Monster Subtypes

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Yeah, so maybe elves will be Medium Humanoid (Fey), or Medium Fey Humanoid (Elf).

My guess would be Medium Living Humanoid (Fey).

 

[Baby Samurai]

My guess would be Medium Living Humanoid (Fey).

Ah, nice, so we might have:


-Medium Immortal Humanoid

-Medium Living Humanoid

-Medium Undead Humanoid

...Etc?

 

[Elphilm]

I think Mortal is a more probable choice than Living, but otherwise that's most likely what they're going for.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Mortal sounds good. I'd guess we'd get "Metabolisms" (I can't think of a better word for it) of Immortal, Mortal, Undead, Construct and possibly Elemental. Shapes would be Humanoid, Beast, Dragon, Worm/snake, Ooze and Abberration as a type for things that can't really be classified.

I could see quite a lot of Shapes but not that many Metabolisms.

 

[Danzauker]

I think we'll see a 2metabolism" entry only of it's strictly necessary, i.e. an elf will be prolly just a Medium Humanoid (Fey) or something like that, while a golem will be a Large Construct Humanoid.

I see no reason to complicate things more than necessary.

 

[Anthtriel]

I think we'll see a 2metabolism" entry only of it's strictly necessary, i.e. an elf will be prolly just a Medium Humanoid (Fey) or something like that, while a golem will be a Large Construct Humanoid.

I see no reason to complicate things more than necessary.

It's necessary to specifically target them, and to have rules for them.

For example, I suspect there will be Death Effects that only target living beings, and rules for eating, sleeping and breathing will probably be tied to living beings as well.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Exactly, should a warlike race of Fey automatically have 1/2 BAB and a crap Fort save just by virtue of being "Fey"?

Equally there were bizarre monster creation decisions where the designers deliberately put the monster in the 'wrong' type so that it got better BAB, for instance. (War Troll, I'm looking at you)

 

[Baby Samurai]

Equally there were bizarre monster creation decisions where the designers deliberately put the monster in the 'wrong' type so that it got better BAB, for instance. (War Troll, I'm looking at you)

Well, I've been ignoring it (BAB/saves tied to type) for the past year or so in the Planescape campaign I'm DMing. When the party got ambushed by Unseelie Satyr Archers, you can bet your little tushy that they did not have 1/2 BAB.

 

[Danzauker]

It's necessary to specifically target them, and to have rules for them.

For example, I suspect there will be Death Effects that only target living beings, and rules for eating, sleeping and breathing will probably be tied to living beings as well.

You don't need a label to tell you EVERYTHING about EVERY creature!!

The rule for Death effects could just go: "If it's not Undead, Construct, Whatchamacallit, then it's a living creature and can be targeted by this kind of effects", like it'a always been.

 

[Anthtriel]

You don't need a label to tell you EVERYTHING about EVERY creature!!

There are going to be breathing, eating and sleeping rules, player characters need them. So somewhere in the rules you will have a section that reads: "Breathing: All [x] need to breathe. If they don't have access to air, they ..."

So what's [x] going to be? "All Humanoids, Animals, Dragons, Beasts, Plants?, this_type, that_type, that_other_type_over_there"? Are you sure that's more elegant than "living creature"?

The rule for Death effects could just go: "If it's not Undead, Construct, Whatchamacallit, then it's a living creature and can be targeted by this kind of effects", like it'a always been.

Descriptions are shorter and clearer if they work by inclusion instead of exclusion. "It works against everything except: ..." is longer then "It works on: ..."
Also, it would be a strange exception. Everything gets a metabolism type, except for normal living beings. Why?

It was different in 3E, because the type system there was stupid.