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

[CrusaderX]

A revamped Aasimar was on the top of my wish list for all of 5e. I'm extremely satisfied with the results here. Thank you, WotC.

 

[gyor]

As far as I can tell the Fey I counted are Quickling, Redcap, Darkling, Darkling Elder, Annis Hag, Bluer Hag, and maybe Xvart, but I don't know if they are Fey. I'd personally make the Boggle into a Fey, but its likely a Monstersity or Abberrantion.

For Celestial all I saw was the Ki-rin.

Fiends include Maw Demon, Shoosuva, Yeth Hound.

Look up Xvarts, in 4e they were originally gnomes, who were experimented on them, and then with the help of hags they escaped to the Shadowfell.

My gut tells me that Xvarts are going to be Fey, maybe they will play up the Hag connection. In fact I bet they do that will all the Fey, given that Hags have their own special section in the book and most if not all the Fey in the book lean towards evil.

 

[flametitan]

Oh, we have quicklings now? One of the ToD Icons minis I got was a quickling, and now we have proper stats for it. Yay.

Now if only we had stats for the fire bat minis I got from the Elemental Evil board game.

 

[the Jester]

Is there more to the table of contents on the next page? A tweet a while back mentioned the zorbo in combination with a couple of the monsters in here; I'm wondering if it made it into the book.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Man, those Aasimar look incredibly powerful. I love them, but I'd have to be very careful allowing one in game I think.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Man, those Aasimar look incredibly powerful. I love them, but I'd have to be very careful allowing one in game I think.

I actually think they look a bit meh, especially the Fallen Aasimar. One round of fear is not much; minor healing once per long rest is okay, but doesn't compare to the variant human with Healer feat. The bonus necrotic damage, eh... It would be more impressive as a bonus action, but as an action, it will take three or four rounds for you to even break even on damage compared to just using that action for attacks. The weaker your normal attacks are, the better Necrotic Shroud is; a 10th level Sorcerer using Fire Bolt might break even in only one or two rounds, but a feature that turns your cantrips once per day from weaksauce into something competitive with a fighter's weapons is nowhere close to broken. It isn't terrible, but it isn't transformative either the way Nimble Escape or a feat like Mobile, Sentinel, or Warcaster is. The Feral Tiefling's Wings from SCAG are far, far better than anything the Aasimar gets.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Available on Fantasy Grounds now (went live midnight eastern time). They did a good job on the conversion.

 

[flametitan]

I actually think they look a bit meh, especially the Fallen Aasimar. One round of fear is not much; minor healing once per long rest is okay, but doesn't compare to the variant human with Healer feat. The bonus necrotic damage, eh... It would be more impressive as a bonus action, but as an action, it will take three or four rounds for you to even break even on damage compared to just using that action for attacks. The weaker your normal attacks are, the better Necrotic Shroud is; a 10th level Sorcerer using Fire Bolt might break even in only one or two rounds, but a feature that turns your cantrips once per day from weaksauce into something competitive with a fighter's weapons is nowhere close to broken. It isn't terrible, but it isn't transformative either the way Nimble Escape or a feat like Mobile, Sentinel, or Warcaster is. The Feral Tiefling's Wings from SCAG are far, far better than anything the Aasimar gets.

Either I'm misreading you or your misreading the extra damage. The extra damage is added once per turn on top of what you normally inflict. Aside from the action to enter it, it's free damage.

 

[Dualazi]

Either I'm misreading you or your misreading the extra damage. The extra damage is added once per turn on top of what you normally inflict. Aside from the action to enter it, it's free damage.

As written from that posted image I agree, and it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of room for interpretation. As such, I’d ban this in a heartbeat, that firepower amp is insane. Even at third level it’s basically doubling your modifier to damage in most cases, and while it doesn’t synergize as well with multiple attacks, they do increase its reliability. The fact that it doesn’t require any effort to trigger and comes with free CC out of the gate is just gravy. The fact that it’s necrotic damage is a slight downside, but even with the plethora of undead in D&D this still seems too good.

If you assume that a player has even 50% uptime on the ability, at 10^th level that’ll be an extra 50 damage that encounter. Are there any other racial abilities that can contribute that level of combat strength?

 

[gyor]

As written from that posted image I agree, and it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of room for interpretation. As such, I’d ban this in a heartbeat, that firepower amp is insane. Even at third level it’s basically doubling your modifier to damage in most cases, and while it doesn’t synergize as well with multiple attacks, they do increase its reliability. The fact that it doesn’t require any effort to trigger and comes with free CC out of the gate is just gravy. The fact that it’s necrotic damage is a slight downside, but even with the plethora of undead in D&D this still seems too good.

If you assume that a player has even 50% uptime on the ability, at 10^th level that’ll be an extra 50 damage that encounter. Are there any other racial abilities that can contribute that level of combat strength?

50 - whatever you otherwise would have dealt during the action you used to activate it. So say normally you deal 2D12 + 10 damage in a round via 2 attacks that's what an average of 27 damage? So 50-27 is only 23 total bonus damage over a whole encounter, less if everything is dead before the minute is up.

So no, not over powered.