D&D 5E Wandering Monsters - I Don't Know What It Is, But I Like It!

[GX.Sigma]

So why do you think say an Abyssal Greater Basilisk doesn't have duality of body and soul; while a normal Basilisk does?

Because it's made of the essence of the Abyss.

 

[steeldragons]

I think the more relevant question, alllllmost on par with wondering why anyone would question where angels are "born", is why do you think any basiliskhas a "soul"?

 

[Weather Report]

I'd go with Immortal Humanoid (exemplar).

In 4th Ed, yeah, but that doesn't work in 5th Ed.

 

[Weather Report]

Maybe I'm missing something - what's wrong with Rilmani just being outsiders?

They would be in 3rd Ed, but Outsider is not a monster type in 5th Ed.

 

[I'm A Banana]

My axe to grind on this is that creature types are inherently arbitrary and increasingly non-functional.

What's a rilmani? It's a rilmani. That's the important part. It doesn't need to be categorized any more broadly than that.

The D&D rules have pretty much been concerned with about four major distinctions, historically: Person, Monster, Plant, and Animal. These come into play with druid powers and with spells: low-level enchanters can sway other people, but can't sway, I dunno, Umber Hulks. Druids can influence dire wombats and murdercabbages, but not so much the local barkeep. And you can imagine it being elaborated to elementals and fey and angels and immortals and demons and devils and canines and felines and goblinoids and a whole make-believe taxonomy.

There's gotta be a better way to do this mousetrap.

 

[Weather Report]

My axe to grind on this is that creature types are inherently arbitrary and increasingly non-functional.

What's a rilmani? It's a rilmani. That's the important part. It doesn't need to be categorized any more broadly than that.

The D&D rules have pretty much been concerned with about four major distinctions, historically: Person, Monster, Plant, and Animal. These come into play with druid powers and with spells: low-level enchanters can sway other people, but can't sway, I dunno, Umber Hulks. Druids can influence dire wombats and murdercabbages, but not so much the local barkeep. And you can imagine it being elaborated to elementals and fey and angels and immortals and demons and devils and canines and felines and goblinoids and a whole make-believe taxonomy.

There's gotta be a better way to do this mousetrap.

The only monster types that seem to effect the game, mechanically, are Fiends and Undead, so far, right?

 

[I'm A Banana]

The only monster types that seem to effect the game, mechanically, are Fiends and Undead, so far, right?

Good point on the undead -- the turn undead mechanic wants them to be a type, too. To a lesser degree, giants, dragons...

 

[Quartz]

It seems to me that many of these could be emulated by - in 3E terms - the use of the celestial and half-celestial templates. A Ki-Rin could be a half-celestial unicorn with wizard or sorceror levels, a Hollyphant could be a celestial minimal mammoth, etc

 

[Lackhand]

I'm really confused about type, and so is everyone else ( ).

Now that Construct doesn't mean immune to sneak attack, do we even need each monster to have a "type" in this sense, rather than some keywords?
I don't think the distinction between Humanoid and, say, Fiend is very valuable. There can be Beast Fiends and Monstrosity Fiends and Humanoid Fiends, after all.
What I'd prefer to see is... well, exactly that.
Give something a Natural keyword if you want the druid to be able to compel it.
Give something the Immortal keyword if you want it to not need to eat, sleep, or suffer disease.
Give it the Undead keyword if it's animated by the foul forces of unlife.
Give something the Humanoid keyword if you want it to be able to be Charm Person'd.
Give it the Fiend keyword if you want it to be hedged out by things that affect fiends. Maybe all Fiends are immortal? They don't have to be, though!

A Natural Immortal Undead Humanoid Fiend? Seems weird, but I've seen worse!

I remember suggesting exactly this on these boards on the leadup to 4e. Someone with way higher postcount than myself (I want to say Ari Marmell? But my memory is shot ) had already seen what was coming thanks to prerelease NDA. Whoever it was defended the oncoming design.
I wasn't convinced it was a good rewrite of the 3e system then, and I'm still not convinced we need that core of "monster type" instead of "monster keyword".

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=607]Klaus[/MENTION], I liked your ideas. When I converted a whole lot of D&D monsters to Rolemaster, I treated kirin as celestial unicorns, and treated shedus, lammasus, opinicuses, oriental earth dragons, dragonnes and androsphinxes as all of the same general type.

And I like the 4e treatment of rocs/phoenixes etc.