The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

Ready-to-Use Tactics for D&D 5E

Coming Oct. 6: Remonstered!

April 13, 2026

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Meta

Times have changed. The old rules no longer apply. Our foes have grown in strength. We must adapt.

Don’t worry. I gotchu.

In Remonstered! The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, every monster’s tactics are updated to reflect the recent changes to their stat blocks in the 2025 Monster Manual and accompanied by brand-new tips to help you prepare the battlefield, choose allies and minions, and take your combat scenes in exciting, unexpected directions. (Not to mention another banger cover by Lio Pressland and all-new interior illustrations by Jen C. Marshall!) This revised edition hits shelves Oct. 6, but you can preorder it now from Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Indigo or your favorite independent bookstore in the United States or Canada.

And if you’ve decided to stick with the original 2014 fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons rules, fret not: The original The Monsters Know What They’re Doing will still be available alongside the revised edition.
Sunder Shaman and Wurm Tactics

May 15, 2026

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Giants, Monstrosities

The sunder shaman is a Gruul-affiliated giant that would more logically be considered an NPC if it weren’t a giant but rather a humanoid. Also, despite its name, it’s not a spellcaster, just a giant berserker with extraordinary Strength and Constitution and merely humanoid-average mental abilities.

It’s got good defenses: Armor Class 20 and proficiency in all the “big three” saving throws. It’s proficient in Athletics as well, for whatever that’s worth; few people would ever try to grapple it. However, I can imagine situations in which a sunder shaman gives up its Multiattack to try to grab somebody, and in that case the escape DC would be 20. Additionally, its Multiattack increases its offensive damage output immediately after it takes damage itself.

While it’s not proficient in Stealth, Stone Camouflage gives it advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks in rocky terrain, so it has some ambush potential on its home turf. Most often, though, it’s not going to be encountered on its home turf. The sunder shaman is an offensive weapon, as evidenced by the Siege Monster trait. Yep, it’s another creature that goes after the shelter first and the sheltered afterward. (Which does a lot to explain why a world-spanning city contains so many ruins.)
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Gruul NPC Tactics

April 30, 2026

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Humanoids

What do you do if you’re a wild hunter-gatherer type who abhors sedentary living, dense development, abstruse legal codes and advanced technology, hemmed in by a city that’s grown to fill all the space available to it, including the lands where your people once subsisted? You live your life as best you can, when it lets you. And when it doesn’t, you start busting stuff up.

“A loose affiliation of bands that squat on the fringes of Ravnican society,” according to the Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica, the Gruul Clans bring subgiants, goblinoids, reptilians, centaurs, minotaurs and antisocial humans together under one ragged banner. Most Gruul are already represented in the good ol’ Monster Manual, but chapter 6 of Ravnica lists three nonplayer character archetypes that aren’t—four if you count the sunder shaman, but the book groups that one among monsters rather than NPCs, so I will, too.
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Undercity Medusa and Devkarin Lich Tactics

April 20, 2026

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Monstrosities, Undead

Undercity medusas occupy a peculiar place in the Golgari Swarm. Although they live beneath the city, they don’t seem to share the Swarm’s ideology. Their alliance with the Golgari is a matter of convenience, a buffer that lets them live unmolested by the other guilds. The Golgari, in turn, benefit from their power to petrify opponents. Given the chance, though, the medusas would happily use the other denizens of the undercity for their own ends alone.

Nimbler and stealthier than ordinary medusas and much stronger and smarter, undercity medusas are dangerous ambush attackers. They can cast fog cloud once per day and often use it to conceal themselves, but the moment they’re ready to strike, they have to drop it in order to make use of their Surprise Attack trait, which grants them advantage on attack rolls against surprised foes. Why? Because as long as everything is heavily obscured by the fog, everyone in it is effectively both blinded and invisible, and the combination of advantage and disadvantage nullifies the undercity medusa’s own attack roll advantage. Truth be told, the fog is likely to be a tip-off to suspicious player characters; much of the time, an undercity medusa is better off merely using its Stealth proficiency to hide in the shadows and save fog cloud for emergency disengagement.
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Golgari NPC Tactics

April 9, 2026

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Humanoids

From the legalistic Azorius Senate, the zealous Boros Legion and the scheming House Dimir to … our first bunch of weird little guys, the Golgari Swarm. Azorius, Boros and Dimir go about easily understood human goals in easily understood human ways. The Golgari, on the other hand, share a mentality from another phylum of life altogether, if not another kingdom. When they say “I hope you rot,” they mean that in the best possible way.

The Golgari rank and file comprises drow, fungus zombies, vegepygmies and kraul warriors. Kraul are a eusocial insectoid folk with an instinct for teamwork; their warriors have hard exoskeletons and wield spears. With high Strength and above-average Constitution and Dexterity, they have a slight bias toward toe-to-toe melee engagement but aren’t averse to the occasional hit-and-run maneuver. Some possess wings and act as “scouts and shock troops,” but a unit including scouts comprises only scouts; a unit of shock troops comprises only shock troops.

Kraul have 60 feet of darkvision and thus prefer to engage at night or underground, but there’s nothing stopping them from engaging in daylight beyond this preference and the fact that they have no particular skill at stealth. When they attack, it’s a direct, open assault. They do, however, have the Spider Climb trait, so if clinging to the ceiling confers any kind of advantage upon them, that’s what they’ll do. But it’s probably of greater concern that high walls and towers constructed to keep others out are no obstacle to them: They can walk right up the side.
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