Dear 4e, Please Stop with the Horrible Portmanteaus!

[Scribe Ineti]

A fellow by the name of WILLIAM SHAKESMAN once wrote, "What's in a name?"

That is to say, a rose is a rose. A shardmind is a shardmind. Don't like the name, call it something else. It still is what it is.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

It´s my fault. I want to play a game where a Shardmind Battlemind punches owlbears. Sorry. Wotc just gives me what my brainrays force them to create.

 

[S'mon]

Most of the recent portmanteau names have been very poor, yup. OTOH made-up words like Yrthak can be bad, too.

 

[tallyrand]

<---Back from a quick trip to the dictionary.

I don't have a problem with it, if you want these things to sound more exotic, take the root words and translate them into another language.

The Stormclaw Scorpion becomes a Szponburza Scorpion in Polish which should be enough to satisfy anyone.

The Deathrattle Viper can be a Doodrammelaar Viper (Afrikaans)


and our favorite Battlemind becomes Mendjebeteje. (Albanian)


Google Translate is my new best friend

 

[Windjammer]

<---Back from a quick trip to the dictionary.

I don't have a problem with it, if you want these things to sound more exotic, take the root words and translate them into another language.

The Stormclaw Scorpion becomes a Szponburza Scorpion in Polish which should be enough to satisfy anyone.

The Deathrattle Viper can be a Doodrammelaar Viper (Afrikaans)


and our favorite Battlemind becomes Mendjebeteje. (Albanian)


Google Translate is my new best friend

I must say, even as a multilingual group (English, German, Hungarian, Finnish, Portuguese) we're probably provincial enough to find foreign naming conventions funny. I love your proposal!

And grats to the OP. Kudos also to whoever first said that it's all about IP protection. *crosses both thumbs that WotC name generator will come up with next warlord feat named Army Builder*

 

[BryonD]

I actually prefer simple descriptive place holder names.

I recall one of the 3E books has "arrow demon" for a super archer demon. A lot of people took great exception to this. I think it was a good approach.

This is not to say that the designers are then off the hook from using their imagination. In my opinion, the "Shadow Hopper" demon should also include text like: "Known amongst the ranks of the Abyss as Kreqstalim, ....." or "In the Realms these horrors are commonly spoken of as Kreqatalim,..."

But, when it is three years later and I want to find that demon that dimension doors through shadows to hit people with sneak attacks, trying to recall Kreqstalim from hundreds of names is a pain.

But if the designers can't add some flavor also, that gets a thumbs down.
And if a DM is actually using these place holder type names in-game then huge thumbs down.

 

[Piratecat]

My shardmind battlemind and my warforged warlock/warlord beg to differ.

 

[boar]

Mind flayer > illithid > mindflayer

Other than that, I agree completely. Rivendell, Blackmoor and Greyhawk are cool fantasy names. Vicejaw, Godplate and Fightbr... sorry, Battlemind are not.

Um, you do realize that Rivendell, Blackmoor, and Greyhawk are all portmanteaux?



As Elphilm's hilarious slip illustrates, the problem isn't the naming convention -- it's the names. When a portmanteau is good, you don't even notice that it's a portmanteau; you just think, "Whoa, sweet name." When it's bad, it's bad. Same thing with made-up names -- good ones are evocative and cool, while bad ones sound retarded. "Shardmind" is no more horrible than "Yggth'har."

 

[Ourph]

But if the designers can't add some flavor also, that gets a thumbs down.
And if a DM is actually using these place holder type names in-game then huge thumbs down.

Actually, I think what you're calling "placeholder names" often sound more authentic than made up fantasy names.

People don't go around calling Dogwood trees Cornaceae Cornus trees. They use the common (portmanteau) name because it's easy to remember and say.

Likewise, in a fantasy world, it would make perfect sense for common folk and adventurers to call a bow-wielding demon an Arrow Demon. If a horrible creature rose out of the Abyss and started firing arrows into my face, the last thing I would be worried about is inserting a cool, creative, interesting name into the phrase "Run for your lives it's a ...........". In that situation, I think Arrow Demon would be perfectly satisfactory.

 

[bagger245]

"My fellow Shardminds, we are at war. The tainted Wildens with their Minotaur allies have breached out defenses and so I call to all the young Shardlings out there to take arms, while we wait for reinforcements from the Githzerai army to arrive," rallied the Battlemind commander.