How many monsters does a D&D edition need to start with?

[...You Lost Me]

This looks like like an argument over specific occurrences in a generic fantasy universe.

[Username17]

Yeah, discussions about how much information from the monster manual should be known by people in the world is extremely off topic pretty much no matter what the topic at hand actually is. I'm much more interested in the discussion about playable monsters, so I'm just going on as if that was still being talked about.

Some monsters are obviously going to be easier or more difficult to use as PCs. I'll write up a sample platter from easiest to hardest:

• Orc
  Obviously the Orc is just a humanoid with abilities minor enough that they are regularly used as a horde monster even at low levels. Making a playable Orc is trivial, and if your new version of D&D doesn't support them at release you are fucking up. I don't think it's actually acceptable to release a D&D edition without playable Orcs in the post Warcraft universe we live in.
• Drow
  Drow traditionally deploy with a bunch of weird and medium-power magic powers. That would require some sort of fungible character resource that could be spent to purchase those powers. I lean towards magic item slots, but subclassing, paragon classing, substitution levels, background points, and pretty much anything else you could imagine might be usable to buy Drow levitation as well. Further, 3.5 experimented with "Lesser Drow" where the obscure and higher level spell powers were simply dropped and it turns out no one fucking cares. So you could probably just cut the higher powered spell powers and roll them in as a standard race.
• Werewolf
  Unlike Drow, it's actually important that Werewolves have access to their signature powers of resistance to non-silver weapons and transformation into a wolf. That's pretty much non-negotiable, so you actually are going to necessary have something for the player to actually pay for those powers.
• Frost Giant
  Attempts to make 1st level Frost Giants have been insulting and terrible. Fundamentally, a 1st level Frost Giant basically can't exist. Meaning that rolling one in as a PC requires some sort of level minimum system in addition to finding something for the player to pay for starting with Frost Giant Strength.
• Medusa
  The Medusa's signature power is an unlimited use death ray she can shoot from her eyes. This is actually a character defining power that would require a huge expenditure to "afford". In addition, that power is in no way appropriate to even have at first level, meaning that you need level minimums just for it.
• Mind Flayer
  The Mind Flayer is covered with lots of crazy powers to the point that it basically already has a character class just to exist. It essentially is an 8th psionicist, or at least it bloody well should be. So now you're not really talking about sticking a racial template onto a class and possibly having to pay something for a bigger template, you're needing to actually multiclass or extend monster classes or something.
• Shedu
  It has a lot of weird powers, but it doesn't even have any fucking hands. It can't adventure inside and can't use most tools. So you need to have Phone Lobster design you a bunch of subsystems for playing non-humanoid characters because apparently he thinks it's easy.
• Ochre Jelly
  It doesn't have the ability to communicate or even have opinions. It's literally impossible to play one. It's like playing a chair or a door.

Where your game draws the line of what it allows is of course debatable. I would prefer it to go at least as far as Medusa, but I would totally understand if the cutoff was Drow. I would be openly contemptuous of a new edition that didn't have playable Drow. For fuck's sake, acceptable playable Drow rules came out for 3.5 in 2004.

-Username17

[K]

That's really the only reason to train people of any profession. It's also why there are professional organizations for lawyers and doctors, and why these professional organizations control the number of medical and law schools; true knowledge must be confined to the select few.

OK, reality check time. 'The select few' has no meaning when the schools specifically push through more and more people in greater numbers every year to push their profits up, regardless of whether their are actual jobs available. And shall we start on paralegals and nurses? Obviously they have fake knowledge of law and medicine to, what? Kill people?

Over half my neighborhood (and it isn't a great neighborhood) works for hospitals, universities or some form of academic institution or firm. They have access to 'secret true knowledge' on a casual basis, even if they don't all take advantage of it. And there are actual industries based on nothing but making knowledge available. Your crazy ideas are just coming across as insane again.

To get that knowledge, did they have to go to an accredited school with tuition costs and entry requirements, or were they allowed to learn on their own? If they tried to practice without accreditation, what would happen to them?

And that's just the modern age of internet and modern printing presses. The modern age is all about education and spreading information, but that's an incredibly recent invention in human history. Guilds, trade groups, religions, and craftsmen have been suppressing information for thousands of years, to great effect.

Any arguments that good information is easily acquired in DnD Land are arguments that DnD Land is the modern age with technology that empower the individual and not an elite-based social structure like most of human history

[Voss]

Yet strangely it evolved out of those very things, and the social structures those groups set up to pass along information (even if originally just amongst themselves).

