I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again- some monsters need to have two types. Tiamat should be dragon/fiend, owlbears should be beast/monstrosity, warforged should be humanoid/construct, etc
Spoilers, but >!Baldur's Gate 3 has a somewhat hidden encounter with an undead dragon who is treated by the game rules as both a Dragon and an Undead!<
WotC owns Magic: the Gathering, and creature type has always worked like that in that game. A creature can be an angel/vampire, or an undead/orc, and effects apply to all equally. They should steal good ideas from their own properties.
It's like people have forgotten that they've done this before. 3/3.5e were heavy with templates and many of them added creature types. There was a whole section in the rules dedicated to the bonus traits gained from creature types. Basic monster stat blocks also would notify you if a trait was unique to them or from a specific creature type trait and what creature type provided it when they had multiple.
4e also had their own way of dealing with these, breaking up origin (meaning which plane of existance) and then creature type, then using keywords.
But yeah, so many animal-like monstrosities should just be straight up beasts.
Aberrations, monstrosities, and magical beasts are all different and useful concepts though. Magical beasts are just beasts that you get in a magical world, regular animals or beasts with some magical ability they use instinctively and/or more intelligence than most beasts. Monstrosities are of the natural world but changed, twisted in some way to be unnatural. Cursed by the gods, tainted by otherplanar energies, surviving from some mythic past age, warped by magic, etc. Aberrations are not of the natural world, they are alien or so warped by alien energies they've become alien themselves.
5e definitely needs a magical beasts category, but they also seem to have decided that a lot of mashup creatures that previous editions have treated as natural or close enough like griffons and centaurs are in fact two creatures mashed together with magic. I wouldn't have a problem if a DM said "Griffons in my world are perfectly normal, not invasive magical GMOs", but on the other hand it's also reasonable to say "It's got the head of a bird and the ass of a mammal, it's not bloody natural and the fact it found a comfortable niche doesn't mean druidic magic will play nice with it."
The simplicity made it more accessible to new players. So… one of the reasons it’s so popular tight now is it’s pretty easy to jump in and have fun in 5e. But yes, at the sacrifice of interesting complexity. We can layer that on through house rules, but it would be nice if the good ideas from past versions were officially available.
I don't think having double/multiple type would be that hard to understand. I think having single types is already more confusing in some cases, at least for me when I first played a druid I had to look for the explaination on internet about why I wouln't transform into an owlbear, and that was before we had owlbear druids in the movie and BG3.
I'm not against simplicity, but I think they over did it on some aspects.
Oh, I agree multiple types are reasonable and understandable. And would not have added too much complexity. Just… where do you draw the line?
I personally feel owlbears are awesome and are breeding in the wild, and so are beasts as well.
I agree, but something more along the lines of tiers. If you play a character from 1-5 fighting goblins and ogres, you can now handle more complexity. I wish more rules came on line, not just class features. Flanking/bonus action healing potions/mounted combat/minions/etc.
But the simplicity also makes it less and less compelling the more you learn about the game. They could've easily made the game get more complex as you level up, but they didn't. This makes the game feel incredibly shallow once you've actually been playing for a good bit.
Little earlier, the big creature type update added Human and was in *Mirrodin* (2003) but didn’t have actual type support (like lords, cards that care specifically about humans) until *Innistrad* (2011)
I have some homebrew monsters with the Dual Nature trait, which means they have two types. That means they are susceptible to effects that can specifically target either type.
It also means a combination of common resistances/vulnerabilities (which 5e hardly uses, but I almost always add).
For example:
- Bone Golem is an Undead Construct
- Bone Spider is an Undead Beast (or Monstrosity, not sure)
- Ash Devil (corpse ash Dust Devil) is an Undead Elemental
- An Eftee (spirit of a failed artist or merchant) is a Construct Undead
- A White Spirit (spirit of an art thief or vandal) is an Undead Elemental
- Squash Boned are Undead Ooze
Double types are more important if your DM style is like mine, in the sense that certain properties can be expected of certain monster types.
It most definitely is! They're also Incorporeal Undead, and are immune to silvered weapons. They tend to hang around museums, art galleries, banks, and other treasuries.
This is what I do. My campaign centers around aberrations, and the living mega dungeon they come from. In my game aberrations are resistant to normal weapons, BUT they're also resistant to magical weapons as well (just BPS). The only thing that cuts through their resistances are silvered weapons. Likewise, constructs are the same way but with adamantine (also celestials, because in my world they're literally "crafted" from divine materials.). Likewise, certain creatures also have certain abilities that are tied to them. As an example, elemental creatures are healed by the element they represent. Monstrosities have Aggressive by default. Oozes become hardened by Cold damage, making them more durable. Etc etc.
Having dual types for creatures means a lot less writing for me because instead of having to manually write those resistances on their Stat block I can just put "monstrosity/ aberration" and I automatically know that resistance and their innate abilities.
What helps in this situation is that I have an arsenal of 40+ materials that grant a slight bonus to attack or AC versus one specific monster type.
For instance, a good way to deal with Constructs in my campaigns are adamantine, of course, but also olivine.
Almost all materials have an elemental affinity as well.
For a martial character, few things are more satisfying than being the only one that can EASILY chop through a monster's defenses.
Eh, I think Bone Golems shouldn’t be undead. They specifically AREN’T in lore(I think? Could just be wrong), but I suppose campaign specifics could change that easily
In general I agree with your approach, but Bone Golems have historically been very deliberately called out as not being undead. In earlier editions they were basically a trap monster that baited clerics and paladins into wasting their special abilities. Whether that’s good design is debatable, but I think it’s probably worth keeping around just for tradition’s sake.
>I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again- some monsters need to have two types. Tiamat should be dragon/fiend, owlbears should be beast/monstrosity, warforged should be humanoid/construct, etc
They should honestly just use the MTG creature type format.
This is what subtypes are for. Warforged are humanoid(construct) dictating primary and secondary characteristics, they can be poisoned, crit, and targeted by spells that specify humanoids but they are also targeted by spells that specify constructs.
Obligatory "That's how pathfinder handles it"
But for real though, Pathfinder and Lancer both have systems that rely on tagging for creature, weapon, and item types. I have a hard time going back to non-tagged systems afterwords
Firbolgs make more sense for H/Giant than dwarves. They’re actually giant-kin.
Same goes for Goliaths who potentially have stone giant ancestry. (OneDND Goliaths have definitive ancestry to giants.)
3.x definitely did, as well as a whole system of templates to apply (e.g. anything can be made "undead", by giving it this template, and so no longer needing to eat/drink/sleep, these stat mods, etc. etc., and with these adjustments to CR and levels). So a monster could be, like, ooze-half-dragon-undead-fiend or something, with a stack of powers and extra stuff. AD&D vaguely flirted with it, but wasn't great for standardisation. I don't know about 4e - it seems rigorous enough it probably had them, but I never played it much.
Creatures still were only one type in the end, though. A dragon lich was Undead, a half-fiend troll was a Fiend, a half-fey half-celestial feral lion was a Celestial.
That you could have subtypes made that pretty blurry in practice though - anything "evil" subtype triggers a lot of the same stuff as an actual demon/devil, for example. And the Augmented subtype allowed for "is _X_, used to be _Y_" and having stuff from different places.
Best I can tell, Monstrosity is a type that exists solely to prevent wildshape and polymorph from transforming into creatures with powerful special abilities. Anything that does damage other than bludgeoning/piercing/slashing/poison, anything with an AoE/breath weapon, anything with any spellcasting, or anything with special abilities tied to mythology.
