Much has been made of the scarier monsters in the new DnD Monster Manual, with the designers touting the jaw-dropping might of high challenge rating monsters like the Blob of Annihilation. Now one DnD fan and physicist, Tom Dunn, has dunn the math to find out exactly how much stronger the new-and-improved fiends are, comparing monsters that appear in both versions of the tome.
The analysis, published to Dunn’s website, The Finished Book, shows that while new Dungeons and Dragons monsters are a little stronger across the board than their decade-old counterparts, there’s one area they really excel: dishing out a world of hurt.
According to Dunn’s data, damage per round is where the buffs to monsters in the new DnD book become particularly noticeable. To be more specific, nearly three quarters of monsters deal more damage in 2025 than they did in 2014, and the gulf between monsters old and new only widens at higher CRs.
On balance, that’s probably good news. There was a feeling from some players (and perhaps slightly more DMs) that monsters needed to be beefed up a bit in the new Manual after the 2024 Players’ Handbook gave PCs some significant buffs. Speaking anecdotally, we were personally impressed with how many tactical options the new ancient dragons have, and could only cackle with glee at the new Arch-Hag, and how much of a nob it can be.
In comparison to damage, other gains made by 2025 monsters have been marginal, Dunn shows. AC changed little, for instance, and though an increase to HP was very clear, it was also relatively small. Meanwhile, many monsters actually saw their save bonuses go down – as at higher CRs many monsters lost their proficiencies in Constitution or Charisma saving throws.
Dunn claims that their data shows most of the extra damage comes from changes made to legendary monsters. But – and excuse my poor arts-addled brain if I’m hideously wrong here – since he hasn’t split the 2014 monsters into legendary and non-legendary categories, it seems to me that more data is needed. From what’s presented here, it could still theoretically turn out, for instance, that non-legendary 2014 monsters were much weaker than 2024’s ordinary monsters, while 2014’s legendary monsters could actually be on par with the legendary beasts from 2024.
Along with damage, which is probably the statistic both players and DMs alike are most interested in, the one other stat which has really rocketed up in the new Monster Manual is initiative. Dunn notes that, whereas previously enemy initiative didn’t really upgrade with CR, that’s certainly not the case anymore.
Now it increases at a rate much faster than the PCs’ own, which means as players fight higher level monsters, they’re going to find themselves acting second more and more often. And, according to The Finished Book, a monster with an initiative bonus six higher than the player will deal 10% more damage on average in a combat.
While it’s obviously impossible to perfectly compress all the foibles and abilities of each DnD monster into hard numerical data, it should be said that Dunn has an impressive system for taking into account abilities, which could make his analysis more accurate than others. Either way, the findings are certainly interesting – you should definitely check out his Monster Math for yourself!
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Source: Wargamer
