5e Monster Manual: Please tell me about the shitty monsters

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 3:54 am

Stinktopus wrote:Noticed that the Succubus and the Nymph didn't make the cut.

Not sure about the Nymph, but the succubus is there, except for some reason now they're neither Bateezu nor Tanar'ri (they have their own entry outside of demon or devil).

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 4:50 am

So that Angry DM guy made an interesting point, and one that I noticed as well but didn't think about too much until he brought it up. What's with the weird FATE Aspects in the monster descriptions? Were those intended to be... well, FATE Aspects? Or something else that they axed?

One thing I am going to call now is that they will halfass something in the DMG when it comes out and say "We meant these to give monsters Advantage all along."

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 8:15 am

What really bugs me is that every-goddamn-thing in the MM appears to be an elite pro athlete (well, except for the hill giant). It's actually to point of obtrusiveness - I never thought that f'n artwork could actually be immersion-breaking.

Stinktopus wrote:The sprite artwork is a little... umm... loli?

Meh, not exactly new

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 12:46 pm

Dogbert wrote:The lich... my personal make-or-break monster regarding d&d mystique because I damn love me some immortality as goal for my wizards.

Yes, there's still a way for PCs to do it.

Fuck you, the method is called SUCK DM COCK.

Monster Manual wrote:Wizards that seek lichdom must make bargains with fiends, evil gods, or other foul entities. Many turn to Orcus, Demon Prince of Undeath, whose power has created countless liches. However,
those that control the power of lichdom always demand fealty and service for their knowledge.
Also, seems the ritual is now weaksauce and you need to feed your phylactery a box of kittens a day in order not to rot away.

Liches used to stand for autonomy incarnate, the triumph of the arcane paradigm and luciferan philosophy: Becoming your own god. Now they're just pawns of the lower planes.

BUT THE UNDEAD ARE EEEEEEEVIL!

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 6:47 pm

Liches used to stand for autonomy incarnate, the triumph of the arcane paradigm and luciferan philosophy: Becoming your own god. Now they're just pawns of the lower planes.

Yes, but as such they were actually kind of terrible -in that only a couple of classes could make use of the "best" path to immortality. In implication, liches were just one more rock on the giant pile of wizard-wank.

All the classes should be playing the same game, so an option like that should either be codified in a way that makes it usable by anyone who's sufficiently awesome, regardless of class, or not be codified at all and left to MTP and/or the whims of individual tables.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 7:42 pm

Schleiermacher wrote:
Liches used to stand for autonomy incarnate, the triumph of the arcane paradigm and luciferan philosophy: Becoming your own god. Now they're just pawns of the lower planes.
Yes, but as such they were actually kind of terrible -in that only a couple of classes could make use of the "best" path to immortality. In implication, liches were just one more rock on the giant pile of wizard-wank.

All the classes should be playing the same game, so an option like that should either be codified in a way that makes it usable by anyone who's sufficiently awesome, regardless of class, or not be codified at all and left to MTP and/or the whims of individual tables.

No. Not even a little bit. The fact that not everyone can be a Stranger with the Burning Eyes does not mean that no one should be allowed to.

If someone wants to be immortal, there are a metric fuckton of options for doing it. Hell, everyone can turn into a fucking Vampire. Just because an option is not open to literally everyone including people who by their very fucking nature do not want is (IE, someone who intentionally chooses to never ever cast any kind of spells cannot fucking choose to be an immortal who body jumps by the Magic Jar spell).

And you know what, if all your immortality abilities are functionally identical, so that no one can call one of them the best, then they suck and you need to go back to the drawing board. Yes, Lich Phylacteries are the best for dying and coming back... sort of. Technically you stop being immortal if someone destroys it, so Stranger with the Burning Eyes is actually better than you at living forever past level 16. And Jade Pheonix Mages can usually count on being able to kill themselves in trouble, and thus live forever, and they don't have a Phylactery that can be hunted down and destroyed. And if you think all three of those methods of immortality should operate exactly the same, and also the same as the special fighter only method, then you are a terrible person.

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 8:04 pm

Schleiermacher wrote:
Liches used to stand for autonomy incarnate, the triumph of the arcane paradigm and luciferan philosophy: Becoming your own god. Now they're just pawns of the lower planes.
Yes, but as such they were actually kind of terrible -in that only a couple of classes could make use of the "best" path to immortality. In implication, liches were just one more rock on the giant pile of wizard-wank.

