Creature Codex

Having picked up the Tome of Beasts trio and having been impressed with the content and quality of those products I made the decision to grab the Creature Codex and add it to my collection of 5e books. It's a beast of a monster book, easily twice the thickness of most of my other books. This thing is a fatty.

There's something like 400 creatures in this codex, including new varieties of angels, demons, dragons, dinosaurs, and golems. There are entries for a bunch of leader type creatures found in the Monster Manual, like centaurs, goblins, and a more. And a bunch of new undead that will be handy for the Adventure: Tombs of Cathedra setting. The back of the book includes sorted lists of the creatures by type, challenge rating, and terrain. It's everything you would expect from a monster book.

There's some text about Midgard, the Kobold Press world setting, but you can use that or ignore it without any real impact. It's all flavor. You might even be inspired by some of it, I know I was.

The Creature Codex is a nice collection of unique monsters and I'm looking forward to unleashing a good many of them on my players or using them to spice up the lore in my games. The art is good, though the paper takes some of the sharpness away from the images and makes them a little dull, especially compared to all the glossy paper on all the more recent products. I think it was a solid investment and I'm sure my players and I will get plenty of entertainment from the contents.

If I had one gripe it'd be that unglossed paper. I flipped through the book for the first time while eating dinner and my greasy little fingers stained up several of the pages. That paper just sucks up oils, sauces, and stains and does not let go. I know that this book came out in 2018 and product quality has improved in the last 5 years, but glossy paper would benefit the look and durability of this product. But having said that, my original AD&D books weren't glossy and they've held up just fine. This book will do me just fine.

I think this one is a good value for the cost and if I can surprise my players with any of the monsters in it, that'll make it worth what I paid for it.