What if the Monsters Were Playgrounders Instead?

[White Blade]

So, I think the playground has fully run its course on figuring out how badly broken society would instantly be if the PC classes were serious about transforming society. But what if we just threw out the starting assumptions of D&D and asked ourselves how much the monsters could bust the setting. It seems obvious that the dragons are just going to roll over everyone right assuming they don't get killed very early in the world cycle. Needless to say, the typical problems of civilization are now over - Even the weakest of the true dragons can pick up an Eberron archetype to be able to feed themselves with cleric spells, even putting aside Platforms of Healing and Everfull Larders, and most dragons will have friends (or "friends" as the case may be) who can cast True Resurrection. Up in the air if the metallic dragons outperform the chromatic dragons over time, because of their doubtless superior social organization and much longer lifespan advantages or if the chromatic dragons manage to edge them out with dark sacrifices. Since there are a lot of dragons who can cast wish to create whatever weird cross-breeds they feel like.

But assuming the dragons don't balloon to take up the whole planet in raw square footage (perhaps they take to hiring friends to cast Genesis to make demiplanes that they fill with treasure and pets), what happens lower down the totem pole?

[Glimbur]

The issue with dragons is they need to get really old to get really powerful. If some other faster race takes over they might be able to prevent dragon victory. Push them to the edges of the world, hunt them down, and when an adult or older slips through you can out number it enough that the conclusion is not foregone.

The easy answer is kobold, because they have extra sorcerer abilities and magic is good. But that is just class levels all over again so we can set them aside also.

Self replicating undead are in contention. Many of the incorporeal ones can just kill animals at will, assuming they can keep up, but are limited by sunlight. Wights are easier to do damage to but can be active all day long. Put a pin in undead apocalypse, it seems plausible.

When you say monsters do you include Outsiders? They have just piles of abilities, including spell casting, and the fluff suggests they work together within their alignment and sometimes across it. That's a faction to watch also.

That's what I can think of offhand, surely I missed things like oozes splitting to cover the world.

[JoeNapalm]

Dragons are the apex of the apex predators, and live exceptionally long lives...on the pyramid of any given biosphere, there are never going to be more than an exceptionally rare few.


Apex predators naturally limit their own populations out of necessity. It takes 120 square miles to support a single Siberian Tiger. The entire globe could only support one Godzilla.


Due to their longevity and biology, Dragons are inherently "lazy" by human standards. They spend most of their time sleeping.


Sure, they are immensely powerful -- but that doesn't necessarily mean they would directly influence human society much...Man would be more pests and vermin to the evil Dragons, honey bees to the good ones. Humans have a very human-centric take on things, but to Dragons I doubt we'd be so central to their existence.


-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[ciopo]

hasn't this been already theoricized? shadow apocalypse, and/or X apocalypse, where X is any of those creature with an uncapped create spawn ability.

Anyway, my money is on that outsider that has casting as a CL 17 cleric at cr 6ish? I forgot what it was, trumpet archon maybe?

runner up those creatures that have those "do more than one standard action per turn" special qualities

[White Blade]

The issue with dragons is they need to get really old to get really powerful. If some other faster race takes over they might be able to prevent dragon victory. Push them to the edges of the world, hunt them down, and when an adult or older slips through you can out number it enough that the conclusion is not foregone.
Well, thinking through which monsters might manage to compete through superior reproduction: Lammasus naturally have seventh level cleric casting, have a good set of class skills, and are always lawful good magical beasts. Ethergaunts are obvious choices for dominating power levels. To your point about outsiders, Slaads can reproduce very easily if there's still a supply of living things around. They're dumb as a bag of bricks of course, but they don't need to eat or sleep and they have a lot of skill points.

hasn't this been already theoricized? shadow apocalypse, and/or X apocalypse, where X is any of those creature with an uncapped create spawn ability.

