D&D 5E (2014) Wandering Monsters: Defining Our Terms

[Mon]

I would prefer something like 4e, but even tighter, wherein a creature's "type" consists of ORIGIN + FORM + DESCRIPTOR(S). Descriptors are optional.

Origins: Abberant, Astral, Fey, Magical, Natural, Primordial, Shadow
Forms: Beast, Humanoid, Monstrosity
Descriptors: Construct, Dragon, Ooze, Undead, Fire, Cold, Evil

More origins, forms, and descriptors are possible - this is just an example culled mostly from 4e.

So a beholder might be an Abberant Monstrosity with no descriptors.
A wolf is a Natural Beast with no descriptor.
An elf is a Fey Humanoid, with either no descriptor or a racial descriptor ("Elf")
A red dragon might be a Magical Beast (Dragon, Fire)
A skeleton is a Magical Humanoid (Undead).
A vampire is a Shadow Humanoid (Undead).
A Frost Giant is a Primordial Humanoid (Giant, Cold)
A Djinn is a Primordial Humanoid (Genie, Air).
An Iron Golem might be a Magical Humanoid (Construct).
A Treant might be a Fey Monstrosity (Plant) or a Fey Humanoid (Plant)

Others likely disagree, but I don't think things like Incorporeal or Shapechanger should be descriptors - they just should be special qualities.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Monster types are a mess. 4e made a huge improvement with the split between origin and body form.

Can you elaborate (genuinely curious)?

 

[I'm A Banana]

So, I like the environment listing, because it helps me when I'm setting up an area for exploration. Say I want to plunk a jungle down, then I can look at the MM, and say, "Oh, here's a list of things that live in a jungle that the PC's might encounter, awesome."

It helps me create situations in play, and serves as fuel for the plot-generation fire.

I generally like the monster types, but I think "monstrosity" might be a little vague. People are going to have the same reaction to "monstrosties" as they do to 90% of the other things on that list. No one hears a fiend or a dragon is living nearby and goes "Oh, well, at least it's not a monstrosity, I guess I have nothing to worry about." It's not useful to have a vague catch-all for "Screw it, I don't know what it is."

I'll also go on record as really disliking 4e's arbitrary clinical insanity of monster types. It hard-coded the fiction to the creature way too tightly. "Oh, see, demons are elementals like fire people, but devils are immortals like angels, and golems and undead are basically the same thing, and eladrin are immortals but like magic panthers and pixies." Which also brings me to the eyebrow-raising bit from the article about how eladrin are Fey and not Celestial which....I think I like, but I'm instantly suspicious of. Part of the appeal of the eladrin to me (pre 4e fashion model blink elf) was this view of the fey and the celestial as somehow linked, that there was something divine and Muir-esque about the untamed wilderness. I don't want eladrin to loose that association with the essence of Good. I think they can do that as Fey, too (and I like how that makes Fey a more dynamic category), but it's not cool if they're just blink elves again.

I'm not initially enamored of his idea for treasure. It seems to combine awkwardly stilted and meaningless jargon-y redefinition with "generic treasure" that doesn't catch me.

What I like about treasure info in a monster is stuff like "The blood of a basilisk can be used to make a stone to flesh potion" or "Campestri are delicious and are considered quite the delicacy to certain groups of less-than-morally-upstanding humanoids." or "Roc eggs can sell for 500 gp." Stuff that makes the monster stand out, that gives the treasure some relationship to the beast, and that gives me more idea seeds for what to do to reward the party for handling this potentially deadly hazard.

Treasure types are old-school, but screw generic treasure tables. Give each monster it's own little random treasure table with custom rewards. Use it or don't, but it's there for ideas and funtimes! This also reminds me of the distinction between "Wandering" and "In-Lair," which is useful from an exploration-style gameplay perspective for more than just treasure.

So I'm a little stymied to respond to two of the poll questions.

"Monstrosity" doesn't make sense, but I wouldn't make them beasts or magical beasts (which are also vague terms). And I can already tell where the lammasu would live (CELESTIAL, DUH). I think the type is getting too hung up on body type. Worgs (and winter wolves!) aren't civilization-building humanoids, but they are people, all the same: they have language, they make alliances, they consider good and evil (and mostly side with evil).

