D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[tetrasodium]

It does get into the vibe though that D&D is its own setting. D&D isn't a generic fantasy toolbox, its a Dungeons and Dragons toolbox, and has a set of its own tropes and expectations that come with it. One of those D&D Things is just, a bunch of random races running around. That's going to be a player expectation

A character going wildly off the rails is a little different to "Hey you know this race that's existed since 1986 and is just, a turtle guy who can fit in anywhere given the general D&D existence of wilder things than turtle guys? I want to play one". In a setting with lizardmen, rust monsters, illithid, and the giant dragons, "Yeah there's just some turtle people around" shouldn't be a wild ask

Dark Sun wasn't as restrictive as people said it was and blatantly had expies of the things it said it was removing, to say nothing of stuff like kenku and yuan-ti being setting standard, and Ravenloft was just a hot mess of a setting where they had to go "Oh, we want to keep the horror theme so uh. You hear of a brain in a jar, the most 50s sci-fi thing ever, take a fear check at the ~~horrors~~" in the hope the DM could do something with that, because boy the books couldn't write gothic horror to save their lives

Counterpoint. In a setting where lizard men goblins gnolls living constructs and a couple others have a notable place in the setting lore as people I'd prefer a hard restriction do the work of proactively fencing off those races that need a place carved out because I would much rather have players playing the existing races with setting lore hooks I could loop into the campaign as it develops over time

 

[Remathilis]

I think you're catastrophizing a little here. There's usually a little more going on, particularly in a gaming situation where setting is the responsibility of one party. If the point is to present a well-realized, internally coherent setting to the players to interact with, setting limitations upfront about what will be in said setting is pretty obvious. I think it's become more common to seek input before one gets into establishing the setting norms in the first place and that's generally a good thing, but there's really nothing inherently wrong with the GM having a setting prepared in isolation and presenting it as is to the players for character creation.

Though it does beg the question if your setting is so different than the games core concept that you are omitting large chunks of the PHB, are you using the best system? I often think people bend and twist D&D into other game systems for no other reason than to claim they are still playing D&D.

"That's stupid" is obviously the most mean-spirited form of turning down a player proposal, but you can imagine a more reasonable "I don't have a place inside the structure I've built for turtle people or blood magic, because I constructed it without those, and it would be disruptive to other elements to introduce them now." It's clearly better to work out the overlapping shared stuff you want to play with ahead of time, but if it comes down to a GM not being interested in something, and we're dealing with a game where they're doing al the setting generation work (and presumably have already done a bunch of it) then I don't see a problem.

In the real world, we discover and invent new things all the time. We discover animals we didn't know exist (or even thought were extinct), tribes of people who lack contact with the larger world, and new beliefs, technology and ways of doing stuff. Is your world so mapped out in detail that a new species (or monster) would disrupt the ecosystem? Is magic such a defined system no one could create a magic form based on blood? Is your world so small that you can name everything that exists in it?

It should be possible to amiably work out some other character concept, perhaps to rework a whole new setting/theme, or to play some other game altogether.

Seems like a lot more work compared to finding a place to accommodate said option.

 

[Remathilis]

Though equally there is a point where people can go "This is a legacy creature that has stats in every edition, why are you even playing Dungeons and Dragons if such a re-occurring Dungeons and Dragons creature can't exist in your setting?". Even orcs occasionally stumble into Dragonlance, if a setting is so hard set on things that Tortles, a legacy race who have been in the game longer than I've been alive, can't fit in a setting? Then, genuinely, I wonder why you've even put your setting in Dungeons and Dragons to begin with.

That's before I even get to blood magic which is a swords and sorcery staple

I find the biggest hypocritical element DMs who champion limitations as a vessel of creativity make is that they often find reasons to limit what players can play, but so not likewise limit what they can use as far as monsters and magic. Lots of DMs find it perfectly acceptable to ban the race section from Monsters of the Multiverse but then don't likewise ban themselves from using the Monster section of the same book.

Show me the DM who says they will only use the monsters from the Monster Manuel and nothing else and I'll show you a DM who actually values limitations as creativity. Anything else is "Limits for Thee, but not for Me!"

 

[Remathilis]

Something funny @Alzrius ?

 

[GobHag]

I think you're catastrophizing a little here. There's usually a little more going on, particularly in a gaming situation where setting is the responsibility of one party. If the point is to present a well-realized, internally coherent setting to the players to interact with, setting limitations upfront about what will be in said setting is pretty obvious. I think it's become more common to seek input before one gets into establishing the setting norms in the first place and that's generally a good thing, but there's really nothing inherently wrong with the GM having a setting prepared in isolation and presenting it as is to the players for character creation.

"That's stupid" is obviously the most mean-spirited form of turning down a player proposal, but you can imagine a more reasonable "I don't have a place inside the structure I've built for turtle people or blood magic, because I constructed it without those, and it would be disruptive to other elements to introduce them now." It's clearly better to work out the overlapping shared stuff you want to play with ahead of time, but if it comes down to a GM not being interested in something, and we're dealing with a game where they're doing al the setting generation work (and presumably have already done a bunch of it) then I don't see a problem.

It should be possible to amiably work out some other character concept, perhaps to rework a whole new setting/theme, or to play some other game altogether.