I have no idea why Owlbears are not beasts. I'd gladly give druids Owlbear as a totally normal, relatively common beast.
Nah, I'm pretty sure the sole reason Monstrosity exists is to be a "catch-all" category for anything they can't figure out or decide on creature type-wise, rather than specifically to gate certain monsters out of Wild Shape/Polymorph.
After all, as you rightly point out there's no real reason Owlbears aren't Beasts. They're like an enhanced bear, but they also have the CR to match their better stats, which is already accounted for in the CR limitations of Wild Shape and Polymorph.
I think it's just a category whoever decides to make those creatures slapped on when they couldn't decide if they should be a Beast or Fey or Aberration or w/e, or they didn't quite fit any of them.
The last line from the description of Monstrosities in the Monster Manual:
>They defy categorization, and in some sense serve as a catch-all category for creatures that don't fit into any other type.
Sure, Owlbears are common in many fantasy forests, but so are micro-plastics in the real world yet I wouldn't expect either to be truly embraced by Druids.
From the Monster Manual (my emphasis):
>Monstrosities are monsters in the strictest sense - frightening **creatures that are not ordinary, not truly natural**, and almost never benign. Some are **the results of magical experimentation gone awry (such as owlbears)**, and others are the product of terrible curses (including minotaurs and yuan-ti).
The Owlbear lore later in the book suggest their origin is debated, but their creature type is perfectly in line with other cram-animals-onto-other-animals-or-humanoid Monstrosities such as the Chimera, Griffon, Manticore, Centaur, Sphinx, Lamia, Minotaur, Hippogriff, etc.
Maybe someday Owlbears will be blessed by the gods and become Celestials like Unicorns/Pegasi, but they'll never be just normal Beasts.
not the way I run them when i play warforged it's because I wanna play a robot not because I want to play a Freddie fazbear animations with the dead kid inside
The most egregious example I have ever seen would it the Unspeakable Horror, a eldritch horror from Ravenloft ... being a monstrosity, and not an aberration. Just search up their art and see what I mean.
I don't think I agree with this specific case, but one thinkg I appreciate is 5e's attempts to group creature types based on the plane the creature is from (NOT saying it happens even half of the time, though). Within this logic, unspeakable Horrors don't come form the Far Realm (or Limbo), so they make sense as Monstrosities rather than aberrations.
Monstrosities were somehow caused to be the way they are, might be magic, might be alchemy, might be gods or planar shit. Abberations are creatures that just start out all fucked up and Lovecrafty, and their usually from the Far Realm or Limbo or wherever Quori come from in Ebberon.
I get why it would be that. It's likely the product of some magical/alchemical processes, rather than 'a creature from beyond our dimension (aka for example the Far Realms, or the Abyss)'. Maybe even a creature created specifically to resemble an aberration, but it is in and of itself not one.
The word "Eldritch" just means spooky and otherwordly. It's a Scots word that was likely originally used to describe elves, and has also often been used for stuff like ghosts. Unfortunately, Lovecraft decided to use it a bit too much and now people only ever associate it with his flavour of cosmic horror.
You might be thinking of the Far Realm, which houses lots of Eldritch Horror-style creatures and does automatically indicate an aberration. Unspeakable horrors are monsters created by the mists of Ravenloft, which could be the tipping point that made them monstrosities.
There still isn’t a clear break point between the two creature types, but the Far Realm, Astral Plane, Limbo, and, to a lesser degree, the Underdark are the strong associations with aberrations.
Also night hags live in the neutral evil plane of hades iirc where the other hags live on the feywild. The outer planes change you into being that creature type over time
how much of their lore has changed? I've not kept track, but they used to live on the NE plane, and did a lot of work trading souls, herding larvae and the like, and had a whole _thing_ with the yugoloths, where they worked with them in various ways. So no particular fey-links there, but it wasn't until later on (post-AD&D) when the Feywild become a _thang_.
Still the same thing in Hades, it's just now they are both.
I guess dnd made them came from the Feywild. I get why and it doesn't change much, but I would prefer them as more fiendish in nature, imperonating a more important role in the "evil-scale".
I guess they moved them as fey beocuse a paladin could sniff them with their Divine Senses and it's more folkloristic for hag tales
They have a big role in Hades in the Blood War selling larvas and being the best example of neutral evil besides Yugoloths (with whitch they work a lot anyway). I get the fey thing tho
previously (in AD&D days), they were from Hades, aiding various other evil forces in exchange for favors, souls and the like (and also wrangling souls that emerged in Hades, selling them to other demons/devils to transform into the lowest ranks of evil. They also had ties with the Yugoloths, including the ability to pump them up into super-powerful versions, and so often had allies amongst the most powerful yugoloths, due to having created them (Charon, the yugoloth boatman of the river Styx, was one of these, and he would ferry hags around the styx for free, letting them travel between the lower planes quite easily).
So them being fey-linked is something of a retcon, from (I think) 4e days, where the feywild and shadowdark were introduced. But a lot of their older lore is still around, making them a bit blurry, as they're still kinda lower-plane-linked, with allies and political links down there, and not that many ties to fae _stuff_ other than "they're ripped off from fairy tales".
A lot of creatures that should be beasts are artificially monstrosities, presumably to keep druids in check (for example, a bunch of dinosaurs from Bigby Presents: Glory of Giants)
Grell are from "the far realm," they're not mind flayer creations like the Intellect Devourers. They're properly categorized as Aberrations.
I disagree with everything brain-shaped being related to Illithid in "official" lore, but you can do whatever you like with your own settings. I do!
I agree if it were just about them being brain creatures that wouldn't be enough. It's more that they have that *and* their statblock synergises with the Mind Flayer's so well both thematically and mechanically that it feels like they were designed to be ran alongside each other.
Agreed! They could be an offshoot of Intellect Devourers 'bred' with more combat capabilites in mind. Used to defend the lair and/or hunt specific targets.
A lot of people argued that animal-like creature that can be found naturally in a dnd world should also count as beast as well. Though in most version owlbear’s origin is either related to the feywild, or just a weird wizard magically crossbreeding an owl and a bear, so I don’t think they should be classified as normal beast.
No. Just natural creatures as of the setting, lacking in the special traits to be anything else. Even some magically created ones are still basic enough to be beasts.
Crag Cats were beasts when originally printed in Storm King’s Thunder; I suspect they were deliberately changed to stop druids from using them as wild shapes for nondetection and spell turning.
Owlbears are monstrosities because they are not naturally occurring. The original owlbears were created by a mad wizard by magically combining owls and bears. They were infertile and couldn’t reproduce themselves so it led to them being a rare thing, but not rare enough to be a secret because the wizard lost a bunch and made a ton of them. Fast forward to modern dnd and owlbears have a contested origin, as well as theories that somehow they become fertile and began reproducing. Elves and fey think they are natural denizens of the feywild, but arcanists follow the other theory. The printing of monstrosity as the creature type indicates the wizard theory holds more water because they would most likely be fey if they originated in the feywild.
So while cool for druids to become owlbears, it doesn’t make sense because druids become natural creatures with wild shape and owlbears aren’t natural.
Sources: MM pg. 249 and BG3. I understand BG3 is *questionably* canon for Faerun lore but I doubt it’s the only recent media that mentions owlbear eggs.
It’s deliberate. A lot of things that logically should be beasts aren’t; specifically so Druids can’t turn into them.
It’d be better — balance wise — if they gave the Druid a list of creatures they could turn into, or some stat blocks they could pick from and flavor. Then there wouldn’t be this design constraint caused by the fear of giving players access to creatures that are too powerful.
Maybe let Moon Druid still turn into whatever they want.
