Bullshit monsters, and using them in games

[Judging__Eagle]

How fine are people here with a GM just reskinning a monster; like say an Elemental, and calling it something else, with some minor addons?

Like say, you need some more ice monsters for an cold-themed game; and you decide to use them Ice Elementals that are immune to cold and weak to fire.

Is stuff like that acceptable? They are described as "thing", and have some "thing-like" powers/weaknesses; but it's not like you really 'made' the creature up.

Because I've done that, mostly to keep a dungeon 'in-theme'; and I wanted some variety in the CRs of the monsters I was using; or I drew a blank, and couldn't find a monster that was what I wanted to use (also... were Ice Elementals ever statted up anywhere?); and I'd appreciate the feedback.

[Lokathor]

It's my favorite way to run monsters. Minimal work on my part, but players are still left partially in the dark. If they make the Knowledge checks or whatever I tell them what the check says they get to know, which isn't everything, so they still have to guess a bit. It's great.

[Juton]

It's actually a good idea. Besides thematic concerns a DM needs to work to keep metagaming in check.

[Kaelik]

Only works if you houserule knowledge system to something not shitty like 3.5.

If you are using Tome knowledge rules, it's probably okayish.

[Judging__Eagle]

I go by 10 + CR of the creature to figure out their name; and ever +2 over reveals 1 important detail, type and features, subtype, weaknesses, abilities, etc.; if they're more than 10 over they can just see the creature's stats.

[Crissa]

But JE, that means people don't know they're being attacked by an dragon when an ancient red blows fire over their village.

-Crissa

[A Man In Black]

But JE, that means people don't know they're being attacked by an dragon when an ancient red blows fire over their village.

You don't need knowledge skills to know that a big flying lizard just set a bunch of stuff on fire. They just don't know if it was an ancient red, or a hellfire wyrm, or a half-red-dragon large thing, or a really big and scaly chimera, etc. Just because an elephant steps on your cat doesn't mean you know anything about elephants other than that they're large, grey, and heavy.

[Username17]

I've always found the idea of tying knowledge skill DCs to CR to be insane. People know more about the big nasty animals and plants. Very few people can tell the difference between a sycamore and an elm, but lots of people can identify poison oak. And frickin everyone knows what a tiger is. The biggest and the baddest become famous because they are big and bad. People talk about that shit much more than they talk about rare beavers. There are only a handful of tigers left in the world, but there are only a handful of people on the planet that wouldn't be able to identify one of them - and most of those people at like 4 years old.

But regardless, I am against palette swapping monsters to make new monsters in most cases. The D&D world already has too many predators in it. The number of monsters in the world simply strains credibility. And making even more monsters strains credibility even more. At the point where every single thing you ever encounter is a new monster you've never heard of, it stops feeling like you're a character from the world and starts feeling like you're dealing with an alien invasion. And honestly, that's fine if you're doing an alien invasion. If the players are exploring a new world like the plane of shadow or the mirror realm, by all means palette swap away. Don't fight dire bears and wyverns, fight yakathors and gorlams. Go nuts, because it's an alien fucking planet and the "normal" monsters there should feel like they are from an alien planet.

But if the players are anywhere close to home, use the shit in the fucking monster manual. There's more than enough stuff in there, and it strains credibility for the PCs to have never fucking heard of the top predators from their own back yard.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

I did this in the 'dungeon crawl inside an enormous creature' thing I did. I took the stats for big wall-crawling web-throwing venomous spiders and re-skinned them into big wall-sliming goo-throwing venomous amoeboids. It worked for two reasons: because it was a deliberately weird environment, and because the amoeboids didn't do out-of-nowhere nonsense.

But if their CR had been appropriate to the characters, I probably just would have used the Oozes from the MM.

[Just another user]

But JE, that means people don't know they're being attacked by an dragon when an ancient red blows fire over their village.

