Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Monstrous Compendium Vol. Four: Eldraine Creatures is a D&D Beyond exclusive monster catalog with a few paragraphs of additional worldbuilding information for playing Dungeons & Dragons in the Magic: the Gathering setting of Eldraine.
As the name suggests, it's the fourth entry in what was prior a free series of additional monsters for specific settings to bring extra life to your D&D table. This version presents the most content out of all the other options in the series thus far, with 25 new monsters ranging from CR ½ to 18.
There is additionally a decent chunk of lore sprinkled in for worldbuilders looking to play in Eldraine to start from, with some basic details of the species that call the world home. These additional details ask you to reference Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, and the Monster Manual for stat blocks that represent kinds of monsters native to the plane outside of this small expansion.
The vast majority of the art is from existing Magic: the Gathering cards or promotional material, most from the Wilds of Eldraine expansion.
The total list of monsters, organized by CR, is in the following table:
| CR | Name |
|---|---|
| ½ | Faerie Borrower |
| ½ | Gingerbrute |
| 1 | Faerie Pest |
| 2 | Faerie Pathlighter |
| 2 | Sewer King |
| 3 | Knight of Eldraine |
| 3 | Ogre Chitterlord |
| 3 | Redtooth Werefox |
| 4 | Sweettooth Horror |
| 5 | Deathless Rider |
| 5 | Dunbarrow Witch |
| 5 | Nightmare Haunt |
| 6 | Witchstalker |
| 7 | Goose Mother |
| 11 | High Fae Imposter |
| 11 | Snapping Hydra |
| 11 | Tempest Hart |
| 11 | Treefolk |
| 12 | High Fae Kindguard |
| 12 | High Fae Mage |
| 12 | Speter of Night |
| 13 | Hae Fae Noble |
| 15 | Archon of Boundaries |
| 15 | Witchkite |
| 18 | Beanstalk Wurm |
Is Monstrous Compendium Vol. 4 Worth It?
Not For Players
This isn’t content for players. If you’re a player first and foremost looking for new abilities or even beasts or fey for your spells you have no reason to be here. Technically the Fey creatures in the low CR range can work with Conjure Woodland Beings or Conjure Fey, and while Faerie Borrowers at the ½ CR make for a busted addition to Conjure Woodland Beings, they aren’t usurping existing powerful options, nor is this specific niche case applicable to the vast majority of players without access to this single 4th level spell.
There are zero beasts, so Druids looking for new Wildshape options, look elsewhere.
For DMs or world builders looking to start games in the world of Eldraine, this does have some value.
Monster Design
There is some great monster design on display here with Archon of Boundaries boasting a unique stat block that comes with three reactions per round and three options for new reactions it can take to engage in a fight more dynamically outside of initiative order. Beanstalk Wurms have the Leafy Handholds trait, making these gargantuan wurms literally meant to be climbed, which is novel. Going through the full list, the High Fae are a bit generic, but beyond that, each monster comes with new, interesting ideas and abilities that can benefit worlds beyond Eldraine.
I’m genuinely happy with the quality of the new monstrous abilities here and am also pretty excited and intrigued by a lot of the content related to the monsters that set you up to run an adventure centered around these monsters
Plot Hooks and World Lore
A lot of the content includes fantastic plot hooks hidden inside the flavor text assigned to the monsters; the Deathless Rider, for example, develops a villainous warlock queen from a mysterious castle called Dynnistan. While its stat block is a frightening glare stapled to an empowered zombie, it's combined with options for using a Warhorse Skeleton or Nightmare alongside it for the fight, providing fairly dynamic options for approaching varieties of encounters with it.
There could be entire story arcs centered around the High Fae in the upper tiers, with some great options for mid-tier adventures centered around Edgewall and Lord Skitter or Sweettooth and their candy horrors. You can dig deep on the Redtooth Elves and their curse, embrace the cannon plot with the Phyrexian invasion and play around with the Wicked Slumber and Ashiok’s haunts, or build up to an epic confrontation with a Witchkite, a dragon-warlock hybrid.