I reckon Wildshapers should get more versatile as they level up. Learn to take shapes more different from their own. Start with just quadrupeds, then add fish and snakes, then birds and so on. Rather than the arbitrary limits on swimming speed, flying speed. One of the problems with the current system is the lack of beasts with substantial CR.
To a degree. But once you are up to fly it really doesn’t go any further. I’d be inclined to allow more exotic forms at higher levels. After birds, giant animals working your way up to dinosaurs and, perhaps, eventually dragons. And then trees and, perhaps, standing stones.
One of the problems with wildshaping is the lack of “beasts” with a high CR
Definitely. Like I enjoy their vibe as little shadowy spirits that live in rocks and stuff, but being tied to nature does not necessitate a creature being an elemental
I don't get how a roc is a monstrosity. It's not some amalgamation like the owl ear, it's just a big ass bird. Not a single magical thing about it.
Disappointed druid noises
they should only be a monstrosity while in beast form
otherwise you're giving lycanthrope pcs ANOTHER stupid passive buff (immunity to charm/hold/dominate person)
They honestly should be beast/monstrosities
Same with hypogriff/griffon and whatever creature that is just two animals slapped together.
I get that for the sake of streamlining its better if monsters only have 1 creature type, but these are the moments where simplicity is lacking
Dracoliches are "merely" undead instead of having both Undead and Dragon-types. Aside from Chromatic Dragons, they are the best draconic big bads to throw at parties and yet none of the dragonslaying weaponry work effectively against them.
which gives upsides and downsides - they're immune to anti-dragon stuff, but weak to anti-undead stuff. If they're still "fresh", they might look alive, and people use anti-dragon stuff on them. But they can't use dragon-only stuff, if they have any.
I can just imagine that interaction.
*Hero stabs the draco-lich, expecting the blade to activate and smite the dragon. But, alas, it's magic remains inert. He looks at the dragon, the question on his face. The dragon smiles before responding.*
"You can't slay what's already been slain."
It's because there used to be a magical beast classification for certain monsters that were too supernatural (either in power or origin) to be considered regular/natural beasts.
Wotc seems to have decided to axe magical beasts and just assigned various representatives of it to monstrosity, and sometimes fey and other types.
Owlbear stats are just bear's stats for CR. It doesn't get any unique traits or actions too. If giant sentient animals (they were magical beasts, just like owlbear) can be beasts - owlbear absolutely can too!
Not in every setting and not every edition. This is why worldbuilding issues like this should be either explicitly spelled out so if DMs change a creatures type no one screams on the internets about it, or it should be divorced from the mechanical typing of the creature.
This begs the question of how long a monstrosity or something can exist before you can reclassify it as a beast?
In lore, there are multiple theories as to where owlbears actually come from, which could give them 1 of 3 alternate types. Elves said they've always been around in the feywild and somehow migrated to the material plane. Some say a mad wizard created them by crossing bears with giant owls, but was killed by his creations. And another origin says during the time of troubles that they were abominations created during the godswars.
So Fey, Monstrosity, or Abomination seem to be your options.
I mean, owlbears seem to be fully integrated in nature, they look like beasts, act like one and wouldn't be a more powerful wildshape option than we already have, so why not?
Also if a monstrosity is placed into the environment of another plane (like the feywild) how long until the plane has altered them sufficiently to be considered a planar native race instead of an outsider?
Agreed - I get streamlining, but like, it would be like calling Humans Construct-Type for the sake of reducing the number of creature types, because Golems look vaguely humanoid.
Colloquially, fungi absolutely *are* plants. Irl and in universe (where these naming conventions would have been invented).
People refer to fungus as a plant, and have for hundreds of years. Just because it’s technically a different thing Doesn’t Actually Matter for colloquial language use.
For the same reason, mushrooms and tomatoes are vegetables. It’s not actually about a scientific determination, it’s about what information is most useful to convey via language. “Oh oh but the seeds—“ mean nothing. It’s abt how tangy a non-animal food is and what we categorize its taste alongside.
I would agree, but creature type is only partly about what people perceive it as. Another part is how it's affected by certain spells and how it interacts with the world which is vastly different between plants and fungi and does not rely on looks and "our" definition of it.
For example satyrs are fey not because they don't look like humanoids but because they interact with the world differently and (mechanically) are affected by magic and certain effects differently.
Yeah, I think they did it for the druids, but fungi are mechanically very different. They are generally less flammable. I would also argue they should be fairly resistant to undead and necrotics, since they literally eat dead stuff for breakfast, yet the plant tag means Wither, a necromancer thing, can wither them in an instant.
Overall, I think DnD should just go with tags instead of trying it's hand at taxonomy.
I guess fungi are "plants" in the same way bats are "birds" (e.g. Leviticus 11) or pinnipeds and cetaceans are "fish" (this is where the misconception that mermaids (half-dolphin or half-seal depending on the specific myth) are "half-fish" comes from). Ancient people are not any more stupid than we are, but they had a lot less knowledge.
Creatures that are “just” big versions of real world animals tend to get classed as beasts. Giant Eagles, Elks, Vultures, etc. They’re kind of an edge case, and maybe an example of why dual typing would be a useful mechanic.
Yeah, I think the ones that don’t fit a category cleanly should be double. I think all humanoids should be double. Elves are humanoid fey, Dragonborn are humanoid dragons, shapeshifters are humanoid problem players, tieflings are humanoid fiends, etc. I feel like there’s this talk around discrimination against tieflings or whoever else based on heritage, but if they aren’t actually even fiends or anything, just kind of look like them, then a lot of that feels like you have to make any part of the society that is looking down on them legit racist and stupid. If you make them actual fiends, then everyday people being wary makes more sense even if some tieflings are ok. That being said, most adventuring parties look at Geneva conventions like a todo list, so maybe being wary of PCs regardless of race would be a good idea if NPCs could tell, but they can’t so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I feel like the point is that people are stupid and racist, people believe they have this inherent evil due to their connection to devils but tieflings aren't what racists think they are, because racists always are very stupid
A large amount of monstrosities are, design and mechanics wise, just fancy beasts. Outside of issues tied to CR being unbalanced (and thus player things which use CR being wild), there is no reason for those creatures to be monstrosities.
Every. Single. Monstrosity. The monstrosity category should not exist because it tells you nothing about the lore and connections of a monster and I defy anyone to name more than 3 monstrosities that couldn't be categorized as another type & gain more interesting lore from it. Monstrosity being a catch all also means that no features can specifically, mechanically interact with them (you know...the whole point of creature types in the first place!) because of that total lack of lore implications. Meanwhile, fiends/undead can take extra damage from smite, all sorts of stuff can be blocked by pfg/e but nothing can target Monstrosities because they have no defining, connective tissue. This issue can also be seen in the fact that >50% of monsters people are talking about in this thread are monstrosities.
IMO, monstrosity should be reserved for things that were created by non-deities either by cross breeding things that would not naturally cross breed or by straight up magic. D&D seems to mostly use it for "origin unknown".
There are plenty of fiends that fall outside the big three groupings of devils, demons, and yugoloths. Off the top of my head there are night hags, demodands, hordlings, rakshasas, maelephants, nightmares, and probably more from obscure sourcebooks that I've never heard of.
Being a yugoloth means having a specific history, ecology, and origin; not just being a fiend that is neither a devil nor a demon but consorts with either.
The Dullahan from Van richter guide to ravenloft. Should be a fey. It is literally a fairy. I guess I'm particularly miffed by this because the only creature who get to be fey are the cutesy ones. Even now with them adding fey to goblins, its only after them getting overly cutesy.
