D&D General Identity of Monsters Post-Alignment (+)

[Mind of tempest]

not sure why you decided to answer for someone else, but I will point out that hostile =/= evil and the post said "evil,"

half of what people mean by evil is harmful to me.

 

[dave2008]

half of what people mean by evil is harmful to me.

But I wasn't asking half of the people, I was asking Sabathius42 what they meant by their statement. If I had to speculate, given the context of the post, I would say they didn't mean hungry = hostile = evil, they meant a random monster who is evil (a one-off / unique) is hostile/hungry to eat you. Big difference, but I will not know for sure until they respond. Perhaps you are current, but I don't think so.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm working on a setting where the gnolls are the ones who take care of the dead and run the setting's mausoleum (it's an enclosed area). And I don't mean "take care of the dead" in the carrion-eater sense, either (although some do wonder about that); I mean in the "proper burial to avoid undead" sense.

Yeah, seems appropriate.

 

[Marc_C]

You need to set it up like in the real world. In my last campaign fishermen complained sea creatures (sahuagins) were attacking their ships and destroying their nets. When the PCs investigated they found the lair and discovered the fishermen were fishing further and further into the sahuagins historical feeding territory. The PC negotiated an arrangement. The fishermen were not happy but it was better than a full scale attack against their costal city. The lord approved the arrangement.

This is set up to fail at some point. Either the fisherman will brake the arrangement or the sahuagins will have a new chief.

 

[Xeviat]

My setting is leaning into a more civilization vs the wilds, and a mortal vs the spirit world dichotomy. The "monstrous races" are replaced with the peoples who are not members of the races that have nations. One only can get a sense of "mono cultures" because I'm usually dealing with a small region, where there's 2 or three groups of each of the major races and then the few half-humans that are scattered around.

These groups aren't slaughtering each other because they're nearly equal power and they're sort of taking up biomes that suit them best. Humans could try to clear cut the forests to make more farmland, but the elves have already established a foothold there and that would cause war so diplomacy is more common. War still happens, but it's states dealing with each other instead of tribes.

My goblins (and goblinoids) are joining the fey races, and the spirit world itself is a whole mirror world in my setting. There's a lot of distrust between mortals and spirits, in both directions, but the barriers were weakened a century ago so there's starting to be more blending.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I haven't read the rest of this thread yet, but one of the ones that I have been using for a while are a reinterpretation of the Yuan-Ti

Millenia ago the Yuan-Ti people came upon a heavily wounded and dying Snake God. The god, knowing it would die, offered its body and blood to the Yuan-Ti, who were fleeing some great threat. Upon eating it's flesh and drinking its blood they were transformed into the forms you are familiar with.

But, the Yuan-Ti also learned that this god had only been a fragment of a much larger and more powerful being that had been shattered. The Cosmic Serpent. Grateful to their savior, they sought a way to restore them and reasoned that if the divine essence that had been diffused among them could be concentrated, then the God and eventually the Serpent could be restored.

So, they began a culture of ritual cannabalism and a caste system. Upon death, a body is consumed and also during certain religious holidays and ceremonies, volunteers are asked for or voted on. People can refuse, it is an honor to be chosen because it is the community saying "your divine essence has reached a peak worthy of being ascended to the next tier" but if the individual feels it is not yet their time, they can refuse and the community accepts. Eating an unwilling sacrifice is blasphemy of the highest order. I don't think there is a higher crime in their culture. Second highest "bad thing" would be leaving a body to rot. Though, sometimes, that is a rare punishment for those they feel have defiled the divine essence in their body, allowing it to diffuse back into the earth to be re-aqquired later.

The Thinbloods (because why in the world would the lowest caste be called "pure") generally eat and devour snake meat during these ceremonies. Snakes being the essence of the god which fell into the sea and earth, and was not taken in by the people.

The best and most honored of the Thinbloods are devoured by the Half-Bloods, (The Malison in the book), who are the nobles and leaders of the Yuan-Ti.

And the Best and most honored of the Half-Bloods are devoured by the Pure Bloods (the abominations in the book, because again, why would the best caste be called abominations) who are the royal court and their direct relatives.

Then at the very top, is the Divine Emperor. An immortal who is to be the reborn God when his divine essence has returned to him.

