About This Book
Monsters are the heart of this book—where they live, how they think, how they might befriend you, and how they might harm you. Chapter 1 delves into the stories of some of the monstrous groups presented in the Monster Manual. Chapter 2 supplements the race options in the Player's Handbook, and chapter 3 introduces a host of monsters and their stat blocks. Appendix A provides a few new beasts, and appendix B is stocked with nonplayer characters to populate your D&D adventures. Appendix C lets you look up stat blocks in this book by challenge rating, creature type, and environment.
Sprinkled throughout the book are observations and musings from two denizens of the Forgotten Realms: the legendary explorer Volothamp Geddarm (Volo to his friends) and the Archmage of Shadowdale himself, Elminster Aumar. For the benefit of DMs and players everywhere, Volo and Elminster share their insights with regard to some of the monsters found herein, and their words hold a measure of truth regardless of the D&D world in which these monsters are met.
Playtesters:
Robert Alaniz, Jay Anderson, Kevin Baumann, Jerry Behrendt, Bill Benham, Stacy Bermes, Matthew Budde, Mik Calow, Anthony Caroselli, Chris Eadie, Frank Foulis, Jason Fransella, Jason Fuller, Jeffrey Fuller, Nick Graves, Richard Green, Gregory Harris, Ken Hart, Sterling Hershey, Eric Hufstetler, Paul Hughes, Mark Knapik, Yan Lacharité, Shane Leahy, Tom Lommel, Jonathan Longstaff, Matt Maranda, Chris "Kong" McDaniel, Lou Michelli, Mike Mihalas, Daren Mitchell, William Myers, Kevin Neff, Robert Quillen II, David "Oak" Rice, Sam Robertson, Arthur Severance, Pieter Sleijpen, Phil Tobin, Steve Townshend, Kyle Turner, William Vaughan, Arthur Wright