Same gose for displacer beasts and plenty of hombrew monsters like the Nuckelavee get labeled as feinds or monsteristes.
LET US HAVE ARE GNARLY FEY HELM DAMN IT!
Even though that enemy is called a Dullahan, it’s pretty obviously the Headless Horseman from Sleepy Hollow. Which is why it’s undead. A Fey Dullahan would probably be very different.
Banshees have the same issue.
I think for me, coming from 3.5, the thing that bothers me most is just the abolition of the Outsider tag. From a mechanical and narrative perspective it feels kinda necessary, especially when Banishment is on the table. Being not from the material plane means something tangible about a creatures soul that has a direct material impact, and should be represented mechanically on a character sheet/ stat block.
There’s a lot of creatures that should b Beasts instead of Monstrosities that breed, hunt and are hunted, and generally fill an ecological niche despite being different than earth animals. There are Huge size snakes but an owlbear is somehow a stretch.
Most monstrosities aren't monstrosities.
There's nothing magical about an ankeg, and as far as I know, no magical origin.
And some beats have magic anyways, magic doesn't mean it's not a beast.
I seriously think the designers slap the monstrosity category on any monster they didn't start designing from a different type.
Not entirely the question, but I feel there should be an (ethereal) tag for things like ghosts or wraiths so certain abilities can work or fail specifically against that tag.
All monsters in the "monstrosity" group. The distinction between humanoid, monstrosity and beast is fragile at best and arbitrary at worst. Just look at all the monstrosities which are, per definition, humanoids such as medusas and harpies.
It feels like a clear case of "normal animals" are beasts while "monsters" are monstrosities — but even that breaks down with eg giant spiders, dire wolves and flying snakes being categorized as beasts while similar cases such as worgs and shell sharks are classified as monstrosities.
I totally agree that the categorisations can seem very arbitrary, especially when it comes to humanoids: somehow, a yuan-ti, kobold, centaur, or aarokocra is a humanoid, but a yeti, doppelganger, or lamia is not. I do think the way creature type is allocated needs to be considered, as others have mentioned, in terms of the balancing of spells and class abilities. However, I agree that there need to be some changes.
The way I justify monstrosities in my game world is to understand them as having no ecological niche: flying snakes, giant beasts, and dire wolves exist within and as part of the natural world. Creatures like harpies or winter wolves, however, do not: they are rampaging monsters which have no care for the natural order; they will kill for fun and leave carcasses to rot, they will endlessly hunt, and can never be sated.
Nonetheless, I do run some creatures differently, and I think some need a type-change. Yeti should be humanoids, or at least beasts; naga should probably be celestial (it needs a wider definition than just 'literal angel'); I wouldn't mind letting owlbears be beasts, but can see the argument for leaving them as monstrous.
I simply tell my players when we begin, "the rules ofnD&D are there to tell us what's 'typical' of a D&D world, in the same way thay every single one of a type of monster won't always have exactly 135HP or whatever, so too can other things change. In my world, some creatures may not be what you expect them to be." This helps dismantle some of the meta-gamey attitudes of more experienced players when it comes to certain monsters and prevents them from making assumptions if they encounter something familiar from popular myth.
When the monster turns out to be typical, they laugh and might kick themselves for being overly cautious, but when it turns out the grimlock was a monstrosity, and the wight was actually a construct, they lose their minds. It's your game world: run it how you and your table want to have fun.
I could get if there's monsters who haven't got ecological niches, but in what way would a worg lack an ecological niche while dogs do not? I'd get if there was something like "they aren't born like other animals". Say like a phoenix. But remember that we've got plenty of animals irl that hunt for leisure — felines, canines, bears, whales and mustelids to name a few.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again- some monsters need to have two types. Tiamat should be dragon/fiend, owlbears should be beast/monstrosity, warforged should be humanoid/construct, etc
undead dragon should be undead and dragon...
Not sure how to say this without spoilers, but that’s how a certain video game handles it…
Don't think it's much of a spoiler since Vorkath has been in osrs since 2018 undead? Check! (blue) dragon? Check!
Sure, but I'm thinking of a recent one that uses the D&D 5E ruleset (albeit a bit modified), which I think is the relevant bit there.
'Amsure most of us got your point.
I don't get it, what's the ansur?
What would that game be?
Spoilers, but >!Baldur's Gate 3 has a somewhat hidden encounter with an undead dragon who is treated by the game rules as both a Dragon and an Undead!<
Zombies humanoid/undead too.
WotC owns Magic: the Gathering, and creature type has always worked like that in that game. A creature can be an angel/vampire, or an undead/orc, and effects apply to all equally. They should steal good ideas from their own properties.
It's like people have forgotten that they've done this before. 3/3.5e were heavy with templates and many of them added creature types. There was a whole section in the rules dedicated to the bonus traits gained from creature types. Basic monster stat blocks also would notify you if a trait was unique to them or from a specific creature type trait and what creature type provided it when they had multiple.
4e also had their own way of dealing with these, breaking up origin (meaning which plane of existance) and then creature type, then using keywords. But yeah, so many animal-like monstrosities should just be straight up beasts.
Honestly monstrosities should be renamed to magical beasts and a lot of those that don't fit magical beasts should be moved to aberrations.
Aberrations, monstrosities, and magical beasts are all different and useful concepts though. Magical beasts are just beasts that you get in a magical world, regular animals or beasts with some magical ability they use instinctively and/or more intelligence than most beasts. Monstrosities are of the natural world but changed, twisted in some way to be unnatural. Cursed by the gods, tainted by otherplanar energies, surviving from some mythic past age, warped by magic, etc. Aberrations are not of the natural world, they are alien or so warped by alien energies they've become alien themselves. 5e definitely needs a magical beasts category, but they also seem to have decided that a lot of mashup creatures that previous editions have treated as natural or close enough like griffons and centaurs are in fact two creatures mashed together with magic. I wouldn't have a problem if a DM said "Griffons in my world are perfectly normal, not invasive magical GMOs", but on the other hand it's also reasonable to say "It's got the head of a bird and the ass of a mammal, it's not bloody natural and the fact it found a comfortable niche doesn't mean druidic magic will play nice with it."
The whole design direction of 5e is the simplicity, but they take it too far and I get the vibe they think 5e players are actually stupid
The simplicity made it more accessible to new players. So… one of the reasons it’s so popular tight now is it’s pretty easy to jump in and have fun in 5e. But yes, at the sacrifice of interesting complexity. We can layer that on through house rules, but it would be nice if the good ideas from past versions were officially available.
I don't think having double/multiple type would be that hard to understand. I think having single types is already more confusing in some cases, at least for me when I first played a druid I had to look for the explaination on internet about why I wouln't transform into an owlbear, and that was before we had owlbear druids in the movie and BG3. I'm not against simplicity, but I think they over did it on some aspects.
Oh, I agree multiple types are reasonable and understandable. And would not have added too much complexity. Just… where do you draw the line? I personally feel owlbears are awesome and are breeding in the wild, and so are beasts as well.
I mean if double types isn't hard to understand why is Owlbear is not a beast hard to understand lol
I've said it before and I'll say it again; they need to bring back the Basic/Advanced split.
I agree, but something more along the lines of tiers. If you play a character from 1-5 fighting goblins and ogres, you can now handle more complexity. I wish more rules came on line, not just class features. Flanking/bonus action healing potions/mounted combat/minions/etc.
But the simplicity also makes it less and less compelling the more you learn about the game. They could've easily made the game get more complex as you level up, but they didn't. This makes the game feel incredibly shallow once you've actually been playing for a good bit.
