Dungeons & Dragons Volo’s Guide to Monsters Hardcover – 15 November 2016

Volo’s Guide to Monsters provides something exciting for players and Dungeon Masters everywhere.

• Dive deep into the story behind D&D’s most popular and iconic monsters, including beholders, mind flayers, and the yuan-ti, as well as classics like orcs, gnolls, and kobolds.
• Gain access to rules and story for dozens of monsters new to fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, such as the froghemoth, the neogi, and the vargouille.
• Open up new race options, including the goblin, the orc, and the firbolg.

The esteemed loremaster Volothamp Geddarm is back and he’s written a fantastical dissertation, covering some of the most iconic monsters in the Forgotten Realms. Unfortunately, the Sage of Shadowdale himself, Elminster, doesn’t believe Volo gets some of the important details quite right. Don’t miss out as Volo and Elminster square off (academically speaking of course) to illuminate the uninitiated on creatures both common and obscure. Uncover the machinations of the mysterious Kraken Society, what is the origin of the bizarre froghemoth, or how to avoid participating in the ghastly reproductive cycle of the grotesque vargouille.

Dungeon Masters and players will get some much-needed guidance as you plan your next venture, traipsing about some dusty old ruin in search of treasure, lore, and let’s not forget … dangerous creatures whose horns, claws, fangs, heads, or even hides might comfortably adorn the walls of your trophy room. If you survive.

This is NOT just another Monster Manual! Volo’s Guide to Monsters provides something exciting for players and Dungeon Masters everywhere.
· A deep dive into the lore behind some of D&D’s most popular and iconic monsters
· Dozens of monsters new to the fifth edition to include in your epic adventures
· New playable races to allow you to build characters to fit nearly any type of story in your D&D game.

• Monster Lore—97 pages provide a much deeper examination of nine different creatures that have a tendency to cross paths with wandering adventurers. These include beholders, giants, gnolls, goblinoids, hags, kobolds, mind flayers, orcs, and the Yuan-ti. With each creature type getting between 10-12 pages of supplemental material, you’ll find details about culture, births, combat, minions, and much more. In some instances, Volo has provided valuable maps that further one’s knowledge of these monsters. And in some instances, additional charts have been provided for roleplaying some of these creatures. Sidebars contain details such as confronting these creatures, major cities, key individuals, and deities… plus many more secrets
• Character Races—A total of seven new races (although Goliaths were introduced in the Princes of the Apocalypse resource) are provided for players to try out—Aasimar, Firbolgs, Goliaths, Kenku, Lizardfolk, Tabaxi, and Tritons. Matching the level of details found in the 5e Player’s Handbook race descriptions, players will find ability score mods, special abilities, class suggestions, and other details for roleplaying these new races.
• Monstrous Adventurers—Should a DM allow it, the book also includes the basic traits for the bugbear, goblin, hobgoblin, kobold, orc, and Yaun-ti so that players can create a character from one of these creature races.
• New Monsters—With over 120 new monsters (some of them are variations of a particular creature — an example is the Hag creature that provides two new variants called Annis Hag and Bheur Hag), DMs will have some new challenges to toss at players. The back of the book contains a number of helpful charts that break up the new creatures by creature type, challenge rating, and environment.

·  New Non-Player Character Stats— Appendix B contains 23 new non-player characters that include Apprentice Wizard, Blackguard, Diviner, and Swashbuckler among others