What would you do with the current Type/subtype system?

[Fwib]

What would you do with the current Type/subtype system?

My GM and I thought about this a while back, and came up with the idea that all creatures should be one of three types: Animal, Plant and Elemental (depending on what they're made of) (and as a jest on Animal/Vegetable/Mineral) with everything else being made of subtypes.

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

Okay. I play a core-only game, and I don't own the book those're in. I can't assess the value of the animal type with regard to those spells.

I figured the animal type was just shorthand anyway. Something to avoid having to say, "A magical beast with an Int of 1 or 2 with no spell-like or supernatural abilities," or whatever. With that logic, there's no reason for more than, like, two types at all--humanoids and monsters… and then you're pretty much back to 1st edition.

[RandomCasualty]

1153406688[/unixtime]]What would you do with the current Type/subtype system?

The best idea I've seen here (I forget who suggested it initially) so far is to make type define what item slots the creature gets, then have subtypes to describe immunities and such. So you'd have something like Humanoid, Beast, Aberration and Ooze as your base types then [Giant], [Undead], and on as subtypes. The system wasn't really worked out too thoroughly to the best of my knowledge but from the concept of it, it seemed like the best Type/subtype fix I've seen so far.

[User3]

1153406688[/unixtime]]What would you do with the current Type/subtype system?

My GM and I thought about this a while back, and came up with the idea that all creatures should be one of three types: Animal, Plant and Elemental (depending on what they're made of) (and as a jest on Animal/Vegetable/Mineral) with everything else being made of subtypes.

I've actually been thinking about this, and you want types for a few reaons:

1) Magic items slots. There should be standardized magic items slots based on a basc bodly plan based on a creature's type.
2) Precision/knowledge-based attacks. No more of the binary/percentile 'fortification.'
3) To aid DMs in making new monsters.
4) ?????
5) Profit.

To this end, you need...
1) a Humanoid type (humanoids, monstrous humanoids, giants, most outsiders, a lot of constructs, some plants, a few aberrations, and the occational dragon)

2) the Beast type (animals, magical beasts, vermin, some dragons, some aberrations, a few outsiders, maybe one or two plants)

3) the Amorphous type (Oozes, swarms).

[(4) Aberrations (Some aberrations, magical beasts, animals, outsiders)]

Elementals are tough, but they generally fit into Humanoid or Amorphous.

Of course, you have to mess things up a bit to make the magic items balance. For example, all rings should be slotless. That is, after all, why they are made using "craft ring" rather than "craft wonderous item."

Humanoids all get the normal item slots Those with tails get a 'tail' slot, wings grant 'wing' slots, but these are really just racial items priced as being slotless (or 1.5x?). Extra limbs grant extra limb slots. Humanoids will probably be the most well-equipped creatures, and such should be build into their CR.

Beasts can wear amulets and similar items, as well as rings. This is mainly a flavor issue, but I find the idea of beastly creatures wearing fedoras, capes, and boots absurd. Your call. If there is an aberration type, they'll be the ones with really odd body plans, and will be assigned eq slots on an individual basis. Things like "octopodes."

Amorphous creatures can use any slotless items they can carry inside themselves, but can't normally use vestiments and the like. This should be factored into their CRs.

Sound good?

[Crissa]

Actually, I would like an animal type and a magical beast type - one is basic critters, the other is magical critters. One shows up on Detect magic, the other doesn't.

I wish there were effects that works on animals that weren't broken. And Humanoid effects should frickin' work on monsterous humanoids.

And Elemental should be a subtype. Maybe MAgical is a subtype. And Monsterous. And Abberant! Abberant animal, something non-magical, but created. Abberant humanoid - something otherwise humanoid, but based on an alien energy type - not elemental or negative or positive or magical.

Wait, why do we have abberation, anyhow, when we have outsider?

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1153481534[/unixtime]]
Wait, why do we have abberation, anyhow, when we have outsider?

