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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ProfessorCirno" data-source="post: 5101455" data-attributes="member: 65637">I think one important point to bring up regarding good vs bad portmanteaus (and words in general) is longevity.Mind Flayer and Illithids are old monsters, and the names have become D&D-isms.  Beholder is the same - it's an iconic monster.  And one thing that helped Mind Flayer is the fact that it had the second name of Illithid.  Now the monster can do double duty - Mind flayer is perfect for a standard dungeon crawl, but if you want to make them your main focus of a campaign or area, you switch to the much more aberration-esque "Illithid."  One name is said by adventurers, the other is said by the scholar of forgotten lore trying to warn them.  It's perfect.The sillier ones didn't live on.  Flumphs are a sort of D&D joke.  Nobody is going to use Raggomuffins from 3e.  Yeah, earlier editions had stupid names.  That doesn't mean 4e should do the same thing, though.  It's a terrible excuse: "Look, this past edition made lame mistakes, so we should make lame mistakes too!"When I look at Warthorn Battlebriars, I just don't think it's going to be something evocative and long lasting.  I think that's the issue - that many of the new names are just throwaways.  You have the party fight them, then the party moves on and forgets about them.  They aren't campaign pieces, and frankly would probably never be.There were a lot of dumb names in earlier editions, and yet we still find ourselves fighting mind flayers and beholders.  So the question, I suppose, becomes: what will 4e's mark be on future games?</blockquote>

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