Monsters of the multiverse might be a lil important afterall..

[animewatcha]

Keep an eye on the youtubers you use to keep track of the premiering books like monsters of the multiverse. Looks like each of the races are getting tweaked.

Like on Fryminis channel, Aarakocra now have 30 land speed (fly speed is equal to land speed. Talons are 1d6 + strength instead. At 3rd, they can do gust of wind 1/long rest (no material component) or spell slot.

[Mastikator]

Wish they just added variants of races rather than errata them :/

[Kane0]

Wish they just added variants of races rather than errata them :/

Agreed
10char

[Pildion]

Wish they just added variants of races rather than errata them :/

I'm with you, and Always allow my players to chose the original race if they want to.

[KorvinStarmast]

Wish they just added variants of races rather than errata them :/
Yes, that would be more backward compatible.

[Imbalance]

It's not official until they errata the book's spine.:smallwink:

[J-H]

What I've seen indicates that DNDB and other tools will have these as additional options only available if you purchase the book... so the old info is still valid and usable. It's a table-level choice.

I have no interest in most of the post-Tasha's approach to races and this doesn't look like it'll be an exception.

[Psyren]

Wish they just added variants of races rather than errata them :/

They haven't errata'ed anything. You can choose not to use the book, and Volos etc will still be there.

[PhantomSoul]

I have no interest in most of the post-Tasha's approach to races and this doesn't look like it'll be an exception.

Yeah, all the more reason to skip the book. But nowadays, that's the default for WOTC.

[Thunderous Mojo]

If 13 out of the initial 15 posts for this thread are "WotC Sucks/We Hate the future" everyone gets a box of Krispy Kreams and some Hateraid.

[noob]

If 13 out of the initial 15 posts for this thread are "WotC Sucks/We Hate the future" everyone gets a box of Krispy Kreams and some Hateraid.

My issue is "I miss pack tactics" otherwise I do not really see a lot of problems.

[Naanomi]

Very few of the changes appear to be world shaking. A few unique abilities lost here and there but mostly lateral changes or upgrades.

I'm most frustrated that they were not thorough... Lots of 'orphaned' (mostly setting specific) options left without a modern version now if people were interested in going all-in on the new model

[Dalinar]

My issue is "I miss pack tactics" otherwise I do not really see a lot of problems.

Same here. Unsure I like the design direction from what I've heard.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Thank You noob!

Specifying a particular concern is something a Discussion Board can engage with.

The other posts, unfortunately, are not really engaging in conversation..but are more background noise.

I'm not exactly thrilled with some of the Player Options changes that have been released....of course whatever I don't like, I wont use.

Bugbears being able to fit w/in Small Character sized spaces is cool...reminds me of Kato from the Pink Panther movies....

[stoutstien]

I'm of the mind that while I appreciate mostly changes are probably for the better the execution seems half-hearted.

[JackPhoenix]

What I've seen indicates that DNDB and other tools will have these as additional options only available if you purchase the book... so the old info is still valid and usable. It's a table-level choice.

I have no interest in most of the post-Tasha's approach to races and this doesn't look like it'll be an exception.

Assuming the older books won't get errata'd. Which they'll almost certainly will. They've already changed orcs and kobolds once.

[Psyren]

Assuming the older books won't get errata'd. Which they'll almost certainly will. They've already changed orcs and kobolds once.

You agreed they could do that when you signed up for DDB. This would be the advantage of PDFs or dead tree editions.

[Kane0]

You agreed they could do that when you signed up for DDB. This would be the advantage of PDFs or dead tree editions.

Shame there isnt an official way to obtain PDFs

[Willowhelm]

I don’t know how to link to it but the packtactics YouTube channel had a community post with a screenshot that references the dnd dev update where they said the new content will not replace the old monsters and races. Fwiw.

[Rafaelfras]

I think its a titanic waste of time, efort and page count changing something that didnt need change instead of something new

[Thunderous Mojo]

I think its a titanic waste of time, efort and page count changing something that didnt need change instead of something new

That is fair.

No other edition of D&D has had two separate rest schedules, (Short Rest/Long Rest), and it seems quite possible that the Designers have decided to partially phase out some Short Rest Schedule abilities.

This might result in a smoother play experience.

The leaked information I have read indicated Racially granted armor proficiencies are being removed. If this is correct, then I think the Designers came to feel that Iron Mage/Wizard builds were overly powerful.

[ProsecutorGodot]

That is fair.

No other edition of D&D has had two separate rest schedules, (Short Rest/Long Rest), and it seems quite possible that the Designers have decided to partially phase out some Short Rest Schedule abilities.

This might result in a smoother play experience.

The leaked information I have read indicated Racially granted armor proficiencies are being removed. If this is correct, then I think the Designers came to feel that Iron Mage/Wizard builds were overly powerful.

I've noticed that it's an increasingly common thing for new subclasses/races to not have any resources or features tied to short rests. To put some perspective on this, even the Genie Warlock didn't gain any new abilities that refresh on a short rest and every single racial feature that involved short resting was removed, even Lizardfolk's Cunning Artisan which was something that simply happened during a short rest.

It's pretty clear that Short Rests are having their importance diminished even beyond what they're at now, honestly I wouldn't be shocked if we saw the traditional short rest based classes changed overall.

[Kane0]

It does sadden me that the short rest appears to be on the outward trend. I would have preferred 'here is how you convert short rest stuff into long rest stuff and vice versa' rather than slowly phasing it out.

Similarly with racial equipment proficiencies, something to note moving them into backgrounds so they dont just... disappear.

[No brains]

I do hope there is some way to get armor proficiencies after they get patched out of races. It allows you to play a single-class gish without spending all your feats. Arguably it's a powerful trait, but 13+dex natural armor is also very good. I'd really feel like I was missing something if my only recourse for playing an armored arcanist was to play as a lizardfolk.

I mean, different classes that get armor and full spellcasting exist, but I liked the feeling of freedom from having customizable options.

[Psyren]

I personally like the SR/LR divide but I can understand why it's a bit of a pain for them to design around. When the experience of playing a given class or race can change wildly depending on how many short rests the party gets (e.g. Warlock, Monk, and Fighter), it can make collecting feedback even from people actually playing those characters at a table nearly impossible to sort through. Say someone loves the monk or even thinks it might be too powerful - are they saying that because their DM is softballing the encounters, because they have custom magic items, because the DM is letting them take 3 short rests a day, some combination of the above or something else entirely? It's one more variable to try and keep track of when some multiple of PB per long rest would standardize that much more easily.



Similarly with racial equipment proficiencies, something to note moving them into backgrounds so they dont just... disappear.

I don't know if I'd be down with, say, Githyanki suddenly becoming far and away the best wizard race in the game overnight. I think casters needing to spend a bit more resources to get armor proficiency is a good thing.


I think its a titanic waste of time, efort and page count changing something that didnt need change instead of something new

I disagree completely:

1) It aligns a pile of races with their new design philosophy. (Whether you like said philosophy or not is irrelevant, it's still theirs.)
2) It collects them into a setting-agnostic source. Never mind just being able to play a Changeling in Faerun or a Shadar-Kai in Eberron, now everyone can feel comfortable including these races in their homebrew settings too.
3) It allowed them to redesign a bunch of races to remove traits that weren't working (e.g. Kenku) and buff races that were underperforming (e.g. Genasi) And the loss of Pack Tactics, while regrettable, is understandable.
4) Making it a splat book instead of errata allows people who don't like the changes to more easily ignore them. Had they simply been stealth'ed in overnight one night, the uproar would have been tumultuous. Better still, this will give people a chance to play with the changes (while they pay for themselves design-wise) before any future errata that might be made.

For those who don't like the changed races and expect errata to hit DDB at some point, this at least gives you time to acquire the old versions outside of that app (and swear off it hence, if need be) rather than the changes being applied out of nowhere.

[Rukelnikov]

I disagree completely:

1) It aligns a pile of races with their new design philosophy. (Whether you like said philosophy or not is irrelevant, it's still theirs.)
2) It collects them into a setting-agnostic source. Never mind just being able to play a Changeling in Faerun or a Shadar-Kai in Eberron, now everyone can feel comfortable including these races in their homebrew settings too.
3) It allowed them to redesign a bunch of races to remove traits that weren't working (e.g. Kenku) and buff races that were underperforming (e.g. Genasi) And the loss of Pack Tactics, while regrettable, is understandable.
4) Making it a splat book instead of errata allows people who don't like the changes to more easily ignore them. Had they simply been stealth'ed in overnight one night, the uproar would have been tumultuous. Better still, this will give people a chance to play with the changes (while they pay for themselves design-wise) before any future errata that might be made.

For those who don't like the changed races and expect errata to hit DDB at some point, this at least gives you time to acquire the old versions outside of that app (and swear off it hence, if need be) rather than the changes being applied out of nowhere.

We get around 1 splatbook a year, I'd rather get something new, than a rehash.

EDIT: Explaining that a bit better. if they spend 10 pages of the book on the old races, then its fine. If they spend 2 pages for each race for 30 old races, thats 60 pages devoted to that. I'd rather they just spent 10 explaining the changes to be made to those races, and 50 on new stuff. And its mostly from an "I want new toys" standpoint, but there's also the "I'm kinda being made to pay twice for those 60 pages of content"

[Athan Artilliam]

If 13 out of the initial 15 posts for this thread are "WotC Sucks/We Hate the future" everyone gets a box of Krispy Kreams and some Hateraid.

Pelor forbid people express an opinion that isnt corporate sanctioned. People are allowed to have negative opinions & they are allowed to voice them, never put brand loyalty above brand quality. If the product is unsatisfactory you should hold them accountable.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Pelor forbid people express an opinion that isnt corporate sanctioned. People are allowed to have negative opinions & they are allowed to voice them, never put brand loyalty above brand quality. If the product is unsatisfactory you should hold them accountable.

{Scrubbed}
For several months now, (at least), almost every time Tasha's Cauldron, or any future product has been mentioned, a flood of negativity ensues.

I'm all for people sharing their opinion...but this is a message board....
repeating, ad nauseam, "I'm unhappy with WotC", does not leave much opportunity to create a discussion.

A Thread becomes a hatefest...because the only discussion that can occur is discussing someone's personally held feelings...which just leads to ad hominem attacks and rancor..which inevitably leads to the thread being closed...

I'm, personally, very fatigued of this cycle..as a consequence...I'm speaking out.

There are valid reasons to be disappointed with D&D products...I'd love to discuss them...but we cant really discuss a persons feelings without, potentially, venturing into fraught territory.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Pelor forbid people express an opinion that isnt corporate sanctioned. People are allowed to have negative opinions & they are allowed to voice them, never put brand loyalty above brand quality. If the product is unsatisfactory you should hold them accountable.

There are ways to voice a negative opinion in a productive way. My personal opinion is that those who frame their dislikes primarily as "anti-corporate/current eventism" are being very unfair to the people these changes are actually a big positive for.

I do think the majority of posters here are well reasoned in their criticism, even if I disagree with some of it.

[Kane0]

I personally like the SR/LR divide but I can understand why it's a bit of a pain for them to design around. When the experience of playing a given class or race can change wildly depending on how many short rests the party gets (e.g. Warlock, Monk, and Fighter), it can make collecting feedback even from people actually playing those characters at a table nearly impossible to sort through. It's one more variable to try and keep track of when some multiple of PB per long rest would standardize that much more easily.

True, however their surveys seem to be doing them no favors on this front.



I think casters needing to spend a bit more resources to get armor proficiency is a good thing.


Light armor isnt particularly noteworthy, but medium and equally shields are both big steps up if not provided by class (looking at you, cleric). If there are races with Natural AC around medium armor levels im not particularly worried if left on races, but if weapon/armor profs were to be rolled into backgrounds some balancing would be required (like taking the place of multiple other background features/profs).

[ProsecutorGodot]

True, however their surveys seem to be doing them no favors on this front.

I'm cautiously optimistic that as we draw closer to the 2024 side of this design shift we'll see a bit more meat on these surveys, my assumption is that they're starting in broad strokes and will refine from there.

[Athan Artilliam]

snip

Long time lurker, recently started a new 3.5 game so I decided to post for once. For a person who apparently doesnt want to "make things personal" you could try not dismissing me for being "new". Thats unwarrented bias & prejudiced in its own right.

Instead of laying blame for the negativity pattern at the foot of the consumer, you should turn your eye at the producer. They rarely print new material & every time they do its usually a reprint of old stuff with a bit of novelty to it. They seem far too interested in their image than their product. People have legitimately used the term "patch" in this thread as though this was a video game. Digital media usage & social culture wars causing massive reprints make it so difficult to actually hold to standard of play. Errata is one thing. Deletion & Censorship is another.

WotC seem intent to continue to muck about with its current content than to actually be creative. Hardly any classes or subclasses are being made. Hardly any new material or mechanics are being made. No new settings have been made since Eberron, two generations ago.

5e could use an arcane Gish class like Duskblade, or a Short Rest ability swapping Factotum. (Heck, it seems like Short Rests are being mothballed even since its "too hard" to balance according to WotC monitoring how a person plays a game in our current corporate surveillance culture. In the end, they could try inventing something new instead of just dusting off 3.5 content.

But why should I go through the effort of this massive wall of text if you are just going to ignore it & dismiss it as it doesnt conform to yours? Its too much effort.

Got a bit rumbly there but you said you wanted talking points...
TLDR 5e needs content. Serious content. Not just another handful of the same racial stat block orientations & a nifty racial feature. Races/Species/Heritages/whatever they want to call it are easy to just tweak & shuffle their formula so thats the only content that gets made.

snip

[ProsecutorGodot]

WotC seem intent to continue to muck about with its current content than to actually be creative. Hardly any classes or subclasses are being made. Hardly any new material or mechanics are being made. No new settings have been made since Eberron, two generations ago.
Plenty of subclasses being made, honestly, every setting/splat/rules expansion we've had in the past year has featured at least one subclass. There's another thread going on about whether any new classes need to be printed, some would argue that even the Artificer was too much to add.

As far as settings, it depends on your definition of "new". There have been a few "new to 5E" settings since Eberron, though they're almost all MTG settings with the addition of the Critical Role Wildemount setting and and expansion of the domains of dread beyond Barovia. Whether or not you like the addition of these settings is one thing but to say they aren't happening is actively dismissing them.

We do also have explicit confirmation that several more settings are coming soontm.


5e could use an arcane Gish class like Duskblade
As soon as the 5e playerbase can agree what "Gish" means for 5e, we can stick it right next to the Eldritch Knight, Valor/Sword Bard, Hexblade, Bladesinger and Battle Smith.


TLDR 5e needs content. Serious content. Not just another handful of the same racial stat block orientations & a nifty racial feature. Races/Species/Heritages/whatever they want to call it are easy to just tweak & shuffle their formula so thats the only content that gets made.
From my perspective, having started the hobby in late 2016, there's still so much content in 5e I haven't had the opportunity to explore that I feel there's a good amount. Of course I wouldn't argue against more, I'm pretty content with the current variety.

[Greywander]

If 13 out of the initial 15 posts for this thread are "WotC Sucks/We Hate the future" everyone gets a box of Krispy Kreams and some Hateraid.
From what I've heard, a lot of the original people who worked on 5e have moved on to other projects, and WotC has brought in fresh talent to work on new content for 5e. It's not hard to see how that might result in 5e diverging from its original vision, or how a lot of people might not be happy with the new direction 5e is taking. It's also not hard to see how fresh talent might not be able to produce content of the same quality as seasoned veterans. Who knows for sure what the future holds, but I tend to be pessimistic, and if things turn out well then I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Part of my concern is also that WotC is trying to appeal to people who don't buy their products. All the more reason why those who are unhappy should make their voice heard, so that WotC knows that at least some segment of their paying customers is losing interest in their products.

Now, that said, I'm not expecting it to be all bad, either. Genasi are in sore need of an upgrade, and I do like the new dragonborn from Fizban's (though I worry it might be a little overtuned, but at least the breath weapon is actually useful now).


I don’t know how to link to it but the packtactics YouTube channel had a community post with a screenshot that references the dnd dev update where they said the new content will not replace the old monsters and races. Fwiw.
Yeah I don't believe this. And this is part of why I'm unhappy with the direction they're going. There's a sense that it's less about providing new options and more about forcing people to play the "right" way. Why else would they just straight up delete lore sections? It wasn't to make space for something else.

Of course, it's not like they can stop us from using outdated content, but this will become more and more difficult as new printings, including digital printings like DND Beyond, overwrite the old printings. No one wants to have to trawl eBay for vintage copies of the Player's Handbook or whatever.


No other edition of D&D has had two separate rest schedules, (Short Rest/Long Rest), and it seems quite possible that the Designers have decided to partially phase out some Short Rest Schedule abilities.
I have mixed feelings about this. It almost seems like the short rest was trying to fill a specific niche, and maybe it just didn't fit well. Maybe it's how DMs are running their games, in which case the proper solution is to explain better to DMs how to run the game. They could change short rests to 10 minutes, or even 1 minute, making those abilities essentially "per encounter" abilities, such as 4e had.

I do think there's a useful distinction between a 1 minute rest, a 1 hour rest, and an 8 hour rest. I think the trick is in handling time properly. Often if a party can short rest, they can just stop for a long rest. If they don't have time to long rest, then they don't have time to short rest, either. So the DM needs to fill the game with situations where it's okay to stop for an hour, but not for 8 hours. For example, using time limits (e.g. in X days, Y will happen, so every time you long rest, you get one day closer to Y) or timed events (e.g. you have a meeting with the duke in 2 hours, giving you enough time to short rest, but not long rest). You could have things like a wandering monster who patrols the dungeon every hour; once the monster is defeated or passes by, you can hole up and be safe for the next hour. If you're traveling through the wilderness, you could keep track of rations and other supplies as a means to discourage frivolous long rests. And so on.

But maybe we will see short rests disappear. I'm not saying people should have to change how they play in order to accommodate short rests, but maybe if someone has been complaining about short rests, they should consider changing how they play and they might find the change to be positive for their game. That seems like a better outcome than the removal of short rests.

[Athan Artilliam]

snip

{Scrubbed} Take a look at the content made for 3.5 or Pathfinder, even Pathfinder 2nd edition (& thats just current d20 systems). For anyone who has played more than 5e the situation is obvious, branch out a little.

5e is STARVED for content. They barely have more than a handful of subclasses each total. In 3.5 they would come out with a bunch of feats, spells, ACFs, classes, equipment PrCs, etc.

There have not in fact been any new settings made. A few thin one book tie ins it other Hasbro/WotC stuff doesnt count. Critical Role is 3rd party. As example, 3.5 Eberron had like seven different books all hundreds of pages long

[Rukelnikov]

I have mixed feelings about this. It almost seems like the short rest was trying to fill a specific niche, and maybe it just didn't fit well. Maybe it's how DMs are running their games, in which case the proper solution is to explain better to DMs how to run the game. They could change short rests to 10 minutes, or even 1 minute, making those abilities essentially "per encounter" abilities, such as 4e had.

Yeah, no, that means having the narrative accomodate mechanics, when the mechanics were created to bring the narrative to numbers. If it makes sense for the party to be able to rest for an hour an they decide to, you can spice it up every now and then, if most of the time something happens to interrupt them, then the suspension of disbelief becomes harder to maintain.

In a dungeon, its logical that its denizens wander thru it, in the wilderness, players can mostly short rest after every encounter if they decide to do so. Of course the DM may say the party doesn't get the benefits of a rest, but this strains it even worse.

Short rests mechanics are akward to use in some of the most common gameplay styles. In a combat focused dungeon crawler, where the mechanic should be at its best, its difficult to use because an hour is too much time, some mid term buff may still be on, so PCs are encouraged to keep moving trying to get the most number of combat rounds uptime from a given buff, and spending an hour mostly stationary in a dungeon, may mean ambushes, enemies having time to prepare, fleeing, calling in reinforcements, or whatever. In a sandboxy game where you may not have more than 1 combat encounter per long rest, its often useless because no other combat are likely to be had until next day.

Best case scenario for short rest are adventures than involve multiple encounters separated by hours, like the exploration most sandboxs provide sprinkled with a large ammount of encounters, which is often contrary to the spirit of such games.

I like the IDEA of the short rest as a resource management mechanic, mainly because I dislike going to sleep and waking up full power even if I went to sleep an inch away from death. But the implementation doesn't seem to mesh well with a large number of campaigns (maybe most, my gut says most, but I have no idea really).

[Kane0]

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote} Take a look at the content made for 3.5 or Pathfinder, even Pathfinder 2nd edition (& thats just current d20 systems). For anyone who has played more than 5e the situation is obvious, branch out a little.

5e is STARVED for content. They barely have more than a handful of subclasses each total. In 3.5 they would come out with a bunch of feats, spells, ACFs, classes, equipment PrCs, etc.

There have not in fact been any new settings made. A few thin one book tie ins it other Hasbro/WotC stuff doesnt count. Critical Role is 3rd party. As example, 3.5 Eberron had like seven different books all hundreds of pages long

We were aware of that intent beforehand though, 5e was never intending to have the flood of content that 3.X got, for better or for worse. There is a distinction between new content and bloat, the latter of which has always been a big concern for 5e

And I dont think WotC has ever done a D&D setting? They were almost all from the TSR era.

And if we're talking third party, well take a gander at the DM guild, MFoV, dandwiki, homebrew here, and independant creators like KibblesTasty. Not in book form, but I reckon thats mostly because of the age we now live in.

[Athan Artilliam]

snip

5e has a bus load of useless races though so obviously they have failed to stop it. The fact is, races are safe because they are 200% "balanced" because its formulaic. New classes are scary to the execs. All theyve done is changed priorities. In their quest to stifle rule "abuse" they have instead neutered their creativity & depth. In their adherence to post modern culture theyve robbed settings of any nuance or meaning. Look at the material of the past which would wax poetic about Beholder ecology, variations, alterations, etc. The new beholder is just an eyeball monster with no history or culture or place in any setting because they wont WRITE CONTENT ABOUT IT, they just say that it isnt always evil anymore. How can new players like Godot even appreciate what they are missing when WotC wont even mention what came before?

[ProsecutorGodot]

Take a look at the content made for 3.5 or Pathfinder, even Pathfinder 2nd edition (& thats just current d20 systems). For anyone who has played more than 5e the situation is obvious, branch out a little.
Funny you should mention those - haven't played 'em, at least beyond the handful of games we played to test which edition the group wanted to jump in on and the pathfinder video games. My mind isn't plagued by making unwarranted comparisons to them and expectations that the DND number will change but the content will remain the same.


5e is STARVED for content. They barely have more than a handful of subclasses each total. In 3.5 they would come out with a bunch of feats, spells, ACFs, classes, equipment PrCs, etc.
The only class lacking in subclasses by a metric of "handfuls" is Artificer. Every other class has at minimum 7 subclasses to choose from.


There have not in fact been any new settings made. A few thin one book tie ins it other Hasbro/WotC stuff doesnt count. Critical Role is 3rd party. As example, 3.5 Eberron had like seven different books all hundreds of pages long
Eberron is also "3rd party" by that definition. Takes about 10 seconds of research to know it was a contest winning submission for a setting design. Someone else's idea, eventually published by WotC with credits and design input from Keith Baker. The only meaningful difference in my eyes is that the Exandria setting isn't owned by WoTC, though it is published by them, with an upcoming adventure module to boot.

Respectfully, I vehemently disagree with how you see the state of 5e. You see a sorry content bare edition in need of the touch of 3.Xe era feat chains and prestige classes, I don't want that for 5e because if I did I would have started playing 3rd edition instead of 5th after our group test games.


How can new players like Godot even appreciate what they are missing when WotC wont even mention what came before?
Mind you, we've come full circle with you now patronizing me about my semi-recent entrance to the hobby after you yourself were recognized as a new forum poster. I would say I know plenty about Beholder's, their behavior and their variations because a lot of that information is actually available in 5e but I'm sure you'll correct me on that.

[Athan Artilliam]

Mind you, we've come full circle with you now patronizing me about my semi-recent entrance to the hobby after you yourself were recognized as a new forum poster. I would say I know plenty about Beholder's, their behavior and their variations because a lot of that information is actually available in 5e but I'm sure you'll correct me on that.

I'm not disparaging you for being new. We new need hobbyists to keep the hobby alive. Im not dismissing your points because you are new either. Im just using you as an example of the current player base. As apposed to the other guy who acted like I cannot express my opinion because I am new to the forum as if my history of posting here disqualifies me out of hand. Dont confuse my argument.

You are making the case that 7 subclasses is more than plenty.

I am saying I'm more used to this
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?550696-Truly-Complete-list-of-3-5e-Base-Classes
And this doesnt include the 150 or so Prestige Classes

So you should be able to see that 7 variations of 12 still falls short of what I expect of them.
I see a lack of content because I am used to more content. You are content with the content because you haven't played with more content. I have played with more content so I am discontented with this content.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I am saying I'm more used to this
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?550696-Truly-Complete-list-of-3-5e-Base-Classes
And this doesnt include the 150 or so Prestige Classes

So you should be able to see that 7 variations of 12 still falls short of what I expect of them.

I'm making the case that 5e isn't (and shouldn't be) trying to emulate 3.xE in all but thematics where appropriate. I'm confident that there are some unique classes that could be ported over, potentially as a unique class but more than likely as a subclass of an existing one.

I don't understand the appeal of 150+ classes. I don't understand how that can be appealing. I haven't even played one character in each of the 12 base classes, I've still got tons of unique character options even if I only play a character in each specific subclass I haven't yet. In what you call a small selection I'm already overwhelmed with appealing options.

