As we've mentioned previously, the D&D Insider team has been hard at work bringing the same level of functionality and fun to adventure preparation that we did for character creation with the D&D Character Builder. This article will serve as a brief pictorial tour through the newest addition to the D&D Insider family, D&D Adventure Tools: Monster Builder.

Adventure Tools in its entirety will be a one-stop shop for players and DMs to:

• Easily browse, search, and use official D&D 4e content.
• Edit that content for your own use.
• Create brand-new content in the same formatting as official content.

Whether you want to quickly find existing content, tweak existing content, or create brand-new content, Adventure Tools will be a wonderful addition to your game.

Because we want to get these tools out to D&D Insiders as quickly as possible, we'll be releasing them in stages. We announced at the end of June that the first stage of the Adventure Tools application will be the D&D Monster Builder. D&D Insiders will get access to D&D Monster Builder as part of your normal D&D Insider subscription, at no additional cost.

Eventually, other releases will follow for Adventure Tools, such as Encounter Builder and Map Builder. In addition to new builders, we'll also continue adding content, enhancements, and new features to D&D Monster Builder, in the same vein as the D&D Character Builder and D&D Compendium.

So let's get to the D&D Monster Builder!

This is one of the first screens you'll see in the D&D Monster Builder. Note the monster list on the left. This list will contain over 2,000 monsters from official Wizards of the Coast published sources. Selecting a monster will show its stats in the center pane. In addition, you can use the filters in the bottom left to refine your monster search by name, role, level, and other categories.

Above is an example of editing a monster from the list -- a level 5 bugbear warrior. You can edit monsters easily and quickly by changing their level, which automatically recalculates their correct attack, defense, and damage statistics. You can also individually hand-tweak each and every element if you wish.

The right panel on the above screen allows you to browse through the monster list even as you're editing your main monster. For example, if you saw a power you liked on another monster, you can drag and drop it into your monster.

You can also browse through powers directly. Notice the power list in the top right portion above. You can filter and browse through over 10,000 powers. In the center panel you can tweak/edit/create any monster power you'd like.

We hope you enjoyed this quick tour of the upcoming D&D Monster Builder. We'll be bringing you more information and screen shots as we prepare to get this functionality into the hands of our D&D Insiders!

The D&D Insider Team