Not really surprising considering that 4E went heavily against the idea of monster races (except for a few allowed ones) and that most people voting on the WotC boards prefer 4E.
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D&D 5E Wandering Monsters- playable monsters
- Thread starter gyor
- Start date
Not really surprising considering that 4E went heavily against the idea of monster races (except for a few allowed ones) and that most people voting on the WotC boards prefer 4E.
I agree with this.
The bottom line is, i don't think we have seen good mechanics for handling monsters....certainly not the exotic types.
Now i have no issues with them making an attempt in the playtest, and if it works great.
But i absolutely do not want monster design to be impacted because a pc might play the monster some day. Monsters are meant to be challenges, and the designers need to have the flexibility to design them that way.
LightPhoenix
First Post
I pretty much agree with monstrous races being loosely-balanced, if at all. However, I'm not certain that an curve indicator is any different than LA in terms of the problems that it faces. The racial benefits that Ogres or Pixies or Minotaurs get aren't going to mean the same thing at first level as they will at tenth or twentieth. There's a point where class abilities will dwarf racial bonuses. For physical races like Ogres, I'm for making an estimate of where that is and just assigning that as a minimum level. For magical races like Pixies, I think growing into power is thematically more appropriate, but the minimum level could work too.
Dungeonosophy
Legend
Mearls didn't mention the Creature Crucibles line of Classic D&D.
In WotC's "historical summaries", CD&D is almost always left out.
In WotC's "historical summaries", CD&D is almost always left out.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
It's not a matter of "fantasy enough". It's that I've always considered the underlying "theme" of D&D to be that of "normal" people who are skilled bravely facing threats that seem extremely dangerous. It's the hero's journey. It's about people like the Fellowship of the Ring. Relatively normal people whose abilities are comparable in power to humans with a couple of advantages that humans don't have in exchange for some disadvantages humans don't have.
A human with a sword and shield fighting a dragon in a picture looks super epic. It looks like that guy has to be super skilled and super brave. A true hero. You can only imagine the wondrous things he's accomplished in his lifetime.
When you see a picture of two dragons fighting, it's more like "Awesome! Two dragons are fighting!" but you don't imagine that either one of the dragons is especially skilled or heroic. They don't have to be. They have all the powers of a dragon.
I'd like the focus of D&D to be about that skill and heroism.
I've played in and run games with monster PCs before. They never came off as satisfying as games without them. Maybe the first 2 or 3 times they were extremely novel in a "Look, I'm playing an Amethyst Dragon!"(which I did) sort of way. After a while, though it just felt like we were playing monsters just to play something different not because they were more fun.
Plus, it always ends up with the monster PC being more powerful than everyone else in the group. Which starts the peer pressure to either play a monster as well in order to feel like you are contributing.
I'd refer you to the hundreds of threads on this message board talking about why balance is necessary in a game but let me summarize:
If someone is playing a character way more powerful than everyone else the game becomes about them. They steal the spotlight continuously. Combats becomes about them because they have abilities no one else can ever acquire(which is often the reason they are picked by players in the first place).
Why cast fireball when you have a Mind Flayer that can stun all the enemies at once, at will, for minutes, and eat all of their brains before they have a chance to react? No point is wasting resources...or playing the game really. You can go into the other room and play Xbox or something while the Mind Flayer defeats them single-handed and you delay.
Interactions with NPCs become about them because of their high skills/ability to charm or dominate people/monstrous appearance. You know how often other people get to talk in a group that consists of a dragon, and 4 "standard" races? Almost never. I've tried it. NPCs come running up to the dragon because he's so large, he's the first one they see. Plus, he's the dragon...he has to be in charge. Plus, they've never seen a dragon and we need to role play their surprise upon seeing one. They need to discuss how they are so glad to meet him and ask him questions they've always wanted to ask a dragon.
While the other 4 players in your group waves your hands in the air and try to get the attention of anyone or even get NPCs in the world to acknowledge their presence.
And if they don't do all that stuff, you have the player of the dragon asking "Wait, no one is running away/towards me? No one is screaming? They're all perfectly ok with a dragon walking into their city? Doesn't that seem odd to everyone else?" The rest of the players agree and it seems out of place.
The game becomes ABOUT the fact that the PC is a monster rather than about whatever the DM wanted it to be about.
I'm going to have to disagree with this. They've made a LOT of changes in an attempt to balance them. Limited spell slots, having to prepare spells in higher slots to do more damage, and increased damage as fighters go up levels come to mind. The fighter-wizard dichotomy is much lessened in Next and I suspect you'll see it lessen even more in the next couple of playtests.
