Tome of Beasts III Lairs

As part of the Kickstarter for "Tome of Beasts", I signed up for the PDF of the accompanying Lairs book - a collection of short adventures showcasing monsters from the book. There are Lairs books for both "Tome of Beasts" and "Tome of Beasts II", and indeed for the "Creature Codex", but I haven't looked at any of these books previously.

The adventures themselves range from levels 1 to 12. They're all short, intended for a session or two of play, with a 5-room dungeon (or a little more) at the centre of each. Each features a small handful of monsters from "Tome of Beasts III", with some also drawing monsters from the SRD (or Monster Manual).

As might be expected, the adventures are something of a mixed bag. They're all functional, if rather basic, adventures. None of them are terrible, none of them are really spectacular, though some few do seem rather dull. That said, if needing a quick adventure at short notice, or if particularly looking for something to use monsters from ToB3, these are decent.

Ultimately, though, this book hasn't inspired me to go looking for the other Lairs books, and I'm not particularly inclined to recommend this book. Certainly, it's a companion volume for ToB3, so this is one to avoid if you don't have that book. If you do have that book, this one is worthwhile if you're looking for a set of short adventures (which, to be fair, is a useful thing to have - provided you don't already have a ready supply of such things). And, of course, if you are offered a good package deal then this may well be worth looking at.

So that's a somewhat ambivalent review for that one. Make of it what you will.

(Note, though, that "Tome of Beasts III" itself is something I regard much more highly - whether you go for this one as well or not.)

Tome of Beasts III

Seven years ago, in my review of "Tome of Beasts", I said I probably wasn't interested in any more generic monster books. I then repeated this four years ago in my review of "Creature Codex", and then again in my review of "Tome of Beasts II".

And here we are. In my defense, this time Kobold Press have declared that this is the final volume in their ToB 'trilogy'. We'll see. Perhaps also of note, I picked this one up from their Kickstarter, and only in PDF - I find I'm very much moving away from physical RPG books now.

There's actually very little to say about this book - it's a 400ish page book, in glorious full colour, containing a lovely assortment of new monsters. If you enjoyed previous volumes in the series, you'll probably enjoy this; if you didn't, you almost certainly won't; and if you haven't checked out those volumes you should get them first. This book doesn't require the earlier volumes, but as they publish the monsters have become increasingly niche in nature, so the earlier volumes are probably more useful.

If making recommendations for 'monster' books for 5e, my order of recommendation is as follows: "Monster Manual", "Tome of Beasts", "Monster Manual Expanded", "Creature Codex", "Monster Manual Expanded II", "Tome of Beasts II", "Monster Manual Expanded III", "Tome of Beasts III", "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes", "Volo's Guide to Monsters", and finally "5th Edition Foes". Indeed, at this point I would stop well before the end of that list - I don't regret any of the purchases, but I just don't need all these monsters.

(Note that "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes" and "Volo's Guide to Monsters" have now been replaced with "Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse". Based on what I've heard, I would certainly recommend the combined volume over the two separate ones, and it would probably appear a good bit higher on the list. However, as I don't own that book, I cannot make a solid recommendation.)

My recommendation here is necessarily conditional. If you're looking for even more monsters, this book is an excellent buy. If you're looking for specific WotC-owned monsters, then of course this won't do the job for you. Likewise, if you're looking for monsters that will appear in WotC products, or on the DM's Guild, this book isn't going to help. And if you're looking for anything other than monsters, this isn't the book for you. It does one thing, but does that one thing extremely well.

And that's that.

I'm pretty sure I'm now done with buying books for D&D 5e (even if the OGL thing does get reversed, with the new version coming next year, it doesn't make sense to buy much), I'm even more sure I don't need more monsters, and Kobold Press claim they're finished. But maybe I'll be reviewing "Creature Codex II" in a couple of years...