Anyway, my money is on that outsider that has casting as a CL 17 cleric at cr 6ish? I forgot what it was, trumpet archon maybe?

runner up those creatures that have those "do more than one standard action per turn" special qualities

I don't think the contention that X apocalypses win has actually been proven over and against the other monsters, to whom many of the X monsters are not a serious threat, but against densely populated humanoid cities. And even then, that's usually low-optimization densely populated human cities and not whatever monstrosity the Playground considers reasonable precautions in a 3.5 setting.


Dragons are the apex of the apex predators, and live exceptionally long lives...on the pyramid of any given biosphere, there are never going to be more than an exceptionally rare few.

Apex predators naturally limit their own populations out of necessity. It takes 120 square miles to support a single Siberian Tiger. The entire globe could only support one Godzilla.
But the more powerful dragons don't need to hunt for food? Create Food is a third level spell and dragons can pick up cleric spells, most without doing anything special at all, and Prestidigitation is a cantrip that can flavor their food to taste.

[RandomPeasant]

The game breaks along pretty similar lines. Many monsters simply are spellcasters. A good chunk of them have Sorcerer spellcasting, which limits things a bit (as magical innovations can't propagate as quickly), but there are creatures out there with Wizard or Cleric spellcasting. And there are monsters with crazy magical abilities that spellcasters can't easily replicate, mostly obviously in the form of at-will SLAs.

For example. Couatls get at-will plane shift. That means that a Couatl empire is not some giant thing that stretches across the world, but a collection of 500 mile radius circles on various planes. Since it's distributed in this way, it can support a relatively high population density without having to resort to agriculture. If you can do your foraging on eight different planes, you can support eight times the population density of normal hunter-gathers.

Or you might have city-states emerging around Elemental Weirds, clustering as close as possible to the powerful but immobile spellcasters. 18th level Sorcerer spellcasting (not to mention their giant list of SLAs) offers a lot of value for a typical tribe of humanoids.

I find this a really interesting idea, and a lot of my world-building musings are in at least vaguely this sort of direction. The idea of a world ruled by monsters is a nice contrast to typical D&D settings, and gives you an interesting historical narrative of mortals gaining power as magic becomes more prevalent and more powerful. Fledgling mage-academies against the established regimes of driders, eldritch giants, chronotyryn, barghests, yak folk, ethergaunts, mind flayers, and all the other magical nasties of D&Dland is an excellent campaign premise.


Apex predators naturally limit their own populations out of necessity. It takes 120 square miles to support a single Siberian Tiger. The entire globe could only support one Godzilla.

You know who doesn't do that? Humans. We're an apex predator, and we've exploded to populate the whole world. Because we're smart enough that when we hit the carrying capacity of the land, we can just raise that carrying capacity. A newborn dragon (of most types) is as smart as the average person, and by the time they're Great Wyrms, even the dumbest have nearly superhuman intellect. It's certainly possible to say that Dragons would simply laze around like giant, fire-breathing cats, having little to do with the world of mortals. But I think that's lazy, particular in the context of the question. I think it's more likely that you'd see giant draconic empires come to dominate the world. An individual dragon is a battle-winning siege engine, and Dragonpacts allow them to elevate trusted mortal lieutenants. The overall number of dragons is likely to be low, but their impact on the setting will not be.

[Fizban]

The easy answer is kobold, because they have extra sorcerer abilities and magic is good. But that is just class levels all over again so we can set them aside also.
It's not the "extra sorcerer abilities"- it's the fact that as per Races of the Dragon they can replicate absolutely ludicrously fast while eating dirt (less than 7 years to adulthood). Which then in turn allows them to form massive cities out of nothing, which means they get high level spellcasters for free.

The main competitor (aside from flat-out apocalypse), will be creature with both sufficient innate casting and sufficiently low resource requirements. Which most likely means starting with one of the creature types that doesn't need to eat. Dragons can eat dirt (it's why Kobolds can now eat dirt), and reproduce quickly, but it takes them decades and centuries to get anything more sophisticated than their basic breath weapon. Find a (non-native) Outsider or Elemental with 5th level or higher casting and resistance to non-magical weapons, which can replicate quickly, and you've got a contender. Lots of Good outsiders have innate casting, but they're not supposed to be able to breed like rabbits. Genies have some magic, but not techable spell lists.

