@@jessebenson8799 thank you for the time stamps!

it'll be there in about an hour or two! live chat replays appear a couple hours after the stream finishes! ^^

Oh wait, I can just say it all again here: Working on a migraine? Well class, looks like I’m yapping instead. Aia, take the money for a new bookshelf & listen: The Monster Manual for the To-may-to/To-mah-to Edition of D&D has finally fallen into my grasp, & y’all are gonna hear about it, one reply at a time. It’s good. It is so f🟥cking good. The art is peak, the quotes go hard, & 4th tier is not just fighting the tarrasque. Something has come back from 4e: The way there’s multiple statblocks for each monster. Weaker monsters have stronger variants, final bosses have a mini-boss version of themselves. Example: CR 3 owlbears have CR 7, Huge-size cousins with the power of flight. CR 23 empyreans have the CR 1 empyrean iotas. Liches have a mini-me called a ghast gravecaller. Hags have a boss that outguns an entire coven. They also have men now, so Wario could totally be a hag himself. Lair actions aren’t a thing anymore, but regional effects still are. Bosses just get an extra legendary action (and legendary resistance) inside their lair. Outside of lairs, the average number of legendary resistances has increased from 3 to 4. Ration your save-or-die spells accordingly. Speaking of bosses, newcomers include the Colossus (big robot go smash), Elemental Cataclysm (primordial titan, hates civilization), & Blob of Annihilation (melting corpse of a god that vores you). Flying PCs are less of a combat ender. Ranged attacks & AOEs are /everywhere./ Even the tarrasque deals thunder damage by roaring. Also, these ranged attacks deal the same average damage as melee. In function, everyone has a gun. Considering that brooms now take 200gp & 10 days to craft, this escalation is warranted. That's right, flying brooms: 50 feet of fly speed the minute the PCs have downtime. Start thinking about 3D battlemaps, then lock & load. Speaking of attack rolls, sometimes they just add a status condition in addition to the damage. This isn't omnipresent, just happens more often. Example: Previously, a poisoned arrow would be +4 to hit, deal 1d8 piercing, then force a DC 12 CON save against being poisoned. Now? If it hits, you're immediately poisoned. Ergo, high AC is more valuable than ever. This could prove problematic for barbarians with Reckless Attack, but still: Always. Find. Cover. Remember magical bludgeoning, piercing, & slashing damage? Not mentioned here. Most higher tier monsters deal force damage. Amethyst dragonborn rejoice. And that goes the same for monsters resisting BP&S damage. Demons and ghosts also halve the damage from magic weapons! It’s like they’re raging 24/7. Sharp-eyed gamers may have noticed that the surprised condition doesn't rob you of your turn on the first round, just gives you disadvantage on initiative. This is double-downed by higher CR monsters have higher initiative, dexterity mods be d🟥mned. Nobody is getting a free round by interrupting the villain monologue. Giant animals with their own language (eagles, elk, owls) are celestials instead of beasts. The polymorph economy: In shambles. Giant apes are still viable, though. In fact, celestials have puffed up their ranks by getting furrier. Joining unicorns & couatls are nagas & sphinxes. Sitting on top is the CR 20 animal lord. What animal lords are is deeply ingrained in the Planescape lore, but what they look like is simple: Rewatch Aia’s fursona stream, then add druid spells. Mock their toe beans at your peril. But werewolves are monstrosities now. Monsterf🟥ckers stay winning. In fact, a lot of humanoid goons have lost their humanity. Kobolds are dragons. Goblins, fey. Gnolls, fiends. The gith (even the GITH) are aberrations like illithids. It’s almost as if WOTC wanted to beat their colonialist undertones, have less barechested savages that exist to die for a greater master. By doubling down, kind of? I’m interpreting them saying “See, these caricatures aren’t humanoid! Just forget that you could’ve played as them, forget you could live their lives, just burn their huts down.” “At the same time, no, we’ll never say that they aren’t people. Hold Person doesn’t work on them, though. Consider this a power creep, & don’t think about it.” Am I overthinking this? I wouldn’t put it past them. I’m sure their dev team had the best intentions, though. My personal stance is that you couldn't do much to salvage gith in the 1st place. Gith all look like someone in yellowface, & they have 2 monolith cultures: Raiding like a Mongolian horde or meditating on being a model minority. I don't care if some of them are green. It's still racist! This'll probably just result in players wanting to homebrew their monstrous species into having non-humanoid types. Because who wants to deal with Hold Person? Rules, after all, are always interpreted in the manner most convenient to the interpreter. I'm done complaining about racism for now. More positivity: Monsters are better spellcasters than PCs. Full stop. You are always punching up in a magic duel. How’s this? All due to a funny little rule about casting multiple spells back in the Player's Handbook: “On a turn, you can expend only one spell slot to cast a spell.” So no, you can't Silvery Barbs on the Banishment that you're casting. But guess who doesn't have spell slots anymore? Monsters. It's “once per day” this & “recharge on a 5-6” that. Or just at will! Liches be fireballing at 5th level forever! A lot of monsters cast spells as a part of their godd🟥mn multiattack. Including. All. Dragons. It's an excellent springboard for the silliest of homebrew. (Yeah yeah yeah, I know that white dragons don't get spellcasting until they're ancient, shut up! We all know a late bloomer!) Jeffrey Cohen said that a monster polices the borders of the possible, & my next demon prince is gonna police how many spell combos are possible each round. Speaking of, what the book is tragically missing is aiding monster creation. Fortunately, I’ve got the perfect one-two punch for doing that… The Lazy DM’s Forge of Foes by Mike Shea (PDF 15 USD) & The Monster Overhaul by Skerples. (PDF 30 USD). Former is a DIY for monster stats, latter is that for monster fluff. But in Monster Overhaul, I found the greatest piece of advice for encounter building: “In a game where both the monsters and PCs have goals, balanced encounters are meaningless. Faced with a stronger foe, the weaker side can (and probably should) run, negotiate, bribe, bluff, seek common ground, surrender, or, if all else fails, fight.” Sorry murderhobos, I just rolled up a demigod. That’s the encounter table for you. How softly are you kissing her boots? Congratulations, you've wiped over half the ghouls out in 2 rounds. They're going to use their ability to speak common to negotiate a surrender and remind you that they once lived like you did. Like the rest of the 2024 books, the new organization is the best part of the MM. Truly alphabetical, & indexes galore. You’ll never lose a statblock again. That alone puts it above the 2014 MM. Closing thoughts? I wouldn't have this much nitpicking if I didn't like the new edition. You could buy the core books and run perfectly unique, anti-racist campaigns for decades. Thank you so much for indulging me, Aia. You don't know how much joy you bring to people that you've never even met. We love you. Parasocially.

timestamp specifically just for me as well, thank you my queen!!!! excited to hear Mayhem together with you when the whole album drops!!!!