All the classes should be playing the same game, so an option like that should either be codified in a way that makes it usable by anyone who's sufficiently awesome, regardless of class, or not be codified at all and left to MTP and/or the whims of individual tables.

Miss the point much?
Your tone seems to imply that lich is a valid PC option. Well, it's not. Its a BBEG option, plain and simple. It's something that can be added to the captain of Team Bad Guy to add flavor and plot device and shit like that. So it doesn't matter even one single nanofuck whether or not PC McFighter can turn in to one.
And that's the end of that discussion.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 8:45 pm

Miss the point much?
Your tone seems to imply that lich is a valid PC option. Well, it's not. Its a BBEG option, plain and simple. It's something that can be added to the captain of Team Bad Guy to add flavor and plot device and shit like that. So it doesn't matter even one single nanofuck whether or not PC McFighter can turn in to one.

Of course it's a valid PC option. At least it had better be, and in fact it works well as such. Any game that bothers to define what you have to do to become a lich and doesn't make it a PC option is not a game I'm interested in playing.

And since you mentioned missing the point, let's meet Kaelik, grand master of the discipline:

No. Not even a little bit. The fact that not everyone can be a Stranger with the Burning Eyes does not mean that no one should be allowed to.

If someone wants to be immortal, there are a metric fuckton of options for doing it. (...)
And you know what, if all your immortality abilities are functionally identical, so that no one can call one of them the best, then they suck and you need to go back to the drawing board. (...) And if you think [all the PC-usable] methods of immortality should operate exactly the same, and also the same as the special fighter only method, then you are a terrible person.

Congratulations on this stunning achievement in missing the point. I do not think and did not say that all forms of immortality should operate in the same fashion, or anything remotely along those lines. You didn't even understand what I meant by "best".

Here's what Dogbert said:

Liches used to stand for autonomy incarnate, the triumph of the arcane paradigm and luciferan philosophy: Becoming your own god.

This is somewhat hyperbolic (liches are certainly not godlike as a rule) but fundamentally true. Vampires and Strangers stave off death by stealing the life (or lives) of others, Death Knights and Jade Phoenix Mages do it by swearing fealty to a supernatural entity that preserves them, Mummies do it with the blessing of a god - but Liches and Liches alone can claim that they accomplished immortality 100% under their own power, which makes all those other guys look a bit chumpy in comparison, now doesn't it? That's what I mean by "best" in this context and it has nothing to do with how Liches or Vampires function in practice. It's the "Mages (and only mages) can do anything"-triumphalism that has to go.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 8:55 pm

ACOS wrote: Your tone seems to imply that lich is a valid PC option. Well, it's not. Its a BBEG option, plain and simple. It's something that can be added to the captain of Team Bad Guy to add flavor and plot device and shit like that. So it doesn't matter even one single nanofuck whether or not PC McFighter can turn in to one.
And that's the end of that discussion.

It's not a valid PC option? Sez who?

I've played a campaign where at least one character was planning on becoming a Lich (only reason we didn't was we stopped a bit shy of being high enough level whoops I guess we were high enough level, we just weren't ready to transition to being evil yet). It's +4 ECL, but hey.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 9:09 pm

Hey guys I have a PC that can live forever starting at level 1, play an Elf.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 9:13 pm

Schleiermacher wrote:Jade Phoenix Mages do it by swearing fealty to a supernatural entity that preserves them

I thought Jade Phoenix Mages were just enlightened and shit.

I don't see how JFM counts as "immortality". You still age and will eventually die of old age if you aren't killed before that, you just get to be wizard Buddha and retain your memories through reincarnation.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 9:14 pm

Schleiermacher wrote:Vampires and Strangers stave off death by stealing the life (or lives) of others, Death Knights and Jade Phoenix Mages do it by swearing fealty to a supernatural entity that preserves them, Mummies do it with the blessing of a god - but Liches and Liches alone can claim that they accomplished immortality 100% under their own power, which makes all those other guys look a bit chumpy in comparison, now doesn't it? That's what I mean by "best" in this context and it has nothing to do with how Liches or Vampires function in practice. It's the "Mages (and only mages) can do anything"-triumphalism that has to go.

