D&D General Drow & Orcs Removed from the Monster Manual

[Mistwell]

I'll state it again if you missed it. In my opinion the other features add enough to modify the CR. Not sure what else to say or why you're so upset about someone having a different opinion.

After giving it some thought the 2014 monster manual orcs had a dash as a bonus action so I'd probably keep it if I ever actually use orcs in my game. I'd still hesitate to use relentless endurance because it's just kind of annoying to track for a monster.

Modify the CR by how much? That's my point, WOTC should have given better guidelines for something as basic as that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I actually know for a fact they did, because I used to be a 24-head and knew about the showrunner and writers back in the day. But it was also a time when politics tended to be more nuanced generally. And yes we all love S5 and President Fixon or whatever he was called lol.

In S1 Jack does finally get pushed into torturing someone but it:

A) Doesn't work

B) Backfires horribly

Those are good points. I haven't seen the first season in almost fifteen years. I do think overall the series had him doing lots of shady things. One of the running jokes for me and my wife was how needless some of it was (not just with Jack but all the other characters who would murder, break rules, hide things from the public, when it didn't seem to matter). The president would get a decaf latte and his advisor would be like "The American people can't handle knowing the president drinks decaf" and crash a plane or something. And Jack would torture a barista just to make sure he didn't add an extra lump of sugar in his coffee by the end

On Season One the one thing that really stands out in my memory is his daughter Kim going from ridiculous problem to ridiculous problem each episode (and you almost don't notice until you remember this is all taking place in a 24 hour period). I think the moment for me where it really stood out was when she escaped from someone who was trying to kidnap her or worse and then ended up confronting a cougar

So it clearly doesn't approve of torture in S1. Nor does S2, even though it works once in that IIRC, Jack himself gets mad about them torturing someone.

I could go on for uh, a lot of posts about the weird attitudes to torture in 24, it's actually kind of an interesting subject - if I had to sum it up over all seasons I'd say "24's attitude to torture is that it is pointless and wrong and achieves nothing except when Jack Bauer himself does it or supervises it". Like, not just "good guys" or CTU doing it - it fails and is wrong unless it's Jack (and sometimes it fails and is wrong when he does it, just increasingly rarely as the show goes on, I think the last "incorrect torture" is of that English guy in what, S4?).

Sorry getting WAAAAAY off topic here lol.

Hey, I think it is an interesting topic and you are making very good points. I think I tend to blur all the seasons in my head and play a greatest hits of Jack Bauer torturing suspects when it probably has more nuance.

 

[AlViking]

Modify the CR by how much? That's my point, WOTC should have given better guidelines for something as basic as that.

Are you reading my answers? I would not modify the CR at all. The changes add no damage and add only minor utilitarian benefits that rarely make a significant difference in combat.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Whilst I don't disagree with what you're saying I do think it's worth noting that sometimes even Shakespeare kind of goes so far that things cease to really be cathartic and becomes something else instead - horrifying and not really in a fun way either - Titus Andronicus, for example.

Whereas MacBeth's violence is much more palatable, despite there being a lot of it.

Well, Titus Andronicus was the favorite play of the serial killer in Exorcist III, so you may have a point lol

I am not saying his use of violence is always cathartic or that I like every single tragedy, but my point is that is the draw to stuff like this. I think there are other reasons we go to movie violence too. Someone liking the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for example doesn't mean they believe that kind of violence is good or acceptable (I think people are often drawn to that stuff because it is a way to confront their own mortality)

 

[Gradine]

I like these changes quite a bit! Reminds me of 4e monster design where there wasn't just a single bog-standard "goblin" or "kobold"; and removing PHB species from the MM seems like a great way to not pigeon-hole those species and free up more space for more interesting creatures.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Dirty Harry isn't really the first or last movie to applaud vigilantism. (Which the character absolutely is.)

That's a long-simmering, unsolvable tension in the way our society is constructed.