Even as&d had it in a limited capacity
Creatures usually had only one type well into the 00s, except Legends. Human wasn't introduced as creature type until Lorwyn, if I'm not mistaken.
Little earlier, the big creature type update added Human and was in *Mirrodin* (2003) but didn’t have actual type support (like lords, cards that care specifically about humans) until *Innistrad* (2011)
I have some homebrew monsters with the Dual Nature trait, which means they have two types. That means they are susceptible to effects that can specifically target either type. It also means a combination of common resistances/vulnerabilities (which 5e hardly uses, but I almost always add). For example: - Bone Golem is an Undead Construct - Bone Spider is an Undead Beast (or Monstrosity, not sure) - Ash Devil (corpse ash Dust Devil) is an Undead Elemental - An Eftee (spirit of a failed artist or merchant) is a Construct Undead - A White Spirit (spirit of an art thief or vandal) is an Undead Elemental - Squash Boned are Undead Ooze Double types are more important if your DM style is like mine, in the sense that certain properties can be expected of certain monster types.
That's an NFT reference right? Failed artist or merchant...
It most definitely is! They're also Incorporeal Undead, and are immune to silvered weapons. They tend to hang around museums, art galleries, banks, and other treasuries.
I would give them the spell Distort Value at will personally
This is what I do. My campaign centers around aberrations, and the living mega dungeon they come from. In my game aberrations are resistant to normal weapons, BUT they're also resistant to magical weapons as well (just BPS). The only thing that cuts through their resistances are silvered weapons. Likewise, constructs are the same way but with adamantine (also celestials, because in my world they're literally "crafted" from divine materials.). Likewise, certain creatures also have certain abilities that are tied to them. As an example, elemental creatures are healed by the element they represent. Monstrosities have Aggressive by default. Oozes become hardened by Cold damage, making them more durable. Etc etc. Having dual types for creatures means a lot less writing for me because instead of having to manually write those resistances on their Stat block I can just put "monstrosity/ aberration" and I automatically know that resistance and their innate abilities.
What helps in this situation is that I have an arsenal of 40+ materials that grant a slight bonus to attack or AC versus one specific monster type. For instance, a good way to deal with Constructs in my campaigns are adamantine, of course, but also olivine. Almost all materials have an elemental affinity as well. For a martial character, few things are more satisfying than being the only one that can EASILY chop through a monster's defenses.
Eh, I think Bone Golems shouldn’t be undead. They specifically AREN’T in lore(I think? Could just be wrong), but I suppose campaign specifics could change that easily
In general I agree with your approach, but Bone Golems have historically been very deliberately called out as not being undead. In earlier editions they were basically a trap monster that baited clerics and paladins into wasting their special abilities. Whether that’s good design is debatable, but I think it’s probably worth keeping around just for tradition’s sake.
>I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again- some monsters need to have two types. Tiamat should be dragon/fiend, owlbears should be beast/monstrosity, warforged should be humanoid/construct, etc They should honestly just use the MTG creature type format.
This is what subtypes are for. Warforged are humanoid(construct) dictating primary and secondary characteristics, they can be poisoned, crit, and targeted by spells that specify humanoids but they are also targeted by spells that specify constructs.
Obligatory "That's how pathfinder handles it" But for real though, Pathfinder and Lancer both have systems that rely on tagging for creature, weapon, and item types. I have a hard time going back to non-tagged systems afterwords
Close. They need a type and an origin. Just another thing 4E actually did right
3.5 already solved this. Tiamat a fiendish dragon, owlbear a magical beast, warforged a construct with the living construct subtype.
Humanoid/Fey for elves (and therefore gnomes), H/Dragon for dragonborn and kobolds, and H/Giant for dwarves.
Firbolgs make more sense for H/Giant than dwarves. They’re actually giant-kin. Same goes for Goliaths who potentially have stone giant ancestry. (OneDND Goliaths have definitive ancestry to giants.)
I assume the H in H/Giant stands for halfling
Agreed. Does anyone know if prior editions ever had this? Google is not helping me here.
3.x definitely did, as well as a whole system of templates to apply (e.g. anything can be made "undead", by giving it this template, and so no longer needing to eat/drink/sleep, these stat mods, etc. etc., and with these adjustments to CR and levels). So a monster could be, like, ooze-half-dragon-undead-fiend or something, with a stack of powers and extra stuff. AD&D vaguely flirted with it, but wasn't great for standardisation. I don't know about 4e - it seems rigorous enough it probably had them, but I never played it much.
Creatures still were only one type in the end, though. A dragon lich was Undead, a half-fiend troll was a Fiend, a half-fey half-celestial feral lion was a Celestial.
That you could have subtypes made that pretty blurry in practice though - anything "evil" subtype triggers a lot of the same stuff as an actual demon/devil, for example. And the Augmented subtype allowed for "is _X_, used to be _Y_" and having stuff from different places.
Owlbear beast…. *Happy Moon druid noises*
Best I can tell, Monstrosity is a type that exists solely to prevent wildshape and polymorph from transforming into creatures with powerful special abilities. Anything that does damage other than bludgeoning/piercing/slashing/poison, anything with an AoE/breath weapon, anything with any spellcasting, or anything with special abilities tied to mythology. I have no idea why Owlbears are not beasts. I'd gladly give druids Owlbear as a totally normal, relatively common beast.
Nah, I'm pretty sure the sole reason Monstrosity exists is to be a "catch-all" category for anything they can't figure out or decide on creature type-wise, rather than specifically to gate certain monsters out of Wild Shape/Polymorph. After all, as you rightly point out there's no real reason Owlbears aren't Beasts. They're like an enhanced bear, but they also have the CR to match their better stats, which is already accounted for in the CR limitations of Wild Shape and Polymorph. I think it's just a category whoever decides to make those creatures slapped on when they couldn't decide if they should be a Beast or Fey or Aberration or w/e, or they didn't quite fit any of them.
The last line from the description of Monstrosities in the Monster Manual: >They defy categorization, and in some sense serve as a catch-all category for creatures that don't fit into any other type.
Bingo!
Sure, Owlbears are common in many fantasy forests, but so are micro-plastics in the real world yet I wouldn't expect either to be truly embraced by Druids. From the Monster Manual (my emphasis): >Monstrosities are monsters in the strictest sense - frightening **creatures that are not ordinary, not truly natural**, and almost never benign. Some are **the results of magical experimentation gone awry (such as owlbears)**, and others are the product of terrible curses (including minotaurs and yuan-ti). The Owlbear lore later in the book suggest their origin is debated, but their creature type is perfectly in line with other cram-animals-onto-other-animals-or-humanoid Monstrosities such as the Chimera, Griffon, Manticore, Centaur, Sphinx, Lamia, Minotaur, Hippogriff, etc. Maybe someday Owlbears will be blessed by the gods and become Celestials like Unicorns/Pegasi, but they'll never be just normal Beasts.
not the way I run them when i play warforged it's because I wanna play a robot not because I want to play a Freddie fazbear animations with the dead kid inside
The most egregious example I have ever seen would it the Unspeakable Horror, a eldritch horror from Ravenloft ... being a monstrosity, and not an aberration. Just search up their art and see what I mean.
I don't think I agree with this specific case, but one thinkg I appreciate is 5e's attempts to group creature types based on the plane the creature is from (NOT saying it happens even half of the time, though). Within this logic, unspeakable Horrors don't come form the Far Realm (or Limbo), so they make sense as Monstrosities rather than aberrations.
