The responses have been really great. Thanks.
So I guess my original complaints may be summarized as:
- Doing insufficient research when adapting mythical monsters, resulting in monsters with the wrong names or other erroneous details
- Adapting a mythical monster in a way that destroys what originally made it interesting without adding anything of equivalent value, or failing to improve upon a monster that was already bland
- All of the above and more, taken to absurd extremes. At this point the adaptation is so utterly different as to be pointless as an adaptation
- The various absurdities and frustrations of the D&D-specific monster taxonomy mechanic
I think #1-3 have been pretty well addressed, but I don't recall any responses to #4. #4 is a criticism I have specifically against the world building of D&D. It can be broken down into a number of more specific components. Credits to this article for inspiring me:
https://www.monsterdarlings.com/blogposts/2016/03/02/the-frustration-of-fantasy-taxonomies
The types are needlessly hierarchical. This is the big problem with the types, at least in d20 derivatives, because it is ultimately the root of all the others. A given monster may only have one type, even if it would be logical for it to have multiple types. For example, the fomorian is a giant from the feywild, but does not have the fey type because the authors arbitrarily decided it cannot be a dual-typed fey/giant. Likewise, the guardinals and eladrin are typed as fey (IIRC) despite being from the upper planes, and the rules disallow them being dual-typed celestial/fey. The fairy dragon is a dragon but not a fey, despite the name! This can make it difficult for designers to place monsters that are not written specifically to fit around these idiosyncratic distinctions. The types force the designers to world build around the rules rather than use the rules to support the world building!
The types are not clearly or consistently defined. The aforementioned fact that it may be difficult to know where a given monster belongs is a testament to the vague definitions of the types themselves. Indeed, the types have changed meaning across editions. In a number of cases there is no consistent criteria for placing monsters, especially regarding the monstrosity type (which is literally a miscellaneous catch-all for lazy design). For example, the owlbear, griffon and centaur are monstrosities, whereas the flying snake (a snake with wings), the tressym (a winged, intelligent cat with spell turning), and cranium rat (a psychic rat) are beasts. In another example, the chimera was typed as a dragon in the
Rules Cyclopedia, but a monstrosity in 5e. The fey type includes dryads, satyrs, blink dogs, and hags; what do these have in common that makes them the same type?
The types cannot account for all monsters. Precisely because the types lack solid definitions, it means that (depending on how a designer defines them) they cannot account for monster concepts that aren't specifically built around them. For example, there types for creatures from specific planes but not others: celestials for upper planes, fiends for lower planes, aberrations for planes of chaos and far realm, but no type for planes of law or neutrality. Modrons have the construct type, yes, but it doesn't show up under
detect good/evil like the others do; being invisible to that spell makes no sense considering that modrons are the personifications of law. How would you type something like
Planescape's rilmani or
Pathfinder's aeons? In the early days of 3.x, this resulted in some publishers inventing new types, such as the manifestation and spirit types in
Relics & Rituals: Excalibur and the biomechanoid type in
Infernum.
The rules for types are not intended to be tweaked. The problems I mentioned could be solved by modifying the type mechanic, but the problem there is that it is not modular at all and trying to change it results in a cascade effect to account for all the other mechanics that reference types. Adding a new type would require checking every spell and effect that targets specific types to make sure it is referenced correctly, or else inventing a set of guidelines for how spells should interact with types. The latter defeats the point of the 5e types lacking inherent rules, even if it is something that would be really useful for anyone who cannot read the developers' minds.
The types are not equivalent to one another. The types as of 3.x/5e measure concepts that are not necessarily comparable. While it makes common sense for some types to be mutually exclusive, like humanoid versus giant (the differences is size) or beast versus humanoid (bipedal? thumbs?), the types collectively represent diverse concepts like planar origin (aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend), state of life (construct, undead), body plan (beast, humanoid, ooze, plant), and such. 4e tried to clarify the types by setting some aside as "origins" and "keywords," making it easier than ever to place monsters and perhaps inspiring creativity with its combination potential; unfortunately this was forgotten in 5e. Other games with type mechanics generally have very few types to avoid confusion or allow monsters to have as many as applicable, as seen in examples like
Mazes & Minotaurs,
13th Age,
Rules Cyclopedia,
Trudvang,
Fantasy Craft, and
Dark Dungeons.
The types ignore the principle of Gygaxian naturalism. By this I mean that the type mechanic as presented assumes that adventures occur only on the material plane and that nobody visits other planes, since creatures from other planes all generally have the type related to that plane. Every creature from the upper planes is a celestial (except the guardinal and eladrin), every creature from the feywild is a fey (except the fomori), every creature from the lower planes is a fiend, etc. This is in sharp contrast to
Planescape, where the planes harbor creatures of many types; for example, the PCs are typically humanoids from planes other than the material.
In my opinion, a good type mechanic should allow a given monster to have as many types as applicable, only list as many types as absolutely necessary, and give clear common sense guidelines for why types are even distinguished.
For example: the "spirit" type covers the universal concept of spirits in world mythology. A spirit is the personification of a physical or abstract concept, such as fire, healing, disease, madness, moonlight, a river, a mountain, a tree, the hearth, war, etc. Spirits live to protect and serve the advancement of the thing they represent, and share a mutual mystical sympathetic bond with that thing (analogous to a human's body/soul duality). A spirit may be naturally invisible and incorporeal, but capable of interacting with material things through a variety of means (haunting, temporary incarnation, possession, etc), or permanently incarnated. The most powerful spirits are worshiped as gods.
Feel free to chime in with your thoughts.
