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Designed by: Daniel Kahn, Dana Floberg, NevernotDM, Dragonix
Like Kobold Press’ Tome of Beasts Lairs series, Monster Manual Expanded Adventures is an adventure anthology that uses monsters from a third-party monster book. In this case, one of the best monster books ever produced for 5e in Monster Manual Expanded 3.
Monster Manual Expanded Adventures features five dungeon-crawling adventures (often called “lairs”) designed for levels 5-10ish, from a sand dragon’s desert tomb to a literal clockwork laboratory.
Each adventure is well-organized, with a concise Adventure Summary, multiple Adventure Hooks, and optional side bars for including them in official campaigns, such as Curse of Strahd.
They also feature lovely, full color grid maps, as well as all the necessary statblocks from MME3 — which is over 30!
In other words, you don’t have to own MME3 to run any of these adventures (but you should own it anyway, have you read my review!?).
Each encounter, of which there are a ton, includes encounter scaling from around level 5 to 10 or 12. It’s an impressive challenge to use the same monster (or monster grouping) for such a wide range, but the designers pull it off with adjustments to hit points, numbers, and abilities.
That being said, I’m certainly disappointed that only Tier 2 is explored.
The adventures are mostly light on story and quite creature-heavy, as is expected when cramming plenty of monsters inside. It’s why the term “lair” may be a more accurate description versus “adventure.”
But semantics aside, they’re all solidly built dungeon crawls.
“The Archives of Hazzan Abdul” is a desert tomb inhabited by a recently awakened sultan-turned-sand-dragon. In order to reach the final boss room, the party has to collect three sapphire keys to bypass the Zelda-inspired boss door.
The guarded boss door allows the party the freedom to tackle the dungeon in any order, including a split party sand-trap and a battle with a gnoll gang, while ensuring the sand dragon is the final encounter.
“The Feast of Flesh” is one of my favorite adventures in the book, and could easily fit within a Curse of Strahd campaign. It’s also the most cinematically paced, with the party invited to a dinner at a church after escorting a noble to a new town.
Unfortunately the church has been taken over by shapeshifting monsters: buso, kubot, and halimaw, who unleash their true form when the party (and their escorts) are at their most vulnerable.
I wish “Meltdown in the Mire” were a bit longer, as the concept of a polluting fey factory in a swamp is a fun idea. The cheap magic items the factory produces are unstable, causing constant wild magic surges and the boss fight with the director can awaken the stuffed thessalhydra nearby.
“Rotten at the Root” uses the many new plant monsters from MME3, such as doom blossom and wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing. This plant-temple could also use an extra room or two. You know a dungeon is stacked when I long for empty rooms for the party to catch their breath!
I thought I had seen the literal clockwork-design dungeon in “Ten Strokes ‘Til Midnight” before. I have, in Adventures from the Potbellied Kobold. But this 12-room, clock-shaped map involves a half-destroyed laboratory of mad arcane scientists, and it’s another big winner.
Why were these idiots trying to build a clockwork beholder? Things went horribly wrong, but I love that each room was dedicated to building a different eye ray, creating a nice balance of exploration, traps, and of course, battles with awesome monsters.
Huge points for the security guard clockwork golem named Extreme Prejudice, and the vengeful lab worker (now a wraith shadow priest) willing to help the party during the final battle.
Some of the liars need a bit more breathing room, but overall these are fun, monster-heavy dungeon crawls that showcase dozens of interesting creatures from Dragonix’s excellent series.
Monster Manual Expanded Adventures is also available on Roll20.
Pros:
- Five well-designed, monster-heavy dungeon crawls.
- Over 30 statblocks (and artwork!) from Monster Manual Expanded 3 included.
- Encounter scaling for every encounter, and multiple adventure hooks for each adventure.
- Each adventure includes a full color map of the dungeon (cartography: Dungeonae)
Cons:
- All adventures are Tier 2.
The Verdict: Featuring over 30 monsters from Monster Manual Expanded 3 along with clever dungeon designs, Monster Manual Expanded Adventures is the perfect dungeon-ready compliment to the best monster book series on the DMs Guild.
A review copy of “Monster Manual Expanded Adventures” was provided by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.
Support my work by using my affiliate links and pledging via Patreon.
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