What you expect is bad design from my perspective*, even with the slow roll of subclasses we see powercreep and I'm not that unfamiliar with 3.Xe to know that powercreep was continuous and aggressive because if this splat didn't come out stronger than the previous nobody would use it. I've seen enough discussion to know that 3.5e eventually crossed the boundary of quantity over quality.
*EDIT - I should clarify, I mean bad in the sense of a design goal for 5e, not in a system that was built around this type of design like 3.X or Pathfinder.

I see a lack of content because I am used to more content. You are content with the content because you haven't played with more content. I have played with more content so I am discontented with this content.

If you're not content with the pace of 5e, please continue to enjoy 3.Xe things, I am happy that they are designed differently because they're catering to different audiences and the current pace of 5e is how I prefer things to be knowing full well what the alternative is.

[Naanomi]

I played 3.5, half of the new classes were next to unplayable (some of them literally so); and more than that of the PrCs. More Feats were traps or begrudgingly taken prereqs than were good. I don't miss it

[Athan Artilliam]

snip

Im not arguing for powercreep.

Im saying that past versions of D&D had stuff like Ghostwalk which was all about fun d&d adventures heavily featuring ghosts & also, character options for ghost PCs. What about Incarnum? That stuff is really cool. A lot of people are wanting 5e Incarnum content but 5e cant even do psionics right. Will all conten be balanced against all other content in your average game? No. Thats why its the DMs duty to gatekeep the content. Heck 5Ee still cant shake the martials/casters problem so balance is a laughable counterpoint.
You dont have to use all the content. A DM could say, no magic only psionics. Or maybe, hey were doing a ghost game were everyone is a spirit lost on the Plane of Limbo.

5e cannot support that. Its a VERY narrow game. Im not asking it to be 3.5. I like 3.5, sure, but I'm dont want every game to just be a clunky d20 system. (Roll & Keep is the best dice mechanic IMO) but 5e should offer options. If for no other reason than legacy

[Kane0]

What about Incarnum? That stuff is really cool. A lot of people are wanting 5e Incarnum content but 5e cant even do psionics right.

Fun fact, psionics has been handled very differently in each edition.



Will all content be balanced against all other content in your average game? No. Thats why its the DMs duty to gatekeep the content.

I dont think that is a core assumption of 5e.

[Athan Artilliam]

Fun fact, psionics has been handled very differently in each edition.


I dont think that is a core assumption of 5e.

1>I am not pretending there is only one way to do psionics, only that WotC has failed to add psionics multiple times in a row.

2>Content limitation is a vore assumption of ALL roleplaying games.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Im not arguing for powercreep.

Im saying that past versions of D&D had stuff like Ghostwalk which was all about fun d&d adventures heavily featuring ghosts & also, character options for ghost PCs. What about Incarnum? That stuff is really cool. A lot of people are wanting 5e Incarnum content but 5e cant even do psionics right.
See, this looks like a very different argument than what you presented at first. You're right, 5e is lacking in filling a lot of these specific niches, it's more of a generalist system.


Will all conten be balanced against all other content in your average game? No. Thats why its the DMs duty to gatekeep the content. Heck 5Ee still cant shake the martials/casters problem so balance is a laughable counterpoint.
You dont have to use all the content. A DM could say, no magic only psionics. Or maybe, hey were doing a ghost game were everyone is a spirit lost on the Plane of Limbo.
I think the bolded is a poor argument, both editions failing in this aspect doesn't make it a negative specifically for 5e. I think that in general 5e is a lot close to having an equal level of power between martials and casters than 3.5 is and suggesting that 5e should have more classes, feats and spells (note, spells are only beneficial to spellcasters) will widen this gap.


5e cannot support that. Its a VERY narrow game. Im not asking it to be 3.5. I like 3.5, sure, but I'm dont want every game to just be a clunky d20 system. (Roll & Keep is the best dice mechanic IMO) but 5e should offer options. If for no other reason than legacy
You're the one who made the direct comparison as an example of what 5e should be striving for, so forgive me for thinking you wanted it to be much more like 3.5 or pathfinder.

I'll also say that simply adding options for legacy, which I assume you mean as something similar to tradition, is something I don't agree with. It's the exact reason we have a handful of spells like Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Polymorph and Wish that completely overshadow other options because it's simply tradition for these to be staple spells.

If you want branching out my first instinct would be to avoid rehashing from old editions as much as possible except where the current edition has failed to reach. I think the only thing 5e is distinctly lacking is a diverse selection of settings, which despite my answer to your entry comment saying "we do have them" doesn't mean to say they're all that varied. I expect that the returning classic settings will be much different than the ones we currently have because they really don't have much choice that wouldn't be at this point. We also know an entirely new setting (that isn't the Exandria one) is also in development. The lack of settings is already a design aspect they recognized as lacking and are working to fix, to what effect we don't know yet.


2>Content limitation is a vore assumption of ALL roleplaying games.
Content limitation is part of the social contract of roleplaying games, not something they're designed around.

[Psyren]

We get around 1 splatbook a year, I'd rather get something new, than a rehash.

EDIT: Explaining that a bit better. if they spend 10 pages of the book on the old races, then its fine. If they spend 2 pages for each race for 30 old races, thats 60 pages devoted to that. I'd rather they just spent 10 explaining the changes to be made to those races, and 50 on new stuff. And its mostly from an "I want new toys" standpoint, but there's also the "I'm kinda being made to pay twice for those 60 pages of content"

There's new content in plenty of those races, and considerably more in the monsters.



Light armor isnt particularly noteworthy, but medium and equally shields are both big steps up if not provided by class (looking at you, cleric). If there are races with Natural AC around medium armor levels im not particularly worried if left on races, but if weapon/armor profs were to be rolled into backgrounds some balancing would be required (like taking the place of multiple other background features/profs).

I completely agree those are big steps, which is why casters should give up a bit more to access them. A background is nothing, even less than a race choice. Multiclassing or feats are the ideal here. I'm sure wizards will muddle through somehow.


From what I've heard, a lot of the original people who worked on 5e have moved on to other projects, and WotC has brought in fresh talent to work on new content for 5e. It's not hard to see how that might result in 5e diverging from its original vision, or how a lot of people might not be happy with the new direction 5e is taking. It's also not hard to see how fresh talent might not be able to produce content of the same quality as seasoned veterans. Who knows for sure what the future holds, but I tend to be pessimistic, and if things turn out well then I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Speaking as someone who got into 5e only recently, I'm quite happy with the content quality and current direction.

[Kane0]

I completely agree those are big steps, which is why casters should give up a bit more to access them. A background is nothing, even less than a race choice. Multiclassing or feats are the ideal here. I'm sure wizards will muddle through somehow.


Worth say, two skills? One skill and a tool/language? Backgrounds provide a very consistent set of things to a PC so I think we have some wiggle room there (especially looking at Tasha's heirarchy of proficiencies).
I dont want to interpret your position as 'casters arent allowed to have high AC', can you elaborate on why you think casters should have to work harder for heavier armors? Its worth noting that even the current ways to get medium armor via race, feat, etc is redundant for clerics, druids, rangers, paladins and gishes.

[Psyren]

Worth say, two skills? One skill and a tool/language? Backgrounds provide a very consistent set of things to a PC so I think we have some wiggle room there (especially looking at Tasha's heirarchy of proficiencies).
I dont want to interpret your position as 'casters arent allowed to have high AC', can you elaborate on why you think casters should have to work harder for heavier armors? Its worth noting that even the current ways to get medium armor via race, feat, etc is redundant for clerics, druids, rangers, paladins and gishes.

For the casters you listed - they don't need heavy armor (and several already have it anyway, with corresponding balancing), and if a given concept finds it integral for some reason, Heavily Armored is a single feat away for them.

As for wizards, bards, warlocks and sorcerers - 5e already did these classes the favor of eliminating Arcane Spell Failure from prior editions, including from shields, so they're already starting with a boost. I don't think requesting a feat investment or a multiclass is too much expectation for them.

Leaving unchanged as a racial option, especially with floating ASIs being the new norm, would have simply shifted the "best X race" for a lot of caster builds to being e.g. Mountain Dwarves or Githyanki. I suspect WotC doesn't want that, and I agree.

[Gurgeh]

I dont want to interpret your position as 'casters arent allowed to have high AC', can you elaborate on why you think casters should have to work harder for heavier armors? Its worth noting that even the current ways to get medium armor via race, feat, etc is redundant for clerics, druids, rangers, paladins and gishes.
I think the better way to phrase it is "nobody should be allowed to have high AC at low cost". Casters already have a bunch of magical ways to improve their AC, and they paid for those with their class feature of spellcasting and the opportunity cost of having fewer spells to affect the world around them. Heavily-armoured martials paid for their access to heavy armour because that's their class feature. In the case of half- and third-casters - that's fine, their breadth and depth of magical power is much lower than that of a full caster and if they want to skyrocket their AC then they are giving up far more of their resources to do so than a full caster would - especially since they're more MAD than both a pure martial and a full caster and consequently are going to have to make meaningful choices between maximising their casting stat vs maximising dexterity if they don't run with heavy armour.

This is compounded by the fact that you get accelerating returns from higher and higher AC; the party wizard going around with Mage Armour and Shield to get a steady AC in the mid-teens and a burst AC around 20 is far less troublesome than the same character hopping around with a shield and full plate and piling Shield on top of a mundane AC of 20 to become effectively untouchable - so you get the ridiculous situation where heavy and medium armour is more valuable to the classes for which it's just one of many options than it is for the classes whose defence begins and ends with it.

The elephant in the room is cleric subclasses that get heavy armour as a subclass feature (and therefore grant it as a multiclass benefit, unlike the Fighter and Paladin). There are all sorts of ways around this (disallow multiclassing, come up with only-in-the-class-that-earned-it restrictions for armoured spellcasting, roll heavy armour into the base Cleric chassis and consequently remove it as a dip benefit, etc.) None of these are bulletproof, but

[Azuresun]

Light armor isnt particularly noteworthy, but medium and equally shields are both big steps up if not provided by class (looking at you, cleric). If there are races with Natural AC around medium armor levels im not particularly worried if left on races, but if weapon/armor profs were to be rolled into backgrounds some balancing would be required (like taking the place of multiple other background features/profs).

My solution would be to say that racial armour proficiencies grant you armour prof one level better than what your class grants, or Heavy Armour Mastery if you have all of them. Solves the weirdness where you've got a race known as warriors....and the optimal class for them is wizard.


No offense but I'm honestly getting battered spouse vibes from your post. Take a look at the content made for 3.5 or Pathfinder, even Pathfinder 2nd edition (& thats just current d20 systems). For anyone who has played more than 5e the situation is obvious, branch out a little.

"Battered wife"?! Yeah, because clearly someone who disagrees with you on the internet about pretending to be an elf, they're obviously in the same boat as someone with psychological damage from an abusive spouse. Sheesh. That's a pretty offensive and crass comparison, and you should retract it right now.


5e is STARVED for content. They barely have more than a handful of subclasses each total. In 3.5 they would come out with a bunch of feats, spells, ACFs, classes, equipment PrCs, etc.

Yeah. And out of those, some would be gamebreaking by themselves, some would give core casters new ways to be the best at everything, some would be components for some gamebreaking combo, some would be entirely useless, and a lot would be "flavourful, but not an option if you want to keep up with the 3e numbers treadmills".

I was around for all of 3e, played Pathfinder for a bit, and I've played a bunch of other RPG's, and I'm largely happy with 5e's way of doing things (it'd be 100% if they'd just iterate the Mystic and heave it out the door).

[Thane of Fife]

That is fair.

No other edition of D&D has had two separate rest schedules, (Short Rest/Long Rest)

4e has two separate rest schedules (Short Rest/Extended Rest).

[Azuresun]

It appears you joined this month.
For several months now, (at least), almost every time Tasha's Cauldron, or any future product has been mentioned, a flood of negativity ensues.

I'm all for people sharing their opinion...bit this is a message board....
repeating, ad nauseam, "I'm unhappy with WotC", does not leave much opportunity to create a discussion.

A Thread becomes a hatefest...because the only discussion that can occur is discussing someone's personally held feelings...which just leads to ad hominem attacks and rancor..which inevitably leads to the thread being closed...

I'm, personally, very fatigued of this cycle..as a consequence...I'm speaking out.

There are valid reasons to be disappointed with D&D products...I'd love to discuss them...but we cant really discuss a persons feelings without, potentially, venturing into fraught territory.

You don't want me to spew an endless torrent of bile about the game that I passionately hate by all appearances (yet inexplicably spend time talking about, rather than something I like)? ZOMG corporate shill! Why don't you just ban all discussion and debate entirely?!?!?!? FREEDOM OF SPEEEEECH!!!!!

[Rukelnikov]

There's new content in plenty of those races, and considerably more in the monsters.

I know, I want the new content, what I don't want is the reprint taking too much space from the new content.


I completely agree those are big steps, which is why casters should give up a bit more to access them. A background is nothing, even less than a race choice. Multiclassing or feats are the ideal here. I'm sure wizards will muddle through somehow.

I do think casting in armor should be harder to attain, the armor proficiency in itself though I think is fine. Current backgrounds are comparable or better than Vhuman and Custom Lineage, granting a feat, 2 skills and a tool, and 10 spells known, so its not out of the expected power, the problem is that anyone who is interested in getting armor proficiency from a background is because they don't get it from class, which means its another background for casters. I wouldn't be surprised to see backgrounds granting fighting styles or maneuvers at some point, I expect that to be soonish.


I think the better way to phrase it is "nobody should be allowed to have high AC at low cost". Casters already have a bunch of magical ways to improve their AC, and they paid for those with their class feature of spellcasting and the opportunity cost of having fewer spells to affect the world around them. Heavily-armoured martials paid for their access to heavy armour because that's their class feature. In the case of half- and third-casters - that's fine, their breadth and depth of magical power is much lower than that of a full caster and if they want to skyrocket their AC then they are giving up far more of their resources to do so than a full caster would - especially since they're more MAD than both a pure martial and a full caster and consequently are going to have to make meaningful choices between maximising their casting stat vs maximising dexterity if they don't run with heavy armour.

Those that get it do get it cheap, because even when you say that's "their feature", they are only paying one level for it, even if it didn't allow MC wizards to cast in armor, they would still be paying it very cheap at one level. Which is kinda unnecesary, since Plate isn't expected to be affordable until ~lvl 4. Maybe they shouldn't get heavy armor prof at 1st level, if those classes got it at 3rd, it'd be a substantial investment, notably delaying spellcasting, and without nonsense rules like "if you didn't start a fighter, you don't get this proficiency". If they got it at 4, that would mean no 9th level spells, but 3 feels like a good level to get Plate , and so they should have prof by then.


The elephant in the room is cleric subclasses that get heavy armour as a subclass feature (and therefore grant it as a multiclass benefit, unlike the Fighter and Paladin). There are all sorts of ways around this (disallow multiclassing, come up with only-in-the-class-that-earned-it restrictions for armoured spellcasting, roll heavy armour into the base Cleric chassis and consequently remove it as a dip benefit, etc.) None of these are bulletproof, but

Tbh, I don't like the rule that not starting as a fighter means you don't get heavy plate unless you pay a feat for it. Was my paladin training the poor man's course or something? Same as I said before, its fixed by moving the proficiency to lvl 3.

EDIT: I wasn't thinking how heavy armor is not restricted to plate, and moving the proficiency to lvl 3 kinda kills the other heavy armors. But you know what? I'm fine with that, its a small price to pay for better MC rules.


You don't want me to spew an endless torrent of bile about the game that I passionately hate by all appearances (yet inexplicably spend time talking about, rather than something I like)? ZOMG corporate shill! Why don't you just ban all discussion and debate entirely?!?!?!? FREEDOM OF SPEEEEECH!!!!!

You can change font colors near the center of the top toolbar :smallwink:

And btw... Serve meals not, to those fantastic creatures with regenerative abilities

[Xervous]

On one hand I’m glad to see WotC is going back to make the changes for proper rebalancing under our new lord and savior Tasha’s. My prime gripe there has always been that the changes were a half measure, and we’re finally starting to see the other part of the surgery. It’s one thing to disagree with a system’s intent, but shoddy implementation is a whole ‘nother beast. Given the pacing of their releases and the time required this is when we should have seen a more refined Tasha’s, but the Suits need quarterly results regardless of them being golden brown or half baked.

On the other hand it’s a bit depressing to be staring down a system that doesn’t want to supply lore in most books when it has also decided to ship a bare minimum of thin setting books. When so many other games ooze personality with their settings or themes it feels like D&D is moving closer to the vagueness of GURPS. You know generally how it works and can discuss the structural elements, but fewer and fewer fluff details exist as common points. Where are the discussions about otter pelt trading?. I get that they don’t want to tell anyone how they should be playing, but it seems to be coming at a cost of the inspirational and instructive content I appreciated in other versions/games.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Long time lurker, recently started a new 3.5 game so I decided to post for once. For a person who apparently doesnt want to "make things personal" you could try not dismissing me for being "new". Thats unwarrented bias & prejudiced in its own right..

Mea Maxima Culpa.

My intention was never to dismiss you. I noticed information the board provided, (which includes a persons join date), and added a completely unnecessary bit, with the intent of adding context.

It was a mistake, alas, I forgot the second rule of Fight Club...err The Playground: "Don't Talk about Post Counts"

I never intended to cast aspersions on your post or give the impression that I was dismissing your comments. I offer my apologies for the misstep.

Xervous, what products are you thinking of that 'ooze' creativity in terms of lore?

Are those systems, like D&D, Roleplaying Games that deal with multiple worlds?

The Cypher System, for example, has a core set of rules which then are altered by the Settings.

5e, as a whole, has not excelled at creating Lore.
In part, because I do not think it is Jeremy Crawfords forte, (and the D&D Design team membership numbers have been historically wafer thin).

I also think in part because the game has nigh 50 years of Lore...so what bits do you recycle, what bits need to be created out of wholecloth?

5e has cool Gnolls.
4e had a cool Cosmology and Devil Duergar.
2e &3e had an abundance of very talented Designers, and seemingly unfettered production of products.
1e and OD&D started the ball rolling.

[RSP]

I don’t know how to link to it but the packtactics YouTube channel had a community post with a screenshot that references the dnd dev update where they said the new content will not replace the old monsters and races. Fwiw.

I recall Crawford saying similar about the new Bladesinger: it was an option to play the new one or the one from SCAG…then they errata’d the SCAG so no official version of the original exists.

[PhantomSoul]

I recall Crawford saying similar about the new Bladesinger: it was an option to play the new one or the one from SCAG…then they errata’d the SCAG so no official version of the original exists.

Their statements are always subject to at-will errata, which seems to be entirely used!

[Gurgeh]

Tbh, I don't like the rule that not starting as a fighter means you don't get heavy plate unless you pay a feat for it. Was my paladin training the poor man's course or something? Same as I said before, its fixed by moving the proficiency to lvl 3.
Eh? Paladins get heavy armour proficiency at first level, too.

[PhantomSoul]

Eh? Paladins get heavy armour proficiency at first level, too.

I'm guessing they started as not-Paladin and multiclassed into Paladin, which is the same case as starting as not-Fighter and multiclassing into Fighter, so there was a hidden "similarly" or "in my case" or something!

[Athan Artilliam]

5e, as a whole, has not excelled at creating Lore.
In part, because I do not think it is Jeremy Crawfords forte, (and the D&D Design team membership numbers have been historically wafer thin).

I also think in part because the game has nigh 50 years of Lore...so what bits do you recycle, what bits need to be created out of wholecloth?

5e has cool Gnolls.
4e had a cool Cosmology and Devil Duergar.
2e &3e had an abundance of very talented Designers, and seemingly unfettered production of products.
1e and OD&D started the ball rolling.

Thats the problem. They wont pick a side. They dont want to offend anyone. Ever since CoS/Ravenloft theyve been backpedaling, all they need to do, is make a new Setting & then fill it with opinions. But Crawford & co are scared of opinions, because some opinions are """"wrong"""" so instead we just Harrison Bergeron the whole thing & tell DM to make it up. But without context or lore or opinions you have no foundation. Take Eberron in example, in Eberron any dragon can be any alignment, this is significantly different to Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms but for that to matter you would have to know about the Metallic/Chromatic lore. How do we know that your setting's goblins are different if there is no standard by which to measure?

Not to mention the absolute lack of deep dives in the lore. Like I said, faerun & eberron used to get stacks of books that talked about stuff in their settings. Now we get a cliff notes version.

[Mastikator]

If 13 out of the initial 15 posts for this thread are "WotC Sucks/We Hate the future" everyone gets a box of Krispy Kreams and some Hateraid.

Since I got indeed'd a bunch I'd like to get a chance to defend myself / elaborate at the risk of more indeed'ds or even nitpicky disagreement.

Some races have many variants, the tiefling, the elf, the halfling for example have many variants. I think this is cool, I would welcome more variants for them.

Some races on the other hand have no variants while they have many iterations, and since these iterations are by large all fine I think they could just be officially different variants. Currently we only have one kind of kobold, but we could have several, we could have sunlight sensitive kobolds as well as kobolds with weaker darkvision. Now they're updating the kobold again, one with draconic legacy and roar instead of pack tactics. I think this would've been a great time to just add it as a kobold variant.

Orcs had their int penalty removed, instead of just having a dumber orc variant. ¿Porque no los dos?

The book isn't out yet so it might turn out to be according to my preference. But WotC has been not amazing at listening to their customers in my opinion and therefore I have no confidence that they won't just override the perfectly fine kobold we have today.

Sure you could just have gotten the book hard cover and not have to worry (after all if you're not a paying customer your opinion matters less), but if you did get the content online that means you get a bit screwed by their needlessly weird contract. I think they're taking good products and yeeting them into the trash for no discernible reason. And that makes me sad :smallfrown:
Overall I don't hate WotC, in fact I like them and I think the future is bright, but it could be brighter.

[Rafaelfras]

I disagree completely:

1) It aligns a pile of races with their new design philosophy. (Whether you like said philosophy or not is irrelevant, it's still theirs.)
2) It collects them into a setting-agnostic source. Never mind just being able to play a Changeling in Faerun or a Shadar-Kai in Eberron, now everyone can feel comfortable including these races in their homebrew settings too.
3) It allowed them to redesign a bunch of races to remove traits that weren't working (e.g. Kenku) and buff races that were underperforming (e.g. Genasi) And the loss of Pack Tactics, while regrettable, is understandable.
4) Making it a splat book instead of errata allows people who don't like the changes to more easily ignore them. Had they simply been stealth'ed in overnight one night, the uproar would have been tumultuous. Better still, this will give people a chance to play with the changes (while they pay for themselves design-wise) before any future errata that might be made.

For those who don't like the changed races and expect errata to hit DDB at some point, this at least gives you time to acquire the old versions outside of that app (and swear off it hence, if need be) rather than the changes being applied out of nowhere.

I disagree races should be changed in the first place. I dont want those changes neither via splat or errata. I think is a waste of time spending so much on something that, in my opinion shouldn't be so numerous in the first place and add so little to the game as a whole


1) Yeah I dont. Said philosophy its doing harm to the game making then do a lot of backtracking, spending a ton of time and resources and in the end publishing a entire new book of rehashed content.
2)Races dont need to be setting agnostic. Their lore either metter because you are playing their setting or dont because you are playing homebrew and can ignore their fluff altogether. Not every race belongs to every setting and thats ok. You as a DM is free to play a changeling in Faerun if you want but whats the point of being able to play any race in Eberron or Faerun if we dont have Eberron or Faerun for 5th ed? (we do, but you get my point, I would prefer a proper setting guide over this)
3) In my opinion races didn't need to be redesigned they were fine as they were, when you have so many races to the point of bloat as we do now some will end weaker, but classes bring so much more to the table that they will overshadow any weake trait a race might get.
4) I didn't want neither splat or errata, I will not use any of this material so for me is just wasted space that is taking the place of anything cooler, like 2 or 3 more classes that would make it easier for us to cover some aspects and archetypes we miss, an High level adventure, I know I would like that. The Forgotten realms Setting guide that still missing (or any setting that still didnt make it )



We get around 1 splatbook a year, I'd rather get something new, than a rehash.

EDIT: Explaining that a bit better. if they spend 10 pages of the book on the old races, then its fine. If they spend 2 pages for each race for 30 old races, thats 60 pages devoted to that. I'd rather they just spent 10 explaining the changes to be made to those races, and 50 on new stuff. And its mostly from an "I want new toys" standpoint, but there's also the "I'm kinda being made to pay twice for those 60 pages of content"

I am on board with that

[KorvinStarmast]

I personally like the SR/LR divide but I can understand why it's a bit of a pain for them to design around. My position as well. They might could have given DM's a bit more "how to" in the DMG on this.

I think casters needing to spend a bit more resources to get armor proficiency is a good thing. Concur. TANSTAAFL

2) It collects them into a setting-agnostic source. Never mind just being able to play a Changeling in Faerun or a Shadar-Kai in Eberron, now everyone can feel comfortable including these races in their homebrew settings too.
That's where I tend to not agree: race limitations based on setting makes more sense to me.

buff races that were underperforming (e.g. Genasi) My favorite piece of news from the sneak preview we all discussed in another thread.

4) Making it a splat book instead of errata allows people who don't like the changes to more easily ignore them. Yes, easier to manage as a DM.

People have legitimately used the term "patch" in this thread as though this was a video game. Aye.


