D&D 5E D&D Studio Blog - Sage Advice - Creature Evolutions

There's a new D&D Studio Blog - Jeremy's posted about "Creature Evolutions": Creature Evolutions | Dungeons & Dragons

Some quick takeaways:

• Some creatures that were formerly humanoids will, going forward, be monstrosities, fey, or something else. ("Humanoid" is reserved for creatures with similar "moral and cultural range" to humans.)
• Alignment got put in a "time out".
• They've started using class tags so that DMs know that a particular NPC can attune to magic items limited to a particular class.
• Bonus actions get their own section in the stat block now.
• They've merged the Innate Spellcasting and Spellcasting traits and have gotten rid of spell slots.

Also some stuff we've already guessed based on the stat blocks and playable races in Wild Beyond the Witchlight.

There's also some Sage Advice on "rabbit hops" for harengon PCs.

 

[Bitbrain]

There's a new D&D Studio Blog - Jeremy's posted about "Creature Evolutions": Creature Evolutions | Dungeons & Dragons

Some quick takeaways:

• Some creatures that were formerly humanoids will, going forward, be monstrosities, fey, or something else. ("Humanoid" is reserved for creatures with similar "moral and cultural range" to humans.)
• Alignment got put in a "time out".
• They've started using class tags so that DMs know that a particular NPC can attune to magic items limited to a particular class.
• Bonus actions get their own section in the stat block now.
• They've merged the Innate Spellcasting and Spellcasting traits and have gotten rid of spell slots.

Also some stuff we've already guessed based on the stat blocks and playable races in Wild Beyond the Witchlight.

There's also some Sage Advice on "rabbit hops" for harengon PCs.

Well, I’m a bit concerned about this “similar Moral and Cultural range to humans”, but other than that, it all seems promising.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Ok, lots of things here. Will go through them one by one.

Creature Type: This is nice, and hopefully will allow more variety with PC races. Still wish duel creature types had made it in though.

Alignment: I like these changes as well. It makes it more clear to the DM that they can change alignments around how they want, rather than every single member of a species being exactly the same.

Tags: Cool I guess. Interested to see what they have planned for this later on.

Proficiency Bonus: Omfg I'm so happy that this is in stat blocks now. It just makes it so much easier to reference, and a nice aid when homebrewing monsters.

Spellcasting: I'm torn on this. I like the idea, but I think there needs to be direct rules clarification on whether 'spell like actions' can be treated like spells. So for example can they be counterspelled? Can they be silenced? Classes and abilities which focus on shutting down offensive enemy spells might end up basically useless from now on.

Ability Score Increases: I've made my opinion clear many times, but evidently WotC are determined to go down this route which I hate.

I like flexible ASI's. But please can we have 'suggested ASI's' to see what the norm or stereotype is? We already have suggested class builds, so not sure why we're not allowed it for races. Sadly I suspect the new player race overhaul in the upcoming book will be completely removing pre-set ASI's for all player races.

Age/Size/Weight: If I used all the explicit words to describe exactly what I thought about this change, I'd probably get banned. So I'll be slightly more polite about my thoughts on it.

It's awful. Like so awful I can't describe it using civil language levels of awful. I despise it. Everyone is now just a reskinned human, all living the same length of time, and weight. Why have different species at all if diversity is apparently racist? Just remove everything but human, and give a list of abilities to pick from at the start.

I want to go on a much longer and angrier rant, but need to keep it short so people don't have to read a wall.

Languages: I like this change. Languages aren't innate or biological, and any species should be able to pick any language. A 'suggested' language would be nice though, to show what's most commonly spoken by that species.


There are many things I like here, and other things I think are awful. I really dislike this push towards every species just being a human with a hat, rather than their own unique things. Diversity is good, but this is just turning everything into some giant, amorphous grey blob with no identity at all.

 

[ReshiIRE]

I don't really understand what similar "moral and cultural range" means. It is a basic understanding in writing that, given the limitations of human understanding, that all sapient characters in fiction are fundamentally, psychologically human. Talking bird? Human. The aliens from Arrival? Human. At least as far as the storyteller is concerned.

So to me, if a creature is sapient and has a culture and morality, then it is psychologically human. Real-life humans know of no other entities with culture and morality, which means that all creatures we create in fiction are reflections of humanity.

The human "moral and cultural range" is infinite.

Yeah; I don't think this improves the situation at all. I feel arguments over "is it okay to commit genocide against x" are going to get worse because now it's not going to just an argument over alignment, morality etc. but now people are going to point to creatures that are pretty human and could reasonably be involved in situations where killing them is fairly wrong... and some (mostly trolls, but still) are going to say "but they're not humanoid so it's okay!"

