D&D 5E Wandering Monsters: Morons and Salads

[Hussar]

There is a plane called Mechanus. It would be pretty embarrassing if the game failed to answer the question of who lives there.

Even if you think your players won't fight them, that's not a good reason to omit them.
I thought worldbuilding was the entire point of a monster manual. What do you think the point of a monster manual is?

The point of the monster manual is to provide interesting things for the PC's to interact with. As a world building tool, it's an abysmal failure.

This was precisely the same sort of discussion that happened when the 4e Dryad was first unveiled. The pre-4e Dryad is essentially an Aha-Gotcha monster. If it gets into a fight, it charms. If the charm fails, it dies. It cannot really fight, has no real offensive power and is largely just a trap.

The 4e Dryad, OTOH, can do everything that the 3e and earlier dryad can do. It can interact with the party and try to seduce them or whatever it is the dryad wants to do. But, if the fight starts, it's also capable of being more than a saving throw away from being a speedbump. In 3e, it's a CR 3 creature because of its charm ability, but has 14 hp. If the charm fails, it dies.

This is the same problem I have with something like Modrons. Inscrutable beings with indecipherable goals make for really bad games. Compare them to Formians - invasive insectoid borg beings who plop down and begin assimilating everything around them. Now that's something I can drop into the game without any real problem. They come pre-packaged with lots of conflict.

Can you make modrons and slaad interesting? Sure. Celebrim has proven that in this thread. You can add all sorts of stuff to make them interesting. To me, it doesn't matter though. A well designed creature in the Monster Manual shouldn't need me to add an entire setting just to make them interesting. They should be interesting in a paragraph.

 

[steeldragons]

Can you make modrons and slaad interesting? Sure. Celebrim has proven that in this thread. You can add all sorts of stuff to make them interesting. To me, it doesn't matter though. A well designed creature in the Monster Manual shouldn't need me to add an entire setting just to make them interesting. They should be interesting in a paragraph.

I must concur.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think @Hussar is saying that (i) wants a Monster Manual that contains elements for setting up in-play situations, rather than for simply describing the setting, and that (ii) he thinks that a MM that satisfies his preferences might be more widely useful also

'cuz it sounds more like he's saying "If we have Fey, we don't need other creatures that are also there to deliver a tense interaction scene."

I established above that slaad and modrons fill that role in play: they're a tense interaction scene.

The response to that was, "Well, so are other monsters, so why do we need slaad and modrons?"

My response to that is "If that's your criteria for what to include in the MM, you don't need an MM."

If the complaint is that Slaad and Modrons don't add anything other than world-building, I've already shown that not to be the case. They serve a valuable function in play. They are interesting things to encounter, without changing what they are.

So, what's the complaint now?

 

[MarkB]

'cuz it sounds more like he's saying "If we have Fey, we don't need other creatures that are also there to deliver a tense interaction scene."

He did quote your post when he said that, and I'm pretty sure that when he said "we already have Fey for that", the "that" he was referring to was this line:

In both cases, they fill a role similar to a lot of the old stories of the Fey: weird, otherworldly, powerful, incomprehensible, but not exactly hostile, either. Just different. Dangerous, but different.

Basically, he was saying: If you're looking for something that fills a role similar to old stories of the Fey, then why not use the Fey?


I think there is a legitimate response to that, which is that the Fey of D&D have drifted away from those old tales somewhat and tend to fill a different, less alien role in games these days - they're more like Tolkien elves than fairytale Fey. But it's best to respond to the argument he was actually making.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Why do we need a bunch of kinds of monsters when we can just use bandits?

If you start arranging an MM based on what you NEED, you'll quickly find that you don't actually need an MM. A couple of charts to get the math right and do it OD&D style.

An MM is 100% composed of things that some people might WANT.

And that includes entropic chaos-toads and geometric law-bots. And maybe for some folks that doesn't include faeries or fiends.

Given the past 10 years, it's a near-certainty that WotC is going to produce a whole slew of Monster Manuals. Is it really controversial to suggest that the core, most basic Monster Manual, be full of stuff that 99 percent of folks agree ought to be in there, and the more unusual, less-used stuff (and yes, world-building stuff like Elder Brains and the like) be saved for later bestiaries?

 

[Shemeska]

Basically, he was saying: If you're looking for something that fills a role similar to old stories of the Fey, then why not use the Fey?

The fey of mainline D&D have never been presented as creatures of primordial chaos like the slaadi. They've always had a connection of some variety to the natural world, not a distant, alien plane like Limbo.

Now yes, 4e did some funky things with the fey, some good (more exposure is good) and some that are just confusing given pre-4e fey lore (such as eladrin who were never fey, and recycling them as such was sloppy IMO). But even so, they're still fey, they're not incomprehensible beings of chaos. Even 4e fey aren't remotely anything like the bizarre, alien Gentry from NWoD, or even the Eldest from Pathfinder's fey First World. The fey occupy a niche distinct and all their own, and that niche isn't primordial chaos.

