The BEST D&D 5e Book Ever Made?! - "Flee, Mortals!" REVIEW!

While The Character Sheet is currently at Gen Con, our coverage of Fantasy and TTRPG news continues with the amazing new Dungeons & Dragons 5e book from ‪@mcolville‬ and the team at MCDM, "Flee, Mortals!", and our review of this massive new collection of beasts, combat rules, and much, much more!
So is "Flee, Mortals!" the best D&D 5e supplement released in years, and why does it deserve a spot on your bookshelf and you latest campaign? We're breaking down the massive changes to encounter levels, creature roles, combat, and more that combine some of the best aspects of 4th edition dungeons and dragons with the core ruleset of D&D 5th edition...and just how they could impact your game for the better!
Find out why "Flee, Mortals!" is everything the OGL Backlash was about protecting...and just how amazing a OGL Source book can really be, as we break down everything you need to know about Matt Colville's MCDM Masterpiece!
#dnd #fleemortals #mcdm #ogl
Follow us at / dndsheet

[@BasementMinions]

Been pouring over the PDF since it released, it's truly remarkable how it makes vanilla monsters feel so fresh.

[@TheCharacterSheet]

It just brings back all the joy of 4e combat with the more solid framework of 5e, and it's pretty incredible

[@TheCharacterSheet]

Is "Flee, Mortals" getting a spot on your book shelf? Let us know in the comments!

[@Shattered_Entertainment]

yes it is i love it

[@raymondharnack4160]

100

[@Ckorsz00]

Minor correction: Where Evil Lives was always going to be made. The money for creating the content was raised as a stretch goal for Flee Mortals. The current backerkit campaign is just to raise money to PRINT Where Evil Lives, because the original kickstarter for Flee Mortals raised too much money to put all the content in one physical book.

[@theyonlycomeoutwhenitsquiet]

This was an auto-back for me. I’ve enjoyed nearly everything MCDM has put out, and their quality only seems to improve

[@TheCharacterSheet]

the quality is definitely top tier!

[@ColinMacInnis]

I used their Tome of Foes book and Tyrants book for a very tactical campaign and here 2 years later, those battles still rank Top Favourite

[@Shovel_Cat]

As one of the happy folks who helped test out some of the early monsters I am super stoked.

[@BrianSledd]

I honestly loved the Defender, Striker, Brute designations for monsters back in the days of 4e and have kind of used those as a guideline of sorts when looking to do 5e adventures. I agree with most of the comments before me, this was an insta-back, I have loved the stuff that MCDM has done (Kingdoms and Warfare has been *AMAZING!*), is doing, and hopefully will wow us when they come out with their TTRPG. I think we are living in the best timeline when we have Daggerheart, Tales of the Valiant, MCDM's project, as well as a few other smaller (but not insignificant) projects roll out in the next year or so.

[@ross8093]

I have the pdf and im so excited to use it just in time for my Curse of Strahd campaign to ratchet up in number of fights. I'm very impatient to have the hardback in my hands

[@TheCharacterSheet]

Hope you enjoy it!

[@arekschneyer3802]

I love this book so much already! I’ve been using the monsters in it since the preview came out!

[@OleIngvarStene]

Amazing book. Already used it a lot.

[@richardmarriott-smith9517]

I'm a big fan of Mat Colville and MCDM. I backed this and received the pdf. I love the action-oriented monsters. The minions rule is a great idea that they brought back from 4th edition. I love the "roles" idea of giving each creature a role and dividing creatures like Goblins into multiple types each with a distinct role. It makes encounters and battles so much more fun by having all this variety. It makes everything so much more interesting and challenging for the players. Thanks Mat and MCDM!

[@Zorogundam19]

It reads great and I can't wait to use it. My biggest issue is that I wish I got 2 copies since I know it's going to sell out as soon as it's available.

[@donburton6925]

I don’t usually go for books like this ( there are many good ones out there) this one seems very interesting!

[@yehoshuasanchez4155]

As a newer DM would it be ok to start using these monsters or should I get comfortable with the 5e ones?

[@daveschrumpf8261]

I thought it was the best 5e book ever put out. I was wrong. MCDM's newest addition (which is basically just an addendum to Flee Mortals), Where Evil Lives is the best 5e book ever put out.

[@LeeJCander]

This book is the best written product I have. Even above a bunch of Kobold press material I have. They’re great, but not necessarily amazingly written.

[@Satchmojones]

WotC best book is Mythic Odysseys in Theros...imo.

