3.5 Beholders, Mind Flayers, Yuan-tis...

[Kae'Yoss]

You can have Neutral Evil Fiends, which people are using the old terminology for, Daemons or Deamons (forget which spelling). That's a term from mythology, so WoTC can't forbid that.

Daemon's the right one. That's the German word for Demon (we use a umlaut instead of ae, though, and I don't know if the boards will display it. Let's try: Dämon. Ae is used when the umlauts aren't available) and something unix users know (That's right! Unix makes use of evil fiends, while Microsoft uses wizards, these nice old chums. Who's the bad guys now? )

 

[jmucchiello]

OT: Computer Daemons

Unix makes use of evil fiends, while

Common misconception and mostly untrue. Lookup the definition of demon or daemon and you'll get:

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
de·mon ( P ) Pronunciation Key (dmn)
n.

1. An evil supernatural being; a devil.
2. A persistently tormenting person, force, or passion: the demon of drug addiction.
3. One who is extremely zealous, skillful, or diligent: worked away like a demon; a real demon at math.
4. Variant of daimon.

Unix daemons are named after definition 3 of demon. You can verify this in the Jargon File.

 

[trancejeremy]

Those things were originally in the SRD that was put up as part of the gentleman's agreement, but not in the officially released SRD.

So I think WOTC just wanted to make it perfectly clear in 3.5

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Re: OT: Computer Daemons

Common misconception and mostly untrue. Lookup the definition of demon or daemon and you'll get:

Unix daemons are named after definition 3 of demon. You can verify this in the Jargon File.

So they say.....

 

[reiella]

The 3.5 SRD says:



The original SRD did not mention those specifically, but neither were they listed in the monster sections.

The exclusion of these monsters from the SRD is, as they say, the suck.

For some folks, that could be a real problem:

http://www.goodman-games.com/3004preview.php (Beholders)
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/detail.php?qsID=47&qsSeries=Slayers Guide (Yuan-tis)
http://www.greenronin.com/cgi-bin/product.cgi?prodid=1005 (Legions of Hell, baatezu)

I'm sure there are myriad products that include mind flayers, beholders, and yuan-tis, not to mention tanar'ri, baatezu (see Legions of Hell) as monsters... how's that being worked out?

- Ket

edit: added quote tags to quote block.

Mind Flayer actually was listed there, along with it's name of Illithid.

For the other books, well, they can still release under 3.0 (final) of the SRD if those critters were included there. Legions of Hell was allowed to use Tanar'ri and Baatezu due to the gentlemen's agreemtn (if they did in fact use them) that was in place until the final SRD was complete/released. I believe the same was true of the Slayer's Guide to Yuan-Ti (And also Veiled Masters for reference to the Illithid-actually due to WotC and Paradigm making some arrangement I believe).

 

[Benben]

Mmm, you are right.
Daemon is the correct (latin) form.

Which I believe comes from the old Greek "daimon" which referred to intermediary spirits between the gods and humans.

 

[Hand of Evil]

My question; Why did they rename the Sea Loin to the Sea Cat?

 

[Plane Sailing]

The thought that I can't help thinking is "why *those* creatures in particular?"


Why not Howlers, Inevitables, Solars, Invisible Stalkers?

Why not Tendriculous, Thoqqua, Tojanida and Xorn?

Why not Drow?

I doubt that all of those have some pre-existence in other forms, but I can't think of a reason for producing a list which includes beholders, mind flayers and displacer beasts but excludes any number of other completely made-up monsters ?!?

 

[Aeolius]

Didn't they remove Kuo-Toa as well?

Correct. Kuo-Toa are no longer in the SRD. I guess we can still call them by their 1e nickname, "gogglers", and be safe.

My question; Why did they rename the Sea Loin to the Sea Cat?

I assume you mean sea LION? I thought "sea cat" was pathetic, as well. Sea cat sounds like a miniature sea lion. Most likely, they wanted to end any confusion with the mammals of the same name, so folks like myself would stop saying "feline sea lion" all the time. Perhaps they should have merged sea lion with feline, to create "sealine".

 

[heirodule]

I'm sure those monsters were picked because they "archetypically identify "D&D" more than any other.

"archetype marketing" is the hot new thing and brought us the PT Cruiser.

this guy invented it