D&D 5E Monsters as characters?

[Sunseeker]

Our group has recently encountered several lucky streaks wherein we were rewarded with a wish spell. Much to our surprise, the DM basically set no limits on the wish and as such some of our group as now monsters.

Has anyone else attempted play with monsters characters? Giants? Dragons? Efreets? etc... How did you handle experience and leveling? Were these options even available to monster characters? Could these creatures take classes? If it was a transformation of an already-created character, did they retain their stats and class levels?

Or is my group charting new territory in 5E?

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Probably pretty new. I'll be doing something like that in a few weeks, but it's for a single adventure, so there won't be any level gaining.

 

[pukunui]

Or is my group charting new territory in 5E?

Yes. There's no Savage Species (or similar) for 5e as of now. That being said, I think WotC has so far discouraged monsters as characters. Look at how the reincarnation spell only includes the PHB races.

Mike Mearls has talked about "monster classes", but I don't know that they've done any development on that concept yet.

 

[Sunseeker]

Yes. There's no Savage Species (or similar) for 5e as of now. That being said, I think WotC has so far discouraged monsters as characters. Look at how the reincarnation spell only includes the PHB races.

I think the reincarnation spell could easily be expanded to include other, newer playable races, but limiting it to player races also prevents a lot of shenanigans that went on (as I recall 3e had a way to "control" the reincarnation and thus get silly things).

Mike Mearls has talked about "monster classes", but I don't know that they've done any development on that concept yet.

Well it will be interesting to see what he says.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Gygax had said you could play a Balor if you wanted, as long as you started at level 1.


I've heard of a few others playing monsters in 5e, using the DMG guidelines when assigning traits and abilities for a new race.

 

[hoffrg86]

Official 5e, there is nothing i'm aware of.; 3.x had incorporated a lot of this, you could look to some of those sources. There was libre mortis, and epic level handbook from what i remember, i'm sure there are lots more. Bottom line is, if the DM and players are enjoying it(we found the appeal lasted a short time.) just go with it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

One of the big things you'll run into is that monster stats are simply not designed with character use in mind (with the possible exception of some beasts, since that features into some class features). My guess is that you'll find a lot of 'em to be kind of glass cannons - able to dish it out, not really able to take it.

But let us know what you find.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Gygax had said you could play a Balor if you wanted, as long as you started at level 1.

Pretty much. A few years ago I ran an OD&D game and one of the players wanted to play a dragon. So we started him off as a little wing-a-ling ding dragon of 1 HD, skin equal to leather armor, a single claw attack, and once per day 1d6 small area breath weapon. He could also fly but only for very short hops. The powers & abilities would grow from there.

In 5E a lot would depend on character level, and monster chosen. Of course a carelessly worded wish would result in the PC becoming that monster quite literally and losing all class/levels and be unable to gain new ones. Hey you wanted to be a frost giant and you are!

 

[Jeff Albertson]

In 5E a lot would depend on character level, and monster chosen. Of course a carelessly worded wish would result in the PC becoming that monster quite literally and losing all class/levels and be unable to gain new ones.

I don't own it yet, but I thought the DMG makes it clear you can add class levels to monsters, is that right?

 

[Sunseeker]

Of course a carelessly worded wish would result in the PC becoming that monster quite literally and losing all class/levels and be unable to gain new ones. Hey you wanted to be a frost giant and you are!

I think a "be careful what you wish for" may indeed be the direction the DM is taking with this, though he is running an impressively high fantasy game, I think the DMG would classify it as "mythic fantasy", so characters playing dragons or storm giants or mind flayers wouldn't be entirely out of place in such a game to begin with. He is certainly not actively trying to punish us for being monsters though and while he has stated that monstrous characters will level slower he hasn't taken that off the table for us completely. I've already straight-up asked him if he has a problem with us playing monsters and he has not, so for I know we might need for be a little bit more than a PC race with a class can offer.

So far it has really depended on how far the player is willing to push it.

EX: I got my character made into a half dragon (not really a substantial increase in power) but the DM limited any additional recharge-based uses of my breath weapon to adding a rank of exhaustion every time I used it more than once a day (I only ever got it to recharge once). This did however, cost my character somewhere above 70,000gp in exotic materials we had uncovered while questing. There was no adjustment to my class or current abilities for this.

However, I recently got to become a full dragon, this did cost me, in the words of Gul'Dan

but I am literally the Adult Bronze Dragon straight from the MM.

One of the other players wanted to be a mind flayer, the character was a lvl10 wizard. He gained all the physical stats from the mind flayer but kept his mental ones, no variant mind flayer spellcasting though. From what I have gauged he is not substantially more powerful than he was before and has much less HP.