The Book of Lairs for the 2nd edition of Dungeons & Dragons came out in 1994 (I still remember buying it in my local gaming store).
It is a series of short encounters (usually 2-3 pages in length) based on a monsters from either the MC3: Monstrous Compendium, Volume Three: Forgotten Realms Appendix (1989) and MC11: Monstrous Compendium, Forgotten Realms Appendix II (1991).
This post has a handy table to help expand on the book, and make it more useful to Gamemasters.
The Book of Lairs
While I completely recommend the Book of Lairs (especially for someone running on the sandbox modules or adventures), this isn’t really a review as such. More like an enhancement.
There are over 30 encounters in this book, each one focused around a particular monster. While this publication is a Forgotten Realms book, it can easily be used for any campaign world.
The encounters are set out in alphabetically order, which doesn’t really provide anyone with a good guide, except to perhaps to easily find a monster.
To make the book more useful, I have created a table which solves two issues:
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- It organises the encounters into various terrain and climate; and
- It also organises the encounters by level
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I feel this is a much more useful, and it means you can use them for random encounters as well as set encounters.
| Terrain | Climate | Level | Encounter |
| Any | Any | 1st | Ring-Worm |
| Any | 3rd | Tempest | |
| Any | 5th | Phantom | |
| Any | 10th | Revenant | |
| Arctic | Cold | 6th | Hauns |
| Cold | 10th | Sha’az | |
| Forest | Cold or Temperate | 1st | Frosts |
| Temperate | 3rd | Silver Dogs | |
| Temperate | 5th | Belabras | |
| Temperate or Tropical | 6th | Bhaergala | |
| Temperate | 6th | Cantobele | |
| Marsh/Swamp | Any | 4th | Alguduirs |
| Temperate or Tropical | 5th | Tren | |
| Temperate | 6th | Cantobele | |
| Any | 7th | Fachan | |
| Temperate | 8th | Bichirs | |
| Any | 12th | Crimson Death | |
| Mountains | Any | 7th | Asperii |
| Volcanic | 13th | Firenewts | |
| Vale | 14th | Saurials | |
| Any | 16th | Dracoliches | |
| Plains/Grasslands | Temperate | 2nd | Loxo |
| Any | 4th | Lightning Golem | |
| Any | 6th | Morins | |
| Steppes | Dry | 2nd | Beguilers |
| Subterranean | Any | 9th | Childabrins |
| Urban | Any | 2nd | Rhaumbusuns |
| Any | 3rd | Crawling Claws | |
| Any | 3rd | Orpsus | |
| Any | 4th | Inquisitor | |
| Any | 4th | Sand Cats | |
| Any | 5th | Harrla | |
| Any | 6th | Thylacines | |
| Any | 7th | Wemics | |
| Any | 8th | Monkey-Spiders | |
| Any | 11th | Dimensional Warper |
Over to You
Do you own Book of Lairs? Do you find this helpful? Let me know in the comments below.
While You’re Here…
Since 2021 I have been publishing d12 Monthly, a monthly zine, which has a ton of articles for any edition of Dungeons and Dragons.
Printed copies are available in my store. The PDF is available on DriveThruRPG and you can get both, plus support my work, via my Patreon.
I will also be releasing some more products in the near future.
Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or my contact page any time.