I don't like treasure parcels (UGH!), I don't want "treasure per level guidelines" (DOUBLE UGH), and I'd personally like it to be more than "up to the DM" (BORING AND UGH), but arbitrary terms like "rich chest" (lol, bewbs) and "poor sack" (lol, scrote) don't communicate very clearly, either, and if they just serve as code-words for back-end dice rolling, why bugger about with it? I prefer a creature-specific treasure table.

 

[Sage Genesis]

Well I'm not 1of3, but I do know how 4e handled creature types. It actually works rather a lot like Mon's proposed system. Creatures have an origin and a type. Optionally they can also have certain keywords to further refine their description.

Origins are:
* Natural (meaning, it originated on the prime material, or the "real world" if you will)
* Elemental (pretty obvious where it came from)
* Fey (it came from the feywild)
* Shadow (it came from the shadowfell)
* Immortal (it came from the astral sea, which includes the various sub-planes like the Nine Hells in 4e's cosmology)
* Aberrant (it came from the Far Realm, beyond the stars, or is some other Lovecraftian entity)

Types are:
* Humanoid (pretty obvious)
* Beast (also obvious)
* Magical beast (I'm sure you can also understand this)
* Animate (the creature was made, not born)

Keywords can then include "undead", "angel", "dragon", and anything else you might imagine. The list is possibly endless.


So a zombie is a Natural Animate with the undead keyword. That might sound strange, to call it natural, but that only means it didn't originate from a different plane of existence, not that it's actually wholesome or perfectly normal.

I think 4e's system is pretty much flawless, for one important reason: given the cosmology it's intended for, it can encompass anything without any trouble. The proposed 5e system can't. There is no category for Formians. There is no category for Ethereal Marauders. Slaad are not fiends but they can't be aberrations either, because they are not unnatural within the Great Wheel cosmology - if Slaad are aberrations, then angels must also be. And so on. There are a lot more extraplanar creatures than celestials, fiends, and elementals, and not all of them can be easily classified as humanoid or something instead. The idea is that categories would need to be invented for them separately, but I think that's a terrible idea. That's not a category, that's a keyword. Categories have very specific functions within the game mechanics and just bloating that up endlessly can make older material hard to combine with newer material.

 

[Sage Genesis]

I'll also go on record as really disliking 4e's arbitrary clinical insanity of monster types. It hard-coded the fiction to the creature way too tightly. "Oh, see, demons are elementals like fire people, but devils are immortals like angels, and golems and undead are basically the same thing, and eladrin are immortals but like magic panthers and pixies."

I don't really see the problem with this.

Demons in 4e are elementals, yes. The Abyss is a corrupted maelstrom within the elemental chaos that spawns hordes of demons. While normally the elemental chaos is the raw proto-matter of creation, demons are the engines of destruction that want to tear it all down again. I can understand if you were to say that you don't enjoy 4e's setting, but calling it arbitrary or insane... I don't get that.

Devils and angels aren't immortals, they have the immortal origin. There is a difference. It means, they are both originate from an otherworldly realm, which is probably an afterlife of some sort. This is not insane or arbitrary. This is how Judeo-Christian mythology actually works. (Others too, come to think of it.)

Golems and undead are both animates, sure. Is this incorrect? And don't forget, there is far more to a monster than just its type. Undead are typically highly resistant to necrotic damage but vulnerable to radiant damage. Turn Undead doesn't work on golems. They are only "basically the same" in the same way that halflings and giants are "basically the same".

Eladrin (meaning, high elves), in 4e's cosmology are considered fey. They are the sidhe, the Fair Folk, and closer to the folklore roots of elves than D&D has ever been. Why is this arbitrary? Again, I can understand disliking the setting, I can't understand calling it insane.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I can understand if you were to say that you don't enjoy 4e's setting, but calling it arbitrary or insane... I don't get that.

Devils and angels aren't immortals, they have the immortal origin. There is a difference.

The second sentence is the evidence for the first.

There is no category for Formians. There is no category for Ethereal Marauders. Slaad are not fiends but they can't be aberrations either, because they are not unnatural within the Great Wheel cosmology - if Slaad are aberrations, then angels must also be. And so on.

