The whole Tome of Beasts series is pretty great, including the Creature Codex. Some of them are a bit too “out there” for me to use in my particular game, but I’d rather have that than another reskinned goblin.
The main 4 monster books from KP are published under an OGL and are available on open5e , you don’t get any lore, art, or advice on how to run the monsters without paying for the books, but you can see the statblocks.
The kobold press website also has a tool that can show you the environments a monster can typically be found in.
I would still recommend getting the books, especially if you want to use any of the higher CR monsters as the lore makes it a lot easier to understand the mindset the creators had when designing them.
Are any of these monster books actually good? The fact they don’t seem to have sample monsters makes me doubt it.
The whole Tome of Beasts series is pretty great, including the Creature Codex. Some of them are a bit too “out there” for me to use in my particular game, but I’d rather have that than another reskinned goblin.
The main 4 monster books from KP are published under an OGL and are available on open5e , you don’t get any lore, art, or advice on how to run the monsters without paying for the books, but you can see the statblocks.
The kobold press website also has a tool that can show you the environments a monster can typically be found in.
I would still recommend getting the books, especially if you want to use any of the higher CR monsters as the lore makes it a lot easier to understand the mindset the creators had when designing them.
As stated, tome of beasts books are some of the best monster books out there