EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
...I literally just said I don't expect that.Who says the owlbear in my campaign is the same as the owlbear from the MM?
Consider the context I just gave. At the same level, in the same general location. Don't you think one adult bull moose (to use a real world example) should be, generally speaking, about the same as any other adult bull moose if you're looking at moose in the same forest within a few days of each other, unless there's something noticeably different about it? Variation exists, but I wouldn't expect to see one at 500 pounds (massively below normal weight) and the other at 4000 pounds (about 2.5x max normal weight) unless I'm given a reason why they differ.Why would any two owlbears be exactly the same?
That's an explanation though. That is something the players SHOULD be able to observe, but which they might not necessarily observe in practice (through being blasé or failing a check or simply not putting the pieces together.)I tweak monsters all the time. Sometimes there's in world explanations, sometimes it's just that you stumbled across a particularly ornery owlbear.
Turn that "likely" into "will" and you are perfectly describing what I'm asking for. The hints do not have to be picked up—but you must play fair and actually make it reasonable that someone really could have. That way, the fact that they did not do so is genuinely on them.It's not going to start breathing fire unless there's an in world reason, but some individual creatures may well be more or less dangerous than standard. I will likely give descriptive hints but just because you've never run across a dragon that casts spells doesn't mean this one won't.
There are certain ironies in asserting such a strong position on monster variability but not other forms of perfectly equivalent variability.Truly exceptional monsters are rare, but a fair amount of variance can happen more often.
Okay, have you even been reading what I've said? Because I explicitly said that. Repeatedly. You are not responsible for guaranteeing that the party learns something. But when you make secret changes like this, you are responsible for ensuring they genuinely COULD learn it, even if (by happenstance, bad luck, unwise choices, overconfidence, etc., etc., etc.) they don't ACTUALLY learn it.If the PCs don't know or somehow
learn something, I see no reason to inform the players.
I have said this in no less than three previous posts, including the one you just quoted.