The Monsters Know What They're Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters (Volume 1)

This excellent book is a must-have for all dungeon masters. Especially if you are just getting started out!It goes into great detail about HOW monsters should actually fight in DND 5e, and more importantly WHY they fight like this. It'll really bring your combats to life!I had been throwing many hard or even deadly encounters at my group, but they just kept wiping out all the enemies because I wasn't using any sort of strategy for the enemies. But now, I just threw my first proper deadly encounter at them, and it was a great battle!I use this book to create little decision trees using the website app.diagrams.net and this allows me to have a quick reference as to how a monster should act in combat.It would also make a great gift for any DM friends you have!

I bought a load of books to "up my game" as Dungeon Master, and put this one off until now as I thought it was a little over-priced, and also most of the content was available online. How wrong I was!The book is beautifully put together, the hardcover is fantastic, and the sheer size of the thing is way beyond what I had imagined. But most important of all is the fact that this is all really well written. It's really easy to read, like a good "page turner" story where you don't want to stop reading.I think it's fair to say that most D&D books fall into one of three categories:- essential source books that are a little dry, but (mostly) necessary for the tables and information in them;- skinny pamphlets posing as books that have great content, but would be better as a laminated A4 handout;- books written with good intentions, but the author just isn't a very good writer.This book stands far above all of the rest in my opinion. The information in it can be read from cover to cover, or dipped into to prepare a specific encounter. There's some general ideas that cover any monsters not covered in detail, and then a wealth of information for all of the common monsters that I would expect to see in a campaign.I honestly don't know how I have been running combat without this book as a resource, and I would heartily recommend reading this to any Dungeon Master, experienced or brand new to the hobby.My players knew something had "changed" the last time we played, and I had a number of post-game messages to confirm that this was one of the best combat sessions they had ever played. I can't wait to put more of the ideas in this book into practice.

So this book was much bigger than I expected, and I must admit I was little nervous about reading it at first. However, once I read through the introduction and useful overview of the monster's goals, it became clear the book was then quickly split up into explaining the tactics of each individual monster one by one. This with a good index and contents page makes it incredibly easy to find the monsters you want, study them specifically, and then you can put down and pick up the book at your leisure.My party just got visited by an old "friend" they disturbed some time ago, and I'd already built him up quite a lot before (a vampire). This book was brilliant with the tactics and helped me scare the players so much they were meta gaming their little socks off (for a party that rarely meta games at all, this was pretty hilarious to me). Even so, the vampire managed to escape to fight another day, so the paranoia continues for now. Just wait until the vampire sends his minions after them too (all carefully explained in the book as well).I've gone through quite a few of the classic monsters now and always feel like the advice is easy to understand, makes a lot of sense and is very interesting to read. A lot of love went into this book and if there are ever sequels with monsters found in Volo's and Mordenkainen's I will happily purchase them too.

Very good book. I'm new to DMing and this helped me improve the game play for my players. It was good seeing them learn the difierent battle tactics in a game with a veriaty of different Monsters. It made them think more and get more ingrosed in the game. I love this book! It also help the DM make the Monsters come alive knowing them better.

This is a real Game Changer for DMs, by using tactics from this book encounters started to be more distinct from each other. Love It!

On the whole if you have played Dungeons and Dragons a reasonable amount, you should be able to work this out for yourself, but for new players or those like myself moving from 2nd Edition to 5th Edition, it is a bit of a shortcut. I haven't finished it yet, but would now consider using some of the monsters I had previously avoided in 5e. On the whole, it is just a bit of common sense, but as a shortcut to understanding, go for it.

I have been playing and running D&D games for over 40 years. This book has given me new insights into old monsters and some potentially nasty surprises for experienced players.

Amazing product gives the dm everything they need to bring these monsters to life

Absolutely love this book. If you are an old DM, or a novice one, looking to turn the corner on how to run fantastic encounters that turn simple goblins into a force to be feared... then this book is for you.

This book is phenomenal. I ordered it recently for a friend and decided to look at it a bit before I gave it to him, and I loved it so much that I ordered one for myself. The amount of content here is amazing. I don't know what's in the description here on Amazon, but this book contains a breakdown of every monster in D&D 5e, containing battle tactics, breakdown of moves in combat, ideal ability combos, and additional information sourced from logical conclusions upon reviewing the stat blocks and source text. It's crazy. 5 out of 5, 10 out of 10, 100 out of 100. Would recommend to anyone interested in D&D.

Have you ever looked at a creature's stat block and been like: "Ok, but how am I meant to run a Banshee?" The flavor text gives you some hints as to what they are... but not who they are, or why they are. Well, this book is here for all of you who are, like me, trying to give a touch of personality to monsters in TTRPGs.From cowardly creatures that gang up on adventurers, to mighty dragons who seek treasure for the sake of having more treasure, Keith Ammann hits the nail right on the head with this gorgeous, huge book.I was expecting a flimsy bunch of pages barely held together, or lots of art to pad out the content... oh boy, was I not ready for this 300+ pages long book with barely any padding to it. I recommend giving it a quick once-over and then reading up on the kinds of monsters you will be running in your next session to have a better idea on how to make your games truly memorable.Amazing book!

This book really helps you to get into the mindest of different monsters, and see them with completely different eyes. While it often gets into detailed mechanics that are specific to D&D 5th edition, the basic ideas are general enough that you can easily use it for other fantasy systems as well (older versions of D&D in my case). So I'd recommend it even if you don't play 5e. It's very durable and the cover is great. And it's a hardback that's actually affordable.

What a great find. If you're a D&D DM (or even a player), this is a great way to understand why the monsters do what they do.(Did not know it was hardback. Great object.)