The function of creature types

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 8:24 pm

So, Krusk's review brings up an interesting question- what should the function of creature types be? Should subtypes be a thing? How many creature types is too many? Is 3.5's overall model (12 types with broad rules and endless subtypes with more specific rules) good? Should things be opened up to the point where things essentially have multiple narrower types like 3.5 subtypes that have been upgraded, so that a dracolich isn't Undead (augmented) but Undead Darkminded Dragon?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 8:52 pm

Creature types and subtypes are a mechanism for pulling common rules out of multiple different entries and into a shared keyword. 3.5's problem was that type rules asserted too many things to be true, and as such certain monsters very clearly did not fit into the type they were meant to fit (I'm looking at you, undead and vampires).

If you were going to do it properly, types would be rudimentary with very few implications, and then you'd fill in the rest with subtypes and the monster entries themself.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 10:35 pm

I kind of liked the 4E thing where the origin and form of the creature were two different things, like "Elemental Ooze" or "Immortal Humanoid". Seems like it makes more sense with things like immunities.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 11:12 pm

Creature type helps with world building and general rules, as well as providing natural language that can apply to gameplay effects. A 'dragon slaying arrow' is more convenient to implement when you know what is and isn't a dragon in your game.

FFXIV breaks it into Kingdom (Things that eat and breath like animals "Bloodborn", things that don't like constructs "Bloodless"), Class ("Beast", "Dragon", "Giant"), and then specific genus within that class ("Wyvern") It's a neat categorizing system, I think there's about 12 classes overall.

M:tG does creature classification pretty nicely too, with some creatures having multiple typings. It's consistent enough where if you see something is a 'dragon', 'beast', 'illusion', you have an idea of what to expect.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 11:13 pm

I've always felt that Types were really high-level classifications of creatures, such that they needed to be plugged into the setting. Like, if orcs are Giant-Type why don't they worship Giant gods? Aren't they really runtish giants probably with inferiority complexes? Or if they're not that, they're some kind of mutant midget ogre, so where the heck did that come from?

So with that in mind, less is probably better than more. Types need creation myths and that's work for GMs. Alternatively, just adhere to the design guideline that if you're making a type, you need to narratively define where it comes from, and "mAGIC?!!" only gets to be used for one Type.

Krusk · Post by **Krusk** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 12:34 am

Ive always felt types should = monster classes. So all dragons get xhd, xbab, and xskills. Then they get common traits from the type and custom traits from your ass. Types should also probably be roughly balanced against one another and actual pc classes.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 12:51 am

Krusk wrote:Ive always felt types should = monster classes. So all dragons get xhd, xbab, and xskills. Then they get common traits from the type and custom traits from your ass. Types should also probably be roughly balanced against one another and actual pc classes.

See I actually tend to think this is one of the big weaknesses of the 3.X system. I would rather see hit dice, bab, and skills tied to something other than creature type, even if it mean implementing roles (either overtly or hidden behind some other mechanic like monster classes), because a Zombie Minotaur and a Death Knight Minotaur should look pretty different even in their baseline numbers. A Succubus or an Imp shouldn't have Good BAB and proficiency with all martial weapons just because they are outsiders and Balors are expected to have that sort of thing.

Basically I think types should be a general grouping that honestly tells you next to nothing about the creature by itself. Like for the most part saying "Humanoid" vs "Animal" tells you little except what knowledge skill to identify it and what might be super effective against them (ie favored enemy bonuses, bane weapons, etc). Other types like Undead, Plant, or Construct might tell you slightly more basic things (immunities, lack of con score, that sort of thing), but still overall doesn't define much beyond that. All of the other stuff should come from something else.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 1:07 am

If you base things on [The Real World], creature types are useful from a simulationist aspect for general capabilities of a class of critters - dogs can be poisoned by chocolate, goblins have two arms and legs, mammals are warm-blooded, etc.

