D&D (2024) 2024 Monster Manual Fiends and Elementals Are Coming This Week

[Reynard]

Agreed. After reading about the Dragonblood versatile heritage, I found myself musing about what would be needed to convert that PF2 Core material to 5e. Then we could have Chromatic, Metallic and Gem Dragonbloods running around in 5e.

The racial feat structure in PF2 makes it a lot easier to do this sort of mixing and matching. Maybe someone should replicate that for a 3rd party sourcebook.

 

[Corinnguard]

The racial feat structure in PF2 makes it a lot easier to do this sort of mixing and matching. Maybe someone should replicate that for a 3rd party sourcebook.

Ditto for Level Up's Mixed Heritages. Pick a heritage from one source and a heritage gift (basically a 1st-level feat) from another heritage.

 

[Corinnguard]

I wonder if the upcoming MM video on Elementals will have anything on the Genasi.

 

[Scribe]

Clicked through the Fiend video, art continues to look great, didnt bother with audio, but the art looks cool.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I did not know that. However... I feel like it's diluting the accepted meaning of 'fiend' in 5e cosmology to apply it to a species native to and living on the PMP. Kurtulmak's in Avernus (IIRC) and that doesn't make kobolds fiends.

Unless sahuagins being native to the PMP is also being changed to better accommodate the retroactive nominative determinism of 'sea devils.'


I'm disliking this 'personhood requires diluting your species' native essence on the PMP' and/or 'standing next to a portal to the EPoW for too long un-persons you' angle for the humanoid type in the MM more and more. I just... don't see this theming surviving contact with the broader playerbase's concerns and desires, after they stop to think about what it means for characters rather than what it means for PCs as game pieces. Why have they created such a bizarre dichotomy, with such deeply unpleasant implications? Are they genuinely oblivious?

And literally all of this would be solved by dual typing, but oh well, got to kludge around the grammar of a couple of spells with wording that happens to treat types as singular categories rather than tags, I guess.

Am I just yelling at a windmill here? I could've sworn it had the 'giant' type....

Perhaps instead to solve this we remove the humanoid type from the game and make all playable species dragons, in accordance with the name of the game. Only then will we achieve true nominative determinism.

Dragons are people. Giants are people. You thinking that a species turning into an elemental or a fey or a construct makes them a non-person is your own problem, it is not representative of the stance of the rules.

 

[InkTide]

Dragons are people. Giants are people. You thinking that a species turning into an elemental or a fey or a construct makes them a non-person is your own problem, it is not representative of the stance of the rules.

It is a representative stance the rules make, not one I am making. It is also not something I believe, don't speak for me. The name of Hold Person is obvious, but there's also stuff like the Marriage mode of Ceremony only being able to target humanoids.

Don't put this all on me, I agree that dragons and giants are people - but parts of the game consider 'humanoid' to mean 'person,' sometimes explicitly.

 

[Corinnguard]

Perhaps instead to solve this we remove the humanoid type from the game and make all playable species dragons, in accordance with the name of the game. Only then will we achieve true nominative determinism.

That would be nice as we could then have an official Council of Wyrms setting for 5e.

As for spells that target humanoids at first, there needs to be another thread regarding their usage. How many DMs and players actually use them in a game before they are swapped out for those spells that target nearly all the monster types at tiers 2 and 3. Or better yet, how many players rely on their Charisma-based skills instead of those spells to change another being's stance towards them.

 

[beta-ray]

OP updated with Elementals video link

 

[Chaosmancer]

It is a representative stance the rules make, not one I am making. It is also not something I believe, don't speak for me. The name of Hold Person is obvious, but there's also stuff like the Marriage mode of Ceremony only being able to target humanoids.

Don't put this all on me, I agree that dragons and giants are people - but parts of the game consider 'humanoid' to mean 'person,' sometimes explicitly.

No, it doesn't consider humanoids to be the only beings that can be "persons". The names of these spells were picked out decades ago, back when Elves didn't have souls and the game referred to demi-humans. It isn't called "Hold Person" because it only works on those with personhood. It is called Hold Person because it was designed back when the game was less defined and they needed to make a version of the spell that worked on a bandit, but not a dragon.

NO WHERE in the game will you find any of the creature types defined in such a way that the question of personhood comes up. And the existence of certain monsters makes this really obvious, even beyond dragons and giants, you have the Aartuk. They are plants. They are plants with a civilization, planet, society, religion, economy, military culture... they are aliens. They are people. That have the Plant type. Not to deny them personhood, but because that creature type was more accurate to their existence.

 

[InkTide]

No, it doesn't consider humanoids to be the only beings that can be "persons". The names of these spells were picked out decades ago, back when Elves didn't have souls and the game referred to demi-humans. It isn't called "Hold Person" because it only works on those with personhood. It is called Hold Person because it was designed back when the game was less defined and they needed to make a version of the spell that worked on a bandit, but not a dragon.

The point I was making (and the reason I specified the name of the spell) was that Hold Person's name is problematic if they don't want it to be making a statement about personhood with it. I'm aware that wasn't the intent, but it hasn't been targeting by body shape for a while... so the name stands out more.

It also wasn't my primary example, which you completely ignored.

NO WHERE in the game will you find any of the creature types defined in such a way

Two things:
1. The types themselves have no rules or definitions at all. Everything in 5e that "defines" what creature types "mean" is built into the other systems that interface with them, not the types themselves. E.G., you wouldn't have "Undead are vulnerable to radiant damage," you'd have "Vulnerabilities: Radiant" in some undead stat blocks.
2. Ignoring the wording of Ceremony in your reply to me doesn't make the assumption it is making - and the implications it has for the types it interfaces with - cease to be 'somewhere' in the game.

I can only really conclude here that you have not been responding to me in good faith from the moment you decided to accuse me of being the source of what I was complaining about. I do not appreciate you making this about some "personal problem" you accuse me of having.

There are, whether you like it or not, parts of the game with these implications. They are mostly relics of things designed for different paradigms than what they currently exist in, but they do exist. That wording of Ceremony was printed in Xanathar's - it's not some ancient niche thing I'm making up, and whatever "personal problem" you think I have didn't manifest it into RAW.