But anyway, you are still (somehow) arguing that the elites of D&D land somehow don't know anything about anything; and actively prevent people from learning how all the horrible things out to eat them are going to eat them. Because... reasons. This isn't about suppressing knowledge of gunpowder so peasants can't revolt, this about suppressing the knowledge that green slime will totally eat your face, so your peasants will die and not be able to grow food for you. And that is fucking stupid.
You still haven't said anything to suggest this isn't tinfoil hat party time.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Any arguments that good information is easily acquired in DnD Land are arguments that DnD Land is the modern age with technology that empower the individual and not an elite-based social structure like most of human history

I think that would constitute the difference between a trained and untrained knowledge check -- if you're trained, you have knowledge that is definitely correct (but that you might misapply, e.g. the dragon under a Hat of Disguise). If you're not, you just have, "stuff I heard".

[K]

Yet strangely it evolved out of those very things, and the social structures those groups set up to pass along information (even if originally just amongst themselves).

But anyway, you are still (somehow) arguing that the elites of D&D land somehow don't know anything about anything; and actively prevent people from learning how all the horrible things out to eat them are going to eat them. Because... reasons. This isn't about suppressing knowledge of gunpowder so peasants can't revolt, this about suppressing the knowledge that green slime will totally eat your face, so your peasants will die and not be able to grow food for you. And that is fucking stupid.
You still haven't said anything to suggest this isn't tinfoil hat party time.

Oh, the elite know things. That's what a high Knowledge check represents: a combination of true facts and rumors that gradually becomes more true facts as your rating grows.

But they suppress easy access to information for two reasons:

1. To keep the information out of the hands of rivals, some whom are powerful like other spellcasters and who will get eaten by green slime and thus stop being rivals, and also peasants who will not have the ability to create green-slime-based weapons (I don't know about you, but the first time I read about green slime I came up with half a dozen slime weapons).

2. To cement their role as protectors of the peasants. If the peasants can consult a nearby almanac every time a manticore shows up and then devise a defense, they don't need to pay, worship, and fuck heroes to take care of monster threats.

It's like the Cold War or the War on Terror. Without the constant threat of some unknowable enemy, you can't justify the wild amounts of defense spending. In this case, the defense spending is the tribute paid to powerful spellcasters and heroes.

Look at the history of information dissemination. The Church tried to ban the ideas of Gallileo and it didn't matter that the experts agreed with his calculations and they had little to do with Scripture. The first printing press printed the Bible. It took twelve years for Lister to convince surgeons to sterilize their instruments.

That's the history of information dissemination in a world without illusions, polymorphing, and mind control. Imagine how fucked the world is when a charlatan or montebank can literally force people to believe his lucrative lies?

[John Magnum]

Didn't Sparrowhawk go to a magical academy...? I mean, he also received direct tutoring from a mentor figure and had self-trained stuff, but I'm pretty sure he attended a wizard university as well.

[Kaelik]

But they suppress easy access to information for two reasons:

1. To keep the information out of the hands of rivals, some whom are powerful like other spellcasters and who will get eaten by green slime and thus stop being rivals, and also peasants who will not have the ability to create green-slime-based weapons (I don't know about you, but the first time I read about green slime I came up with half a dozen slime weapons).

2. To cement their role as protectors of the peasants. If the peasants can consult a nearby almanac every time a manticore shows up and then devise a defense, they don't need to pay, worship, and fuck heroes to take care of monster threats.

Wait, what? Now you are claiming that the Wizards who are just way too busy in their succubus harems to write books are also spending times burning down libraries because they want to make sure that everyone asks them personally to help solve their green slime problem?

Which is it K, are the high level people too busy to write books, or are they personally burning down the library of Boccob because they want the level 1-3 Wizards who would be paying fees to read from the library to instead die so that those high level characters are the only people who can save the peasants?

[K]

But they suppress easy access to information for two reasons:

1. To keep the information out of the hands of rivals, some whom are powerful like other spellcasters and who will get eaten by green slime and thus stop being rivals, and also peasants who will not have the ability to create green-slime-based weapons (I don't know about you, but the first time I read about green slime I came up with half a dozen slime weapons).

2. To cement their role as protectors of the peasants. If the peasants can consult a nearby almanac every time a manticore shows up and then devise a defense, they don't need to pay, worship, and fuck heroes to take care of monster threats.

Wait, what? Now you are claiming that the Wizards who are just way too busy in their succubus harems to write books are also spending times burning down libraries because they want to make sure that everyone asks them personally to help solve their green slime problem?

Which is it K, are the high level people too busy to write books, or are they personally burning down the library of Boccob because they want the level 1-3 Wizards who would be paying fees to read from the library to instead die so that those high level characters are the only people who can save the peasants?

None of those are actually OR statements. You really can be so busy burning down libraries that you don't have time to write books.

Yes, all of those things can be true. Spending an afternoon to send a fire elemental to party in the library of Boccob seems like an excellent thing for a Wizard to do in order to support his lifestyle of succubi and easy contracts from the ignorant needed to pay for body oils. Poisoning the well is a business tactic as old as time.

That being said, how would the few level 1-3 Wizards in the world be able to pay you more than you'd get for being one of the sole acknowledged experts in a field who can demand his own prices? Did low-level Wizards suddenly get a way to make money without my awareness?