Never balance a combat advantage with a roleplaying disadvantage. I've seen the effects of this as far back as 2e kits that gave you the THAC0 of a Fighter(for a Thief) in exchange for "trouble finding you more often". Almost everyone took the kit because it was an advantage with a nebulous disadvantage. Most DMs had adventures planned out that didn't leave room for adding extra "trouble" for the one character. Most of them had written their adventures long before they even knew what PCs were playing in their game. They were either too lazy or stubborn to change their adventures in order to add "trouble" and some just felt like it would ruin the tone or flow of the adventure to add it. Even when it did get added, it felt more like an advantage than a disadvantage. The DM paid more attention to the PC with the kit. He became more important because he got his own storylines. Sometimes he got more XP than everyone else because he got to fight his own personal combats while he was off alone(while the rest of us watched him fight for an hour). The combats were never so strong as to kill him because the DM didn't want him dead.
When skills and powers for 2e came out, I decided it was super cool. A friend of mine showed me how wrong I was. He took every roleplaying disadvantage he could find in exchange for combat abilities. I told him the game was going to be no fun for him....he said that we'd see. Nearly every NPC he ran into hated his guts. He was ugly, belligerent, arrogant, unable to hold his tongue, and hated all of them twice as much as they hated him(all for points, of course).
So within 5 minutes he had started a bar fight and had killed 3 random people in the bar simply because he could. The guards showed up and he proceeded to defeat 5 guards single handedly. Then, 5 minutes later 15 more guards showed up. He defeated them soundly. Then 5 minutes later 5 more showed up. These were the elite guards. They were all level 3 and he was level 1. But the abilities he bought easily cancelled out the level difference. One of them had a +1 sword and one had a suit of plate. He looted those and equipped himself. He then proceeded to ask for XP. Which increased him to level 2. I then threw wizards up against him armed with some powerful magic items figuring that he'd learn his lesson. Though, his character was a Cleric/Wizard/Fighter/Thief because of the points he spent. He defeated them as well and got all their magic items.
Then I gave up and realized that although I could kill him, I couldn't do it in a way that made sense in the game. The city didn't have 10th level guards. I had figured out their resources in advance. He was on track to kill every guard in town.
We jointly agreed that he had proved his point. Giving a character more combat power in exchange for roleplaying disadvantages is a BAD idea.
I'm much more in favor of using weaker forms of creatures. However, when it comes down to it...if you are going to use a weaker form of a creature, why allow it at all?
"I'm a flightless, human sized dragon with no breath weapon or magical powers and my claws do 1d8+3 damage, just like your sword!"
"So, you're a human fighter then..."
"Yeah, basically...but I look like a dragon."
At least Wizards can be balanced from the point of view of "You have limited resources and what you choose to do with them determines your focus for today." It's impossible to balance a creature that has wings and can fly at will. The only way to balance it is to say "Sorry, you can only fly twice a day" and that is bound to disappoint the person who wants to play that creature as well as strain disbelief as to exactly why his wings only work twice per day.
I have seen people ask for it in my games before. Especially new players:
"I want to be a dragon! That would be awesome!"
"Sorry, Dragons are too powerful, they have a level adjustment so you'd have to be 8th level to be a level 1 dragon. We are starting at level 1."
"Well then, I'll be a giant!"
"Sorry, level adjustment. You have to be level 5 for a giant."
"Ogre?"
"Nope, level 3. But you could switch character to make one when we get to level 3."
"But, I don't want to play a character for 2 levels and then switch to a different one."
"Sorry, I guess you could play this scaled down Ogre when you start with the same strength and size as everyone else and slowly grow."
"What's the point of playing an Ogre if I'm not bigger and stronger than everyone else? I'll just be an elf."
Those issues only apply to 3.5e/Pathfinder. In D&D Next HD don't affect saves, BAB, or abilities, so it becomes kind of moot.
I never liked LA. It always seemed so clunky and never made an even remotely balanced character. The problem is that a PC has HP, Saves, Bonuses to Attack, Bonuses to Damage, Defenses. Normal PCs are balanced around the difference in these numbers. One class might have 3 less hitpoints in exchange for an average of 5 more points of damage per round. So, when a monster attacked the party, the one with less hitpoints was slightly more likely to die.
However, with LA creatures, you always ended up with someone in the party who had 2 HD and a LA of +8 or something in a group with 10th level people. The LA creature had an extremely powerful ability but had 15 hitpoints while the rest of the party had 100. Meanwhile he had +5 to hit while everyone else had +15.
