D&D’s new Monster Manual makes it easier to build a world without magic

If I had to pick a throughline for the 2024 Dungeons & Dragons rules refresh (aka One D&D, D&D 2024, 5.5 edition, or whatever they’re calling or not calling it this week), it would be customization. While there’s not a lot to draw from right at this moment as far as officially published adventure books, there’s a whole lot of new ways to make your at-home games unique — from player-made bastions to the reintroduction of Greyhawk as a world-sized blank slate and beyond. Personally, I’m looking forward to spinning up a world where magic is incredibly rare, and where the players are uniquely powerful compared to their adversaries. The new Monster Manual (2025), come to find, is suddenly my new best friend and an able partner in making a low-magic setting from scratch.

Several elements of how the Monster Manual is organized put a low-magic setting easily within reach for Dungeon Masters willing to put in the work. The most obvious is the entirety of Appendix A: Animals, which lists everything from a feisty badger (Armor Class 11, 5 hit points) to a killer whale (Armor Class 12, 90 hit points). For the campaign that I’m running, I expect to be able to make use of this section alone for at least two full levels of play, and maybe longer.

But why limit yourself to just the one appendix, fellow magic hater? Another section of the book organizes monsters by habitat! On page 375 you’ll find tables for coastal monsters, desert monsters, as well as monsters from the hills, forests, grasslands, urban areas, and more. Just grab something thematic near the challenge rating you need, take a quick look at their combat abilities, and you’re good to go. These more traditional baddies can help raise the stakes, but won’t necessarily be burdened with magical powers.

Newly reorganized stat blocks also mean that monsters’ spellcasting abilities are a bit easier to see at a glance. If one of the monsters you’ve picked out for your players has spells, you can just skip over them during combat. Best practice, however, would be to put something in place of those spells to make up for them. More hit points is always an option, but it is a boring one. Page seven offers ideas for giving monsters items, so maybe your more humanoid critters brought an ax to this swordfight.

But if D&D has taught me anything, it’s that encounters are more than just monsters. Maybe there’s some kind of environmental hazard — flooding, sandy terrain, or liquid hot magma — that could put a wrinkle in the action. That makes the Dungeon Master’s Guide (2024) even more valuable than it was before. Either way, fans the world over should be pleased to have a book full of upgraded monsters to go with their newly upgraded rules for D&D.

Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (2025) will be released widely on Feb. 18. The book was previewed using a PDF provided by Wizards of the Coast. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.