[tussock]

Yeah, discussions about how much information from the monster manual should be known by people in the world is extremely off topic pretty much no matter what the topic at hand actually is. I'm much more interested in the discussion about playable monsters, so I'm just going on as if that was still being talked about.

Thanks, sorry for triggering the abstract digression.

Even though I do find it continually amusing how much my contemporaries struggle with the notion of the pre-scientific mind, despite them being so prevalent today. Or how people don't get how fucking hard good science is. Don't understand that while looking up wikipedia is easy, finding the information that's there from first principles was very much not easy at all. Why those citations to actual research really do matter, especially when it's "obvious".

Like, NZ's chief science advisor to government recently put out a report which complained that most government ministers and departments did not understand what evidence is for. This included the ministry of police and the courts.

So ... yes, the NZ police department does not gather evidence to investigate crimes, they instead guess at who is the most likely guilty person and then gather any clues which agree with their preposition, while carefully burying anything which disagrees. And they do this because it's apparently the leading system among western police forces, due to the high conviction rates. The reaction from journalists was completely tone-deaf, on account of they don't understand what evidence is for either.


People may or may not agree that applies to more abstract matters of knowledge, on account of people often being wrong.

Some monsters are obviously going to be easier or more difficult to use as PCs. I'll write up a sample platter from easiest to hardest:

Cool, so let's work up a system (caution: barely a shadow of a system) for 3e.

• Orc
  I have a bit of a hate-on for D&D copying Warcraft's Orcs, given that Warcraft is a D&D clone. I think you stick to your branding and use Half-Orcs, even if you do have to ditch the rape-baby background. Either way, a wrinkly-faced human is easy. +1/-1, done.
• Drow
  Monster-drow are all 3rd level or higher and elite types, classically at least, so there's the advanced array and a bunch of feat-space for your NPCs. PCs get +1/-1 and can be "renegades" to choose stuff other than the standard spell-likes and start at 1st level.
  
  Can I just say, lots and lots of shit is easier if you assume the races are all-elite or even better. It's actually OK if PCs end up being relatively weak members of awesome races like they're relatively strong members of the common races, eh.
• Werewolf
  My trick with these guys was to make them a gestalt with some negative levels to buy off. A Com1 gets bitten, he's still a full Were, and because it's higher level it's uncontrolled. A Ftr16 gets bitten, he only loses control when he's down to less HP than the Were-class would have, and as a gestalt it gains bugger all anyway.
  
  Low-level 'thropes need to be vulnerable to commoner-hordes somehow, but they really do as monsters anyway for story reasons. System can handle that in many ways, overbearing, burning, crits, whatever.
• Frost Giant
  If I cared, you can assume the Monster-Frosties are all secretly elite high-level Fighters covered in runic items (immortals waiting for ragnarok and all that) then you can totally make a 1st level PC who's a 6 HD Frost Giant with racial feats and some negative levels to take away the awesome. That requires pre-building the "human-like" playable monster types with the class rules if you want them to end up the same, and isn't really worth the fuss.
  
  Generally Frosties are better left as an incomprehensible and inhuman force of nature bent on ending civilisation's reign. So, no, you can't play one.
• Medusa
  If you want PC-buildable Medusa, which you do not want, but for argument's sake if you did, you've got to create a mythology where lesser creatures can end up as a Medusa, with curses or whatever. So an Elf can become a Nymph can become a Sirine can become a Medusa, or whatever suits your array of fairy-tale monsters.
  
  Caution: the medusa does not carry over powers from lesser forms. It's a rebirth on level-up thing. Same for Fiends and the Slaadi and so on.
• Mind Flayer
  As Frank notes, this is an 8th level Psion with a symbiote-curse and a bunch of associated monsterous-nature feats. Obviously the killing-grapple needs a save and a large damage expression for PCs to be allowed it, but it needs that anyway. Nothing here would improve the gamability of the 'Flayer though, and making them less alien is bad for the stories.
• Shedu
  First I'd have to read the Shedu entry, something I've avoided for a good twenty years now. Maybe if someone draws it a nice picture one day.
• Ochre Jelly
  Much like the game eventually got over itself about using PC-enabled constructs, so we could just say that PC slime-creatures can exist and buy stuff off a PC-appropriate list of slime-creature feats (which never makes anything like an Ochre Jelly because that's nuts). Sounds like an excellent book for a 3rd party to author for Halloween, certainly never see company time spent on it. Also, Warforged are not core.

[Voss]

Also, Warforged are not core.

For any reason beyond 'don't like them?' Because any number of people can come up with reasons to apply that to anything, including halflings, dwarves, elves, and even humans.

