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

[Chaosmancer]

I played and GMd a year of 4e and gave up on it. Their lore wasn't my D&D, so I tossed the whole thing on its ear and stuck with what I liked, assuming it would eventually pass.

So you are walking back your previous statement.

And for the most part it did. When 5e started it felt like they were going back to the lore I remembered, or at least weren't contradicting it directly all that much (I still hate the 5e beholder origin). But instead they tore it to pieces and made a collage. Even 4e didn't do that; they just replaced everything at once, which ironically was easier to ignore.

See, and things like this just baffle me. The dream origin for Beholders is so utterly fascinating. I never had a single interest in them before that. But here we are with you calling out on of the coolest bits of DnD lore as them tearing everything apart and making a collage (which I assume you mean disparagingly) all because... they didn't just keep the 4e lore (which was really good) and they didn't completely match up their game to your multi-decades old memories of games from before the turn of the century.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Your way is anti-creativity. If metaplot is required to justify any changes to the setting than a) if your setting has a perfect starting scenario (Eberron), then you have to abandon that perfect starting date and explain what else changes as time progresses (technology, politics, new NPCs) and b) work backwards from the changes you want to make to the justifications you have to make to implement that change.

Like, for an example of why I think metaplot is a plague on D&D settings, the Dragonborn. In 4e WotC wanted to add Dragonborn as one of the core races of D&D. Which in a roleplaying game called "Dungeons and Dragons," anthropomorphic dragon people being a major player option just makes sense. However, they didn't want to have all Dragonborn be created by Bahamut (like they were in 3.5e) and needed a justification for why there's suddenly all these Dragon people walking around the Forgotten Realms now. Ideally, they should have just snapped their fingers and said "Dragonborn exist now, they've always existed." In which case, most people would judge the new race based on how interesting they were.

But, because the Forgotten Realms has this terrible tradition of using metaplot to change the setting in extreme ways, they came up with the idea that Dragonborn come from a continent on a parallel universe that was shunted onto Toril because the God of Lies murdered the Goddess of Magic (which is like the 3rd time she has died). And that's where Dragonborn come from, kids. Which is unbelievably stupid. Technically it's "justified/allowed" according to your guidelines for what makes a good "retcon," but that doesn't make it good. And a lot of people hated this justification, and dismissed the race as being terrible because WotC's lore for where they came from was terrible.

So, Goliaths are a core player race in the 2024 Player's Handbook, but they don't really have a big role in Eberron. There have been minor references to them before and Keith has proposed a few ways you could include them in your Eberron, but they are not a core Eberron race. Let's assume that WotC comes out with a new Eberron book in a year or two, and decide that all of the core races of the PHB need to have a major role on Eberron, but also assume your approach to worldbuilding, so they say "100 years have passed since the original Eberron starting date, and in that time a continent from an alternate universe has teleported to the setting and it's inhabited by Goliaths," I would think that's idiotic and proof WotC didn't understand the setting. I wouldn't buy that book and if any of my players asked to play a Goliath, I'd come up with literally any other justification for why they exist in the setting. Because the way Dragonborn were introduced to Eberron was infinitely better than this. But progressing the timeline in order to introduce a new race is stupid and ruins the feel of the world.

Which is why I think your approach to lore, where every change to a setting has to be justified with metaplot, is really bad. Just an awful approach to worldbuilding that would ruin so many of the settings that I love because you don't like retcons. It's way better to wave your hand and change the setting to how you want it to be. If the change is good, great! Future books in that setting can keep using it. But if the change sucks, they can just wave their hand again in the next book and ignore that it ever happened.

You consider consistency to be more important than quality. I consider quality to be more important than consistency.

I mostly agree with all this (nitpicks here and there). One of the greatest gifts of Eberron to its DMs is that there are no canon answers to the greatest mysteries, and it is always starting from the same start point. Those two things have allowed for the lore to be made so, so, so much better and more robust than what I've seen from other settings.

 

[Chaosmancer]

To add: I think there's also a concern from a design standpoint that removing the stated, concrete reasons for these bonuses makes it harder to reverse engineer and build your own creatures intended to have such traits. At least, harder than it was in 2014 5e.

Eh, I'm not so sure about that.

Can you reverse engineer to give a monster expertise in a skill? Yes, and you can make up whatever lore reason you need for that monster. Again, the specific lore question being asked in regards to keen senses is "why is this dog really good at noticing things" which... the entire reason that dogs exist and live with us is because they are good at noticing things.