WotC seem intent to continue to muck about with its current content than to actually be creative. Hardly any classes or subclasses are being made. Hardly any new material or mechanics are being made. New mechanics need to fold into existing mechanics, not disrupt them. It's not that useful to add new mechanics if you want to avoid bloat and directly frustrate stream lined play which was a design goal

No new settings have been made since Eberron, two generations ago. Theros, which came in from an M:tG port, has a setting book. Is that not a new book? (Strixhaven (IIRC also M:tG) is a grrr-inducer for me since it feels too "harry potter" for my tastes...)


Heck, it seems like Short Rests are being mothballed even since its "too hard" to balance according to WotC monitoring how a person plays a game in our current corporate surveillance culture.
Having participated in a bunch of their player and DM surveys, their efforts in eliciting feedback are uneven.

TLDR 5e needs content. Serious content. Not just another handful of the same racial stat block orientations & a nifty racial feature. Races/Species/Heritages/whatever they want to call it are easy to just tweak & shuffle their formula so thats the only content that gets made. Your appeal further back to "new mechanics" I don't necessarily agree with. Bloat is a thing that I dislike, and even if the volume of stuff coming out isn't to your liking (they seem to have delegated bloat function to DMs guild to a certain extent) demanding "moar" is to my ear tone deaf. More setting? I agree with you. More classes? No. More sub classes? Maybe. (There are already a multitude of them).

Plenty of subclasses being made, honestly, every setting/splat/rules expansion we've had in the past year has featured at least one subclass. There's another thread going on about whether any new classes need to be printed, some would argue that even the Artificer was too much to add. I feel that way but plenty of others do not.

expansion of the domains of dread beyond Barovia. Whether or not you like the addition of these settings is one thing but to say they aren't happening is actively dismissing them. I have the book but my players are not quite hungering for more grim dark.

We do also have explicit confirmation that several more settings are coming soontm. {Insert my standard kvetch about the lack of Dark Sun here}
As soon as the 5e playerbase can agree what "Gish" means for 5e *cackle* Don't hold your breath. :smallsmile:

From my perspective, having started the hobby in late 2016, there's still so much content in 5e I haven't had the opportunity to explore that I feel there's a good amount. Of course I wouldn't argue against more, I'm pretty content with the current variety. I got back into it in 2014 and there's enough content for me, yes.

...WotC has brought in fresh talent to work on new content for 5e. It's not hard to see how that might result in 5e diverging from its original vision... Understatement is noted. :smallwink:

Part of my concern is also that WotC is trying to appeal to people who don't buy their products. G.I. Joe and Dragons, coming soon to a game store near you! :smallbiggrin:

All the more reason why those who are unhappy should make their voice heard, so that WotC knows that at least some segment of their paying customers is losing interest in their products. Have you noticed that we have not seen a survey in a while?

Genasi are in sore need of an upgrade, and I do like the new dragonborn from Fizban's (though I worry it might be a little overtuned, but at least the breath weapon is actually useful now). Yes to both.
There's a sense that it's less about providing new options and more about forcing people to play the "right" way. Why else would they just straight up delete lore sections? It wasn't to make space for something else. That's why I keep my 1st printing material ... {:smallfurious::smallfurious: insert my standard rant on True Polymorph's original form here}

No one wants to have to trawl eBay for vintage copies of the Player's Handbook or whatever.
Mine is in a three ring binder since the glue came off. yeah, I got one of them.

It almost seems like the short rest was trying to fill a specific niche, and maybe it just didn't fit well. Maybe it's how DMs are running their games, in which case the proper solution is to explain better to DMs how to run the game. DMG tutorial on rests: would be a useful thing.

I do think there's a useful distinction between a 1 minute rest, a 1 hour rest, and an 8 hour rest. I think the trick is in handling time properly. A tutorial in the DMG on that would be handy. (Heck, the Original game and AD&D 1e each had guidance on "you the DM have to manage time and here's what you do")

Often if a party can short rest, they can just stop for a long rest. If they don't have time to long rest, then they don't have time to short rest, either. So the DM needs to fill the game with situations where it's okay to stop for an hour, but not for 8 hours. That's where the tutorial would be so handy.

But maybe we will see short rests disappear. My monks and my warlocks will start handing out torches and pitchforks. The line forms over here. We will march on Seattle! :smallfurious:

No offense but I'm honestly getting battered spouse vibes from your post. Take a look at the content made for 3.5 or Pathfinder, even Pathfinder 2nd edition (& thats just current d20 systems). Bloaty systems are bloaty. (PF 2 hasn't had time for that, yet, I suspect)

5e is STARVED for content. Not seeing what you are seeing. I invite you to investigate DMs Guild.

They barely have more than a handful of subclasses each total. In 3.5 they would come out with a bunch of feats, spells, ACFs, classes, equipment PrCs, etc. Bloat is bloat. PrC's are a part of the problem that 5e tried to solve, not a solution to anything 5e.
As example, 3.5 Eberron had like seven different books all hundreds of pages long Maybe the market for that is smaller than you believe. I don't know. And maybe there will be another Eberron book coming if enough interest is shown. Ask Keith Baker, he might know.

We were aware of that intent beforehand though, 5e was never intending to have the flood of content that 3.X got, for better or for worse. There is a distinction between new content and bloat, the latter of which has always been a big concern for 5e. Your posts come off to me as requests for bloat.

5e has a bus load of useless races though so obviously they have failed to stop it. Not gonna disagree, and I do agree with your assessment that race creation/introduction is low hanging fruit. (We have a thread on race bloat versus class bloat on the front page, I think, or on page 2.

New classes are scary to the execs.
Balance and repetition/redundancy are a valid design concern.

In their adherence to post modern culture they've robbed settings of any nuance or meaning. Dark Sun being a likely non starter now, sadly.

Look at the material of the past which would wax poetic about Beholder ecology, variations, alterations, etc. The new beholder is just an eyeball monster with no history or culture or place in any setting because they wont WRITE CONTENT ABOUT IT Volo's Guide To Monsters has some expanded stuff on Beholders and mind flayers, for example. The gith get expanded treatment in Mord's.

Im not arguing for powercreep. Just bloat. (We are already getting power creep. XGtE started it and TCoE has doubled down on it.

Heck 5Ee still cant shake the martials/casters problem so balance is a laughable counterpoint. Bounded accuracy works, but in Tier 3 and Tier 4 the LFQW thing comes up in play.

I am not pretending there is only one way to do psionics, only that WotC has failed to add psionics multiple times in a row. They have had numerous UA for this edition for psionics and the player/DM feedback kept on being "keep working on it, not quite there yet." I think they'll eventually get there.

Content limitation is a vore assumption of ALL roleplaying games. I assume you meant core, and that's a pretty broad statement (though I have a gut feel that it's mostly true).
In case you were not aware: 5e was developed (some folks think that 4e essentials was where the momentum started), announced around 2012ish, and then released in 2014. Within less than a year of release about 80% of the folks on the 5e project were gone. WoTC clearly is not interested in producing content at a rate higher than it is demanded.
"Leave them hungry for more" is a valid marketing strategy. TSR didn't apply it and TWR went under.

[Psyren]

I disagree races should be changed in the first place.

There's an easy option here to make us both happy - you keep your old books, and those of us who are happy with updated content are free to purchase and use the new ones. Everybody wins! Right?



2)Races dont need to be setting agnostic. Their lore either metter because you are playing their setting or dont because you are playing homebrew and can ignore their fluff altogether. Not every race belongs to every setting and thats ok. You as a DM is free to play a changeling in Faerun if you want but whats the point of being able to play any race in Eberron or Faerun if we dont have Eberron or Faerun for 5th ed? (we do, but you get my point, I would prefer a proper setting guide over this)

Except those lines are completely arbitrary. Faerun has both dopplegangers and lycanthropes, so it can have changelings and shifters - it's that simple. There is nothing about either race that makes it so they would implode or defy all reason outside of Eberron.



3) In my opinion races didn't need to be redesigned they were fine as they were, when you have so many races to the point of bloat as we do now some will end weaker, but classes bring so much more to the table that they will overshadow any weake trait a race might get.

Wait, are we complaining that none of the races are new so this book is just a rehash, or are we complaining that there's too many new races so now this book is causing bloat? There's a clear contradiction there :smallconfused:



4) I didn't want neither splat or errata, I will not use any of this material so for me is just wasted space that is taking the place of anything cooler, like 2 or 3 more classes that would make it easier for us to cover some aspects and archetypes we miss, an High level adventure, I know I would like that.

Your reasoning that if they weren't working on this you would get 2 or 3 new classes is faulty. First, designing new classes (and even subclasses) is way more work than tweaking a bunch of races. Second, race redesigns are what they wanted to do. Telling them "don't do the thing you want to do" is not going to magically get all their creative juices to flow into the class design vat.

[Athan Artilliam]

People keep mentioning Mage the Gathering tie in books like there are supposed to be legitimate material...

People keep mentioning DMs Guild like glorified homebrew/fan fiction is supposed to be legitimate...

We shouldnt have to make WotC's game for them

[ProsecutorGodot]

People keep mentioning Mage the Gathering tie in books like there are supposed to be legitimate material...
It is legitimate material, as legitimate as any setting book can be - you'll either use it or you won't. It might shock you to hear this, but there will be people who prefer the MTG setting additions over Eberron.


People keep mentioning DMs Guild like glorified homebrew/fan fiction is supposed to be legitimate...

We shouldnt have to make WotC's game for them
5e does place a heavy emphasis on player created content, you're encouraged to fill perceived gaps yourself while they work on the content schedule they've set out. That doesn't mean you're making the game for them, they can't design what everyone wants at the same time.

[Athan Artilliam]

There's an easy option here to make us both happy - you keep your old books, and those of us who are happy with updated content are free to purchase and use the new ones. Everybody wins! Right?


Wrong. The censor & delete the content. The only way to have old material is to own the ones that survived the digital book burnings



Except those lines are completely arbitrary. Faerun has both dopplegangers and lycanthropes, so it can have changelings and shifters - it's that simple. There is nothing about either race that makes it so they would implode or defy all reason outside of Eberron.


Lets talk warforged. And yes there is a difference between making room for a single player & having an active population



Wait, are we complaining that none of the races are new so this book is just a rehash, or are we complaining that there's too many new races so now this book is causing bloat? There's a clear contradiction there :smallconfused:


Why are you so confused about everything? They are not mutually exclusive.




Your reasoning that if they weren't working on this you would get 2 or 3 new classes is faulty. First, designing new classes (and even subclasses) is way more work than tweaking a bunch of races. Second, race redesigns are what they wanted to do. Telling them "don't do the thing you want to do" is not going to magically get all their creative juices to flow into the class design vat.


It is work, they get paid to work. We the consumer, want them to provide a certain type of product & are getting tired of their current marketing. Why should we give our money to a product we dont want?

The solution is easy. Fire the people like Crawford who want a stagnant rule set & hire some people with creativity. Its not magical, dont be facetious. Its about setting design goals for the product your consumer wants. No one like New Coke. Did Coke force us to buy it?

[Telok]

Where are the discussions about otter pelt trading?

AD&D. Though it was the giant beaver pelts if my memory holds up. And like lots of giant animals they were low to average intelligence with thier own language, so it was a bit awkward for some people.

Home invasion, murder, skinning & selling sapients was OK if they had scales & gold but not if they had fur & no money. That sort of thing. It still happens, we just don't talk about it because they didn't stat & price the non-wealthy sapients this edition.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Thats the problem. They wont pick a side.

What 'side' are you referring to?
Why do game mechanics, have to chose a side?

To state it bluntly, I'm not interested in applying tribal fissures to D&D Rules.

I've been playing D&D since 1981.
In Grognard terms do these changes rise to the same level as the following:

Kicking Gary Gygax out of TSR
Actively directing RPG game development in order to create and sell TSR Novels...ala...The Time of Troubles Novels.

None of the changes proposed for the Anniversary Edition, rise to the same level of umbrage I felt at the above.

I'm chary of the proposed statblock changes, but so far the creatures presented in Witchlight and Strixhaven are cool. Compare Igwiliv in Witchlight to Halaster Blackcloack in Dungeon of the Mad Mage, for example.

Magic the Gathering worlds, are persistent fantasy creations, that have implied stories and beautiful artwork built up over years, decades of time.

MtG worlds are absolutely sound fodder for D&D ideas....the problem is 5e hasn't executed those books very well.

[Athan Artilliam]

there will be people who prefer the MTG setting additions over Eberron.


5e does place a heavy emphasis on player created content, you're encouraged to fill perceived gaps yourself while they work on the content schedule they've set out. That doesn't mean you're making the game for them, they can't design what everyone wants at the same time.

You seem to hate eberron for some reason so lets shift away from that. Why is there no Greyhawk content? Greyhawk is one of the most popular settings & given that its the home of the most known D&D deities like Pelor & named characters like Melf it could stand a 5e release more than some MtG tie in. Or Dark Sun. Or Birthright. Or Spelljammer. There are far more people asking for that than 50 pages of some MtG setting.

[ProsecutorGodot]

You seem to hate eberron for some reason so lets shift away from that. Why is there no Greyhawk content? Greyhawk is one of the most popular settings & given that its the home of the most known D&D deities like Pelor & named characters like Melf it could stand a 5e release more than some MtG tie in. Or Dark Sun. Or Birthright. Or Spelljammer. There are far more people asking for that than 50 pages of some MtG setting.

Why are you saying I hate Eberron? I didn't even say that I preferred the MTG settings, I prefer FR and that's the setting my group plays. We borrow heavily from Eberron though because Eberron is cool.

Also we do have Greyhawk content, might I direct you to Ghost's of Saltmarsh? Sure it's not a whole setting book but the doors open and, once again I must remind you, we have already been given explicit confirmation that 3 classic settings will be receiving expanded setting books.

They are working on new and returning settings, this is not speculation, it's explicitly confirmed information. I'll repeat this all day long if I have to.

[Psyren]

Wrong. The censor & delete the content. The only way to have old material is to own the ones that survived the digital book burnings

Nothing has been deleted. And even if one day they update DDB, they still can't come to your house and rip Volo's out of your hands.


Lets talk warforged. And yes there is a difference between making room for a single player & having an active population

Warforged aren't in Monsters of the Multiverse, which is the topic of this thread.


Why are you so confused about everything? They are not mutually exclusive.

I'm not confused about "everything," just the bad logic being employed here. If they're compiling races that already exist, the "bloat" has already happened and you should have been complaining back when Volo's and MToF were printed. Waiting until years later is rather poor timing.


It is work, they get paid to work. We the consumer, want them to provide a certain type of product & are getting tired of their current marketing. Why should we give our money to a product we dont want?

I'm also a consumer. We're not a monolith.


The solution is easy. Fire the people like Crawford

No.

[Xervous]

You seem to hate eberron for some reason so lets shift away from that. Why is there no Greyhawk content? Greyhawk is one of the most popular settings & given that its the home of the most known D&D deities like Pelor & named characters like Melf it could stand a 5e release more than some MtG tie in. Or Dark Sun. Or Birthright. Or Spelljammer. There are far more people asking for that than 50 pages of some MtG setting.

Given that MTG has people throwing more money at it than most of the TTRPG market sees in the same time it’s not surprising WotC would take advantage of the potential overlap in customers’ interests. They know MTG is selling right now and they’ve already got the...

Hold on, how many novels have they churned out for MTG recently?

Edit: it looks like the MTG stuff started back up in 2018 and really got moving in 2020.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Why is there no Greyhawk content? .

Hasn't every multi-planar adventure had a Greyhawk character in it?
I'm also positive a Greyhawk book will come out.
I would much rather wait for quality, then have a rushed inferior product.

To my mind, what made Greyhawk great, was never the old box set from AD&D 1.0.
What brought Greyhawk to life were Gary Gygax's modules....
...still excellently fun, today.

All the 2e AD&D Greyhawk stuff, felt a little to Soap Opera for my tastes.

As a DM, just give me some good modules, and some good ideas for the Setting, and let the players fill the world with epic deeds.

[ZRN]

No other edition of D&D has had two separate rest schedules, (Short Rest/Long Rest),


It's impressive how thoroughly some people have memory-holed 4e.

[Psyren]

Pretty sure Elemental Evil is set in Greyhawk and that is officially in 5e.

EDIT: above is @AA/TM

[PhantomSoul]

It's impressive how thoroughly some people have memory-holed 4e.

What do you mean? Next is 4e; there's been nothing since 3.5!

I really like the idea of the two-tier rests and think it's sad that they've been killing it off instead of leaving it be or fixing where they didn't lean into it well enough, with new character options actually using the system (and maybe reinforcing different rest timing variants). It's easily one of the things I've found most problematic with their newer stuff given it just encourages exactly the issue that's a main complaint (four-turn adventuring days, too few party members benefiting from short rests so the whole party is less likely to use them, and poor resource attrition options given functionally perfect recovery every long rest except in only marginal cases).

[JackPhoenix]

Pretty sure Elemental Evil is set in Greyhawk and that is officially in 5e.

EDIT: above is @AA/TM

It is, and it's not. Princes of the Apocalypse is, like all adventures except CoS and GoS, set in FR.

[Dr.Samurai]

WotC seem intent to continue to muck about with its current content than to actually be creative.
This is the sense I have as well.

I think we can all debate/discuss how much content is a good amount and what expectations should be, but for me, even if we can agree on those items, it feels like WotC is still "figuring things out" and wants us to pay them to do that as they're doing it.

Now, I first got into the game in 3rd edition. I bought the core books and they were on sale. I didn't realize they were on sale because 3.5 was coming out a week later lol.

So WotC has gone through this process before where they changed the rules up some time into an edition and reprinted the core books and gave out rules for updating everything, etc.

I didn't really go through it. My investment was only 1 week and 3 books at the time. But going through it now seems... uninspiring. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the books coming out don't appeal to me. I like themed books with a focus on rules expansions that build on the current system, instead of rehashing the current system with tweaks because everything needs to be perfect in some way.

That said... if they're going to go through all the trouble of tweaking the system, just give me a non-magical barbarian subclass that works!

[Psyren]

It is, and it's not. Princes of the Apocalypse is, like all adventures except CoS and GoS, set in FR.

Ah, sad. It was originally in Greyhawk but they used PoA to move it to FR.



Now, I first got into the game in 3rd edition. I bought the core books and they were on sale. I didn't realize they were on sale because 3.5 was coming out a week later lol.

So WotC has gone through this process before where they changed the rules up some time into an edition and reprinted the core books and gave out rules for updating everything, etc.

The good news is they've been very up front about when they expect the core changes to be coming (2024) so you can make an informed decision about whether you want to keep purchasing 5e content now or wait to see the updates then.


That said... if they're going to go through all the trouble of tweaking the system, just give me a non-magical barbarian subclass that works!

On this we can agree. The two least magical barbs are the worst!

[PhoenixPhyre]

Personally, including lore for races inherently makes them setting-specific. Because lore only has meaning in the context of a setting.

Yeah, they're trying to cheese this by going with the "it's all the multi-verse" thing, but that just means you can't really have your own setting--you're tied to all these assumptions and default settings (different meaning) that they've put in. A world without Corellon or Lolth is one where the elf lore makes no sense.

You can publish bare stat blocks, but even those have assumptions involved.

Personally, as a DM who has their own setting that uses ~0 of the stock lore (except at a very surface level), I'd prefer if they gave DMs guidance on creating good races[1]. And then only had the most generic races in core. Leave all the special races to individual published settings. Leave the lore to the settings. And then actually publish setting information. Heck, doesn't even need to be a formal book per setting--you could have "Races of the Multiverse" with per-setting lists and lore.

[1] although I've steadily lost the faith that they'd do this well

[ProsecutorGodot]

Personally, as a DM who has their own setting that uses ~0 of the stock lore (except at a very surface level), I'd prefer if they gave DMs guidance on creating good races[1].
[1] although I've steadily lost the faith that they'd do this well

Out of curiosity, what more do you need for "create a setting agnostic race from scratch" than what the DMG already offers?

This section teaches you how to modify existing races, as well as create new ones. The most important step in customizing or designing races for your campaign is to start with the story behind the race or subrace you wish to create. Having a firm idea of a race’s story in your campaign will help you make decisions during the creation process. Ask yourself several questions:

Why does my campaign need the race to be playable?
What does the race look like?
Where do the members of this race live?
Are there interesting conflicts built into the race’s history that make the race compelling from a storytelling standpoint?
What is the race’s relationship to the other playable races?
What classes and backgrounds are well suited to members of the race?
What are the race’s signature traits?
In the case of a new subrace, what sets it apart from the other subraces of the parent race?
Compare the race you have in mind with the other race options available to players, to make sure that the new race doesn’t pale in comparison to the existing options (which would result in the race being unpopular) or completely overshadow them (so that players don’t feel as if the other options are inferior).

When the time comes to design the game elements of the race, such as its traits, take a look at the game’s existing races and let them inspire you.

This is fairly comprehensive for users who have taken the pains to create their own setting in my opinion. It gives you focus points for the new race and offers the critical advice that it should be similar in mechanical power to existing races but distinct in its design and narrative drive. Honestly if you only had the bolded points to go off I'd say that's a strong enough guide for someone creating a new race for their own setting.

[Xervous]

Out of curiosity, what more do you need for "create a setting agnostic race from scratch" than what the DMG already offers?


This is fairly comprehensive for users who have taken the pains to create their own setting in my opinion. It gives you focus points for the new race and offers the critical advice that it should be similar in mechanical power to existing races but distinct in its design and narrative drive. Honestly if you only had the bolded points to go off I'd say that's a strong enough guide for someone creating a new race for their own setting.

The bits that are missing in explaining how to make races are the most crucial ones, those that address the important hazards that are not immediately evident. In asking the GM to be the one doing the comparison they are assuming the GM has developed an understanding of a system that makes no attempts to highlight its own pain points. Were I to be writing that section I’d hit the two big bullet points of Flight and Armor Profs as things to be careful with for races. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive list. Merely highlighting why handing out heavy armor prof on a race can skew the intended balance (oh yes that means we’re mentioning why wizards shouldn’t have easy access to heavy armor), or detailing how early flight can be disruptive is a set of examples that help give context for the sorts of concerns a GM should be mindful of in making new races.

[KorvinStarmast]

Some races have many variants, the tiefling, the elf, the halfling for example have many variants. I think this is coo I think it stinks. :smallyuk: I'd rather there were no extra elf types rather than the never ending additions.

Some races on the other hand have no variants while they have many iterations
I prefer the KISS principle.
Currently we only have one kind of kobold, but we could have several, we could have sunlight sensitive kobolds as well as kobolds with weaker darkvision.
Please no, it's the elf problem all over again.

Orcs had their int penalty removed, Good. Stat penalties are not core, I disliked that they did that in Volo's.

Overall I don't hate WotC, in fact I like them and I think the future is bright, but it could be brighter. Same.

People keep mentioning DMs Guild like glorified homebrew/fan fiction is supposed to be legitimate. Adventurer's Leagues uses quite a bit of DMs Guild material. But I don't use any of it. Core is enough for me.
We shouldnt have to make WotC's game for them Who is this we? I tend to run my own setting, or my own 'tinkered with' version of Greyhawk that I've been messing with for a lot of years.

Wrong. The censor & delete the content. The only way to have old material is to own the ones that survived the digital book burnings *chuckle* :smallfurious::smallfurious: Their errata on the original True Polymorph is a book burning that I wish could be unburnt. :smallfurious: Originally, you concentrate for an hour and the change is permanent. None of this "until dispelled" rubbish. (Though Wish can probably undo anything, based on wish's text).

Lets talk warforged. And yes there is a difference between making room for a single player & having an active population Yes.

The solution is easy. Fire the people like Crawford who want a stagnant rule set & hire some people with creativity. Its not magical, don't be facetious. It's about setting design goals for the product your consumer wants. No one liked New Coke. Did Coke force us to buy it? They fired Mearls, are you happy? I wasn't even though some of his 'here's a great idea' stuff was a mess that forgot bounded accuracy.

Magic the Gathering worlds, are persistent fantasy creations, that have implied stories and beautiful artwork built up over years, decades of time. But they need to stay on their side of the fence. (IMO) Keep the Theros PC options in Theros.

MtG worlds are absolutely sound fodder for D&D ideas....the problem is 5e hasn't executed those books very well. Product integration. And yes, they really did miss a chance to get it right in terms of porting it over.

Why is there no Greyhawk content? Greyhawk is one of the most popular settings & given that its the home of the most known D&D deities like Pelor & named characters like Melf it could stand a 5e release more than some MtG tie in.
Or Dark Sun.
Or Birthright.
Or Spelljammer. There are far more people asking for that than 50 pages of some MtG setting. Agreed. We got Ghost of Salt Marsh but not WoG setting book.

I'm also positive a Greyhawk book will come out. I would much rather wait for quality, then have a rushed inferior product. Tasha's was rushed, and she's from Greyhawk. Not looking good. :smallfrown:

All the 2e AD&D Greyhawk stuff, felt a little to Soap Opera for my tastes. Not gonna disagree.

Out of curiosity, what more do you need for "create a setting agnostic race from scratch" than what the DMG already offers? Besides getting a slightly OP example with the Eladrin? :smallyuk:

[Psyren]

There is still lore in MotM so I'm really not sure where the belief it was all excised comes from. For example, the Bugbear entry still mentions how they were encouraged to sneak into the Material Plane from the Feywild by a goblinoid god (Maglubiyet.) They added a line about how many have snuck away from his influence over the course of decades (i.e. the ones who become PCs.) They're not just diving into the racial features with no setup.

