Angry Drunk Review - 5e Monster Manual: A Modern Relic

[Dogbert]

Do PCs do more damage now or something?

From my personal experience, a Cleric worth their salt delivers on average a number of damage dice per round equal to their level, so that's my benchmark. Wizards get Polymorph, Could spells, and the DM won't bitch at you for using Animate Dead so you have no reason not to do this damage as a minimum on a Wiz too. Rogues get Sneak Attack dmg whenever they attack with Advantage and can spec into Arcane Trickster to keep their damage from lagging. Lore-specced Necro-Bards do well enough on their own too.

[Insomniac]

You know, almost every time I've seen an HP total quoted for a monster, my immediate reaction has been that it's way too high for that CR. Do PCs do more damage now or something?

They can, but Hit Point Bloat is in full effect across the board. It isn't uncommon for CR 2 and CR 3 monsters to have 50 to 70 HP points, something you'd expect for CR 5 encounters.

Right after 4E, you'd figure they'd have learned their lesson that monsters with a crapton of HP are no fun because it takes too long to burn through hundreds of HP for non-optimized groups. The game seems like a real slogfest.

[RobbyPants]

Right after 4E, you'd figure they'd have learned their lesson that monsters with a crapton of HP are no fun because it takes too long to burn through hundreds of HP for non-optimized groups. The game seems like a real slogfest.

After Mearls went out of his way to say that the problem of long fights from 4E was noted and fixed.

[Lago PARANOIA]

From my personal experience, a Cleric worth their salt delivers on average a number of damage dice per round equal to their level, so that's my benchmark.

Explain, Dogbert. From where I'm sitting, the Cleric looks like a dog of a class that can't do anything (buff and strike, blast, utility) better than a Bard or a Wizard.

[Ravengm]

Right after 4E, you'd figure they'd have learned their lesson that monsters with a crapton of HP are no fun because it takes too long to burn through hundreds of HP for non-optimized groups. The game seems like a real slogfest.

After Mearls went out of his way to say that the problem of long fights from 4E was noted and fixed.

To his credit, the whole "bounded accuracy" fiasco means you'll be hitting somewhat more often most of the time, so monsters' effective HP is slightly lower than you'd expect. When I leafed through the book, it seemed like the most HP-bloaty monsters were the ones with like 11 AC, but it's entirely possible I just got a weird sampling of them.

[Dogbert]

Explain, Dogbert. From where I'm sitting, the Cleric looks like a dog of a class that can't do anything (buff and strike, blast, utility) better than a Bard or a Wizard.

Hrm, I guess my estimates didn't go all the way to lvl 20, and I forgot that spell levels 6-9 only grant a single spell per day so they shouldn't even be considered for actual heavy duty. Ok, let's run the numbers again and see how far off the target my estimate was.

Spell levels 0-1: Sacred Flame or weapon.
Spell lvl 2: Sacred Flame + Spiritual Weapon.
Spell lvl 3: Sacred Flame + Spiritual Weapon + Spirit Guardians.
Spell lvl 4: (as above) + Guardian of Faith.

Spell level 5 lacks Duration-based Dots/Summons, but at lvl 6 you get Planar Ally, a spell which is considerably more friendly to clerics than it is to wizards so you basically have an Outsider-for-Hire from that point on.

By lvl 17, a cleric should be doing something around 12d8 + 1d6+ 29 assuming Wis 20 and a Deva cohort. Indeed, 13 dice are far from being 20, unless you assumed the "29" as the Mean of 7 virtual d8s (which sounds like BS, I know).

Oh well, not the first time I've been wrong.

[Krusk]

Stuff in 5e generally has too many hit points.

See in 3.5 people complained fights were simultaneously too quick and too long. It was only 1-2 rounds, but it took a solid 30 min on the best case. This led to 4e where they got rid of save or dies and padded HP a lot. This means that each combat has 5-6 rounds, and each round still takes 15 minutes. Leading to even longer combats than before because 4e.

