How the Monsters Have Changed in the 2025 Monster Manual: Air Elemental

Are you wondering how Wizards of the Coast has altered the monsters in the 2025 Monster Manual? Well, one way of showing this is to make side-by-side comparisons of the 2025 monsters to their 2014 equivalents. Today, we're looking at the Air Elemental.

Notably, the Air Elemental now appears in the "A" chapter of the Monster Manual instead of the "E" section. The description for the Air Elemental also includes a table of various compositions for the air elemental, with the air elemental possibly formed from a foul miasma or a cloud of shifting animal shapes.

In terms of base stats, the Air Elemental's AC, HP, and Ability Scores are all unchanged. However, the 2025 Air Elemental now has a 10 foot base speed in addition to its 90 foot hover speed. The Air Elemental now has resistance to all bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing damage (previously just non-magical bludgeoning/slashing/piercing) and has total damage immunity from lightning damage. Previously, it had resistance to lightning damage.

The Air Elemental's Slam attack was replaced by Thunderous Slam, with the new attack having a 10 foot reach instead of 5-feet and dealing Thunder damage instead of bludgeoning damage. The Air Elemental's Whirlwind attack only targets one creature in its space instead of each creature. The attack deals more damage than before (24/4d10+2 compared to 15/3d8+2) and still inflicts the prone condition on a failed save along with being pushed away from the Air Elemental. The 2025 Whirlwind's wording is more direct about the push effect than the 2014 Monster Manual, with the target no longer being "thrown" in a random direction.

Full statblocks are below:

2025 Monster Manual:

2014 Monster Manual:

 

[Reynard]

I wonder if there is a standardized rule for damage from collision during forced movement.

 

[Ghost2020]

Fire Giant is under F and Hill Giant is under H?
This is pretty darned stupid to put these monster types alphabetically by name, instead of in their group. Are Demons and Devils scattered through out the book as well? (not trying to be snarky, but genuinely curious)

The old air elemental entry has a few rules for throwing the character at other PCs and into walls, etc. That's pretty cool. Why did they leave that off the new one?

 

[Sir Brennen]

Fire Giant is under F and Hill Giant is under H?
This is pretty darned stupid to put these monster types alphabetically by name, instead of in their group. Are Demons and Devils scattered through out the book as well? (not trying to be snarky, but genuinely curious)

The old air elemental entry has a few rules for throwing the character at other PCs and into walls, etc. That's pretty cool. Why did they leave that off the new one?

I believe they are, yes, mainly for new gms who wouldn’t necessarily know what (for example) an eryines or succubus are (categorically speaking), or which is a demon or devil.

However, sounds like there are going to be extensive indexes in MM2024, so you can see all the demons and devils listed together there, as well as giants, elementals, etc.

I mean, even in most editions that did those kind of groups, there were still outliers that belonged to them but listed separately by name (Invisible Stalker, for example, was never listed under “Elementals” despite being one)

 

[payn]

What is thunder damage?

 

[jayoungr]

I wonder if there is a standardized rule for damage from collision during forced movement.

Same as falling damage, isn't it?

 

[Sir Brennen]

What is thunder damage?

FKA “Sonic” damage in older editions. It’s been a thing since 2014.

 

[payn]

FKA “Sonic” damage in older editions. It’s been a thing since 2014.

Thanks, i forgot about that.

 

[Stalker0]

I wonder if there is a standardized rule for damage from collision during forced movement.

I'm guessing they are just removing that entire "fling" concept and changing it to a standard push. Note that the damage of the new push is comparable to the old fling at 20 feet (aka 15 + 2d6 for the fling = 22 vs 24 for the new one, so right in the ballpark).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I wonder if there is a standardized rule for damage from collision during forced movement.

Be really good if there was. I quite like the rules from the old version for that, but it's weird to have them in a specific stat block!