Where your game draws the line of what it allows is of course debatable. I would prefer it to go at least as far as Medusa, but I would totally understand if the cutoff was Drow. I would be openly contemptuous of a new edition that didn't have playable Drow. For fuck's sake, acceptable playable Drow rules came out for 3.5 in 2004.

-Username17

Funny story. the final 5e docs tossed in drow (and warforged) in at the end of the races document. They're oddly innocuous, most of their abilities are basic elf stuff (trance, sleep/charm shit, perception bonus), + darkvision rather than lowlight vision, sunlight sensitivity (disadvantage on attack, perception and search in sunlight) and 'Lolth touched magic': you get to cast dancing lights (cantrip, so as often as you like). At third you get faerie fire 1/day and at 5th, darkness 1/day. +1 dex and +1 charisma rather than dex and wis or dex and int for wood or high elves.

Basically, they're an elf subtype, but no weapon training and the spells instead of subrace features.

It matches up pretty well to the 'non-noble drow' you were talking about.

[Parthenon]

[*] Werewolf
My trick with these guys was to make them a gestalt with some negative levels to buy off. A Com1 gets bitten, he's still a full Were, and because it's higher level it's uncontrolled. A Ftr16 gets bitten, he only loses control when he's down to less HP than the Were-class would have, and as a gestalt it gains bugger all anyway.

Low-level 'thropes need to be vulnerable to commoner-hordes somehow, but they really do as monsters anyway for story reasons. System can handle that in many ways, overbearing, burning, crits, whatever.

I don't quite understand this and at first glance it seems a really shitty solution. Are you saying that if a Rogue 1 gets bitten by a Werewolf and gets turned, they are suddenly a Rogue 1//Werewolf 5 with unequal gestalt classes?

The 3.5 Werewolf rules are bullshit because the PC suddenly gets several levels worth of hitpoints, regen and attack bonuses which fucks over party balance.

[*] Frost Giant
If I cared, you can assume the Monster-Frosties are all secretly elite high-level Fighters covered in runic items (immortals waiting for ragnarok and all that) then you can totally make a 1st level PC who's a 6 HD Frost Giant with racial feats and some negative levels to take away the awesome. That requires pre-building the "human-like" playable monster types with the class rules if you want them to end up the same, and isn't really worth the fuss.

What. The. Fuck? Are you suggesting that at 1st level some characters start with a 6HD PC while others are 1HD, and yet others are like 5HD but regularly lose control of their characters?

[*] Ochre Jelly
Much like the game eventually got over itself about using PC-enabled constructs, so we could just say that PC slime-creatures can exist and buy stuff off a PC-appropriate list of slime-creature feats (which never makes anything like an Ochre Jelly because that's nuts). Sounds like an excellent book for a 3rd party to author for Halloween, certainly never see company time spent on it. Also, Warforged are not core.[/list]

An ochre jelly is completely different to a sapient slime-person. One can think, react, communicate, use tools etc and is about the size and weight as a human. The other is an unthinking ooze that can compress to 1 inch thick and weighs 5 tonnes. A specific form of slime monster could easily be a PC race, but the ochre jelly pretty much can't.

---

My opinion is that orcs and drow are fine as equivalents to standard PC races like elves and dwarves. Get rid of the drow powers and make them be things you can sink feats/slots in later....

Just a weird thought- what if every race got a special racial power or two they can sink an item slot for. So drow can use an item slot to get levitate, web, talk to spiders or whatever, while halflings can get some rerolls and luck bonuses, dwarves get DR/- and save bonuses, orcs get health regen and mild rage, and humans get an extra feat slot they can swap out each time they wake up...

It could be an interesting way to give racial powers without overpowering 1st level.

---

Anyway, in terms of what can and can't be PC races, I'm more curious about things like:
[*]Raptorans, Angels and other winged humanoids
Permanent flight is too powerful for 1st level, but the raptoran thing of gradually unlocking flight over time is bullshit. I think that it should be a minimum level thing- as soon as the party is level 5 (or whatever level flight is easily accessible) you can chuck in a Raptoran Archer 5 and be done.

[*]Undead/golems
Basically anything that doesn't need to eat or sleep, with immunities to poison and possibly others. The warforged showed that a lot of the time it really doesn't matter. Maybe a token cost like an item slot, but this should be a level 1 onwards race, especially after Warcraft.

[*]Ghosts and other non-physical creatures
This I have no idea about. How exactly are you supposed to balance a ghost?

[K]

[*]Raptorans, Angels and other winged humanoids
Permanent flight is too powerful for 1st level, but the raptoran thing of gradually unlocking flight over time is bullshit. I think that it should be a minimum level thing- as soon as the party is level 5 (or whatever level flight is easily accessible) you can chuck in a Raptoran Archer 5 and be done.

I'm going to suggest an idea that violates DnD conventions, so please be prepared for people to scream "craaaazzzzyyy!"

