D&D 5E Volo's Guide to Monsters: General Discussion.

Chaosmancer said:

And honestly, I think that is what frustrates me about your position. You are dead set that bonuses to Intelligence are worthless. That there is no value, that no one except wizard benefits from having an intelligence higher than 6… and that is just not true. I have found may situations where Intelligence has been a valuable stat. I’ve used History, Religion and Nature significantly to tell people information about the world, information I might not have given them otherwise.

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I've been thinking recently about ways to give players more information about the game world, and I think... autopsies and observations might be a good thing to make available. Something along the lines of: with twelve hours' effort, if you make a DC 20 Medicine check against the corpse of a creature, or a DC 15 Medicine check on a live specimen under your control, the DM will give you the creatures' physical statistics (including Str, Dex, Con and attack options) with or without suitable technobabble about its physiology. An Arcana check would similarly reveal the creature's magical abilities such as teleportation or stoning and the MM bit about basilisk stomachs turning flesh back into stone. Maybe fit Nature checks in there somewhere too.

Chaosmancer said:

There is just so much here to talk about… frankly I’m going to snip a lot and talk in generalities, there’s just so much anger I’m not sure going point by point is going to be conducive to a discussion.

Yes, I have done a little homebrewing for that situation. No, not all the things he makes needs to be for combat, but the guy is a combat buff, he loves killing things, so his characters tend to focus on combat. When he tried to convince the Cloud Giant Baroness that his ingenuity was worth betting on, it was an intelligence roll, because ingenuity is best based off intelligence.

It wasn’t a lot of homebrewing, more just expanding the current crafting rules and using the rules and logic in gnomes to figure out which checks they should use. Which, by the way, gnomes are a +2 INT race, and not generally seen as worthless.

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I've never seen anyone play a Gnome as anything but a Wizard in 5E. Furthermore, as Wizarding and technology are the main things Gnomes do, an Intelligence bonus is actually suitable to them. Even with an addendum saying that Hobgoblins CAN be Wizards (and even then it is limited to the Abjurer school apparently), Intelligence currently does nothing in the game that would add to their primary build and WotC has been openly hostile to the very idea of bringing something like the Warlord into the game so that Intelligence could of any way be of any use to a non-magical character.

Chaosmancer said:

And honestly, I think that is what frustrates me about your position. You are dead set that bonuses to Intelligence are worthless. That there is no value, that no one except wizard benefits from having an intelligence higher than 6… and that is just not true. I have found may situations where Intelligence has been a valuable stat. I’ve used History, Religion and Nature significantly to tell people information about the world, information I might not have given them otherwise.

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And that position is generally a terrible way to play the game anyway. You hide information away from your players that anyone born into that world who had lived their whole life in that world traveling to its locations and hearing its stories and interacting with its people would automatically know. And so the protagonist of your story don't know the first thing about their supposed homeland, instead walking in with the presumptions of our world and maybe that 1-page hand out and ten minutes of you explaining what races live in the world or something of the like. And so they fumble blind and naturally fall into the trap you had laid out to punish them for acting the "wrong" way or making the "wrong" presumptions according to your own personal headcanon that you didn't fill them in on but any denizen of the world would have known. And it is entirely on them to have to ask you every single turn before taking any action and making a test so they don't fall into your "clever" trap.

"oh, you decided to kill a deer in order to get food? Well, naturally EVERYONE knows that hunting here is illegal unless you are a noble and so now those 15th level guards riding up are going to arrest or kill you. Its your fault for not having made your intelligence rolls before taking any action."

Actively withholding vital information about the world the characters live in so you can play "gotcha" moments on them in order to try to justify skills that rarely have any sort of actual use in general play is a major stretch on your part. It is you going the extra mile in order to try to make something that has little use have some use. Generally DMs don't have time to prepare a massive story for every single thing in the game, History, Arcana and Religion are all "ask the DM for more information" skills. In a whole lot of cases, you are going to run into the case where the DM is either going to find themselves having to shrug and sigh and admit that they really hadn't written up anything more about the deity than that one paragraph vaguely describing them or having to try to make up something on the spot, or worse-- they are using an established setting and now either have to look up in the right book or maybe crack open a wikipedia page.