Now 5e comes out, and they removed most save or die effects, so the only tactic is "Stand there and hit it with a stick or throw rocks at it", just like 4e. The main difference is that throwing a rock or hitting with a stick is very quick to resolve. Think 3.5 fighter on the most complicated level. So now we have a lot of rounds resolved quickly. That seems ideal from a speed perspective, but this is mearls. He realized that being less complicated than a 3.5 fighter's turn is a bad thing. His solution was terrible.

In 5e everyone does less damage than they did in previous editions. Monsters have a lot more resistances, and most ways to counter them are "Blow your GM". This means 5e fights consist of everyone playing a 3.5 fighter without power attack.

Everyone surrounds the monster and clubs it. It gets 2-3 attacks a round and clubs the PCs back. The monster dies in 8-9 rounds which means our average combat length is similar to every other edition.

This is why I make a big deal to point out any sort of monster save or die, or encounter winner powers. Most don't have any, but if they do, its basically game over for the PCs.

[Krusk]

Kenku
I'm always a fan of Kenku, something about them is always intriguing to me. Raven folk are neat. According to 5e the kenku have never figured out clothes, even though though they have an above average int. Their feet don't work for walking, so the shuffel around, but don't have a move speed penalty. It also then mentions how stealthily they move, and they get a racial bonus to it. So I'm not really sure what they meant there. It claims they all serve some master they forgot about. Which seems lame considering they don't have a wisdom penalty. They stole speech from him so he took their wings. Somehow they are still loyal. They also apparently only speak through the use of their mimicry trait, which is new to this edition but kind of neat. Makes it annoying to actually use as a PC, but there aren't rules for that anyway. These are CR 1/4 which seems about right. They don't fly which seems to take away the luster of "Raven dude". Their mimicry power seems like one of the "Fuck you always works no save" things, but its actually got a DC 14 wis check. It kind of surprises me to see that.

Aside on monsters as PCs
There are no rules for this, but you could very easily translate any CR 1/4 monster into a playable race. I kind of wish Mearls had done that for us, but thats the story of this book. This is mostly because no one in 5e gets nice things. This means weird racial powers that make it difficult/interesting to be a monster as a PC don't really exist. It also means, you shouldn't have that hard of a time convincing your DM to let you be a CR 1/4 monster as your race. You just run the risk of your DM shitting all over it first. It also means you probably don't want to do that unless you think it looks cool, because you won't ever get cool powers.

Kobolds
They go with little red dragonborn for this edition. Not a bad choice, but I'd like to see the blue ones make a comeback (what with their name literally being a mispelling of cobalt). In googling cobalt, I found a gay bar near me that just seems fabulous. Kobolds are forever going to be a big pride parade to me from now on. You'd think that retro edition would be the perfect place for bringing the blue color back. Like the other entries, it goes on a lot about their dieties and the origins from that. You get to hear all about kurtulmak and tiamat, and garl glittergold and those dicks. You still don't really care but enjoy. The whole kobold entry is way shorter than I'd expect at half a page, considering they gave 4 pages to Hags. It basically talks about how they suck at everything but digging and traps. It does bring the winged kobolds, Urds, into the core book. I never cared about those, but its been introduced in enough splats it seems worthwhile. Statwise, a winged one is CR 1/4, and a normal is CR 1/8. The winged Kobold statblock is not called an Urd statblock. It is called a Winged Kobold. Almost as though the guy writing stats knew you didn't care either, but his partner wouldn't stop fapping to Urds. Urds are CR 1/4, but have flight, and a ranged attack. Its very reasonable that a couple of these could be a TPK just because you can't stop them. Their ranged attack is a dropped rock, but its unclear how many rocks they have. 1? 15? "Enough for a combat or two"? You don't know. If they only have 1, they are probably OK at CR 1/4. If more, they could be pretty brutal. The equipping section at the front of the book just says the DM picks. So who knows. The traditional kobold is CR 1/8, and generally sucks, but being so low CR you get a bunch of them. Their pack tactics and bonded accuracy means they might actually damage you, but you should be dropping one every attack even at first level.


Cobalt Blue Glass.

