Fifth Element said:
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).
That's a little arbitrary, d00d.
The amount of attention CompoundWord adjecives receive is not proportionate to the frequency of their use.
Yeah. Murders aren't that frequent, either, so I guess we should all stop paying attention to them.
Speeding, now
there's a major problem!
Point being: Dumb thing is still dumb. Even if it was dumb before. Even if it's not dumb that often. The only context it needs is: "Does this thing sound dumb to me?"
If the answer is "yup," then it's a problem for you.
It's subjective. It's not something that responds to the powers of amateur science. Does 4e have more than 1e? Man, I don't care enough to do the legwork. Is the narm of
swordwing any worse than wallbangers like
flumph or unpronouncable word salad like
ixixachitl? It's subjective.
For me, here's the thing:
Owlbears are kind of inherently silly. An owl and a bear get mashed together and they call it an owlbear. That's hilarious. It might also be able to savagely maw my fighter, but it's still hilarious. It's meant to be hilarious. The game can be silly. That's OK. Gelatinous Cubes and even Webbirds fall into that camp. Gnomes hit those notes a lot. Modrons, to a certain degree. Flumphs. The name sounds silly, the creature is silly, this is clearly a Very Silly Thing. The game can have a "comic relief" section that includes these things and be more awesome for not taking itself too seriously.
"Dragonborn" are not supposed to be inherently silly. Neither are "swordwings." They're meant to be badass knights and dangerous wild monsters. We don't have dragons giving live birth to dragonborn ("IT'S MAH BABAY!") as a goofy thing. Swordwings are not monstrous pigeons with immense swords replacing their wings so that when the try to fly they instead act like a blender. They're not SUPPOSED to be goofy. In fact, in a lot of cases, we're supposed to think "OH! This monster is so DARK and SCARY and UNPLEASANT and HORRIFIC!"
But this is not an absolute rule. "Mind Flayer" sounds suitably creepy. This is because Flaying is a very creepy thing, and imagining a creature that does that to your mind is pretty creepy, too.
The problem isn't the convention in and of itself per se.
The problem is that labeling "dark and edgy and scary and powerful" things with goofy-ass names leads to a depth of self-parody that is usually reserved for idiot marketing teams and politicians.
I'm not supposed to take an "owlbear" very seriously. "Mind Flayers" I am supposed to take seriously, and they sound like it. "Dragonborn" I am supposed to take seriously, and they sound hilariously stupid. The latter is a problem, and it shows up quite a bit in 4e, regardless of when it showed up in the past (which I fully believe it did!), because I don't play those games, so I don't really care what idiot things they did to the 40+ crowd (like weapon types vs. AC, and 10,000 different polearms!). I do care what awesome things they did to the 40+ crowd, cuz I want in on that action, but the stupid stuff doesn't bother me.
Or, well, it
did show up quite a bit, mostly in MM1 and MM2. It's something they've been getting much better at, and, aside from some legacy narm springing from dumb names in the first year or so (FELL TAINT!), they're really much better than they were. Which is awesome, 'cuz now I have to facepalm a lot less when reading monster books.
Dasuul said:
That's just the warm-up, however. After the owlbear, they get to fight Warwar, a warforged warpriest, multiclassed into warlord so as to qualify for the Zephyr Warchief paragon path and the Warmaster epic destiny, wearing warsheath warplate and wielding a warsoul warhammer in one hand and a totemic warclub in the other.
And a wilden from the feywild! And a shade from the shadowdark! Though those are less broad.
(and yes, Feywild is, to me, a dumb name, as is "Shadowdark," though shadow
fell is pretty okay.)
But, y'know, like I pointed out, they've been getting better about this. I think they realized that even if it wasn't a problem for Fifth Element and some other folks, it was enough of a problem that they should probably stop doing it quite so much.