Well, the idea behind aberrations is that they've got some weird anatomy or setup that otherwise makes them odd. If you're going by the type= item slots paradigm, it makes perfect sense to have aberrations because they're creatures with weird item slots. A beholder or an octopus would qualify in this category.

As far as animals are concerned, I've always considered animal to be a type like giant. It pretty much means nothing save a designator to determine who various druid abilities can affect, much like giant exists for certain other abilities, like favored enemy. Besides that effectively there's nothing special about the type.

I'm also thinking we should probably divorce BaB and saves from type as well. There should be a separate designation giving a creature a role that determines its BaB and saves.

[Fwib]

I like the type=slots idea. are there any other ideas for what types should be that might turn out even better?

[Username17]

Creature Types clearly should not be what they are now - which is classes for monsters. That's just dumb. Monster classes should be things like "Fiend" and "Brute", and "Spell-like Ability Caster Guy". Because let's face it, there's no reason for a specter mage and a skeleton warrior to have the same character class.

That being said, having the slots be tied to type isn't a ba idea. Although remember that you're still going to have the Aberration type that has "fill in slots on a per-creature basis".

So the body types you need are:

Humanoid (Orc)
Humanoid with Wings (Deva)
Humanoid with 4 Arms (Thri-Kreen).
Fish (Dolphin)
Quadraped (Horse)
Winged Quadraped (Dragon)
Ooze (Gelatinous Cube - no slots)
Aberration (Beholder)

And seriously, that's everything you need. Mariliths, Centaurs, Chimera, and even Octopuses are all Aberrations.

-Username17

[squirrelloid]

1153501397[/unixtime]]
And seriously, that's everything you need. Mariliths, Centaurs, Chimera, and even Octopuses are all Aberrations.

Octopodes, thank you.

Mmmm... Cthuluesque aberrationy appetizers.... move along, nothing to see here.

[Essence]

Insectoid (Centipede)
Winged Insectoid (Wasp)
Arachnid (Spider)
Bush/Tree (Orcwort)
Tendril (Assassin Vine)
Ooze (Swarm of Locusts)

[Username17]

No offense, but I wouldn't use any of th types Essence just requested.

Insectoid (Centipede)

Centipedes?! Not just "no", hellz no! They have a variable number of legs. Once you have the Aberration "I don't even know how much equipment it can use" type, there's no need, no use for centipedes going in any other type.

Winged Insectoid (Wasp)

While you could make a type for this, as it is a consistent body plan, I honestly don't see the need. Granted that wasps have more appendages than Pegasi or griffons, but what difference does it really make? They have wings, and they don't have hands, does it really matter that they have six legs instead of four? I'd just roll them up into Winged Quadraped and call it good.

Arachnid (Spider)

Like the Centipede or the Molusc, this is an inconsistent body type. Arachnids have about 12 appendages and variable numbers are used as legs, feelers, or claws. There are different kinds of spiders that have anywhere from 6 to 10 legs, and some arachnids (notably Scorpions) have grasping appendages as well. These creatures have to go into Aberration, because you have to specify how many slots each Arachnid actually has.

Bush/Tree (Orcwort)

That's just a "no slot" ooze. Call it an Ooze and you're good to go.

Tendril (Assassin Vine)

How many grasping appengages does an Assassin Vine have? If you have to specify each time (and you do), it's an Aberration.

Ooze (Swarm of Locusts)

That's an Ooze too. You eve called it an Ooze, so I'm perplexed.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Well honestly I wouldn't even bother subdividing the "humanoids with X arms" category. You might as well just have extra arms as a trait, because we have to mention it anyway under attacks, and we know what slots having extra arms gives you. So it's easier to just call Thri-Kreen humanoids and give them an extra arm as a special trait.

[Fwib]

Why not make 'with wings' a subtype?

So you get Humanoid and Quadruped and you add (Winged) instead of 2 more Types.