Ethereal Marauders seem pretty blatantly Aberration territory, I think, but the rest are good points. Ant-people formians and slaadi don't fit into this mode (unless lawful things become Celestials and Chaotic things become fiends, which I don't think would work very well).

I mean, you can add moar monster types as easily as you can heap on keywords in 4e, and I don't want to see the undead referred to as "natural" anymore (ie: no more hard-coded origin planes plz?), but "Immortal" or "Outsider" is a pretty useful category of otherworldly thing that we don't have to get very specific about until we want to.

You could, of course, go to the other extreme and be very specific about your creature types. Goblinoid isn't a type of humanoid, it's a type all its own, akin to "Giant." Instead of celestials and fey and fiends we might have Angels and Nature Spirits and Demons and Devils and Yugoloths. No need to make bigger categories, just organize them how they are naturally organized within their own scope?

That might work OK. It'd certainly be VERY flexible! Are undead all souls from the shadow-realm in your world? Are elementals and demons the same creatures? Slap a unifying keyword on them in your games, and go wild! It would be important to interface correctly with PC abilities, though. Since rangers' favored enemy is kind of a solved problem now, the real bugaboo is things like druids talking to "plants and animals" and the like. Which might actually be OK, too -- it's the DM's judgement what would count as something a particular druid PC could talk to or not. Medusae in your world are plant-creatures, let druids talk to 'em. Centaurs are natural creatures, maybe the druid needs to learn their language. Medusae are elementals? Centaurs are fey? Up to you, DM-person.

 

[Klaus]

and I don't want to see the undead referred to as "natural" anymore (ie: no more hard-coded origin planes plz?),

What's the hang up? A zombie can be a "natural animate (undead)" in a campaign, and it's easy to say "in my game, all undead have the necrotic origin, and a zombie is a necrotic animate (undead)".

 

[I'm A Banana]

What's the hang up? A zombie can be a "natural animate (undead)" in a campaign, and it's easy to say "in my game, all undead have the necrotic origin, and a zombie is a necrotic animate (undead)".

"Natural" and "Undead" should be probably mutually exclusive territories. Imagine being a newbie stumbling across that little surprise for the first time and trying to parse a world where undead are naturally-occurring parts of the ecosystem and are described as "unnatural creatures born of evil magic" in the fluff but as natural creatures right there in the stats.

And it's always easy to pretend like the rules aren't written the way they are, but that doesn't mean the rules should be written in a way that is obfuscating and awkward.

4e's types don't do much for the actual function of monster types in D&D. Functionally, monster types play the following roles:

• Groups of creatures who, in the fiction of the world, are closely allied with each other and in some sense share basic cultural and biological traits.
• Groups of creatures who certain classes gain special abilities in dealing with or dealing against.
• Groups of creatures who certain magic items are especially effective or ineffective against.

I personally am beginning to suspect that none of those things actually need to tie into "monster types." Magic items and special abilities don't need to be reliably used, and fictional association can be conveyed without lumping EVERY monster into Category X or Category Y. Remember we didn't even have actual monster types before 3e: creatures were occasionally lumped together as the same type of creature, and that was fine. We didn't need to denote this formally somewhere, and thus define exactly what a creature was.

Without needing to tie into the rules, what purpose do monster types serve that a simpler, more specific keywords wouldn't serve better? If the druid can communicate with "natural creatures," does anyone need to be told that the druid can talk with a sparrow? And do we need the game to tell us if the druid can officially talk to dinosaurs or undead or not, or might that be part of how a DM defines their world, or a question to be answered on a case-by-case basis?

 

[Dausuul]

I'll also go on record as really disliking 4e's arbitrary clinical insanity of monster types. It hard-coded the fiction to the creature way too tightly.

Specifically, it created far too tight a link between the creature and 4E cosmology.

I think 4E got it right with keywords but wrong with origins. There should be a handful of creature categories, and then keywords that can be applied to specific instances. Categories should indicate, not the creature's origin (which will vary from one setting to another), but its essential nature--the broad family to which it belongs. Keywords would then indicate subcategories and additional traits, such as undeath.

 

[Philousk]

I find that there is no vermin or animal type (but this last can easily be amalgamated in the type of beast) in the list presented. I did not know the particular classification for types (origines, forms, descriptors) in 4e and for once I totally love ...