[JackPhoenix]

*chuckle* :smallfurious::smallfurious: Their errata on the original True Polymorph is a book burning that I wish could be unburnt. :smallfurious: Originally, you concentrate for an hour and the change is permanent. None of this "until dispelled" rubbish. (Though Wish can probably undo anything, based on wish's text).

"Permanent" and "until dispelled" is the exact same thing when spell duration is concerned. It means the spell is still ongoing, and any means that can end a spell... like Dispel Magic ... will do so. It's been that way for at least 20 years since 3e.

[Rukelnikov]

"Permanent" and "until dispelled" is the exact same thing when spell duration is concerned. It means the spell is still ongoing, and any means that can end a spell... like Dispel Magic ... will do so. It's been that way for at least 20 years since 3e.

But if its until dispelled, doesn't that mean you can target the original creature?

[KorvinStarmast]

"Permanent" and "until dispelled" is the exact same thing when spell duration is concerned. It means the spell is still ongoing, and any means that can end a spell... like Dispel Magic ... will do so. It's been that way for at least 20 years since 3e. No, they do not mean the same thing.
The original wording, when using natural English, leaves us with a permanent change. The temporary change is the entire period of the spell, the an ongoing spell", up until the entire hour of concentration is completed. At the end an hour it is no longer an ongoing magical effect; the change is permanent.

Words have meanings in normal English, and in this case I'd rather they had left it that way. :smallfurious: It is massively cheapened, they way the back pedaled on that. :smallfurious:

[Rukelnikov]

No, they do not mean the same thing.
The original wording, when using natural English, leaves us with a permanent change. The temporary change is the entire period of the spell, the an ongoing spell", up until the entire hour of concentration is completed. At the end an hour it is no longer an ongoing magical effect; the change is permanent.

Words have meanings in normal English, and in this case I'd rather they had left it that way. :smallfurious: It is massively cheapened, they way the back pedaled on that. :smallfurious:

The change is permanent doesn't mean it can't be dispelled, if the duration is permanent, then the magic is always present, then dispel magic can be used.

For a permanent non dispelable effect, it should be instantaneous, like a fireball, the magic came and went, and the burns it left have no magic in them.

[Millstone85]

There is still lore in MotM so I'm really not sure where the belief it was all excised comes from. For example, the Bugbear entry still mentions how they were encouraged to sneak into the Material Plane from the Feywild by a goblinoid god (Maglubiyet.) They added a line about how many have snuck away from his influence over the course of decades (i.e. the ones who become PCs.) They're not just diving into the racial features with no setup.The part about bugbears coming from the Feywild is also new. Does this apply to all goblinoids? I like the idea, actually.


"Permanent" and "until dispelled" is the exact same thing when spell duration is concerned.
No, they do not mean the same thing. The original wording, when using natural English, leaves us with a permanent change.I agree that a permanent spell would be the same thing as a spell that lasts until dispelled.

But reading the original text, I think Korvin is right.
If you concentrate on this spell for the full duration, the transformation becomes permanent.The spell ran its full duration, and the transformation became permanent.

[PhantomSoul]

I agree that a permanent spell would be the same thing as a spell that lasts until dispelled.

But reading the original text, I think Korvin is right.The spell ran its full duration, and the transformation became permanent.

I'm on team "'permanent' in the Spell Description means permanent" too; the Duration ended in order for it to become Permanent. (I'm on board with Wish undoing it, but Wish could transform a Creature anyhow.)

[Psyren]

I suspect that ambiguity around "permanent" is why they clarified it. Even in 3e, PAO was dispellable.


The part about bugbears coming from the Feywild is also new. Does this apply to all goblinoids? I like the idea, actually.

Goblins, Hobgoblins and Bugbears all have explicit fey origin now, yes.

[Kane0]

So do we know if Monsters of the Multiverse will also be going through and updating the Monster Manual, will it be expanding like a MMII or a bit of both?

[Psyren]

So do we know if Monsters of the Multiverse will also be going through and updating the Monster Manual, will it be expanding like a MMII or a bit of both?

No announcements yet. I expect a MM update will happen in 2024 alongside the PHB/DMG, and the MotM-style statblock changes will be incorporated to core monsters then.

[stoutstien]

Personally, including lore for races inherently makes them setting-specific. Because lore only has meaning in the context of a setting.

Yeah, they're trying to cheese this by going with the "it's all the multi-verse" thing, but that just means you can't really have your own setting--you're tied to all these assumptions and default settings (different meaning) that they've put in. A world without Corellon or Lolth is one where the elf lore makes no sense.

You can publish bare stat blocks, but even those have assumptions involved.

Personally, as a DM who has their own setting that uses ~0 of the stock lore (except at a very surface level), I'd prefer if they gave DMs guidance on creating good races[1]. And then only had the most generic races in core. Leave all the special races to individual published settings. Leave the lore to the settings. And then actually publish setting information. Heck, doesn't even need to be a formal book per setting--you could have "Races of the Multiverse" with per-setting lists and lore.

[1] although I've steadily lost the faith that they'd do this well

Agree 100 percent. More tools less rules. As for the lower side of it I always thought a good angle for them to take advantage of would be to present a couple different options for each race. It's not like they don't have a dozen different settings that they can pull from to do so

[JackPhoenix]

No, they do not mean the same thing.
The original wording, when using natural English, leaves us with a permanent change. The temporary change is the entire period of the spell, the an ongoing spell", up until the entire hour of concentration is completed. At the end an hour it is no longer an ongoing magical effect; the change is permanent.

Unfortunately, that's not true. At the end of the hour, the ongoing magical effect is still there. The rules are rather clear that for spell effects that can't be dispelled, the duration is instantaneous. Wall of Stone too becomes permanent after you concentrate for the entire duration, but it specifically says it can't be dispelled. True Polymorph doesn't, and never did.


Words have meanings in normal English, and in this case I'd rather they had left it that way. :smallfurious: It is massively cheapened, they way the back pedaled on that. :smallfurious:

Permanent does not mean future events can't change or revoke the "permanent" effect.

[Dr. Murgunstrum]

Wish they just added variants of races rather than errata them :/

What errata has been applied to races? Have they republished anything?

[PhoenixPhyre]

What errata has been applied to races? Have they republished anything?

They errata'd kobolds and orcs, as well as chunks of the lore around several races. Even stripped it from D&D beyond.

[Millstone85]

What errata has been applied to races? Have they republished anything?In the most recent changes to the PHB (https://media.wizards.com/2021/dnd/downloads/PH-Errata.pdf) and VGtM (https://media.wizards.com/2021/dnd/downloads/VGtM-Errata.pdf), playable races simply lost their alignment entries.

Also, the sidebar to the glory of Drizzt got scrapped, to be replaced with "Wherever the cult lurks, drow heroes stand on the front lines in the war against it, seeking to sunder Lolth’s web". Which is actually an improvement, IMO.

[Yael]

I'm not disparaging you for being new. We new need hobbyists to keep the hobby alive. Im not dismissing your points because you are new either. Im just using you as an example of the current player base. As apposed to the other guy who acted like I cannot express my opinion because I am new to the forum as if my history of posting here disqualifies me out of hand. Dont confuse my argument.

You are making the case that 7 subclasses is more than plenty.

I am saying I'm more used to this
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?550696-Truly-Complete-list-of-3-5e-Base-Classes
And this doesnt include the 150 or so Prestige Classes

So you should be able to see that 7 variations of 12 still falls short of what I expect of them.
I see a lack of content because I am used to more content. You are content with the content because you haven't played with more content. I have played with more content so I am discontented with this content.

Not to get into the conversation just to gang up on you, but you were being a little unfair here. 5e's phylosophy (at least, you know, before Tasha's, but I'm not going into that... yet) was for simplicity. 3.5e's could be argued that it was about choice. That's why there were so many options to build your character from. That doesn't make it strictly better (even if I like it more, I'll accept it's not a perfect system, nor is 5e), but you'd feel like you're going places if you're building your character with the options that are presented (or borderline nowhere, if you don't know what are you doing or you play monk).

Now, I can see the need of more options, but 5e was half-made from the start, it is lacking rules for virtually everything, yet it's done so simple that they can be made on-the-go, and that's why homebrew is usually better recieved than official stuff is, tbh. I'm not justifying 5e for lacking content, but their approach was never that of going the distance with options, although I'd like it better if they did, especially because the lack of prestige classes make single 20 builds the best option to play (except for dips for broken abilities, which are usually the bread and butter for strong builds).

Someone on the boards once made a comparison I liked, and that I'll try my best to remember, but I apologize in advance for butchering it.

5e is like a robot building kit. You can get it to work if you follow the instructions, and you'll get a pretty good and functional yet limited creation. You'll have fun because a robot is fun, and 5e is fun. But in the end, it's the kit that ends up being the base of the robot.

3.5e is, however, the entire lab. Given time, you can play virtually anything you want to play, wherever you want to play (I'm talking about setting) and you'll get lots of options to do so, because a lab is big and in this case, you are the one building what you want to play. This goes for both DMs and players.

Yeah, I totally butchered that one. I'm sorry, I saw that quote several years ago.


Im not arguing for powercreep.

Im saying that past versions of D&D had stuff like Ghostwalk which was all about fun d&d adventures heavily featuring ghosts & also, character options for ghost PCs. What about Incarnum? That stuff is really cool. A lot of people are wanting 5e Incarnum content but 5e cant even do psionics right.

I'd kill (not really, don't @ me on this one, pls) for having good Incarnum, Pact, Shadow even Truename magic brought back into D&D. Those are such fun systems (err... most of them), and 5e is not really lacking in options, but in themes and systems. I agree, Psionics were just plain, and we are still lacking some good ol' anime fight book Sword Magic to make combat more interesting.

Also, the lore. Please stop retconning the lore for political agendas, which we all know they are, it may be a good or a bad thing, that's up to each and everyone to decide, I'm not here to judge on that, but for the state of the game is pretty detrimental. Tomorrow you'll have to ask a monster if you can hit them, or you'll be cancelled on twitter. Did I go far? Yeah, that's what the changes are making me do.

[Kane0]

I'd kill (not really, don't @ me on this one, pls) for having good Incarnum, Pact, Shadow even Truename magic brought back into D&D. Those are such fun systems (err... most of them), and 5e is not really lacking in options, but in themes and systems. I agree, Psionics were just plain, and we are still lacking some good ol' anime fight book Sword Magic to make combat more interesting.


While I would definitely appreciate more combat subsystems, I would much prefer additional meat on the social and exploration bones.

[Dienekes]

Not a fan of these hobgoblins, admittedly.

I mean, mechanically they’re superior to the old ones. But, I’m somewhat baffled by them. Hobgobs have never been this weird fey creature. They’re the monstrous personification of the horrors of expansionist imperialism. That’s been their thing for decades.

And the end effect is weird. If the change was made to divorce culture from the races, then how is hospitality etiquette not culture?

Like, the end result isn’t a bad race. It may in fact be superior to the base model. Weapons and Armor Proficiencies have always been terrible design, since they don’t add to the classes the race is trying to have their fluff push them toward.

But this doesn’t look like a Hobgoblin at all. If I was going to compare it to anything, it’s probably the best representation of actual old fairy stories with the likes of Rumpelstiltskin or the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair. Which, you know, cool that’s a race now, but that’s not really what I was hoping for with Hobgoblins.

Not a fan of this version of my favorite monster race.

[Xervous]

Not a fan of these hobgoblins, admittedly.

I mean, mechanically they’re superior to the old ones. But, I’m somewhat baffled by them. Hobgobs have never been this weird fey creature. They’re the monstrous personification of the horrors of expansionist imperialism. That’s been their thing for decades.

And the end effect is weird. If the change was made to divorce culture from the races, then how is hospitality etiquette not culture?

Like, the end result isn’t a bad race. It may in fact be superior to the base model. Weapons and Armor Proficiencies have always been terrible design, since they don’t add to the classes the race is trying to have their fluff push them toward.

But this doesn’t look like a Hobgoblin at all. If I was going to compare it to anything, it’s probably the best representation of actual old fairy stories with the likes of Rumpelstiltskin or the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair. Which, you know, cool that’s a race now, but that’s not really what I was hoping for with Hobgoblins.

Not a fan of this version of my favorite monster race.

So this is New Coke, the Hobgoblin? Fine on its own, but why is it replacing something that wasn’t in need of fixing?

[Dienekes]

So this is New Coke, the Hobgoblin? Fine on its own, but why is it replacing something that wasn’t in need of fixing?

Apparently, Jeremy Crawford thought goblinoids should be a part of the feywild now. Changing their lore so that Maglubiyet found and corrupted them there. And while Goblins and Bugbears factually fit the feywild setting pretty well from their fluff, Hobgoblins really don’t.

Not saying I know for certain, but I’d guess that Crawford and co. liked their new lore they created more than the old and just thought they would change Hobgoblins to fit. And after all, who cares about Hobgoblins?

Me. I cared about them.

[Tanarii]

Also, the sidebar to the glory of Drizzt got scrapped, to be replaced with "Wherever the cult lurks, drow heroes stand on the front lines in the war against it, seeking to sunder Lolth’s web". Which is actually an improvement, IMO.
Not as much of an improvement as if they'd just errata'd the Drow out of he PHB. Drow don't belong the, even as an optional race.

[Psyren]

In the most recent changes to the PHB (https://media.wizards.com/2021/dnd/downloads/PH-Errata.pdf) and VGtM (https://media.wizards.com/2021/dnd/downloads/VGtM-Errata.pdf), playable races simply lost their alignment entries.

That has nothing to do with this book, and removing the alignment section is not a "variant." They were going to do that anyway as stated in their blog post. If not via errata, then definitely in "5.5."



5e is like a robot building kit. You can get it to work if you follow the instructions, and you'll get a pretty good and functional yet limited creation. You'll have fun because a robot is fun, and 5e is fun. But in the end, it's the kit that ends up being the base of the robot.

3.5e is, however, the entire lab. Given time, you can play virtually anything you want to play, wherever you want to play (I'm talking about setting) and you'll get lots of options to do so, because a lab is big and in this case, you are the one building what you want to play. This goes for both DMs and players.

Yeah, I totally butchered that one. I'm sorry, I saw that quote several years ago.

I find 3.5e to be far more limited than 5e. 3.5 is the kind of game where you can't swing from a chandelier because there's no swing from a chandelier skill or feat, but there is a specific prestige class in Complete Adventurer with "swing from chandelier" as a 4th-level feature, so now everyone who wants to swing from a chandelier needs to work that one PrC into their build somehow. Or just be a wizard.


it may be a good or a bad thing, that's up to each and everyone to decide, I'm not here to judge on that, but for the state of the game is pretty detrimental.

So you're "not here to judge if it's good or bad," but conclude it's "pretty detrimental for the game." You do realize that's a judgment right? :smallconfused::smallsigh:



Me. I cared about them.

I do too, and love the new ones. They use the Feywild's Rule of Reciprocity to explain not just the Hobgoblin's racial feature (the unique Help action technique they get) but also to explain why they are more readily able to become regimented soldiers than the other goblinoids who emerged with them.

[Dr.Samurai]

I find 3.5e to be far more limited than 5e. 3.5 is the kind of game where you can't swing from a chandelier because there's no swing from a chandelier skill or feat, but there is a specific prestige class in Complete Adventurer with "swing from chandelier" as a 4th-level feature, so now everyone who wants to swing from a chandelier needs to work that one PrC into their build somehow.
Do you think this is what informed the removal of "Cunning Artisan" from the revised Lizardfolk?

Because at first I was miffed that they removed this. Then I was like "well, couldn't any character with Survival try and adjudicate this kind of thing with their DM?".

Or just be a wizard.
*makes disgusted disgruntled noises*

[Psyren]

Do you think this is what informed the removal of "Cunning Artisan" from the revised Lizardfolk?

Because at first I was miffed that they removed this. Then I was like "well, couldn't any character with Survival try and adjudicate this kind of thing with their DM?".

In a word, yes. Not only is it unnecessarily restrictive (signaling to the DM that nobody but Lizardfolk should be able to do anything like this), it also plays into another "noble savage" stereotype that implies every single lizardfolk has the same upbringing. If your lizardfolk grew up in Strixhaven or Candlekeep learning wizardry, where/when would they have learned how to strip a carcass for bone javelins for example? And why couldn't a wood elf ranger or a goliath barbarian have this kind of knowledge?

Making this ability an application of a skill or background makes much more sense.

[Dienekes]

I do too, and love the new ones. They use the Feywild's Rule of Reciprocity to explain not just the Hobgoblin's racial feature (the unique Help action technique they get) but also to explain why they are more readily able to become regimented soldiers than the other goblinoids who emerged with them.

But now they are no longer the regimented soldiers. There’s actually nothing in the stat block to even suggest that part of them.

If anything the new stats better fit bards, rogues, and political manipulators.

Which is a fine race. It’s just not at all what I can recognize as Hobgoblin.


In a word, yes. Not only is it unnecessarily restrictive (signaling to the DM that nobody but Lizardfolk should be able to do anything like this), it also plays into another "noble savage" stereotype that implies every single lizardfolk has the same upbringing. If your lizardfolk grew up in Strixhaven or Candlekeep learning wizardry, where/when would they have learned how to strip a carcass for bone javelins for example? And why couldn't a wood elf ranger or a goliath barbarian have this kind of knowledge?

Making this ability an application of a skill or background makes much more sense.

I’m curious how this stance interacts with liking the Hobgoblin’s new etiquette feature.

After all, building simple creations out of natural occuring resources does seem to be a potential evolutionary trait found in various insects arachnids, and birds, but even some lizards and mammals.

I can’t think of one where a specific type of etiquette was though.

[ProsecutorGodot]

In a word, yes. Not only is it unnecessarily restrictive (signaling to the DM that nobody but Lizardfolk should be able to do anything like this), it also plays into another "noble savage" stereotype that implies every single lizardfolk has the same upbringing. If your lizardfolk grew up in Strixhaven or Candlekeep learning wizardry, where/when would they have learned how to strip a carcass for bone javelins for example? And why couldn't a wood elf ranger or a goliath barbarian have this kind of knowledge?

Making this ability an application of a skill or background makes much more sense.

I'm more disappointed that the feature was cut in it's entirety, something separated from that but still communicating the fact that they have done biological advantage (this is my assumption) to be able to craft out of hide and bone without tools.

"Your claws have a unique shape that allows them to function as woodworking or leatherworking tools for basic crafting" or something along those lines.

[Psyren]

But now they are no longer the regimented soldiers. There’s actually nothing in the stat block to even suggest that part of them.

It's in the lore description, why does it need to be in the statblock too? Not even the old statblock had a feature about them being soldiers, unless you squinted really hard at the martial weapon proficiency (which plenty of non-soldiers have.)


I'm more disappointed that the feature was cut in it's entirety, something separated from that but still communicating the fact that they have done biological advantage (this is my assumption) to be able to craft out of hide and bone without tools.

"Your claws have a unique shape that allows them to function as woodworking or leatherworking tools for basic crafting" or something along those lines.

Plenty of races have claws - Tabaxi, Aaracokra, Leonin, Shifters etc. Why would only Lizardfolk claws be usable this way? Why do you need claws for this at all when knives exist?

The first questions when designing any racial should be "does this need to be a racial? What is gained by making this race-specific, and what implications could result?" With MotM, they appear to finally be asking that question, or at least asking it more than they did prior to Volo's.

[Dienekes]

It's in the lore description, why does it need to be in the statblock too? Not even the old statblock had a feature about them being soldiers, unless you squinted really hard at the martial weapon proficiency (which plenty of non-soldiers have.)


Because the stat block is what the actual game mechanics indicate a race is.

The old stats very much did have reference to them being soldiers, you literally pointed it out where it was.

Now was it a good representation of it?

No. It was really bad. Part of why I was initially excited to see what was happening to them. But now I got, well, this thing that doesn’t really have any features I associate with hobgoblins, and doesn’t match how the race featured in old fluff I liked, replaced with new fluff I don’t care about.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Plenty of races have claws - Tabaxi, Aaracokra, Leonin, Shifters etc. Why would only Lizardfolk claws be usable this way? Why do you need claws for this at all when knives exist?

The first questions when designing any racial should be "does this need to be a racial? What is gained by making this race-specific, and what implications could result?" With MotM, they appear to finally be asking that question, or at least asking it more than they did prior to Volo's.

Features that allow you access to natural weapons are useful, doubly so if those are multi purpose tools.

I suppose of the setting doesn't include any lore of where lizardfolk are primarily found (where they are better able to adapt and survive than other races) then it doesn't make much sense. If they are still primarily swamp dwelling isolationists then it would make sense that they might have developed this ability as part of adaptive to their environment, similarly to deep gnome having better darkvision than a regular gnome as an adaptation to living underground.

[Telok]

is the kind of game where you can't swing from a chandelier because there's no swing from a chandelier skill or feat, but there is a specific prestige class in Complete Adventurer with "swing from chandelier" as a 4th-level feature, so now everyone who wants to swing from a chandelier needs to work that one PrC into their build somehow. Or just be a wizard.

To be honest I had "swing from something" type stunts beaten out of me in 4e and 5e too. Every time you try its "roll to jump up, roll to swing, then gain advantage", even assuming you have a 75% success on all rolls just adding one more roll makes it worse than just normal attacking without the advantage*. D&D is still having DMs add extra fail rolls to stunts. So I just never try anything like that in 5e, or 4e, or 3.x (unless I have the insane skill checks to stunt with that the edition allows). Just play casters.

* assuming 75% success at attack & str:athletics & dex:acrobat its -> 75% attack up to 94% with advantage down to 70% after one pre-check then down to 53% after two pre-checks.

[Dr.Samurai]

To be honest I had "swing from something" type stunts beaten out of me in 4e and 5e too. Every time you try its "roll to jump up, roll to swing, then gain advantage", even assuming you have a 75% success on all rolls just adding one more roll makes it worse than just normal attacking without the advantage*. D&D is still having DMs add extra fail rolls to stunts. So I just never try anything like that in 5e, or 4e, or 3.x (unless I have the insane skill checks to stunt with that the edition allows). Just play casters.

* assuming 75% success at attack & str:athletics & dex:acrobat its -> 75% attack up to 94% with advantage down to 70% after one pre-check then down to 53% after two pre-checks.
On the one hand, I understand Psyren's point and tend to agree.

On the other hand, I experience exactly what Telok is saying here. When I ask my DM if I can use my physicality in some way not hard-coded into the rules, he hears "Can you force me to roll a bunch of skill checks as if I just asked to roleplay the Eliminator challenge at the end of American Gladiators?"

[Psyren]

Because the stat block is what the actual game mechanics indicate a race is.

The old stats very much did have reference to them being soldiers, you literally pointed it out where it was.

So a big game hunter barbarian is a soldier? They're proficient with two martial weapons. How about an itinerant bardic bravo who challenges people to duels? A forge cleric smith? A thief-catching ranger? So in what way does martial weapon proficiency = soldier?

"Soldier" is a profession - not a race, and not even a class. A racial mechanic around a single profession is limiting. Flavor text/lore saying "culturally, these guys like soldiering" is fine. Mechanics are not - and as above, the mechanic they had before doesn't even say "soldier."


Features that allow you access to natural weapons are useful, doubly so if those are multi purpose tools.

I suppose of the setting doesn't include any lore of where lizardfolk are primarily found (where they are better able to adapt and survive than other races) then it doesn't make much sense. If they are still primarily swamp dwelling isolationists then it would make sense that they might have developed this ability as part of adaptive to their environment, similarly to deep gnome having better darkvision than a regular gnome as an adaptation to living underground.

I don't see deep gnome darkvision as being equivalent to stripping corpses for parts. One is clearly genetic/biological, the other is a learned skill.

If you wanted to make a general use for the survival skill, and then say lizardfolk get a bonus to survival due to being swamp-dwellers, that's one thing. But even then, that is limiting because not everyone wants their lizardfolk to have grown up in a swamp, nor should they be forced to.

EDIT:


To be honest I had "swing from something" type stunts beaten out of me in 4e and 5e too. Every time you try its "roll to jump up, roll to swing, then gain advantage", even assuming you have a 75% success on all rolls just adding one more roll makes it worse than just normal attacking without the advantage*. D&D is still having DMs add extra fail rolls to stunts. So I just never try anything like that in 5e, or 4e, or 3.x (unless I have the insane skill checks to stunt with that the edition allows). Just play casters.

* assuming 75% success at attack & str:athletics & dex:acrobat its -> 75% attack up to 94% with advantage down to 70% after one pre-check then down to 53% after two pre-checks.

Respectfully, I see that as an issue with your DM's creativity. If a player wanted to use the environment to Errol Flynn their way across a battlefield, I can think of a number of benefits to doing so beyond just giving them advantage on their next swing. Perhaps succeeding at that allows the character to gain extra movement and thus get further than they could with their walking speed. Perhaps that forces opportunity attacks against them while swinging to be made at disadvantage, or even gets them a free Disengage action. Perhaps the chandelier itself falls at the end of their swing when they release the rope, triggering the Improvised Damage rules (DMG 249) in an area underneath it, and leaving a zone of difficult terrain on the battlefield due to the shattered remnants.

The goal is to use design to incentivize creative thinking and make the players engage with their surroundings. If I put a chandelier in a room in the first place then I actually want the players to consider ways to interact with it. Same with an area rug they can slide out from under a charging guard, or a table they can knock over when archers appear in the gallery, or a heavy curtain held back by a bit of rope. And 5e itself, as a system, encourages this kind of creativity as well in ways that 3.5 failed to do.