Now, maybe you have more of a struggle with things like the Bugbear dealing more damage per attack. That's a bit harder to reverse engineer... but again, you just need to determine the damage you want them to do. 3d4+3 is an average of 10.5 And the bugbear could also deal 1d12+3 and deal 9.5 and be pretty close.

If you are reverse-engineering for damage, you just find the average you want per round and figure out the way you want to hit it. You don't need a trait explaining why this extra die is there.

 

[Chaosmancer]

In a story (which is how I see the lore of D&D until 4e), if you change the story, there ought to be a reason in-setting why that happened. The problem here is that you and I don't see the body of lore in D&D as the same kind of thing. To you its the setting for your game and anything else is (seemingly) a regrettable side effect of that. To me, it's a more or less continuous story abruptly ended.

Eberron fans are, I have been told, a special group of folks who don't see lore in D&D the same way as fans of other settings. Perhaps because Eberron lore really is just a setting for an RPG (albeit a detailed and cool one), like you want.

I keep re-reading this, trying to understand the position that causes you to think your opinion should have any priority, while you admit you don't even want to consider a game setting as being used as a game setting.

It is like seeing someone upset that a clock tells time, because they prefer to use their clocks as paintings, and they wish the arms weren't quite so noticeable. It is a clock, not a painting. Game Settings are Game Settings, not novels. You a free to read them if you deeply desire to, but when you start presenting opinions that make them worse game settings to make them better novels... you are working against their entire intended existence.

 

[Chaosmancer]

OK, that's pretty funny.

Obviously I don't like it, but I certainly don't think WotC is trying to harm my experience personally. That would be ridiculous.

Like I've said, I feel the publishing environment for 5e would be stronger if 3pp had the clear option to remain with 5e or move to 6e, rather than the pressure to make whatever changes WotC institutes in the official game in their own products. I've seen 3pp chasing that dragon to what is IMO their creative detriment, since theircre-releasing existingbproduct with changes to appease WotC supporters rather than making new product.

Is there even a single 3PP creator that has been "forced" to use WotC's lore? Their Copyrighted lore?

 

[Chaosmancer]

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...)

Honestly, SOOO much can be done with flavor text. I had a villain once who smashed their staff into the ground, sending a wave of force energy which hit every single target. Freaked the players out. It was a Mage casting 9th level magic missile. But because I didn't describe it that way, it was unknown, and that made it terrifying.

 

[mamba]

Now, maybe you have more of a struggle with things like the Bugbear dealing more damage per attack. That's a bit harder to reverse engineer... but again, you just need to determine the damage you want them to do. 3d4+3 is an average of 10.5 And the bugbear could also deal 1d12+3 and deal 9.5 and be pretty close.

If you are reverse-engineering for damage, you just find the average you want per round and figure out the way you want to hit it. You don't need a trait explaining why this extra die is there.

they are not trying to replicate the bugbear, they are trying to understand how it ended up that way

 

[Chaosmancer]

they are not trying to replicate the bugbear, they are trying to understand how it ended up that way

Why does an Air Elemental's fist deal 2d8 damage, while an Awakened Tree's Fist does 3d6 damage, and a Clay Golem's does 2d10 and an Earth Elemental does 2d8?

You might say that their size plays into it, but why do elementals deal d8's and the golem a d10? You might argue the Tree and Treant do d6's because they are plants, until you see the Twig blight does d4's. And if it is size, why do the medium Mummy's deal 2d6 then 3d6 extra instead of 1d6? Same with the ghoul dealing 2d6? Maybe it is because of undead? But the Vampire does 1d8.

Or. Maybe. Trying to understand why they picked specific numbers for the damage dice is a little hit or miss, unless they named the attack after a weapon. Because their actual concern was reaching an average, and making sure the nature of the attack was thematic. At a certain point, the why for damage is... because.

 

[JEB]

they are not trying to replicate the bugbear, they are trying to understand how it ended up that way

Those aren't mutually exclusive goals, to be fair. Reverse engineering makes it easier to homebrew variants of existing monsters, as much as building a new one from scratch with comparable powers.

 

[dave2008]

Those aren't mutually exclusive goals, to be fair. Reverse engineering makes it easier to homebrew variants of existing monsters, as much as building a new one from scratch with comparable powers.

But to reverse engineer damage and build new ones from scratch knowing what the "Brute" trait is was never necessary. You just need to know how much damage the monster does, that is it.