D&D 5E Which common monsters/creature types do you exclude from your campaigns?

[el-remmen]

I was thinking about my current homebrew, which unlike the top down homebrew I ran for 20 years, I am making up as I go along based on the needs of the two current games I am running there, and how there are certain monsters I have not used in it and with a little more thought realized that I tended not to use in general. As such, I thought perhaps I should straight up decide to exclude them from these games.

While I know it is not the framework for settings that WotC is using for their current setting linked projects (and the ones to-come) where they want to include as much as possible, I think what you don't include in a setting is as important as what you do include. In fact, it is easier to lay out a few things that do not exist than to try to list everything that is allowed. It is like the 10 Commandments which were groundbreaking in making sure that the majority of them (8 of 10) are things to NOT do, as opposed to things you MUST do (only two).

Anyway, with that in mind, I realize that a monster I have rarely used and have no interest in using in any game that is not specifically a horror themed game, are cursed lycanthropes. While, I may choose to include some kind of "true lycanthrope" shapechanging animal people - like ratfolk or werebears. I am not into the full moon, body horror, loss of control, thing.

Another exclusion are dragonborn, which I just don't like as an idea - and replace with lizardfolk.
Tritons are another creature type I have excluded, because between sea elves, sahuagin, koalinth, merfolk, and locathah, do we really need yet another aquatic species? Esp. since I like the idea of sentient dolphins.

There are other creatures that I exclude until such time that I think they might become setting appropriate due to the events of the campaign. Thus, no githyanki unless the PCs go plane-hopping, no girallons unless I decide it is a one-off wizard experiment gone wrong, probably will never use djinni or efreeti etc. . . unless they are thematically appropriate to a place in the setting that has been uncovered, and so on.


So which creatures do you exclude and why? And is it something you decide on ahead of time or something you decide as you prep events/adventures?

 

[Tutara]

It occurs to me I have never run anything with orcs as an enemy army. I just don’t find them appealing - they probably skew too close to LotR style fantasy for my taste. I’ve had orc bandits and orc pirates, but never orcs-as-a-horde.

 

[billd91]

I may exclude creatures due to redundancy or because they don’t really jump out at me as interesting, but I don’t have any particular systematic reasons for doing so.

 

[Mort]

While nothing is "off the table" for me, I tend to exclude Drow. Mostly because I just think of them as oversaturated/overused - especially for how rare they're supposed to be.

 

[Thomas Rainsborough]

No monsters are excluded. Now, for players, chars are allowed to be subset of the 5e PHB set, and nothing else. There are no Dragonborn, no Half-Orcs, and Tieflings are incredibly rare.

 

[overgeeked]

So which creatures do you exclude and why? And is it something you decide on ahead of time or something you decide as you prep events/adventures?

I don't think I consciously exclude anything. Most monsters can find a place to be useful. But a lot just don't come up. I tend toward animal-folk (lizardmen, bullywugs, etc), undead, elementals, sentient flora (dryads, myconid, etc), oozes, dragons, and mixed animals (chimera, griffon, owlbear, etc). But I also homebrew or pull in a lot of monsters in those categories and mix and match those categories willy-nilly. Love me some undead treants, non-standard element-infused dragons, weird mixed animals, etc.

 

[iserith]

I don't exclude monsters really unless there are terrain considerations (so that's more of a regional or situational exclusion), but one thing I for sure don't have in my games are CUTE monsters. There will be no adorable kobolds or goblins in any game of mine, ever. They're all nasty.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I tend now to ignore goblinoids, orcs, kobolds and other more common fodder enemies. I prefer to use non-humanoids creatures for low-level adventuring.

• Xvart and Boggles can replace goblins
• Derroes and a Darklings can replace Drows
• Kuo-toa, Ghouls, Harpies, Grimlocks and Merrows are pretty good for monsters-who-were-humanoids-but-were-corrupted-by-Darkness
• Minotaurs and Gnolls (both fiends in my games) replace the classic brutal evil creatures.
• Nagas and yuan-ti can replace lizardfolk.

I also tend to avoid Devils as a type and have them be evil-aligned Celestial instead. Demons are way cooler.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Aberrations. I don't like Lovecraft or related by-products.