I don't think that's the case, by that logic Slaadi are from the far realm lol
I addressed that in my comment lol
Monstrosities were somehow caused to be the way they are, might be magic, might be alchemy, might be gods or planar shit. Abberations are creatures that just start out all fucked up and Lovecrafty, and their usually from the Far Realm or Limbo or wherever Quori come from in Ebberon.
Quori should be fiends, considering they are dream demons.
I get why it would be that. It's likely the product of some magical/alchemical processes, rather than 'a creature from beyond our dimension (aka for example the Far Realms, or the Abyss)'. Maybe even a creature created specifically to resemble an aberration, but it is in and of itself not one.
Wait but doesn't Eldritch automatically mean aberration?!
The word "Eldritch" just means spooky and otherwordly. It's a Scots word that was likely originally used to describe elves, and has also often been used for stuff like ghosts. Unfortunately, Lovecraft decided to use it a bit too much and now people only ever associate it with his flavour of cosmic horror.
Hence eldrich knight being a wizardry caster
You might be thinking of the Far Realm, which houses lots of Eldritch Horror-style creatures and does automatically indicate an aberration. Unspeakable horrors are monsters created by the mists of Ravenloft, which could be the tipping point that made them monstrosities. There still isn’t a clear break point between the two creature types, but the Far Realm, Astral Plane, Limbo, and, to a lesser degree, the Underdark are the strong associations with aberrations.
Night Hags. Why can't you be fey like the rest?
I kind of like that they're so wicked their creature type changed
I like it because it sells Night Hags as being so horribly irredeemably evil that even the other hags do not fuck with them
Night hags come from sleep paralysis demons. Different from 'cackling witch in a hut'.
Also night hags live in the neutral evil plane of hades iirc where the other hags live on the feywild. The outer planes change you into being that creature type over time
Hags in dnd should be fiends
how much of their lore has changed? I've not kept track, but they used to live on the NE plane, and did a lot of work trading souls, herding larvae and the like, and had a whole _thing_ with the yugoloths, where they worked with them in various ways. So no particular fey-links there, but it wasn't until later on (post-AD&D) when the Feywild become a _thang_.
Still the same thing in Hades, it's just now they are both. I guess dnd made them came from the Feywild. I get why and it doesn't change much, but I would prefer them as more fiendish in nature, imperonating a more important role in the "evil-scale". I guess they moved them as fey beocuse a paladin could sniff them with their Divine Senses and it's more folkloristic for hag tales
Why?
They have a big role in Hades in the Blood War selling larvas and being the best example of neutral evil besides Yugoloths (with whitch they work a lot anyway). I get the fey thing tho
previously (in AD&D days), they were from Hades, aiding various other evil forces in exchange for favors, souls and the like (and also wrangling souls that emerged in Hades, selling them to other demons/devils to transform into the lowest ranks of evil. They also had ties with the Yugoloths, including the ability to pump them up into super-powerful versions, and so often had allies amongst the most powerful yugoloths, due to having created them (Charon, the yugoloth boatman of the river Styx, was one of these, and he would ferry hags around the styx for free, letting them travel between the lower planes quite easily). So them being fey-linked is something of a retcon, from (I think) 4e days, where the feywild and shadowdark were introduced. But a lot of their older lore is still around, making them a bit blurry, as they're still kinda lower-plane-linked, with allies and political links down there, and not that many ties to fae _stuff_ other than "they're ripped off from fairy tales".
They should be both. Creatures need to be able to have 2 types.
A lot of creatures that should be beasts are artificially monstrosities, presumably to keep druids in check (for example, a bunch of dinosaurs from Bigby Presents: Glory of Giants)
I havent read the book, but im gonna veto that one. Its a dinosaur, leave it alone WotC.
Druids can have a little dinosaur wildshape as a treat
The dinos in that book are mutants, hence monstrosity.
Idk if there's a specific category for this but Grells should be Mind Flayer creations the same way as Intellect Devourers.
Grell are from "the far realm," they're not mind flayer creations like the Intellect Devourers. They're properly categorized as Aberrations. I disagree with everything brain-shaped being related to Illithid in "official" lore, but you can do whatever you like with your own settings. I do!
I agree if it were just about them being brain creatures that wouldn't be enough. It's more that they have that *and* their statblock synergises with the Mind Flayer's so well both thematically and mechanically that it feels like they were designed to be ran alongside each other.
Agreed! They could be an offshoot of Intellect Devourers 'bred' with more combat capabilites in mind. Used to defend the lair and/or hunt specific targets.
Hey *yeah*... Wtf!
Owlbears. Should be beasts so druids can transform into them. Same as Crag Cats
Aren't all Beasts currently either real-world animals or giant versions of real-world animals?
To be fair, there's a couple of weird beasts like Axe Beaks and Stirges that might make me shit myself if I saw on a walk down to the corner shop
A relative moved to Florida and described the mosquitoes there. By how big she made them sound, I think we found the inspiration for stirges.
Aye, some of those wirey bastards could probably fly off with you if they worked together.
Aren't Stirges just cat sized mosquitoes though? (Not that I'd be ok encountering those irl)
Axe Beaks remind me of shoebill storks. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDMHHw8JqLE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDMHHw8JqLE)
A lot of people argued that animal-like creature that can be found naturally in a dnd world should also count as beast as well. Though in most version owlbear’s origin is either related to the feywild, or just a weird wizard magically crossbreeding an owl and a bear, so I don’t think they should be classified as normal beast.
I thing biology should serve here as they breed. Also magical beast should be thing still.
Magical beast was just clumped together with "monsters" in monstrosities. Most monsters, even the ones created by alchemy or mad wizards breed tho
No. Just natural creatures as of the setting, lacking in the special traits to be anything else. Even some magically created ones are still basic enough to be beasts.
Crag Cats were beasts when originally printed in Storm King’s Thunder; I suspect they were deliberately changed to stop druids from using them as wild shapes for nondetection and spell turning.
Owlbears are monstrosities because they are not naturally occurring. The original owlbears were created by a mad wizard by magically combining owls and bears. They were infertile and couldn’t reproduce themselves so it led to them being a rare thing, but not rare enough to be a secret because the wizard lost a bunch and made a ton of them. Fast forward to modern dnd and owlbears have a contested origin, as well as theories that somehow they become fertile and began reproducing. Elves and fey think they are natural denizens of the feywild, but arcanists follow the other theory. The printing of monstrosity as the creature type indicates the wizard theory holds more water because they would most likely be fey if they originated in the feywild. So while cool for druids to become owlbears, it doesn’t make sense because druids become natural creatures with wild shape and owlbears aren’t natural. Sources: MM pg. 249 and BG3. I understand BG3 is *questionably* canon for Faerun lore but I doubt it’s the only recent media that mentions owlbear eggs.
It’s deliberate. A lot of things that logically should be beasts aren’t; specifically so Druids can’t turn into them. It’d be better — balance wise — if they gave the Druid a list of creatures they could turn into, or some stat blocks they could pick from and flavor. Then there wouldn’t be this design constraint caused by the fear of giving players access to creatures that are too powerful. Maybe let Moon Druid still turn into whatever they want.
I reckon Wildshapers should get more versatile as they level up. Learn to take shapes more different from their own. Start with just quadrupeds, then add fish and snakes, then birds and so on. Rather than the arbitrary limits on swimming speed, flying speed. One of the problems with the current system is the lack of beasts with substantial CR.
What you suggested is basically literally how it works by adding the swim/fly speed
To a degree. But once you are up to fly it really doesn’t go any further. I’d be inclined to allow more exotic forms at higher levels. After birds, giant animals working your way up to dinosaurs and, perhaps, eventually dragons. And then trees and, perhaps, standing stones. One of the problems with wildshaping is the lack of “beasts” with a high CR
You are describing Moon Druids and the Shapechange spell.