"What's the history of this Inn?" "Who were the last 5 champions of the arena?" "What is the name of the chief tax collector of the area and what time does he come around?" "When is the next holiday in which the followers of this god participate?" Particularly with good rolls these are all things that a character should be able to know, but very likely not things the DM can't really answer-- either because they haven't read every single piece of information written on the setting or they had never thought up that stuff for their own setting. Either way, it likely has little to nothing to do with what the adventure was about and so this was left blank.

That is then the downside of hiding vital information about the setting from your players. Oh, sure-- maybe you have spend thousands of hours detailing every single last aspect of your campaign world down to naming every resident of every town with vast backstories and family trees reaching back 500 years. But it is ridiculous to expect everyone DMing to put that much detail into your world.

So when you hide information about the world and require people to ask the question and pass checks to get it... you also intrinsically require them to ask the RIGHT questions and NEVER to ask the WRONG questions or inevitably find themselves walking face-first into a proverbial brick wall. Because you ask the wrong question, you get nothing... ask too many questions and you are going to aggravate everyone... this is going to end up resulting in it being highly discouraged for you to ever ask questions.

Now, granted-- in games based on but different from D&D, I have seen this handled in a way where "the DM hasn't decided it, so the person who asked the question gets to make up the answer themselves". In which case it might be rewarding to ask questions. But that isn't the way it works in D&D.

Not unless something is specifically pointed out as a mystery to tackle with big flashing lights all over it. And, sure, that happens on occasion-- but History, Arcana, Religion and Nature combined come up in this way far less often than most other skills do. And, naturally, it is a situation where if just one person passes, then the whole group effectively passes as the Wizard can then just pass on the information. For no other character in the group, the difference between a 6 intelligence and a 12 intelligence if you are anything but a Wizard does not make a difference. Particularly if you did not train in the right lore skill that is applicable here.

Oh, and let's not forget... if you are a Bard of a particular level? All those skills get nullified. Anyone else who bothered to train in it has wasted their training.

Oh, sure. You could force a situation where you could see the party split and separate and thus try to make it so that one person can't just pass all those checks on the others' behalf. But you know what-- once you admit that it is even possible for the party to separate and a PC to be acting by themselves and having to pull their own weight? Yeah-- that's where you just admitted that the Hobgoblin stats are absolute utter crap. Because if it is even possible for a PC to be caught alone, then if you are playing them as any class that gets all Martial Weapons, or at least all Finesse Martial weapons if it is a Dex class, then the ONLY advantage you had at all goes straight down the toilet and you would be better off, at least no worse off, if you were literally any other race.

And, finally, I maintain-- no DM is going to let an entire adventure come to a complete screeching halt simply because a PC failed a lore skill check that left them without the important piece of information to know what to do next. There are many other skill checks which, if failed, and the result is a sufficient loss of hit points, the game will come to a screeching halt and all will consider it fair to do so... but never a failed lore check. Everyone would feel cheated if that were the case. So if the PC didn't get the piece of information, then the DM is going to give it to the players in some manner anyway. And most of the time without any real cost. They kind of have to.

Chaosmancer said:

And, just because a lot of people run Investigation incorrectly doesn’t mean it is as useless as you say. Let’s say your team has broken into a shop keep’s office, you want to see if he has any ties to a criminal enterprise. Investigation on the room, maybe investigation on his desk which I mentioned is covered in papers. I don’t think you really need to say you check the third drawer down for a secret compartment, if you are rifling through the desk and roll high enough, I assume you checked that drawer.

And actually, going back and re-reading the PHB, because I don’t remember that 10 minutes to investigate rule, reveals two interesting things. 10 no such rule exists, investigation can be as short or long as the DM wants it to be, and more importantly 2) the high specificity you are talking about in the bolded part is actually referenced in the rules for Perception, the skill you say is quicker and more general and therefore more useful.