If you base things on [Fantasy]...it gets dicier. Bilbo Baggins totally had a sword that glowed blue in the presence of orcs and goblins; the barrow-blades were laid with spells against the Witch-King of Angmar and could pierce the Nazgul's armor. Which can get weirdly discriminatory in the case of spells - Shadowrun played around with the whole "Slay Human" and "Slaughter Ork" thing for example.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 4:38 am

Ancient History wrote:dogs can be poisoned by chocolate,

Actually, that's true for basically all animals that aren't called humans (and we have no Humanoids available to see how far that stretches). Chances are probably equal that if elves existed, you could kill them with Wonka bars.

Partly a PSA so people don't give chocolate to their cats and rodents, partly just enjoying the imagery of the elf king flipping out because there's a chocolate fountain at the banquet.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 6:20 am

can other apes eat chocolate? I thought it harmed dogs 'cause of their higher heart rate mainly.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 6:25 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning seems to indicate that rats find chocolate less poisonous than humans do.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 6:53 am

I was under the impression that the caffeine was also a problem, and that horses have a notable ability to digest caffeine similarly to humans.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 1:51 pm

The best use for types in 3e was Animals because Druids can use them, Humanoids because there's a bunch of spells only affect them, and Outsiders because you can banish them like they're not even real. Also Dragons because FUCK YES, DRAGONS.

Where there used to be big lists of things your druid could mess with or your charm spell would work on (in AD&D) and stuff like that got folded into a common word and that was super useful.

I quite like Shapechanger and Beast for those purposes too. Divvying the MM for the use of players during a game of Dungeons & Dragons, rather than some idealistic theorycraft nonsense. Can I ride it as a mount? That sort of thing.

Also, there should only be 7 +-2 types, so people can remember them all at once and it becomes obvious which one they end up in. Large immunity sets built in to those are basically a terrible idea. For me at least. Can't remember them. Or don't care enough to get them right after years which is close enough.

4e's type system probably works well for 4e, where monsters are purely there to soak up various rates of randomly typed damage functions with a 3-square push. A deeper game like D&D has greater needs.

So for classic D&D you'd want
1) Humanoids: the charmable/sleepable/lycanthropable monsters,
2) Animals: the druid pets and basic mounts.
3) Spirits: the monsters you can talk to because they're like people only not charmable,
4) Summons: the stuff you can summon and hedge out with magic circles and do deals with for service.
5) Creations: the stuff you can create that isn't really alive and don't eat or sleep but maybe only come out at night anyway (undead/golems/traps/animates/clockworks).
6) Monsters: things you can't easily talk to, but aren't suitable mounts, and are self-willed.
7) Horrors: the cleaning crew (slimes, moulds, jellies, oozes, cubes, mimics, swarms).
8) Critters: too stupid to be monsters, too cool to be animals, too ordinary to be horrors, basically giant frogs and bugs.
9) Dragons: Too talky for Monsters, too ugly for Spirits. Lots of things are Dragons. Basically all the crazy powerful stuff players are "never" allowed.

Tarrasque? Monster.
Will o' Wisp? Horror.
Aboleth? Dragon.
Storm Giant? Spirit.
Carrion Crawler? Critter.
Otyugh? Monster.

Seems easy enough. If you have NPC/Monster classes, give them a class too. If you have a small set of climate-terrain types, give them that too. Shapechange limited to 1, 2, 3, 6, & 8. Polymorph 1-3. Alter self 1.

And yes, the metaphysics of the multiverse are anthropocentric. Steel Dragons and Mariliths and Aranea also Alter Self into a humanoid shape, because mythology.

EDIT: For some reason I awoke with the idea that a Vampire is a Horror (cleaning crew, a floating mist cloud in this case) with Alter Self (for human form), Totem Form (wolf and bat), Charm Person, and a typically arbitrary Horror's set of immunities and vulnerabilities (like death just sending them to a time out and not liking antibiotics). Elves are Spirits because they're immune to charm and sleep.

Instead of Undead and Golems and Oozes being immune to fifty different spells and conditions, there's a small enough number of monster types that spells and conditions can just specify which ones they affect. Few things can effect Creations, Horrors, or Dragons.

