Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 9691869" data-attributes="member: 87792">[ATTACH=full]409737[/ATTACH](Image from Faolyn's post, cut into mine because I will be commenting)I just thought I'd double back on this because it also shows why I find 2e and the Monstrous Manual in particular to be thematically so underwhelming (as well as a mechanical disaster). And yes I do expect a little knowledge of mythology from DMs - or other sources of research and inspiration.The 2e dryad I see is not a nature spirit. She's a pale skinned girl who lives in the woods, plucks flowers to braid into her hair and, damningly, wears cloth clothing. Worse yet she wears flowing cloth clothing that would catch on branches. That's not a nature spirit there. It's a hippie elf chick who lives in a house and buys her clothes from a shop and drawn in a pose to emphasise sideboob.Just as an aside the 1e dryad is simply funny.[ATTACH=full]409734[/ATTACH]I mean that's not a nature spirit. That's a girl who's hollowed out a tree, and made a ladder and shutters in the tree. And she can't even fit in her own literal tree house.Meanwhile let's look at the 3.5 dryad. The one that immediately preceded the 4e one. (As an aside the 3.0 dryad was very much an elf of the woods - but at the very least an improvement over the 2e one in that she looked as if she actually lived in the "Hollywood woods" and had a tan.)[ATTACH=full]409731[/ATTACH]... fully naked, front on? Visible wooden nipples?  This is just embarrassing. Although to give it its due it is an actual nature spirit and not a dressed up hippie.Judging by the art the 4e Dryad is the only one of the official D&D dryads to the point it was published that I can take even vaguely seriously. And yes, it is a bit of an over-reaction to the 3.5 one (of course if it's your kink I don't judge).The 5e dryads, both 2014 and 2024 (I honestly prefer the 2014 impressionist one) both manage to hit all the points I'd expect - being nature spirits not ren faire humans with pointy ears, be sexy, and be wearing clothing or ornamentation that is actually natural rather than cloth.This is the old "Dragon boobs" question of course. But other than the embarrassing 3.5 dryad the 4e one is the only D&D dryad up to the time it was published that gets the nature spirit as opposed to "sexy wood elf" part at all.And this is blatant special pleading. "Wasn't the game's main goal"? Specialist social characters have never been D&D's main goal in any edition. 4e simply did them better than any other edition unless you were an utter munchkin who got their fun out of abusing the broken 3.X diplomacy rules or the 3.5 glibness spell.D&D's main goal has always been either dungeon exploration or action adventure combat.  And the bard was held back to give time to do it justice - a decision I wish they would have made for the whole of 4e.And yes, we can agree on presentation. Which Daggerheart is much better at D&D than.And I would also point out given how I'm critiquing the artwork so few of the monsters illustrated might actively be a strength of Daggerheart. (It certainly makes Daggerheart much more usable to not have an entire separate volume for the monsters).</blockquote>

Verification