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Dungeons & Dragons has undergone some balance shifts with the introduction of new core rulebooks in 2024, and it looks like those changes will continue into 2025 with the upcoming Monster Manual. As the primary compendium of D&d foes, the Monster Manual is essential to the overall picture of what playing D&d looks like, but not much has yet been revealed about the rework. The biggest promise of the new book is the inclusion of over 500 monsters, expanding significantly on the 300+ tally of the 2014 edition.

Quality is more important than quantity, however, and the Monster Manual has also promised changes in that regard. Monsters are gaining new abilities and attributes with the goal of making them more interesting to fight than before, although backward compatibility largely ensures that there shouldn't be a radical shift in difficulty across the board. Certain monsters will be getting tougher, however, a distinction that comes...

Balancing Dungeons & Dragons is a complicated process, and according to the game's designers, the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide fixes one area where they simply got it wrong in 2014. With flexible party sizes and combat that can range in intensity, there's no single set of rules for what might make a good encounter in D&d. One common piece of advice is to be careful with large enemy rosters, as players end up with less opportunity to dominate the turn order and strategize effectively.

In an interview with Screen Rant, however, D&d Senior Game Designer James Wyatt explained the multiplier used to calculate the impact of higher monster counts in the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide didn't work properly. According to Wyatt, the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide cuts the concept because "the math was off," with the multiplier ultimately introducing a less accurate skew to challenge calculations. The change is accompanied by an increase...

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, the second tome in a trifecta of Dungeons & Dragons rulebook revisions, has a lot on its plate. There's no single path to becoming a successful dungeon master in D&d, and attempting to round up all the essentials in one volume requires a delicate balancing act. It's an art that D&d has struggled to perfect in the past, and despite featuring plenty of valuable and interesting information, the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide couldn't quite arrange it in a way that made it intuitive for those learning the game.

Fortunately, the 2024 Player's Handbook already showed a deft hand at sprucing up the current state of D&d, and the new Dungeon Master's Guide brims with the same potential. From annotated examples of play to more extensive resources detailing D&d characters and places, a lot of useful new material has made its way in, and most...

The primary architects behind the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide are designers working at Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast, but they're not the only ones who had a hand in the new book. In honing advice for dungeon masters, WotC turned to some external creatives, including some celebrities famous for their skill at running the game. From Critical Role host Matt Mercer to Daredevil actress Deborah Ann Woll, the influence of outside DMs played an important role.

In an interview with Screen Rant, D&d Creative Director Chris Perkins described the process of consulting with outside dungeon masters, in which Wizards of the Coast would send out chapters on Dm advice along with a list of questions. Consultants would read the chapters with those questions in mind and provide feedback, ranging from "this is great" to "this is actually bad advice if you're a neurodivergent Dm." Senior Game Designer James Wyatt...