There was some unfortunate disappointment with the new D&D Monster Manual. WotC probably panicked when they saw Matt Colville’s Flee Mortals and rethought everything they’d been working on. The alphabetization in particular is one area that annoys. It’s perhaps a clunky result of throwing the taxonomy up in the air when trying to rewrite everything.

I really like the Monster Overhaul; most entries includes a table for the taste and effects of eating the creature and, often, name, appearance, and/or activity.

And I’m impressed by the Heroes of Adventure Monsters Compendium (even tho it uses AI art); it includes a table of hooks for what the creature is doing when encountered.

What Should It Look Like?

There should be a really clean taxonomy of creature, type, category, and family.

• Creatures of a given type should be grouped into one entry.
• Those of a category should be grouped together in their own section.
• Those of a family should be merely identified in their stat block as belonging to that family.

The Monster Overhaul groups creatures into sections partly based on taxonomy and partly on habitat. While that’s useful in some ways, I think taxonomy is the better choice, with substantial material on habitat being supplemental.

Taxonomy

• A gelatinous cube should have its own entry but is identified as being a part of the family of “amorphs” or whatever. This would include the various oozes, slimes, and jellies, and the whole family would be immune to precision damage and resistant to bludgeoning damage (since they have no bones). Theoretically, you could have “gray ooze” and, say, “black ooze” in the same entry with slightly different stats and powers.
• The “red dragon” should be one entry with notes for what powers it gets as it ages. That entry should be grouped with other the dragons under a “Dragon” section. And all dragons should be in the “dragonkin” family along with pseudodragons, dragon turtles, wyverns, and sea serpents.
• Likewise, the “storm giant” and “frost giant” are their own entries grouped under a section on “Giants”. But ogres are under O and merely identified as belonging to the “giantkin” family.
• Creatures can be in no family (which is to say a family of their own) or in multiple families. A dracolich should be in both the “undead” family and “dragonkin” family.
• The common ghoul and lacedon/water ghoul should be together in a single “ghoul” entry. They should be in the “undead” family with ghosts, wraiths, wights, and vampires. But there’s no need to try to group all undead together into their own section.
• “Demon” and “devil” would be separate sections, and all such creatures would be identified in their stat blocks as part of the “fiend” family.
• The “beast” family can include any ordinary animal or its giant version. These can probably be grouped, so that “wolf” and “giant wolf” are in one stat block, as are “eagle” and “giant eagle”.
• Similarly, various goblins (warrior, guard, shaman, chieftain) can probably be gathered into one entry. This would be part of the “humanoid” family, altho goblins and hobgoblins would be noted in their descriptions as being closely related. There’s no need to group them into a “goblinoid” category, tho.
• Other categories could include “lycanthrope” and “elemental”. Other families could include “fae” and perhaps “plant” and “construct”.

With this kind of taxonomy, you can say that clerics can turn undead, which means any creature in the “undead” family. Or you can say a weapon is “+2 vs fiends [family]”, regardless of whether they’re demons or devils, or “+2 vs giantkin [category]”.

Abilities

Creature abilities should be geared toward enhancing the drama and challenge of an adventure, including things like being able to summon minions and flee via some magical or mundane escape route.

Many entries should include a table to randomly roll the creature’s exact mix of abilities, resistances, and vulnerabilities, so the players can’t scour the book for how to deal with each one.

Hooks

Most creatures need a list of hooks to help GMs figure out how to use them. What sort of goal might such a creature have that would put it in conflict with civilized folk and provoke adventurers to hunt it? Preying on livestock, wrecking fields, fouling woodlands, etc., and of course amassing treasure…. Or, at least, what is it doing when the heroes encounter it? Hunting, eating, guarding young, sleeping, recovering from an injury, etc.

Habitat

Each entry would need information about what habitat the creature could be found in. Some might be found almost anywhere, but others would be so limited that it would make more sense to group them.

• One section in the Monster Overhaul is “Primeval”, which neatly allows the inclusion of dinosaurs, giant reptiles, extinct giant mammals, troglodytes, and cavemen, which is clever because those could all go together in a “land before time” adventure.
• Likewise, mundane animals could all be grouped into one category but subdivided by habitat, so—for example—all the sub-Saharan plains animals like lions and elephants would be together. Each habitat would also include a list of fantastical monsters that would be appropriate as well, such as gnolls being found (with hyenas) on the hot plains.
• Sea creatures could likewise be categorized together, since you would almost never encounter giant squid, whales, sea serpents, merfolk, and such away from a sea adventure. Fresh water creatures, tho, might be found in any lake, river, or underground pool, so they might instead be merely listed together in a habitat listing.
• Polar creatures might be another category: polar bears, giant furry snakes, etc. Altho enough of these might just be cold-region variants of temperate creatures (bears might all share an entry) and so might just be a habitat listing rather than a category of its own.

Lairs

There should be a lot of maps in the book. GMs need to know what the creatures’ lair look like, so they should be listed for each creature and mapped. Of course, a ruined temple might just as easily be the lair of a lich as a band of humanoids, so the map would often only be generally keyed (“great hall”, etc.), but side notes can indicate how a room might used by one creature versus another (“laboratory or common room”).

In the Monster Overhaul, the two-page entry on cultists is so helpful—with tables for lairs, purpose, gods, etc. and a generic temple map—that it could be run right out of the book with almost no prep.