Absolutely fantastic product, adding a swath of creatures that will sensibly fit in many settings, and will keep adventurers on their toes with unfamiliar foes. My favorites were the creatures of the fey.

We need more 5E supplements like this. Let's face it: D&D 5E is great, but it's a bit on the shallow side. It doesn't take long before all the classes become familiar, the backgrounds all look like old news, and you glaze over the list of feats looking for something original. Enter the Midgard Heroes Handbook. Wow, this is basically your Player's Handbook 2, with an insane selection of new races, subclasses, backgrounds, feats, new spellcasting rules and hundreds more spells & magic items.

The book of course shines if you play in Midgard, which is fast becoming my favorite fantasy campaign setting. This book is also one of the main reasons why I love Midgard. The Midgard Worldbook does a great job of describing an amazingly unique world based on the greatest pantheon ever (Norse mythology), but it's the Midgard Heroes Handbook that turns this unique feeling into unique gameplay. As a player, you'll find here cool options you can use in other campaign worlds, like a Circle of Stones druid, or the Seer background, and countless more. The new races and many backgrounds are of course tied to Midgard, so it would be DM's option to allow them in your other games. As a big druid fan I was hoping for more druid circles than just the one here, especially when there's 2 new sorcerous bloodlines, 3 new warlock pacts, 11 new wizard traditions and 17 new cleric domains! The martial and rogue characters get new subclasses too.

If you're not familiar with Kobold Press, you can basically expect quality content, writing and layout that rivals (and sometimes surpasses) material from Wizards of the Coast. As a DM, all Kobold Press content is automatically considered official, no question.

All in all, you can't go wrong with this book. I'm a HUGE Kobold Press fan, and this book will turn you into one too.

This book blew me away. The amount of work and detail that went into this book is monumental.

I started my game journey in 1979 playing d&d. I was hooked ever since. I have played most of the rpg out there in the past and can appreciate ones where there is so much attention to detail. Having worked in the games industry as a Canadian distributer I habe seen countless products. i have worked with many companies ans know what it takes to make a book like this.

Kobold Press is doing one of the best jobs I have seen!

This worldbook is a must have. The gm has access to so much detail to flesh out a very unique game world. The mashuP of Norse - Egyptian - scandanavian etc etc has something for everyone. There is no shortage of content to run in any directions your players take you!

I really like the races and cultures. It brings a new dimension to a gaming experience.

I am a former archaeologist and also studied mythologies. love love love what this book invokes. Our games are played out in our imagination. We need books like this to help paint the great stories we want to play out in the theatre of our imagination.

There are very few resources in one book that can cover such detail as this!

This is the perfect companion for the players books to flesh out more detail in your game.

I highly reocmmend running this campaign world for Pathfinder or Dungeons & Dragons.

A solid purchase containing alot of interesting ideas that will be able to faciliate play for a long time. The nation states within the book are very interesting and capable of being moulded into a short or long campaign depending.

Its also a book that suppports "lonely fun" when you don't have a gaming group on hand to play.

Clear, systematic advice. Lots of great examples of use in gamplay... the experience of the authors shows through throughout.

Tome of Beasts is an incredible supplement for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. This book is one of the biggest collections of monsters and villains for 5th edition D&D. Though it was published by a 3rd-party publisher, Kobold Press, this book has come to be something of an unofficial standard Dungeons and Dragons rulebook. If you are a dungeon master who uses adventures published by 3rd party publishers (and you should), there is a good chance that you'll see some of the monsters in this book republished in some form.

As for the content of the book, it's simply a massive list of enemies to pit your players against when you're running a D&D game. This includes monsters of all levels, and some individual NPC characters that serve as great villains. At over 400 pages, this book has something for nearly any situation and every level of the play. If you're looking for an interesting, low-powered construct, undead, or ooze to throw at a first-level party, then you'll find it here. When your party is higher in level and you need to put them up against a creature they've never fought before, you will be able to find something here. There is plenty to challeng mid-level parties, including new versions of classic monsters. For example, there are 30 pages of material dedicated to new types of dragons, including things like mithral, void, and cave dragons. By the time your party reaches higher levels and travels to other planes of existence, you can pit them against the new types of devils and demons that appear in this book. But not only are there new fiends, there are new arch-devils and demon princes that make for great high-level villains for your campaign. Looking for something else to do with your players at high levels? You can have them tangle with one of this book's seven Fey lords and ladies, the powerful fey creatures that range in challenge rating from 12-21. There is even a handful of Lovecraftian monsters, such as deep ones and migo.

