D&D 5E Wandering Monsters- playable monsters

[Jeff Carlsen]

I think monsterous races should be handled like magic items. Acknowledge that they aren't necessarily balanced, and provide races that are an honest interpretation of the species sans training and experience.

This doesn't need a level adjustment so much as an indicator of how ahead or behind the curve a given race is. Perhaps offer advice for making up the difference over a campaign.

 

[Li Shenron]

My points in a nutshell:

- I am not a huge fan of playing monstrous characters, but in some campaign settings at least the most humanoid-like can be very important, such as Orcs, Hobgoblins, Lizardfolks or Drow. Thus, it's much better for 5e to support at least the first category of playable monstrous races.

- I don't think flat level adjustment is the way to go. It is especially punishing to some classes, and in general works only when it's a small number. Furthermore, "hit points penalty" doesn't seem to me at all like a good design choice.

- I don't know what would be a good system, but somehow I feel the solution might be found in the direction of "paying" by giving up some character features rather than whole levels. Maybe to play a Drow you have to give up feats / ability score increases. Unfortunately there aren't many features to give up that aren't tied to classes, so perhaps some monstrous races might require to give up some class features as well (e.g. less known spells or less spells slots, but not giving up entire spellcasting levels), but that would require more ad-hoc rules.

- In general, I don't think the game really needs to support "lesser, playable versions" of all monsters, just because someone wants to be a Lich or an Illithid at 1st level. I think 3.0 Savage Species actually did a good job with "monsters as classes", but IMHO this is low-priority... I'm more of the opinion that first the game should support playing e.g. an Ogre at the level which would be appropriate for being a "full Ogre": let's say an Ogre is normally 3rd level, well if you want to play one, play it in a game which starts at least at 3rd level! (Or even play it with a 1st level party, but get no XP until everyone catches up with your level) I don't want the designers to struggle in order to fit an Ogre to a 1st-level game, just leave this option for a Savage Species-like supplement.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I never been a big fan of monstrous races because of the complications they introdoced, especially the difficulty in size or power. The Dirty Simple Humanoid are easier to handle and has been more popular than say, beholder. Even in 4E we can see they're not popular choice. PS It was actually fun to see Character Builder results for once.

I also never been a fan of level adjustment and prefer other ways of balancing them. But I wouldn’t want other people’s games to suffer because these rules aren’t in the game.


How important is it to you that players can make dirt-simple humanoid characters, like orcs, goblins, kobolds, hobgoblins, or gnolls?
I wouldn’t want other people’s games to suffer because these rules aren’t in the game.

What’s the best way to handle dirt-simple humanoid characters who have more than 1 HD?
Present them just like a race, like in 4th Edition, so a PC gnoll at 1st level is on par with other PCs but weaker than other gnolls.

How important is it to you that players can make more complicated humanoid characters, such as minotaurs, ogres, pixies, or mind flayers?
I wouldn’t want other people’s games to suffer because these rules aren’t in the game.

What’s the best way to handle these more complicated humanoid characters?
Present them just like a race, like in 4th Edition, so a PC minotaur at 1st level is on par with other PCs but will never have all the features of monstrous minotaurs.

 

[the Jester]

I'm not generally a fan on monstrous races, excepting dirt simple 1HD humanoids like orcs and kobolds.

Generally, monsters are for slaying, not playing (at least in my playstyle).

I think monsters should be treated as monsters. I support the idea of giving dms advice on running nonstandard pc races, but I don't like the 4e conceit that every monster that a pc might play starts off as a 1 HD wimp equivalent to a halfling peasant. NO minotaur should be that wimpy IMHO, and the best way to deal with nonstandard races is to acknowledge the imbalance, give the dm advice on how to deal with it and establish very firmly that nonstandard races are the province of the dm- no player should show up at my table expecting to play a water naga without checking with me first.

I dislike making weak versions of monsters just so they are balanced options for players. That's not what monsters are for. And if you want to guard the integrity of your campaign setting (something that is more important to some dms than catering to every whim of each player at the table), sometimes a mean-ass, big and tough monsters needs to be exactly that.

I totally endorse giving gms who are all about monster pcs the options and tools to run this, but they should be explicitly dm-choice dials, VERY explicitly. Monster pcs can totally ruin the flavor of a campaign if it's up the players to decide when to use them.