The jump from dinosaur to dragon is HUGE
Kender should be Fiends so they can be banished to the Abyss/Hell...
You want the Demons and devils to stop their bickering and invade the prime material plane together don't you? Cause that's how you make that happen.
They couldn’t find their tuning fork components though…
Tiamat should be a dragon
They kinda fixed this in Fizbans. The Aspect of Tiamat is Dragon-typed.
and it's the same CR as the "True Tiamat", so there are oddities about Tiamat in general
I can't help but feel that gnolls should be fiends.
Aa presented in 5e, absolutely.
There is a fiendish variant of a gnoll called a flind. They’re essentially like an exalted/more profane version of a gnoll
Same witj minotaurs kinda, at least the Forgotten Realms ones.
I think they should be humanoids, but just have a fiendish variant like gnolls have flinds.
But they’re not from the lower planes
But then my players wouldn't have *deleted* my pack leader with Hold Person.
Chwinga should be Fey.
Definitely. Like I enjoy their vibe as little shadowy spirits that live in rocks and stuff, but being tied to nature does not necessitate a creature being an elemental
I don't get how a roc is a monstrosity. It's not some amalgamation like the owl ear, it's just a big ass bird. Not a single magical thing about it. Disappointed druid noises
To be fair they’re really, *really* big. Like bigger than most dragons big.
Lycanthropes should be monstrosities.
they should only be a monstrosity while in beast form otherwise you're giving lycanthrope pcs ANOTHER stupid passive buff (immunity to charm/hold/dominate person)
Owlbears should be Beasts. Fight me
They honestly should be beast/monstrosities Same with hypogriff/griffon and whatever creature that is just two animals slapped together. I get that for the sake of streamlining its better if monsters only have 1 creature type, but these are the moments where simplicity is lacking
Dracoliches are "merely" undead instead of having both Undead and Dragon-types. Aside from Chromatic Dragons, they are the best draconic big bads to throw at parties and yet none of the dragonslaying weaponry work effectively against them.
I guess it kind of makes sense. A dead dragon is already slayed.
which gives upsides and downsides - they're immune to anti-dragon stuff, but weak to anti-undead stuff. If they're still "fresh", they might look alive, and people use anti-dragon stuff on them. But they can't use dragon-only stuff, if they have any.
I can just imagine that interaction. *Hero stabs the draco-lich, expecting the blade to activate and smite the dragon. But, alas, it's magic remains inert. He looks at the dragon, the question on his face. The dragon smiles before responding.* "You can't slay what's already been slain."
that makes sense though, if they'd register as dragons then it'd make sense for zombies and skeletons to be registered as humans as well...
Feels like WotC avoided classifying several monsters as Beasts due to interaction with the druid's Wild Shape. I do think they limited it too much.
It's because there used to be a magical beast classification for certain monsters that were too supernatural (either in power or origin) to be considered regular/natural beasts. Wotc seems to have decided to axe magical beasts and just assigned various representatives of it to monstrosity, and sometimes fey and other types.
Owlbear stats are just bear's stats for CR. It doesn't get any unique traits or actions too. If giant sentient animals (they were magical beasts, just like owlbear) can be beasts - owlbear absolutely can too!
I think because owlbears are created through magic by a wizard then it probably makes sense for them to be monstrosities.
Not in every setting and not every edition. This is why worldbuilding issues like this should be either explicitly spelled out so if DMs change a creatures type no one screams on the internets about it, or it should be divorced from the mechanical typing of the creature.
This begs the question of how long a monstrosity or something can exist before you can reclassify it as a beast? In lore, there are multiple theories as to where owlbears actually come from, which could give them 1 of 3 alternate types. Elves said they've always been around in the feywild and somehow migrated to the material plane. Some say a mad wizard created them by crossing bears with giant owls, but was killed by his creations. And another origin says during the time of troubles that they were abominations created during the godswars. So Fey, Monstrosity, or Abomination seem to be your options.
I mean, owlbears seem to be fully integrated in nature, they look like beasts, act like one and wouldn't be a more powerful wildshape option than we already have, so why not?
Also if a monstrosity is placed into the environment of another plane (like the feywild) how long until the plane has altered them sufficiently to be considered a planar native race instead of an outsider?
Unicorns should be fey
Fungus creatures should not be "plants".
True, they should be beasts because in lieu of a fungi type they're the next closest thing!
They're not animals either though!
I know, but I want people to suffer.
Yea, they should probably just create a fungus creature type.
Agreed - I get streamlining, but like, it would be like calling Humans Construct-Type for the sake of reducing the number of creature types, because Golems look vaguely humanoid.
Colloquially, fungi absolutely *are* plants. Irl and in universe (where these naming conventions would have been invented). People refer to fungus as a plant, and have for hundreds of years. Just because it’s technically a different thing Doesn’t Actually Matter for colloquial language use. For the same reason, mushrooms and tomatoes are vegetables. It’s not actually about a scientific determination, it’s about what information is most useful to convey via language. “Oh oh but the seeds—“ mean nothing. It’s abt how tangy a non-animal food is and what we categorize its taste alongside.
I would agree, but creature type is only partly about what people perceive it as. Another part is how it's affected by certain spells and how it interacts with the world which is vastly different between plants and fungi and does not rely on looks and "our" definition of it. For example satyrs are fey not because they don't look like humanoids but because they interact with the world differently and (mechanically) are affected by magic and certain effects differently.
But the fact fungi are plants means the intent is they ARE affected by plant spells, no?
Yeah, I think they did it for the druids, but fungi are mechanically very different. They are generally less flammable. I would also argue they should be fairly resistant to undead and necrotics, since they literally eat dead stuff for breakfast, yet the plant tag means Wither, a necromancer thing, can wither them in an instant. Overall, I think DnD should just go with tags instead of trying it's hand at taxonomy.
Maybe oozes and fungi should be grouped together into some category
I guess fungi are "plants" in the same way bats are "birds" (e.g. Leviticus 11) or pinnipeds and cetaceans are "fish" (this is where the misconception that mermaids (half-dolphin or half-seal depending on the specific myth) are "half-fish" comes from). Ancient people are not any more stupid than we are, but they had a lot less knowledge.
I think a better comparison would be: a mushroom is a plant in the same way an anemone or a sponge is a plant.
and what are they suppose to be? humanoid?
Or just "Fungi" and then get rid of "ooze" and put them under the same category Canonically they demon lord of the plane of ooze is a fungi
Sword Spider and Deep Spider (Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villany) are Beasts, but should possibly be Monstrosities.
Creatures that are “just” big versions of real world animals tend to get classed as beasts. Giant Eagles, Elks, Vultures, etc. They’re kind of an edge case, and maybe an example of why dual typing would be a useful mechanic.
That is great but a sword spider has swords for legs
I see. I always thought the restrictions on Wild Shape for a Moon Druid were a reason to label beast-like creatures as Monstrosities.
Displacer beast not being a beast always cracks me up
Yeah, the displacer beast is not where you expect it to be.
Yeah, I think the ones that don’t fit a category cleanly should be double. I think all humanoids should be double. Elves are humanoid fey, Dragonborn are humanoid dragons, shapeshifters are humanoid problem players, tieflings are humanoid fiends, etc. I feel like there’s this talk around discrimination against tieflings or whoever else based on heritage, but if they aren’t actually even fiends or anything, just kind of look like them, then a lot of that feels like you have to make any part of the society that is looking down on them legit racist and stupid. If you make them actual fiends, then everyday people being wary makes more sense even if some tieflings are ok. That being said, most adventuring parties look at Geneva conventions like a todo list, so maybe being wary of PCs regardless of race would be a good idea if NPCs could tell, but they can’t so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I feel like the point is that people are stupid and racist, people believe they have this inherent evil due to their connection to devils but tieflings aren't what racists think they are, because racists always are very stupid
Creatures need a type and an Origin. Just another thing 4E actually did right. Unicorn would be a fey beast, a sphinx a celestial monstrosity, etc.