You don't have to have only one version of flight that is super-great like DnD has always done. You can have a 1st level version of flight that makes it so that you can't attack or cast spells and makes you more vulnerable to attacks and liable to crash if hit. Then flight stops being an insta-win combat power and it becomes a simple movement ability like climb. The upshot is that you don't have to do the weird thing with Raptorian flight where you start with jumping and then get some gliding and finally get flight.

Higher-level versions of flight can be the awesome kind that allows you fly and make ranged attacks and get hit with powerful attacks without dropping out of the sky. You can do simple replacement where picking up the better version of flight opens up the lower ability slot for something else. It could show up when people start picking up comparable powers like D-door or incorporeal powers.

[tussock]

Also, Warforged are not core.

For any reason beyond 'don't like them?' Because any number of people can come up with reasons to apply that to anything, including halflings, dwarves, elves, and even humans.

Golems in D&D are mindless magic-immune horrors, often on the ragged edge of controllability, created by near-epic Wizards and Clerics as things to slaughter low-level robbers. Things that have fucked up their mid-level PCs on occasion. You can't just slap a "I'm a happy friendly 1st level Golem, love me" class in core and expect people to be OK with that. You're pissing in a lot of pools at once there.

It's a fine thing for crashed spaceships in Blackmoor, or Tinker Gnome wackiness, or Rogue Modrons in Planescape, or Eberron's recent wars of genocide, but you don't put stuff like that in the Player's Handbook, because then it's everywhere.

I'm glad they exists and all, but you can't expect the Realms fans to be happy about dumping the shit they didn't like about Eberron all over their playspace. And they weren't, demonstrably so. See also Kender and 5e. WTF.



TLDR; it's not just that 10% of fans might like something, it's that 10% of fans might fucking hate something too, if it's too far. Radical world changes can alienate paying customers.

[tussock]

---

[*] Werewolf
My trick with these guys was to make them a gestalt with some negative levels to buy off. A Com1 gets bitten, he's still a full Were, and because it's higher level it's uncontrolled. A Ftr16 gets bitten, he only loses control when he's down to less HP than the Were-class would have, and as a gestalt it gains bugger all anyway.

Low-level 'thropes need to be vulnerable to commoner-hordes somehow, but they really do as monsters anyway for story reasons. System can handle that in many ways, overbearing, burning, crits, whatever.

I don't quite understand this and at first glance it seems a really shitty solution. Are you saying that if a Rogue 1 gets bitten by a Werewolf and gets turned, they are suddenly a Rogue 1//Werewolf 5 with unequal gestalt classes?

Yes, I didn't put that conventionally, so that's fairly well deciphered. Want some complete rules? It involves a bunch of special casing for all sorts of events and awkward attempts at terminology and ultimately makes were-creatures fairly Zzzz.

The 3.5 Werewolf rules are bullshit because the PC suddenly gets several levels worth of hitpoints, regen and attack bonuses which fucks over party balance.

There is no party balance. Making the Monk a standard 3e werewolf is good for the game. Taking the Cleric's spells away when he gets infected is also good for the game. Yes, really.

[*] Frost Giant
If I cared, you can assume the Monster-Frosties are all secretly elite high-level Fighters covered in runic items (immortals waiting for ragnarok and all that) then you can totally make a 1st level PC who's a 6 HD Frost Giant with racial feats and some negative levels to take away the awesome. That requires pre-building the "human-like" playable monster types with the class rules if you want them to end up the same, and isn't really worth the fuss.

What. The. Fuck? Are you suggesting that at 1st level some characters start with a 6HD PC while others are 1HD, and yet others are like 5HD but regularly lose control of their characters?

Negative levels give out -ve hit points and other maluses. You lose them as you grow toward your "real" HD. Undoing the curse they put on you when you left the tribe or whatever. It's not greatly balanced or anything, but it's playable enough and I've had up to Hill Giants next to Humans with it. Generally you start out with a lower attack bonus and AC, but better damage and HP, than an equivalent Human Fighter type. Reach is awesome and all, but the Human gets it for 3gp, so no one cares.

Racial Powers in Item Slots could be an interesting way to give racial powers without overpowering 1st level.

I like to view it that the Drow don't have racial magic in the first place, they have an overwhelming cultural drive to make everyone take the same magic training. For other races, that doesn't suit. Giants don't culturally train to be Large for instance, they just are. I'm OK with Demons transforming into greater Demons on level-up because that's their plot, but not Dragons or Giants because it's not theirs.

You could of course write in that all Dragons grow larger once they've collected and secured a large enough bed of gold and gemstones, and their "age" is just typical for how long that takes, or that Ogres really do wake up as Hill Giants after they eat enough cows. But it's not there yet.

Anyway, in terms of what can and can't be PC races, I'm more curious about things like: Flight, Immunities, and Incorporeal

Tweaking the rules to nerf flying archers in general is very good for the game against the 3e default. Older editions carry big-ass penalties for shooting aloft, and have rules for grounding flyers at 1/2 or 2/3 HP or whatever, and rules for making airborne melee and counter-attacks really easy in some of them.