 

[comrade raoul]

The implication behind the questions is that if I don't think monster PCs are always and everywhere a bad idea ("monsters are for slaying, not for playing"), I should want rules for monster PCs in the game. I think this implication is dumb.

Sometimes the best way to handle rules for something is to invite game masters to make up the necessary rules themselves. This is especially true if the things you want rules for are (a) hard, if not impossible, to cover with a set of relatively simple, balanced, universally applicable rules; and (b) will seriously mess with the flavor and trajectory of a campaign if not handled intelligently and in cooperation with the whole gaming group. Except for the dirt-simple humanoid races, monster PCs are pretty obvious examples of both (a) and (b).

I'm sure some games are much enriched by allowing, say, minotaur or mindflayer PCs. But having rules for them means (i) many DMs will feel forced to allow these PCs if they don't want to come across as heavy-handed; (ii) players who aren't completely indifferent to optimization will have a bunch more options to consider in character-generation, and may feel some pressure to create characters they will have more less fun role-playing; and (iii) designers will have to take the possibilities created by monster PCs into account when creating new material. None of these results are attractive. The best way to avoid them is to leave it to individual groups to handle monster PCs on case-by-case bases.

 

[Dausuul]

I think monsters should be treated as monsters. I support the idea of giving dms advice on running nonstandard pc races, but I don't like the 4e conceit that every monster that a pc might play starts off as a 1 HD wimp equivalent to a halfling peasant. NO minotaur should be that wimpy IMHO, and the best way to deal with nonstandard races is to acknowledge the imbalance, give the dm advice on how to deal with it and establish very firmly that nonstandard races are the province of the dm- no player should show up at my table expecting to play a water naga without checking with me first.

I dislike making weak versions of monsters just so they are balanced options for players. That's not what monsters are for. And if you want to guard the integrity of your campaign setting (something that is more important to some dms than catering to every whim of each player at the table), sometimes a mean-ass, big and tough monsters needs to be exactly that.

I totally endorse giving gms who are all about monster pcs the options and tools to run this, but they should be explicitly dm-choice dials, VERY explicitly. Monster pcs can totally ruin the flavor of a campaign if it's up the players to decide when to use them.

I agree with this. I approve of having support for monster PCs in the game, but a) it should be explicitly stated as an "opt in" for the DM, and b) monsters should not be wussified to make it work. What's the point of playing a monster PC if you have to play a sanitized, scaled-down version? I have no problem being told I'm not allowed to play a dragon in a 1st-level party. Better I should have to wait until 10th or 15th level, and play a real dragon, than have something that's cosmetically a dragon but functionally just another Joe Fighter.

As far as the mechanics go, the problem with 3E level adjustment was the same as with 3E multiclassing: Having the 5th-level abilities of two classes is nowhere near as good as having the 10th-level abilities of one class. Classes built around physical combat, like fighter and rogue, could multiclass pretty well because their abilities stacked. You got to add the fighter attack bonus to the rogue attack bonus, likewise for hit points, and then you could add fighter feats and rogue sneak attack and they all worked together. And the same was true of monsters built around physical combat. An ogre could take levels in barbarian or fighter and stay more or less on par with its human counterparts.

But when you had a monster with magical abilities, then you were in the same situation as the multiclassed fighter/wizard. The monster's magical powers didn't improve your class abilities, nor vice versa, so you wound up sucking at everything. WotC kludged up a solution to the fighter/wizard problem with prestige classes like the eldritch knight, but it never did the same for monster PCs.

If WotC can solve the multiclassing problem for D&DN, it shouldn't be hard to implement monster PCs using the same system.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I don't know there is a good answer to these questions. I am not a big fan of monster PCs because I feel that most of them don't fit in well with a standard D&D group from a story point of view and most of them have abilities that are significantly more powerful than humans/elves/dwarves/etc.

As hard as it is to balance a wizard vs a fighter, it's even harder to balance a fighter vs a dragon or even a Mind Flayer. No ability you could ever give the fighter would really be as powerful as an area of effect stun for a long period of time like a Mind Flayer's. It doesn't matter how many level adjustments you give it.