Uh... wtf? It doesn't matter whether you are immortal because you "steal" you sustenance from others or you "steal" your sustenance from arcane energy. Both of those are immortals who got their immortality on the strength of their own power.

For fucks sake, Liches have to keep stealing their immortality from adventurers who are trying to kill them. Even by your weird libertarian wet dream of "best immortality" meaning "guy who is self sustainingly immortal" vampires are still totally equally self sustaining. Because D&D vamps don't have to ever drink blood or interact with other creatures.

Sakuya Izayoi · Post by **Sakuya Izayoi** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 9:15 pm

There are plenty of valid fightin' precedents for liches. Arthas, Skull Knight, Lord Soth, etc. Not that fighterbaters want any cool options that aren't DM patronage and roleplaying things to death.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 9:45 pm

Arthas is a paladin though.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 10:01 pm

Lord Mistborn wrote:I thought Jade Phoenix Mages were just enlightened and shit.

You may be right, I'll admit I've only skimmed that class.

Kaelik wrote:
Uh... wtf? It doesn't matter whether you are immortal because you "steal" you sustenance from others or you "steal" your sustenance from arcane energy. Both of those are immortals who got their immortality on the strength of their own power.

For fucks sake, Liches have to keep stealing their immortality from adventurers who are trying to kill them.

Oh, come on. You're equivocating so hard it's completely unbelievable you're doing it in good faith. If you pretend you can't see the difference between "has a slew of supernatural weaknesses and has to go out on a nightly basis to drink human blood" and "as long as my magic Faberge is safe and snug I can dick around and do whatever I want and look down my nose at silly people trying to kill me with swords", I don't want to talk to you. Even apart from the insane framing of the issue, you're flat out wrong: One of these people has more trouble than the other with morally outraged murderhobos, and it's not the Lich.

Oh, and while I'm at it:

Even by your weird libertarian wet dream of "best immortality" meaning "guy who is self sustainingly immortal" vampires are still totally equally self sustaining. Because D&D vamps don't have to ever drink blood or interact with other creatures.

This sort of argument is the reason why so many people think the Den is a cesspit of deranged rules lawyers. If vampires in your games don't have to drink blood (and presumably can't be staked in the heart, since they're immune to critical hits) then I am utterly uninterested in your opinion on this subject. By RAW you are right but in this case that's because the RAW is fucking sloppy.

It's a Vampire. Drinking your blood because it needs blood to live is what it's fucking for.

There are plenty of valid fightin' precedents for liches. Arthas, Skull Knight, Lord Soth, etc. Not that fighterbaters want any cool options that aren't DM patronage and roleplaying things to death.

Well, I wouldn't call any of those characters liches in the archetypal sense, but sure! Good! Bring 'em on. The whole idea is to get rid of all the bullshit old "Wizards are the Master Race" memes.

Sakuya Izayoi · Post by **Sakuya Izayoi** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 10:06 pm

Foxwarrior wrote:Arthas is a paladin though.

I mean after he breaks the top of the Frozen Throne and inherits Ner'zhul's knowledge as a former shaman and agent of the Burning Legion. Thus, granting him all the proper lichy schticks like necromancy, commanding vast legions of the undead, being difficult to permanently destroy, etc. Plus, he can still bonk people over the head with Frostmourne too.

Sakuya Izayoi · Post by **Sakuya Izayoi** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 10:13 pm

Schleiermacher wrote: Well, I wouldn't call any of those characters liches in the archetypal sense, but sure! Good! Bring 'em on. The whole idea is to get rid of all the bullshit old "Wizards are the Master Race" memes.

One of the things that gets advocated here sometimes that I like is epic class changes that don't have the annoying prerequisites of PrCs. So Lich could just be, do the minimum of GM Fellatio an appropriately dramatic and badass ritual, and whatever class you were gets augmented with cool lich powers.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 10:44 pm

Schleiermacher wrote:Oh, come on. You're equivocating so hard it's completely unbelievable you're doing it in good faith. If you pretend you can't see the difference between "has a slew of supernatural weaknesses and has to go out on a nightly basis to drink human blood" and "as long as my magic Faberge is safe and snug I can dick around and do whatever I want and look down my nose at silly people trying to kill me with swords", I don't want to talk to you. Even apart from the insane framing of the issue, you're flat out wrong: One of these people has more trouble than the other with morally outraged murderhobos, and it's not the Lich.

