MOAR! Monsters Know What They’re Doing — Keith Ammann

The monsters have learned some new tricks.

Keith Ammann returns to the other side of the Dungeon Master’s screen in MOAR! Monsters Know What They’re Doing, a follow-up to his tactical guide The Monsters Know What They’re Doing.

This time, Ammann examines the strategies, motivations, and likely combat behaviors of more than 100 additional creatures from Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, helping Dungeon Masters think beyond stat blocks and consider how different monsters might actually behave when the adventurers show up.

Rather than simply asking what an enemy can do, Ammann asks what it would choose to do. How does it use its abilities effectively? Does it fight alone or cooperate with allies? What does it want? When would it retreat? And what happens when a creature uses its intelligence, instincts, and particular advantages to stay alive?

The result is a practical resource for Dungeon Masters who want encounters to feel more strategic, distinctive, and true to the creatures involved.

Details

• Written by Keith Ammann
• Follow-up to The Monsters Know What They’re Doing
• Tactical analysis of more than 100 creatures
• Covers monsters from Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes
• Designed for fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons
• Dungeon Master strategy / monster tactics / tabletop RPG

Why We Love It

A monster gets considerably more interesting when it stops behaving like a bag of hit points waiting politely to be defeated.

What we like about Ammann’s approach is that tactics become another form of characterization. A cunning creature should fight cunningly. A predator should behave like a predator. An intelligent enemy should notice when the party keeps doing the same ridiculous thing and perhaps stop falling for it.

That makes combat harder, certainly.

But it also makes the creatures—and the world they inhabit—feel much more alive.

Sorry, adventurers.