D&D 5E (2024) Views on 24 MM/SRD monster mechanics now

[Reynard]

I absolutely hate what they did to lycanthropes. A vampire taking normal damage from nonmagical weapons I can live with, even though I preferred them having that resistance. But werewolves not even getting regeneration that silver turns off anymore is a travesty in my opinion. That’s the single most recognizable trait of lycanthropes, getting rid of it completely ruins the monster’s feel.

Ironically, it is also the least traditional (along with the full moon thing). Those were both invented for the 1941 Wolfman film -- or stolen from vampire myth in the case of silver. That is not to diminish the changes in 2024, of course: those Universal movies were the foundation for all those creature's stats in early D&D, not myth or folklore.

Here's a really good historical discussion about werewolves from the most recent Our Fake History podcast (which I cannot recommend enough just in general): Episode #236 – Real Werewolves? – Our Fake History

 

[Lazybones]

I had a similar reaction to the new lycanthropes at first. I really liked the idea of silver weapons bypassing their resistance, especially since I'd recently run a game where the party encountered one early in their careers, when they didn't have any magical weapons yet. In those situations, finding a silver weapon was a big deal (and usually a big glowing sign that shifters were in the near future).

But I can see why they removed that trait in 2024. They kind of had to, to be consistent with the way they removed resistance or immunity to non-magical weapons across the board. And in that encounter I referenced above, the warriors didn't have much to do except try to pile onto the thing and keep it from the wizard and cleric, who were the only ones that could hurt it. In one of my other games I had a character who for whatever reason never found a magical weapon (I had put a few out there that they just happened to miss); in mid-level play he was constantly running into things that he was much less effective against than the rest of the party. It sucks to be in that situation, so it becomes incumbent on the DM to make sure that everyone has access to a magical weapon. And if that's the case, what's the point of having the resistance? Just make the monster tougher so that everyone has an appropriate challenge.

I still do like the idea of "here's a threat that our usual armaments can't deal with, so we need to find something special that can do the job." Going on a quest to find the weapon/spell/item you need is a stable of the fantasy genre, so I may create custom monsters to fill that role in the future. I like the idea of the loup garou that someone mentioned earlier, and I found a CR13 version online that looks pretty frightening (it has regeneration that is only stopped by silver).

Finally, the new lycanthropes are still scary; they definitely got a glow-up in terms of AC, hit points, and damage. I'm still uncertain about the new curse effect, as I haven't yet seen it in actual play. But I was putting a village infested with werewolves into my newest 5e 2024 campaign, and when I playtested that encounter they absolutely shredded my party of eighth-level PCs. Now that they can change as a Bonus Action, a group of "commoners" can be on you in an instant, adding to the drama and tension of the scene. In the test encounter the characters retreated into a house that the werewolves proceeded to tear down around them. I'm still going to keep that encounter, just reducing the number of foes to a more manageable number.

 

[SkidAce]

Yeah, that is often the case, but not always. And since it’s worked into the stats instead of called out as specific features, it just ends up looking like loose design instead of unique traits.

And the roleplaying cues might be missed by new DMs. (Dogs better stats cause of SMELL might be overlooked)

 

[SkidAce]

I will take the opposite side of the argument from you by saying that just naming something does not make it a "unique trait", if that trait is subsumed during gameplay. To me, that's merely performative design. A creature having "Keen Senses" written in their statblock does not make that creature more unique in their design when all that results from that is the DM rolling two dice for Perception checks instead of one. ...

How about the fact that, say a dog lists keen senses (hearing and smell) and detects something it couldn't see?

Not to continue the debate from other threads, just curious your thoughts on this.

 

[DEFCON 1]

How about the fact that, say a dog lists keen senses (hearing and smell) and detects something it couldn't see?

Not to continue the debate from other threads, just curious your thoughts on this.

Well, me personally I've never felt the specificity of just giving "hearing and smell" to its Keen Senses as anything worthwhile, because the game itself does not almost ever distinguish between any of the five senses when it asks for Perception checks. When there's something to be noticed it's just "make a Perception check", with no specific designation of which sense is doing the heavy lifting. So in the dog's case... if a PC has made a Dexterity (Stealth) check to hide, the game does not state which of the five senses is going to be used to find the PC... any of them could the one that does it. Maybe the dog sees the person hiding, maybe they hear them, maybe they smell them? Doesn't matter. Game doesn't tell us which. And thus making Keen Senses specifically for only two of them does not actually impact the dog either way-- they will still roll with Advantage to detect the PC.

But at the end of the day... rolling with Advantage on all or just some of your senses does not actually change you as a creature, it just ups your odds a bit. A dog could roll a '6' and a '9' on a Perception check, while their human owner next to them rolls a '19' on theirs, so how great were the dog's Keen Senses then? They weren't. The dog wasn't actually Keen after all.