Davvy's Guide to Monsters of the Multiverse 

The book will be released separately four months from now, in mid-May. That does not excuse the scummy business practices.

Being disappointed by lizard folk not having cunning artisan, but pointing out that biting isnt his kink, implies that fashioning weapons from bones is his kink.

I can't believe "Monsters of the Multiverse" is not a spelljammer setting book

I feel you on the end note. WotC's monetization practices are kinda hurting my desire to keep up with 5e, personally.

Just want to point out that bugbears and hobgoblins resist charm due to “fey ancestry”… but the ACTUAL FAIRIES DON’T.

Another change to Kenku is that it is no longer limited to speak only in mimicry. They can just talk now.

Pretty much agree about Hobgoblins. Is the new one good? Yeah. It’s actually a kinda great way to represent weird old fairy stories where the fae in question had rigorous and weird etiquette that must be followed. It just has nothing to do with what D&D Hobgoblins have always been about.

I don’t like that they’re swapping all the short rest abilities with per proficiency bonus abilities. Having things recharge on short rests was good! It means that everyone in the party gets something on a short rest, not just the warlock and monk (and wizard ig)

Im geniuenly sad that the Hobgoblin change wasn't just a sub race. My war bois... And my Triton lost wall of water. What the hell. That was such a nice spell to have. So many people were drowned..

"Minotaurs always know where north is" On one hand, good for dungeons if your DM is into certain sorts of puzzles On the other hand, the minotaur Corsair captain character i keep in the back of my head now became a better sea-minos

The cunning artisan thing bugs me. I get that this separates them from being tribal. But I love the idea of just any lizardfolk being able to just make bones into stuff regardless of upbringing, that it is just instinct.

Yeah... honestly, gotta love the dnd wikis that exist for those of us who want to play the game but don't have the money to just drop $30 or so because they want to use a single feature

I sometimes feel like I’m the only person who was glad the shifter got a rework. One per long rest just ain’t enough werewolfing.

I'll just treat most of the new race stuff like option rules. So, you can use this new stuff or you can use the old stuff as well.

Fighters/monks/warlocks: "Whew, those last two fights were crazy! Shall we short rest before we continue?" Everybody else: *Anakin face* Fighters/monks/warlocks: *Padme face* "W-we get to short rest, right?"

Yuan-Ti pureblood being really good is pretty setting specific, one of my friends played as one for tomb of annihilation where like everything does a little bit of poison damage and they realized a few sessions in "hey this was accidentally a really good decision"

I love the vulnerability to Tar Tar damage. Might be a deep cut.....but I see it and appreciate it.

I’m sure this book is not going to be controversial in any way lol

I'll be honest as a new player/DM to DnD these changes to the races just make them feel boring and samey to each other. Especially with so many being Fey ancestry now, I mean I know that you can just ignore these changes, but its still sad to see the uniqueness and personalities of these races just fizzle out.

I've talked with my friends, and we're basically all of the opinion that some of this stuff is okay, but Wizards seems to be changing lore just to change lore (looking at you fey ancestry Goblinoids) and is now over correcting with the proficiency bonus scaling. Kobold is now possibly the weakest race in the game (glad to see that the strength of Dragons is still holding true ever since Dragonborn got changed /s). I like some of the changes, namely Genasi and Gith. But a lot of them are me asking "Why????" I think I'm planning to have players choose either the old, or the new versions, or even mix parts together.

I felt like they took a lot of the spice out of the races. A lot of the races had pro’s and con’s to them(short race speed, sunlight sensitivity, or hard to use abilities like the Aasimar ones) but I’ve felt like they’ve gotten rid of the cons to instead just have watered down and less interesting pros

Really enjoyed the overview, I would like to point out, Kenku are no longer limited to their mimicry to talk. They can talk like any other race, they can just use mimicry as a feature.

I find the changes to Goblinoids as Fey to be odd, monsters of the Multiverse is supposed to be a more setting agnostic take on all these races, but the Goblinoids diverge from pretty much every established setting they’re already in. Also why don’t we have official Playable Gnoll stat blocks yet? The Forgotten Realm Gnolls might be bloodthirsty demonic monsters but in Eberron they’re just another race.

I actually hate that sunlight sensitivity was removed from kobolds. Creating huge disadvantages that need to be worked around, or just dealt with in bad situations makes interesting things happen. Without sunlight sensitivity, my Kobold Rogue would never ended up with his sunglasses! Playable race should be focused on giving characters more weaknesses as well as strengths, simply giving buffs is why everyone says humans were boring.