I can't believe you are so fucking stupid that you just wrote an entire fucking paragraph that makes no sense in which you just assumed I believed something that you then spent your second paragraph mocking me for not believing.

But you are still wrong. If the ultimate test of immortality is chilling in your tower, Elans are as good or better than Liches. All the undead are immortal. The only reason you could ever possible claim that Liches are a better kind of immortal than fucking Elans or Skeletons is if you want to live through attempts by others to violently stab you.

So no, your "Liches are the best because they can chill in a tower" thing, in addition to being a fucking wrong because Vampires can also chill in towers, is also a terrible metric since Elans already do that as well as Liches.

Schleiermacher wrote:This sort of argument is the reason why so many people think the Den is a cesspit of deranged rules lawyers. If vampires in your games don't have to drink blood (and presumably can't be staked in the heart, since they're immune to critical hits) then I am utterly uninterested in your opinion on this subject. By RAW you are right but in this case that's because the RAW is fucking sloppy.

It's a Vampire. Drinking your blood because it needs blood to live is what it's fucking for.

Maybe you should watch less True Blood? I mean, for fucks sake there are lots of vampire variants, and with most of them it isn't even clear they have to drink blood so much as that they enjoy it (See Dracula a bunch of times) and there are plenty of vampires who clearly don't have to drink blood, but just do it because they enjoy it. There are entire multiple book arcs about Vampires that grow more powerful the longer it has been since they drank blood, including thousand year old masters who seclude themselves from humans because the hunger is so great, and they would lose all their power if they indulged.

So yes, Vampires can chill immortally in towers in D&D, and that doesn't violate fucking Vampire cannon, because Vampire cannon has like 500 fucking different kinds of vampire.

But hey, while we are at it, Vampires aren't the only people who can chill in towers, Strangers with Burning Eyes can do it to, and your weird fascination with how Liches sit in towers the best doesn't even make fucking sense.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 11:01 pm

I'm beginning to see why Mike Mearls and friends think that they can make an entire edition based on little more than crybaby fighter revanchism.

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 11:18 pm

Schleiermacher wrote:The whole idea is to get rid of all the bullshit old "Wizards are the Master Race" memes.

Old bullshit? This is the standard trope of all fucking time.

You know what? Fuck it, I give up - I'm throwing my lot in with Lago.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 11:37 pm

Sigh. Yes, there are squillions of stories about vampires that don't need to drink blood and don't care about holy symbols and in fact sparkle in the sunlight.

Doesn't change the fact that at its core the vampire myth is about a damned, nocturnal creature that subsists on blood. You can have all the different kinds of vampire you have space for and if you have a game or story about vampires you can subvert expectations all you want, but in a general-purpose high fantasy game like D&D if there's one kind of vampire you have to have it's the kind that drinks blood, because that is the foundation of the archetype. Now, this was a tangent, can we leave it at that?

The reason why I'm saying that liches represent a superior form of immortality is not that they are "best at sitting in a tower", or necessarily best at anything at all on a practical level. The discussion has strayed into those areas but that was a distraction. I will try to explain what I was getting at again since apparently I've done a poor job of it:

The point of the lich, symbolically and archetypically speaking, is as Dogbert said that it represents the ultimate triumph of the magician's paradigm over the forces of nature: Death is overcome, the mortal wizard becomes immortal. Having achieved his immortality purely though his own knowledge and power, he is not beholden or dependent on any outside force, his immortality is self-sustaining. Thus, unlike a vampire or mummy who must credit circumstance or higher powers, becoming a lich is an accomplishment and a validation of the magician's paradigm as a route to mastery of the world.

And again: This is all very cool if you're playing Ars Magica. It's not so cool if it's something that only one or two of the thirteen classes in your collaborative fantasy RPG can aspire to. Which is why I want everyone else to get equally cool toys as well. (NB! Not necessarily the same toys.)

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 11:42 pm

Lago_PARANOIA wrote:I'm beginning to see why Mike Mearls and friends think that they can make an entire edition based on little more than crybaby fighter revanchism.

ACOS wrote:Old bullshit? This is the standard trope of all fucking time.

You know what? Fuck it, I give up - I'm throwing my lot in with Lago.

As for you two, what in the world? I assume you think I'm a fighter revanchist, but I can't understand what makes you think that.