Kraken
They really go all out on the Kraken art. There is no mistaking this for a giant squid, which is kind of a shame considering any googling of this monster gives you a giant squid. Instead you get one of the fish monsters from Star Wars episode 1. Because thats the imagery you want to conjure. Its also apparently outlandishly huge according to the art. But remember nothing in this edition is bigger than that tent I posted earlier. For scale, they show sharks the size of his whiskers. So the art guy just didn't get the memo at all. Kraken are apparently the biggest bads of the ocean and "whole nations quake in fear when the Kraken emerges". With bonded accuracy, I don't really believe that. What I do believe is that someone saw that new shitty pirates of the caribbean movie and just copy pasted their fluff entry. Apparently Krakens are older than civilizations, and some dieties. It even talks about how they are treated as virtual gods and devoted to just being dicks. You'd think that you could just be landlocked and not care, but they call out that because they can breathe air, sometimes they go up rivers and mess stuff up. That seems kind of stupid on a whole bunch of lairs.


Krakens apparently.

Speaking of the Kraken's lairs, they have lair entries. I haven't mentioned a lair for a while because there hasn't been one. I kind of think the designers just forgot to include them, because balrogs and shit totally have lairs. They have the same BS-ie powers all lairs give. Something that moves people around. Something that boosts damage (ligtning vulnerability), and something that does damage (10 lightning damage). Yes one of its big bad lair options is to do 10 damage. Mind Blowing. Their lair alos gives regional effects, and unlike lair powers these are usually kind of neat. A lair can alter weather in a 6 mile radius, lock water elementals into the water so they can't leave, and things with int 2 or less are charmed and defend him.

In combat, a Kraken is CR 23, so you'd expect some hefty stuff. Its lair does 10 damage though, so maybe you caught on. It can in fact chase you up a river and onto land, but if it does this is like, the ultimate win for you. Its int is 28, wis 18, and cha 20, so I'm not sure how you do that, because it knows it dies if it does this. If you can you can totally destroy it though. Its like that fish that can go on land, but should totally stop. One thing thats kind of suprising is that they don't mention its lightning affinity anywhere in the fluff. So when you start running one, the idea that its immune to lightning, its lair does lightning damage, and it can summon lightning storms seems out of nowhere and it is. I get that they could do it in prior editions, but this is a new edition. Don't keep fucking up out of tradition. This thing, like most other monsters is a melee beast and kiting it works wonders. It can eat dudes and is pretty good at that with +23 to hit, and auto free grapples. There is no limit to the number of people it can eat, so it might just eat your whole party. It also gets 3 30ft tentacle attacks. Going by that pic, the tentacles are apparently more like short arms. In reality thats kind of lame. Like, slightly better than real world giant squid. Which, while an awesome monster, isn't exactly very Fantastical. Also it can throw people, so if for some reason it wants to stop being able to hit you, it can throw you away from it. Its last power is a random lightning storm. It can blast 3 lightning bolts 120 ft, but they only do 22 damage Dex save DC 23 for half. Lastly, its got legendary actions which are just "do your normal attacks" and also an ink cloud. Because its totally not a squid. This just makes it hard to see for itself, and does poison damage, but not much (16 save for half).