That leaves you with:

Humanoid (Orc)
+ [Winged] (Deva)
Humanoid with 4 Arms (Thri-Kreen).
Fish (Dolphin)
Quadraped (Horse)
+ [Winged] (Dragon)
Ooze (Gelatinous Cube - no slots)
Aberration (Beholder)

No?

Any other simplifications? or is there a good reason that only types should do slot-stuff and subtypes not?

In fact, probably want [Extra Arms] too, which makes the marilith and thri-kreen Humanoid [Extra Arms] which seems sensible, i think...?

My mistake, Marilith has no legs, so it's an Aberration

[Crissa]

Why do you have winged humanoids as a slot type and centaurs as an abberation? What? They're both hexapodal.

And I don' see any difference between the Winged critter and the brachiating four-armed monkey. That's an extra pair of 'movement' limbs. We don't go all whining because Humans have two legs for walking instead of slithering like Naga, right?

-Crissa

[Crissa]

Okay. So we should have:

Humanoid (Intelligent, two arms and a head)
[Upright] (walks on two legs)
[Slithering] (no legs!)
[Centauroid] (Four legs good! - this is already in d20, too)
[Winged] (has wings!)
etc; make a 'new' type if required by races as you make them. Making Abberations is kinda pointless, because as you move along you end up with literally tons of things in this category.

Animal (has no manipulators)
[Quadruped]
[Insectoid]
[Arachnid]
[Clawed]
[Hooved]
[Winged]
[Slithering]
etc.

Of course, Types is probably what you want to have things be affected by spells with - humanoid for having language and whatnot, animal for not having sentience, swarm for group minds, etc.

Basically, these are keywords that trigger when spells work.

And I see no problem as long as spells are broken like AWAKEN and just don't have enough restrictions. Your spell makes friends with animals? Why can't it work on some types of beastial humanoids which are inbetween? Your spell works on humans? Why can't it work on merfolk and centaurs?

Of course, that's a flavour issue, too, but for the rules to work on it, we need to identify clear terms.

That's why we had types in the first place, aside from classes...

-Crissa

[Username17]

Why do you have winged humanoids as a slot type and centaurs as an abberation? What? They're both hexapodal.

Because winged humanoids is everything from Caelumites to Pit Fiends to Pixies to devas. It's really really fvcking common.

The Centaur body plan is... centaurs. And... uh... dracotaurs. You don't really save any time by having that be a type. There aren't a whole lot of tauric creatures in D&D.

Well honestly I wouldn't even bother subdividing the "humanoids with X arms" category.

That's reasonable. The +Arms trait works. Note that you still can't build a marilith that way and shouldn't expect to.

Why not make 'with wings' a subtype?

I'm not at all sure that the Quadrapeds are changed the same way by wing additions that humanoids are. It seems easier just to call it a different type, since there are really only like 7 types.

-Username17

-Username17

[Crissa]

1153555086[/unixtime]]

Why do you have winged humanoids as a slot type and centaurs as an abberation? What? They're both hexapodal.

Because winged humanoids is everything from Caelumites to Pit Fiends to Pixies to devas. It's really really fvcking common.

The Centaur body plan is... centaurs. And... uh... dracotaurs. You don't really save any time by having that be a type. There aren't a whole lot of tauric creatures in D&D.

Well, like I said, the 'centauroid' and 'quadrupedal' are already in the game - they affect mostly carrying and pulling power.

Wemics, Centaurs, Bauriars, Dragonkin - Naga, Lamia, Seri... what are the ones with the wings? Mariliths, etc.

It seems to me that saying 'abberation' isn't useful at all. Just make up a subtype for the critter if one hasn't been made, or a combonation - throwing everything into the pot and calling it abberation is both silly and adds to work later if you end up with winged centaurs and dragonkin or whatnot when you could just add multiple subtypes.

You have three arms, three legs? Well, as long as you're still affected by things like a humanoid, interact like a humanoid, why not give yourself the subtype [Trilat] and sure it's abberant from the Humans, but Humans are Abberant from the Trilats.