Kobold Press is known for their fantasy setting, Midgard. A well-established setting that is playable in D&D and Pathfinder, with a ton of supplements backing it. It should be noted that Tome of Beasts is something of a Midgard supplement--but stands entirely on its own. If you run a Midgard game, you'll be happy to see that some creatures presented in this book come with a little blurb about their place in Midgard. This is extra information that is entirely separate from the stats and background information given about the creature. It's simply something extra for those running a Midgard campaign to add some flavor. This book can really be applied to any D&D setting, especially given the variety of creatures it presents.

Given the wealth of information in Tome of Beasts, this book is a fantastic resource for any dungeon master. It's bigger and has more material than any of the official individual monster supplements for D&D, and it offers a great variety of monsters and non-player characters that can provide you with years worth of material for your game. Given that Tome of Beasts has become a somewhat standard part of the D&D library, with it providing material for several 3rd party modules, buying this book is no-brainer for any DM.

Read our full review at Geeksagogo.com!

An enjoyable romp. One of my first true one shots, I didn't really spend any time planning this so ran it straight from the book after a skim read before hand. The players enjoyed it, but I/we found the flow a little too well signposted, there were definately no mysteries to be deduced/roleplayed. Not going to consider that a flaw though, it was a one shot and my players wanted to kill things so it ticked all the boxes in that regard.

My only criticism would be some mistakes with the dusk queen stat block. It lists the spells in divine and cleric seperately, so effectively only showing spell slots up to level 7 for each, when it should be showing higher level slots as a combined level 14 character. Not a major problem but it did mean from initial read I was limited on my 4th level slots. There's also a mismatch between what spell scrolls it says she casts and which she's listed as having, not a major problem but confused me a little when reading it in the heat of battle!

TLDR: Good hack n slash, little roleplay, few mistakes but not gonna spoil anything.

I made a video review of this book! I picked the top five weirdest, coolest and funniest creatures out of the many hundreds.

Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zf7ffd-Aqc&t=2s

Kobold Press has brought their popular Midgard setting to D&D 5th edition with this rich and highly-adaptable book. Even if you've never played a Midgard game, this book is a tremendous resource, offering amazing options that easily fit into any setting. It is best described as being something like another Player's Handbook. The book features 10 new playable races such as Centaurs, Minotaurs, Dhampirs, and Gearforged, and variants of standard D&D races, such as Winterfolk Halflings and Southlands Dwarves. Though it offers no new base classes, the book does offer some variants on existing classes that can bring a lot of flavor to your game. There are 16 archetypes for the various standard classes that offer options like vampire-slayer rangers, griffon-riding fighters, and some diverse variants on rogue such as the combat-oriented duelist and the street-smart fixer archetype. There is a fantastic section that adds a ton of new feats and more than a dozen new backgrounds. Many of the backgrounds are tied to the Midgard setting, but can be adapted to other settings. Some of the backgrounds, such as miner, and prophet feel like they belong in the standard rules.

One of the best parts of the book is the section dedicated to weapon options--types of actions that anyone proficient with a given weapon can perform when weilding it. This actually has rules for tripping an enemy with your glaive, using your shortsword when grappled, and vaulting over an obstacle with your quarterstaff. This book is well worth reading for these options alone--since there's a player in every game who wants to pull off some sort of maneuver with their weapon.

One of the things that Midgard is known for is its expanded magic rules. The Heroes Handbook continues the tradition of their 'Deep Magic' series of supplements for Pathfinder and now D&D 5e by bringing some excellent optional rules. The book contains dozens of new spells, but on top of that, it also has a bunch of great options for casters. For clerics, there are more than a dozen new domains, such as mountain, travel, and beer! There are a handful of warlock pacts, such as shadow and genie lord. Wizards have another 8 options for arcane traditions that involve things like angelic magic, ritualistic high-elven magic, and elementalisim--a long-time favorite of players.