Kua-Toa
While I like the Kua-toan, I don't see them as needing more of an entry than Kobolds for the game. The main pic is a sweet koa-toan priest chanting in front of a fire or something? Its pretty cool. The backstory for them is that they are the people from fantasy innsmouth but people weren't cool with it and drove them into caves. Also some BS about mind flayers being mean to them. So now they are insane and follow insane dieties. The interesting part is that apparently Kua-Toan possess some ability to actually make dieties. Really. "Worship gods of their own insane creation, but if enough kuo-toa believe that a god is real, the energy of their collective subconscious can cause that god to manifest as a physical entity". Thats actually a big deal because thats not how 5e gods are made and if they weren't insane they would have awesome stuff going on. They have a vairant on this page to make the normal kua-toa into a monk, but like all monks this raises your CR and makes you worse. On the next page, you actually see a kua-toa and its a good thing they drew one, because it looks nothing like previous editions. Instead of a weird green frog man, its a blue dude whose head is actually a whole fish. That is a distinctly different thing than a man who has a blue fish head. This head has fins and a tail. Its a huge departure of form from tradition, and I'm surprised we haven't heard anyone upset about it. They are CR 1/4, but have a random fuck you power. Specifically, they can auto see invisible people within 30ft which probably doesn't come up at CR 1/4. They have their traditional sticky power, but it only applies to a shield they carry, and it kind of sucks now. If an attacker misses them (their AC is 13, you will not miss them), the attacker makes a DC 11 str check to resist being stuck. Being someone who attacks with melee means you will not fail a DC 11 check. If you do fail, just make the check again next round as an "Action". I hate that action terminology. The next page has stats for an archpriest and a whip. So its weird that the monitor is a variant with instructions on how to make it instead of just a 4th entry. Its also pretty shitty that the monitor makes the whip worse, and raises its CR from 1 to 3. The Archpriest is CR 6, and has 5th level spells so you'd think he was good. You'd be wrong, because they are cleric spells so mearls picked all healbot and scrying spells. This guy basically has a scepter he can hit you with for a some lightning damage and then nothing. The whip also has no good spells, but he has a pincher stick meaning he can grapple people, but they get a save. (For some reason they don't get the fuck you grapple power)


This is the 5e kua-toan.

Lamia
This seems like the perfect monster for them to make a 14 page entry on, so I'm pleased its a single page-er. The art is really bad, like it looks half finished and a totally different style than most of the book. The sketches in the margins are actually kind of neat poses though. The dude doing the cat stretch is funny, and the chick lunging at people actually makes them look pretty vicious. This entry actually calls back to a previous entry in the book and says they lead groups of jackalweres to do stuff. Its kind of neat because it makes it seem like maybe this guy actually read another entry. The lamia entry is actually pretty cool and makes them seem like neat inhabitants of a desert. They lair in some luxurious palace in the desert, and horde magic, incense, gold, and art that they steal from caravans. It scrys on dudes and sends its minions out to rob stuff. Thats a tactic that seems like it might even work unlike most of the ones in this book. I'd prefer if we ditch the stuff about how Graz'zt makes them and forces them swear an oath of loyalty to him. I'll still call this #5 in the list of monsters I don't hate in this book. These dudes are CR 4, have super low AC And suck in combat. That said, they have charm person, suggestion, mirror image, major image, disguise self and geas. They aren't really the guy you fight. You fight their minions and this dude rolls in fully buffed and hits with an "Intoxicating touch" power. You get cursed for an hour and get disadvantage on all wis saves (no save to prevent). This makes it easier to geas you once captured. The pic of the one pouncing seems off base with their actual stats, but its not a big deal.

A lich is CR 21 and has all the traditional stuff. It rejuvenates when killed to its phylactery. It has a bunch of spells that mearls picked, but they aren't even all bad. Its got a paralyzing touch power which is cool from flavor but you should never use it because it sucks. It has some legendary actions, and the Frightening Gaze/disrupt life powers aren't bad. The gaze hits a creature it can see within 10ft of it, and forces a DC 18 wisdom save. Basically a "Get away from me melee dude" power. Disrupt life hits everyone in 20ft, and just does some lame ammount of damage. So I lied, and all of its legendary actions suck. Basically its just a high level wizard with a moderatly decent spell selection. For a CR 21 foe thats not a good thing. Especially because its only got 1 level 9 spell, and so does each PC.

Lich
For whatever reason the stats for a lich come after the entry for a lich with no warning or explanation. I assumed mearls had a good one, and not a shitty layout designer, and did the same. You know the fluff for liches by now and its the same stuff. They give an actual walk through of how to become a lich from an out of game perspective, but no in game method or requirements. Also all liches have the stats presented on the previous page. Even if you were originally a giant or a kenku or something. It goes into how hard phylactry's are to break, but there are no actual rules for it. So it might be as simply as throwing it at the wall, or it might be some long complicated quest or series of spells however your DM decides.