[Dienekes]

So a big game hunter barbarian is a soldier? They're proficient with two martial weapons. How about an itinerant bardic bravo who challenges people to duels? A forge cleric smith? A thief-catching ranger? So in what way does martial weapon proficiency = soldier?

Can be. Depends on how the big game Hunter got their martial training. But really that’s an odd equivalence.

My claim is that fluff should be implemented into mechanics. Now originally Hobgoblin’s fluff “heavily regimented forced militarization, etc.” and the designers chose to represent that fluff through the mechanic of weapon and armor proficiencies.

Is that the best representation of such fluff? No. It’s pretty bad. But it is a direct representation of the fluff through the mechanics.


"Soldier" is a profession - not a race, and not even a class. A racial mechanic around a single profession is limiting.

Yes. It is limiting. It’s a race. Races are by their nature limiting. That’s what their mechanical purpose is. They take a box full of specific mechanics say “this race have these features” and then the players go from that point.

For the original Hobgoblins, they were a species whose entire person was shaped by their inner drive toward warfare. Almost like a soldier ant, that was one of their core drives as a species.

When that was true, it should be reflected in their mechanics. Is this limiting? Of course. That’s it’s purpose. To set up the boundaries of what is an isnt a Hobgoblin.



Flavor text/lore saying "culturally, these guys like soldiering" is fine. Mechanics are not - and as above, the mechanic they had before doesn't even say "soldier."

The flavor was these creatures were shaped by Maglubiyet to be heavily regimented pursuers of warfare. That’s what they were. If that is the race’s fluff it should be their mechanics.

Out of curiosity, you started this discussion claiming you liked the old Hobgoblins. What did you like about them? Because creatures whose entire purpose has been shaped toward war for the glory of Maglubiyet was pretty much what they had.

I am also again curious how is that different from saying “mechanically all Hobgoblins now care about etiquette.” That’s also a cultural trait. Or at least it is in humans. And it is also limiting of the concepts of what is an acceptable Hobgoblin.

[Telok]

And 5e itself, as a system, encourages this kind of creativity as well in ways that 3.5 failed to do.

Have not had that experience. Where do the books say to allow & encourage these things? Its not the "don't roll if it isn't in question orbisn't important" thing because its usually in combat (important) and the DCs are always over 10 (can always fail).

In 3.5e I had a 10 str martial character who leapt over a pyrohydra, taking all the opportunity attacks to give flanking. In 5e I had a 13 str expertise in athletics character fail to jump 15 feet because I rolled a 10. Thats my experience, try anything not explicitly allowed in the book & face additional rolls of DC 15 or more to be given advantage.

[Psyren]

My claim is that fluff should be implemented into mechanics. Now originally Hobgoblin’s fluff “heavily regimented forced militarization, etc.” and the designers chose to represent that fluff through the mechanic of weapon and armor proficiencies.

Right, and the designers subsequently realized that mechanic is unnecessary and may even be unbalancing.


Yes. It is limiting. It’s a race. Races are by their nature limiting.

You're requesting they staple on additional limits/implications that don't need to be there. Out of... what, appeal to tradition? If they gave Hobgoblins back these proficiencies, what would you be okay with them removing in exchange?


For the original Hobgoblins, they were a species whose entire person was shaped by their inner drive toward warfare. Almost like a soldier ant, that was one of their core drives as a species.

And proficiency with a martial weapon is needed for that? As noted previously, many non-soldiers use martial weapons. Armies also contain doctors, counselors, engineers, janitors, chaplains etc.


Out of curiosity, you started this discussion claiming you liked the old Hobgoblins. What did you like about them?

Their lore? You know, the thing that's still there?

No race in MotM has weapon or armor proficiencies now, just like none of them have fixed ASIs. That's a good thing. It means you evaluate races by their actual features, not which ones will let your build get a free feat or free point buy.

[Sorinth]

I am also again curious how is that different from saying “mechanically all Hobgoblins now care about etiquette.” That’s also a cultural trait. Or at least it is in humans. And it is also limiting of the concepts of what is an acceptable Hobgoblin.

D&D is obviously very loose with where the line is with this sort of stuff, but if we take the classic Fey thing where they can't tell a lie. That's not a cultural thing, they physically can't lie presumably because of magic. So it would make sense to have that as a racial feature whereas for Dwarves where lore wise it's just culturally frowned upon to lie shouldn't have a feature. I would assume for Hobgoblin's and their new feature it's because they are deciding this is an expression of their fey magic rather then regular etiquette.

[Psyren]

Where do the books say to allow & encourage these things?

DMG 5:

"The rules don't account for every possible situation that might arise during a typical D&D session. For example, a player might want his or her character to hurl a brazier of hot coals into a monster's face. How you determine the outcome of this action is up to you."

- "My walking speed is 30. Can I swing on that chandelier to cover more distance instead?"
- "I'm surrounded by enemies. Will grabbing that chandelier rope and cutting it count as forced movement to get me out of there without provoking?"
- "I want to release the rope of the chandelier after my swing - will that cause it to fall on the guards standing below?"


In 3.5e I had a 10 str martial character who leapt over a pyrohydra, taking all the opportunity attacks to give flanking. In 5e I had a 13 str expertise in athletics character fail to jump 15 feet because I rolled a 10. Thats my experience, try anything not explicitly allowed in the book & face additional rolls of DC 15 or more to be given advantage.

Noted - that doesn't change my earlier judgment however.

[Sorinth]

Have not had that experience. Where do the books say to allow & encourage these things? Its not the "don't roll if it isn't in question orbisn't important" thing because its usually in combat (important) and the DCs are always over 10 (can always fail).

In 3.5e I had a 10 str martial character who leapt over a pyrohydra, taking all the opportunity attacks to give flanking. In 5e I had a 13 str expertise in athletics character fail to jump 15 feet because I rolled a 10. Thats my experience, try anything not explicitly allowed in the book & face additional rolls of DC 15 or more to be given advantage.

Why are the DCs always over 10? This seems like different expectations between the dm/player. 5e doesn't really set those expectations, so you can play a game where it's very hard to exceed your normal jumping range, and another game where you can have superhero jumping. Your 3.5 character who jumped a hydra made what sounds like a completely unrealistic jump (Which is fine for games that aren't trying to be super realistic), your 5e character was in a game where jumping was limited to more realistic distances.

For me the difference between 3e and 5e is that in 5e the DM can easily control whether superhero style jumping is allowed or not, whereas in 3e they didn't have that flexibility (Beyond rule 0 it's my game I can do what I want).

[JackPhoenix]

Because the stat block is what the actual game mechanics indicate a race is.

The old stats very much did have reference to them being soldiers, you literally pointed it out where it was.

Now was it a good representation of it?

No. It was really bad. Part of why I was initially excited to see what was happening to them. But now I got, well, this thing that doesn’t really have any features I associate with hobgoblins, and doesn’t match how the race featured in old fluff I liked, replaced with new fluff I don’t care about.

Hobgoblins are my favorite race, too. That's why I had nothing but derision for how they were presented (mechanically) in Volo, both because their main unique feature (Saving Face) doesn't make much sense for what they are supposed to be, and also because they've lacked iconic ability of every hobgoblin NPC: Martial Advantage. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if the PC version of a race lacks distinctive ability NPCs of the supposedly same race share, the designer has failed (Same goes for any attempt to present a powerful monster (like vampires, lycanthropes or minotaurs) as a balanced PC race). The Int bonus doesn't help, should've been +2 Con/+1 any. The new version somehow managed to be WORSE.

And I (partially) disagree with the idea that weapon and armor proficiencies are bad feature. They are great feature: They help show that every hobgoblin (or dwarf, elf, githyanki, or whatever) is a bit of a warrior, regardless of class. It's true it does nothing when you already pick relevant class, but that can be resolved. A mountain dwarf is a great example: While martials won't get anything from extra proficiencies, their racial ASI (and other features) help them... and conversely, while a dwarf wizard is all over that medium armor, he's got little use for that extra Str (that's where the Trasha's rules for ASI fail). Now, it's a problem with the hobgoblin, who not only gets armor proficiency only wizards and sorcerers get any benefit from, they also get bonus to an ability score martials don't care about, and no feature that helps martials more than casters (like, say, Martial Advantage). Or give something else if you would get the same proficiency twice, like you get a different skill proficiency if you'd get a skill from both class and background in the PHB, or switching proficiencies for different ones in Trasha.

[Psyren]

I didn't say weapon/armor proficiencies are a bad racial feature. Quite the opposite actually, they're arguably too good. For any build that would otherwise need to spend a feat or multiclass - the expected/balanced cost of such features - sidestepping that with a race selection is effectively getting a free feat on top of everything else the race gives you, and is massively more valuable in games that don't allow feats/multiclassing at all. WotC is obviously not fine with that anymore.

[Dr.Samurai]

Hobgoblins have always been strange to me. I kind of like their 3rd edition lore. I love Eberron but their eusocial/shared dream thing seemed out of left field for me. Giving them fey type and ancestry also seems out of place.

I've never played one though so no skin of my neck.

I am absolutely devastated that Primal Intuition and Aggressive have been removed from the Orc. GUTTED!

I was looking forward to playing an orc barbarian using his poor man's Cunning Action-Dash to drag hapless enemies around the battlefield. And with Primal Intuition/Primal Knowledge, that's a boatload of skills (combine with Aspect of the Tiger for even more).

Now, they're just lame half-orcs. Absolutely unreal...

I dreamed a dream...

[Psyren]

I am absolutely devastated that Primal Intuition and Aggressive have been removed from the Orc. GUTTED!

I was looking forward to playing an orc barbarian using his poor man's Cunning Action-Dash to drag hapless enemies around the battlefield. And with Primal Intuition/Primal Knowledge, that's a boatload of skills (combine with Aspect of the Tiger for even more).

Now, they're just lame half-orcs. Absolutely unreal...

I dreamed a dream...

Orcs can still bonus action Dash actually - and they aren't restricted to moving towards a perceptible enemy now, they can use the speed boost to go anywhere.

They lost the Intimidate skill (questionably useful even if you were the face, which they almost never were), and in exchange gained temporary hit points, Relentless Endurance, and lost their Int penalty. Much more useful arguably.

[Athan Artilliam]

I dont understand how people can have an issue with Hobgoblin weapon proficiencies but seem to be okay with Elven ones.

NB4 "actually I don't like those either". If people really did care about the elves being portrayed as a bunch of racial militants like this apparent Hobgoblin "stereotype", elves would have been forced back to the censor machine for the same reasons.
{Scrubbed}

[Xervous]

I dont understand how people can have an issue with Hobgoblin weapon proficiencies but seem to be okay with Elven ones.

NB4 "actually I don't like those either". If people really did care about the elves being portrayed as a bunch of racial militants like this apparent Hobgoblin "stereotype", elves would have been forced back to the censor machine for the same reasons.
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Who is to say it’s not on the schedule? They didn’t ship their PHB revision yet. A big gripe with Tasha’s was that it was an incomplete change. Here we see another step towards a uniform implementation of their goal. They’ll probably finish up in 2024 at this rate.

[Psyren]

I dont understand how people can have an issue with Hobgoblin weapon proficiencies but seem to be okay with Elven ones.

I'm not. I want consistency. But core races are not in MotM; we have to wait for 2024 for those updates.

EDIT: I'll also add that racial weapon proficiencies and racial armor proficiencies are not the same thing. A weapon proficiency amounts to maybe a couple of extra points of damage on average most of the time, unless your race gets you something truly impactful like a heavy polearm or hand crossbow or something. Armor proficiency however literally switches on entire class features/builds that were previously inaccessible, and that should carry a commensurate build cost (feat/multiclass). So even if in 2024 they keep "all elves regardless of upbringing know how to shoot a longbow" - for whatever reason - I don't see that as equivalent to "Hobgoblin and Dwarf sorcerers can breakdance in scale mail."

[Dienekes]

D&D is obviously very loose with where the line is with this sort of stuff, but if we take the classic Fey thing where they can't tell a lie. That's not a cultural thing, they physically can't lie presumably because of magic. So it would make sense to have that as a racial feature whereas for Dwarves where lore wise it's just culturally frowned upon to lie shouldn't have a feature. I would assume for Hobgoblin's and their new feature it's because they are deciding this is an expression of their fey magic rather then regular etiquette.

See this is kind of the sticking point for me. Personally, I’m a fan of making different species as different from humans as I can get them. And as such I am completely fine with a species having a feature that for humans would be cultural or learned behavior, that for this other species is ubiquitous. It’s not a cultural trait. Everyone is like that.

I’m perfectly fine with that.

What annoys me is when that justification is used inconsistently. It’s ok that all Hobgoblins have etiquette taboos because they are fey.

But it somehow wasn’t ok that all Hobgoblins have a regiments martial mentality, because that would be applying culture to the whole race.

You can’t have it both ways. In the lore Hobgoblin martial inclination was in their blood. They were the creators of the first martial art, because that was how Maglubiyet shaped them. That justification is exactly the same as all of this fey race have the usually cultural etiquette taboos since it’s how their magic makes them act.


Right, and the designers subsequently realized that mechanic is unnecessary and may even be unbalancing.



You're requesting they staple on additional limits/implications that don't need to be there. Out of... what, appeal to tradition? If they gave Hobgoblins back these proficiencies, what would you be okay with them removing in exchange?

That is not what I said. I am fine with weapon and armor proficiencies being removed. They have some real gameplay issues. But I would have preferred the direction to maintain the base Hobgoblin lore as much as possible and implement it into their mechanics.

Hobgoblins as shaped by Maglubiyet into creatures entirely focused on warfare. That’s cool. I would like to see mechanical implementation of that lore. It does not have to be reapplying weapon and armor proficiencies, but I would have liked the new Hobgoblins to maintain the old focus instead of this new fey thing.

What would I get rid of in return? Well literally all the fey stuff. Hobgoblins have never been fey. They’ve never been associated with fey magic or the feywild. It is a new addition straight from this book and I’d be completely fine with it disappearing just as fast.



And proficiency with a martial weapon is needed for that? As noted previously, many non-soldiers use martial weapons. Armies also contain doctors, counselors, engineers, janitors, chaplains etc.

Nope, but something is needed for it.



Their lore? You know, the thing that's still there?

Well what parts? What about their lore spoke to you? I loved Red Hand of Doom, myself. I enjoy the idea of the mentality of a species warped to entirely focus on war and bloodshed. I enjoy thinking how they can be used as a vehicle to show how such militarism would effect an entire species and the horrors of uncompromising total war. They’re frankly my favorite of the monstrous races, by a fair mile.


Hobgoblins are my favorite race, too. That's why I had nothing but derision for how they were presented (mechanically) in Volo, both because their main unique feature (Saving Face) doesn't make much sense for what they are supposed to be, and also because they've lacked iconic ability of every hobgoblin NPC: Martial Advantage. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if the PC version of a race lacks distinctive ability NPCs of the supposedly same race share, the designer has failed (Same goes for any attempt to present a powerful monster (like vampires, lycanthropes or minotaurs) as a balanced PC race). The Int bonus doesn't help, should've been +2 Con/+1 any. The new version somehow managed to be WORSE.

And I (partially) disagree with the idea that weapon and armor proficiencies are bad feature. They are great feature: They help show that every hobgoblin (or dwarf, elf, githyanki, or whatever) is a bit of a warrior, regardless of class. It's true it does nothing when you already pick relevant class, but that can be resolved. A mountain dwarf is a great example: While martials won't get anything from extra proficiencies, their racial ASI (and other features) help them... and conversely, while a dwarf wizard is all over that medium armor, he's got little use for that extra Str (that's where the Trasha's rules for ASI fail). Now, it's a problem with the hobgoblin, who not only gets armor proficiency only wizards and sorcerers get any benefit from, they also get bonus to an ability score martials don't care about, and no feature that helps martials more than casters (like, say, Martial Advantage). Or give something else if you would get the same proficiency twice, like you get a different skill proficiency if you'd get a skill from both class and background in the PHB, or switching proficiencies for different ones in Trasha.

You mostly cover why I dislike weapon proficiency. It can be flavorful, but it doesn’t actually promote playing the classes that it is designed to complement. I have a similar issue with Goblin’s mini-cunning action actually. But in general, to show a race is good with magic, they get a free cantrips. You know who can use a free cantrip? Literally everyone. To show that a race is particularly skillful they get a free skill. Awesome, just don’t select the same skill for your class or background. To show martial prowess, some races get a weapon proficiency. You know who can use that? Not martials. So in effect, the race is pushed toward playing any class except the ones that the designers were trying to create a thematic link toward. Not great design in my opinion.

If Hobgobs had martial advantage that would alleviate a bit of the problem, yeah.

[Kane0]

Regarding racial armor prof being better on casters than martials (specifically without locked racial ability stats to help balance them out), perhaps add 'if you gain proficiency in the same armor from your class you instead gain your choice of the defense, protection or interception fighting style'

Perhaps also extend the same thing to races with natural armor that also take a class that gets unarmored defence?

[Psyren]

Hobgoblins have never been fey.

Somebody better dig up William Shakespeare and tell him how wrong he was then.


Well what parts? What about their lore spoke to you? I loved Red Hand of Doom, myself. I enjoy the idea of the mentality of a species warped to entirely focus on war and bloodshed. I enjoy thinking how they can be used as a vehicle to show how such militarism would effect an entire species and the horrors of uncompromising total war. They’re frankly my favorite of the monstrous races, by a fair mile.

As did I. And they kept that, while also marrying that with a fey origin. That's elegant to me.

[Dienekes]

Somebody better dig up William Shakespeare and tell him how wrong he was then.


Fine. Never been fey in D&D. The game we are currently talking about.



As did I. And they kept that, while also marrying that with a fey origin. That's elegant to me.

But removed it from the stat block which is disappointing to me.

[Psyren]

Fine. Never been fey in D&D. The game we are currently talking about.

They are now. In the game we're currently talking about.

If anything they are going back to the creatures' mythological roots (which I can't elaborate on because of forum rules, but which Shakespeare was likely drawing inspiration from with his own portrayals.) The game designers are free to do that.


But removed it from the stat block which is disappointing to me.

If your character's entire identity was tied to a free weapon proficiency then it wasn't a very strong identity. You can be "focused on war and bloodshed" without that.

[Dienekes]

They are now. In the game we're currently talking about.

If anything they are going back to the creatures' mythological roots (which I can't elaborate on because of forum rules, but which Shakespeare was likely drawing inspiration from with his own portrayals.) The game designers are free to do that.

They’re free to do whatever they want. I’m also free to not like it. They’re free to make elves and dwarves the same species, and hags, most witches, and trolls explicitly undead to go back to their Norse roots if they wanted as well. And I’d also probably dislike that as well.

I liked the old lore.




If your character's entire identity was tied to a free weapon proficiency then it wasn't a very strong identity. You can be "focused on war and bloodshed" without that.

It was not the entire character. But it was an expression of the race’s identity through mechanics. Which is something I value.

[Psyren]

I’m also free to not like it.

No argument here :smallsmile:

[Dr.Samurai]

I think, clearly, the obvious solution that has occurred naturally to a big brain such as myself is... a splat book for each race, going into the various lores and cultures for each ethnic group, and providing numerous subclasses or racial variants.

So, by way of example, a Hobgoblin book with 14 different takes on hobgoblins and 40 pages of lore and culture dedicated to each one.

They have already given elves and tieflings this treatment, so that helps with covering the PHB races...

[Kane0]

I think, clearly, the obvious solution that has occurred naturally to a big brain such as myself is... a splat book for each race, going into the various lores and cultures for each ethnic group, and providing numerous subclasses or racial variants.

So, by way of example, a Hobgoblin book with 14 different takes on hobgoblins and 40 pages of lore and culture dedicated to each one.

They have already given elves and tieflings this treatment, so that helps with covering the PHB races...

Well yeah we have fizbans dragon book, why not have the book on celestials, the one on fiends, the one on undead, the one on goblinoids, and so on.

[Dr.Samurai]

Well yeah we have fizbans dragon book, why not have the book on celestials, the one on fiends, the one on undead, the one on goblinoids, and so on.
That would be amazing. A book fleshing out all the celestials and then doing a treatment on Aasimar. Or one fleshing out all the undead and then doing Revenants.

I would love that.

Not as much as buying a book full of all the races we are currently playing with now, but with less lore. But it would be close...

[Kane0]

That would be amazing. A book fleshing out all the celestials and then doing a treatment on Aasimar. Or one fleshing out all the undead and then doing Revenants.

I would love that.

Not as much as buying a book full of all the races we are currently playing with now, but with less lore. But it would be close...

There is precedent for that sort of thing. Fiend folio, book of vile darkness, libris mortis, etc

[Rukelnikov]

It was not the entire character. But it was an expression of the race’s identity through mechanics. Which is something I value.

Its the same tendency that we've seen since Tasha's, PCs don't get to have racial identity anymore.

[Telok]

DMG 5:

"The rules don't account for every possible situation that might arise during a typical D&D session. For example, a player might want his or her character to hurl a brazier of hot coals into a monster's face. How you determine the outcome of this action is up to you." And every DM I've played with calls for additional rolls which, because math, increases the chance for failure. Thats what they determine. I fail to understand how it that supports your statement:
"Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
And 5e itself, as a system, encourages this kind of creativity as well in ways that 3.5 failed to do."


Why are the DCs always over 10? This seems like different expectations between the dm/player. 5e doesn't really set those expectations
The DCs are always over 10 because, as I understand it from the DMs, DCs 10 and under are for easy stuff which by definition doesn't warrant rolls.

What I was responding to was "I find 3.5e to be far more limited than 5e. 3.5 is the kind of game where you can't swing from a chandelier because there's no swing from a chandelier skill or feat", which is stating that 5e has a better system for performing plysical stunts than 3.x. Yet every 5e game I experience the opposite due to DMs asking for rolls and characters having low bonuses or rolls.

[JackPhoenix]

I think, clearly, the obvious solution that has occurred naturally to a big brain such as myself is... a splat book for each race, going into the various lores and cultures for each ethnic group, and providing numerous subclasses or racial variants.

So, by way of example, a Hobgoblin book with 14 different takes on hobgoblins and 40 pages of lore and culture dedicated to each one.

They have already given elves and tieflings this treatment, so that helps with covering the PHB races...

See, that would convince me to give WotC my money again. Solves the issue with monsters having fluff fitting no actual setting (though that could've also been solved by giving 5e a default setting in the first place. One of the very few things I liked about 4e) and being generalized in a way that doesn't fit existing settings. Eberron goblinoids are not friggin' fairies.

If they want goblins being fey, dragons being some weird multi-planetary hiveminds spawned from raw magic and similar crap, they should publish a setting where that's true, instead of trying to force their stupid ideas in existing setting where they absolutely don't fit.


The DCs are always over 10 because, as I understand it from the DMs, DCs 10 and under are for easy stuff which by definition doesn't warrant rolls.

What I was responding to was "I find 3.5e to be far more limited than 5e. 3.5 is the kind of game where you can't swing from a chandelier because there's no swing from a chandelier skill or feat", which is stating that 5e has a better system for performing plysical stunts than 3.x. Yet every 5e game I experience the opposite due to DMs asking for rolls and characters having low bonuses or rolls.

That's more of a GM problem than the game's problem. Which, admittedly, could be fixed if the game provided better advice for inexperienced GMs.

[Dienekes]

Its the same tendency that we've seen since Tasha's, PCs don't get to have racial identity anymore.

Now, while I get this reaction. And in some cases I even agree with it. By using the Tasha rules elves no longer have any natural agility, nor do they have keen ears and eyes grant them high perception. In fact as far as I can tell elves identity as of Tasha’s is… they don’t sleep. Which is not really something I think many people actually consider a pillar of elfism.

But, I don’t think it’s entirely true, always, especially in this case.

The new Hobgoblin has an identity. It’s not even a bad one. Rumpelstiltskin the race is as fine a foundation for a species as any other.

It just has nothing to do with what I value about Hobgoblins.

[Telwar]

See, that would convince me to give WotC my money again. Solves the issue with monsters having fluff fitting no actual setting (though that could've also been solved by giving 5e a default setting in the first place. One of the very few things I liked about 4e) and being generalized in a way that doesn't fit existing settings. Eberron goblinoids are not friggin' fairies.

That would be great.

They're not going to, because at some point WotC decided that putting effort into settings wasn't worth their time or effort. This stems from the mountain of unsold AD&D2e setting box sets that they inherited from TSR, but even in 3e they published a lot of materials for Forgotten Realms and Eberron; I have thirteen hardcover supplements for Eberron, and fifteen for FR (with two softcovers, and I'm pretty sure I'm missing a couple). That got ratcheted down significantly with 4e, with 2-3 books per setting (Player book, DM book, and maybe an adventure).

Instead, in a time where publishing setting material that can be used and enjoyed by the literally millions of new players they've gotten, to aid them in building their own worlds by poaching/stealing material, WotC and affiliates have published, let's see...SCAG, Rising from the Last War, the Wildermont setting from Critical Role, and now three MTG settings. Of those, the only one that's really new is the Wildermont setting. Everything else is basically riding their long tail of 2e and 3e content, or MTG content.


If they want goblins being fey, dragons being some weird multi-planetary hiveminds spawned from raw magic and similar crap, they should publish a setting where that's true, instead of trying to force their stupid ideas in existing setting where they absolutely don't fit.