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Yes, there are rare, RARE, situations in which it will be clear you should use Investigation. RARE situations. As in it isn't going to come up even once every adventure, as opposed to Medicine or Stealth or Persuasion, which if those are you thing you will have nearly constant opportunity to use it with very clear goals you are trying to achieve by using them. And Perception is called for more than any other skill in the game. Pretty much every single time combat is going to begin in order to avoid spending an entire round taking damage and not being able to respond. Those are way higher stakes than anything any of the Intelligence skills are ever going to be deciding.

But the majority of Investigation checks that are expected to be taken are generally written without any real hint that they should be taken. The situations in which they are expected to be made in order to possibly achieve success are often pretty identical to the situations in which making them cannot possibly result in something fruitful. That whole "stab in the dark" as to when you are or are not wasting everyone's time pretty much exist solely with Investigation. Everything else involves either the DM calling for it when it should be used or the PCs actively trying to achieve a tangible result from a tangible element of the world that can be interacted with. Investigation is the skill where you have to ask the DM if there are any interesting elements of the world to be interacted with that they just yet mentioned. And 90% of the time the answer to that is going to be "no! STOP ASKING!!"

There is a damn good reason why when this Investigation (i.e. Search) skill gets translated into electronic game versions of D&D, it gets turned into a passive skill like perception. If you pass within a certain distance of a trap or secret door or otherwise hidden object of interest, it lights up and becomes not hidden-- as opposed to requiring someone to have to spam the skill every 5 steps in case they are missing something and to avoid having neglected to spam it in those few times there is actually going to be a reward for having done so.

The fact that in tabletop one expects the player to continuously pester the DM, i.e. "spam" the skill, particularly when this is a real life person who could really lose their temper by having their game dragged down by an overly cautious PC and there are 4 other people at the table who can't play so long as one person insists on investigating everything constantly while conversely a computer just isn't going to mind... it is just generally bad game design, recognized as such and so people in general have stopped playing the game in that way. The way investigation works in the game is the way it is played at most tables-- which is that it is never used and even when it seems like it should be used, Perception is usually called for instead. At most tables your example of searching the Merchants room? At most tables that would be a Perception check in which you can substitute Investigation in if you are the odd person who actually took that skill.

Chaosmancer said:

Finally, to wrap things up because I have to go and mow the yard now, I think it is incredibly unfair to assume that this race is bad, and that it is bad on purpose, and that it is going to be automatically banned, and all of that was planned by the writers. As we’ve seen repeatedly in reference to Dragonborn and Tieflings, DMs are not only capable, but willing, to selectively ban races they don’t like. So if people consider the bugbear too powerful (which I haven’t heard yet, in fact I’ve heard they aren’t nearly as good as people say they are, because differences of opinion) they will ban the bugbear, not necessarily the Bugbear, Lizardfolk, Hobgoblin, Goblin, Kenku, ect.

The way Hobgoblins are written now, from my perspective, they are always decent warriors. They are always able to use a martial weapon regardless of class, they are tough, and they can adapt to any of the major martial races. And frankly, I don’t think changing that +1 INT to +1 STR or +1 DEX is going to magically make them vastly superior. Because as much as you tout that +1 to hit and damage as being so important… if they end up missing by 1 point, they save face and end up hitting anyways. That bonus is really good, even if it is per short rest, because you can see exactly how high of a bonus you are going to get, so you can choose never to waste it, unlike battle master precision attack or bardic inspiration or bless, which can always roll a 1 and be very unhelpful.

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It is not unfair of me to "assume" the race is bad. I see the numbers, I can directly compare it to the numbers of other available races. The fact that everyone's first thought for this race is "be a wizard!!" and no one at all is even attempting to suggest you could build a workable Fighter tells you something is damn screwed up. I even issued the challenge-- show me how one functionally builds a character with this that wouldn't be flat out better if it were a Mountain Dwarf or High Elf. Those are the most comparable two and both make both better Wizards and better Fighters than this does. And this almost certainly indicates that they win out on everything in between.