To be clear, I wasn't making the case that Dirty Harry was the first vigilante movie

But to my first point on it, I don't think the first movie applauds vigilantism the way the other movies in the series do (even the second movie as @Ruin Explorer points out is still not really advocating for vigilantism). In the first film he throws his badge away at the end once he crosses the line into killing the bad guy in the way he does (and the villain in that is utterly despicable too, so I feel like the movie trying to balance out the conflict Harry is having: because in a movie made today people wouldn't think twice about shooting Scorpio dead). I am not even surethe Enforcer is fully on board there (that one is more about Harry Grappling with feminism and actually a really good entry----I'd have to watch it again though to really gauge its stance on vigilantism). But Sudden Impact definitely leans into being pro vigilante. That is the one that strikes me as the most pro-vigilante. I still enjoyed that one. I thought it was great (just like I enjoy the Death Wish movies).

 

[Warpiglet-7]

That's very nice.

Now, do you treat your fellow humans like dogs? Is the social standing between you and dogs the same as that between you and human minorities? Can a Rottweiler or Pit Bull read those depictions of Hell Hounds, look you in the eye and say, "Hey, that's how they used to (and in some places still do) talk about me...."

If not, maybe the analogy isn't all that strong. If yes, well, that's another situation entirely, and not only because you have a talking dog.



If you want to test if you really can do this, reskin your orcs to carry resemblance to, say, poor, rural Caucasians from Appalachia. Publish it, and see what you get. After all, orcs are fictional, so nobody should get their nether garments in a twist over how they are depicted, right?

Funny you should say. They sleep in my bed and get healthy people food from time to time.

But reskin orcs as a culture in the real world? Why would we start doing that?

I reject the premise that they were previously similar to any real world group unless the general savagery of conquerors/being warlike is a stereotype of a group.

But the suggestion that MM benefits or needs another edition to run as smoothly does not sit well with me. The fact that people say “just use 5e” for stat blocks tells me what I need to know.

I always thought of orcs as marauders and enemies at the gates. Whether that archetype is more that or things that go bump in the night is up to each person’s psyche. I won’t say more because no need to tread that again.

I will accept this design choice as a well intended overreaction. But I need more evidence to be convinced it is good game design. I don’t see the benefit.

It think it is a surmountable but unforced error. Will I buy the book? Maybe. It may have enough that I can overlook this annoyance.

 

[Mistwell]

Are you reading my answers? I would not modify the CR at all. The changes add no damage and add only minor utilitarian benefits that rarely make a significant difference in combat.

Yes. I am. Maybe you made a mistake. You wrote, " In my opinion the other features add enough to modify the CR."

Which is why I said, "modify it by how much" and now you're saying you...wouldn't modify it?

Those changes do make a combat difference and often add damage. All the Orc traits in question tend to add a round to combat, which adds a round of damage to combat. Dashing as a bonus action means they can often close to melee range in one less round. Temporary hit points can add a round of combat. Popping back to 1 hit point when otherwise reduced to 0 hit points definitely adds a round to combat. All these things increase the survivability of an Orc, which translates to that Orc having more rounds to dish out damage to the party.

 

[Umbran]

I reject the premise that they were previously similar to any real world group unless the general savagery of conquerors/being warlike is a stereotype of a group.

Well, that's your problem, right there.

If you want a thing, and others don't, you can't just say, "Well I reject your premise, now give me what I want," and expect to succeed. It is a negotiation non-starter.

Nor can you expect others to try to care about your wants/needs, or want to understand your point of view, if you simply flatly reject theirs. Again, non-starter.

Come to the table actually open to some give-and-take, and you might get somewhere. Otherwise, the major source of your disappointments is... your own position.

 

[AlViking]

Yes. I am. Maybe you made a mistake. You wrote, " In my opinion the other features add enough to modify the CR."

Which is why I said, "modify it by how much" and now you're saying you...wouldn't modify it?

Dang typo. In my opinion the features do not add enough to modify the CR.

We don't know exactly how CR is calculated and I don't see darkvision or bonus action dash adding to it. The relentless endurance is the only thing that I would think could add to CR but the only monster that has something similar would be zombies. Those get a con save when dropped to zero but even those are still a lowly CR 1/4.