First thing that comes to mind is monsters with abilities that negate player agency. Now, there are few of them in MM. But homebrew one with innate dominate person that targets cha save, that one would be very nasty.
Alright, I can see that, but I would consider that a different kind of "inherently objectionable". Namely, objections raised by imbalance or abusable mechanics.
As a more edge-case example, one where
I personally don't have a problem but I know plenty of GMs do, and I can accept that reasoning even if I don't agree with it: Inherent flight. Lots of GMs forbid races with always-on flight speed, because that makes just those characters inherently 3D-motion beings, while everyone else remains, apart from limited exceptions, bound to the 2D surface, however complex that might be. I
personally think the better solution is to have
Have you any ideas for what might be in a similar space? Like, something that isn't so clearly abusable, but which might still stick in someone's craw? The question was, after all, targeted at me specifically--what would
I refuse to accept, as a player--and thus if possible I'd like to give an answer. As it stands, I'm still in the space of "I can't think of anything that would perturb me enough to complain...that wouldn't perturb
most people enough to complain".
I will add, on this specific issue I have a heightened sensitivity, as one of the reasons I became a GM in the first place was a friend going through a VERY bad experience with his very first D&D game. One of the players clearly had the GM wrapped around their little finger, as they were given a homebrew species that had NINTH LEVEL SPELLS as an inherent feature due to being demigod children. I have perhaps a bit of a brighter line regarding "obviously OP racial features" than perhaps others would. That said...I can't imagine that a feature equivalent to the 8th level spell
dominate monster would be viewed as all that much
less ridiculously OP than having a ninth-level spell as a racial feature, no?
And this loops back around to my "sure you can be a red dragon...but you're depowered, or an upstart teenager, or cursed, etc." thing. If you want to play some kind of creature that has mind-control powers, sure, I'd be okay with that...if and only if you start out weak and grow into that power. So maybe you don't start out with dominate. Maybe you start out with a customized version of
friends...which
doesn't have some of the downsides that the spell usually does. Ohh, the temptation there, to manipulate every mind you encounter! But feeding that temptation might feed...other things. There are consequences for choices. I try to make those consequences reasonable and predictable, within reason, but I also try to encourage what I call a "chiaroscuro" world: a world where the bright things are truly vivid and beautiful and compelling,
worthy, and the dark things are truly pitch-dark and consumptive and acquisitive,
evil. If true heroes stand in defense of what is good, then what is good absolutely can survive. But for what is good to
thrive, it needs more than heroes, it needs leaders and experts and commonfolk alike who see the example set by those heroes, and thus
choose to do better, day in and day out.
"Reward me not with gold or words. Reward me with the prayer of
works. If you would honor me, then honor the Least: for they need it far more than I."
If I reward mercy with betrayal and forgiveness with death, then I am teaching my players that mercy is a sucker's game and forgiveness is just giving someone the chance to stab you in the back. Sometimes, mercy is the wrong choice, as much as that fact breaks my heart. Sometimes, the offered hand has been slapped away too many times, as John Dryden
so aptly put:
Oh that my pow'r to saving were confin'd:
Why am I forc'd, like Heav'n, against my mind,
To make examples of another kind?
Must I at length the sword of justice draw?
Oh curst effects of necessary law!
How ill my fear they by my mercy scan,
Beware the fury of a patient man.
