D&D (2024) Its till just me or is the 2024 MM heavily infused by more 4e influences?

[MonsterEnvy]

Ahh, well, that ship sailed a LONG time ago. 5e has always gone very, very high magic. The classes, the entire system, is high magic. So, yeah, if that's what's tipping you over, then, well, I can get on board there. I've been lamenting how high magic D&D has become since the release of 5e in 2014.

And 4e and 3e I am guessing

 

[MichaelSomething]

Wait, do people want a return to slashing/piecing/bludgeoning damage types??
Didn't people complain about how it encourages the "golf bag of weapons"??

 

[Hussar]

And [emoji640]e and [emoji639]e I am guessing

Not really. [emoji640]e actually strongly supported low and very low magic gaming. [emoji639]e could do it with a bit of jiggery pokery with the healing rules.

It’s not like now where [emoji[emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]][emoji640][emoji6[emoji640][emoji637]]][emoji[emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]][emoji640][emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]]]% of the classes have spells.

 

[mamba]

How does it make it worse. I don't even agree with Nevin that the power scaling has gotten notably higher.

2024 is higher magic than 2014 in general, it might not be worse in combat when it comes to the characters, but it is in the world in general, including monsters (see the dragons)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Wait, do people want a return to slashing/piecing/bludgeoning damage types??
Didn't people complain about how it encourages the "golf bag of weapons"??

I was never one of those people. I'd prefer more differences between the three physical damage types anyway.

 

[mamba]

Ahh, well, that ship sailed a LONG time ago. 5e has always gone very, very high magic.

still, 2024 made it worse. 2014 could still be trimmed back a bit to keep it in the tolerable range (barely…), 2024 boldly stepped over that line entirely (for me)

What I want as changes and what 2024 delivers are pretty far apart

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm in the "trying to apply real world logic to dragons is silly" camp. There is no version of dragon that actually has wings that could possibly be functional. The only way any dragon could fly is MAGIC. And if it's magic, it doesn't matter how big the wings are.

It matters for the aesthetic, which is the very reason why the designers did this. Just as the reason why they made dragons look like swords for some ridiculous reason, but only if you see them from above/below while fully stretched out, no bending or turning. In other words...something almost no one will ever actually see.

The wings, fins, crests etc are clearly adornment. That is something that is found in real world animals (and humans).

I disagree. I think the wings are still semi-functional. Yes, they require (and are) magic. That doesn't mean the wings are totally superfluous. They look stupid and stumpy.

Adornments come in two major forms naturalistically: "display" (like a peacock's tail), and "warning." Stumpy wings are good for exactly neither of those things. They aren't big enough to put on a mating display, nor are they good for spooking potential attackers.

And as for WotC, they haven't "committed to it being a proper Asian design" because they want to avoid cultural appropriation, whilst still paying homage to the original Asian influenced gold dragon design.

That's a load of horse pucky. People draw Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. dragons all the time. That's not "cultural appropriation" if you do it respectfully. The whole idea behind Gold dragons being good dragons in the first place WAS that it draws on the distinctive place of dragons in Eastern myth vs their Western counterparts. That is, in the West, dragons are monsters, threats, princess-eaters, etc., with very rare deviation away from that until the tail end of the 19th century/early 20th century. (AFAICT, the first "friendly" Western dragon is the titular The Reluctant Dragon, who is an amiable, mild-mannered scholar that befriends the main character.) In the East, dragons are and have pretty much always been divine, and while not always nice, their wrath is (usually) justified. Some of them still occasionally do harmful things or are horrible monsters (Yamata no Orochi in Japan, for example), but by and large they're divine messengers, bringers of water and life, etc.

"Appropriation" only happens when you use something thoughtlessly and disrespectfully, nicking something purely for its exoticism or distinctiveness without actually caring anything about what it is, why it is, etc. D&D does care about that stuff, even if it is at a distance removed. That's how cultural intermixing works.

If Japan can make Western dragons a key part of many, many, many, many works of their own creative media, the United States can do the same with Asian-inspired dragons. Fearing "appropriation" simply because something you're doing draws on the ideas of another culture is feeding the trolls who try to claim that appropriation isn't a thing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I would propose a third option: Start from the design principle that players should be able to tell what a monster is (or near enough to the mark) by fighting it, even if the DM doesn’t use its name or describe its appearance beyond minimum necessary detail. This should completely avoid Sack of HP syndrome because one sack of HP is indistinguishable from another without description, but it will also insure that all the abilities a monster has “makes sense” for that monster to have, because the abilities are designed specifically to express something recognizable about the monster.

An interesting starting premise. One issue: This makes DMs reskinning monsters either impossible, or extraordinarily unwise, both of which are...not particularly desirable states for most DMs, I would assume.

Because if we do stick to this premise, then you cannot ever reuse a red dragon's stats for a flamethrower tank. You cannot ever make a couple small tweaks to use a Behir as a Storm Giant. Etc. Every monster has to be positively identifiable from its actions, so calling <set of stats that do fiery things and can take a lot of hits> a "Flame Tank" is a dead giveaway and liable to pull perceptive players directly out of the experience, since they know what they're "really" fighting. Conversely, DMs are no longer free to modify monsters either. If they change too much, it's not going to be clearly identifiable as a "Red Dragon" or "Behir" etc. anymore. This 1:1 correspondence between a monster category and a slate of abilities harshly reduces the potential for creativity and intermixing that are pretty important for presenting a rich world, for both gamists and simulationists.

How would you address these issues? While I'm sure not everyone will care about either one individually, most folks will care about at least one of the two and I'd assume at least a plurality of DMs would prefer to have both options.

 

[Micah Sweet]

An interesting starting premise. One issue: This makes DMs reskinning monsters either impossible, or extraordinarily unwise, both of which are...not particularly desirable states for most DMs, I would assume.

Because if we do stick to this premise, then you cannot ever reuse a red dragon's stats for a flamethrower tank. You cannot ever make a couple small tweaks to use a Behir as a Storm Giant. Etc. Every monster has to be positively identifiable from its actions, so calling <set of stats that do fiery things and can take a lot of hits> a "Flame Tank" is a dead giveaway and liable to pull perceptive players directly out of the experience, since they know what they're "really" fighting. Conversely, DMs are no longer free to modify monsters either. If they change too much, it's not going to be clearly identifiable as a "Red Dragon" or "Behir" etc. anymore. This 1:1 correspondence between a monster category and a slate of abilities harshly reduces the potential for creativity and intermixing that are pretty important for presenting a rich world, for both gamists and simulationists.

How would you address these issues? While I'm sure not everyone will care about either one individually, most folks will care about at least one of the two and I'd assume at least a plurality of DMs would prefer to have both options.

I have no problem with that. I kinda hate re-skinning anyway.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It has Antler like Horns, I think it’s face looks different to other Sragons too.

I would argue there is nothing antler-like about these horns.

They're quite clearly horns, without really any antler-like characteristics. They don't even look like moose antlers.

This is what "proper" (if that's even the correct term) Easter dragon "antlers" look like (spoilered because BIG images):

Spoiler: Dragons

Of course, they are understood to be "horns" for these dragons, but they aren't the ridiculous, massively over-elaborate, ridged crests that 5.5e Gold Dragons have. They're actually quite understated in most cases, barely different from a slightly-forked deer antler or antelope horn.