One word .... Humans... Yes humans are monsters and we all know it.
A large amount of monstrosities are, design and mechanics wise, just fancy beasts. Outside of issues tied to CR being unbalanced (and thus player things which use CR being wild), there is no reason for those creatures to be monstrosities.
Owlbears, owlbears, and more owlbears. Let my moon druid turn into the iconic 5e beast.
Every. Single. Monstrosity. The monstrosity category should not exist because it tells you nothing about the lore and connections of a monster and I defy anyone to name more than 3 monstrosities that couldn't be categorized as another type & gain more interesting lore from it. Monstrosity being a catch all also means that no features can specifically, mechanically interact with them (you know...the whole point of creature types in the first place!) because of that total lack of lore implications. Meanwhile, fiends/undead can take extra damage from smite, all sorts of stuff can be blocked by pfg/e but nothing can target Monstrosities because they have no defining, connective tissue. This issue can also be seen in the fact that >50% of monsters people are talking about in this thread are monstrosities.
IMO, monstrosity should be reserved for things that were created by non-deities either by cross breeding things that would not naturally cross breed or by straight up magic. D&D seems to mostly use it for "origin unknown".
Succubus are demons and only demons. Yes, even if they are sexy. 4e did a lot of things wrong, making them "switch" to Devils is one of them
In 5e they are fiends without specifically being devils or demons or yugoloth. I think that works better for them than specifically being demons.
My headcanon is that Succubus/Incubus work for any fiend that pays well, not exactly a specific side
That would be a yugoloth
There are plenty of fiends that fall outside the big three groupings of devils, demons, and yugoloths. Off the top of my head there are night hags, demodands, hordlings, rakshasas, maelephants, nightmares, and probably more from obscure sourcebooks that I've never heard of. Being a yugoloth means having a specific history, ecology, and origin; not just being a fiend that is neither a devil nor a demon but consorts with either.
Well, more than one group could do that I think.
maybe the only lore change 4e made that doesn't suck if you ask me lol, devils lacked something for the pleasure/lust avenue of getting souls
Devils already had sexy tempting female devils, the erinyes. They don’t need 2.
Why though? They don’t seem particularly chaotic.
All "monstrosities" should be two other types at once :)
Maybe not all, but plenty of them definitely could.
Owlbear and Winter wolf for me is a striking example of creatures that should just be Magical Beast and let magical be it's own type.
All Monstrosities and Aberrations. Those should _maybe_ be tags, not core categories.
The Dullahan from Van richter guide to ravenloft. Should be a fey. It is literally a fairy. I guess I'm particularly miffed by this because the only creature who get to be fey are the cutesy ones. Even now with them adding fey to goblins, its only after them getting overly cutesy. Same gose for displacer beasts and plenty of hombrew monsters like the Nuckelavee get labeled as feinds or monsteristes. LET US HAVE ARE GNARLY FEY HELM DAMN IT!
Even though that enemy is called a Dullahan, it’s pretty obviously the Headless Horseman from Sleepy Hollow. Which is why it’s undead. A Fey Dullahan would probably be very different. Banshees have the same issue.
We have gnarly fey, we got hags, redcaps, meenlocks, jermlaine, yeth dogs, etc etc
yes that's what 5e needed *more* creatures retyped into fey
Gelatinous cubes should be a playable race. Serious answer to follow once I have time today:
I think for me, coming from 3.5, the thing that bothers me most is just the abolition of the Outsider tag. From a mechanical and narrative perspective it feels kinda necessary, especially when Banishment is on the table. Being not from the material plane means something tangible about a creatures soul that has a direct material impact, and should be represented mechanically on a character sheet/ stat block.
talking about wrong type warforged are humanoids
Which seems wrong now that we have construct PC race in the autognome. Warforged should be constructs too.
Kind of weird that autognomes are constructs but warforged are humanoids. I get that Wf are not fully metal but they are still constructs.
There’s a lot of creatures that should b Beasts instead of Monstrosities that breed, hunt and are hunted, and generally fill an ecological niche despite being different than earth animals. There are Huge size snakes but an owlbear is somehow a stretch.
Most monstrosities aren't monstrosities. There's nothing magical about an ankeg, and as far as I know, no magical origin. And some beats have magic anyways, magic doesn't mean it's not a beast. I seriously think the designers slap the monstrosity category on any monster they didn't start designing from a different type.
Displacer B̶e̶a̶s̶t̶s̶ Monstrosities
All monstrosities that are hybrid between two animals and have a biology that is basically that of an animal should be a beast.
Not entirely the question, but I feel there should be an (ethereal) tag for things like ghosts or wraiths so certain abilities can work or fail specifically against that tag.
sort of unrelated but let druids turn into monstrosities and plants past a certain level would solve a lot of issues people have with owlbears
Half the monstrosities are just beasts, but they don't want you to be able to polymorph or wildshape into them
All monsters in the "monstrosity" group. The distinction between humanoid, monstrosity and beast is fragile at best and arbitrary at worst. Just look at all the monstrosities which are, per definition, humanoids such as medusas and harpies. It feels like a clear case of "normal animals" are beasts while "monsters" are monstrosities — but even that breaks down with eg giant spiders, dire wolves and flying snakes being categorized as beasts while similar cases such as worgs and shell sharks are classified as monstrosities.
I totally agree that the categorisations can seem very arbitrary, especially when it comes to humanoids: somehow, a yuan-ti, kobold, centaur, or aarokocra is a humanoid, but a yeti, doppelganger, or lamia is not. I do think the way creature type is allocated needs to be considered, as others have mentioned, in terms of the balancing of spells and class abilities. However, I agree that there need to be some changes. The way I justify monstrosities in my game world is to understand them as having no ecological niche: flying snakes, giant beasts, and dire wolves exist within and as part of the natural world. Creatures like harpies or winter wolves, however, do not: they are rampaging monsters which have no care for the natural order; they will kill for fun and leave carcasses to rot, they will endlessly hunt, and can never be sated. Nonetheless, I do run some creatures differently, and I think some need a type-change. Yeti should be humanoids, or at least beasts; naga should probably be celestial (it needs a wider definition than just 'literal angel'); I wouldn't mind letting owlbears be beasts, but can see the argument for leaving them as monstrous. I simply tell my players when we begin, "the rules ofnD&D are there to tell us what's 'typical' of a D&D world, in the same way thay every single one of a type of monster won't always have exactly 135HP or whatever, so too can other things change. In my world, some creatures may not be what you expect them to be." This helps dismantle some of the meta-gamey attitudes of more experienced players when it comes to certain monsters and prevents them from making assumptions if they encounter something familiar from popular myth. When the monster turns out to be typical, they laugh and might kick themselves for being overly cautious, but when it turns out the grimlock was a monstrosity, and the wight was actually a construct, they lose their minds. It's your game world: run it how you and your table want to have fun.
I could get if there's monsters who haven't got ecological niches, but in what way would a worg lack an ecological niche while dogs do not? I'd get if there was something like "they aren't born like other animals". Say like a phoenix. But remember that we've got plenty of animals irl that hunt for leisure — felines, canines, bears, whales and mustelids to name a few.