You don't need knowledge skills to know that a big flying lizard just set a bunch of stuff on fire. They just don't know if it was an ancient red, or a hellfire wyrm, or a half-red-dragon large thing, or a really big and scaly chimera, etc. Just because an elephant steps on your cat doesn't mean you know anything about elephants other than that they're large, grey, and heavy.

This is a good point, a peasant could say to some adventurers that his village was attacked by a dragon, when it actually was attacked by a pirolisk, or a hydra, or a Dragonne or a number of other dragon-like critters.

Then if interrogated about it he could reveal that this "dragon" had actually five heads or other such small details, either giving a clue to the adventurers or utterly confusing them.

[Judging__Eagle]

Well... that's a good point Frank.

My own games tend to be about the PCs being 'sent' somewhere far from home, almost every time.

My campaign format needs to be able to explain why a PC isn't here one session, and will be here in the next couple, or why a PC vanishes for a half year, and then shows up again.

The idea that people know super dangerous shit is true, but the thing is, people might not be able to know what these people look like.

the movie Inglorious Bastards has something along those lines.

Every Nazi knows about "the Bastards", but here's the thing, if you're a Nazi, and you seriously see "Hugo Stigliz" Enlisted Officer Assassin face to face, you won't know who he is. You might even drink with him, and being a 'high level' Gestapo Colonel might not let you ID him at anything, except that maybe he's from Frankfurt (his accent).

You could be a team of elite SS security tasked to guard mother-fucking Adolf Hitler... and you can't ID "The Bear Jew" even if he's walking up to you with a glass of champange on a silver tray and walking up to you.

There is seriously a single Nazi in the whole movie that can possibly ID everyone of the 'high level' enemies in the game.

Everyone may have 'heard' of a Dragon, and may know roughly what one looks like, and will know that certain colours are certain things; but people who know the details of a creature will know that say... Trolls die best when drowned. Hill Giants are mostly dangerous at range if you're not a good ranged damage party (they're catapults with good Aim; so fast, flying, ranged PCs have the least trouble with them; but they're also good at melee, so only decent melee's can engage them directly). Details that make a monster easier to fight.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Every Nazi knows about "the Bastards", but here's the thing, if you're a Nazi, and you seriously see "Hugo Stigliz" Enlisted Officer Assassin face to face, you won't know who he is. You might even drink with him, and being a 'high level' Gestapo Colonel might not let you ID him at anything, except that maybe he's from Frankfurt (his accent).

Here's the thing. You might not recognize Smazz'glob the super secret succubus assassin even when you see her face to face, but you'll sure as hell know that she's a succubus thanks to those sexy curves and wings.

[Edit] It's true, though, that characters are more likely to know the capabilities of more commonly encountered things, while the known abilities of a pit fiend or great wyrm might be legendary (and often incorrect).

[PhaedrusXY]

Where are the Tome rules for knowledge checks? I don't remember seeing that...

[Just another user]

I've always found the idea of tying knowledge skill DCs to CR to be insane. People know more about the big nasty animals and plants. Very few people can tell the difference between a sycamore and an elm, but lots of people can identify poison oak. And frickin everyone knows what a tiger is. The biggest and the baddest become famous because they are big and bad. People talk about that shit much more than they talk about rare beavers. There are only a handful of tigers left in the world, but there are only a handful of people on the planet that wouldn't be able to identify one of them - and most of those people at like 4 years old.

-Username17

Well, yes,but we live in a world with television and pictures and encyclopedias and this without even including the internet.

In a more medieval settings things would not be so easy..

Have you ever read the descriptions of creatures in medieval bestiaries? There was all kind of crazy shit there I can't see why things should be different in a D&D world.

Probably people in D&D world know about dragon, trolls and what-not but I would not be so sure that good part of what they know about them is not a lot of B.S. After all how many people could say to have met a dragon and survived? And those we did probably ran away from it as fast as possible rather than taking time to observe it with attention and taking note of details so their narration of the encounter would be less than 100% accurate.

[K]

I'm pro-reskinning, but only as long as you have a reason. I mean, I'd rather have you reskin than do something stupid like make blackscale lizard men when you could just swap around some feats on the standard lizard men and be good to go.