This is about everyone being able to have magic that does nice things, even if they don't wear robes and get their magic out of a big incomprehensible book.

I thought that was what we all wanted around here?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 12:14 am

Schleiermacher wrote:This is somewhat hyperbolic (liches are certainly not godlike as a rule) but fundamentally true. Vampires and Strangers stave off death by stealing the life (or lives) of others, Death Knights and Jade Phoenix Mages do it by swearing fealty to a supernatural entity that preserves them, Mummies do it with the blessing of a god - but Liches and Liches alone can claim that they accomplished immortality 100% under their own power, which makes all those other guys look a bit chumpy in comparison, now doesn't it? That's what I mean by "best" in this context and it has nothing to do with how Liches or Vampires function in practice. It's the "Mages (and only mages) can do anything"-triumphalism that has to go.

First of all, you're complaining that a particular phlebtonium source has the best roleplay version of a some ability that's only really useful for fluff. This on its own isn't an automatically binnable complaint since sometimes these kind of fluff holes represent not attending to a playerbase demand (we demand Shaolin monk-flavored army captains instead of Charlemange-flavored; it's part of the genre!), but it becomes especially stupid because you're simultaneously No True Scotsmanning the other in-setting sources of immortality because of... reasons. Yeah, immortality should be one of those cross-concept schticks like diplomacy or army leading, but the flavors of immortality are going to be different and one flavor is going to be the coolest. It's like whining how the coolest and most flavorful guilds are wizards leading wizards or how all the coolest and most flavorful performers troupes are bards leading bards.

So what was with my snark? In my experience, the people who make these kinds of complaints (why is it that wiiiiizards get the best teleports?) are fighter revanchists. After all, druids don't feel all small in the pants because they have no easy and thematic way to summon angels or build fantasy mecha or network a psychic hivemind; they just say 'fuck you, I can turn into Godzilla and create a volcano' and make peace with the idea that some thematic options are just going to be closed off to them.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 12:23 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So what was with my snark? In my experience, the people who make these kinds of complaints (why is it that wiiiiizards get the best teleports?) are fighter revanchists. After all, druids don't feel all small in the pants because they have no easy and thematic way to summon angels or build fantasy mecha or network a psychic hivemind; they just say 'fuck you, I can turn into Godzilla and create a volcano' and make peace with the idea that some thematic options are just going to be closed off to them.

Right, that's reasonable. As I see it, we're kind of making a mountain out of a molehill here. I expressed a contrary opinion to Dogbert's criticism of 5E liches, and suddenly I had to defend myself from a Kaeliking.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 1:17 am

Schleiermacher wrote:The point of the lich, symbolically and archetypically speaking, is as Dogbert said that it represents the ultimate triumph of the magician's paradigm over the forces of nature: Death is overcome, the mortal wizard becomes immortal. Having achieved his immortality purely though his own knowledge and power, he is not beholden or dependent on any outside force, his immortality is self-sustaining. Thus, unlike a vampire or mummy who must credit circumstance or higher powers, becoming a lich is an accomplishment and a validation of the magician's paradigm as a route to mastery of the world.

It's not so cool if it's something that only one or two of the thirteen classes in your collaborative fantasy RPG can aspire to. Which is why I want everyone else to get equally cool toys as well. (NB! Not necessarily the same toys.)

So basically, it is totally unacceptable for the undead immortality of the CLERIC WHO ONLY ISN'T A COMMONER BECAUSE HIS GOD BLESSES HIM WITH SPELLS to come from the favor of his god. Or for the Rogue who steals shit from other people to steal his immortality from other people. Because that version of immortality is somehow "worse" because it doesn't come from personal mastery of the arcane.

Fuck you.

The problem you noticed is that Fighter and Barbarian aren't real classes. Every other class either can be a Lich (even when they shouldn't like Bards) or doesn't and it doesn't matter, because personal fucking mastery of an exterior source of power isn't a fucking class thing for them.

Hell, even a Monk can get an even thematically better form of immortality by personal excellence that doesn't even require exterior magic applied to an exterior item.

But nooooo, you are too fucking mad that Clerics have to be Mummies not Liches. Here's an idea: If you think that pleasing a fucking deity or conceptual force enough that it grants you powers such as immortality is inferior thematically to mastering an external force of magic, don't fucking play a Cleric.