This really feels like an area that's much, much better to just leave unspecified or up to common sense.

Also; do not get at ALL the removal of age and height mentions from ancestories. Nobody was asking for that. They also don't get the correct solution to language either: just specify that if your character comes from a specific culture, they gain access to the languages of that culture, as determined by the DM.

Despite me having issues with a certain amount of how Paizo handles alignment for potential ancestories and humanoids (and a little unsure how to feel about negative ASIs), it certainly feels the writers and staff 'get' how to handle these issues a lot more (Paizo the company... that I'm not sure of).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ok, lots of things here. Will go through them one by one.

Creature Type: This is nice, and hopefully will allow more variety with PC races. Still wish duel creature types had made it in though.

Alignment: I like these changes as well. It makes it more clear to the DM that they can change alignments around how they want, rather than every single member of a species being exactly the same.

Tags: Cool I guess. Interested to see what they have planned for this later on.

Proficiency Bonus: Omfg I'm so happy that this is in stat blocks now. It just makes it so much easier to reference, and a nice aid when homebrewing monsters.

Spellcasting: I'm torn on this. I like the idea, but I think there needs to be direct rules clarification on whether 'spell like actions' can be treated like spells. So for example can they be counterspelled? Can they be silenced? Classes and abilities which focus on shutting down offensive enemy spells might end up basically useless from now on.

Ability Score Increases: I've made my opinion clear many times, but evidently WotC are determined to go down this route which I hate.

I like flexible ASI's. But please can we have 'suggested ASI's' to see what the norm or stereotype is? We already have suggested class builds, so not sure why we're not allowed it for races. Sadly I suspect the new player race overhaul in the upcoming book will be completely removing pre-set ASI's for all player races.

Age/Size/Weight: If I used all the explicit words to describe exactly what I thought about this change, I'd probably get banned. So I'll be slightly more polite about my thoughts on it.

It's awful. Like so awful I can't describe it using civil language levels of awful. I despise it. Everyone is now just a reskinned human, all living the same length of time, and weight. Why have different species at all if diversity is apparently racist? Just remove everything but human, and give a list of abilities to pick from at the start.

I want to go on a much longer and angrier rant, but need to keep it short so people don't have to read a wall.

Languages: I like this change. Languages aren't innate or biological, and any species should be able to pick any language. A 'suggested' language would be nice though, to show what's most commonly spoken by that species.


There are many things I like here, and other things I think are awful. I really dislike this push towards every species just being a human with a hat, rather than their own unique things. Diversity is good, but this is just turning everything into some giant, amorphous grey blob with no identity at all.

I really think this suite of changes is the result of being risk-averse. As was said above, if you remove defaults from all these areas or change the default to, "pretty much like humans", no one can complain to WotC that they're making a wrong choice, or not being diverse, because they're not making a choice at all. Liability covered.

 

[Bolares]

Over/under Warforged become constructs?

Under, because of the healing limitations.

Edit: But thinking about it, you could easilly create a feature for warforged that circumvents that.
Organic Core. Warforged count as humanoid for the purpose of (insert a good word for healing effects here).

 

[NaturalZero]

If they completely erased alignment, I would probably keep playing for 10 years without noticing.

 

[Oofta]

I really think this suite of changes is the result of being risk-averse. As was said above, if you remove defaults from all these areas or change the default to, "pretty much like humans", no one can complain to WotC that they're making a wrong choice, or not being diverse, because they're not making a choice at all. Liability covered.

Liability covered at the cost of every humanoid just being a person with a rubber mask. Won't change much for me but it doesn't feel like the right direction.

 

[Bolares]

Or if could be to empower people to make the characters they want to. It really depends on your point of view.

THIS. I get people are frustrated the game is changing, in a way they don't like. But this changes make character creation so much more fun for me... I'm running Tomb of Anihilation, and made my players create back-up characters because that tomb MURDERS PCs. I used the tasha's rules for this characters, and the character concepts they created, being free from Ability Scores bonus optimizations were great!

 

[Bolares]

Which, they could already do.

In theory yes, but in practice (or at least in games I've participated or run since I started playing D&D in 3.5) race/class ability score optimization was the primary factor in choosing a race.

 

[HammerMan]

I don't think it'll be Charm Person bad a 3.5e's version, where it couldn't effect Minotaurs and Centaurs because they were Monstrous Humanoids.

yup if people said COunterspell was soft recon stealth nerfed, this did it to charm/hold person