D&D (2024) 2024 MM - Winners and Losers
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Demetrios1453
Legend
You know, how about actually discussing how the monsters were improved or made worse mechanically in this thread, and not getting into side discussions over wording or order. It will make for a much more interesting and... calm... thread.
Remathilis
Legend
Lose: duergar, snirvneblin, and lizardfolk.
So humanoid NPCs all share common stat blocks. Fine. You can still make orcs and drow using the PHB and the MM NPCs. But the three above aren't in the PHB and there is no stats for them in the MM either (except for elemental specialty lizardfolk). They straight up have no extra abilities or lore unless you own Monsters of the Multiverse. Seems like a bad oversight.
So humanoid NPCs all share common stat blocks. Fine. You can still make orcs and drow using the PHB and the MM NPCs. But the three above aren't in the PHB and there is no stats for them in the MM either (except for elemental specialty lizardfolk). They straight up have no extra abilities or lore unless you own Monsters of the Multiverse. Seems like a bad oversight.
I don’t have an opinion on this word but for the past few years they’ve been “correcting” themselves by reduction, removing stuff, neutering words, etc. And they had some problems to correct to be sure, but they didn’t chose to do it with new interesting weird stuff, they’ve usually corrected with edited blander stuff. And THAT is a problem, not the changing, but changing to more meh instead of new fascinating.As a Jewish person, I've pointed out on these boards before that this isn't really the case, because "phylactery" isn't a term that we use. Rather, we call them "teffilin," and calling them "phylacteries" is a conflation that's near-totally made by gentiles.
In that regard, liches using phylacteries is actually an improvement, because it helps to attach the term to something else, letting the erroneous "phylacteries are teffilin" idea wither on the vine. Which is to say, it was absolutely a hill worth dying on. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and so another opportunity to help out a marginalized community was missed.
pukunui
Legend
Since we're getting "classic" evil drow stat blocks in the new FR book, it's possible we'll get "classic" duergar, deep gnome, and lizardfolk stat blocks in there too. It's possible we'll get new playable versions of those three sometime soon as well.
They also seem to have gone backwards a bit with goblinoids ... like, there was a big issue with the "classic" orcs, who have now had a complete makeover and have even gained PHB status, but instead of not having anything like the classic orc in the book, they instead made goblinoids the new orcs and have seemingly justified it by making them fey instead of humanoids.
If we're not going to have orcs, duergar, drow, deep gnomes, lizardfolk, etc in the MM ... wouldn't have made just as much sense to not have goblinoids either? Especially since all three types have been made into playable species, and they also have settings like Eberron which present goblinoids in a more nuanced way than what they've put in the MM.
It's puzzling.
Remathilis
Legend
I considered that, but that still means a fourth book to use them.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
The Duergar and Svirfneblin are kind of Setting specific, and making the MM less Setting specific seems to have been a goal. The FR books seem to be positioned as "Classic D&D" booster packs as much as they are for FR fans. Now they can pair other Settings with tge MM with less baggage.
Lizardfolk...were scaly Orcs, so didn't have much distinct going on, so it doesn't seem they lost much by transitioning to NPCs. I expect an Inner Planes Setting is in the works, so more Lizardfolk flavor there seems probable
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