I would much prefer giving fey (not including eladrin who should go back to Arborea) a fey-plane of their own, not associated with any alignment (because having seelie and unseelie fey, and things in-between, is something I'd like to have without trying to explain away the disconnect if their plane was linked to a single alignment). Taking select things from the 4e feywild and Pathfinder's First World (which I think handles the alien aspect of the fey much more successfully) would be how I would handle it personally.

 

[GSHamster]

Given the past 10 years, it's a near-certainty that WotC is going to produce a whole slew of Monster Manuals. Is it really controversial to suggest that the core, most basic Monster Manual, be full of stuff that 99 percent of folks agree ought to be in there, and the more unusual, less-used stuff (and yes, world-building stuff like Elder Brains and the like) be saved for later bestiaries?

I agree. The way I see it is that there are 4 or so choices:

1. Change modrons and put them in MM1.
2. Same modrons and put them in MM1.
3. Change modrons and put them in later MM.
4. Same modrons and put them in later MM.

I like option 4. Keep modrons the same, but put them a later monster manual. Save MM1 for the monsters that most people use.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Basically, he was saying: If you're looking for something that fills a role similar to old stories of the Fey, then why not use the Fey?


I think there is a legitimate response to that, which is that the Fey of D&D have drifted away from those old tales somewhat and tend to fill a different, less alien role in games these days - they're more like Tolkien elves than fairytale Fey. But it's best to respond to the argument he was actually making.

Another response to that is: because niches can be filled by more than one monster type.

Another response to that is: modrons and slaadi lend particular unique twists to this type of conflict.

Etc.

Given the past 10 years, it's a near-certainty that WotC is going to produce a whole slew of Monster Manuals. Is it really controversial to suggest that the core, most basic Monster Manual, be full of stuff that 99 percent of folks agree ought to be in there, and the more unusual, less-used stuff (and yes, world-building stuff like Elder Brains and the like) be saved for later bestiaries?

Yeah, I'm sympathetic to this point. If the first monster book is pressed for space, we don't need to put them in there.

But remember the fabulous diversity of creatures that was found in the 2e Monstrous Manual, even with the 1-page-per-monster tendency. We had slaadi. We had zaratans. We had weird space monsters and we had frolicking fey and we had tiny electric purple bats and we had beholder-based humanoids and we had intelligent magical storks and we had the brain mole and we had gem dragons and we had oliphants and mammoths and mastodons (all different creatures!) and we had steampunk outer space hippopotamus-men, two pages on jermlaines, grippli, and eight kinds of horses, and that's just at about the half-way mark.

Now I'm not saying that's necessarily the best selection of critters to have in an MM, either. I'm just saying that it's not out of the realm of possibility that 5e's MM is able to fit in slaadi and modrons and still have plenty of room to breathe. If they need to cut for space, okay, yeah, extraplanar creatures probably deserve the axe. But there's no indication that they need to cut for space at the moment, and there's a real possibility that they have plenty of room for these guys.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, I'm sympathetic to this point. If the first monster book is pressed for space, we don't need to put them in there.

But remember the fabulous diversity of creatures that was found in the 2e Monstrous Manual, even with the 1-page-per-monster tendency. We had slaadi. We had zaratans. We had weird space monsters and we had frolicking fey and we had tiny electric purple bats and we had beholder-based humanoids and we had intelligent magical storks and we had the brain mole and we had gem dragons and we had oliphants and mammoths and mastodons (all different creatures!) and we had steampunk outer space hippopotamus-men, two pages on jermlaines, grippli, and eight kinds of horses, and that's just at about the half-way mark.

Now I'm not saying that's necessarily the best selection of critters to have in an MM, either. I'm just saying that it's not out of the realm of possibility that 5e's MM is able to fit in slaadi and modrons and still have plenty of room to breathe. If they need to cut for space, okay, yeah, extraplanar creatures probably deserve the axe. But there's no indication that they need to cut for space at the moment, and there's a real possibility that they have plenty of room for these guys.

Well, the Monstrous Manual wasn't actually the original 2E monster book. I don't know if there's a list online of what was in the first Monstrous Compendium, but I bet it's a lot more meant-for-every-table stuff. That said, there's weirdos in every book: The 1E MM1 has the giant beaver which I'd be surprised to learn has been used in any game ever.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, the Monstrous Manual wasn't actually the original 2E monster book. I don't know if there's a list online of what was in the first Monstrous Compendium, but I bet it's a lot more meant-for-every-table stuff. That said, there's weirdos in every book: The 1E MM1 has the giant beaver which I'd be surprised to learn has been used in any game ever.

Sure, but MM's have grown in size since the days of the MC's and 1e, too. 2e's 300+ pages is actually kind of typical for a D&D rulebook these days, and given how many beloved monsters D&D has, the more the merrier. Part of what sold me on D&D as a kid was that awesome diversity of critters: I could see D&D was a big umbrella under which a lot of different fantasy would fit.