I mean, I don't really care if there is a breeding population of Winter Wolves or if there are enough caribou to feed them. It works perfectly fine if you come up with some magic reason why it all works out, and keep monsters fantastic rather that just another kind of animal in your world. Treating monsters as mere animals leads to the natural conclusion that they will be used by your setting like animals; it might be fine if there is one city in the world where they ride on griffons, but if the history of horse ownership is any model then griffons should be in every city and army and your setting actually would be crowded.

Do you really care if you walk into a wizard's tower and run into a summoning ooze? Are you going to cry foul if you realize the insect cultists you've been fighting are using the wererat stats? Surprise creates dramatic tension, and the last thing you want is players to suddenly say "ho hum, another werewolf. Can we just assume we win and skip to the next part?"

Ideally, you want to have around 90% of your world's monsters to be of a stock list. People know that orcs live in the Burning Waste and know enough about orcs to not be fooled by the guys walking into town in hooded robes, but there may literally be no one alive who knows that there is a stained glass golem in the Glittering Tower and it is the only one of its kind.



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Now, there is the issue of whether players should be able to figure out what monsters can do with Knowledge checks and the like. I'm of the opinion that you should flavor monsters in such a way that people get a good idea what a monster can do, and let skill checks or common sense be the way of figuring that out. I mean, if you see a giant dog with flames coming out of it's mouth with every exhale, you shouldn't need to know that its a CR 3 Hell Hound with an AC of 16 to know that it probably can breath fire at you.

[Crissa]

Have you ever read the descriptions of creatures in medieval bestiaries? There was all kind of crazy shit there I can't see why things should be different in a D&D world.

That's the point. They had dragons and gryphons and hydras and nix nack nox and for crying out loud, they knew what these were.

I don't get it in D&D where the dirt-farmers don't have a clue what's eating them but they totally know every grub and worm. Maybe that's okay if it came in the night, but don't these guys have fairy tales?

-Crissa

[Lokathor]

Perhaps the DC to identify for sure should be 20 - Creature CR, like with spotting a magic item.

[Leress]

Perhaps the DC to identify for sure should be 20 - Creature CR, like with spotting a magic item.

That would make higher CR creature easier to ID than weaker ones.

[cthulhu]

Maybe it should be 20-CR to know what something is approximately and a thumb nail sketch of what it does , and 10+CR to know exactly what it does.... actually wait that doesn't work with exact numbers.

i.e.

1) Easy check: It's a fucking dragon, it breaths fires and can cast spells

2) Hard Check: It's an adult red dragon, it breaths fire a maximum of 6 times a minute and casts spells as per a 9th level sorcerer.

So everyone in the village knows its a vampire and some vague and possibly wrong shit about garlic, but only Van Hellsing knows that it is a rare chinese hopping vampire of DOOM and you need a mirror to avoid the 'rage gaze' and only staking them, chopping them up into a bag and throwing the bag into a river will actually destory them.

Thinking about it, if you can only make the second check if you past the first one (or both are the same dice roll), that means if you've heard about manticores at all you know exactly what they do, and that'snot to bad, and EVERYONE has heard about the ancient dragon of badassery, but only 5 guys know exactly how hardcore he is.

[mean_liar]

I reskin like mad, add templates, swap feats and do whatever the fuck I want with my monsters to maintain dramatic tension in the story.

I just got done with an Island of Dr Moreau-meets-Reanimator arc and the players fought a mass of reskinned crazy, and we all loved it.

Next arc? City-adventures against humanoids with class levels.

Frank's point about monsters should mostly be stock doesn't ring true for a game with as much history behind it as DnD - players simply know too much. Characters can make Knowledge checks and identify meaningful characteristics about the Reskinned Thing and that's enough, but I'm not telling them that the mass of sewn-together-wrong yeti parts barreling through them are just Giant Stag Beetles.

[Just another user]

Have you ever read the descriptions of creatures in medieval bestiaries? There was all kind of crazy shit there I can't see why things should be different in a D&D world.