Just a thought. Instead of buying an “essential” new expansion book every goddamned month, why don’t we all just chip in and buy Wizards of the Coast from Hasbro?

I don't know why, but judging from your review, it sounds like this book is less like a new DnD book and a new 40k codex. Except that a new codex generally adds new interesting tools for an army while this book provides minor buffs or reworks to races.

It's such a weird move to make it only available as part of a bundle. Make the bundle by all means, but people would definitely buy it on its own. I just can't fathom the business decision there

Really don't like the changes to the aasimar. Would probably been okay with it if they could use their transformations an equal amount to their proficiency

I'm going to tell people to choose a source book for their race. You can chose either one but no mixing of the two. I'm pretty sure Goliaths, Bugbears, Orcs, and Hobgoblins will be from MoTM but most others will probably still be from Volo's and such.

I don't like them converting subraces like Svirfneblin into full races, or the Aasimar subraces into just a different option. Fey Goblins, Bugbears, etc seems weird as the main option, should be more like a subrace. Just feels off.

Honestly, I hate most of the changes they made. A few things I consider positive changes, but the majority of it is imho a systematic nerfing as well as erasing flavor and the give-and-take of choosing certain races. Can't let anyone shine in any particular area, everything's gotta be equally mediocre and bland. Some of it I'll take, most of it gets the boot though.

Considering that for a long time there were only like 5 small races, I'm glad there's more options to be a small version of a lot of other things now. That's cool

Yeah, unless they release this as a second book or my local hobby store starts selling it individually I'm going the way of the Straw Hat Pirates.

As a DM, some of these are things I can see implementing, and some I don't see doing so at all. Essentially, many options exist now, and I 'd rather keep them all than take one thing as official or the other. I personally can't see these things being a true problem for me unless I enter a public Adventurer's League game at some point in time or DM one. Heck, I'm still using the old rules for Healing Spirit back when it was "busted" before they made an errata to nerf it, because I have my own way of dealing with it that I've talked with my players about that I think works better at my table. My opinion though is that by saying that some of these rules are the new "official" rules, WotC is knee-capping variety in their public games, which are the only places where "official" rules will matter in a TTRPG. This may or may not affect the popularity of those kinds of games in the long run, but I can only speculate. I'm more than willing to talk to my players about using different races and subclasses I'm not very familiar with so long as they can provide me a copy of the rules for them and are open to discussing it, as I think most people are. At the end of the day, a lot of these decisions to me feel a little strange and make me wonder why they didn't say just say that these things exist as options anywhere, thus allowing themselves to keep the old rules viable for officially run games.

Ok call me crazy but if you want to simplify spellcasting as a DM, why not just use the spell points system from the DMG (p288)? You don't need to focus on spell slots, you can half the number of spells known and track the points like HP. It might not be the best for PCs but it feels pretty good on monsters.

I personally really liked the short rest ability and a little sadden that the path forward seems to be "Do what you want." I also don't care for the lineage system that has come out.

$160 dollar erratta... We really need an Archive of Nethys Equivalent for 5e

The only changes that I really like here are the Changeling and the Tabaxi. The others just felt rather pointless.

Hope the that these changes are optional. I really don't like what they did to the Lizardfolk, Kenku, and Duergar.

The thing is now so many of these creatures dont feel like members of their own speices... their like little imposters

At least you can write the purchase off as a Business Expense on your taxes so its not a complete waste.

Very to the point and informative. Thank you Davvy. PS: I hate the Yuan-ti nerfs.

I pre-ordered this on Amazon months ago, and can't wait for the release, but Davvy hit-the-nail-on-the-head with the last few minutes describing the emotional state and concern of players with these multitudes of books. I'm 37 and only in the last year have I finally committed to purchasing and reading the many, many 5E books (I have 23 so far). I don't regret it, and I've deliberately made choices I knew I either needed or thought would be of the most use in branching off from in my own to be determined campaigns. The only real upsetting thing is, I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND A GROUP TO PLAY WITH. And the thing is, I started building my collection from the college bookstore back in January of 2020, when I was going since everything else was shut down. It seems to this day, I've been the only person in the whole school buying these books! Where the Hell are my fellow nerds hiding! It's college, I know you're out there! You can't hide forever, I will find you, and when I do, I'll DM the Hell out of you!!