Immunities can strait-up kill a game if you allow them to. Heavy-handed nerfing abounds. I don't like 4e's solution much, but it does work, which is useful. Big jobs.

Ghost PCs are actually in an official 3e book, and no one seemed to care, so I guess they're easy enough to re-write into being playable. Obviously you can't be the same thing as a classic Wight or Spectre, but likely the monsters should also not be that way.

[Koumei]

For ghosts, it really depends on what you want (or rather, what you think most of the players will want). There are probably about four different major ideas you could go with:

1. The spooky bullshit that some people actually believe in, like on the shows where it's supposedly real and they have GHOST DETECTING devices. These creatures are not only "so incorporeal you can't stab them", they're so incorporeal they can't stab you either. They can't interact with the world or even speak. This cannot be portrayed as a playable thing, because it fucking isn't. If you think centaurs are a problem, now you're a centaur and the world is made of ladders. It's similar to playing as an actual Phantasm.

2. D&D 3rd edition, where you can choose to interact with the world sometimes by making yourself "corporeal enough to hit with a magic stick" and all other times you're totally invisible and can cause powerful effects on the living. This is a flat-out "sure you can play it... if the game is starting at level ten or so".

3. Somewhere between the other two, the ghost largely can't do anything, it barely even exists until it possesses someone. So basically you're a Magic Jar specialist. It can be done, but there's a reason the Stranger With the Burning Eyes comes online so late. Once again, don't hold your breath, the campaign is practically over by the time it's doable.

4. You just want to be able to float and walk through walls. If that doesn't preclude getting stabbed, you can make that a level 1 race. I mean sure, there are great benefits to "gently falling off a cliff, rather than redecorating the rocks" (might come up once in a campaign. Maybe) and to "a locked door is not an issue" (awesome for scouting solo, will come up all the time but not instantly negate the challenge), but these are not the same benefits as "all of those giant flying dinosaurs, demons with basic blasting magic, and trees that grapple people to death... I am immune, I win".

So from a playability perspective, I would suggest the fourth one there (indeed it's what I did for Disgaeagame), and then let it take options late-game to get powerful ghostly options. But it does actually mean that players don't automatically go "Shit, it's a ghost, we know what won't work on these, what do we do now?" Because some ghosts can just be punched. And people who really dig Supernatural, Paranormal Activities and such will be pissy because ghosts aren't super-mysterious and deadly.

[Wiseman]

[*]Raptorans, Angels and other winged humanoids
Permanent flight is too powerful for 1st level, but the raptoran thing of gradually unlocking flight over time is bullshit. I think that it should be a minimum level thing- as soon as the party is level 5 (or whatever level flight is easily accessible) you can chuck in a Raptoran Archer 5 and be done.

I'm going to suggest an idea that violates DnD conventions, so please be prepared for people to scream "craaaazzzzyyy!"

You don't have to have only one version of flight that is super-great like DnD has always done. You can have a 1st level version of flight that makes it so that you can't attack or cast spells and makes you more vulnerable to attacks and liable to crash if hit. Then flight stops being an insta-win combat power and it becomes a simple movement ability like climb. The upshot is that you don't have to do the weird thing with Raptorian flight where you start with jumping and then get some gliding and finally get flight.

Higher-level versions of flight can be the awesome kind that allows you fly and make ranged attacks and get hit with powerful attacks without dropping out of the sky. You can do simple replacement where picking up the better version of flight opens up the lower ability slot for something else. It could show up when people start picking up comparable powers like D-door or incorporeal powers.

You have blasphemed against the very game of D&D. Abandon the hobby immediately and burn your sourcebooks.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I can totally get behind this. Say there's a first level angel character or whatever. She's still a novice at fighting, and when flying has to concentrate on flight alone and can't attack, or at least not without disrupting her flight. But as she levels up, she gains more combat experience and can eventually do everything she could do on the ground in the air at level 5-6, which is conveniently the same level fly comes online for everyone else.

[Chamomile]

That system is mechanically functional, but also requires that you provide some explanation as to why everyone else can fly no problem from the very first moment they step into the air, but someone actually born with wings can't shoot a bow while flying until they've been through dozens of battles. It's not hard to figure out an explanation (flying with wings requires actual effort because they're your wings, when flying with magic, magic does all the work for you), but all of them have the side effect of diminishing the awesomeness of being born with wings. It's yet another fantasy schtick that's overshadowed by the almighty Wizard, in narrative if not in actual gameplay.

Considering we're talking about 3.X, though, that's just making an existing problem slightly worse. It just bugs me.

[OgreBattle]

I'm going to suggest an idea that violates DnD conventions, so please be prepared for people to scream "craaaazzzzyyy!"

