D&D (2024) Fey Video Critique & Alternate Perspective

[SkidAce]

IIRC, despite hailing from the Feywild(Haragons) or having a distant relation to it(Owlins), neither are typed as Fey. Both are typed as Humanoid.

This is what mildly annoys me, a lack of consistency.

Meh, I will survive.

 

[Remathilis]

This is an awful lot of words to say "they changed it, so now it sucks", innint?

 

[cranberry]

Ever since the infamous "we all won" statement, I don't put much stock in what they say.

 

[Weiley31]

This is what mildly annoys me, a lack of consistency.

Meh, I will survive.

I can see the annoyance. I personally felt anything from the Feywild should be typed as Fey. So, the Haragons and Owlkin not being typed as such always felt a tad weird to me.

Following on a similar theme, in Kobold Press' Book of Ebon Tides any "Disney" style animal character ,(ya know, the kind that walk and talk ala Robin Hood or what not) seem to be considered as a kind of "Fey" as well. Or more like distant cousins as mentioned in one of the passages in said book.

Now granted, they don't get typed as Fey if a player option IIRC. (Certainly Bearfolk aren't listed as Fey or even the Shadow Bearfolk sub-race option in said book). But, I can at least buy that the distant cousin part is the reasoning for why they aren't fully typed as Fey.

Interestingly, one of the Feylords in the Kobold Press books IS the Lord of Bearfolk, or something like that.

 

[Chaltab]

Also fairies and haragon. And owlin? can’t remember.

I completely forgot those three existed. Dont' think Owlins are fey though.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

The designers make decisions based on commerce. They wouldn't make the decision unless they felt it would be popular with their target audience (hint: you may not be their target audience). In this case, it reflects the resurgent interest in the Celtic culture that was pretty much obliterated by the shadow of Tolkien for many years. And it's all across pop culture, not just D&D. Oh look at What Robert Eggers is doing after the success of Nosferatu - a Labyrinth reboot! Pretty sure those goblins are fey.

Game designers are more like artists than business people. Unless management has them on a tight leash they're more likely to follow their own creative vision and then look for commercial arguments to support it than the other way around.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think it’s important to call out that “goblins becoming fey” is not a case of "the game" shifting in the same sense as they've discussed “the way players play” shifting thegame. It was not some inevitable happy accident of natural evolution. No. It was a result of the design team’s deliberate choices originating in 4th edition’s Heroes of the Feywild where there was a description of a branch of goblinkind inhabiting the Feywild goblin kingdom of Nachtur.

To reiterate: This is not an organic bottom-up progression through play. This is a designer choice to change the lore originating in 4th edition.

Yeah, when WotC is talking about a creature's "narrative," it's all top-down. What they decide a goblin's story is may or may not be the same thing a goblin's story is in your game. They have a reason for wanting goblins to be fey (I suspect it's because they've got a big fey themed adventure on the near horizon). It may be a welcome change or not, but it is THEIR change.

Notice the different approach. In 4e, the feywild goblins were a branch or offshoot in addition to worldly goblins. In 2024 5e, the team is using language like “whole goblinoid family” and “[they’re] all fey” in regards to the goblin entry in the new MM.

Why does it matter? Because core books like the MM establish the contextual lore. We cannot assume players with the 2024 MM will know past goblin lore, not even from the 2014 MM. So if a player wants to run a goblin in 2024 D&D, the MM goblin entry is at odds with certain stories that players might think of regarding “goblin clan in the crags outside town.” No big deal, maybe the flavor text in the new MM accounts for that. But what if player goblin meets the new goblin leader of their family clan…and wants to cast charm person to sway their decision about a critical issue…now the “all fey” stats are working at odds with the narrative.

Instead of expanding the creative space for the GM, it sounds like the 2024 goblin entry is constraining it.

I think this has some nuance based on the fact that 2024 isn't a fully new edition. It exists in the context of being 5e. 5e already has humanoid goblins, and those aren't going anywhere. I suspect the humanoid goblins will use the "generic NPC" statblocks, rather than any entry for "Goblin." It sounds like they're not going to focus on them, but much like, idk, the rune knight, it's still a viable option.

I do think that they have been very bad about communicating this point.

False Equivalency (and ugly implications)

5:33 “When we were working on a spell like hold person or charm person, that specifies it works on a humanoid, we knew that with the new MM there are some monsters that used to be targetable by the spell that the spell would just not work on them any longer… We also consider it a feature, not a bug, when sometimes you need to vary your tactics. It’s similar to not every damage type works against every monster, e.g. oh this creature resists fire… It’s the same with some spells that apply conditions.”

Typically, when a creature has an immunity, there is a clear reason within the imaginative play space that players can reason out “ok, I’m not going to be able to charm a suit of animated armor” or “ok, the fire elemental is probably immune to fire.” Those are apples. The designers are trying to make an equivalence between those apples and the orange of “your charm person fails on a goblin…because a goblin is not a person humanoid.”