I really do think they need a new setting, just for 5e. The Realms and Eberron have at least a little baggage, and this would let this crop of developers make their mark.

We're not going to see that, of course. If they were going to have a new setting for 5.5, we likely would have heard about it, at least if they were going to do a setting search, which would be my preferred way of handling it. But who knows?

[Psyren]

What I was responding to was "I find 3.5e to be far more limited than 5e. 3.5 is the kind of game where you can't swing from a chandelier because there's no swing from a chandelier skill or feat", which is stating that 5e has a better system for performing plysical stunts than 3.x. Yet every 5e game I experience the opposite due to DMs asking for rolls and characters having low bonuses or rolls.

3.5e has two obstacles to "stunts" / freeform actions:

1) A prescriptive skill system - Skills like "Tumble," "Search" and "Perform" are very specific about what actions you can do with them, including rigid/predefined DCs.

2) Requiring build resources to go outside the skill system - spending feats, spending skill tricks, spending levels on PrCs, etc.

The end result is that if you want to do something not called out in the base rules, you're encouraged to find the one and only splat method for doing it, like needing to be a Justicar (CWar) before you can hogtie someone with some rope.


And every DM I've played with

Yet every 5e game I experience

I believe you and I'm sorry you had these experiences, but there are better DMs out there who actually follow the DMG's advice on this. It's my sincere hope you get to play with one one day.

[Rukelnikov]

3.5e has two obstacles to "stunts" / freeform actions:

1) A prescriptive skill system - Skills like "Tumble," "Search" and "Perform" are very specific about what actions you can do with them, including rigid/predefined DCs.

2) Requiring build resources to go outside the skill system - spending feats, spending skill tricks, spending levels on PrCs, etc.

The end result is that if you want to do something not called out in the base rules, you're encouraged to find the one and only splat method for doing it, like needing to be a Justicar (CWar) before you can hogtie someone with some rope.

Tiying someone up was one of the base uses of Use Rope, the tied creature had to make a contested Escape Artist vs your roll to tie them.

I can't believe that anyone that played 3.5 can argue 5e allows for more. I may like 5e more than 3e because ofits simplicity, but there's no denying in 3e you could play pretty much whatever the hell you wanted.

[qube]

I believe you and I'm sorry you had these experiences, but there are better DMs out there who actually follow the DMG's advice on this. It's my sincere hope you get to play with one one day.Do note that any game works if you have a good DM.

At the very least, if there's a pattern of DMs not the advice - it's still a fault of 5e - as it failed to make clear that the "advice" is more rule then hint.


I can't believe that anyone that played 3.5 can argue 5e allows for more. I may like 5e more than 3e because ofits simplicity, but there's no denying in 3e you could play pretty much whatever the hell you wanted.it's a natural side effect of giving options.

The more options you have, the more one has the natural tendency to let them be railroaded in those options.
The less options you have, the more one has the natural tendency to refavor into what one needs.

(of course, this is just an argument on human nature. Cold logic obviously points out one could equally reflavor - regardless of the amount of options)

As example: consider, in extreme, the children's game of make belief - you can do anything there.

[Tanarii]

I can't believe that anyone that played 3.5 can argue 5e allows for more. I may like 5e more than 3e because ofits simplicity, but there's no denying in 3e you could play pretty much whatever the hell you wanted.
3e had more ways to build characters, with pre-set character buttons you could push.

5e has more open-ended resolution to allow the DM and player to figure out a way to do things without pre-set character buttons you can push.

3e's skill system was probably intended to be a universal open-ended resolution system the same way that 5es ability check system is. But in practice it wasn't anything like it, especially because of the example DC tables, which got worse over time as 3.5 and the ELH and other splats came out. It became limiting, not extensible.

That's not to say 5e doesn't have its flaws. The DCs in the DMG are too high by about 5 points, and the advice not to call for DCs below 10 seems to result in many DMs instead still calling for the same number of checks, but using 10 as a minimum.

[Witty Username]

The change is permanent doesn't mean it can't be dispelled, if the duration is permanent, then the magic is always present, then dispel magic can be used.

For a permanent non dispelable effect, it should be instantaneous, like a fireball, the magic came and went, and the burns it left have no magic in them.

Reincarnate may be a better example than fireball given the discussion.


I think, clearly, the obvious solution that has occurred naturally to a big brain such as myself is... a splat book for each race, going into the various lores and cultures for each ethnic group, and providing numerous subclasses or racial variants.

So, by way of example, a Hobgoblin book with 14 different takes on hobgoblins and 40 pages of lore and culture dedicated to each one.

They have already given elves and tieflings this treatment, so that helps with covering the PHB races...

So like a Libiris Mortis, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, and maybe some things like Races of the Wild, Races of Destiny and Races of Stone?
I see a couple of potential issues, one being that we are trying to avoid system bloat. The other being that I already have those books (Lore is easy to loot from 3.5). I think if Wotc went this route it would require them to bring Gnoll back to salvageable (YMMV, but I have tried to use gnolls, they are very difficult to use as written without being a generic dumb monster in 5e)



The more options you have, the more one has the natural tendency to let them be railroaded in those options.
The less options you have, the more one has the natural tendency to refavor into what one needs.

(of course, this is just an argument on human nature. Cold logic obviously points out one could equally reflavor - regardless of the amount of options)

As example: consider, in extreme, the children's game of make belief - you can do anything there.
To follow up on this point:
See OSR and Free Kriegsspiel for further reading, many smaller RPGs borrow or rework versions of D&D basic because of this.
The most basic version of this is mechanics that dictate player behavior and restrict the DMs ability to arbitrate, to take a 5e example charisma is used for persuasion checks, so if your character has low charisma you can be gatekeeped out of social encounters due to poor stats, where an RPG with no social rolling can be more free depending on DM adjudication, this gets worse in 3.5 where characters can spend a lot of character resources to specialize in persuasive skills so either the low mechanic character is forced out or the high mechanic character feels the effects of invalidated effort. D&D basic has none of these mechanics and social encounters are expected to be resolved via RP, so the number of options for the players goes up.

[Psyren]

Do note that any game works if you have a good DM.

At the very least, if there's a pattern of DMs not the advice - it's still a fault of 5e - as it failed to make clear that the "advice" is more rule then hint.

A pattern of bad DMs can still be unique to an individual (or at least an uncommonly bad streak of luck) rather than a systemic fault. Whether or not his DMs saw it, the passage I quoted is nevertheless still written in the DMG.


3e had more ways to build characters, with pre-set character buttons you could push.

5e has more open-ended resolution to allow the DM and player to figure out a way to do things without pre-set character buttons you can push.

3e's skill system was probably intended to be a universal open-ended resolution system the same way that 5es ability check system is. But in practice it wasn't anything like it, especially because of the example DC tables, which got worse over time as 3.5 and the ELH and other splats came out. It became limiting, not extensible.

That's not to say 5e doesn't have its flaws. The DCs in the DMG are too high by about 5 points, and the advice not to call for DCs below 10 seems to result in many DMs instead still calling for the same number of checks, but using 10 as a minimum.

This.

[Rukelnikov]

3e had more ways to build characters, with pre-set character buttons you could push.

5e has more open-ended resolution to allow the DM and player to figure out a way to do things without pre-set character buttons you can push.

3e's skill system was probably intended to be a universal open-ended resolution system the same way that 5es ability check system is. But in practice it wasn't anything like it, especially because of the example DC tables, which got worse over time as 3.5 and the ELH and other splats came out. It became limiting, not extensible.

That's not to say 5e doesn't have its flaws. The DCs in the DMG are too high by about 5 points, and the advice not to call for DCs below 10 seems to result in many DMs instead still calling for the same number of checks, but using 10 as a minimum.

Even if we assumed that to be true (which I'm not really sure its the case), the ability to play as 95% of the creatures that inhabit any given setting more than makes up for it and then some.

[Dr.Samurai]

So like a Libiris Mortis, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, and maybe some things like Races of the Wild, Races of Destiny and Races of Stone?
I see a couple of potential issues, one being that we are trying to avoid system bloat.
Well... I am not trying to avoid system bloat. I am not even sure what the criteria is to designate something as "bloat" and something else as "rulebook".

I am saying I would buy books like those, as opposed to the stuff they're putting out now.

The other being that I already have those books (Lore is easy to loot from 3.5).
Sure but note that another portion of the conversation is the mechanics. And lore is changing. So the point is if you're going to change hobgoblin lore and mechanics, you could do it in a book about goblinoids that goes more in depth into the lore and offers different takes, so that some people can keep what they like and others can get something new that they like.

Presumably, if you're expanding on the races to include all types of different kinds, you will be coming up with new lore as well.

I think it can be done. I think we can all caution about "bloat", but we'll be doing it as we buy these books off the shelves and expand our library into the next edition. We'll be like "man... that sure is a bloated edition, but I love each and every one of my 67 5th edition splat books".

I think if Wotc went this route it would require them to bring Gnoll back to salvageable (YMMV, but I have tried to use gnolls, they are very difficult to use as written without being a generic dumb monster in 5e)
In Eberron there are fiend worshipping gnolls, and gnolls of the Znir pact. And of course that can be expanded upon. This can be done for each monster, and, at least for me, it would feel like depth, as opposed to clogging up the system somehow.

[Tanarii]

Even if we assumed that to be true (which I'm not really sure its the case), the ability to play as 95% of the creatures that inhabit any given setting more than makes up for it and then some.

No it doesn't. That's a bug, not a feature.

I don't want my players coming to a game assuming they can play drow, or Goblinoids, or Orcs. Or even Dragonborn or Tiefling, but I've lost that battle. Thanks WotC!

[Rukelnikov]

No it doesn't. That's a bug, not a feature.

I don't want my players coming to a game assuming they can play drow, or Goblinoids, or Orcs. Or even Dragonborn or Tiefling, but I've lost that battle. Thanks WotC!

Well, we see it as complete opposites then, to me that's the greatest feature of 3e, and the greatest bug of 5e.

If there are Dragons and Nagas, and Ghaele's in the setting why can't I play them? DnD is about choice, why limit those choices?

[Psyren]

Even if we assumed that to be true (which I'm not really sure its the case), the ability to play as 95% of the creatures that inhabit any given setting more than makes up for it and then some.

Maybe it's because I haven't had my coffee yet, but I see no correlation whatsoever between the skill resolution mechanic and the races you're allowed to play in a given campaign.


Well... I am not trying to avoid system bloat. I am not even sure what the criteria is to designate something as "bloat" and something else as "rulebook".

I am saying I would buy books like those, as opposed to the stuff they're putting out now.

Ed Greenwood is putting out more setting books in DM's Guild (https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2022/01/dd-faerun-creator-will-soon-debut-thay-land-of-the-red-wizards.html), and they include racial background stuff. Seems to me this solves the problem without WotC having to cram a dozen sidebars into every setting-agnostic product.



I don't want my players coming to a game assuming they can play drow, or Goblinoids, or Orcs. Or even Dragonborn or Tiefling, but I've lost that battle. Thanks WotC!

Only two of these are in this book though? The rest are core?

[Dr.Samurai]

Despite me wanting to play an orc barbarian very badly, and my comment on a book of goblinoids, I agree with Tanarii. I’m partial to the traditional classic races, as opposed to all the exotic stuff getting thrown in. But if you’re going to do it, let’s go full throttle!


Ed Greenwood is putting out more setting books in DM's Guild, and they include racial background stuff. Seems to me this solves the problem without WotC having to cram a dozen sidebars into every setting-agnostic product.
So I don't follow the economics behind WotC and D&D. Is the idea (or reality, I suppose) that each campaign setting won't make enough profit to justify making the books?

In other words, books don't have to be setting agnostic if you make them for each setting. If WotC put out a Dwarves of the Forgotten Realms splat similar to the idea above, where they flesh out Shield Dwarves and Gold Dwarves and the weird jungle dwarves, etc. and added new race options/subclasses/magic items and whatever, I probably wouldn't buy it. But I'm sure tons of people would.

But if they did a Dwarves of Eberron book, I'd most certainly purchase that.

But would WotC not make money this way because there aren't enough Eberron/Greyhawk/Dark Sun fans to support this model?

And then apart from that, what exactly is a "setting-agnostic product"? Is Fizban's setting agnostic? Is the "multiverse" setting agnostic? Are tieflings, and their association to devils, setting agnostic? I'm skeptical that you can publish setting-agnostic mechanics.

[Xervous]

Well, we see it as complete opposites then, to me that's the greatest feature of 3e, and the greatest bug of 5e.

If there are Dragons and Nagas, and Ghaele's in the setting why can't I play them? DnD is about choice, why limit those choices?

I’m of the camp that I love having rules for playing them, but the expectation is that a player showing up to a randomly sampled campaign gets a ‘no’ on the oddballs. Perhaps it’s a matter of GM tools being delivered as player options. They say the GM can do whatever with the game but there’s this misplaced, vaguely attributed expectation that someone can show up wanting to play (for example) a warforged/drow/bird person and it’s the GM who would be taking that away. I’ve only seen it discussed here in hypotheticals, at least as far as the examples stuck in my memory.

[Rukelnikov]

Maybe it's because I haven't had my coffee yet, but I see no correlation whatsoever between the skill resolution mechanic and the races you're allowed to play in a given campaign.

We are talking about which system "allows you to do more", for me, being able to play almost anything I can come across is allowing me to do a lot of stuff.

OTOH, the way I (and the other usual DM of my group) handle ability/skill checks, hasn't changed much since 3e. You describe what you want to do, the DM picks the attribute/skill they deem most appropriate and set a DC, and there's often input from the players:

"I wanna know how long ago these flowers must have blossomed going by their current appeareance"

"Roll nature"

"I don't have nature, but I've expertise in Survival, can I maybe use that?"

"Ok, but the DC will be a bit higher" (Still a net gain for the player usually.)

[Psyren]

We are talking about which system "allows you to do more", for me, being able to play almost anything I can come across is allowing me to do a lot of stuff.

You can play as a monster in both games, and balance will be a lost cause either way.


OTOH, the way I (and the other usual DM of my group) handle ability/skill checks, hasn't changed much since 3e. You describe what you want to do, the DM picks the attribute/skill they deem most appropriate and set a DC, and there's often input from the players:

"I wanna know how long ago these flowers must have blossomed going by their current appeareance"

"Roll nature"

"I don't have nature, but I've expertise in Survival, can I maybe use that?"

"Ok, but the DC will be a bit higher" (Still a net gain for the player usually.)

I'm fine with this but apparently Telok's succession of DMs are not.


Despite me wanting to play an orc barbarian very badly, and my comment on a book of goblinoids, I agree with Tanarii. I’m partial to the traditional classic races, as opposed to all the exotic stuff getting thrown in. But if you’re going to do it, let’s go full throttle!


So I don't follow the economics behind WotC and D&D. Is the idea (or reality, I suppose) that each campaign setting won't make enough profit to justify making the books?

In other words, books don't have to be setting agnostic if you make them for each setting. If WotC put out a Dwarves of the Forgotten Realms splat similar to the idea above, where they flesh out Shield Dwarves and Gold Dwarves and the weird jungle dwarves, etc. and added new race options/subclasses/magic items and whatever, I probably wouldn't buy it. But I'm sure tons of people would.

But if they did a Dwarves of Eberron book, I'd most certainly purchase that.

But would WotC not make money this way because there aren't enough Eberron/Greyhawk/Dark Sun fans to support this model?

For obvious reasons I can't answer what level of profit WotC considers to be worthwhile. All I can say is that DM's Guild provides a vector for the setting authors (Ed Greenwood, Keith Baker etc) to produce official/"canon" material in WotC's settings under their Community Content license. On a case by case basis, WotC has the right to then incorporate this material into their own first-party modules, AL etc.


And then apart from that, what exactly is a "setting-agnostic product"? Is Fizban's setting agnostic? Is the "multiverse" setting agnostic? Are tieflings, and their association to devils, setting agnostic? I'm skeptical that you can publish setting-agnostic mechanics.

It's pretty straightforward - "setting-agnostic" means "not tied to or assuming a specific setting." Both multiversal (multi-setting) and purely mechanical (no setting) material falls under that umbrella.

Fizban's is indeed setting-agnostic. The character obviously is from Krynn, but the information inside that book applies to dragons from multiple settings, and even the deities (Tiamat and Bahamut/Paladine) are not tied to a specific setting anymore, being present in at least three if not more. Even for one like Eberron where they aren't explicitly present (I think...?) things like Dragonborn and Drakewardens are.

[Rukelnikov]

You can play as a monster in both games, and balance will be a lost cause either way.

5e has no real rules to play monsters, if you mean the sidekick system, it explicitly prevents you from taking class levels a regular PC could take, my Illithid has been studying at Lantan's Academy of Artifice for many years, why cant he learn even the most basic infusions?

LA was far from a perfect system, but it was much more robust, and didn't unbalance the game more than class and feat selection did.


I'm fine with this but apparently Telok's succession of DMs are not.

I understand that, the point is that he would have had the same problem in either edition.

EDIT: I think the biggest change I've noticed regarding the two skill systems is the removal of trained skills (I seem to remember a couple instances in 5e where preficiency in a skill is specifically called for, but I might be remembering wrong). That was a good decision IMO, it simplifies things, and the rare cases where it could make sense not to allow a roll for someone who doesn't have proficiency can be handled by the DM, being the exception, not the norm.


I’m of the camp that I love having rules for playing them, but the expectation is that a player showing up to a randomly sampled campaign gets a ‘no’ on the oddballs. Perhaps it’s a matter of GM tools being delivered as player options. They say the GM can do whatever with the game but there’s this misplaced, vaguely attributed expectation that someone can show up wanting to play (for example) a warforged/drow/bird person and it’s the GM who would be taking that away. I’ve only seen it discussed here in hypotheticals, at least as far as the examples stuck in my memory.

Well, of course the DM can say no, and a lot of times it makes sense that they do, if playing a certain class or race would meaningfully lessen the campaign or setting they are playing in.

However, there is a difference between the DM saying no, and the rules basically saying "work it up with your DM" (which is kinda the current state for 5e, maybe MotM will give us some better guidelines, but I'm not very hopeful)

[Psyren]

LA was far from a perfect system, but it was much more robust, and didn't unbalance the game more than class and feat selection did.

A robust turd is still a turd so we'll have to agree to disagree. I'd rather have no playable monster rules at all than that mess.


I understand that, the point is that he would have had the same problem in either edition.

Agreed, bad DMs are bad regardless of edition. That's not exactly revelatory though.


Well, of course the DM can say no, and a lot of times it makes sense that they do, if playing a certain class or race would meaningfully lessen the campaign or setting they are playing in.

However, there is a difference between the DM saying no, and the rules basically saying "work it up with your DM" (which is kinda the current state for 5e, maybe MotM will give us some better guidelines, but I'm not very hopeful)

I'm very interested in the MotM foreword as well.

But part of the point of this book isn't just to empower players to feel entitled, it's to signal to DMs "hey, loosen the thumbscrews a bit, turns out that a shifter and a deep gnome in the same party won't make most games implode after all and we have years of feedback to prove it."

[Telok]

I'm fine with this but apparently Telok's succession of DMs are not.

I think most of the issue is that lots of DMs (in RL & talking to other people, not the posters here ) tend to call for rolls when they don't know if, or by how much, a character should succeed at something. 5e is predicated more on only rolling in high stress "do or die" situation where the character only ever gets one try. That isn't communicated well, and the medium-middle-average-normal DC of 15 is significantly non-trivial to characters without max stat+expertise and/or buff stacks. Leading to (in general) lots of failed rolls for anything but rogue dex checks, bard cha checks, & spells.

Where it intersects with the races/classes thing is that, like feats & multiclassing, races & classes are presented as player facing instead of DM facing. So people percieve it as a player's choice to use a race or class. While things that are tucked away in the DMG are seen as the DM's choice if they'll ever be used or even mentioned as a possibility.

Its like options on your smartphone. If you put a "opt into sharing personal info" wiget on the main screen people are going to use it. If you bury it under a couple layers of settings options people will never see it and let any app default to having full access to the contact & call & message & location logs. The PH & options books are player facing, like the phone's main screen, while the DMG & MM options are hidden or default to being denied to players.

[Naanomi]

I always disliked 3.5's skill system ultimately. It encouraged either maxing out a skill with variable DC, getting a skill to always succeed on some skill check you cared about, meeting prereqs (and then dumping the skill), or never investing anything.

In practice it meant rolls rarely mattered, you either knew you were going to fail (you didn't invest in it enough to care) or you were virtually guaranteed success (you optimized for a particular skill check or just invested in it every level); variability was rare... A problem that got worse as you got higher levels (and scaling DCs kept upping the disparity).

I kind of like a game where it is worth trying something not knowing if you will succeed beforehand

[Xervous]

Its like options on your smartphone. If you put a "opt into sharing personal info" wiget on the main screen people are going to use it. If you bury it under a couple layers of settings options people will never see it and let any app default to having full access to the contact & call & message & location logs. The PH & options books are player facing, like the phone's main screen, while the DMG & MM options are hidden or default to being denied to players.

I’d look at it more like BIOS settings. Generally speaking it’s not expected you’ll need to tweak it, but you can dig down to that level if you know what you’re doing and need it. I mainly want to shift the dialogue away from telemetry and user tracking because that has negative connotations that we’re best served without. The point of having oddball race / core system settings buried is that the inexperienced user doesn’t need it and can easily run into issues if they go about uninformed, flipping switches.

[Scots Dragon]

Having had a chance to look at a copy, I'm feeling vindicated over the complaints about the lack of inclusion of Eilistraee. Lot of mention of how drow in the Forgotten Realms don't all follow Lolth, not a single mention of the most prominent alternative who many of them do follow.

[Tanarii]

Well, of course the DM can say no, and a lot of times it makes sense that they do, if playing a certain class or race would meaningfully lessen the campaign or setting they are playing in.

However, there is a difference between the DM saying no, and the rules basically saying "work it up with your DM" (which is kinda the current state for 5e, maybe MotM will give us some better guidelines, but I'm not very hopeful)
Putting the onus on the Dm to deny instead of the DM to allow is not acceptable for non-standard races, especially monsters, extremely non-human, or classically enemy races.

In a splat (so this book) or setting book, sure, that's fine. But in the PHB it's a bug.

[Psyren]

Having had a chance to look at a copy, I'm feeling vindicated over the complaints about the lack of inclusion of Eilistraee. Lot of mention of how drow in the Forgotten Realms don't all follow Lolth, not a single mention of the most prominent alternative who many of them do follow.

The only Drow in this book are monsters/villainous, so Eilistraeeans not being represented makes perfect sense.

I haven't seen any complaints about Drow myself. Plenty about Kobolds though.


I think most of the issue is that lots of DMs (in RL & talking to other people, not the posters here ) tend to call for rolls when they don't know if, or by how much, a character should succeed at something. 5e is predicated more on only rolling in high stress "do or die" situation where the character only ever gets one try. That isn't communicated well, and the medium-middle-average-normal DC of 15 is significantly non-trivial to characters without max stat+expertise and/or buff stacks. Leading to (in general) lots of failed rolls for anything but rogue dex checks, bard cha checks, & spells.

I guess I just don't comprehend how a DM can't know the success chance before calling for a roll, when they're the one both setting the DC and have access to every character's sheet. (I mean, they do, right?)



Where it intersects with the races/classes thing is that, like feats & multiclassing, races & classes are presented as player facing instead of DM facing. So people percieve it as a player's choice to use a race or class. While things that are tucked away in the DMG are seen as the DM's choice if they'll ever be used or even mentioned as a possibility.

Its like options on your smartphone. If you put a "opt into sharing personal info" wiget on the main screen people are going to use it. If you bury it under a couple layers of settings options people will never see it and let any app default to having full access to the contact & call & message & location logs. The PH & options books are player facing, like the phone's main screen, while the DMG & MM options are hidden or default to being denied to players.

MotM, like Volo's before it, is both player-facing and DM-facing. It just depends on the section you're in. I don't see an issue with that.

[Telok]

I’d look at it more like BIOS settings

I think thats probably too technical. Most everyone has passing familarity with privacy settings, but very few know what a BIOS is.

A different example: the "anyone can try to disarm a weapon in combat" thing is in the DMG. All games I've seen have used feats & multiclassing, but none have ever allowed that. Most players I've talked to aren't heavy forum users and haven't read the DMG, they don't even know it exists and therefore can't use it. Even if they did know they have to ask because its not presented as a PC ability.

The thing about books having a "DM" section is meaningless. If a player has bought a $30 USD book the're going to read it. The contents of the book are player facing & assumed available by them because they paid the money for it. That may not be intended, but its real.

[Psyren]

A different example: the "anyone can try to disarm a weapon in combat" thing is in the DMG. All games I've seen have used feats & multiclassing, but none have ever allowed that. Most players I've talked to aren't heavy forum users and haven't read the DMG, they don't even know it exists and therefore can't use it. Even if they did know they have to ask because its not presented as a PC ability.

That's because they're not by default. That's intentional.

"This section provides new action options for combat. They can be added as a group or individually to your game."



The thing about books having a "DM" section is meaningless. If a player has bought a $30 USD book the're going to read it. The contents of the book are player facing & assumed available by them because they paid the money for it. That may not be intended, but its real.

Yeah... and? "Player races are intended for players, monsters are intended for DMs" is not a revelation.

[KorvinStarmast]

If there are Dragons and Nagas, and Ghaele's in the setting why can't I play them? DnD is about choice, why limit those choices? What a vague, broad question. We appear to be seeing a version of "because dragons" argument here, and the why is "because it doesn't fit that DM's world."
You have one character that you are responsible for. The DM has the whole world.

