D&D 5E What do you like, and what do you not like about Volo's Guide to Monsters? (spoilers)

[Ath'kethin]

I have to agree, though this trend actually started in 4e. Not all monsters need origin stories, and not all monsters need to be created by the same handful of epic-level bad guys (in Volo's it's primarily Orcus, the Queen of Air and Darkness, and Yeenoghu)

The whole "evil humanoids don't get to use the same gods as the rest of us" trope has been around for decades. What I dislike is integrating it so completely into the background and motivations of the monsters. Compare the section on gnolls in Volo's Guide to the section on, say, elves in the PHB. Elves have been associated with Cory whatshisface for decades, too, but there is no mention of the deity in the elf section in the PHB.

Now, the whole "driven only by their creator god's will" bit is prevalent throughout 5e; after all, the Orc and Gnoll sections of the MM have god-serving specific variants of the monsters. There was no reason to expect Volo's Guide to be any different. But I still don't like it.

EDIT: More to your point, I never played much 4e, so I guess I missed that aspect of it. I would have disliked that aspect there, too.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

WotC: We have a bunch of big evil cosmic types, let's figure out what they do.
Lazy Homebrewer: They shouldn't do anything. It makes my homebrew harder. It is totally appropriate for WotC to spike their own product to make my life easier. Now if we can just get rid of those pesky classes and elves, dwarves, and halflings........my homebrew is a 19th century reenactment where there are only humans and no magic......

 

[Chaosmancer]

Honestly, I love more write-ups for monstrous deities because the religions of the various races are fairly important to the cultures of all my races.

The fact that Humans have 13 gods compared to the 2-5 of everyone else means they are the most obviously religious, building massive cathedrals and the like with the various churches competing.

Corellon being a deity of War and Art who believes heavily in protecting the natural world is why my elves were militaristic and attempting to conquer the world, so they could protect it.

The tension between Gruumsh and Luthic in my world is the source of a lot of conflict for my orcs, who are either heavily traditionalist or secretly subverting the established order to progress the orcs forward.

ect.


And, you know, saying that all members of a race follow this god and belief in that god means they usually do X or Y doesn't mean you can't have exceptions. But it does give you a baseline to think about them and how they might view the world.

Saying "Everyone is a complex blend of emotions and beliefs, sometimes corresponding to certain deities and sometimes breaking with that to worship other deities, while still existing together usually in some version of unity, though occasionally conflict." is certainly more realistic and closer to the truth, but it doesn't give me anything to start with. You can't break from the norm if you don't know what the norm is, and I don't think they need to spell out in every single entry that you are free to break from the norm and have them worship, believe and act differently.

 

[knasser]

Hey, it's a thread asking people to say what they like and dislike about the book. Nobody should have to extensively justify not liking something unless they've got something factully wrong. And nobody has to prove anything is an inherent negative even - simply seeing a large number of words dedicated to something that has no appeal to them is sufficient to be able to say "I didn't like X".

 

[Tony Vargas]

The whole "evil humanoids don't get to use the same gods as the rest of us" trope has been around for decades. What I dislike is integrating it so completely into the background and motivations of the monsters.

I suppose 'evil because you're religious' is a little more developed than evil, because: always evil.

Compare the section on gnolls in Volo's Guide to the section on, say, elves in the PHB. Elves have been associated with Cory whatshisface for decades, too, but there is no mention of the deity in the elf section in the PHB.
Now, the whole "driven only by their creator god's will" bit is prevalent throughout 5e.

I guess I hadn't looked that hard at it.

EDIT: More to your point, I never played much 4e, so I guess I missed that aspect of it.

I did, but I guess it slipped by me, too...

...unless it's in reference to the Dawn War? A lot of monsters were created by primordials or deities to fight in the Dawn War...

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Hands down what I love the most are grungs. 2nd Edition had me at grippli. Then Volo comes along and says, "I'll see your grippli and raise you humanoid poison arrow frogs." Bam--you got me! They're certainly worth the price of admission for me. And their variant poisons only make them more interesting.

What I don't like is that grungs aren't a playable race. But that could be easily houseruled with a GM who's on board. (Although as a playable race I'd take the grung mechanics and slap the grippli name on it so the PC wouldn't be an evil slaver jerk.)

 

[Zene]

I got my copy yesterday, and flipped right to the Bugbear sections in Ch1 and Ch2.

I was disappointed to find that 1) There's not a picture of a bugbear in the entire damn book, and 2) while most of the sections in Ch1 and Ch2 have a "roleplaying a ___" section, that seems to have been skipped for the goblinoids (including bugbears). Nor is there a bugbear picture/statblock in Ch3.

Haven't read the book in full yet, so maybe I'm missing something. But so far that's the thing that's annoyed me most. I feel like adding a playable race, with no picture and no roleplaying notes, is a pretty major oversight. Even things like the Kenku and Tritons got both.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I got my copy yesterday, and flipped right to the Bugbear sections in Ch1 and Ch2.

I was disappointed to find that 1) There's not a picture of a bugbear in the entire damn book, and 2) while most of the sections in Ch1 and Ch2 have a "roleplaying a ___" section, that seems to have been skipped for the goblinoids (including bugbears). Nor is there a bugbear picture/statblock in Ch3.

Haven't read the book in full yet, so maybe I'm missing something. But so far that's the thing that's annoyed me most. I feel like adding a playable race, with no picture and no roleplaying notes, is a pretty major oversight. Even things like the Kenku and Tritons got both.

There's a bugbear under the bridge in the picture at the start of the goblinoid section.

 

[Zene]

Ah, I missed that, thanks! Still, really just a half of a silhouette instead of an actual picture.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Ah, I missed that, thanks! Still, really just a half of a silhouette instead of an actual picture.

Well, it's a bugbear - they're supposed to be stealthy! There are probably dozens of bugbears scattered throughout the book, all hidden so well that we'll never see them (just like those they target)...