The save face ability is good, but it is good under very limited circumstances.
In fact, while it LOOKS like a unique ability, it is extremely comparable to Bardic Inspiration. Effectively it is like getting a Bardic Inspiration cast on yourself every short rest. Now the Bardic Inspiration at first level grants you d6 on a roll you know you failed. This increases to a D8, a D10 and finally a D12 at higher levels. So at higher levels it is actually much worse than just getting a Bardic Inspiration cast on yourself.

Now, granted, in a way it is better-- instead of rolling a die to see if you get enough points to succeed, you get to know exactly how many points you are getting. Which is... good..? Well... maybe.

You see, if you missed the roll by only 1 point then you do know that your Bardic Inspiration is going to succeed regardless. Also, if we are talking about attack rolls or primary attribute skill checks? Well, if you had chosen any race that would have given you the +2 to the stat you are actually using (i.e. High Elf and Mountain Dwarf giving you the +2 Dexterity and +2 Strength respectively) means you already would have had that +1 on this roll and every other attack roll or primary attribute skill check. You try to do a Hobgoblin Rogue and you are a -1 on every single Stealth and Acrobatics check you are making as well as every attack roll and every damage roll compared to the identical High Elf in addition to being 1 AC lower, and you might well be making one every single turn. The idea that the 1 hit point per level you are getting remotely makes up for that is just flat out laughable.

And, in case you forget, the High Elf does get the the best 1-handed martial weapon and the best martial ranged weapon in the game as part of its package, so the idea that the Hobgoblin gets anything special from those 2 martial weapons can be thrown right out the window and buried in the ground.

Anyway, so in most cases... this means that unless you have at least 2 allies watching you, then at best this is garnering you the absolute minimum a Bardic inspiration roll would have enabled you to make. This means you are required to keep your party size at 3 at all times in order for this ability that you are giving up a Cantrip and the Perception skill and resistance to Charm and immunity to Sleep and cutting your rest time in half for in order to even be capable of being a bonus in any way, shape or form.

Now, maybe you are going to be lucky enough to be able to have 5 other people or more at all times when desperate skill rolls. So in that situation at lower levels, yes this ability does become better than Bardic Inspiration. Bardic Inspiraton COULD give you a bigger bonus, but it is unreliable an the average bonus is lower. Of course, at higher levels? Well, the average Bardic Inspiration is going to be better than this ability and so while it is unreliable, it is going to be better than this ability 50% of the time.

But you aren't always going to have 5 allies surrounding you at all times and it is crap game design to insist that a RACE be required to be surrounded by allies at all times in order to even have an ability at all. As you eluded to-- parties DO split and do so for perfectly legit reasons. Sometimes the circumstances force them to split, other times they need to accomplish multiple things in a short amount of time. In these cases, the ONLY ability Hobgoblins get utterly vanishes into the nether and they are left demonstrable worse than all other races at all things period.

It is not an assumption that this is crap, it is absolute mathematically demonstrable fact. This "Save Face" ability is only half-decent only at lower levels and only if you manage to make sure that no matter what you do, in any situation you might ever be called upon to make a roll you are absolutely surrounded by allies. Constantly. That means no scouting, that means no personal side stories or projects, that means no spending the night crafting things by yourself... NONE of it! Anything your PC might ever do on their own, the only ability the race gets you is taken away and you are left with a race that is fully deficient from the package you would have gotten from any other race.

Oh, and in the case where you are doing something that you aren't trained in because you had to take Perception as one of your skills and couldn't take this skill instead?... Guess what? The identical High Elf character gets the maximum possible bonus the Save Face ability gives you on all of those rolls, no matter how many they do between each short rest.

In order to fix it, not only does that +1 need switched over from a attribute that is absolute garbage to one that can actually contribute to any class they are supposed to actually be, but they also need to trade one of those Martial Weapon proficiency, which are outright nullified by 90% of the classes in the game, to a bonus skill which is a benefit to a character regardless of the class. I might even suggest throwing in a tool proficiency if that doesn't seem too greedy.

