Why CompoundWord Monsters Don't Bother Me

[Fifth Element]

Other than the obvious reason that D&D has always had more than its share of silly monster names, of course. Owlbears and Thunderheders and all that.

The fact is, for all the flack that CompoundWord Monsters have taken, and that 4E has taken for adopting this naming convention (though quite a few are brought forward from 3.X), there just aren't that many of them.

I went through the three 4E Monster Manuals and counted up all the monsters that would likely be deemed to fall into this naming convention. Note that this applies only to the descriptive term added to a monster's name to diferentiaate it from others of the same "species", so to speak. A swordwing, for instance, does not count because that's just the name of the monster, and we've had planty of goofy-named monsters in the past (webbird, I'm looking at you). I also didn't count compound words that are actually used as part of the language, like say bloodhound. Here are the results.

Monster Manual 1: 83 of 488 monsters are CompoundWord, or 17%.
Monster Manual 2: 54 of 324 monsters are CompoundWord, or 17%.
Monster Manual 3: 27 of 307 monsters are CompoundWord, or 9%.

Altogether that's 164 of 1,119 monsters, or 15%, that are CompoundWord. (This was just me adding them up, by the way, so there's bound to be an error or two.)

If 15% of monsters having silly names is too much for you, I daresay no edition of D&D is going to satisfy you in that regard.

 

[captainspud]

I wasn't aware that this was a problem.

 

[MrMyth]

This doesn't bother me in the general case, just in the specific. I have no real objection to the use of compound name monsters. Often, it works quite well. But it does occasionally lead to some really silly names - but that's hardly isolated to this situation alone, given some of the absurd names other D&D monsters have featured over the years.

 

[Kinneus]

I'll take mindflayer over illithid any day, personally.

 

[TheUltramark]

We still use a home brewed monster to this day created about 20 years ago that we still call (named) bird-thingys

Names are nothing to get in a twist over

 

[Dausuul]

I don't think anyone's up in arms about CompoundWord names. There aren't enough silly CompoundWord names to raise a major stink about. There are, however, enough of them to mock WotC about.

And I'm not clear on why you're excluding the primary creature name. "Swordwing" is a CompoundWord classic, right down to having sword/blade/war/battle as one of the words. (Although it fails to score the Irrelevance Bonus, which is awarded when sword/blade/war/battle is applied purely to "metal up" a name rather than because there's any specific reason for it.)

For that matter, it's by no means limited to creatures. It shows up in class names too. See: Swordmage, hexblade, battlemind, runepriest, warpriest... and I won't even start with the magic items.

 

[IanB]

Any counting system that eliminates swordwings from the get-go is sort of missing the point of the "problem" I think. Also, 4e's (and later 3e's) love affair with portmanteau naming goes well beyond just monsters - Frostfell, Feywild, Shadowfell, etc. ad nauseam.

I mean, I don't think it is exactly a Major Problem, but it is pretty annoying.

 

[TheUltramark]

I suck at naming things (towns, items, characters, anything ) so its hard for me to mock coastwizards at least they are naming them something.

 

[delericho]

Owlbear isn't a silly name. Given the nature of the monster, that's the only thing it could be called. Now, whether it's a silly monster or not...

Anyway, I grew up in a place called Chryston (Christ's Town), and now work in a place called Newbridge, so I'm not exactly bothered by compoundword names. (See also: Rivendell.)

What does bother me (slightly) is bad names - and there have been a fair few of those from WotC. But, hey, it's not that big a deal.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Nothing to get bent out of shape over. What is a monster, but a miserable pile of stats? Call/fluff them whatever you like. I do, and I sleep better at night for it.

Cheers.