Then I'll give the same explanation to those GM that many other players get

"Don't write long, detailed settings"

 

[FrogReaver]

RE- People not reading the rules when they run the game and getting confused by monster blocks - I want to share what may be an illustrative example from my most recent session. I am a first-time DM.

The party met a couple Shadows.

Here's the 2024 Shadow stat block:
View attachment 425412

I took note of the Shadow's many status Immunities, and the effects of their attack. I correctly assumed their BA Hide would be irrelevant because the encounter is in a small room and the players carry lights.

The relevance of the Shadow's ability scores or modifiers to my prep is zero, because I'm really leaning on the official adventure module to provide appropriate challenges.

My party has a great strategy for all the undead on this dungeon floor, which is that the Cleric runs into every room first. This helped with the Shadows too since the Cleric has high strength. I had the Shadows attack only him to see how much of his strength I could take before the Shadows were destroyed (is experimenting on PCs a form of DM malevolence?).

One of the other PCs used the Study action to see if she could discern anything about the Shadow's abilities, and with her roll I shared they are resistant to many types of elemental damage and that they are immune to many conditions. She replied, "Oh yeah, if I try to grapple this thing made of pure shadow, it probably won't go well for me?" and I nodded proudly at her.

The battle ended! The Shadows were defeated! The Cleric was at -6 to his Strength ability score.

I looked at the stat block. And then I looked at my Cleric. And then I looked at the stat block. And I looked at my Cleric and I said, "Ummm yeah you defeated the Shadows and your Strength is restored!"

And all the players laughed and talked about how evil it would be if the Strength drain persisted...

After the session, I looked up what I was actually supposed to do in this situation:

• The 2014 Shadow includes this note under Draining Swipe: "...the reduction lasts until the target finishes a short or long rest."
• The 2024 rules state under the definition of Long Rest in the PHB Rules Glossary: "If any of your ability scores were reduced, they return to normal."
  • Short Rests do not include this benefit.
• My conclusion is that I should have made the Cleric wait for a Long Rest to restore his strength. This is both a change to the text of the monster and a nerf to Short Rests as a potential cure to this particular ability, making the Shadow even more dangerous to encounter.

I don't see my misstep as a negative or the fault of the MM, it was just a learning experience. Now I know that ability score reductions can only be restored by Long Rests (in the absence of more specific text). I did read the PHB and DMG before running the game, but that characteristic of Long Rests made no impression on me, because I as a player have never encountered a stat reduction monster like the Shadow.

I believe other people have noted similar text reductions in MM blocks that no longer specify how to remove certain effects. The assumption is that a player will realize they have an appropriate spell (like Lesser or Greater Restoration, Dispel Evil and Good, etc.), or the DM will have the rule mastery needed to handle the situation. And if no one knows what's going on, we make something up and correct later as needed.

I think the danger here is incurious DMs not wanting to look up things that confuse them after the fact. And that may still be an issue in 2024's MM because of the removed text for a few effects.

The more experienced DM may realize in advance by looking at the stat block that there needs to be a resolution and go looking for more info as part of their prep. I did realize there was an issue with a Mummy on the same floor, who can curse people just by succeeding on a melee attack roll. So I had a resolution for the Mummy all prepped, but the Shadows slipped by me.

Side note: shouldn't the cleric have been dead at -6 str?

 

[plecostomus]

Side note: shouldn't the cleric have been dead at -6 str?

-6 to his Strength ability score (AKA -6 from a total of 15, or 15-6=9). I'll edit the post as you are not the first person to misunderstand that sentence.

 

[FrogReaver]

I’m really struggling to understand what in some cases seems like wholesale disgust at a system that is only very slightly different than the one that came before, that they think is great.

I'd be disgusted too if I found most of the 2024 changes to be worse than 2014 regardless of how similar everything else is.

I don't, i find some good and some bad, probably about 50-50, but i don't think it's hard to understand why someone that didn't share that opinion might feel that way about it.

 

[tetrasodium]

Then I'll give the same explanation to those GM that many other players get

"Don't write long, detailed settings"

This came up because of an official setting that sells well in three and a half settings so far. The setting serves a different purpose than a PC backstory and while there is often a place for the player to fit a reasonably compatible backstory. There comes a point in a player ask where the gm is totally justified in telling the player something along the lines of "no this is a Star Trek game, there are no Jedi no Jedi Council and nothing close enough to pretend. If you tell me what about an organized religious order of psychics appeals to you I might be able to suggest existing elements like one of the many established star trek religious orders or handful of star trek races with some level of telepathic ability, but none of them are anything like The Jedi from StarWars because that is a totally different setting that does not have room for a Jedi from tatooine that joined the Jedi to svenge his dead father".

 

[Mecheon]

Counterpoint. In a setting where lizard men goblins gnolls living constructs and a couple others have a notable place in the setting lore as people I'd prefer a hard restriction do the work of proactively fencing off those races that need a place carved out because I would much rather have players playing the existing races with setting lore hooks I could loop into the campaign as it develops over time

How detailed are things that you can't just fit "Here's Tortuga. Its off the coast. Tortles live there, also probably pirates" into some corner? Frankly I'd argue if a world is so densely populated that you can't just let a player go "Yeah sure there's a tiny village up that way you can come from", then the world is too written and isn't serving its purpose. There's a reason Greyhawk just started as a single map and let the DM do whatever they wanted elsewhere

We're not talking some exotic foreign race from another franchise, we're talking tortles, a legacy D&D race from 1986.