D&D 5E D&D Studio Blog - Sage Advice - Creature Evolutions

There's a new D&D Studio Blog - Jeremy's posted about "Creature Evolutions": Creature Evolutions | Dungeons & Dragons

Some quick takeaways:

• Some creatures that were formerly humanoids will, going forward, be monstrosities, fey, or something else. ("Humanoid" is reserved for creatures with similar "moral and cultural range" to humans.)
• Alignment got put in a "time out".
• They've started using class tags so that DMs know that a particular NPC can attune to magic items limited to a particular class.
• Bonus actions get their own section in the stat block now.
• They've merged the Innate Spellcasting and Spellcasting traits and have gotten rid of spell slots.

Also some stuff we've already guessed based on the stat blocks and playable races in Wild Beyond the Witchlight.

There's also some Sage Advice on "rabbit hops" for harengon PCs.

 

[Scribe]

Languages: Was this a common complaint, that dwarves usually know Dwarvish or elves usually know Elvish? I don't understand why a default here is a no-go, as long as you make it clear you can pick whatever.

Because you cannot say something is innate, about a thing. It must be 'culture' instead.

 

[bedir than]

Languages: Was this a common complaint, that dwarves usually know Dwarvish or elves usually know Elvish? I don't understand why a default here is a no-go, as long as you make it clear you can pick whatever.

Being born knowing a language is pretty rare. Languages are learned. So who does the teaching matters more than who your parents are.
This change is related to the changes on weapon proficiencies and skills. Having every adventurer from a certain race have all of the same learned skills (tools, languages, etc) makes absolutely zero sense.

 

[dave2008]

Which, they could already do.

And you can have what you want with these new guidelines as well in the same way. Some people have a hard time breaking out of their shell and need it in print. It goes both ways. Like I said, it is just point of view issue.

 

[dave2008]

Because you cannot say something is innate, about a thing. It must be 'culture' instead.

Well language is pretty obviously cultural - so that got that one right.

EDIT: of course you could have languages that can't be physically spoken by some creatures. A read a book a long time ago (West of Eden) that had a race of dinosaur people that partially communicated by changing color. The human slaves could not fully replicate their language because of this.

 

[JEB]

Because you cannot say something is innate, about a thing. It must be 'culture' instead.

Then don't say it's innate, say it's culture? "Dwarves from a traditional dwarf culture typically speak Dwarvish in addition to Common. But your dwarf character can come from any kind of culture and choose any other language."

EDIT: Technically, isn't it just as weird to declare that all races speak Common by default?

 

[Scribe]

Well language us pretty obviously cultural - so that got that one right.

Yes, thats what I mean though. They do not want anything that could be anything other than the specific rules, to be defined by them.

 

[Scribe]

Then don't say it's innate, say it's culture? "Dwarves from a traditional dwarf culture typically speak Dwarvish in addition to Common. But your dwarf character can come from any kind of culture and choose any other language."

EDIT: Technically, isn't it just as weird to declare that all races speak Common by default?

"Why does my Dwarf who was raised by Elves speak Dwarvish."

They are not going to say a race is anything outside of a few special rules.

This is the answer to saying 'what makes race X, race X.'

Nothing beyond a few special rules, everything else, left up to the DM to decide, or the player.

 

[bedir than]

They are not going to say a race is anything outside of a few special rules.

This repeated claim ignores that the "special rules" more clearly define races than attributes, and that story (often dismissed as fluff) still matters. There are 1000s of 1000s of words on every D&D race

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

"Why does my Dwarf who was raised by Elves speak Dwarvish."

“Because language is innate.“

-Gnome Chomsky

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Some creatures that were formerly humanoids will, going forward, be monstrosities, fey, or something else. ("Humanoid" is reserved for creatures with similar "moral and cultural range" to humans.)

I really hope this doesn't mean that gnolls become non-humanoid.

This. Volo's essentially turned gnolls into demon-spawn with no real culture or biological means of propagating their species. In light of WotC's more recent rethinking on alignment and what it means to be a humanoid, I don't see how gnolls can keep that tag. They're going to have to be retagged as monstrosities or maybe even fiends.

Or, they might regain their reason, and give gnolls new lore.

Over/under Warforged become constructs?

I don't think it will happen. They aren't going to want to create new spells just to be able to heal Warforged. That is way outside the 5e design mentality.

EDIT: Technically, isn't it just as weird to declare that all races speak Common by default?

I like my best friend's take on this for his world. Common is short for the Tongue of Common Prayer, which was taught to mortals by angels during the Demon War, when fiends exploded out of an erupting mountaintop and waged nearly apocalyptic war against the world.

The language they created for this purpose came from Celestial, which has the divine property of being understood by all who hear it. Thus, this Common language is preternaturally easy to learn, with even disinterested folk who spend time around Common speakers picking up enough to have a basic conversation, and eventually gain fluency.