D&D General Alright, Forgotten Realms junkies! a Q or two.

[pukunui]

Hope no one minds me shoehorning a question in but whatever happened to Saurians? After 2nd edition I never saw any reference to them ever again.

Saurials have not had anything official as a species in a long time. However, Dragonbait appeared as an NPC in Tomb of Annihilation, so at least one saurial still exists in the 5e Realms!

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Saurials have not had anything official as a species in a long time. However, Dragonbait appeared as an NPC in Tomb of Annihilation, so at least one saurial still exists in the 5e Realms!

Weren't they from another planet? So there's probably no need to have a lot of stuff about them.

 

[DragonLancer]

Weren't they from another planet? So there's probably no need to have a lot of stuff about them.

You're absolutely right. I just vaguely remember rules for playing them and something about not getting home so they settled on Toril.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Can't you just use a lizardfolk statblock for a saurial and just remove their ability to speak draconic?

 

[Gorg]

As @Paul Farquhar said, there's no big shake-up in the 5e Realms stuff, and I think the new two book set Realms product is pretty good.

As for my personal game, no sundering or spellplague ever happened. I loved the idea of the Time of Troubles, but the latter two events are lame in my opinion.

Exactly, that's what I was talking about. I was out of the loop from the end of 3.5 to several years into 5e, so When I started hearing about the sundering, the spell plague, Azoun dying, etc I was not too pleased. Esp to find out Mystra was murdered AGAIN, and why.

So, I decided, like you, that in MY version of the Realms, those things never happened.

I loved the 3E Realms setting, and am going with that. Just updated with the mechanics we're playing with. It's not like THIS group has thoroughly explored it already- they have not. I just have to wean a couple of them of the idea that the novels are canon- rather than someone else's version.

 

[pukunui]

Weren't they from another planet? So there's probably no need to have a lot of stuff about them.

Yep. This is all that Dragonbait's entry in Tomb of Annihilation has to say about them:

[saurials are] a race that originated on a distant world and whose members have long lives. Very few saurials dwell in the Forgotten Realms, and no saurial communities are believed to exist anywhere in the world.

There's also a little bit about how they communicate using scents.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

ToA also has terrorfolk as a monstrous species, wouldn't be hard to do one as a PC. But I guess that with dragonborn, lizardfolk, tortles and kobolds the Forgotten Realms has plenty of options for scaly PCs. And if you want to play an "alien", there are plenty of species not native to Toril to choose from, from gith to thri-kreen.

The nature of the saurials' language, means they, like kenku, has the potential to be really disruptive if role played badly.

Given what we have learned about dinosaurs since saurials were first invented, they could have some degree of feathering on their bodies. The flying subspecies you could use a refluffed small aarakocra.

But they would be most useful if you wanted to do an adventure with the PCs transported to an alien world, you could do the saurial homeworld.

(Whatever happened to troglodytes?)

 

[pukunui]

(Whatever happened to troglodytes?)

Nothing? They're in the 5.5e MM.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Nothing? They're in the 5.5e MM.

I don't think I've seen them in an adventure, published or homebrew, for a long long time.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I don't think the calendar has even advanced really.

It did, most of 5e was from 1489 DR (Rime of the Frostmaiden) to 1497 DR (Aquisitions Incorproated) with majority of books and Baldur's Gate 3 set in 1492 DR, as of 5e 2024 it is 1500 DR