Overall, this is a solid book that can add to any 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons game. It's largely on-par with the quality of the standard D&D guidebooks in terms of art and writing. It brings new depth to any game with its rich assortment of races and class options that can keep the game fresh and new for veteran players.

See our full rating and review at GeeksAGogo.com!

excellent guide for running quick one shots for a DM new to 5the edition

We are REALLY loving this book.

My feel is the monsters are more gruesome/creepy than the ones in WOTC stuff...which is great.

Also, I find this book is great for my bosses as I have plenty of minions in WOTC stuff, but this giuves me THAT monster.

Oh, and Baba Yaga!

Great stuff!

This book made me a fan of Kobald Press and I've been following them ever since! I honestly prefer this book over the MM. The breadth of content, both low and high level, is amazing. The art is top-notch.

I particularly love how they have given stats for the fey lords and ladies, deamon princes and other high level individual entities. I cannot recommend this product enough. Love, love, love it.

Good collection of lair based encounters. Fun, thought out, and great finished product as always from Kobold Press. Definitely worth having in your folder of quick encounters, or reading through for inspiration.

Prepared! is a book of 12 encounters with a detailed backstory that are easy to fit into most campaigns or even easier to run as one-shot adventures. The encounters in this book cover from about 1st to 15th level. Though, it should be noted that they aren't long adventures, they're encounters that can fill up a game session of a few hours in length. This book is the perfect place to find a quick one-shot when you need to run a game in a pinch, such as when some of your players can't make it to your regular game, and you can't run the adventure you had planned, or if you need a quick adventure to run with your buddies next weekend. In those situations, you'll be able to find something here that's nice and easy to run for most player levels.

As for the adventures found in this book, there are some really creative and memorable encounters. Some of the adventures include a raid on a goblin 'fortress', a crawl through a mine that is actually the fossilized remains of a long-dead monster, a tomb that contains some clever traps and challenges, and an investiation into a secret tomb beneath a feast hall. These encounters all have interesting hooks that are easy to incorporate into a long-running game, and each provides questions that you, as the DM, can incorporate into future adventures that you write yourself if you chose to do so. As well, the authors also make it easy for DMs to prepare with a short list of the elements that make up each adventure alongside some really nice artwork and maps that set the scene. This really helps speed up preparation if you haven't read the adventure and you need to get caught up quickly. The only problem you may run into is that some adventures use monsters from Kobold Press' Tome of Beasts. This is a great book that we'll save for another review, but most adventures only require you to have your Monster Manual handy, and you can take a few mintues to swap out for monsters in the Monster Manual if need be.

Overall, this book is a huge help to dungeon masters who need to run an adventure right now, but don't have time to prep. Most players will find these adventures to be interesting, challenging, and engaging. This book is extremely useful for a quick one-shot, maybe after hours in the hotel lobby at a gaming convention or at a weekend retreat. Given the quality of the encounters, and fact that it offers adventures for many levels, it's a must-have for regular DMs.

Check out the whole review and other titles at Geeksagogo.com!

OK, folks are complaining about the product being broken up into four images...but it's not too hard to extract a single jpg or png file from it (but, yes that should have been included).

Once downloaded,in Adobe Reader, just click on the map (crosshair cursor) . Ctrl-C to copy the image (you get the whole map, not just a corner)! Paste it into any painting program (paint.net is good and it's free). And Save it to JPG or PNG format!

The image is 2475x1800 in size. A higher resolution would be nice as the location description fonts are a bit chunky, but they are legible. They should also provide a version with no numbered locations overlaying the buildings, and a B&W players printable version.

BUT WAIT...

Currently the "Zobeck Gazetteer" is discounted to $4.99 and has same map at modestly lower quality.

If your really tight on funds the free preview also has the map! Use the technique above to extract it (the preview's "Sample file" overlay text won't appear). It's vertically compressed in the preview by half. First Rotate it 90° clockwise to a normal viewing orientation. it’s size is now 1728(width)x2376(height). You can then use Image Resize to expand from a width of 1728 to 3456. This gives you get a surprisingly usable image, text is legible, etc. Perhaps use Effects, Photo, Sharpen at say 4% to enhance it a tad.