Creature Origin

[Max1mus]

In the description of some races there are creature origins. For example gnomes have the Fey Origin and devas have the Immortal Origin. Are these just for flavor or do they have a real mechanical effect? Has anyone come across any rules that have to do with creature origin? Are these rules too rare to worry about?

 

[fba827]

In the description of some races there are creature origins. For example gnomes have the Fey Origin and devas have the Immortal Origin. Are these just for flavor or do they have a real mechanical effect? Has anyone come across any rules that have to do with creature origin? Are these rules too rare to worry about?

How often creature origin actually comes up in your games depends entirely on your players/play style. But here are some things that are affected by creature type.

* Monster knowledge. If a PC wants to make a knowledge check to learn more about the monster, the type of skill used depends on the creature type (natural creatures are nature, and so on for arcana, nature, religion, dungeoneering).

* Some rituals, particularly binding rituals like magic circle can be keyed to certain creature types.

* some powers, the easiest example is turn undead, do specifically target a specific creature type. most of these really are divine class powers (anti-undead being the most common), though I think i've seen a druid utility power that does something with fey creatures.

Of course, if you all don't use rituals, and no one picks the powers that are creature type specific, and your group's playstyle doesn't roll for monster knowledge checks very often, then, really, it is possible to go for several campaigns without it ever being an issue.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

fba827 caught most of them, but I would like to add that there are also magic items (predominantly from the first AV) which have added effect (particualry on crits) versus creatures of a given origin - cold iron weapons versus fey, as one example.

In my campaign, its really only come up for monster checks and the ritual magic circle - hitting paragon, the wizard has an arcana high enough to keep gods out with a good enough roll, and is constantly trying to think of ways of using the ritual to solve his and the world's problems .

For example, he used it as an aberation detector - they had an NPC who was either dominated or replaced (ala dopelganger) by an aberation, so the wizard created a small magic circle keyed versus natural creatures and pushed the NPC into it - when the NPC bounced off, the PCs knew that the NPC was still a natural creature and most likely merely dominated.

But yeah, for the most part 4e has moved away from effects triggered by creature origin, so for the most part its flavour text though there are corner cases where it can make a mechanical rules difference.

 

[Max1mus]

Thanks guys!