Tome of Beasts 2 Adds a Plethora of Fantastic Monsters to Dungeons & Dragons

Kobold Press has released a new bestiary filled with hundreds of interesting threats for Dungeons [...]

Kobold Press has released a new bestiary filled with hundreds of interesting threats for Dungeons & Dragons. After a successful Kickstarter earlier this year, Kobold Press has officially released Tome of Beasts 2, their third bestiary of monsters made for Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The book is a standalone bestiary with over 400 different monsters, ranging from high-level threats like ancient imperial dragons and demon lords to weirder creatures like the Snake With a Hundred Mage Hands or the very seasonal Snow Terror, which looks like a Frosty the Snowman pulled straight out of hell.

The monsters in Tome of Beasts 2 are appropriately diverse, with everything from bizarre new golems to strange new undead creatures like the Windy Wailer, a crescent moon-shaped spirit that streaks across the sky like a comet, appearing within its pages. Many monsters are pulled out of non-European folklore, while others flesh out the world of Midgard, the campaign setting created by Kobold Press founder Wolfgang Baur and used as the setting for the company's adventures. While the new tome explains how certain creatures fit within Midgard, all of these monsters can be easily slotted into any campaign setting, whether it's an "official" world like the Forgotten Realms or an entirely homebrew setting.

Where Tome of Beasts 2 really excels is that the book finds ways to "fill the gaps" left in official Wizards of the Coast publications. For instance, Tome of Beasts 2 contains over 40 new fey creatures, which almost equals the number of fey found in official D&D books. What's more - the book contains entries for high-level fey threats (such as archfey) for those campaigns who actually want a substantive campaign set in the Feywild. While there are over 20 high CR creatures included in Tome of Beasts 2, this particular bestiary seems to focus mostly on Tier 2/Tier 3 level threats, with the majority of monsters having a challenge rating between 5 and 15. And while the first Tome of Beasts (published about two years after the launch of Fifth Edition) had a few monsters that punched high above its CR, a cursory inspection of the monsters during my readthrough didn't reveal any monsters that seemed significantly more threatening than what their rating indicated.

If you're a DM looking for new monsters to throw at your D&D players or need a creature that they can't metagame around, Tome of Beasts 2 is a must-have book. One readthrough already has me brimming with ideas for future campaign and adventure hooks that I know will delight my players. A PDF version of Tome of Beasts 2 is available for $29.99 while a hardcover version is available for $49.99.

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