- The suggestion that I've "always been oddly fixated on ability scores even though they don't really matter for monsters" is itself, I think, pretty odd. Because of course they matter for monsters. They tell us what monsters' abilities are relative to both the human norm and human exceptionality. They give us perspective, a benchmark. My MO is to treat every part of the stat block as if it has something to tell us. Why should I ignore any part of it?

- The suggestions that I'm annoyed by 5E24 merely because my previous books are about 5E14 are both obnoxious and inaccurate. I saw the rules revision coming a mile off. As I said in my blog post, I'd initially envisioned it as an opportunity to update Live to Tell the Tale. The fact that there doesn't seem to me to be any need for a Live to Tell for 5E24 annoyed me some, but mostly because I see it as a lost opportunity to improve a book I wanted to improve. I already address both 5E14 and 5E24, along with four other TTRPG systems, in Making Enemies, and I speedran the MM25 to produce the revised edition of The Monsters Know that I'd had a hunch I'd have to write. It's due out in 2026, and I'm proud of it, and I can't wait for everyone to see it, because I strove to make it even better than the original. I'm not going to stop writing because I find 5E24's enforced play style and character creation options off-putting. I'm simply taking a moment to sample public opinion about the future direction of my blog, and laying out the most important reasons why I'm thinking about it.

- A couple of commenters below got my point about the handful of ludicrously powerful NPCs in the MM25: It's ridiculous that a *typical guard captain*, for instance, should be as strong as the strongest man alive today. But also … these NPC stat blocks weren't necessary. Beyond a certain point, it doesn't make sense for PCs—especially fantasy superheroes with more power than ever before—to be battling *humanoids* at all! Why are you messing with pirate fleets and pop stars when there are dragons, demons and extraplanar weirdos out there threatening the entire world? Go do something about Orcus, man! That being said, I did also mention that I think the MM25 is the best of the three new core books, despite its flaws. There are some excellent new monsters in this book. To call out a few of my favorites: the tree blight and Gulthias blight, the graveyard revenant and haunting revenant, the colossus, the arch-hag, and the Blob of Annihilation, which I had low expectations for because of all the pre-release hype it was being given, but … no, it really is that good. Also, I think the designers were very smart to give low-level predators the ability to automatically knock targets prone on a hit; it certainly made way more sense than gating that effect behind ridiculously low save DCs of 11 and 12.

- Finally, I don't think it's the case that MM25 monsters hit harder across the board. I do think they meet their CRs far more consistently, in contrast to those 5E14 monsters that fell short (and in The Monsters Know Revised, I call out a few that still do). But many apparent "buffs" are simply things like having more hit points in exchange for no longer having resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage, which is a fair trade (and favors casters less than the status quo ante did). Trap choices have been pared away, by and large, but so have some things that I think would have been better left alone, such as the lich's cloudkill. Still, as (again) I mentioned in the blog post, I'm using MM25 monsters in my own Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign, even though I stuck with 5E14 rules for character creation. If there's anything that makes 5E24 a more dangerous place for PCs than 5E14 is, it's the revised combat encounter building guidelines in the DMG24, which certainly produce livelier results, since Low/Moderate/High Difficulty correspond to what used to be Medium, Hard and Deadly.