Monstrous Menagerie II: Hordes & Heroes is the long-awaited sequel to 2021’s critically-acclaimed Monstrous Menagerie. Monstrous Menagerie II provides nearly 300 more monsters for your Level Up A5E or DnD 5E games, at all CRs up to CR 28!
With a slew of new monsters, new horde monster rules to let your heroes carve their way through large groups of minions, heroic monsters which can level up with you—whether companion or recurring foe—and all the helpful tools you loved in Monstrous Menagerie, this book is here to take your Level Up and D&D games to a whole new level!
All your favorite features from the Monstrous Menagerie, plus:
- Monstrous Menagerie II provides nearly 300 more monsters for your Level Up A5Eor DnD 5E games, at all CRs up to CR 28! Meet the whisper snake, deathless legionnaire, death spider, prismatic ooze, advocate devil, and more!
- In Monstrous Menagerie II, we’re introducing a new monster role: the horde monster. Just as a single elite monster can challenge a party of heroes, horde monsters are specially designed to work well in large groups that outnumber the adventurers.
- Is your party about to face off against a recurring villain? Or have they befriended a monster or beast and want it to adventure alongside them? We’ve developed rules for heroic monsters—monsters that gain levels and improve their capabilities just as player characters do.
- Monstrous Menagerie II includes lots of high-tier monsters, including unique, elite villains suitable for climactic endgames. With the monsters in this book, characters can pit themselves against archdevils, lich lords, dragon kings, and even gods.
- Earth, River, Shadow, Amethyst, Emerald, Sapphire, Brass, Bronze, Copper, and Silver dragon great wyrms complete the list started in Monstrous Menagerie.
- Lord of the ocean, a purple dragon rises from the wine-dark sea. As it unfurls its wings, the sky darkens and thunder peals. Purple dragons, also called storm dragons, hunt the trackless ocean and the deep sea, bringing with them gales and tsunamis that smash ships to kindling. Prey can’t flee underwater: purple dragons swim as fast as they fly. And when they close on their quarry, they open their jaws and release killing thunder.
- Mixing draconic arrogance with the whimsy of the cruelest faeries, fey dragons are petulant and unpredictable. They use illusions and traps to toy with visitors and see every interaction as a game—and they are violently sore losers.
- From the humblest roadside shrine to the most opulent temple, the holy essence of veneration is powerful, and the spirit of that amassed reverence can take draconic form. Spirit dragons are bound to holy places, empowered and given shape by the belief of their parishioners. The least tangible of the essence dragons, a spirit dragon is almost illusory, a wise and noble shape that appears in a moment and vanishes just as quickly.
- The god-hunting insectoids who plague the multiverse are back! New Khalkoi include the Apex Khalkos, and the Khalkos Soldier.
- What does an adventurer know about a monster? The Legends and Lore section describes the information a character might recall about a monster with a successful skill check. The higher the check, the more in-world information—natural history, weaknesses, and so on—the character recalls. And in Monstrous Menagerie II we’ve added false rumors to the Legends and Lore entries: potentially dangerous misinformation that characters learn on a failed skill check.
Monstrous Menagerie and Monstrous MenagerieII are fully compatible with 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, and—of course—Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition.
What Made Monstrous Menagerie So Good?
Monstrous Menagerie is critically acclaimed for it’s improvements over the core 5E monster books…. and in 2024 it still is!
- More Than a Bag of Hit Points. Monstrous Menagerie monsters are designed to be fun and interesting. The original Monstrous Menagerie revamped all of the core 5E monsters from the ground up with new monster math, CR calculations, encounter building rules, variants, and useful tables for each monster. Monsters have interesting and evocative abilities, and the stat block contains everything you need to know.
- All The Tools You Need. Monstrous Menagerie is renowned for the useful tools accompanying every monster, and Monstrous Menagerie II is no different! These tools help you to build an encounter with everything you need right there in the monster entry. Here’s a reminder of what both books bring to your table.
- Legends & Lore. What does an adventurer know about a monster? The Legends and Lore section describes the information a character might recall about a monster with a successful skill check. The higher the check, the more in-world information—natural history, weaknesses, and so on—the character recalls. And in Monstrous Menagerie II we’ve added false rumors to the Legends and Lore entries: potentially dangerous misinformation that characters learn on a failed skill check.
- Sample Encounters & Treasure. Most monster entries include sample encounters, usually featuring multiple variations and varying difficulty levels. Similarly, we’ve included sample treasure hoards along with each sample encounter. These treasures are a convenience for when you don’t have the time to randomly generate or hand-curate a treasure hoard.
- Monster Signs. Often, an encounter occurs with no warning: a group of characters stumbles into a group of monsters. Sometimes, though, characters come upon a sign of impending danger. Perhaps they see a footprint or hear an ominous, distant wail. Clues like this allow characters to make interesting exploration decisions and make the world feel lived-in.
- Monster Behavior. One of the most important elements of any encounter is this: what are the monsters up to? A roll on the monster behavior tables determines whether a monster or group is hiding in ambush, looking for help, preoccupied with a prisoner, or any of thousands of other individual behaviors.
- Sample Names. We’ve provided sample name lists for most intelligent monsters.
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