Li Shenron
Legend
I think we should be careful in interpreting that 3% of monstrous characters coming from the character generation tool...
Yes, 1 every 30 PCs may sound a small number, but... if the average gaming group has 4 PCs, this already means 1 every 7.5 groups might have a monstrous PC. Of course that's not true, because most groups are probably "core races only", then some are "humanoid races only" and maybe truly monstrous PCs lump up in the same groups which allow everything.
OTOH, how many PCs the same player plays e.g. in 3 years (assuming they have collected data for about such long time)? This certainly increases the number of players which have played at least one monstrous PC to definitely more than just 3%...
Yes, 1 every 30 PCs may sound a small number, but... if the average gaming group has 4 PCs, this already means 1 every 7.5 groups might have a monstrous PC. Of course that's not true, because most groups are probably "core races only", then some are "humanoid races only" and maybe truly monstrous PCs lump up in the same groups which allow everything.
OTOH, how many PCs the same player plays e.g. in 3 years (assuming they have collected data for about such long time)? This certainly increases the number of players which have played at least one monstrous PC to definitely more than just 3%...
GreyLord
Legend
On the otherhand, it could be just the opposite. It could also mean that I have free time to play around and am curious what a monstrous PC may look like or do...but I'm making something that I'd never play in a game.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
Plus, it could be that groups that have a monstrous PC are almost entirely monstrous PCs. And each time one of their PCs die, they come back as another monstrous PC. Which would concentrate all the monstrous PCs in a very small number of groups and people.
The article is sensible in differentiating between low-level humanoids and more exotic monster races, and I am a bit surprised there is not a bigger gap in player preference between including the former but not the latter.
I have no interest in playing a Drow, but I recognize there are players who do, and so I use that as my benchmark. If Drow are in, then I would want the game to support PC options for orcs, gnolls, lizard folk, kobolds, and the goblinoids (gob, hobgoblin, and bugbear). That is my personal list; I have played them all (mainly in 3.5), and it has been rewarding not just for myself to have them included. all of these should be mechanically more simple than a Drow. I can live with a game without PC centaurs, but this for me represents the minimum that should be available for PCs, as an option from the start. or each of them, I can easily imagine a rich culture and conceive a variety of individuals I would want in the world.
Incorporating them requires negotiating some issues that make them different than the standard core races, though none of these are actual impediments in my view.
1. Alignment. Most of these are evil races by default. This is trivial, of course: if members of a good race can choose to be evil (in a game with alignment), then the reverse should obviously be possible.
2. Abilities. traditionally, most of these races have been presented as stupid and ugly (low INT and CHA). this is limiting for would-be players, and is simply a design choice. It leads to foolish situations where an Orc or gnoll is less intimidating than an average halfling, and is easily avoided by not building in penalties or irrationally low values in default monster presentation.
3. Weakness. For goblins and kobolds especially, the possibility that they just don't measure up to other races is a given that does not need a remedy. As long as they can do something not available to other PC races, the rewards for a suboptimal choice remain, and there will be players who want to explore that kind of inherent disadvantage.
4. Power. For other races (lizard folk, bugbear, and gnoll in my list), the sense that they are physically larger than other races is the only problem that needs to be solved. In 3.5, the solution for all of these was a combination of monstrous HD and a +1 LA, and this solution was not balanced across the levels. in my view, the reason was that the designers did not sufficiently acknowledge the penalty that having 2 or 3 monstrous HD introduced when they were the initial levels. Simply removing the LA was part of a solution, but it still meant that most monstrous characters were unable to achieve training in basic skills they needed, because skill points were so front-loaded at first level (a problem I once called the Clever Gnoll on these boards). as it turns out, 5e has bypassed this issue, and so the question remains how to reckon the increased bulk of, say, a bugbear in a first level PC. with the play test materials we have now, we simply are not in a position to articulate a solution to this.
Why?
A robust solution will require an understanding of multiclassing rules, if any. it mat be sufficient to simply say "most gnoll PCs have the equivalent of two levels of barbarian or ranger" - a general statement establishing a norm that puts PCs on a familiar scale, and from which players may choose to deviate if they want to make a gnoll cleric. perhaps it is even a requirement: gnolls must take two levels of fighter, ranger, barbarian, or rogue before they can advance in any other class. limiting, but sensible. it may make sense to re-introduce generic levels in humanoid for bulky races, but the richer the.multiclassing options, the more limiting this becomes. (This is a non-obvious correlation, but one I strongly believe to be true.)