And the subversive thing is... there is no subversion. This is how the system works, and they are right that it will work, and there is no corruption or secretly evil plots baked into the system. Are there those who do evil within the system? Sure, that's why the high punishments exist, but this is just how their culture and their people work, and they hope to one day have the purified Cosmic Serpent return and continue its divine mission (whatever that was, I haven't decided)

 

[Iry]

In my Eberron, there is a culture of bugbears that hasn't been part of the larger goblinoid culture since a bit before the fall of the old empire, as they had split off and formed a druidic cult in the swamplands now known as the Shadow Marches. They live arboreal lives, building "nests" in the great trees and only descending from the trees to hunt and trade. They tend to hunt as ambush predators, waiting in total stillness for prey to pass under them, and then soundlessly drop on them, breaking their spine, or if needed striking critical areas at the moment of impact with a weapon.

Dropbears. You just snuck Dropbears into your campaign.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Just curious, why does hungry = evil?

Sorry for the delay....for some reason I never got an alert this thread had any more activity.

Not all creatures trying to eat the part are evil...like say a roc or a pack of wolves, or even something magical like a displacer beast.

When I use the term "monster", that is the keyword to the sentence...not hungry. A monster (in my game anyway) or group I define as evil is one that is seeking to destroy or harm and which is intelligent but cannot be reasoned with.

A zombie or a skeleton isnt necessarily evil....it's just a robotic tool. The halfling necromancer who created the zombie and told it to "kill everyone you see" was the evil one, but that's an individual and not an all encompassing group.

 

[Maxperson]

years ago, I wrote a couple of adventures where the PCs play the monsters. Sick and tired of humans and demi-humans always raiding their lands and killing them, they put aside many of the "traditional" behavior of monstrous humanoids as described in various monster manuals. They formed truces, worked with diplomacy, and worked for the betterment of their communities using a pragmatic approach. While they still often resorted to violence to achieve their goals (like every other human species), they didn't act inherently evil and backstabbyish with each other. Mostly out of necessity, but they pretty much became like every other intelligent humanoid species.

Goblins - 06/29/2005

Goblins is the story of a fantasy rpg through the eyes of the low-level monsters.

www.goblinscomic.com

 

[Oofta]

While I don't agree with the basic premise, I do handle drow differently than the default lore.

My world is loosely based on Norse mythology, and in that mythology drow come from Svartleheim (or Svartalfheim depending on how you anglicize it). But the "being cursed by Corellon" never really worked for me, even if I did steal a lot of non-human gods and lore from FR and Greyhawk.

So in my mythology, elves were one of the first humanoids created, as other humanoids were created many elves felt a bit superior and that they were better and more perfect. A faction of the elves took it further, that with their obvious superiority meant that their rightful place was to rule over the "lesser" races.

They were rejected by the other elves. Bitter and angry, they sought out a new realm to call home. They found Svartleheim, home of Lollth, matched the darkness of their souls and claimed it for their own. Since then there has been a feedback loop, the new home radiating a dark magic ensuring their bitterness and hatred while that bitterness and hatred shapes the realm.

Eventually this affected the very color of their skin turning the drow a dark gray. With time, the drow became more aligned with Lollth and other evil gods. To this day drow live in Svartleheim and constantly feel the the pull of their home rarely spending significant time in Midgard other than to cause misery and chaos. It is incredibly rare for a drow to spend more than a few weeks away from their home plane of existence.

However there was a group that managed to break away, a splinter group rejected the darkness, rejected the hatred. They became Gray Elves. Gray elves still feel the pull of anger and chaos shaping their emotions but they work hard to suppress them and live a life based on logic and reason. Living in Midgard, their skin color slowly faded over time to be barely noticeable. The transformation can go both ways. A gray elf that foregoes logic can become drow once more, a drow that rejects their upbringing will seek out other gray elves. Over decades, the skin color will change. The skin color change also affects duergar and svirfeneblin that also reside in Svartleheim.

Admittedly all of this is derivative from Star Trek and Romulans vs Vulcans, but I started using the gray elves first who traditionally have a very lawful and ordered structure to their society.

As a side note, Svartleheim is my stand-in for the underdark. It's a separate plane of existence that is most easily accessed deep underground.