‘Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes’ to Add New Monsters and Playable Races to Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons is getting a big addition later this year with its newest book of playable material.

Mordenkainen‘s Tome of Foes is the latest supplement to Dungeons & Dragons‘ popular Fifth Edition and will be released in late May 2018. Wizards of the Coast first announced the new book on Friday and gave some more information about what players can expect to find within the book’s 256 pages.

“This book is all about conflicts in the D&D multiverse,” D&D lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford said during a Twitch broadcast on D&D’s official streaming channel. “We delve into some of these great conflicts that rage across the worlds of D&D, give you some lore about those conflicts, and then the second half of the book is filled with monsters, many of which are related to those conflicts.” Some of the new monsters will be incredibly high level creatures, such as Archdevils and elder elementals like the Leviathan.

The new volume will explore the Blood War between demons and devils, the conflict between the dwarves and duergar, and the battles between the githyanki, githzaerai, and mind flayers. There will also be a section about gnomes and halflings and how these two races seem to avoid getting drawn into major conflicts.

Crawford also described Tome of Foes as a “sibling” to Volo’s Guide to Monsters, a 2016 supplement that greatly expanded on the lore surrounding several classic D&D monsters and added dozens of new monsters to the game.

Like Volo’s Guide to Monsters, Tome of Foes is more beneficial to DMs than normal players, but the book contains both expanded lore on several D&D races that players might find beneficial. There’s also several new playable race options in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, which will expand options for players.

Four of the races mentioned were the githyanki (powerful psychic humanoids that dwell on the Astral Plane), the githzerai (a slightly less evil version of the githyanki), the eladrin (descendants of elves that live in the feywild) and the Shadar-kai (a humanoid race that live in the shadowfell). There will also be several variant options for tieflings that are descendants of different devils as well.

Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes will help expand the Fifth Edition version of Dungeons & Dragons. First released in 2014, the Fifth Edition simplified many of D&D’s rules and gameplay and helped greatly expand the game’s popularity. With an emphasis on storytelling over complicated rulesets, the Fifth Edition is a great way for those interested in trying out tabletop RPGs for the very first time.

Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes will be released on May 29th and will cost $49.99.