Before we begin this review of Mordenkainen’s: Monsters of the Multiverse, as released in the 2022 D&D Rules Expansion Gift Set, let’s get one thing clear: this review is about more than just MotM.
Monsters of the Multiverse represents the next stage of Dungeons & Dragon’s evolution within it’s fifth edition. From the changes to spells & spell attacks in casting-based foes, to the renewed focus on the humble Proficiency Bonus (PB) in racial abilities, Wizards of the Coast are making one thing abundantly clear: this book is looking to the future of 5th edition.
Now that we’ve said that…
The Divisive Update
Most followers of D&D online have already made their choice on whether or not to love Monsters of the Multiverse. We’ve had months to start our love and/or hate relationship with the contents of this book, with each teaser and leak further dividing people.
I already own this!
The biggest issue we’ve seen people have with MotM, by far, is the focus on ‘old’ content. Monsters of the Multiverse repackages 30+ playable races from across previous D&D releases, as well as countless monsters, all featuring the design tweaks to races & monsters that Wizards have been drip feeding us since Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything (also included in the Rules Expansion Gift Set) released in 2020.
A huge proportion of the opposition to MotM has come from people who don’t want to pay full price for a book containing content they already have. If you’ve been collecting D&D books since Xanathar’s Guide to Everything released, you already have almost every race included in this book (excluding Tortles, who are included in print for the first time in MotM).
This argument is solid, of course; there are plenty of people who are perfectly happy with the books they already own, and their position is made even more understandable when you consider Wizards of the Coast’s approach to errata. For years they have released errata in PDF form, for free, on their website, as well as including it in future printings of their books.
So why aren’t these changes being made available for free? Because this isn’t errata for a single book; WotC are bringing us changes to races from multiple hardcover source books and campaigns, making them all available in one place for the first time. For those who haven’t bought the other source books, this is new content!
This is, incidentally, what makes the Rules Expansion Gift Set such a good deal. Know a player who only has the Player’s Handbook, or maybe the Core Rules Gift Set from 2019? Now you can give them two books of new subclasses (and Artificer), as well as a book full of fun new races to try, all in one package.
These rules suck! Right?
The second biggest issue people have with MotM is that they don’t like the rules changes. People who disliked Tasha’s introduction of alternative origin rules that let you put ability score increases wherever you want, or the recent ‘removal’ of alignment from many stat blocks & races, will not enjoy MotM.
There are also mixed opinions on the updated caster stat blocks. Some people see this as a simplification of casters, something to make the game easier to run, which is either a great or terrible idea depending on who you are. I personally think it’s a great idea; the easier D&D is to run for a first-timer, the more first-timers we’ll have, the more veterans we’ll create, the more games I’ll be able to play in!
It also reduces the Counterspell tax for players. If you’d missed the update, caster stat blocks now have a shorter spell list, and a couple of their more damaging spells have been relisted as Spell Attacks, which explicitly cannot be Counterspelled.
Removing the ability to counterspell some of a casters common damage spells is an important, positive change for D&D.
First of all, by reducing opportunities for players to use Counterspell on purely damaging spells, you’re reducing the Counterspell tax on your wizards & sorcerers, freeing up spell slots for them to use on other things.
It also ensures that the casters Damage Per Round (DPR) will more often than not actually align with their Challenge Rating (CR), which will make it easier for first-time DMs to accurately balance encounters for their players.
Hitting Smarter, not Harder
Speaking of Challenge Rating, we’ve heard from Jeremy Crawford himself that these monsters are going to be tougher than before, but not just by hitting harder. In this interview with D&D’s Todd Kenreck, Crawford explains that the creatures of Monsters of the Multiverse have been updated so that they’re “earning their CR in multiple ways”.
A monster might have seemed to hit below it's Challenge Rating, but then if you chose a different set of actions from the stat block, suddenly its hitting at, or might even feel like its hitting above its Challenge Rating.
It was too easy for DMs to pick a sequence of things that was NOT that set of most optimal options. So what we're doing now... we are now making it so that a monster must basically earn its CR in multiple ways if it has multiple action sequence options in the stat block.
This is definitely another improvement for new DMs that will make Challenge Rating more relevant moving forward. Most DMs I know, if not all of them, have thrown out CR by now when it comes to planning a session. Why? Because invariably we’d find ourselves running combats that were either more or less challenging than the CR suggested, and it was too difficult to find a middle ground!
By ensuring that monsters are ‘earning’ their Challenge Rating in multiple ways, ensuring monsters don’t fall down and out of their rating, we’re on the right path to ensuring that CR becomes a relevant and useful metric for choosing monsters again.
We’re on the right path
Ultimately, Monsters of the Multiverse is a course correction for D&D; it works well alongside the drip-fed updates to character creation we’ve seen since Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, and the combat mechanic improvements visible in Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons and The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and on its own functions as a signpost pointing our way towards whatever is on the horizon alongside D&D’s 50th anniversary in 2024.
Is it worth picking up in the D&D Rules Expansion Gift Set? Unless you’re missing one or both of the other books, I’d say not. Should you pick it up when it’s released standalone this May, though? Absolutely.
