D&D 5E Legends & Lore 3/17 /14

[RevTurkey]

This sounds excellent to me.

Well done Mearl's & Co.

Just what I like... fluff if I want it but not bound by it. Perfect.

 

[Blackwarder]

I like it.
My biggest regret was loosing my 2e MM and than grabbing 3e MM and wondering what happened to all the great info blocks for moral, ecology, society and such. I realy hope that we will go back to 2e format for monsters.

Warder

 

[Sadrik]

I like the story hooks. Lower crunch emphasis and more book real estate used on fluff. I like that. the one page entries for each creature, like in the Monstrous Compendium may be overkill.

For the Jacklewere: how did Grazzt create them though... That is something best left for an adventure to discover. Perhaps he enacted some fell curse, perhaps caused some invisible plague, perhaps crafted some alchemical tincture converting the helpless, some strapped captives into a devious magical conversion artifact, or he even bribed some dark god to do his bidding. Point being he was not the one who snapped his fingers and made them, he had them made...

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

For the most part, I like this approach. I definitely like having all the story and ecology information in the monster manual. My only complaint is I don't like when proper nouns are used in monster descriptions. The mention of Graz'zt in the jacklewere somehow pulls me out of the world.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I look forward to seeing how it all plays out in published form. One thing that always struck me as a little less than useful with the 4E MMs was that each monster entry would include a suggested encounter that included the monster plus a couple other monsters alongside of it... but not always giving any clear indication why exactly they would be found together (other than all being level-appropriate). Yeah, it worked from the point of view of creating an applicable level-appropriate encounter... but if 5E can take that approach PLUS include a narrative description of why X, Y & Z could be found side-by-side, so much the better. Monsters that ordinarily never get much love because players have a hard time figuring out their place in the world can hopefully get teamed up in a couple different entries based on the monster ecology and story function.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So this is how they're gonna do modular fluff, eh?

Maybe. I think it'll work.

What I'm afraid of most in this case is that wrought iron wall of tigers between the fluff and the mechanics. It looks like they're paying pretty close attention to it, to make sure that the mechanics support whatever fluff they're telling, and being pretty careful about it overall, so that's a positive sign.

But I can't help shake the feeling that different fluff should result in different mechanics. The specific mechanics should support the specific story. A jackalwere created by Grazz'zt should be something that, say, paladins can smite. A jackalwere just born in nature, maybe not?

But then, it sounds like their close attention is working to mitigate/remove this concern. Jackalweres have a gaze that puts critters to sleep...so it's not totally a bad fit for Grazz'zt, who is a manipulative little gremlin. So it sounds like their new stories are built from the mechanics: what other story could these rules tell?

Which is kind of cool, come to think. Sort of coming out the other side of it. A lot of old monsters have a bit of a haphazard selection of abilities because designers sometimes gave more thought to what the creature needed to do than to why it needed to do that (and jackalweres putting things to sleep is not a bad example of that). We can presume that the old stories fit these old mechanics "well enough." Now these old mechanics are also being translated into new stories.

That liberates DMs and individual settings to do their thing, too. Maybe Jackalweres in your game are evil servants of some god of dreams or something (sleep gaze!).

The mechanics-first perspective feels a bit awkward and backwards...but it is probably not a bad idea for an inclusive 5e, all told. As long as the new stories still relate to those mechanics, you'll still be supporting the story with mechanics.

...I imagine things like "alignment" fall more on the story side of things than the mechanics side of things for the 5e team, and I'd be inclined to agree, which can give us things like Lawful Githzerai -- they're the same critter, statwise, just in this particular story of the Githzerai, their monastic tradition has emphasized order and control rather than independence and self-determination (a la the 2e version).

 

[Savage Wombat]

While I appreciate that Graz'zt is old-school D&D, I never liked him much. And now I'm worrying that he's being pushed to the forefront of the game universe in support of the new "all IP all the time" strategy. Why couldn't jackalweres have been the spawn of Yeenoghu or something?

 

[DEFCON 1]

While I appreciate that Graz'zt is old-school D&D, I never liked him much. And now I'm worrying that he's being pushed to the forefront of the game universe in support of the new "all IP all the time" strategy. Why couldn't jackalweres have been the spawn of Yeenoghu or something?

Cause he's not? What difference does it make? No one's personal preferences on what works/not works or is cool/not cool for monsters is going to be able to be reflected 100%.

When the monster manual is released... out of the hundred plus monsters, every single one of us is going to find probably at least a half-dozen monsters whose narrative is going to rub us the wrong way. We're not going to like it. We have to just accept it. WotC is not going to bat a thousand on every single monster.

The big question then ends up being how we react to it? Do we feel thankful that they got so many monsters RIGHT in our eyes... or are we going to come onto ENWorld bitching that they got a couple wrong?

Actually, strike that question-- we already know the answer. This *is* ENWorld after all.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The big question then ends up being how we react to it? Do we feel thankful that they got so many monsters RIGHT in our eyes... or are we going to come onto ENWorld bitching that they got a couple wrong?

Actually, strike that question-- we already know the answer. This *is* ENWorld after all.

I hope what we see is a bunch of different ways to do it better.

Every failure WotC has is a chance for someone to come in and be more awesome. Think Jackalweres would be great Yeenoghu-linked critters? Lets see the adventure you've got that makes that awesome.

 

[Sadrik]

I am going to agree with the sentiment that named critters should not be in the descriptions of monsters.

Bob the vampire, Grazzt the Demon Lord, Hank the Illithid, Jane the Medusa, and also including Pelor the Sun God, Zeus the thunder god these should all depend on the individual campaign and not be an integral part of monster entries lore and ecology.

I do like the associations to other creatures though, this has been done in the game in the past but only for certain creatures. Opening this up to more associations works well for me.