Putting the onus on the Dm to deny instead of the DM to allow is not acceptable for non-standard races, especially monsters, extremely non-human, or classically enemy races.

In a splat (so this book) or setting book, sure, that's fine. But in the PHB it's a bug. It may also inform why it is often hard to find a DM. The overhead can get kinda high.

[Dr.Samurai]

That's because they're not by default. That's intentional.

"This section provides new action options for combat. They can be added as a group or individually to your game."
Do you see this as similar to the Lizardfolk "make a weapon or shield out of corpses" ability, in that by including it only as an option for the Battle Master, you signal that not everyone else would be able to attempt to disarm an opponent?

[Psyren]

Do you see this as similar to the Lizardfolk "make a weapon or shield out of corpses" ability, in that by including it only as an option for the Battle Master, you signal that not everyone else would be able to attempt to disarm an opponent?

Of course not. Even for DMs who don't allow disarms without the BM maneuver, any martial build can pick that up with Martial Adept from the same book (and later, Superior Technique from Tasha's even without a feat.) Comparatively, there is no feat or fighting style that allowed non-Lizardfolk to get Cunning Artisan.

(Also - to reiterate the point I made earlier about Cunning Artisan - that's a learnable skill, not a biological impossibility for anyone else.)

[Rukelnikov]

A robust turd is still a turd so we'll have to agree to disagree. I'd rather have no playable monster rules at all than that mess.

I don't know what turd you are talking about. From Savage Species onwards, the plurality of pcs was astounding, for almost a decade I don't think the whole group repeated base race, and it worked perfectly well.

[Amechra]

I guess I just don't comprehend how a DM can't know the success chance before calling for a roll, when they're the one both setting the DC and have access to every character's sheet. (I mean, they do, right?)

I have had to explain basic probability to a shocking number of otherwise intelligent (but new) DMs.

...

As a side note, 5e is actually really bad at being an open ruleset (though it's way better than, say, 3.5). The big issue it has is that the rules it does have tend to have a lot of moving parts, and it doesn't give you much guidance for fiddling with them on the fly.

Let's take "I want to intimidate that guy over there" as an example. In a system like FATE, that would just involve using the Provoke skill to either Attack them or Create An Advantage, with solid guidelines for what those actions should achieve (Attacking someone inflicts Stress of an appropriate type, while Creating An Advantage would make a temporary Aspect that you can Invoke for free one time). What's more, you can use this general set of rules for anything, from shooting someone with a gun to swinging from the chandeliers to taking out a bank loan. As a result, a new GM who has learned how the basic set of actions work can improvise pretty much anything and have some assurance that they're making a fair ruling.

Compare that to 5e, where a DM would have to come up with what kind of action you'd need to do the thing, determine whether or not they want to actually use the Frightened condition or improvise something else, figure out a fair duration for whatever effect they picked out, figure out how they're setting the DC in the first place (Is it an opposed roll? If so, what is the person being intimidated supposed to roll? If it isn't an opposed roll, what's the DC?), and make sure that whatever they came up with isn't better than a fear-causing ability that already exists in the system (because the assumption is that the published stuff is balanced, so anything you come up with that's better is "overpowered"). That's a lot for a newer DM, especially if they're in the middle of running a fight and one of their players wanted to get creative.

In one system, the GM literally just needs to set a DC, and the game system handles the rest. In the other system, the DM is handed a bunch of parts and told to deal with it.

[Rukelnikov]

What a vague, broad question. We appear to be seeing a version of "because dragons" argument here, and the why is "because it doesn't fit that DM's world."
You have one character that you are responsible for. The DM has the whole world.

And I said, its ok for the DM to say no if it doesn't fit the campaign or setting.

However, in general, most creatures that PCs can encounter fit the setting (some don't, like those whose whole point is that they are "alien", like creatures from the far realm or smth like that), so if PCs fight Ogres or Troglodytes, it stands to reason that they fit the setting. The problem could be that they may not fit the campaign, perhaps the DM doesn't wanna deal with having every town react to the adventuring party that's coming to town with an Ogre, that's understandable.

But for those of us who would like the possibility of playing monster races, it would be awesome to get some 5e design level rules, instead of basically having to homebrew a system for myself.


Putting the onus on the Dm to deny instead of the DM to allow is not acceptable for non-standard races, especially monsters, extremely non-human, or classically enemy races.

Sure, it should be a variant rule, like the many others the game already has.


In a splat (so this book) or setting book, sure, that's fine. But in the PHB it's a bug.

It should be in the Monster Manual.

[KorvinStarmast]

And I said, its ok for the DM to say no if it doesn't fit the campaign or setting. Ah, then we agree more than I expected. :smallsmile:

[Rukelnikov]

I always disliked 3.5's skill system ultimately. It encouraged either maxing out a skill with variable DC, getting a skill to always succeed on some skill check you cared about, meeting prereqs (and then dumping the skill), or never investing anything.

In practice it meant rolls rarely mattered, you either knew you were going to fail (you didn't invest in it enough to care) or you were virtually guaranteed success (you optimized for a particular skill check or just invested in it every level); variability was rare... A problem that got worse as you got higher levels (and scaling DCs kept upping the disparity).

I kind of like a game where it is worth trying something not knowing if you will succeed beforehand

That did happen, but usually not before lvl 10, I think it was during the 9-12 levels that the game turned up a notch and bonuses started pushing the d20 off its bounds, and you could only reasonably contest stuff at which you were good at, like, if an enemy was stealthed, and you didn't invest in perception, by level 13 you would almost assuredly only make the check on a nat 20.


Ah, then we agree more than I expected. :smallsmile:

:smallsmile:

[Tanarii]

And I said, its ok for the DM to say no if it doesn't fit the campaign or setting.As a DM, I don't want the default to be my having to say no for races or classes. I want it to be my saying yes. I don't think we're that far of in agreement, but this is an important difference to me.

Even variant rules in the PHB are a pain for me as a DM in terms of player entitlement. Feats, multiclassing, Drow, and variant ability scores with skills are all often assumed by players. (Not to mention posters, but that doesn't affect me directly, so to speak.)



Sure, it should be a variant rule, like the many others the game already has.

It should be in the Monster Manual.
It's surprising how many players think they're entitled to content from the Monster Manual (or splats). :smallamused: c.f. conjure spells.

But as long as it's condensed so as to not eat up valuable monster space, it's not a bad place for it. Nor is the DMG.

[Psyren]

I don't know what turd you are talking about.

Savage Species

A good start I'd say.



As a side note, 5e is actually really bad at being an open ruleset (though it's way better than, say, 3.5). The big issue it has is that the rules it does have tend to have a lot of moving parts, and it doesn't give you much guidance for fiddling with them on the fly.

Let's take "I want to intimidate that guy over there" as an example. In a system like FATE, that would just involve using the Provoke skill to either Attack them or Create An Advantage, with solid guidelines for what those actions should achieve (Attacking someone inflicts Stress of an appropriate type, while Creating An Advantage would make a temporary Aspect that you can Invoke for free one time). What's more, you can use this general set of rules for anything, from shooting someone with a gun to swinging from the chandeliers to taking out a bank loan. As a result, a new GM who has learned how the basic set of actions work can improvise pretty much anything and have some assurance that they're making a fair ruling.

Compare that to 5e, where a DM would have to come up with what kind of action you'd need to do the thing, determine whether or not they want to actually use the Frightened condition or improvise something else, figure out a fair duration for whatever effect they picked out, figure out how they're setting the DC in the first place (Is it an opposed roll? If so, what is the person being intimidated supposed to roll? If it isn't an opposed roll, what's the DC?), and make sure that whatever they came up with isn't better than a fear-causing ability that already exists in the system (because the assumption is that the published stuff is balanced, so anything you come up with that's better is "overpowered"). That's a lot for a newer DM, especially if they're in the middle of running a fight and one of their players wanted to get creative.

In one system, the GM literally just needs to set a DC, and the game system handles the rest. In the other system, the DM is handed a bunch of parts and told to deal with it.

I'm in no way saying 5e is as good as FATE at being an open-ended system. But at least it is open-ended. You're not locked into a minute of interaction just to crack your knuckles, orc barbarians aren't pushovers, your mortal enemy won't become your friend for an hour, completely shattering someone's resolve in a fight won't be something they can overcome simply by flanking. In short, "5e >3e at skills" is not saying "5e > FATE", nor is it even that high a bar.



But for those of us who would like the possibility of playing monster races, it would be awesome to get some 5e design level rules, instead of basically having to homebrew a system for myself.

You might get your wish. Eventually. Just because they are not vomiting out sourcebooks this edition doesn't mean this is off the table entirely.



It's surprising how many players think they're entitled to content from the Monster Manual (or splats). :smallamused: c.f. conjure spells.

But as long as it's condensed so as to not eat up valuable monster space, it's not a bad place for it. Nor is the DMG.

You choose what they get for a conjure spell. It spells this out quite explicitly and in a player-facing way.

[JackPhoenix]

You choose what they get for a conjure spell. It spells this out quite explicitly and in a player-facing way.

The only spells that allows the player to pick what they summon (from a pre-determined list, with all relevant stat blocks being in the PHB) are Find Familiar and Summon Steed. Conjure Elementals lets you pick the area of [element], which influences what'll appear, but doesn't give you more precise control, and everything else lets you only choose number and CR of relevant creatures, again with no control over what kind of creatures fitting those parameters will appear. And the spells are indeed explicit: they all explicitly mention the DM has the creatures' statistics.

[Psyren]

The only spells that allows the player to pick what they summon (from a pre-determined list, with all relevant stat blocks being in the PHB) are Find Familiar and Summon Steed. Conjure Elementals lets you pick the area of [element], which influences what'll appear, but doesn't give you more precise control, and everything else lets you only choose number and CR of relevant creatures, again with no control over what kind of creatures fitting those parameters will appear. And the spells are indeed explicit: they all explicitly mention the DM has the creatures' statistics.

Yes, exactly - my "you" there, meant the DM, not the player.

Note that even the CR doesn't matter. The player chooses an option containing their desired CR, but the GM can send anything of that CR "or lower."

[Scots Dragon]

The only Drow in this book are monsters/villainous, so Eilistraeeans not being represented makes perfect sense.

Okay, let's check.


Drow Favored Consort
Nearly every priestess of Lolth, including the powerful drow matron mother in this book, takes an attractive drow as consort. Chosen as much for beauty as for magical might, a drow favored consort can hold their own in both conversation and combat. Combining the roles of advisor, protector, and beloved, some favored consorts are content with a supporting role, while more ambitious consorts aspire to be the power behind the throne—or even to claim the throne themselves.

Those favored consorts who prove their cunning gain the ear, and perhaps even the heart, of their priestess and are relied on to provide useful advice. No position of consort is assured for long, though; Lolth’s priestesses are notoriously fickle, and a consort must often contend with rivals.

Some favored consorts work behind the scenes to undermine the evils encouraged by Lolth. Others can be found in Underdark cities free of Lolth’s influence, where these powerful spellcasters apply their might toward ending her tyranny.

The Drow Favoured Consort, which is listed as 'any alignment' could easily have mentioned Eilistraee here. There are full several inches of blank page space. And as we'll see, it's not because she's part of the Forgotten Realms, because they have no problem mentioning the Realms.


Drow House Captain
A drow house captain leads the troops of an Underdark faction, whether defending a stronghold or leading forces against enemies. These officers make extensive study of strategy and tactics to become effective leaders in battle.

Among Lolth’s devotees in the city of Menzoberranzan in the Forgotten Realms, each noble house entrusts the leadership of its military forces to a house captain, who is typically the first or second son of a drow matron mother (appears in this book). Elsewhere drow house captains fight in the war against Lolth, often allying with duergar and others who also wish to rid their subterranean world of that god’s malevolence.

That's another half-blank page where the Drow House Captain could, and probably should, have mentioned Eilistraee. It actually makes no sense to mention the Forgotten Realms and Menzoberranzan and then not mention the primary opposition in that setting.

It doesn't end here.


Drow Matron Mother
Among drow followers of Lolth, each noble house is led by a matron mother, an influential priestess of Lolth charged with carrying out the god’s will while also advancing the interests of the family. Matron mothers embody the scheming and treachery associated with the Queen of Spiders. Each stands at the center of a vast conspiratorial web, with demons, spiders, and conscripted soldiers positioned between them and their enemies. Although matron mothers command great power, that power depends on maintaining the Spider Queen’s favor, and the goddess sometimes capriciously takes back what she has given. The stat block here represents a matron mother at the height of her power.

A matron mother is almost never encountered alone. She is typically accompanied by a drow favored consort and a drow house captain, each of whom appears in this book. Other Underdark creatures might also be in the priestess’s presence, providing protection or advice.

Mothers of Rebellion
Some matron mothers renounce Lolth and join the war against their former goddess. Such drow could be of any alignment, and they lose the following abilities in the stat block: Lolth’s Fickle Favor, Summon Servant, and Compel Demon. Even without these abilities, drow matron mothers are formidable opponents, and several of them hold positions of great influence in the Underdark armies arrayed against the followers of Lolth.

Once again. No mention of Eilistraee despite the fact that the Matron Mother is a cleric. She should have some clarification of who she would worship alternatively.


Drow Shadowblade
Drow shadowblades steal down the dim passages of the Underdark, bound on errands of mayhem. They protect enclaves and Underdark cities from enemies and track down thieves who make off with prized treasures. In the city of Menzoberranzan in the Forgotten Realms, noble houses often employ shadowblades to eliminate rivals from other houses. In communities free of Lolth’s sway, they serve as spies tasked with foiling the plots of that demon lord’s cult. In any role they take on, they move undetected until the moment they attack—and then they are the last thing their victims see.

A shadowblade gains their powers over shadow via a ritual in which they kill a shadow demon and mystically prevent it from re-forming in the Abyss, siphoning its essence into themselves.

Once again. Why wouldn't you mention Eilistraee here? It requires the insertion of six words; 'such as those who worship Eilistraee'.

The Forgotten Realms is mentioned eight times. In at least two of those other Realms deities are referred to; Torm, Tyr, and Ilmater are mentioned as commonly being associated with the ki-rin, and then Shar is mentioned in relation to the Shadow Mastiff.

[JackPhoenix]

Yes, exactly - my "you" there, meant the DM, not the player.

Ah, I misunderstood what were you saying.


Note that even the CR doesn't matter. The player chooses an option containing their desired CR, but the GM can send anything of that CR "or lower."

I would argue the players gets to pick both the number and CR, if they for some reason wanted to (try to) summon only one non-dire wolf instead of an entire wolfpack (and then may still get a cow instead). Though, as a GM, while I'll still be the final arbiter on what'll appear, I would consider what the player wants. I'm more open to a player who wants certain theme for the character's summons, if the creature is appropriate for the location and I take the intent into consideration. If they want a bird to sent a message, I won't give them a toad, though they'll may get a bat, owl, raven or an eagle instead of a messenger pigeon.

[Psyren]

Why wouldn't you mention Eilistraee here?

Because she's just not that important in the grand scheme. Eventually you'll realize it.


Ah, I misunderstood what were you saying.

No worries!


I would argue the players gets to pick both the number and CR, if they for some reason wanted to (try to) summon only one non-dire wolf instead of an entire wolfpack (and then may still get a cow instead).

They do pick the CR, but that's not necessarily what will appear - that's all I'm saying.

[TotallyNotEvil]

I took a look at a PDF a friend sent me, and in case it's correct, it seemed like a whole lot of races are getting resistance to Charm, many to Frightened and, interestingly enough, quite a few are getting 2 1/day spells (with the usual stipulation of paying slots to use more than the free daily uses). I found that particularly neat, and I'm curious to see how that changes the meta, inasmuch as there is one.

No armor proficiencies that I recall, but a few races, IIRC the elf and gith variants, had the ability to pick any weapon/tool proficiency every trance, which seems to add a lot of versatility.

The "Prof bonus/LR" standard was throughly in play.

Sad to see Medium Minotaurs and Centaurs.

[Scots Dragon]

Because she's just not that important in the grand scheme. Eventually you'll realize it.

That’s not your initial statement. Your initial statement was that it wouldn’t be logical to mention her as these drow are villainous. Except they aren’t automatically villainous and can be supporting NPCs.

But now I’ve demonstrated that it’s because she’s not important enough to be mentioned in literally the exact place that’s most logical to mention her?

[Psyren]

Except they aren’t automatically villainous and can be supporting NPCs.

Right, you can do that with lots of monster entries. The Archmage statblock doesn't have to represent an antagonist.


But now I’ve demonstrated that it’s because she’s not important enough to be mentioned in literally the exact place that’s most logical to mention her?

Yep, you got it.


I took a look at a PDF a friend sent me, and in case it's correct, it seemed like a whole lot of races are getting resistance to Charm, many to Frightened and, interestingly enough, quite a few are getting 2 1/day spells (with the usual stipulation of paying slots to use more than the free daily uses). I found that particularly neat, and I'm curious to see how that changes the meta, inasmuch as there is one.

One big effect this has is that Githzerai can be used to get Shield onto any casting class. They get it as a racial spell, which they can then cast using their class spell slots.

This is particularly nice for Arcane Tricksters, who had to choose between Shield and Find Familiar before.

[Scots Dragon]

Right, you can do that with lots of monster entries. The Archmage statblock doesn't have to represent an antagonist.
Uh huh.

Not what you said earlier:

The only Drow in this book are monsters/villainous, so Eilistraeeans not being represented makes perfect sense.

As for Eilistraee being minor, I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.

[Psyren]

Uh huh.

Not what you said earlier:

They are. That there's a tiny blurb effectively saying "you can make some of these non-evil if you want" doesn't mean they're required to start handing out Dancing Lady pamphlets.


As for Eilistraee being minor, I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.

Yeah that thread really ran its course. Not rehashing it either.

[Witty Username]

Putting the onus on the Dm to deny instead of the DM to allow is not acceptable for non-standard races, especially monsters, extremely non-human, or classically enemy races.

In a splat (so this book) or setting book, sure, that's fine. But in the PHB it's a bug.

I don't understand.
How is this different than giving an allow list of races in your character generation setup? I have done this myself, allowed races: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Goliath, Dragonborn (black, red, and white only) and Tiefling. This was an actual list I used for my current game.

Nothing in 5e prevents you from doing this.

[Rukelnikov]

As a DM, I don't want the default to be my having to say no for races or classes. I want it to be my saying yes. I don't think we're that far of in agreement, but this is an important difference to me.

Even variant rules in the PHB are a pain for me as a DM in terms of player entitlement. Feats, multiclassing, Drow, and variant ability scores with skills are all often assumed by players. (Not to mention posters, but that doesn't affect me directly, so to speak.)

That has probably a lot to do with how the community at large and AL play, even when MC and Feats are "variant" rules, they've been made the default by a large part of the community (I'd assume most of the community, but not really sure)


It's surprising how many players think they're entitled to content from the Monster Manual (or splats). :smallamused: c.f. conjure spells.

Well, yeah, they kinda do actually, there are features and spells that target the MM. Like Wild Shape or Polymorph, you could tell them to polymorph blindly without knowing their stats, and just rol and you'll tell them whether they hit or not. While I'd be okay with that kind of play (for all the tome not only if I'm PMed), the default expectation for DnD is that you have access to your own stats. So them feeling entitled to part of the MM is logical if their features point to it.


But as long as it's condensed so as to not eat up valuable monster space, it's not a bad place for it. Nor is the DMG.

Yeah, it shouldn't take up much space. But I think it fits there better than the DMG since it comes with the things it applies to.

[Millstone85]

So, does MotM provide a new version of the elven origin story, or are they keeping that for the next errata of MToF?

It is a simple matter of changing "The elves who most revered Lolth became drow" to "Some elves continued to revere Lolth, particularly among those who had settled in the Underdark".

[Rukelnikov]

So, does MotM provide a new version of the elven origin story, or are they keeping that for the next errata of MToF?

It is a simple matter of changing "The elves who most revered Lolth became drow" to "Some elves continued to revere Lolth, particularly among those who had taken home in the Underdark".

I don't understand, those sentences arent even conveying a similar meaning. The former is telling you which subgroup of elves became the drow, the latter is informing you of whom kept on venerating Lolth, those sentences could perfectly go one after the other, they don't replace themselves.

[Millstone85]

I don't understand, those sentences arent even conveying a similar meaning. The former is telling you which subgroup of elves became the drow, the latter is informing you of whom kept on venerating Lolth, those sentences could perfectly go one after the other, they don't replace themselves.What they have in common is that they introduce drow in the story.

And the original sentence ought to disappear, if WotC is to be any consistent with their new statement (https://dnd.wizards.com/dndstudioblog/sage-advice-book-updates) that "Drow are united by an ancestral connection to the Underdark, not by worship of Lolth".

[Rukelnikov]

What they have in common is that they introduce drow in the story.

And the original sentence ought to disappear, if WotC is to be any consistent with their new statement (https://dnd.wizards.com/dndstudioblog/sage-advice-book-updates) that "Drow are united by an ancestral connection to the Underdark, not by worship of Lolth".

IIRC... They were banished from the Tel'Qessir by Corellon, severing their connection to Arvandor, thus why they can't enter reverie.

[Millstone85]

IIRC... They were banished from the Tel'Qessir by Corellon, severing their connection to Arvandor, thus why they can't enter reverie.Which is exactly what is being retconned out, or maybe made specific to the Forgotten Realms, if WotC isn't being full of it with their PR statements.

WotC no longer wants drow to be a cursed race. Instead, their new take is that each branch of the elven family "was shaped by an environment in the earliest days of the multiverse: forests (wood elves), places of ancient magic on the Material Plane (high elves), oceans (sea elves), the Feywild (eladrin), the Shadowfell (shadar-kai), and the Underdark (drow)".

On that note, I think eladrin are ill-conceived, because there should logically be wood eladrin, sea eladrin and dark eladrin. The Feywild is not all forest. Shadar-kai are a different matter, because even they might want to stay clear of the Shadowfell's undergrounds and watery depths. Seriously, it must be vantablack down there.

[Rukelnikov]

Which is exactly what is being retconned out, or maybe made specific to the Forgotten Realms, if WotC isn't being full of it with their PR statements.

WotC no longer wants drow to be a cursed race. Instead, their new take is that each branch of the elven family "was shaped by an environment in the earliest days of the multiverse: forests (wood elves), places of ancient magic on the Material Plane (high elves), oceans (sea elves), the Feywild (eladrin), the Shadowfell (shadar-kai), and the Underdark (drow)".

On that note, I think eladrin are ill-conceived, because there should logically be wood eladrin, sea eladrin and dark eladrin. The Feywild is not all forest. Shadar-kai are a different matter, because even they might want to stay clear of the Shadowfell's undergrounds and watery depths. Seriously, it must be vantablack down there.

As long as they don't retcon the Forgotten Realms i'm fine with it.

[KorvinStarmast]

It's surprising how many players think they're entitled to content from the Monster Manual (or splats). :smallamused: c.f. conjure spells. I think that it's a cultural thing that is informed by computer games and guides posted all over the internet (One example being the Arreat Summit for Diablo II; there are many others. (And I can accept that I may be a little off in this estimation).

[Tanarii]

Well, yeah, they kinda do actually, there are features and spells that target the MM. Like Wild Shape or Polymorph, you could tell them to polymorph blindly without knowing their stats, and just rol and you'll tell them whether they hit or not. While I'd be okay with that kind of play (for all the tome not only if I'm PMed), the default expectation for DnD is that you have access to your own stats. So them feeling entitled to part of the MM is logical if their features point to it.
It points them to their DM. That's not an entitlement to go browsing through the MM checking stats for mechanical optimization.

[Rafaelfras]

As long as they don't retcon the Forgotten Realms i'm fine with it.
Yeah, 4th Ed shows how bad this can be.
Leave the Realms alone.
In my campaign I had a Drow player that became the original race the Drow were before being cursed. This was a very special moment that sanitized drows will never allow for

[Psyren]

That has probably a lot to do with how the community at large and AL play, even when MC and Feats are "variant" rules, they've been made the default by a large part of the community (I'd assume most of the community, but not really sure)

The Feats survey happening right now could be our best glimpse into what percentage of playgroups use them.



Well, yeah, they kinda do actually, there are features and spells that target the MM. Like Wild Shape or Polymorph, you could tell them to polymorph blindly without knowing their stats, and just rol and you'll tell them whether they hit or not. While I'd be okay with that kind of play (for all the tome not only if I'm PMed), the default expectation for DnD is that you have access to your own stats. So them feeling entitled to part of the MM is logical if their features point to it.

To be fair, there are common creature statblocks included in the PHB (Appendix D) for exactly this reason. The DM can rule that you only get to conjure or polymorph into those so that you're not MM-diving.


So, does MotM provide a new version of the elven origin story, or are they keeping that for the next errata of MToF?

It is a simple matter of changing "The elves who most revered Lolth became drow" to "Some elves continued to revere Lolth, particularly among those who had settled in the Underdark".

Elves aren't in the book other than the Drow monster entries (unless you count Eladrin?) I didn't buy the bundle so won't have the full context until May.


Which is exactly what is being retconned out, or maybe made specific to the Forgotten Realms, if WotC isn't being full of it with their PR statements.

WotC no longer wants drow to be a cursed race. Instead, their new take is that each branch of the elven family "was shaped by an environment in the earliest days of the multiverse: forests (wood elves), places of ancient magic on the Material Plane (high elves), oceans (sea elves), the Feywild (eladrin), the Shadowfell (shadar-kai), and the Underdark (drow)".