So you cast Fireball at Zombies (Creation) and you just have a bunch of smouldering zombies dropping burning rags around the place. But Ghouls (Monsters), which look quite similar, die in fires just fine. They both have the [PROFANE] tag to let standard clerics play with them in their own special way, like the classic undead and fiends, in the same way things have [FIRE] or [AIR] tags.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 3:11 pm

Seerow wrote:
Krusk wrote:Ive always felt types should = monster classes. So all dragons get xhd, xbab, and xskills. Then they get common traits from the type and custom traits from your ass. Types should also probably be roughly balanced against one another and actual pc classes.
See I actually tend to think this is one of the big weaknesses of the 3.X system. I would rather see hit dice, bab, and skills tied to something other than creature type, even if it mean implementing roles (either overtly or hidden behind some other mechanic like monster classes), because a Zombie Minotaur and a Death Knight Minotaur should look pretty different even in their baseline numbers. A Succubus or an Imp shouldn't have Good BAB and proficiency with all martial weapons just because they are outsiders and Balors are expected to have that sort of thing.

I agree with this, fully.

Using a set chassis for creature types gets weird, fast. Take undead: they have a poor BAB progression, and despite the best HD, the lack of a Con modifier meant they tended to not have very good HP totals. So, if you wanted a good undead bruiser, you needed to give them a shit-ton of HD, which made them interact very oddly with things like turning, save DCs, and the effects of various spells.

Types should be handy collections of standard traits, and subtypes should be modifications of those traits. Anything more causes problems.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 3:21 pm

Unfortunately, it's really easy to get into subtype clogging as well, especially if you have a wide variety of creatures like D&D. Read Pathfinder's list of subtypes sometime, that shit is totes out of control. While I'm sure that you could cut down on clog by only making subtypes of monsters that people really care about, I'm wondering if it might not be better to use a combination of broad typing like outsider, undead, construct, etc. with monster roles like bruiser, leader, blaster, etc..

brized · Post by **brized** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 3:55 pm

In working on a monster system for my heartbreaker, I've come to the same conclusions as RobbyPants and Lago. It's much faster/easier for GMs to build monsters with 6 role-based classes instead of 9-12 type-based classes, especially if you allow open multiclassing. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to best fit in monster races, since PCs will want that as an option.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 7:02 pm

If types serve the function of monster classes in your game, then you are declaring that zombies, vampires, and liches are all the same class. That's obviously crazy. You can have monster classes, but they can't be the same thing as your monster types.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 7:26 pm

Creature typing can also reinforce world themes, like if you had a world based off of the 5 Buddhist Realms or the Christian Great Chain of Being' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being#God

Deva: Zeus, YHWH and friends go here.
Rules: Functionally immortal, immune to lots of things.

Asura: Supernatural beings from another plane of existence; angels, demons and so on. Often serve or oppose devas.
Rules: How to summon/banish them, how they manifest, immunities and such.

Demi: Reading up on the 'great chain of being', it talks about how humans are the only beings with both divine aspects (reasoning, imagination) but also animalistic aspects (gluttony, lust). So I'll classify this category as flesh and blood things that are also intelligent enough to wield magic. Humans, demihumans, dragons and whatnot.
Rules: Most characters will be in this category so they're the baseline everyone else is measured against.

Animal: Non sapient, animals and their beastly dire varieties go here.
Rules: Training/taming them, certain spells that target them, and so on.

Plant: strangling vines, oozes
Rules: Insert something about being immune to mind-influencing spells and so on.

Mineral: Inanimate, raw materials for possession by magical means
Rules: "no con score" can possibly go here.

Hungry Ghosts: Sapient undead, your vampires, liches, ghosts go here
Rules: Maybe you want ALL undead to fear the sun, maybe you don't. Whatever you decide on goes here.

Hell: mindless undead; zombies and poltergeists
Rules: basically like a mineral with a different set of vulnerabilities to exorists and stuff.

Pixels · Post by **Pixels** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 8:02 pm

DSMatticus wrote:If types serve the function of monster classes in your game, then you are declaring that zombies, vampires, and liches are all the same class. That's obviously crazy. You can have monster classes, but they can't be the same thing as your monster types.

I assumed that with type-as-role rules, those would be something like bruiser, lurker, and caster respectively. Then they would have a subtype (undead) or a bunch of keywords (unliving, mindless, or whatever) that would describe the common attributes that they have.