And not just because Intelligence is a crap skill-- but because even if this book introduces a wizarding school for them, wizard is still pretty friggin' low on the list of the classes they have ever expected to be and the classes above that all used Dexterity, Wisdom or Charisma. If they were made Con/Dex or Con/Wis or Con/Cha, it wouldn't negatively affect this whole wizard concept anyway because getting a Con boost and a martial weapon of their choice is still going to be enough reason to play a Wizard without the unnecessary +1 Int. It is just going to open up a lot more classes as possibilities because nothing else uses Intelligence.

And the funny thing is... switching over the +1 bonus and then trading a weapon proficiency for a skill one? Well, that would be par for the course for a subrace.... but NOPE!! goblinoids are not allowed to have subraces. Those are only for Elves, Dwarves and Halflings! All hobgoblins have to be identical clones of each other with only a single very specific culture despite being spread clear across the entire world. (And since such a subrace would be infinitely more playable and the current one would only ever be used by Wizards... well... that alone would discourage it.)

And if accommodating this would mean making Save Face "worse" so that it was all the more clearly getting a single use of Bardic Inspiration on yourself once per a short rest... hey, so long as it also increased appropriately at the appropriate levels just like the High Elf Cantrip does, it would just make it all the more appropriate for a PC ability.

And if you think this new category of "Monster race" which get abilities that are designed wildly out-of-whack with the design philosophies of the other races and, in the case of Goblin and Bugbear, get abilities that PC races just aren't even supposed to get, was created as anything other than a clear and easy short-hand to ban them from play... you are insanely naive. In fact, you are also clearly misinformed about which races got stuck into this category. Lizardfolk and Kenku were not put into it, they are safe from any such ban.

I have seen Gnomes as Ranger and Warlock- no Wizards...

I have seen gnome of many classes, latest on my campaign is gnome monk.

Passive investigation can be used to notice things that are amiss. Like a missing room in a dungeon. Yoz can make history checks or investigation checks to make tactical decisins.
I'd really like an even more warlordy fighter that makes use of int or cha. The easiest way would be intrducing new fighting styles: warlord's style could be adding int to party initiative and cha to second wind healing which you may use on other people.

Many Battlemaster maneuvers could use Intelligence for their DC. The only reason they don't is for game-balance reasons.

Intelligence is KEY to tactical fighting and military command, so it makes perfect sense for hobgoblins to get a bonus.

@TheHobgoblin The only gnome character I've seen was a barbarian.
@Prakriti What game balance reasons prevented them from using Intelligence for that? If its not a major problem, I'll houserule that, because it makes sense.

TheHobgoblin said:

And that position is generally a terrible way to play the game anyway. You hide information away from your players that anyone born into that world who had lived their whole life in that world traveling to its locations and hearing its stories and interacting with its people would automatically know. And so the protagonist of your story don't know the first thing about their supposed homeland, instead walking in with the presumptions of our world and maybe that 1-page hand out and ten minutes of you explaining what races live in the world or something of the like. And so they fumble blind and naturally fall into the trap you had laid out to punish them for acting the "wrong" way or making the "wrong" presumptions according to your own personal headcanon that you didn't fill them in on but any denizen of the world would have known. And it is entirely on them to have to ask you every single turn before taking any action and making a test so they don't fall into your "clever" trap.

"oh, you decided to kill a deer in order to get food? Well, naturally EVERYONE knows that hunting here is illegal unless you are a noble and so now those 15th level guards riding up are going to arrest or kill you. Its your fault for not having made your intelligence rolls before taking any action." .

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So… I had to stop reading this and walk away for a moment.

If this is the perspective your working from, I think I get why you are so frustrated and angry.

This is nothing like what I said or meant. I spent hours in my session zero going over the world and details that the characters would obviously know. I despise my PCs not knowing the rules of the world, because then they can’t act in character, they can’t explore what their particular niche in the world is if they don’t understand it.

Know what I didn’t tell them? I didn’t tell them the history of a minor goddess who has no temple in their Tower City, but when a player rolled a ridicously high religion check, I told him of how she ascended to godhood after losing a 1v1 fight against a god called Bane.

When they encountered a Remorhaz in a dungeon, I had them roll. They would never have encountered this creature in their homes, it isn’t even native to the area they were in, it was something brought in by a 3^rd party. They didn’t roll high enough to learn much, but I did say the the one person had seen pictures of them before and knew that this one was an infant.
I told every single player about the fact that the ruler of their tower appears human, but has been the guy in charge for over a thousand years.