Issues I Have With It
What I find to be a bit lacking is variety and options for low-tier adventuring; with only five options for CR 2 or lower creatures, and one of those is a CR 2 “boss” you’d expect to see at the end of a 2nd level adventure, the other being a good-aligned ally creature, there aren’t robust options for early tier adventures. You can play with some Faerie Borrwers, Gingerbrutes, or lean on the lore presented here and make the encounter focus on the mentioned creatures in the flavor text you have to bust out the Monster Manual to reference.
If you love Eldraine and want to play in the setting, this is a great starting point to read through and brainstorm your own ideas for. The monster stat blocks can be valuable, but the options are fairly limited for this price point.
If you just want expansions of monsters, the bang for your buck isn’t here; 25 monsters for $6 USD that aren’t even in a file you can download isn’t a great rate, especially given how abundant monster supplements are and how many free alternatives are easily accessible on many subreddits or through specific creators.
If you just want the world-building stuff, the Magic: the Gathering stories for Wilds of Eldraine are freely available on the Magic website, and The Wildered Quest is a full novel set on Eldraine that is less than the price of these 25 monsters.
Speaking of free content readily available-
Why Isn’t This a “Planeshift” Option?
Previously, Wizards of the Coast released additional free content for playing in their Magic: the Gathering worlds with six Planeshift PDFs; one for Amonkhet, Dominaria, Innistrad, Ixalan, Kaladesh, and Zendikar. Ixalan even got a free adventure released alongside it. These were far from perfect, namely in how apparent it was that these were cobbled together to get world-building information out there, but they included so much more content for free, including usually a wide array of player options.
I’m not opposed to paying for D&D content, but when there are hundreds of free pages of existing Magic: the Gathering setting material entirely free and accessible in PDF form, I have a really hard time paying for even less content specific to Eldraine that’s locked to a D&D Beyond account.
If this was a revision of the Planeshift series with major improvements to layout and production value, or at minimum included an adventure and player options we’d have a different conversation about it. The problem is the Planeshift free PDFs offer more, for… well, for free.
What’s In the Free Planeshift PDFs
Plane Shift Amonkhet includes backgrounds, four new unique species, five “new” domains for Cleric (a lot of which are remixed domains from the PHB), and a few new monster stat blocks with ample references to existing monsters that support the setting. Planeshift Dominaria is shorter, only 24 pages, but is a lot closer to the kind of content this Compendium is offering, but organized in a way for DMs to structure campaigns in the setting. Innistrad offers subspecies for humans based on your starting region to add diversity to the players’ abilities in a human-dominated world, with a ton of pages dedicated to monsters and the adventures around them.
Monstrous Compendium Volume IV: Eldraine Creatures is technically more monster stat blocks than any of these. If it also included the player and world-building content organized like the Plane Shift series, I’d be pretty happy with it. It's clear that this is exploring if people are willing to pay for content that used to be free, and that’s kind of obnoxious.
How Can You Get Monstrous Compendium Vol. Four
If you want to experience these 25 creatures and their bonus lore for yourself, you can spend $6 USD on D&D Beyond and have it added to your account to peruse at your leisure. You currently can’t get a PDF version, nor a physical copy if you want something to hold and read.
A New Kind of Product
Monstrous Compendium Vol. Four: Eldraine Creatures sets a new baseline for the kind of content Wizards of the Coast wants to sell us, and I’m not thrilled about it. This content is interesting and fun to mess around with, but not more than other prior content they’ve printed for free.
I love the Extra Life content, which is similar in scope to what you get as a consumer, but the proceeds support a charity. I’m fine with receiving less content for money when it's part of a larger event or movement or when it's supporting a cause or people I believe in. This isn’t that. Monstrous Compendium Vol. Four: Eldraine Creatures, to me, is a test to see just how little content they can release with a price tag to up profits.
If Eldraine is your jam, maybe this is for you. Eldraine is my jam, and while $6 is pretty cheap, I’m not sure I’m ever going to run more than four or five of these monsters, nor do I feel I’ve gotten a great new robust resource to actually realize DMing in the world of Eldraine. There are plenty of neat ideas, but I have to put in a lot of legwork to bring those ideas to fruition.
Most people probably should skip this.
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