D&D 5E (2024) Nothics should speak Common and other languages

[Time_Feather]

Disclaimer: Yes, obviously, as a DM, anyone can do this. This is about what should be in the Monster Manual.

So, nothic lore (which I feel like wasn't their original lore in the 3E Miniatures Handbook -- a surprisingly great book, even for theater of the mind groups) is that they're former scholars of forbidden lore, twisted into hideous shapes now dominated by a single unblinking eye that are still consumed with the hunt for forbidden lore.

So far, so good, although I think the old Hobbit cartoon tells us that creepy guys with big eyes that slowly blink are probably creepier than those with eyes that don't blink.

But nothics only speak Undercommon RAW. I get that they are supposed to have forgotten their old lives -- which is boring, IMO, but OK -- but how much forbidden lore is written in Undercommon? Are they all getting transformed in a drow or mind flayer library?

And given that WotC loves sticking nothics into starter sets -- there's one in Lost Mine of Phandalin and another in Heroes of the Borderlands -- and that players are explicitly supposed to negotiate with them, not letting them do so in Common feels like a huge oversight. Some DMs will just miss that they don't speak Common, but others will either stop the negotiations dead or force their PCs to pantomime a conversation.

This feels like a missed opportunity. If WotC wants to elevate nothics to be their next "sticky" monster -- monsters that the players fall in love with and want to see return in future; this was an explicit goal with many of the monsters in the 3E Fiend Folio, for instance -- I think the monsters need to be tweaked to be creatures the PCs can do more than fight with.

The easiest fix is to just give them the ability to speak Common, but if they're supposed to be creepy scholars of the forbidden, I'd probably toss in 1d4 rare languages as well, to reflect what kind of esoteric studies they're into. (And it'd be kind of fun when the players learn that the forbidden knowledge that turned a former human scholar into a weird monster was written in ... Celestial.)

As someone who seriously loves and cherishes the design of nothics, I appreciate this immensely! I want to design an entire adventure or module or something with a Nothic NPC as a centerpiece or quest-giver or something of the like.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

nothic or the xorn

Now, the way I would use these creatures (and the way they are used in official publications) is very different. The nothic is an insane former wizard. They are generally more interested in talking than fighting, in a Gollum/Ben Gunn deranged way. WotC also use them in this way, in Reach for the Stars (KftGV) for example. Zala Morphus is called out as speaking Common, Deep Speech an Elvish. They really should know the languages they knew as wizards, which one would expect to be several, plus any they pick up with their Weird Insight ability (does this even provide translation, or RAW is it useless against anything that doesn't speak Undercommon?)

Xorn, on the other hand, are weird difficult to comprehend aliens, and establishing communication should be the main challenge if you want to avoid a fight.

 

[Clint_L]

I routinely ignore the language entry in the MM, so I had no idea they didn't speak Common. Yeah, you want Nothics to speak Common. Crazy, convoluted, confused Common, but ithat's what makes interactions with them fun.

 

[Necropolitan]

What languages a Nothic knows should be randomized or specific to their backstory.

If Vecna decided a Drow researcher was getting too big for their britches Undercommon makes sense, but it could very well be that the Nothic's maddened mind now knows a completely different language than the one they usually spoke in life, their main language now relates to the forbidden knowledge that resulted in their transformation (one who dug too deep into Diabolic lore might speak Infernal), etc.

That's what I do with most monsters that are the result of transformations, their backstories are important to how they ended up in their current situation and that should be reflected in their stat blocks.