Right away, that’s jarring to the imaginative play space. Maybe a player onboarded with Baldur’s Gate 3, and they made good use of charm person in the goblin camp…and they’re going to be unpleasantly surprised in the 2024 rules…that’s an example of being unnecessarily jarring to the shared imaginative play space.

SIDE NOTE: There are also ugly implications to have goblins in the game that are not affected by hold/charm/dominate person – I know it's "just semantics", but the words matter in a game like D&D and I can imagine younger players getting into the "goblins aren't people" rabbit hole. Given the design choices made around orcs and avoiding racist stereotypes...it's hard to see this change as coming from the same playbook.

I don't think they're omitting humanoid goblins from the game. So, it's more a matter of charm person doesn't work against EVERY goblin. And while I'm on board with their instinct (it is good when a player needs to vary their tactics), I do think this is a little kludgy.

I wonder what stopped them from updating charm person in the 2024 edition to something that was more like a charm that affects "creatures of the same type as you" or something. The sense that I always got was that the reason charm person was limited by type was because it was meant to only charm things that were reasonably like yourself.

Stat Block Miscommunication

6:37 “When it comes to playable species, there is a dividing wall in our design between playable species on one hand and monsters on another. It’s really important to remember that each individual stat block represents either just one monster or a number of monsters like it within a larger family… If you go to goblin in the MM there are a bunch of stat blocks that all do different things, which communicates very clearly no one of these stat blocks represents all goblins.”

OK. Put a pin in what they say about the wall between player species design & monster design. In a moment, you’ll see it’s B.S.

Look at what is being said about all the goblins in the 2024 MM being of the Fey type. That works contrary to the designers’ implied claim that “just because one goblin stat block is Fey, doesn’t mean all goblins are Fey.” No. If you present all the stat blocks for goblins in the MM as Fey…that’s what GMs see…that’s what is replicated in D&DBeyond, Kobold Fight Club, Foundry, Roll20, etc, etc, etc. Stat blocks are being consumed independent of flavor text – that’s part of the digital ecosystem that 5e and WotC has created.

You support the idea that “not all goblins are Fey” by giving the GM a non-fey goblin stat block. Period.

I basically agree, though I suspect that they're giving GM's non-fey goblin stat blocks in the NPC's section. They haven't mentioned this, but it'd be in line with the 2014 DMG having "templates" for various humanoids to use in conjunction with NPC stat blocks.

Contradictory Doublespeak

7:54 “Player character design is not in any way guided by what we do with monsters…

10:36: “…but then also people are going to see that we are going to - over the coming years - introduce more playable options that aren’t humanoid. We have some fun stuff coming that demonstrates that.”

Okaaaaaaay. That’s just marketing doublespeak over a blatant contradiction in their design. “Player-character goblins are not fey because of this very clearly defined wall between PC species design and monster design that we’ve reiterated throughout this video…unless you buy our future product where it turns out players can be fey goblins!”

I don't think 2024 is trying to introduce the idea that players are limited to Humanoid types. I just think they haven't put out rules for playing fey goblins yet. Since the 2014 goblin is Humanoid. And they probably have some ideas for highlighting the feyness of goblins in a new species that isn't quite true of the 2014 humanoid goblin species.

Cherry Picking Faerie Tales

12:30 “That was also part of our motivation a number of years ago moving the goblinoids into the Feywild, because in most folktales and other stories in modern media, goblins are a type of fey. We have fully embraced that.”

Well…it’s good to have inspiration…but this is a logical fallacy. What other creatures in D&D originated in folkloric faerie tales? Kobolds, trolls, dwarves, gnomes, ogres – to name a fey. There isn’t something about goblins that makes them inherently more fey than those other creatures in D&D.

Again, this is a top-down designer-originating decision. This is not a player-originating shift.

Yeah, one of the fun things about the new philosophy of typing is that I could see ALL of those creatures having Fey versions. And some of those creatures having, say, Fiend versions. Dragon versions. Giant versions. Elemental versions...

But yes, WotC is doing some marketing at us based on what they think is an exciting direction to take Goblins in. The fact that they're not forcing all of D&D to cooperate with this new direction is a good thing, I think, and makes me more amenable to seeing where they go with this, knowing humanoid goblins are still a part of the game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The designers make decisions based on commerce. They wouldn't make the decision unless they felt it would be popular with their target audience (hint: you may not be their target audience). In this case, it reflects the resurgent interest in the Celtic culture that was pretty much obliterated by the shadow of Tolkien for many years. And it's all across pop culture, not just D&D. Oh look at What Robert Eggers is doing after the success of Nosferatu - a Labyrinth reboot! Pretty sure those goblins are fey.

I disagree. Designers make choices because they think it would be a good idea all the time, not just because they think the majority of their fans want it. And design doesn't follow pop culture as quickly as you're suggesting IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

IIRC, despite hailing from the Feywild(Haragons) or having a distant relation to it(Owlins), neither are typed as Fey. Both are typed as Humanoid.

Regardless, a lot of official D&D species have a fey connection. Sure seems like something they just decided to lean on in the last few years.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is an awful lot of words to say "they changed it, so now it sucks", innint?

In what way are your feelings on the matter any more valid than theirs?