Monster Manual Suggests Changes Are Coming to Some Playable Species

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More non-humanoid playable species are coming to the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons. In videos released over the last two weeks to promote the 2025 Monster Manual, Wizards of the Coast has revealed they have reclassified several creatures that doubled as playable races in the previous version of 5th Edition as non-humanoid species. The goblin is now a fey creature, the kobold is now a dragon, and the kenku is now a monstrosity. It's likely that the hobgoblin and bugbear (both of which are goblinoid creatures in D&D) will also be reclassified in the Monster Manual. The 2024 adventure Vecna: Eve of Ruin reclassified the Warforged as a construct rather than as a humanoid, a change from the 2018 Eberron sourcebook. Lycanthropes are also reclassified as monstrosities in the 2025 Monster Manual, which could also have an impact on playable species.

There are 14 different creature types in D&D 5E, although it took D&D years to include non-humanoid creature types as an option. Centaurs (from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica) was the first non-humanoid creature type, followed by satyrs in Mythic Odysseys of Theros. Both of those books were Magic: The Gathering crossovers and classified those races as fey creatures. The Wild Beyond the Witchlight added Fairies and Haregon as playable fey creatures. Spelljammer added playable construct, monstrosities, and oozes via the Autognome, Thri-kreen, and Plasmoid. Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse also changed the Changeling from Eberron into a fey creature.

D&D hasn't stated their plans for the goblin, kobold, kenku, and warforged playable species rules, but these classifications should be reflected if/when the D&D team updates those species for the 2024 rule set.

Creature classifications matter in 5E D&D because certain spells only impact humanoids. Hold Person, Charm Person, Dominate Person, Finger of Death's zombification effect, Reincarnate, Calm Emotion, Friends, Crown of Madness, Magic Jar, and Simulacrum are all spells that only impact humanoids, for instance. Some of these spells have equivalents that can be used on any creature type but often require a higher level spell slot to be used.

On the flip side, one immediate impact is that, once the 2025 Monster Manual comes out, a bard PC will no longer be able to Charm Person their way out of tense encounter with a goblin or a kobold. Mind manipulation is no longer in vogue (or mechanically possible) when interacting with the game's beloved trash dragons.
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

People choose different species for different reasons. I'm not going to shame someone because they have mechanical preferences. And anyway, interactions with Charm Person may not affect your choices, but it's perfectly valid for them to affect the choice of others.

I'm not attempting to shame them. I'm asking "is that it" and expressing my confusion because the mechanical differences seem incredibly rare.

And if the only thing they want different is immunity to effects in the game... yeah, I'm going to side-eye that. Just like I would side-eye someone wanting to play a Genasi... but also wanted them resistant to six damage types instead of one.
 

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The amusing thing to me is that Tales of the Valiant made all this stuff irrelevant.

Instead of 'Hold Person' and 'Charm Person' the game has 'Hold' and 'Charm'. There's also 'Dominate' and 'Greater Dominate'. The spell is limited by creature size rather than creature type.

Basically any PC can become temporarily immune to Hold and Dominate by having Enlarge cast on them.
That's what I think would make the most sense.
 

In 3.5 they had humanoid as a type with subtypes for things like goblinoid or elf.

I houseruled a lot of things to be humanoid subtype x, such as giants being humanoid giants, planetouched being humanoid native outsider and so on with elves and gnomes being subtype fey and dwarves being subtype giant. It meant the person spells worked on more things you would expect and it gave some things more specific minor flavor associations.
 




I houseruled a lot of things to be humanoid subtype x, such as giants being humanoid giants, planetouched being humanoid native outsider and so on with elves and gnomes being subtype fey and dwarves being subtype giant.
One of the FR books back in 3e had Planetouched as a subtype. It lowered the LA from +1 to +0 for races such as the Aasimar, Tiefling and Genasi. All three with this variant rule were now treated as Humanoid (Planetouched).
 




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