D&D (2024) D&D Monster Manual (2025)

[JEB]

Well, actually . . . the Realms already had dragon-people before 4th Edition, during 2E actually. They were an obscure race, written as antagonists (monsters) . . . I only remember them from one of the Monstrous Compendium appendixes, which pulled them from an earlier source . . .

Yep, the dragonkin. They actually made it into 3e, as well. Then dragonborn came along...

 

[dave2008]

As an aside, I'd love to see a thread on "Make Monsters Scary Again".

A place to discuss ways to get the characters, and their players, actually a bit anxious about the myriad mythical monsters they encounter.

Stuff like:

- show evidence of the monsters' deeds (destroyed farms, bodies of victims, lingering effects of their presence etc...) nice stuff from the WItcher RPG by Talsorian games

- adjust the stat blocks so that they're not banal and routine ("whaddaya mean these trolls aren't bothered by fire?")

- Monster tactics (eg insights from books like "The Monsters KNow What They're Doing", by Keith Ammann)

- Typical monster allies, hangers on and parasites (stirges follow the creature about because of all of the blood that gets splattered in their wake, goblins always have wolves and small fey sprites, Drow always have monstrous, expendable slaves etc)

- Thematic "finishing moves" or scary critical hits or "bloodied condition" effects (at 50% HP the vampire vomits a fountain of blood at the heroes, possibly blinding and choking them, the Death Knight may decapitate or chop off a limb on a target with a critical etc...)

Why not start that thread then instead of posting about such a thread in this thread?

 

[dave2008]

Knowing that Athas's sun eventually turns into a black hole in Spelljammer canon doesn't in any way destroy the Dark Sun setting for me. Similarly, knowing that our sun will likely engulf Earth within eight billion years does't spoil my enjoyment of the planet right now.

Well in Doomspace, IIRC, the death of the world was imminent. Like next month or a year at most, not 8 billion years down the road.

 

[Remathilis]

Dragonlance says hi

So Dragonlance is reset to 351 AC.
Ravenloft is reset 735 per CoS and VRGR
Eberron is perpetually in 998 YK.
Greyhawk is back to 576 CY.
Forgotten Realms is set to 1490. It's the only setting that wasn't reset.
Spelljammer lists no year.
Planescape lists no year either, but it's clearly before Faction War

I think Eve of Ruin is supposed to imply these settings are roughly happening at the same time. So while it doesn't make sense that Faerun gained 100 years and everyone else lost decades (or greater), it makes every setting happening roughly at the same time. Which is why putting a Dark Sun dying in Spelljammer and then releasing a book some point in the past seems counter-intuitive.

Its moot regardless. Athas didn't die. The playtesters saved it. And a new Dark Sun book will most likely be set like 4e was.

 

[dave2008]

My hope would be that they stick with 5e. Level Up did after all

Well so did WotC. I mean 2024 5e is more like 2014 5e than LevelUp is like either version. That is not a knock on LevelUp, to me it just shows that 3PP are plenty happy swimming in the expanded 5e waters.

 

[Remathilis]

Well in Doomspace, IIRC, the death of the world was imminent. Like next month or a year at most, not 8 billion years down the road.

Its implied its time measured in months, if not days for some of the moons.

 

[Hussar]

So Dragonlance is reset to 351 AC.
Ravenloft is reset 735 per CoS and VRGR
Eberron is perpetually in 998 YK.
Greyhawk is back to 576 CY.
Forgotten Realms is set to 1490. It's the only setting that wasn't reset.
Spelljammer lists no year.
Planescape lists no year either, but it's clearly before Faction War

I think Eve of Ruin is supposed to imply these settings are roughly happening at the same time. So while it doesn't make sense that Faerun gained 100 years and everyone else lost decades (or greater), it makes every setting happening roughly at the same time. Which is why putting a Dark Sun dying in Spelljammer and then releasing a book some point in the past seems counter-intuitive.

Its moot regardless. Athas didn't die. The playtesters saved it. And a new Dark Sun book will most likely be set like 4e was.

I think Eve of Ruin more implies that you travel to various alternate universe settings at specific points in time. Not that all these points are congruent.

 

[Parmandur]

Everyone has an accent. Tolkien’s was Public School/BBC, which I expect is the kind of English accent you are most familiar with. I sound very different.

Certainly everyone has an accent: what I meant was that Tolkien sounded less foreign to my ears than the standard upperclass RP speakers I am familiar with. And, interestingly, my own General American accent is derived from the Early Modern Midlands accent being filtered through German immigrants, as I understand it, though I do not have an ear for British accents other than vague vibes.

Tolkien's interests were tied strongly into the Midlands, for sure: the anonymous Gawaon/Pearl Poet that he worked on exetensively as an academic came from Staffordshire, same as Arthur Tolkien, and Tolkien managed to sneak some Midlands Middle English variants back into Modern English through his books.

 

[Demetrios1453]

So Dragonlance is reset to 351 AC.
Ravenloft is reset 735 per CoS and VRGR
Eberron is perpetually in 998 YK.
Greyhawk is back to 576 CY.
Forgotten Realms is set to 1490. It's the only setting that wasn't reset.
Spelljammer lists no year.
Planescape lists no year either, but it's clearly before Faction War

I think Eve of Ruin is supposed to imply these settings are roughly happening at the same time. So while it doesn't make sense that Faerun gained 100 years and everyone else lost decades (or greater), it makes every setting happening roughly at the same time. Which is why putting a Dark Sun dying in Spelljammer and then releasing a book some point in the past seems counter-intuitive.

Its moot regardless. Athas didn't die. The playtesters saved it. And a new Dark Sun book will most likely be set like 4e was.

As I said previously, Eve of Ruin specifically has time travel in it (Tasha/Iggwilv is a past version who is temporarily in the present). While it's not explicitly stated during the adventures to the various worlds that time travel is involved, it's not excluded either.

 

[the Jester]

Planescape lists no year either, but it's clearly before Faction War

I've never read Faction War, but the 5e treatment of Planescape certainly seems to imply that it's after FW to me. The fact that some factions have disappeared or been replaced by others, and some have faded into minor faction status, etc, and that all the old 2e ones are acknowledged as having been major factions in the recent past seems to set the 5e version after the 2e material. But again, having not read FW, I could be missing some crucial bits of information that would make me read it the other way.