 

[GuyBoy]

Modrons. Destroy any sense of fantasy for me.

 

[Burnside]

I don't exclude dopplegangers, but I use them very selectively and carefully, and generally for a limited duration or area. I like them, but overuse can bog down or even derail a campaign.

 

[Burnside]

Aberrations. I don't like Lovecraft or related by-products.

This stuff feels really over-used at this point. I get it, we gazed too far into the abyss.

In terms of the official adventures, I think they should probably lay off both hags and duergar for awhile - especially hags. So many hags.

 

[el-remmen]

So many hags.

funny. I never used hags in the previous 35+ years of playing/running D&D - but the recent resurgence in their use has got me finally using one as an antagonist ally or perhaps a better description is a potential antagonist who is willing to help the party if it furthers her own ends.

 

[delericho]

None. My campaigns will tend to emphasise certain monster types, with different campaigns going for a different feel, but I tend not to explicitly exclude any.

I had thought I was done with Drow, but then I hit on an alternate take for them that I liked, so they're back on the table (though probably not as enemies, actually). I guess it's unlikely I'll make much use of giants again after SKT - too much of the "big bag of hit points" for my liking.

 

[billd91]

funny. I never used hags in the previous 35+ years of playing/running D&D - but the recent resurgence in their use has got me finally using one as an antagonist ally or perhaps a better description is a potential antagonist who is willing to help the party if it furthers her own ends.

I’m thinking the resurgence of hags and “everything is fey” are related.

 

[Burnside]

funny. I never used hags in the previous 35+ years of playing/running D&D - but the recent resurgence in their use has got me finally using one as an antagonist ally or perhaps a better description is a potential antagonist who is willing to help the party if it furthers her own ends.

They're great. There is no inherent issue with them, but if you run a lot of the official campaign books as I do they are prominently featured a LOT. It's almost like there is a style guide that says every adventure has to have them.

 

[the Jester]

The only things I actively exclude are those that are either too campaign specific for my tastes (especially monsters deeply tied to a given god or culture) or that have been destroyed in play- I can't recall the latter having happened, but I can see that it could happen, and I have seen gnomes (f'rinstance) driven to extinction in someone else's campaign.

 

[Mercurius]

I exclude every monster that I don't use in game play, but every monster is "on the table." Whether or not it exists in the world, well, who knows.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I exclude most non-core races from my games as I prefer human-centric games. The old school standards are there, of course, but a lot of the newer races and (formerly) monster races are not permitted. Non-standard races are often met with curiosity, wonder, fear, or suspicion depending on the people they interact with and how they do it. The reason is I don't want a menagerie of intelligent races running around in areas which are more established. I might pull out a (formerly) monster race in the far reaches, but generally unless the player has a darn good convincing backstory--no.

The one exception was an all-monk all-animal-humanoid game I ran online during Covid. But in that setting the idea was that there was a "Zootopia"-type continent in the world with ONLY animal-humanoid races. So, the PCs were an aarakocra, tabaxi, and tortle. That as fun for what it was, but not something I would want to do long-term.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Orcs, and that's from long before recent issues.

They're just REALLY BORING and really overused, and have been overused since the mid-1990s at the latest. They have nothing going on, and 5E trying to make them have something going on by that thing being "RACISM" (unintentional as it may be) did not help matters.

Aberrations. I don't like Lovecraft or related by-products.

I don't hard-exclude them myself, but they're really over-used, so I very rarely include them and tend to have them more as bizarre ancient creatures rather than having them be all "Lovecraftian" in the typical sense. The Far Realm is one of the more boring and trite takes on that sort of thing too.

I do have a soft spot for Beholders, who are technically Aberrations, though.

Also Giants who aren't Hill or Stone giants. I'm just not into these like, "IM A RED VIKING WHO IS 14' TALL AND ON FIRE LOLOLOLZ!!!!!"-type giants, they're so... tacky! So kitsch! So like, ugh... no. No. Just no. They're like something out of a bad videogame, and I've felt that since the '80s! We might as well be fighting sports mascots, but at least that would be kind of funny.