I told all of them about the High Nobel house which is the sole banking organization for the Tower, and writes contracts that include the use of dead bodies as collateral, because they are necromancers and use the zombies as slave labor to cover debts, they also charge insane interest rates and debt can travel through generations of families.


So, do me a small favor. Next time you feel the urge to rant about how terrible my style of play is, step back and think if you actually know what my style of play is. Because false accusations aren’t conducive to an actual discussion.

I’ll go back to reading the rest of your post now.

TheHobgoblin said:

"What's the history of this Inn?" "Who were the last 5 champions of the arena?" "What is the name of the chief tax collector of the area and what time does he come around?" "When is the next holiday in which the followers of this god participate?" Particularly with good rolls these are all things that a character should be able to know, but very likely not things the DM can't really answer-- either because they haven't read every single piece of information written on the setting or they had never thought up that stuff for their own setting. Either way, it likely has little to nothing to do with what the adventure was about and so this was left blank.

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There are a few ways to handle this.

Ask for a bit of extra time, or pretend to check your notes while thinking up an answer.
If it doesn’t matter to the adventure, then your answer doesn’t matter.
Who were the last 5 champions? Well, Heiroch the Shield is the current reigning champ, has been for six years running. Before that was Draun the Axecrusher, and before him was Trachel the Blade who took the title from his father Illishthen the Blade. The fifth would be the first champion of the Stonefist Arena, Took Stonefist, who held the title until he was found dead of poisoning in this very bar.

Took me about 3 minutes to come up with all that. Mostly because I am utterly terrible with coming up with names. Literally my weakest point as a DM.

Secondly, admit you don’t know off the top of your head and ask them why they want to know. If they just want to flesh out the setting and have no immediate use for the information, tell them you’ll write something up and give it to them next session.

I understand that as a writer, I’m more comfortable building a lot of lore and world compared to others, but just because you may not know the answer to every question doesn’t mean those skills can’t be used. After all, if the goal is to ambush the tax man, you can tell them they know when he is arriving and that they can wait the 3 weeks until his next scheduled stop. If they don’t feel like waiting 3 weeks, then you move on, you don’t need more detail than that until things move forward.

TheHobgoblin said:

Now, granted-- in games based on but different from D&D, I have seen this handled in a way where "the DM hasn't decided it, so the person who asked the question gets to make up the answer themselves". In which case it might be rewarding to ask questions. But that isn't the way it works in D&D.

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Unless they decide to do it that way. Nothing in the rules against it.

TheHobgoblin said:

Oh, and let's not forget... if you are a Bard of a particular level? All those skills get nullified. Anyone else who bothered to train in it has wasted their training.

Oh, sure. You could force a situation where you could see the party split and separate and thus try to make it so that one person can't just pass all those checks on the others' behalf. But you know what-- once you admit that it is even possible for the party to separate and a PC to be acting by themselves and having to pull their own weight? Yeah-- that's where you just admitted that the Hobgoblin stats are absolute utter crap. Because if it is even possible for a PC to be caught alone, then if you are playing them as any class that gets all Martial Weapons, or at least all Finesse Martial weapons if it is a Dex class, then the ONLY advantage you had at all goes straight down the toilet and you would be better off, at least no worse off, if you were literally any other race.

And, finally, I maintain-- no DM is going to let an entire adventure come to a complete screeching halt simply because a PC failed a lore skill check that left them without the important piece of information to know what to do next. There are many other skill checks which, if failed, and the result is a sufficient loss of hit points, the game will come to a screeching halt and all will consider it fair to do so... but never a failed lore check. Everyone would feel cheated if that were the case. So if the PC didn't get the piece of information, then the DM is going to give it to the players in some manner anyway. And most of the time without any real cost. They kind of have to.

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You really see things in a very adversarial light don’t you.

It kind of amuses me to a point, do you think that if one person isn’t trained in stealth or wears heavy armor they should retrain their character, because if only one person fails a stealth check the entire campaign could grind to a screeching halt because the only way forward was to sneak past the guards?

