I made a new utility for DMs: HTML and PDF spellbooks for every Monster Manual monster.
If you’ve ever tried to DM a monster who uses a lot of spells – a lich, say, or an archmage – you’ll know that it is no picnic. Trying to pick out the lich’s next turn involves flipping through several spells in the PHB or in D&D Beyond. It sure would be nice if all the monster’s spells were presented together so you could just scan the page!
That’s what this tool is. Every spellcasting MM monster from angel (deva) to yugoloth (ultroloth) has its complete spellbook, in either HTML or PDF format, available here.
Also, I added a feature where you can login and design your own monster or NPC spellbooks. Just type in the name of a spell and the full text of the spell appears in the spellbook. You can also write up custom spells.
This utility was a real lifesaver the other night, when I was DMing a game. Midway through the battle, one of the players cast a Silence spell on my custom NPC necromancer. Normally this is a HUGE pain. You have to look up every single spell to check which ones don’t have a verbal component. Instead, I was just able to scan the PDF and quickly see how many spells the necromancer could still cast: none. All of his spells had verbal components. He was completely hosed.
Here’s that link again: The 5e Spellbook: Printable spellbooks for all the Monster Manual monsters
This is awesome! I’ll definitely get a ton of use out of this. It was very quick and easy to add new creatures as well!
One minor addition I think would be useful would be to add in each creature’s spellcasting modifiers. Just having everything needed to cast the creature’s spells in one place would be helpful in my opinion.
This is nice. I gave up on spellcasting monsters, I just convert them to 4e like special abilities instead. Works better. Just pick what the spellcasters schtick is (it likes fire? OK) and condense those fire spells into an Action or Trait.
I just came across your blog – you have so much useful information! Can you tell me if this spellbook information is has been posted somewhere else since the link does not function. Thank you.