And wings add the same thing to any pedapod, the ability to fly, and the disadvantage of binding the wings to keep from flying. There's no inherent message that they can do anything else while flying than when running.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

The problem is remembering a bunch of weird ass stuff you made up for this new creature. If you put the item slots in the actual creature description, you don't have to look far for exception creatures. But if you create a new type everyitme you now have to be flipping to the type definitions to find out what the hell a Neo-Centaroid type means.

It's a lot easier to simply define one shot creatures in the creature description itself.

[Fwib]

How are creatures that can use their front ambulatory limbs as manipulatory limbs (like a dragon, or a baboon) dealt-with slot-wise?

It seems that they ought to be able to use different items than a horse or a pegasus...

Or maybe there should just be a 'forelimb' slot, rather than a 'bracers' slot, and an 'end-of-limb' slot, rather than boots/gloves/claws/horseshoes etc...? (what is a better name for end-of-limb?)

[edit] Also, can/should we have this last bit hived off into a 'Creature Type Redesign Discussion' thread?

[fbmf]

[TGFBS]
As you wish!
[/TGFBS]

[PhoneLobster]

I'm not seeing why a big fat thing like creature type which currently is about random sets of group abilities and effect targetting junk has to do with equipment slots.

Having a system to describe item slots by type is completely a departure from what d20 currently means by type, its just not relevant.

Equipment slot descriptor or whatever may as well just be a whole new attribute.

Of course the outlined body types are all a bit complex and arbitrary.

At the current rate I would suggest just abandoning most types and having "Humanoid" and "Other".

Or even have no types and instead an item slots entry with all relevant body slots for each critter. (Once you rack up enough types, or if half the stuff gets to fall in the "Other" category, its probably more efficient, especially for crossreferencing in game)

I mean you guys are usually against more crossreferencing right? I mean do we really need people having to cross reference to "Non hooved quadrapedal load bearing furry mammal" in order to determine what they can attach to their riding dog?

Of course its all a bunch of crazy as until monsters are actually playable it doesn't really matter half as much if item slots are a bunch of hand waving.

[Username17]

Having a system to describe item slots by type is completely a departure from what d20 currently means by type, its just not relevant.

Good. Because what d20 currently means by creature type is a complete failure. Let's consider the Outsider Type. Here's what it does:

Crazy Good Skills: A Half-Fiend Dire Tiger is a fvcking Rogue. A crazy-high level Rogue at that. Why?

Darkvision: Every Outsider has Darkvision. Makes things a bit boring in the outer planes, doesn't it?

Outsiders need a different spell to raise from the dead than normal creatures: This doesn't actually matter, because revive outsider is on the Cleric list anyway, so it's just a waste of time and space.

Proficient with all Simple and Martial Weapons: This is a Howler with a Halberd. Hack Howler, Hack! Have a Happy and Aliterative Afternoon. Dumb!

Free Shield Proficiency if trained with any form of armor: It's good to be a Tiefling Rogue, I'll tell you.

Outsiders do not need to eat or sleep: Remember that thing about stealing stuff from sleeping Genies? You can't, because they don't even have beds.

----

In short, every single rule that applies to every creature with the Outsider type. Every single one. Makes us cry. We would be better off having no type rules at all than the ones in the book.

The Tome of Necromancy had to roll back a substantial portion of the Undead Type because it made the game not work. The Tome of Fiends had to roll back part of the Outsider type just to move the game forward at all. The Book of Gears is going to have to throw out a bunch of stuff from the Construct and Vermin type. And so on. Those types are failures.