 

[Sunseeker]

I think part of what would help to balance monsters as PCs, and even monsters in general, is to eliminate the dichotomy of "monster abilities" and "PC abilities", such as how 3.5 had spells and feats that only certain monsters could have. While it's cool to have monsters with "special abilities", with the exception of a few, VERY specific racial abilities, monstrous prowess should be represented with the same feats a player could take. An "venomous bite just has pre-requisites of having a natural poison and skill in "bite" as a "weapon". It would expand the options for players(like being able to train in using your teeth as your weapon) but more importantly it would show that abilities directly correlate across the gap. One of the prime reasons LA failed was that there was no universal math(even between monsters) that translated into CR, and thus, no uniform math that translated into LA.

 

[Tovec]

I don't know there is a good answer to these questions. I am not a big fan of monster PCs because I feel that most of them don't fit in well with a standard D&D group from a story point of view and most of them have abilities that are significantly more powerful than humans/elves/dwarves/etc.

From what I'm reading elves, dwarves, (and presumably) halflings, orcs, gnolls, etc. should all be PC races, because that is fantasy enough, but "monsters" aren't? Are they just that stretch just too far? Where do we draw that line? Elves are good, minotaurs bad. What about centaurs? Why are ogres too far, but orcs are okay?

As I said before, I've had monster-PCs before. They are more work but they are a lot of fun. There are certainly problems but I don't think those problems can't be overcome. Maybe Dausuul is right and multiclassing is the problem. I don't exactly know. I think PF did a great job because any monster could be used as a PC and because ones with huge CRs (level adjusts) could be bought off over time, making an ogre PC eventually (possibly) end up with as many class levels as the human PC.

As hard as it is to balance a wizard vs a fighter, it's even harder to balance a fighter vs a dragon or even a Mind Flayer. No ability you could ever give the fighter would really be as powerful as an area of effect stun for a long period of time like a Mind Flayer's. It doesn't matter how many level adjustments you give it.

This is hard because (a)why are we trying to balance them at all, and, (b)what level are you using as a starting point.

For A: As you said, fighter-wizard dichotomy is hard enough. But by in large 5e isn't trying to balance them. Being off balanced or over powered is a real concern they are working on but as the article says; an ogre PC is going to have certain advantages, like massive strength and power, but huge disadvantages in social situations. That seems like a form of balance to me. Using weaker forms (though I have unique issues with that in itself) is a way to do this, where an outsider PC perhaps doesn't get teleport-at-will. That is balance. It is hard but attainable just as having someone with teleport, or invisibility, or flight is hard, but not impossible, to balance against someone who is mundane and lacks those tricks.

For B: I haven't seen anyone, who wants monster PCs, say they want to play a dragon at first level. Nor a mind flayer. In fact the few people I have seen post about that says (myself included) that they would be willing to wait to get a full blown version. Again, the weaker monster could be implemented here. Or a buyoff as I (via PF) suggested. Heck even my half-baked Half-monster idea could work. In fact no one is trying to balance a dragon vs. a first level PC. An full grown adult ogre (aka ogre classic) in a first level party won't work either. Having to wait until the party reaches.. 3rd I think they said, before able to take the ogre as a race seems very reasonable to me. The problem after that seems to be based on advancement past 3rd level, where the monster isn't getting much out of their adjustment.

Oh, unrelated to those two above, Level Adjustment:
What if LA wasn't a number added onto the HD. What if the monster had HD (along with HP, saves, and abilities) and that was it. Some of those HD might be relatively useless and you could even have a reverse LA, wherein you reduce the effective level to UNDER the HD total. That reduces the problem of saves (though that is much less an issue in 5e) and HP with a HD 4, LA 2 monster who ends up with far less HP than a 6th level PC. Just a thought.

 

[Hussar]

Wow, looking at the results of option 4, playing monster races is a pretty unpopular option. I mean, 46% said flat out no, and another 34% said, "Not in my game, but, I'm too polite to tell other people what to do". When 80% of respondants aren't interested in something, I hope that it's something that gets tabled for a later book.

Although, again, I fear the whole "gnome effect" thing where you have a very small actual number of people who want gnomes, but, because it's spread wide enough, it causes problems to not have them.