The painfully lacking part of the layout was the decision not to include a “Monsters by Challenge” index. Monster stat blocks have all the usability of 4th Edition monsters, and sections that direct you outside the book for information are relegated only to monsters with spellcasting powers. The layout of the book is superb, with easy cues in the bottom right corners letting you know immediately which section of the book you’re in. There are a few stinkers in the artwork (I’m looking at you, fat Owlbear), but mostly they’re great.
Plenty of full page or half page splashes of art are included, giving the material the kind of space that it needs to thrive. The art and layout are generally gorgeous, with the beautifully handpainted style of 5th Edition taking the fore on many pages. Only time will tell if the overstuffing means we see binding issues with the Monster Manual, but for the rough month I had with the book I saw none. Some complaints will be made about the look of the books on the shelf getting disrupted, but nobody’s going to value that over the added content. The cover suffers from some small wrapping onto the spine, but it looks like that’s because the decision must have gotten made to stuff in another fold of monsters. The book is just as high quality as the Player’s Handbook was before it, with just as good a binding and paper stock as you’d expect.
It’s a bestiary in the grandest sense, and while it occasionally stumbles on rules, it innovates or succeeds in key ways that make the book more usable and valuable than many of its predecessors. The Monster Manual for D&D‘s 5th Edition is a grand old book in that tradition, mixing game usefulness and a healthy respect for the mystery and purpose of its own contents. It’s traditionally a tome of magic and wonder for young players, filled with strange beasts that defy description and written to appeal to the kind of kid that obsessively categorizes dinosaurs and devours tomes of mythology. For a lot of Dungeons & Dragons players, the Monster Manual was the magical book that hooked them.
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