[@mtgemperor]

While I do respect Matt Colville for his contributions as well as his videos for beginning DMs, this Kickstarter was a gigantic pass for me. I am not huge on the monster side of things, but I have enough monster books to satiate the palates of my players (currently have 12 including all 3 Tome of Beasts). The biggest problem I have with MCDM content is that he charges too high; $40 USD for a PDF?! That is one hell of an introductory cost and not one I am willing to shell out for, even if it was 400+ pages of monsters. I have paid the same amount for a hardcover from DriveThruRPG and even other kickstarters, and that included shipping! Matt Colville may be one of the most notable and intellectual DMs out there, but I cannot fill that greedy pocket of his for a PDF. For this book to be called "the best ever made" is laughable. This is LeBron James vs Michael Jordan, all over again.

[@Gibbons3457]

Oh boy I guess all the artist and desig ers don't need to eat. Weirdos like you who think pdfs of this quality should cost peanuts are so laughably out of touch these days. MCDM, greedy, don't make me laugh. You're out of touch.

[@Caleb_Plehn]

When considering the price, keep in mind, their freelancers and full-time employees are better compensated than their contemporaries, their art and layout is some of the best in the industry (I mean, their art director was a Senior Character Artist at Blizzard and the art director at Turtle Rock), their monster and general game design is superior to WotC's (probably in part because of their playtesting process, but I also suspect because they are designing with different assumptions and goals), and the book offers way more than just monsters, including a new encounter building system that's easier to use, devil summoning rules, demon soul-eating rules, companion creature rules for players to "tame" and use in combat, (which can also be used with their beastheart class), retainers for when the PCs get an ally, rules for minion creatures, action-oriented bosses which fix the annoyances many people have with legendary monsters, psionic rules for interactions between psionic powers and spells (as well as a host of psionic powers if you have their Talent Class or want to design your own psionic monsters), and creature roles to help new DMs learn to strategize in their encounter building and running encounters. And most of it isn't even designed by Matt Colville, but by James, as well as some of the other best designers in the industry (their vampires were made by Sly Flourish!). $10-15 more for a superior product seems like a fairly good bargain to me. And that's not including that you get their Monster Lair book in PDF for free if you backed the Flee Mortals Kickstarter, so really you're saving $10-15 on getting 2 PDFs. As for the accusation of greed on Colville's part...I'm not really sure how you could conclude that, seeing as he doesn't get paid more for MCDM products making more. Maybe you've gotten to know the guy pretty intimately and have information the rest of us aren't privy to?

[@mtgemperor]

​@@Caleb_Plehn The Monster Lair book was a Stretch Goal! It became its own book because of funding! Whether they had intended to create a Lair book or not, it wasn't part of the original introductory price! Now to be honest, $40 for two PDFs is actually not bad at all. But that's it; no other special add-ons unless you add more in the pledge manager side.

[@Caleb_Plehn]

@@mtgemperor Indeed. But rather than forcing the lairs into the book and cutting other content (the cheap, greedy option), they created an entirely separate PDF for easy reference. They even duplicated the statblocks into the lair book, which means you could buy the book of lairs and use it without having to use the monster book at all. (Again, not very greedy). Looking right now on Kobold Press's store, its $30 for a pdf of any of their monster books, each of which come with around 400 monsters. Flee Mortals comes with about 300, plus companion and retainer statblocks, in addition to the extra optional rules and systems, which make up about 30 pages of the 400 page book. Those are about equal in terms of content / page. Its a $10 difference between the two products. I'm arguing that you get your $10 extra cost in quality and impact on your game, as the monsters and rules themselves in Flee Mortals are of a higher quality than those found even in Tome of Beasts (and I LOVE the Tome of Beast monsters). Kobold Press (to stick with monster books we both own and you are happy with) stuck with 5e's approach, and made monsters better than the official ones. MCDM set out to improve 5e's approach, and made monsters better than any other 5e monster (because their improvements to the system work). And if Kobold Press came out with a revised monster book that used MCDM's re-design, I imagine it would be close to if not the same quality (though I doubt they would achieve quite the same playtesting or art, at least at their lower price point).

[@dwil0311]

You should be embarassed that you are always getting clicks from clickbait

[@ryanpoulter6286]

I don't even play 5e anymore but Matt colville and mcdm do great work. I'm ok with click bait giving them a bigger audience

[@TheCharacterSheet]

We genuinely think this is one of the best 5e supplements ever made, and we explain why. Nothing to be embarrassed about here, except maybe you not really understanding what the term clickbait means :D

[@pedrogarcia8706]

it's not really clickbait if the title is accurate and descriptive.

[@dwil0311]

@@TheCharacterSheet That may be true, that doesn't make it any less clickbait.

[@efg-smca]

​@@dwil0311 Actually, that is literally what it does. Clickbait involves somehow exaggerating the content in the video or making the title & thumbnail seem like you are going to take a position you don't take. It baits one into clicking using false advertising essentially. You might think someone is doing low effort content for views or whatever, but if the thumbnail & video content match up, everyone got the opinion they expected when they clicked on the link.