Coutals are a pretty strong leading example, as being Native Outsiders means they need food but also shouldn't be shackled to conceptual limits on the generation of aligned exemplars. Innate casting of 4th level spells, as well as flight, fast-travel, stealth, foe-detection, and if not continuous resistance than certainly the ability to nope out of most threats without leaving the field entirely via Ethereal Jaunt. However they are Large, need to eat, and being snakelike suggests that they are predators. They need to control vast territory to sustain their numbers, even with herding.

(Psionic) Mind Flayers are another usual suspect, particularly if you let them avoid their dietary requirement with the psionic version of "Create Food and Water." With innate casting up to 5th and the ability to replicate via subsumption of humanoids no longer shackled by brain (or indeed, any food requirements), they would be major players, quite possibly unbeatable, if you allow that workaround. Except they can't actually get around the brain requirement: new mind flayer tadpoles can't Sustenance themselves and need to eat brain mush in the pool for 10 years before they're considered fit for ceremorphosis. So the same exponential logisitics problems remain for their replication, even if once grown they're allowed to persist indefinitely.

Of course, if you're char-oping monster powers, the Deepspawn (LEoF) has already been custom-written to alleviate any and all prey and replication problems. Each Deepspawn is a single Huge aberration which can spawn a copy of any creature it has ever consumed, fanatically loyal and including all learned abilities including class levels, up to a size of Large, every ~14 days (living material native creatures only)- the ability initially says creatures of CR 4 to 6 accompany it and gives a table, but the later details include no such limit. Of course at that point there's little reason to consider their ability to feed a society, so much as their ability to simply print 3-4 spellcasters every year (the only thing preventing them from making more Deepsawn to go exponential is the Large restriction), if they're able to eat one of a decent level. Even without particular individuals, eat a Lammasu to print 7th level Clerics to create food, or a Coutal to for their offensive spells and mobility, eat a Beholder for even better offensive and mind influencing ability, or just eat a Psionic Mind Flayer which can Sustain itself. Lammasu, or Nymph (7th level Druid) or other creature with Goodberry (probably some other sort of fey), and it should be able to produce a surprlus at cost of overall rate of production. Even the lack of variety on printing the same creature over and over doesn't matter when divine lists give you everything, unless the DM intervenes and strips divine casting from the clones. The Deepsawn themselves are of course highly intelligent (Int 17, Wis 16), as all aberrant Underdark horrors inevitably are.

Kobolds have ridiculous exponential reproduction which leads to a fairly flat number of casters per location, unsustainable by hard casting but apparently sustainable via dirt. Mind Flayers need to farm brains to replicate, but once grown the DM may decide they can hack their own subsistence, allowing a flat but permanent increase to their numbers each year depending on long-term brain farming. A Deepspawn can just print 3-4 of whatever every year as long as it can feed itself and whatever it's printing, which it can do indefinitely as long as it has and makes a food producer every so often, or its products don't need to eat.

In order to compete with any of those I think you're going to need a giant or or similar with innate self-sustenance. Are there any splat giants with not just SLAs, but full cleric or druid spell-list casting?


That's what I can think of offhand, surely I missed things like oozes splitting to cover the world.
As always I must mention the Ekolid (FC1), the most terrifying spawn-pocalypse monster I've ever read. As written it can spawn copies for each instance of damage it deals. Not just per individual, but per attack on said individuals, and since the -10 threshold is a thing that means everything with hit points can spawn multiple flying 6 attack weapon and energy resistant fast healing 39hp demons. Which are intelligent (Int 10/Wis 18), and don't need to eat because they're still outsiders! Even the ecology entry which says "only one or two usually survive to adulthood" in the six hours it takes them to consume the target and grow, says that they are mostly constrained by only bothering to attack living targets and that phrasing allows a greater than 1:1 conversion. Oh, and they also form cities and advance by class levels on their home plane.

[Quertus]

Why are we taking about dragons casting Create Food and Water, when they have the "eat anything" ability? :smallconfused:

Of course, dragons take *forever* to age (unless they get ahold of Teleport Through Time, and are on a world which used to be 2e). So, if everyone is starting as "newborn", Dragons have issues.