These four basic issues (only three of which apply to any of the races I am discussing) suggest how little is needed to make more PC humanoid races available without negatively impacting the default game. I am not saying they should be in the PHB, but as an option at the back of the MM seems a sensible and reasonable place for something that will appeal to many players without upsetting the overall balance of a game.
I have no interest in playing a Drow, but I recognize there are players who do, and so I use that as my benchmark. If Drow are in, then I would want the game to support PC options for orcs, gnolls, lizard folk, kobolds, and the goblinoids (gob, hobgoblin, and bugbear). That is my personal list; I have played them all (mainly in 3.5), and it has been rewarding not just for myself to have them included. all of these should be mechanically more simple than a Drow. I can live with a game without PC centaurs, but this for me represents the minimum that should be available for PCs, as an option from the start. or each of them, I can easily imagine a rich culture and conceive a variety of individuals I would want in the world.
Incorporating them requires negotiating some issues that make them different than the standard core races, though none of these are actual impediments in my view.
1. Alignment. Most of these are evil races by default. This is trivial, of course: if members of a good race can choose to be evil (in a game with alignment), then the reverse should obviously be possible.
2. Abilities. traditionally, most of these races have been presented as stupid and ugly (low INT and CHA). this is limiting for would-be players, and is simply a design choice. It leads to foolish situations where an Orc or gnoll is less intimidating than an average halfling, and is easily avoided by not building in penalties or irrationally low values in default monster presentation.
3. Weakness. For goblins and kobolds especially, the possibility that they just don't measure up to other races is a given that does not need a remedy. As long as they can do something not available to other PC races, the rewards for a suboptimal choice remain, and there will be players who want to explore that kind of inherent disadvantage.
4. Power. For other races (lizard folk, bugbear, and gnoll in my list), the sense that they are physically larger than other races is the only problem that needs to be solved. In 3.5, the solution for all of these was a combination of monstrous HD and a +1 LA, and this solution was not balanced across the levels. in my view, the reason was that the designers did not sufficiently acknowledge the penalty that having 2 or 3 monstrous HD introduced when they were the initial levels. Simply removing the LA was part of a solution, but it still meant that most monstrous characters were unable to achieve training in basic skills they needed, because skill points were so front-loaded at first level (a problem I once called the Clever Gnoll on these boards). as it turns out, 5e has bypassed this issue, and so the question remains how to reckon the increased bulk of, say, a bugbear in a first level PC. with the play test materials we have now, we simply are not in a position to articulate a solution to this.
Why?
A robust solution will require an understanding of multiclassing rules, if any. it mat be sufficient to simply say "most gnoll PCs have the equivalent of two levels of barbarian or ranger" - a general statement establishing a norm that puts PCs on a familiar scale, and from which players may choose to deviate if they want to make a gnoll cleric. perhaps it is even a requirement: gnolls must take two levels of fighter, ranger, barbarian, or rogue before they can advance in any other class. limiting, but sensible. it may make sense to re-introduce generic levels in humanoid for bulky races, but the richer the.multiclassing options, the more limiting this becomes. (This is a non-obvious correlation, but one I strongly believe to be true.)
These four basic issues (only three of which apply to any of the races I am discussing) suggest how little is needed to make more PC humanoid races available without negatively impacting the default game. I am not saying they should be in the PHB, but as an option at the back of the MM seems a sensible and reasonable place for something that will appeal to many players without upsetting the overall balance of a game.
Tovec
Explorer
You have to be careful reading into those kinds of stats.
Another way of saying it might be "I might not use it, but I think it should be in the game" as 34% and then add it to the people who DO want it. Ultimately the best idea isn't to lump people into categories. Putting people who are neutral or apathetic in with people who ABSOLUTELY WANT it is as wrong as putting them in with ABSOLUTELY HATE it. I do like the "too polite to tell people what to do" from an internet poll. That was an interesting interpretation. So, I say that we should take the 34% who said "not in my game, but.." to be just that.
This is also a very real possibility. If you polled people, even now, if gnome should be a core race in 4e - that's right 4th - you might get very similar results to the poll you would have done at this stage before 4th came out. Some people can't play without the race in their game. Some might use it occasionally. Some may never use it, but don't want to exclude others. And some may say "nah, too [elfy/dwarfy/halflingy/fey-like]" or some other reason why they want to exclude it. If 5e is about inclusion and giving people options I would immediately rule out the last category. You don't like it? Too bad, others do and it should stay around, somehow.
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