The liche's lair works like all of them. The first power lets him regain spells which is unique, but the other two are just arbitrary damage. It shoots negative energy that does damage (actually quite a lot for a lair), and it has a power that makes things take more damage. One that tethers the lich to someone, and means they take half damage for the lich for a round. The liches lair apparently has no regional effects.

Lizardfolk
I think they have used this exact picture a few times prior. Its not bad, so I'm not against it, but its weird to see yet again. Apparently they are xenophobic and just live in primitive tribes that stalk anyone who enters their territory. Not a lot you can do with this aside from "the party is ambushed". It mentions that those born in their stupid diety that you don't care about's image are bigger and stronger. Those stats are not presented. They also worship dragons in addition to two dieties. the actual monster is a health CR 2, in that it can fight you in melee or at range and won't be terrible at it. Its got a couple of melee attack options, decent ac and hp, along with a land and swim speed. Weirdly enough, the sssnsnsss (dudes born in that dudes image) don't have stats, but there are 3 sets of lizardfolk stats. We also have a shaman, who can shapeshift, and cast a couple of spells. Some are even decently offensive. This guy is CR 2, OK with it. His spells are thematically appropriate too. Heat metal, entangle, conjure animals (reptiles only) plant growth, thornwhip, that sort of thing. The queen/king have the same stats. I point it out as interesting, only because they make a point to do that. It says Lizard King/Queen. Nothing else in the book does that, and they are all listed as King of the ___ or ___Queen or whatever. This is CR 4, but sucks. He is just a solid melee fighter, but not an awesome one. Its really under whelming after seeing two solid monsters. I don't hate these, but overall the fluff is underwhelming. #6.

Lycanthrope
The picture on the lycanthrope entry is pretty sweet. It looks like Gaston fighting the beast, if someone did a "gritty" version or something. It makes a point to talk about how its a curse, and the differnt animal types have different alignments (ugh) and different habits. Some relish it and attack everyone, some hide in the woods. You become one when wounded by one, which is really broad. Like if I'm in human form and shoot a dude with a bow does he turn into a wereturtle just because I am? I guess ask your DM? If you are afflicted, you can just blast them with remove curse, so its not actually hard to remove. If you are born, you need wish. The main page has a note for non-human lycanthropes which shocks me because I had given up on them even considering this. This edition also shuts down the "Build your own lycanthrope" model that 3.5 had, and instead just presents the big 6. So no wereturtles or werehumming birds or any of that BS. This entry also has a bit on player characters as lycanthropes. Its shocking I know. If you choose to embrace the curse, your alignment changes to default for that monster and your DM decides what you do until its removed (It says you become an NPC). If you resist it, you keep your alignment. You and your DM can fight over whether or not you are roleplaying as tortured enough by your curse of becoming better at melee. Each type of lycanthrope has arbitrary stats set. The best case scenario is werebear, which sets it to 19. But again, you could have had a 20 and not cared (It won't lower your stat). You could also have have even higher if an epic barbarian. Everyone else just gets a lower strength assignment, with rats and wolves getting 15. Meaning no one should ever want that. Basically you only ever want to be bitten by a werebear. It doesn't really say how/if you get a hybrid form, or if you can turn into animal form, but it does say you can't speak in animal form, so I assume you get that? I was going to walk through each type and point out what they do. All of them are shitty melee warriors with super low AC. Done. Of note, it mentions that bears only transmit the curse through bite, boars through a tusk, rats through a bite, tigers through a bite, and wolves through a bite. So I assume its something to do with the teeth and that clears up their ambiguity earlier. All of the art for the were animals is awesome. The tiger is my favorite. I genuinly assume they spent more energy on this section's art and rules as a whole than anywhere else in the book except maybe dragons.

[Night Goat]

Since all liches are CR 21 now, and campaigns never actually get into the upper levels, I guess no one will ever encounter a lich in this edition. Templates were a really good addition to the game, but with 5e being Lazy DM Edition I'm not surprised they're gone.