As naturally cooperative beings, being born at 100% (no "baby" state, even), and with access to one of the best prestige classes, Illithids would be strong contenders. Once the Illithid Savant can eat (and resurrect, and eat, and…) Thrullherders, food will magically appear daily.

Many outsiders similarly hit the ground running. And, if we're talking outsiders, let's not forget deities. 20 racial HD, mad crazy abilities.

For great power (and great prestige class), let's not forget the Beholder. And Beholder mobs will all cooperate with and all listen to Mother.

And that's not counting homebrew. Or monsters that Dominate / copy other monsters (is Deepspawn 14 days, or 14 weeks, btw?).

As to what kind of societies they would create? Um… don't we kinda have canon answers for most of those species?

[RandomPeasant]

For great power (and great prestige class), let's not forget the Beholder. And Beholder mobs will all cooperate with and all listen to Mother.

Beholders are a lot less good at world-conquering than you'd think, because they get spanked pretty hard in an above-ground environment by anyone with long-range weapons. They only move 20ft per round and are pretty squish, so the local militia can kite them down with Longbows, given time and room to maneuver.

[Maat Mons]

I'm imagining a cabal of Spellhoarding Dragons. Gold and Silver Dragons are born with the Alternate Form ability. And Bronze Dragons gain Alternate Form at the same age category they gain casting. Gold, Silver, and Bronze Dragons are all among the types that get access to the Cleric spell list too. Tier 1 casting from both the Sorcerer/Wizard and Cleric spell lists, plus the innate ability to keep a low profile. Smells like a recipe for success.

Spellhoarding gives dragons a predisposition for travel and sociable behavior, rather than sitting alone in a lair, in the middle of a territory they defend against other dragons. Alternate Form lets them just integrate into (and then rule) humanoid societies, instead of having to build their own. On the surface, this would look like a humanoid-dominated world with magocraftic governments. But the Wizard-Kings, and all other top positions, would really be Spellhoarding Dragons.

I'm not sure it's fair to say that dragons age slowly. They hit the Adult age category at a little over 100 years, same as elves. And while an adult elf starts out with just one Wizard level, an adult dragon, depending on type, already has 7.



Rakshasa also have innate spellcasting and Change Shape, making them another good candidate for establishing dominance without having to war against humanoids. But they're reliant on class levels to attain 9th-level spells, which might be a problem depending on how common it is in your setting for characters to attain high levels in PC classes. And if we're looking for a setting where monsters rule, the most plausible reason would be that it's just difficult in the setting to train lots of people up to high levels in PC classes at large scale. Because otherwise tend to be better at leveraging class levels than monstrous races, and would tend to dominate.

Mind Flayers can be awesome if you use the variant that gives them manifesting as a 9th-level Telepath. But there too, you have the problem where, either its easy to add levels in manifesting/casting classes, in which case you've got loads of casters of every race to deal with, or it's hard to add levels in manifesting/casting classes, in which case there aren't going to be that many Mind Flayers that push very far beyond their racial casting.



tl;dr: For a setting where NPCs struggle to gain levels, races with innate casting will really shine. But for a setting where NPCs whiz on up in level, any quick-breeding race with "Advancement: By character class" will instead be what shines.

[PraxisVetli]

As always I must mention the Ekolid (FC1), the most terrifying spawn-pocalypse monster I've ever read. As written it can spawn copies for each instance of damage it deals. Not just per individual, but per attack on said individuals, and since the -10 threshold is a thing that means everything with hit points can spawn multiple flying 6 attack weapon and energy resistant fast healing 39hp demons. Which are intelligent (Int 10/Wis 18), and don't need to eat because they're still outsiders! Even the ecology entry which says "only one or two usually survive to adulthood" in the six hours it takes them to consume the target and grow, says that they are mostly constrained by only bothering to attack living targets and that phrasing allows a greater than 1:1 conversion. Oh, and they also form cities and advance by class levels on their home plane.

OH MY GOD.
How have I never seen this thing before?
That's messed up.