FR Drow being shaped by the Underdark and banished there by some antediluvian schism are not mutually exclusive (as any Lolthite will proudly tell you.) The important thing is that there are exceptions and doubts to their version of the story that can help justify heroic Drow.


On that note, I think eladrin are ill-conceived, because there should logically be wood eladrin, sea eladrin and dark eladrin. The Feywild is not all forest. Shadar-kai are a different matter, because even they might want to stay clear of the Shadowfell's undergrounds and watery depths. Seriously, it must be vantablack down there.

The Feywild is a diverse biome but that doesn't mean every inch of it is equally impactful. Eladrin are tied to the Feywild's seasons, and those are more pronounced in wooded areas just like they are here.

[Rukelnikov]

It points them to their DM. That's not an entitlement to go browsing through the MM checking stats for mechanical optimization.

Polymorph doesn't mention the DM at all, and Wild Shape's only mention of the DM is the following:

"Worn equipment functions as normal, but the DM decides whether it is practical for the new form to wear a piece of equipment"

So yeah, they need access to the MM beasts at least in order to work, end elementals in the case of Moon Druids, they cannot know what their feature does, unless they check the MM.

[Tanarii]

Polymorph doesn't mention the DM at all, and Wild Shape's only mention of the DM is the following:I'm going to dodge this totally valid point by changing topics to both spell and feature are hugely OP and needing to be nerfed. And then tying it back in with: for example by removing reference to MM stats, and providing fixed benefits by creature size or something. :smalltongue:

[Psyren]

Polymorph doesn't mention the DM at all, and Wild Shape's only mention of the DM is the following:

"Worn equipment functions as normal, but the DM decides whether it is practical for the new form to wear a piece of equipment"

So yeah, they need access to the MM beasts at least in order to work, end elementals in the case of Moon Druids, they cannot know what their feature does, unless they check the MM.


I'm going to dodge this totally valid point by changing topics to both spell and feature are hugely OP and needing to be nerfed. And then tying it back in with: for example by removing reference to MM stats, and providing fixed benefits by creature size or something. :smalltongue:

*points to previous response*

There are beast stats in the PHB. The spells are weaker without MM access, but not unusable.

[Rukelnikov]

I'm going to dodge this totally valid point by changing topics to both spell and feature are hugely OP and needing to be nerfed. And then tying it back in with: for example by removing reference to MM stats, and providing fixed benefits by creature size or something. :smalltongue:

lol, ok :smalltongue:


*points to previous response*

There are beast stats in the PHB. The spells are weaker without MM access, but not unusable.

The elementals are not featured in the PHB, Moon Druids need to check the MM to know what their features do.

[Dr.Samurai]

It's pretty straightforward - "setting-agnostic" means "not tied to or assuming a specific setting." Both multiversal (multi-setting) and purely mechanical (no setting) material falls under that umbrella.

Fizban's is indeed setting-agnostic. The character obviously is from Krynn, but the information inside that book applies to dragons from multiple settings, and even the deities (Tiamat and Bahamut/Paladine) are not tied to a specific setting anymore, being present in at least three if not more. Even for one like Eberron where they aren't explicitly present (I think...?) things like Dragonborn and Drakewardens are.
Given all the angst over the changes to Drow...they were cursed, it's because of Lolth but some of them hid in the jungles or the frozen north, actually no it's because of the underdark... I can hardly accept that this is not "assuming a specific setting".

It appears that WotC is going to great lengths to streamline *their setting* for the rest of us. To call it "agnostic" seems innacurate. Anyone using this lore is using WotC's setting, and has to create sidebars to make it gel with their own setting or with some official campaign settings.

Case in point... literally nothing of the elven lore applies to Eberron. At all. So in what way are these efforts "universal" or making it so everyone can use it?

I'm stating the obvious here but, until they go purely mechanics-only (which they never will), they will always be assuming some sort of setting with the lore. So I don't get it. Again, the Fizban's stuff about dragons... doesn't apply to Eberron. Does it apply to people's homebrew games? No idea. But I don't think they can achieve what they are purportedly going for.

Now someone can dismiss Eberron and Dark Sun and Dragonlance as not mainstream settings, but then it's not really universal is it? It's more like... if you play within these couple of settings (FR/Greyhawk?) then this lore doesn't shake up too much and we can pretend it's universal and applies to everything...

[Naanomi]

On that note, I think eladrin are ill-conceived, because there should logically be wood eladrin, sea eladrin and dark eladrin.
I still think there should be Coure Eladrin, Bralani Eladrin, Ghaele Eladrin... You know, the celestials that cosmologically predated the appearance of elves by aeons and were big players in the War of Law and Chaos

[Psyren]

The elementals are not featured in the PHB, Moon Druids need to check the MM to know what their features do.

One feature, sure - but four elementals at level 10+ is still a tiny ask compared to either letting the player dig through every beast in the other book or carving them all out for them as early as 2.

EDIT:



Case in point... literally nothing of the elven lore applies to Eberron. At all. So in what way are these efforts "universal" or making it so everyone can use it?

Disagree. "Drow culture and biological divergence came about by them being in a dark place for centuries" does apply to every setting. In Eberron that place is a supernaturally thick jungle that leads underground instead of being completely subterranean, but it still counts.

[Naanomi]

Disagree
How about in Athas, where all elves (including the dark skinned elves beyond the last sea) are all modified proto-halflings, modified with biomancy to better survive the climate disaster they created?

[Dr.Samurai]

Drow in Eberron were loyalists to the Titan empire and magebred into their current form. Their complexion and abilities are the result of magic from the giants. In the case of another offshoot, it’s a shadowy negative energy source of power.

You can’t create “one setting” without changing the other settings. So trying to do so to avoid DMs having to modify things is a lost cause.

[Psyren]

How about in Athas, where all elves (including the dark skinned elves beyond the last sea) are all modified proto-halflings, modified with biomancy to better survive the climate disaster they created?

Athas doesn't officially exist in 5e yet. I assume when it does, people who are paid to answer these kinds of questions will.


Drow in Eberron were loyalists to the Titan empire and magebred into their current form. Their complexion and abilities are the result of magic from the giants.

And? That's not mutually exclusive with the environmental influences. The "essence of shadows" the Titans used to start the process came from somewhere, likely Khyber. Further, the Drow we know today are 40,000 years removed from the initial creations.

[GooeyChewie]

Disagree. "Drow culture and biological divergence came about by them being in a dark place for centuries" does apply to every setting. In Eberron that place is a supernaturally thick jungle that leads underground instead of being completely subterranean, but it still counts.


How about in Athas, where all elves (including the dark skinned elves beyond the last sea) are all modified proto-halflings, modified with biomancy to better survive the climate disaster they created?

I think the key thing is that "setting agnostic" does not mean that it applies to all settings. That term means the text applies to no setting in particular. If a particular setting contradicts setting agnostic text, then the setting text overrides the setting agnostic text. The setting agnostic text is useful for when a setting does not speak towards a particular detail, and you want to include some version of that detail in that setting.

[Naanomi]

Athas doesn't officially exist in 5e yet
Athas hasn't been detailed in 5e yet, but I think it has been listed as a place that exists a handful of times (though isn't a location listed for Dream of the Blue Veil, which I doubt works to get to and from Athas anyways)

[Psyren]

Athas hasn't been detailed in 5e yet, but I think it has been listed as a place that exists a handful of times (though isn't a location listed for Dream of the Blue Veil, which I doubt works to get to and from Athas anyways)

That's great and all, but doesn't change my reply in any way.


I think the key thing is that "setting agnostic" does not mean that it applies to all settings. That term means the text applies to no setting in particular. If a particular setting contradicts setting agnostic text, then the setting text overrides the setting agnostic text. The setting agnostic text is useful for when a setting does not speak towards a particular detail, and you want to include some version of that detail in that setting.

Indeed. It's also useful for when they want to emphasize that a given setting-specific detail is, in fact, unique to that setting - "X are usually Y alignment" for example.

[Rukelnikov]

One feature, sure - but four elementals at level 10+ is still a tiny ask compared to either letting the player dig through every beast in the other book or carving them all out for them as early as 2.

One feature is enough to prove PHB needs the MM in order for every part of it to work. Also, the highest CR in the PHB apendix is 1, meaning someone interested in playing a Moon Druid doesn't know what it'll get past level 2, or if constrained to those options, gets nothing past lvl 2.

If we go beyond PHB only, then Create Homunculus, Druid Groove, FGS directly point to the MM


The statistics of the homunculus are in the Monster Manual. It is your faithful companion...

These trees have the same statistics as an awakened tree, which appears in the Monster Manual, except they can't speak...

The creature has the statistics provided in the Monster Manual for the chosen form, though it is a celestial, a fey, or a fiend (your choice)...

Summon Greater Demon specifies you choose the demon type, and the two examples it gives do not appear on the PHB (Shadow Demon and Barlgura).

So in general, summoners and shapeshifters need the MM in order to know what their features do.

[Psyren]

My point is that needing the MM doesn't mean they are guaranteed carte blanche to dive through it. The DM can still pull out specific statblocks they have access to when that comes up. And while you're right about the PHB creatures being limited to CR 1, that's plenty of options for an inexperienced DM/table who won't have to deal with CR 2 creatures until Level 6 (i.e. Tier 2 of play.) Similarly, elementals won't come up until Tier 3. It's therefore easy for a new DM to say "for the first few sessions, you're limited to what's in the PHB until I feel more comfortable with running the game and with what you can do, at which point I will allow you more options."

[Rukelnikov]

My point is that needing the MM doesn't mean they are guaranteed carte blanche to dive through it. The DM can still pull out specific statblocks they have access to when that comes up. And while you're right about the PHB creatures being limited to CR 1, that's plenty of options for an inexperienced DM/table who won't have to deal with CR 2 creatures until Level 6 (i.e. Tier 2 of play.) Similarly, elementals won't come up until Tier 3. It's therefore easy for a new DM to say "for the first few sessions, you're limited to what's in the PHB until I feel more comfortable with running the game and with what you can do, at which point I will allow you more options."

Yeah, for the first few sessions, but the PHB is suppossed to get you thru to 20.

That's beside the point tbh, IMO the idea that "players can't check the MM" makes no sense, most DMs that also play have already consulted it. And many players get interested in creatures from it either from encountering them in-game or learning about them in other media (Folklore, Baldur's Gate, FR novels, Critical Role, etc...), why wouldn't they read about them in the MM if they are interested? IME that's a step towards players getting comfortable enough with the system to consider starting to DM, so not only do I not think its wrong, I encourage it.

[Psyren]

Yeah, for the first few sessions, but the PHB is suppossed to get you thru to 20.

That's beside the point tbh, IMO the idea that "players can't check the MM" makes no sense, most DMs that also play have already consulted it. And many players get interested in creatures from it either from encountering them in-game or learning about them in other media (Folklore, Baldur's Gate, FR novels, Critical Role, etc...), why wouldn't they read about them in the MM if they are interested? IME that's a step towards players getting comfortable enough with the system to consider starting to DM, so not only do I not think its wrong, I encourage it.

I'm not saying players are entirely forbidden from reading it. But the MM is very clearly intended to be DM-facing, right from the first three sentences in the intro. So as a player, I wouldn't expect to be entitled to 100% of its contents for summoning or transmuting purposes just because something is in there, even the subset of that content that fits the parameters of a given spell.

I agree its reasonable to expect elemental statblocks to be available once I hit Moon Druid 10, but those are easy enough to extract without opening the floodgates.

[KorvinStarmast]

One feature is enough to prove PHB needs the MM in order for every part of it to work. Hardly. And of course there's the "work with your DM" advice that I always offer.

So in general, summoners and shapeshifters need the MM in order to know what their features do. Depends on how much of the summoned creatures' actions are delegated to the player by the DM. I've seen a DM, to speed up play (he was right!) roll all of the hits and saves and stuff for the summoned critters (all he asked the player was "what do you want them to do?" A lot of players are too darned slow to be able to handle 6, 8, 10 summoned critters. (Anecdote: when our dwarf Champion blew the horn of valhalla some weeks back, and 10 berserkers showed up, he confessed straight up "what, I have to run them all?" and I volunteered to handle that for him (fellow player, but also a DM much of the time). He was happy for the help, he ran two of them, me the rest. I suspect that Playgrounders are mostly folks who can, though).

But the MM is very clearly intended to be DM-facing, right from the first three sentences in the intro. So as a player, I wouldn't expect to be entitled to 100% of its contents for summoning or transmuting purposes just because something is in there, even the subset of that content that fits the parameters of a given spell. And of course there's the "work with your DM" advice that I always offer to players.

I agree its reasonable to expect elemental statblocks to be available once I hit Moon Druid 10, but those are easy enough to extract without opening the floodgates. True.

[Rukelnikov]

I'm not saying players are entirely forbidden from reading it. But the MM is very clearly intended to be DM-facing, right from the first three sentences in the intro. So as a player, I wouldn't expect to be entitled to 100% of its contents for summoning or transmuting purposes just because something is in there, even the subset of that content that fits the parameters of a given spell.

I reject the idea that one needs some kind of reason to be able to check the MM, its no different than saying "hey you are a player you can't read the DMG magic items."


I agree its reasonable to expect elemental statblocks to be available once I hit Moon Druid 10, but those are easy enough to extract without opening the floodgates.

They should be made available during character creation, how can someone decide if that is what they wanna play if they don't know what it'll do?


Depends on how much of the summoned creatures' actions are delegated to the player by the DM. I've seen a DM, to speed up play (he was right!) roll all of the hits and saves and stuff for the summoned critters (all he asked the player was "what do you want them to do?" A lot of players are too darned slow to be able to handle 6, 8, 10 summoned critters. (Anecdote: when our dwarf Champion blew the horn of valhalla some weeks back, and 10 berserkers showed up, he confessed straight up "what, I have to run them all?" and I volunteered to handle that for him (fellow player, but also a DM much of the time). He was happy for the help, he ran two of them, me the rest. I suspect that Playgrounders are mostly folks who can, though).

My table usually goes with the unspoken rule of "please don't bring 10 minions to the table", in general summoners go for one or two creatures. Our parties usually have extra NPCs though (the paladin's retainer, a soul knife's pet dire wolf, a random kobold they befriended, etc), so when there's more than 1 NPC on the party's side we usually spread them among the players.

[Psyren]

I reject the idea that one needs some kind of reason to be able to check the MM, its no different than saying "hey you are a player you can't read the DMG magic items."

You can read whatever you want. Expecting them all to be available to you is not the same thing.



They should be made available during character creation, how can someone decide if that is what they wanna play if they don't know what it'll do?

The beasts included in the PHB are more than enough to make that decision, that's why they're there.

[Rukelnikov]

The beasts included in the PHB are more than enough to make that decision, that's why they're there.

Why? Other classes don't have their 10th level feature masked.

[Psyren]

Why? Other classes don't have their 10th level feature masked.

I said what I said. You can decide whether you want to be a moon druid without having the elemental statblock in front of you at chargen.

[Dr.Samurai]

Tangential to this discussion, I want to add that being a full caster and also having the ability to shapeshift into animals is so... incongruous to me that I always struggle to understand what a druid is.

And I know it should seem pretty simple to me. Wilderness spellcaster that can change into animals. But changing into animals seems like such a physical thing, that pairing it with full spellcasting throws me off.

Just thought I'd share. Carry on :smallsmile:.

[Rukelnikov]

I said what I said. You can decide whether you want to be a moon druid without having the elemental statblock in front of you at chargen.

DM fiat then

[PhoenixPhyre]

The PHB existed in published form before the MM. So no, there's no link there, not by necessity.

[Scots Dragon]

As long as they don't retcon the Forgotten Realms i'm fine with it.

Ship sailed on that one. Drow have previously been fully able to enter reverie in the Forgotten Realms.

[Rukelnikov]

Ship sailed on that one. Drow have previously been fully able to enter reverie in the Forgotten Realms.

Well, tbh I have almost no knowledge of anything that happened from 4th ed onwards, I know some Drow went back to being dark elves, were those the ones entering reverie?

[Psyren]

Tangential to this discussion, I want to add that being a full caster and also having the ability to shapeshift into animals is so... incongruous to me that I always struggle to understand what a druid is.

And I know it should seem pretty simple to me. Wilderness spellcaster that can change into animals. But changing into animals seems like such a physical thing, that pairing it with full spellcasting throws me off.

Just thought I'd share. Carry on :smallsmile:.

It's true that there's no other full caster remotely like the moon druid, one that just replaces its physical stats wholesale. I personally prefer the PF1 take on this concept but that would have been much harder to design in the time they had, what with 4e gushing metaphorical vital fluids everywhere and faith in WotC dwindling. So the 1/3 CR bandaid ended up being at least doable even though it shot the class scaling all to hell. I expect this to be the core subclass that gets the biggest changes in 5.5e.

[Anymage]

Yeah, for the first few sessions, but the PHB is suppossed to get you thru to 20.

That's beside the point tbh, IMO the idea that "players can't check the MM" makes no sense, most DMs that also play have already consulted it. And many players get interested in creatures from it either from encountering them in-game or learning about them in other media (Folklore, Baldur's Gate, FR novels, Critical Role, etc...), why wouldn't they read about them in the MM if they are interested? IME that's a step towards players getting comfortable enough with the system to consider starting to DM, so not only do I not think its wrong, I encourage it.

Players are free to read any books they like. And take inspiration from them, if it happens to strike.

Players who try to metagame, whether by digging through books for the perfect monster to summon/shapechange into or by reading up so they know the lore and abilities of whatever they happen to come across, are another matter. And I'd like to see the books written in such a way where the metagaming becomes less effective.

(For digging through books, I'd like to see more templates like the Tasha's Summon spells and a similar template based approach to a lot of shapechange style spells. For metagame knowledge, I'd like to see a bit in the DMG about refluffing monsters and a bit at the end of monster entries in the MM about alternate lore potential for various critters. Instead of trying to scrub the canonical drow backstory clean, giving the Lolthite explanation as the basic but also including the idea that they're just another environment elf or that they've sought powers from the shadowfell should be a nice encouragement reminding DMs that they can and should make things their own instead of feeling bound by canon.)

[Scots Dragon]

Well, tbh I have almost no knowledge of anything that happened from 4th ed onwards, I know some Drow went back to being dark elves, were those the ones entering reverie?

Drizzt himself enters reverie in the 3e-era novels.

[PhoenixPhyre]

For digging through books, I'd like to see more templates like the Tasha's Summon spells and a similar template based approach to a lot of shapechange style spells.

Strongly agree. Splat-book/monster-manual diving is a recipe for power creep. Especially since the power of such abilities grows asynchronously--instead of only increasing when you pick up new features, it increases whenever any monster book is published.

[qube]

I said what I said. You can decide whether you want to be a moon druid without having the elemental statblock in front of you at chargen.

One feature, sure - but four elementals at level 10+ is still a tiny ask compared to either letting the player dig through every beast in the other book or carving them all out for them as early as 2.

*points to previous response*

There are beast stats in the PHB. The spells are weaker without MM access, but not unusable.I can only presume you haven't taken into consideration, that that list doesn't contain all beasts ? The highest CR of the PHB creatures (incl. beasts) is CR1.

That means lvl 6+ moon druids wouldn't get new options.
Likewise, the Shapechange spell (a lvl 9 self-only concentration spell) seriously loses in power when your best option becomes brown bear.

Ancient dragons beware - I'm a Lvl 20 moon druid: I can now shift into a lion (AC 12 hp 26) at will !!

[Psyren]

I can only presume you haven't taken into consideration, that that list doesn't contain all beasts ? The highest CR of the PHB creatures (incl. beasts) is CR1.

That means lvl 6+ moon druids wouldn't get new options.
Likewise, the Shapechange spell (a lvl 9 self-only concentration spell) seriously loses in power when your best option becomes brown bear.

Yes, I know. See #218, #220, #223.

[Sception]

Shadar-kai are a different matter, because even they might want to stay clear of the Shadowfell's undergrounds and watery depths. Seriously, it must be vantablack down there.

I don't know about the Shadowfell's oceans, but per the Shadowfell's underground? Not even the Shadar-kai are emo enough to live in a place canonically called "the Shadow-Dark".

[qube]

Yes, I know. See #218, #220, #223.You also said


There are beast stats in the PHB. The spells are weaker without MM access, but not unusable.

I find it imposstible to see how you see that.
Shapechange, lvl 20 moon druids ...

when your even your best options are beast that have ACs lower then the attack modifier of enemies, and can be killed in a single attack ... calling this "not unusable" seems like the lowest bar in human history.

[Psyren]

You also said


There are beast stats in the PHB. The spells are weaker without MM access, but not unusable.

I find it imposstible to see how you see that.
Shapechange, lvl 20 moon druids ...

when your even your best options are beast that have ACs lower then the attack modifier of enemies, and can be killed in a single attack ... calling this "not unusable" seems like the lowest bar in human history.

Where did I say level 20 druids should be turning into CR 1 beasts? Strawman much?

[Rukelnikov]

Drizzt himself enters reverie in the 3e-era novels.

Oh, well maybe I'm missremembering stuff, I thought they couldn't enter reverie.


I don't know about the Shadowfell's oceans, but per the Shadowfell's underground? Not even the Shadar-kai are emo enough to live in a place canonically called "the Shadow-Dark".

ahahhahahahah

[ProsecutorGodot]

You also said


There are beast stats in the PHB. The spells are weaker without MM access, but not unusable.

I find it imposstible to see how you see that.
Shapechange, lvl 20 moon druids ...

when your even your best options are beast that have ACs lower then the attack modifier of enemies, and can be killed in a single attack ... calling this "not unusable" seems like the lowest bar in human history.

I think Psyren has been pretty clear that a player should be consulting their DM as the need arises, not planning out an exhaustive list of forms to take without their input.

For the early parts of play you have direct access to the primary wild shape forms you'd need, as you encounter more beasts or gain the ability to change into different forms then you can ask for more, but you're not putting forth a very convincing argument saying " but the 17+ level character should be doing more" because that player and the DM at the table are no longer inexperienced and can fix those problems on their own.

[Millstone85]

FR Drow being shaped by the Underdark and banished there by some antediluvian schism are not mutually exclusive (as any Lolthite will proudly tell you.) The important thing is that there are exceptions and doubts to their version of the story that can help justify heroic Drow.Alright, that works.


The Feywild is a diverse biome but that doesn't mean every inch of it is equally impactful. Eladrin are tied to the Feywild's seasons, and those are more pronounced in wooded areas just like they are here.Because we got the Feywild version of surface elves. What I find lame is that once you go underwater or underground, nah, you meet the same elves you would on the Material.


I still think there should be Coure Eladrin, Bralani Eladrin, Ghaele Eladrin... You know, the celestials that cosmologically predated the appearance of elves by aeons and were big players in the War of Law and ChaosOh, I agree. Moving eladrin to the Feywild was a 4e mistake that 5e shouldn't have doubled down on.


I don't know about the Shadowfell's oceans, but per the Shadowfell's underground? Not even the Shadar-kai are emo enough to live in a place canonically called "the Shadow-Dark".
ahahhahahahahThe Shadowdark, yeah, it is hilarious. :smallbiggrin:

[JackPhoenix]

The elementals are not featured in the PHB, Moon Druids need to check the MM to know what their features do.

You know what's funny? MM was released month and half after the PHB.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You know what's funny? MM was released month and half after the PHB.

I already mentioned this. And true. In fact, you're expected to be able to play the entire game with just the PHB. The DMG and MM are optional. Shocking, isn't it? :smallbiggrin:

[JackPhoenix]

I already mentioned this. And true. In fact, you're expected to be able to play the entire game with just the PHB. The DMG and MM are optional. Shocking, isn't it? :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, I've noticed. 'tis what happens when you respond to a post without reading rest of the thread first.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah, I've noticed. 'tis what happens when you respond to a post without reading rest of the thread first.

:smallbiggrin: Been there, done that. Many many times.

[Scots Dragon]

Where did I say level 20 druids should be turning into CR 1 beasts?

By implication. The only beasts in the PHB are CR 1 beasts. You've said that the druid should be limited to what's available in the Player's Handbook.

That's CR 1 beasts.

You've got a habit of this sort of inconsistency in your arguments.

[Witty Username]

I reject the idea that one needs some kind of reason to be able to check the MM, its no different than saying "hey you are a player you can't read the DMG magic items."


You say that like it is an unfair assumption, players shouldn't read the DMG magic items as a general rule, the section is poorly written, under exclusive DM perview, no player options require them (Outside Artificer, which has a white list of magic items for its class features), and they are intended to be homebrewed as I recall. I would actually argue the magic items section is less reasonable than the monster manual.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I wouldn't say that a player can't or shouldn't read either the MM or the DMG magic items.

I would say that they shouldn't assume that anything they find there will apply or be available in the game unless they've talked to me and cleared it with me first. That goes extra for monsters--I tend to steal stat blocks but rewrite the entire look and lore and behavior.

[Rukelnikov]

I wouldn't say that a player can't or shouldn't read either the MM or the DMG magic items.

I would say that they shouldn't assume that anything they find there will apply or be available in the game unless they've talked to me and cleared it with me first. That goes extra for monsters--I tend to steal stat blocks but rewrite the entire look and lore and behavior.

Definitely, something being in the DMG or the MM doesn't mean it has to exist in the setting, or that if it exists it won't be different from whats written in the books.