That's the point. They had dragons and gryphons and hydras and nix nack nox and for crying out loud, they knew what these were.

Oh, yeah, except that those creatures weren't real in that "setting".

Also they had bird that grow from trees(not on trees, from trees) , and bear are born as formless lump of flesh that are licked in shape by the mother, bees that are born from the bodies of oxen, cuckoo that flies on the back of kites because their wings are too weak, and fishes that can stop a ship from moving, and frogs die if exposed to rain, and so on, and so forth.
A lot of bullshit

I don't get it in D&D where the dirt-farmers don't have a clue what's eating them but they totally know every grub and worm. Maybe that's okay if it came in the night, but don't these guys have fairy tales?

-Crissa

they have, and those fairy tales are probably a lot of bullshit, too.
Heck probably they think that a dragon can be killed by throwing a bucket of water in their mouth, I'm sure there at least a dozen fairy tales in D&D land that end like it or with some variant, or that saying the name of <insert your god here> is enough to keep undead at bay, or that trolls are deadly afraid of cats. Heck they *know* that. Exactly like people that wrote or read these ancient bestiaries *knew* that for example, the blood of a male goat was so hot that it could dissolve diamonds.
They have a clue about what it is, it is big hungry and dangerous.anything else is secondary

[Crissa]

And yet, most of the fairy tales we don't repeat are the ones that had real elements. We called them witches and burned them because their tales could have real effects.

That's not entirely fair.

But everyone who lives where there are bears knows what a bear is, especially if they're not in a modern society where they can forget things like that.

-Crissa

[Doom]

I've actually done quite a bit of re-skinning in my campaign. Need a low level orc? Use all the stats of a goblin, give it a small re-heal, and it's an orc.

Anyway, I actually had a lich pop up in my campaign. Wow, what a disappointment. It'll come back later thanks to the phylactery goofiness, but I don't have a clue:

What monster should wrap in the skin of a lich? The current level 14 lich isn't that much different than the level 8 orc...anyone know a monster that would have more pizazz?

[A Man In Black]

I've always found the idea of tying knowledge skill DCs to CR to be insane. People know more about the big nasty animals and plants. Very few people can tell the difference between a sycamore and an elm, but lots of people can identify poison oak. And frickin everyone knows what a tiger is. The biggest and the baddest become famous because they are big and bad. People talk about that shit much more than they talk about rare beavers. There are only a handful of tigers left in the world, but there are only a handful of people on the planet that wouldn't be able to identify one of them - and most of those people at like 4 years old.

If you went hiking in Oregon and got jumped by a bear, would you know if it was a black bear, a brown bear, or a grizzly? Would you know why it attacked you, or what you could do to avoid future attacks? Do you know if they can carry rabies? Do you know if playing dead actually helps with bears? As for tigers, how many of those people know where tigers live, or whether they hunt alone or in packs? Or what they eat (besides just "meat")? Do you know anything that might help you avoid getting attacked by tigers?

Everyone can identify dangerous animals in simple ways for obvious reasons, but beyond that most people don't know squat about them, and that's in the real world, with the internet and encyclopedias and a dozen years of required schooling.

Any CR-based identification system isn't going to produce reasonable results if it's near-impossible to even tell what something dangerous is just by looking at it, assuming the creature in question is an animal-style or person-style creature and not a magical creation, one-off, or alien. But beyond that, you really should need to have some sort of expertise to know anything relevant.

[Crissa]

Yes. All mammals can carry rabies. Differences are obvious in size and behavior, but less important. They're bears. They have the same attacks.

The only major differences is that you shouldn't climb trees vs black bears (they climb, other bears don't via size); grizzlies are the only ones to attack camps; and brown bears are more common. The difference between the strength of a brown and grizzly bear is so minimal of importance, as to why would you care?

I know this because I grew up where there are bears. Bears who are a CR 20 in my world.

Why wouldn't D&D people know the same?

-Crissa