You don't have to have only one version of flight that is super-great like DnD has always done. You can have a 1st level version of flight that makes it so that you can't attack or cast spells and makes you more vulnerable to attacks and liable to crash if hit. Then flight stops being an insta-win combat power and it becomes a simple movement ability like climb. The upshot is that you don't have to do the weird thing with Raptorian flight where you start with jumping and then get some gliding and finally get flight.

Higher-level versions of flight can be the awesome kind that allows you fly and make ranged attacks and get hit with powerful attacks without dropping out of the sky. You can do simple replacement where picking up the better version of flight opens up the lower ability slot for something else. It could show up when people start picking up comparable powers like D-door or incorporeal powers.

D&D already treats running on 2 legs as something that's penalized with sinking feats in, so that's sensible. Looking at the rules for running as a base...
Fly
You can fly as a full-round action. (If you do, you do not also get a 5-foot step.) When you fly, you can move up to four times your speed in a straight line (or three times your speed if you’re in heavy armor). You lose any Dexterity bonus to AC.
And then add that you need to make some kind of ____ save to not fall out of the air when hit, like a massive damage save.

• Orc
  I have a bit of a hate-on for D&D copying Warcraft's Orcs, given that Warcraft is a D&D clone. I think you stick to your branding and use Half-Orcs, even if you do have to ditch the rape-baby background. Either way, a wrinkly-faced human is easy. +1/-1, done.
• Drow
  Monster-drow are all 3rd level or higher and elite types, classically at least, so there's the advanced array and a bunch of feat-space for your NPCs. PCs get +1/-1 and can be "renegades" to choose stuff other than the standard spell-likes and start at 1st level.
  
  Can I just say, lots and lots of shit is easier if you assume the races are all-elite or even better. It's actually OK if PCs end up being relatively weak members of awesome races like they're relatively strong members of the common races, eh.
• Werewolf
  My trick with these guys was to make them a gestalt with some negative levels to buy off. A Com1 gets bitten, he's still a full Were, and because it's higher level it's uncontrolled. A Ftr16 gets bitten, he only loses control when he's down to less HP than the Were-class would have, and as a gestalt it gains bugger all anyway.
  
  Low-level 'thropes need to be vulnerable to commoner-hordes somehow, but they really do as monsters anyway for story reasons. System can handle that in many ways, overbearing, burning, crits, whatever.
• Frost Giant
  If I cared, you can assume the Monster-Frosties are all secretly elite high-level Fighters covered in runic items (immortals waiting for ragnarok and all that) then you can totally make a 1st level PC who's a 6 HD Frost Giant with racial feats and some negative levels to take away the awesome. That requires pre-building the "human-like" playable monster types with the class rules if you want them to end up the same, and isn't really worth the fuss.
  
  Generally Frosties are better left as an incomprehensible and inhuman force of nature bent on ending civilisation's reign. So, no, you can't play one.
• Medusa
  If you want PC-buildable Medusa, which you do not want, but for argument's sake if you did, you've got to create a mythology where lesser creatures can end up as a Medusa, with curses or whatever. So an Elf can become a Nymph can become a Sirine can become a Medusa, or whatever suits your array of fairy-tale monsters.
  
  Caution: the medusa does not carry over powers from lesser forms. It's a rebirth on level-up thing. Same for Fiends and the Slaadi and so on.
• Mind Flayer
  As Frank notes, this is an 8th level Psion with a symbiote-curse and a bunch of associated monsterous-nature feats. Obviously the killing-grapple needs a save and a large damage expression for PCs to be allowed it, but it needs that anyway. Nothing here would improve the gamability of the 'Flayer though, and making them less alien is bad for the stories.
• Shedu
  First I'd have to read the Shedu entry, something I've avoided for a good twenty years now. Maybe if someone draws it a nice picture one day.
• Ochre Jelly
  Much like the game eventually got over itself about using PC-enabled constructs, so we could just say that PC slime-creatures can exist and buy stuff off a PC-appropriate list of slime-creature feats (which never makes anything like an Ochre Jelly because that's nuts). Sounds like an excellent book for a 3rd party to author for Halloween, certainly never see company time spent on it. Also, Warforged are not core.

Level minimums are the way to go. If a medusa is a level X monster, then when the PC's are lower level it's a boss monster, but when they're equal level they can do things with swords, arrows, and magic blasts as equally deadly as eye rays.

[Parthenon]

Are you saying that if a Rogue 1 gets bitten by a Werewolf and gets turned, they are suddenly a Rogue 1//Werewolf 5 with unequal gestalt classes?

Yes, I didn't put that conventionally, so that's fairly well deciphered. Want some complete rules? It involves a bunch of special casing for all sorts of events and awkward attempts at terminology and ultimately makes were-creatures fairly Zzzz.

That seems really weird, convoluted and a waste of time. If you aren't playing gestalt then suddenly one PC is gestalt, and if you are playing gestalt then suddenly one PC is triple-gestalt. And as you say it takes so much time to sort out and so many rules that people get bored.