[Dogbert]

You forgot to mention lichdom is no longer a goal worth pursueing as a luciferan wizard PC because:

1) Liches are now demon bitches because now you have to suck demon GM cock to get it instead of being able to research it yourself.

2) Philacteries are now weaksauce and require a box of kittens a day(?), the magic is no longer self-sustaining.

[Krusk]

I was a little brief on liches.

1 - All liches are CR 21 from now on. This means you can't ever see an iconic monster that has previously been around at PC levels 6+, until your are level 17ish. This pretty much ruins a ton of pre-made adventures and forces a lot of DMs to redesign liches. Unfortunately, I think shitty DMs always have liches act as epic level opponents anyway. So its not that a big a deal to the target 5e DM.

2 - Templates - This isn't quite accurate. Templates still exist. Its just that stuff that obviously should be a template, like lich, skeleton, ghost, aren't templates. Other stuff like Half Dragon is. My theory on this.

The lead for DND is mearls and crawford. The lead for this book is perkins. Stats were written by Sims, Thompson, and Lee. The story was written by Schwalb, Sernett, Townshend, and Wyatt. Of those 4 groups, you could realistically assume that any of them except the story developers had final say over how the monsters were designed. My theory? The majority decision was that we wouldn't ever use templates because they are the devil. Then, one group disagreed and threw some in. The editor (s, there were 2) didn't notice and I doubt mearls has read. So you get a few random templates even though the mandate was "no templates".

2b - This also lets me notice my rants about how it seems like the stats guy didn't read the fluff guys entry are 100% accurate. They were written by different dudes, and they probably did not read them.

3 - I don't get your comment about being demon bitches. Yes, the only way to be a lich is fellate your DM, but thats par for the course of 5e.

4 - I totally skipped that you've got to feed your phylactry now or else turn into a demi-lich. I'm kind of ok with the idea that you've got to do something regularly to keep your phylactry going, but it should be something like "If you feed people to it you get buffs" not "If you forget to do this you go insane and die". The idea being that it encourages the Lich to interact with the world and makes them an antagonist instead of "dude locked in a vault". But keep in mind this is 5e. So the attempt was really shitty. Like beyond shitty. You need to "Feed souls to its phylactery to sustain the magic preserving its body and consciousness." So they actually tell you what spell to use and everything. They go into the idea that your Phylactery can only hold 1 soul at a time and it consumes them in 24 hours. That part thats shitty and the epitome of 5e? They don't tell you how frequently you have to do this. It just says "A lich that fails or forgets to maintain its body with sacrificed souls begins to physically fall apart and might eventually become a demilich".

So you decompose, but undead do that anyway. Then, maybe you become a demilich, maybe not. DM whim. Do you need 1 soul a day? 1 a week? Liches live forever, is it 1 every thousand years? No insight whatsoever. its like someone had an idea, and just didn't finish it. And it was a shitty idea.

A rewrite would be "A lich can draw power from captured souls. He uses the imprisonment spell, and instead of choosing a normal option traps the soul in his phylactry. The phylactery can hold 1 soul at a time, and is consumed at the liches mental command. If a lich attempts to store a second soul, the first is destroyed. When a soul is consumed, a lich regains 10HP and 1 spell level per hit die of the creature. The lich also gains access to the creatures memories as though they were their own. If the creature has an int score higher than the lich, the liches int score increases by 1 when they gain memories. If the liches int score is higher, there is no mechanical effect. When consumed in this manner, the soul is destroyed creating a soulless wraith." Then include soulless wraith monsters that pal around lich lairs or something.

Now you've got liches questing to capture powerful heroes and lock them in their phylacteries to use as fuel. You've also got them stealing spellcasters and gaining their "knowledge".

[Dr_Noface]

My favourite art for kuotoans were the sprites from Baldur's Gate II. 5e's look kind of goofy.

[Dogbert]

3 - I don't get your comment about being demon bitches.

Because now "only Orcus and cronies can make you a lich hue hue hue" and now aspiring liches have to Suck Satan's Cock like that old sketch by Bill Hicks. Lichdom used to be a luciferan thing, you researched the formula by yourself and became your own god, an act of will (hell, in 3E Vecna ascended to godhood too).