Furthermore, we have stuff like the Vermin Lord, who has the ability to communicate with anything your DM lets you talk to (really) because there's no fvcking tag on any creature to let you know that it is a bug. A Gelugon is an Outsider, a Phase Spider is a Magical Beast, an Abeil is a Monstrous Humanoid, a Ruin Swarm is an Ooze, a Monstrous Scorpion is a Vermin, a Carrion Crawler is an Aberration, and a Flame Spider is an Elemental. Got that? Even something as simple and rules critical as "Is it a fvcking bug?" is outright silent in the rules because the bugs are scattered throughout the types based on completely batshit random criteria.

So yeah, the Type system needs to be jettisoned. And replaced by anything else.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1153612998[/unixtime]]How are creatures that can use their front ambulatory limbs as manipulatory limbs (like a dragon, or a baboon) dealt-with slot-wise?

Two ways of handling this I think.

First you can just use the [arms] descriptor to say that it has one pair of arms and gains slots that correspond to arms.

Second you could have a descriptor or ability which makes its claws also act as hands.

Basically the only choice is if we want dragons to be wearing bracers or not.

[Crissa]

What about legwarmers? They're basically bracers.

Maybe we should replace slots with 'limb' instead of 'arm' and such.

-Crissa

[Nidhogg]

1153674432[/unixtime]]Crazy Good Skills: A Half-Fiend Dire Tiger is a fvcking Rogue. A crazy-high level Rogue at that. Why?

I may be missing something here, but why does it really matter? So it can jump further and walk quieter than most tigers, isn't that the point? This isn't a problem unless you give it Knowlage skills or Desipher Script, or something stupid like that, but seriously, how many self-respecting DMs would have a trap disarming evil gorilla running around?

Darkvision: Every Outsider has Darkvision. Makes things a bit boring in the outer planes, doesn't it?

So what? Extra-planar beings can see in the dark. Most of them should anyways, and if for some reason it's silly that a creature should have said trait, an exception can be made.

Outsiders need a different spell to raise from the dead than normal creatures: This doesn't actually matter, because revive outsider is on the Cleric list anyway, so it's just a waste of time and space.

I fix this issue with one of two ways, depending on the flavor of the campaign I'm running, and on pure whim. The first is to say that any creature can be raised, but only on thier native plane. The second is to simply say that Outsider ressurrection is purely the realm of DM fiat. Either way, Raise Outsider goes away. It was a silly spell anyways.

Proficient with all Simple and Martial Weapons: This is a Howler with a Halberd. Hack Howler, Hack! Have a Happy and Aliterative Afternoon. Dumb!

Whatever. Just because the howler is proficient with a halberd doesn't mean he can wield it. I like to houserule that [Native] Outsiders don't get this trait in order to save on stupidity, but I seriously don't give a flying fuck if Tiefling mages has no trouble wielding a greatsword. Whoop-de-shit.

Free Shield Proficiency if trained with any form of armor: It's good to be a Tiefling Rogue, I'll tell you.

Once again, I houserule that [Native]s need not apply because it's kind of dumb, but from a mechanics point of view I don't particularly care.

Outsiders do not need to eat or sleep: Remember that thing about stealing stuff from sleeping Genies? You can't, because they don't even have beds.

Why does this even matter? It's far more simple to say that sleeping and eating is a purely Prime thing to do and be done with it. We don't miss out on much by not being able to bamboozle sleping genies. Hell, we don't even miss out on much getting rid of genies entirely (not that I would, I just wouldn't miss them).

I'm more concerned with the silliness that surrounds things like the Humanoid, Monsterous Humanoid, and Giant types. Seriously What the hell is up with them anyways?

The Tome of Necromancy had to roll back a substantial portion of the Undead Type because it made the game not work.

I still don't get why some undead are suseptible to critical hits under your system. In undead in D&D don't have squishy spots- it doesn't matter if you hack off limbs or heads- they keep coming at you until you beat the crap out of them to the point where thier animating forces fail and they crumble in to dust.

Vermin Lord stuff

You could make a type specifically for bugs, but why bother? If it looks like a bug than Vermin Lords can speak to them. I mean, it would be neat to have a subtype for insectoid non-vermin, but it's more trouble than it's worth.