Thank you, as one who refuses bad business practices I'm so glad that people know of better albeit dubious methods. I dont need 2 more of the same books thank you. X3

This is why I'm a P2e fan, literally all of the rules and character options are available on Archives of Nethis for free. The information is all accessable, with no paywall.

Yeah, I just raise the jolly Rodger whenever WotC puts out a book. Ain’t like they’re gonna go under anytime soon

If the Satyr's Magic Resistance still applies to both spells and magical effects they just became one of the strongest options in the game. +2 to one stat, +1 to another, Medium, Fey creature type, 35 foot movement speed, advantage to saving throws against spells and magical effects, proficiency with two skills, one tool, and one extra language, a 1d6 natural attack that DOESN'T require a free hand to use, and +1d8 feet of horizontal and vertical jumping distance. The only thing they don't get is Darkvision, which can be overcome with a Minor Uncommon magic item that doesn't require attunement and thus costs about 250 gp, easily affordable by 3rd level.

If we can't have racial ability score bonuses, can we have racial ability score maximum modifiers? Hear me out, examples follow. Goliaths would get a 22 max Strength and 22 max Con, but an 18 max Dexterity. Big boy gonna fumble them teacups. Gnomes would have a 22 max Int and another 22 max based on subrace, but an 18 max Strength. Small boi is small, after all. Simply having plusses in two categories results in 30 unique combinations (6*5 = 30) but having one of the remaining scores with a new lowered max increases the combinations to 120 (6*5*4 = 30*4 = 120). That math also works for the old ability score bonus system, too. Some of those combinations would be head scratchers for sure, but hey: you've got some room for unique outcomes before you even factor in racial abilities.

I'm a bit annoyed about how they changed kobolds, in addition to just being worse mechanically now it pretty much removes the flavor they got from the lore around them. Like if I remember correctly Kobolds were "Put the tribe before myself" types, so they had pack tactics as a mechanical representation of how well they worked as a unit with others. Without pack tactics they lose that feeling of unity they had and they're just another race now, but worse they're a race that just kind of feels like "Why would you play this?" when almost every other race at this point feels better either mechanically or from a lore perspective.

This kinda screwed a few races. Aasimar, kobold, minor nerfs across a bunch of them. I think on the whole I disagree with this book,

I’m still going to give my lizardfolk Cunning Artisian. There’s no reason it should’ve been completely removed as opposed to being re-worked.

I'm happy they didn't change the Warforged. It's my favorite race.

I'm like... 99.9999% sure that it was said somewhere that MotM is going to be released individually in May or something right? Or am I being delusional.

"Who asked for changes to the Shifter?" Me. I did. And I can't be happier about it.

2:23 Aarakocra's walking speed used to be 25 feet, and was changed to 30 feet, not the other way around. 4:27 Fairies were reprinted here, along with Harengon, because they were originally released in an adventure module rather than a general source book. 8:05 Kenku no longer "keep forgetting words", as they're no longer restricted to only talking via mimicry; it was a weird dumb thing that was added in 5e and had no basis in their lore from older editions, and I'm very glad it's gone.

This book is trash. Most of the changes made in these races were either ones we the players didn't have a problem with or were complained about by the worse part of the community (Sunlight Sensitivity). The only thing I was happy to see was Relentless Endurance being added to the full orcs but then they ruined it by making them blue. This book was the final straw for me, once I finish my game of D&D 5e I am switching over to something that won't slap me in the face with this many changes every three months. Maybe Pathfinder, or one of the older editions of D&D. Thank you Davvy for making this video, it has given me the info I needed to know.

Pretty sure MotM is going up for individual pre order /purchase later, its already up for pre order on DDB.

So I'm not going to make my players change anything about their current races, and I'm certainly not going to force them to use the updated version. Personally, I dislike a lot of these changes, so I'm going to make it a choice for my players. The last "errata" book made all the changes optional. WHY DIDNT THEY DO THE SAME HERE? I'm not going to force my Yuan Ti player to give up poison immunity, it's her favourite race. It makes no sense for me to tell my Triton player to change his wall of water for water walk, WHY WOULD A FISH PERSON NEED TO WALK ON WATER.

I wonder how many 'spells' are going to be rewritten as 'abilities' so they can't be Dispelled.

They are putting out the Guide to Monsters of the Multiverse as a stand alone book on May 7th dont let them lift you coin pouch or stong arm you

They butchered the lizardfolk and kobolds... Why?!

Meanwhile I’m treating literally every revised race in the book as a new sub race and none of the old ones are barred from my table.