There's a big difference between "self-made and self-sufficient" and "signed a slavery contract" in my book.

[BoxCrayonTales]

I can across a revision of the types system for d20 while browsing. The rules are simple: instead of a dozen very specific types, creatures are divided into supertype (living, nonliving, undead), body (organic, mechanical, animated, homogenous, amorphous), mind (mindless, intelligent, artificially intelligent), and soul (mortal, soulless, technological, undead, intrinsic). It's a bit more complicated than the usual system, but I think with some tweaking it could be perfectly serviceable as a total replacement.

What do you think?

[Ghremdal]

Seems fine to me, though it might be a bit more complicated then just having 10 different types. IT might work if its in the background math, something that the system assumes only experienced GMS can tweak.

[BoxCrayonTales]

Seems fine to me, though it might be a bit more complicated then just having 10 different types. IT might work if its in the background math, something that the system assumes only experienced GMS can tweak.

I did also find another solution that pared down the types to six based on basic anatomy (not humanoid, animated nonliving object, animated classical element, humanoid or semi-humanoid, amorphous, and animated vegetable) and turned everything else into subtypes. Because honestly I cannot understand why a drider (MM1) is considered an aberration but a scorpionfolk (MM2) is considered a monstrous humanoid when they're both arachnid centaurs.

[Username17]

Both of these type revisions fall into the same basic trap, which is trying to fuck with 3e's type system at all. The thing is that type system was and is a dead end. There is no reason for Succubi to have comparable numbers of skill points to Howlers or even to Vrocks. Body type just isn't a good indicator of a monster's role, and shouldn't be used as a class. Wizards and Fighters are both humanoid in shape.

It feels really weird saying this, but 4th edition D&D was on the right track here. I mean, they fucked up their math and their monster design system so hard in other ways that it's hard to notice, but "Stalker" and "Brute" are potentially meaningful monster classes in a way that "Fey" and "Humanoid" are not.

-Username17

[Wiseman]

So you have the monsters role determine it's HD, skills, saves and whatnot and then have it's species (fey, outsider, giant, ect.) as a subtype for things like rangers to target?

[Username17]

So you have the monsters role determine it's HD, skills, saves and whatnot and then have it's species (fey, outsider, giant, ect.) as a subtype for things like rangers to target?

Yeah basically. There's a need for zombie ogres and vampire masterminds to both be "undead" for purposes of whether divine radiance hurts them, but there's no purpose at all in them being the same class for purposes of hit points, skills, and saving throws. A Dracolich needs to be a Dragon and an Undead, and if your system has any problems with that at all it is not functioning properly.

-Username17

[pragma]

The concensus seems to be that effect based tags are the right call for a monster typing system. Not that, like Gmail, a monster can have all the tags or none of them. A very coarse stab at assembling those tags based on my limited recollection of D&D type effects:

[mind control person] - charm person works on this monster
[mind control monster] - charm person works on this monster
[rebuke undead] - charm person works on this monster
[illusions] - monster has enough brains to trick
[turn undead] - monster can be turned
...

The list would get pretty long, so it might be worth condensing some of those tags into like groups (positive energy and turning get lumped together, for instance).

[Ice9]

I don't think all those need to be Types; we can still have specific immunities separate from type. For example, in that list, the monsters vulnerable to illusions is either "all of them" for figments (yes, they work on golems), or is covered by the [Mind-Affecting] tag interacting with "Mindless".

Likewise, there can just be an Undead type, and if a monster can be turned but not rebuked, just make it a specific immunity for that monster.


Off the top of my head (default is in brackets, you probably wouldn't list it at all):

Form - Humanoid, [Other w/ Physiology], Unliving (no blood, no organs, but does have structure), Amorphous.
Mind - Humanlike, [Other Sapient], Instinctive, Mindless.
Animating Force - [Living], Undead, Elemental
Plane - [Standard], Outsider, (Fiend, Celestial, etc. could also be type tags)
Other (for class abilities to trigger off, mainly) - Dragon, Plant, Animal

This is assuming you want to maintain the thing where there are spells/abilities that work on humanoids but not on living/sapient creatures in general. If not, you can probably eliminate that category.

