Dungeons & Dragonshas 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 upcomingMonster Manual.As the primary compendium ofD&Dfoes,theMonster Manualis essential to the overall pictureof what playingD&Dlooks like, but not much has yet been revealed about the rework. The biggest promise of the new book is theinclusion of over 500 monsters, expanding significantly on the 300+ tally of the 2014 edition.
Quality is more important than quantity, however, and theMonster Manualhas 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 into play with the higher-level creatures found in the book.
D&D’s 2025 Monster Manual Buffs High-Level Monsters
Finishing What The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide Started
Although details on the 2025Monster Manualremain sparse,D&DSenior Game Designer James Wyatt revealed thatthe book will give a little extra juice to “monsters at a higher challenge rating"in aninterview withScreen Rant.Just how many monsters might be affected by the balance tweak isn’t yet clear, but it’s unlikely to apply to much that parties beneath level 10 would frequently face. The change should help address long-standing complaints about designing challenging high-level encounters, something that’s always been frustratingly difficult inD&D5e.
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What’s particularly noteworthy about theMonster Manualbalance changes is that they’re not being made in isolation. The2024Dungeon Master’s Guidechanges the encounter budgetfor high-level fights, giving DMs more XP to deploy against their parties once they cross the level 10 threshold.It also removes the multiplier used to estimate the impact of multiple monstersin a fight, meaning far more can be tossed into a high-level encounter while still remaining within the XP budget.
D&D’s Balance Changes Are Meant To Fix The 2014 Rules
High-Level Encounters Aren’t Always Thrilling
The 2024Player’s Handbookdoes contain plenty of its own buffs for player characters, and a high-level Monk character is more likely to fare well against fearsome foes now. It doesn’t contain any dramatic balance shift, however, and Wyatt clarifies thatthe balance changes in theDungeon Master’s GuideandMonster Manualare “not because characters are more powerful now.“The new approach is intended to fix what the design team views as along-standing problem with the 2014 books, which erred too much on the side of caution when it came to the fundamentals of high-level encounter design.
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Some of the new monsters will also be slotting into high-CR positions, witha powerful new ooze called the Blob of Annihilation being a particularly memorable revealearlier this year. Ideally, the changes should make it easier for DMs to work with high-level parties and no longer force them to do extensive supplementary work to make encounters interesting. WithD&Dbeing a standard-bearer for the heroic fantasy genre, high-level play should be some of the best that it has to offer, but the late-game experience defined by the 2014 rules hasn’t been able to achieve that.
What Difficulty In D&D’s 2025 Monster Manual Might Look Like
It’s Still Unlikely To Resemble Past Editions
Despite the change in prerogative, the 2025Monster Manualis still unlikely to commit to overwhelming power in the same way that some past editions ofD&Ddid.5e has maintained a challenge rating cap of 30, which pales in comparison to the CR 90 Great Wyrm Time Dragon that appeared in an officialDragonmagazine forD&D3.5e. That being said, taking stats beyond a certain point can simply become absurd, and making the small selection of monsters that are currently CR 30 even more powerful could still result in truly formidable foes.
The highest-level creature to feature in an actual 3.5e sourcebook was the Great Wyrm Prismatic Dragon, which appeared in theEpic Level Handbook.
There’s no way to know how substantial the changes will beuntil more material from the 2024Monster Manualis revealed, but it makes for something to look forward to at any rate. The 2024Dungeons & Dragonscore rulebooks haven’t shied away from adjusting the balance, and the 2025Monster Manualhas the chance to put all the pieces of the puzzle together for a memorable high-level challenge.