Lmao, the tinder joke at the end got me. Good one, last thing I was expecting

The Changeling, Orc and Genasi changes sound great, otherwise I'm not a fan, and I've never been a fan of abandoning the racial ASIs and Languages

From what I understand, WotC clarified that this material doesn't replace anything it's additional. So both old and new can be used as a legal character.

SOOOO glad my LGS got extra copies of the bundle and decided the best use was to just sell the books and DM screens individually.

I’m glad someone else feel a little salty that WotC is nickel-and-diming the D&D community with this book

Wait wait wait... They did NOT rework Dragonborn?! So basically every race in the book got buffed, but they left out the one race infamously lacking in power due to not having their signature ability being usable a number of time equal to their proficiency bonus?!

Soooooo, are we officially in 5.5E? I feel like this book, Tasha’s, and the dragons one changed the game enough to be considered 5.5E.

I think something a lot of people are overlooking. Before Satyr's had advantage on any save vs a spell or magical effect. Now it's just only against spells specifically. Which is a significant nerf to the race. I think Yuan Ti are the same

Centaur's damage is increased from d4 to d6 Kenku can finally speak read and write common and an extra language as per the new book Kobold's draconic roar now include the kobold itself to gain the advantage while the old one only grants its allies. Satyr's magic resistance is also nerfed like Yuanti's magic resistance Shadarkai gets a massive buff, it was per long rest and it's prof bonus per long rest now.

24 races not 33. The hoove attack of the Centaur went from 1d4 to 1d6. You can purchase it standalone in May or was it March?

God I'm thankful they came out and said new stuff doesn't invalidate the old books. Kobolds are so bad compared to where they were. Yeah, grovel, cower, and beg (GCB) wasn't really good, or used too often, but the comparison to make isn't draconic roar vs GCB, but draconic roar vs pack tactics, which is 1000% worse, and GCB is only slightly worse than draconic legacies, because they offer so little. A single skill, a single cantrip from the SORCERER list (booming blade anyone?), OR (not AND, OR) resistance to fear effects. Yes, we lose sunlight sensitivity, but that was interesting to play around, and in many cases it wasn't even a factor, because dungeons, caves, buildings, the night, and OVERCAST WEATHER or RAIN/SNOWFALL all exist. Draconic roar is compared to pack tactics instead of GCB because it's clear WotC wanted draconic roar to fill the spot that pack tactics was leaving behind (that's why they changed it so that it also gives YOU advantage). The reasons it doesn't fill that role are: Draconic roar has a range of 10 ft, pack tactics is effectively infinite so long as you have an ally within 5 ft of your target. Unless you're a martial melee character, being in melee just to get draconic roar off in the FIRST place is bad. Draconic roar is limited to one round per use, needs a bonus action, needs the target to be HIT with the roar, and can only be used an amount of times equal by your proficiency bonus per long rest, which means most people will get, at max throughout a day, 2-3 uses out of it before they can't use it anymore. Pack tactics is unlimited in uses, for unlimited rounds, requires no action economy to activate, and only needs you to have an ally within 5 ft of your target. Draconic roar DOES give your allies, as well as yourself (now), advantage on attacks against the targets you hit with it, but that's worse than even theoretically giving yourself advantage all the time because of a few reasons. The main one being that you can't guarantee your whole team will be using that advantage on attack during the SINGLE round you're giving it to them (they could have better/more important things to do in their mind during their turn, and casters get a lot of damaging spells that use saving throws instead of attack rolls, so it would be useless for them a little too often). The other reason it's worse is that in order for this to even compete with the damage pack tactics would give over time, your entire team would need to agree to focus fire with attack actions that require attack rolls WHILE draconic roar is active. Decent against a single target, terrible in multi-target skirmishes, and if the cleric or wizard has a better option in the form of something that doesn't use an attack roll, you're losing value. Pack tactics doesn't need to worry about any of this because the only person who needs to be on the same page as you is you. Your martials don't even need to worry about their positioning for you, because they're probably already standing where you want them to, because that's naturally where they WANT to stand, which is in melee range. If for some reason you don't have any melee martials, chances are someone might have a summon spell or a pet. Maybe that's you, and I think all summoned creatures/pets count as allies, and will fill the requirements you need for pack tactics. If you're playing a kobold and want to be as optimal as possible, use Volo's kobolds, they just get a flat out better racial ability than Draconic Roar and Kobold Legacies combined. You need to take more interest in your environment, finding shade for yourself, and attacking things that are in shade themselves during combat. Ask the DM if there's clouds in the sky blocking the sun, take advantage of your time indoors, or within dungeons and caves. If you have fog cloud, cast it above you. Upcast it to make it bigger. Spellcasters actually get a few things they can use to break direct sunlight. Work with your DM to play around the sunlight sensitivity, and you'll see the value old kobold brings over the MotM one.