Of course not, lying and fighting are options. Hey, what if someone wanted to roll History to see if there could be an official reason to be in here? I don’t know if there is, but it might be a fun roll to make. Will people get angry at them for wasting everyone’s time, or will they be curious if that is the answer to the problem.

I’ve played with DMs where there was only one correct answer, and going the wrong way ground everything to a halt and made everything horrible, but just because a skill isn’t an “I win” button doesn’t mean it isn’t useful, just because someone else is good at something doesn’t mean your time was wasted, though I try to make players aware if they are stepping on too many toes, after all, some people get territorial about their niches.

And you know, I don’t need to do anything about splitting the party. Not only will they do it for me, but why on Earth would an elf know about the layout of the hobgoblin city they are infiltrating? That’s a history check I’d let a hobgoblin make, but not neccesarily anyone else. And, it could be great rping that Hobgoblins don’t like to split the party, move as a unit, fight as a unit. Makes perfect sense for them.

TheHobgoblin said:

Yes, there are rare, RARE, situations in which it will be clear you should use Investigation. RARE situations. As in it isn't going to come up even once every adventure, as opposed to Medicine or Stealth or Persuasion, which if those are you thing you will have nearly constant opportunity to use it with very clear goals you are trying to achieve by using them. And Perception is called for more than any other skill in the game. Pretty much every single time combat is going to begin in order to avoid spending an entire round taking damage and not being able to respond. Those are way higher stakes than anything any of the Intelligence skills are ever going to be deciding.



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The fact that in tabletop one expects the player to continuously pester the DM, i.e. "spam" the skill, particularly when this is a real life person who could really lose their temper by having their game dragged down by an overly cautious PC and there are 4 other people at the table who can't play so long as one person insists on investigating everything constantly while conversely a computer just isn't going to mind... it is just generally bad game design, recognized as such and so people in general have stopped playing the game in that way. The way investigation works in the game is the way it is played at most tables-- which is that it is never used and even when it seems like it should be used, Perception is usually called for instead. At most tables your example of searching the Merchants room? At most tables that would be a Perception check in which you can substitute Investigation in if you are the odd person who actually took that skill.

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A handful of things.
1) If the players ask to search a room, I am going to ask for investigation. That is what the skill is meant for, if everyone you’ve ever played with wants perception instead… well, homebrew is fine, but that isn’t what that skill is meant for. I remember when talking about my player crafting items you were very clear that homebrew rules weren’t something we should be using to compare, and yet that is exactly what you are talking about, people homebrewing to make the skill less useful

2) You didn’t address the fact the PHB actually calls for more specificity from Perception, not Investigation

3) Out of curiosity, how is “Do I see anything down this hallway?” “Is there anything interesting in this room” “Do I see where he might have stashed the loot” ect less pestering if the DM replies “Roll perception” than if they reply “Roll Investigation”?

You’re talking like people need to constantly ask for one, but they never need to ask for the other, bu =t your examples seem overwhelmingly to require them to ask no matter what?

4) Do you honestly see so much use of Medicine? I’m playing a doctor character (Gnome Life Cleric) and I’ve only used Medicine a handful of times, I never would have pegged it as one of the big skills.

TheHobgoblin said:

It is not unfair of me to "assume" the race is bad. I see the numbers, I can directly compare it to the numbers of other available races. The fact that everyone's first thought for this race is "be a wizard!!" and no one at all is even attempting to suggest you could build a workable Fighter tells you something is damn screwed up. I even issued the challenge-- show me how one functionally builds a character with this that wouldn't be flat out better if it were a Mountain Dwarf or High Elf. Those are the most comparable two and both make both better Wizards and better Fighters than this does. And this almost certainly indicates that they win out on everything in between.



SNIP

And if you think this new category of "Monster race" which get abilities that are designed wildly out-of-whack with the design philosophies of the other races and, in the case of Goblin and Bugbear, get abilities that PC races just aren't even supposed to get, was created as anything other than a clear and easy short-hand to ban them from play... you are insanely naive. In fact, you are also clearly misinformed about which races got stuck into this category. Lizardfolk and Kenku were not put into it, they are safe from any such ban.