In "Form", there's an argument for a "Homogenous" category, to cover things that don't have any weak points but have a rigid shape. I don't think this is merits a separate type though, especially considering that more sneak-attack-immune monsters is probably not a good thing for the game.

I'm also deciding here that non-living, non-undead things like golems are all powered by elemental energy, and therefore that elementals themselves are not considered "living". You could add a "Magical" category instead, I guess.

[BoxCrayonTales]

Both of these type revisions fall into the same basic trap, which is trying to fuck with 3e's type system at all. The thing is that type system was and is a dead end. There is no reason for Succubi to have comparable numbers of skill points to Howlers or even to Vrocks. Body type just isn't a good indicator of a monster's role, and shouldn't be used as a class. Wizards and Fighters are both humanoid in shape.

So what you're basically saying is that we should replace racial hit dice with generic class levels on a monster-by-monster basis? That throws the CR system out of whack, but it's useful. What generic monster classes would you suggest?

Accounting for your suggestion of monster classes, IMO the first type revision I mentioned is still superior to 3e's because of the standardization for how body, mind and soul types work and the ways they can be mixed and matched. Now mindless undead can actually be soulless rather than having the souls of the people they were made from for no apparent reason.

[Krusk]

I can across a revision of the types system for d20 while browsing.
What do you think?

That sounds overly complex for the benefits.

Frank and 4e are on the right track. I'd like to see 5/6/10 monster role classes people can take levels in. Then you apply a template for "Demon" or "Ice" or "Celestial".

The classes give a chassis that lets them act as bruisers or tacticians or whatever. The template ties them together so you have stuff like "Its an ice monster throw fire at it".

[BoxCrayonTales]

That sounds overly complex for the benefits.

I think so too. I'm just going to drop the parts about hit dice and use the basic tagging system instead of 3e creature types.

Off the top of my head (default is in brackets, you probably wouldn't list it at all):

Form - Humanoid, [Other w/ Physiology], Unliving (no blood, no organs, but does have structure), Amorphous.
Mind - Humanlike, [Other Sapient], Instinctive, Mindless.
Animating Force - [Living], Undead, Elemental
Plane - [Standard], Outsider, (Fiend, Celestial, etc. could also be type tags)
Other (for class abilities to trigger off, mainly) - Dragon, Plant, Animal

This is more or less what I'm thinking. While hit dice and so on are based on a creature's role, I like having a simple tag-based system instead of creature types.

Supertypes: Living, Nonliving, Undead
Body types: Beast, Construct, Humanoid, Elemental, Ooze, Plant
Mind types: Instinctive, Intelligent, Mindless
Soul types: Damned, Mortal, Immortal, Soulless

Every creature uses a combination of those tags instead of the traditional types to determine basic traits. Everything else (aberration, animal, dragon, fey, giant, magical beast, monstrous humanoid, vermin, earth, air, fire, water, etc) would be subtypes, keywords, descriptors, origins and so on. This also means that certain creatures will fall into multiple former creature types (e.g any humanoid of Large or bigger automatically has the giant subtype and may also have the monstrous subtype). All blanket immunities to mind-affecting effects have been made the purview of the mindless type, so intelligent plants and constructs and oozes and undead are no longer automatically immune.

For example, celestials and fiends would generally be Living, Humanoid, Intelligent, Immortal. Mindless undead would be Undead, Construct, Mindless, Soulless.

[Ice9]

I don't think you even need to list the tags that are the default. For example, in the scheme I was using:

Elf - [Humanoid]
Blink Dog - (no tags)
Zombie - [Unliving] [Mindless] [Undead]
Succubus - [Humanoid] [Outsider] [Demon]

Although that depends on how you're using them. I was going for a strictly effect-targeting thing and not a taxonomy. Partly because "default 3.x" is too vague and contradictory in terms of the "big picture", so I'd want to lay down a metaphysics with some consistency first.