My precious poison immunity... How dare you... How will I drink poisoned wine with my victims now?

The best part is, you can mix and match parts of MotM and Legacy content for maximum chaos and fuckery

A reminder that these races are supposed to represent the setting-agnostic version, that can appear in any Crystal Sphere throughout the Material Plane, the old stats (mostly) still apply to Forgotten Realms/Greyhawk/Dragonlance, which are the settings they were made for

Yeah this book is exactly what I thought it would be just really destroying the uniqueness of most of the races and nerfing everything

They have said each book will be sold separately in a few months. This bundle was supposed to be released last year for the holidays but got pushed back. This is a book I'll skip. Reminds me of the old 3.5 days of the "Races of ..." splat books. Only one of those I bought was Races of Stone for Goliaths and Gnomes.

"Monsters of the Multiverse" turning all your mosnters to fairies

Wow, that hobgoblin change is... very poor. Like, that's a total rewrite. And wow, they just took Lizardfolk out back and shot them, huh?

"They have vulnerability to tar-tar damage" truly, a man of culture

I don't usually comment, but I just wanna say that this video was really good and very funny. I know this is your usual style, but I just felt a little extra flair or confidence in there. Can't pinpoint it, just, good job

For the hobgoblin change. Hobgoblins could be friendly bards now, but they can also be arguably more terrifying now. In the fey wild, which they are now from, no gift is free. If a fey creature helps you they will expect to get something in return, and if you don't offer what they want they will likely just take it from you. A hobgoblin is now really good at helping you which means they are now giving you a lot of 'you owe me' cards which they will definitely be cashing in.

A good quality overview and now I know that I will most likely journey out to sea for this book because I don’t like two thirds of it. And a wholehearted thank you for taking the hit so many of us didn’t have to endure the absolutely atrocious marketing of WoTC.

God. They improved my Genasi, but ruined my Githyanki and Aasimar. I hate that short rest recharge has been cut in favor of # of times = to PB

Add Grung you cowards! Thanks for the summary Davvy! Super helpful.

Some of these are neat, most just leave me screaming why. If you're going to throw out most of the previous lore, why not just make a new setting? I'm not sure why they decided to make some of these new races, but whatever. I'm kinda torn on my thoughts of not including Tieflings but including Aasamar and hope it's not a sign of wotc about to pull a stupid move. But, yeah. Some neat changes and more than a few questionable ones. So, neat.

Am I the only one who is surprised that Leonin were not in here? I get they are a Theros race but I can easily see them simply being presented as Tabaxi's beefcake cousins.

The remastering/ remaking trend has moved from video games to source books, which in turn forces Davvy to remake/ remaster his videos. The triple A industry ruins everything.

If Tasha's didn't signify the beginning of 5.5e then this book does.

Kobold Swashbuckler: I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that

Now we have to wait for may to get Monster of the Multiverse. This is really dumb. They should have release it in single books and in a pack.

Not sure how I feel about all these changes Some got nerfed unessicarily I think and some lost their uniqueness I actually liked old kobolds lore as cowards and the lizardfolks being tribal I dislike these changes as they are kind of losing their flavouring

At this point they should have called it 5.5e cos that's what it friggen sounds like. They're changing practically everything.

My Water Gensai character in the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign I'm a part of is literally a combo of the classic playable Water Genasi from PotA, and the Elemental Evils Player's Companion, and the updated version of Mordenkien's Monsters of the Multiverse meaning she has via Call of the Wave both the Shape Water Cantrip, and Acid Splash Cantrip and both the Create and Destroy Water spell, and Water Walk spell, along with having the 30 foot Swim Speed, the ability to breath both air and water via Amphibious, Acid Resistance, and Darkvision.

So it’s out stand alone in May, but I’m thinking I’ll just ignore this book. I like all these races as they were. Also RIP pack tactics.

What youve told me is that my normal collection of all the races are better

I do not like the removal of the yaun ti posion immunity literally the coolest to me

Thank you so much for making this You saved my +$150 and any further lost sleep on this specific problem in my life

Aarakocra nerfs, not like any dm is going to unban them :'3