Click to expand...

Honestly, I can barely follow half of what you’re saying.

They get an ability comparable to a class ability and it is absolute crap?

You want a Fighter Hobgoblin that is viable, and just as good as a Mountain Dwarf? Sure, I’ll throw together one real fast, just base stats though, not taking the time to list all the abilities. I’ll even throw in a non-variant human, just for fun.

[sblock]
Hobgoblin Fighter lv 1
Hp: 13 AC: 18
Str: 15 (+2) Dex: 10 (+0) Con 16 (+3) Int: 14 (+2) Wis 12 (+1) Cha 8 (-1)

Shield and Longsword +4 1d8+2

Dwarf Fighter lv 1
Hp: 13 AC: 18
Str: 17 (+3) Dex: 10 (+0) Con 16 (+3) Int: 13 (+1) Wis 12 (+1) Cha 8 (-1)

Shield and Longsword +5 1d8+3

Human Fighter lv 1
Hp: 12 AC: 18
Str: 16 (+3) Dex: 11 (+0) Con 15 (+2) Int: 14 (+2) Wis 13 (+1) Cha 9 (-1)

Shield and Longsword +5 1d8+3


Nearly identical, all are viable to play, I could have fun with any, even if the others were in the party. Let’s say they hit 3^rd and continue being identical?

Hobgoblin Fighter Eldritch Knight lv 3
Hp: 31 AC: 18
Str: 15 (+2) Dex: 10 (+0) Con 16 (+3) Int: 14 (+2) Wis 12 (+1) Cha 8 (-1)

Shield and Longsword +4 1d8+2

Dwarf Fighter Eldritch Knight lv 3
Hp: 31 AC: 18
Str: 17 (+3) Dex: 10 (+0) Con 16 (+3) Int: 13 (+1) Wis 12 (+1) Cha 8 (-1)

Shield and Longsword +5 1d8+3

Human Fighter lv 1
Hp: 29 AC: 18
Str: 16 (+3) Dex: 11 (+0) Con 15 (+2) Int: 14 (+2) Wis 13 (+1) Cha 9 (-1)

Shield and Longsword +5 1d8+3


Of course, could have gone Battlemaster, nothing prevents it. Even fits really well, by 4^th grab a feat that includes a +1 strength, like Athlete or Heavy Armor Master to hit even numbers, unless playing the human. And you’re off to the races [/sblock]

Now, I admit, I haven’t looked back at the preview information in a bit, so I didn’t know that Lizardfolk and Kenku (both found in the Monster Manual as Monsters) didn’t get listed as Monstrous Races. I remembered Lizardfolk getting a large write u beside Orcs and Gnolls and Yuan-TI and Illithids, you, as monsters, so I figured they were in that list as well.

But again, considering that there is a document on GM’s Guild which specifically makes it legal to play Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Yuan-Ti, and all the rest… I have to say you are dead wrong that they created these races so poorly so they would be auto-banned at all tables.

They are not banned at official tables, so Wizards must think they did something right, or they are conspiring against you, your choice I suppose.

[MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION]
I am impressed how much time you took for a great answer to a terrible rant.

Players get access to 3 new potential animal companions, the Dimeson, Velasaraptor, and Deep Rothe.

Personally I like the idea of a Drow with a Deep Rothe companion, say a Drow farmer who took his favourite rothe with his when he or she left.

For summonable Fey they have Meenlocks, Dark Ones, Dark One Elders, Quicklings, Red Caps, Yeth Hounds, Annis Hag, Bluer Hags, and best of all the Korreds.

Korreds can use Conjure Elemental once a day, so you can get it to summon a Gargoyle, Earth Elemental, Xorn, and Abu Darh (earth dwarves things). Also Otto's Irresitible Dance once a day, a rope it can command, and as long as its in contact with earth, it deals 2 extra dice on weapon attacks, both melee and a ranged rock attack.

Summoning a Darkling Elder is at at will Darkness on command and they have blindsight.