D&D General Drow & Orcs Removed from the Monster Manual

[Scribe]

Humans, tieflings, dragonborn, dwarves, etc. are all PC races and can be enemy humanoid types, so moving goblins, et al. to fey, gnolls to fiends, etc. so they can escape the "these are people so go ahead and kill them all without remorse" issue is garbage.

If there is a problem, focus on the true problem, and stop trying to gloss it over with other things.

Anyway, that is my rant about it--sorry if it isn't quite coherent.

Its perfectly coherent, and it makes obvious that Wizards is just hiding the issue because they dont have the stones to tell the players 'yeah, actually, you are killing other sentient beings, deal with it as its an Elf Game'.

 

[Remathilis]

Its perfectly coherent, and it makes obvious that Wizards is just hiding the issue because they dont have the stones to tell the players 'yeah, actually, you are killing other sentient beings, deal with it as its an Elf Game'.

I am perpetuity amused that D&D tries it's darnedest to avoid the fact that a group of well armed mercenaries slaughtering sapient beings would be a war crime in the real world. "No no no, they're really fey/elementals/fiends/etc so it's totally different" is just the latest in the long line of justifying to itself the violence at the heart of the game.

 

[Minigiant]

My many gripe is the olc orc and drow weren't turned into generic NPC stat blocks.

The basic Orc should be the NPC Shock Trooper
The basic Drow should be the NPC Kidnapper

 

[Scribe]

I am perpetuity amused that D&D tries it's darnedest to avoid the fact that a group of well armed mercenaries slaughtering sapient beings would be a war crime in the real world. "No no no, they're really fey/elementals/fiends/etc so it's totally different" is just the latest in the long line of justifying to itself the violence at the heart of the game.

Its pretty wild, I dont think I've seen a single decent argument that can possibly justify the violence unless everyone you end up killing (in spectacular ways I may add) is just a simulation, an empty shell of 'Alignment Energy' that is unthinking, or an Undead of some type.

The body count in any D&D game I've played (NWN, BG1/2/3, whatever) is probably approaching 1000+.

 

[Krachek]

For the Drows my reasoning is simple.

They will continue to produce material for The Forgotten realms.
So Drizzt will still be a character in DnD.
And Drizzt without the old classic nasty Drows is hard to sell.

I don’t know how they will twist and wrap that, but old classic Drows will reappear in official product one of these days.

 

[Scribe]

For the Drows my reasoning is simple.

They will continue to produce material for The Forgotten realms.
So Drizzt will still be a character in DnD.
And Drizzt without the old classic nasty Drows is hard to sell.

And don’t know how they will twist and wrap that, but old classic Drows will reappear in official product one of these days.

They already dealt with this years ago, by inventing the arctic drow or whatever they are who are 'good actually'.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's a weird take that is trying to hard to be difficult.

I disagree.

 

[cbwjm]

How do people actually use orcs and drow, goblins and ogres, and other such races in their game? I'm personally not so keen on making orcs a standard player race in my games, in the campaign I ran a while back I specified none of these typically evil races because they were the baddies. I'm generally fine with changing the lore anyway so even if I was moving to 2024, that requirement wouldn't change.

Things did progress, an orc chieftain who wanted to break away from the Destroyer (god who created the beastmen which is goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, trolls, and ogres) and the self-destructive warfare with the human settlement and now their is a treaty between the two settlements so I might allow orcs to be player characters if continuing with that specific storyline.

I never got around to using drow but their faith, the Tyranny, worships a small pantheon headed by the Tyrant a lawful god of tyranny and control (probably similar to Bane from FR perhaps combined with Asmodeus and stealing Megatron's quote "Peace through Tyranny") so they are unlikely to be good guys either.

 

[SkidAce]

In a way this doesnt affect us at all, because my campaign normally combats humanoids, which therefore get slaughtered.

As an example, we have recently combatted pirates, "Red Wizard of Thay" types, slavers, evil rogues guild, evil "Illuminati" type wizards, and of course, evil cultists.

On occasion, these groups have had "monsters" as minions, but the bulk have been humanoid.

Their motto seems to be "We kill bad guys".

 

[Weiley31]

For those who want orc lore I refer them to Orcs of Th… oh wait… no! Don’t open…

Yeeees do it!!!