D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Faolyn]

The issue becomes... what do you cut?

"Greater" monsters. By which I mean, things like goblin and goblin boss. Instead, you have a somewhat expanded list of NPC statblocks and then say things like "to make a goblin boss, put traits X, Y, and Z on the Bandit Captain statblock." Or even just take something like the racial template list from the DMG and put it in front of the NPC Statblock section, which is something they should have done in the first place.

If they continue to make things like death dogs and blink dogs into very abbreviated entries, they could also do the same with griffons, hippogriffs, and owlbears.

And, well, they can shrink the artwork a bit.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Already, the 5e MM has a rather pathetic selection of 11+ Challenge monsters. Furthermore, most people will want the "classic staple" monsters they are used to (4e reserved some classics for MM2 and it was not well received).

The initial 4E MM was at least interesting because it had a good number of creatures from 3.5's later Monster Manuals. I guess at least some people on the staff were invested in trying to make the monsters they invented for the later years of 3.5 stick around, but that definitely backfired.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Devils are ALWAYS in the details.

Like some have implied, flesh out the major stuff, and you might not need as many niche critters. ( And I say this as an elf-phile who thought there were WAY too many elf variants.)

 

[Zardnaar]

Devils are ALWAYS in the details.

Like some have implied, flesh out the major stuff, and you might not need as many niche critters. ( And I say this as an elf-phile who thought there were WAY too many elf variants.)

Elves are the most adaptable species in D&D. All they have to do is move to an area and boom new varient.

Waiting for the Kuiper Belt Object elf.

 

[Maxperson]

Devils are ALWAYS in the details.

Pretty sure Devils are usually in the monster books. Yep! There they are between Demon and Dinosaur.

 

[Remathilis]

"Greater" monsters. By which I mean, things like goblin and goblin boss. Instead, you have a somewhat expanded list of NPC statblocks and then say things like "to make a goblin boss, put traits X, Y, and Z on the Bandit Captain statblock." Or even just take something like the racial template list from the DMG and put it in front of the NPC Statblock section, which is something they should have done in the first place.

If they continue to make things like death dogs and blink dogs into very abbreviated entries, they could also do the same with griffons, hippogriffs, and owlbears.

And, well, they can shrink the artwork a bit.

Interestingly, that seemed to be a holdover from 4e's design paradigm where you had "elite" monsters with unique abilities; goblin boss, drow priestess, Eye of Gruumsh, etc. I guess if we are going to treat goblins, orcs, and drow as PC races (note the lack of PHB PC races in the MM) you could cut a lot of humanoids out and plop them in with dual-purpose PC/NPC stats.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Devils are ALWAYS in the details.

And also present in far too large of numbers in every MM.

There's what you cut: the 50 pages of demons, devils and drow that glut every MM.

 

[Zardnaar]

And also present in far too large of numbers in every MM.

There's what you cut: the 50 pages of demons, devils and drow that glut every MM.

There's a reason they're in there.

 

[Hussar]

Talk about stating opinion as fact! A body of work depends upon the author for its existence, and is initially shaped by that person's experiences (positive and negative). In what possible universe are they the "least important element of any body of work"? You can choose to ignore them in analysis and adaptation, of course, but that decision makes them not important to you, not in general.

Nope. Understanding a work does not mean you need to know the first thing about the author and I can prove it in three words.

James Tiptree Jr.

For those who don't know, James Tiptree Jr. is a seminal author of SF. One of the founders of the genre really. Won all sorts of accolades, to the point where one one the highest SF awards you can win is the Jame Tiptree Jr award. (Now renamed as the Sheldon Award.)

However, James Tiptree Jr. is a pen name for Alison Bradley Sheldon and never existed. Not only did James Tiptree Jr. never exist, but, no one actually knew who James Tiptree Jr. was for a decade or more. Yet, James Tiptree Jr. won all sorts of SF awards, was widely read and critiqued.

Now, according to those who claim that the author is important, it would be impossible to actually understand the works because we don't know the author. Yet, apparently, it wasn't all that difficult to understand.

So, no, the author is the least important element in understanding and critiquing a work. This is basic Lit Crit 101 stuff. I mean, if you don't like this example, then tell me this. Without looking it up, who wrote The Wrath of Khan? Could you understand the work without knowing the author? Empire Strikes back? The Matrix? Any of a hundred other works that you can talk about without having the first clue who wrote it?

 

[Hussar]

I'm unaware of any metrics concerning how likely it is for a DM to primarily use the Monster Manual as a means for finding interesting things for their PCs to fight and to read lore facilitated to creating reasons for PCs to need to fight them versus wanting to use them as more fleshed-out NPCs that aren't automatically antagonists

Well, given the reaction to 4e's approach to monster lore, I would say that there are some who find extensive Monster Manual lore to be EXTREMELY important.