[Voss]

[*]Raptorans, Angels and other winged humanoids
Permanent flight is too powerful for 1st level, but the raptoran thing of gradually unlocking flight over time is bullshit. I think that it should be a minimum level thing- as soon as the party is level 5 (or whatever level flight is easily accessible) you can chuck in a Raptoran Archer 5 and be done.

I'm going to suggest an idea that violates DnD conventions, so please be prepared for people to scream "craaaazzzzyyy!"

You don't have to have only one version of flight that is super-great like DnD has always done.

... I'm going to call crazy, but only because what you wrote is factually wrong. D&D has had a fuckloads of rules for flight that are extraordinarily complicated and involve multiple levels of flying ability (from clumsy to perfect) and actual rules that are handwaved away at tables because they're fucking awful and complicated, at times complete with all sorts of restrictions on ascent and descent and forward momentum versus turning ability and all sorts of shit. 'Super great flight' is actually people just ignoring everything, shrugging, and getting on with the MTP.

Also, Warforged are not core.

For any reason beyond 'don't like them?' Because any number of people can come up with reasons to apply that to anything, including halflings, dwarves, elves, and even humans.

Golems in D&D are mindless magic-immune horrors, often on the ragged edge of controllability, created by near-epic Wizards and Clerics as things to slaughter low-level robbers. Things that have fucked up their mid-level PCs on occasion. You can't just slap a "I'm a happy friendly 1st level Golem, love me" class in core and expect people to be OK with that. You're pissing in a lot of pools at once there.

Huh. Not what I expected at all. Mostly because I don't think of warforged as any of those things. They hit 'homeless veterans of an oppressed ethnicity' far more than they do Frankenstein's monster or the golem of Prague. That said, I don't think they fit well in core either- far too setting specific.

I'm glad they exists and all, but you can't expect the Realms fans to be happy about dumping the shit they didn't like about Eberron all over their playspace. And they weren't, demonstrably so. See also Kender and 5e. WTF.

Yeah... that wasn't why Realms fans were upset. They got all cranky because their setting was blown up, the timeline advanced by centuries and large chunks of it replaced with wholly unrecognizable shit, and the only recorded reason for anything was, essentially, a love triangle among three of the gods of good.

The kender in 5e I've got nothing on. Except that maybe their showing off how portable the system is to 'classic' campaign settings, or edition translations. Though the kender is shit and mechanically worse than the halfling, because the pockets are useless and the taunt is a bad match for most classes, so I don't know why they'd bother showing that off.

[Mask_De_H]

That system is mechanically functional, but also requires that you provide some explanation as to why everyone else can fly no problem from the very first moment they step into the air, but someone actually born with wings can't shoot a bow while flying until they've been through dozens of battles. It's not hard to figure out an explanation (flying with wings requires actual effort because they're your wings, when flying with magic, magic does all the work for you), but all of them have the side effect of diminishing the awesomeness of being born with wings. It's yet another fantasy schtick that's overshadowed by the almighty Wizard, in narrative if not in actual gameplay.

Considering we're talking about 3.X, though, that's just making an existing problem slightly worse. It just bugs me.

...Don't let people fly no problem from the first moment they step into the air?

When the winged race can't fly and attack at the same time, the Wizard can fall slightly slower. By the time the Wizard has grasped the concept of aerial movement, the winged race can fly and shoot and Izuna Drop fools.

Even thinking in terms of 3.X, Fly doesn't come online until 5th. Flight should be considered a part of the challenges by then, so a flying race should be able to fly no problem by then.

[Dean]

I've never gotten the meme that flight is too powerful from level one. It fucking isn't. If you could play a race that had no racial bonuses except for a 30 foot fly speed how many of you would pick that regularly. Any game that gives decent ranged options makes flight just a sort of kryptonite. It's great against giant scorpions or wargs but irrelevant against any foe with an intelligence score. The reason "flight is too powerful" is a myth is because the ability to beat giant scorpions super hard has always existed from level one because horses can be bought for 75 gold and that's within everyone's price range. If a party wanted to beat everything they could by plinking it to death with arrows they can do that whether or not you give people functional flight from level one.

As a note the Pathfinder racial guide made a 1st level flying race called the Strix and they haven't taken over the play space or anything. 1st level fliers are fine, just put em in your game and be done with it. It'll probably be better for the game in general to design with 1st level fliers in mind.

[Username17]

[*]Raptorans, Angels and other winged humanoids
Permanent flight is too powerful for 1st level, but the raptoran thing of gradually unlocking flight over time is bullshit. I think that it should be a minimum level thing- as soon as the party is level 5 (or whatever level flight is easily accessible) you can chuck in a Raptoran Archer 5 and be done.

I'm going to suggest an idea that violates DnD conventions, so please be prepared for people to scream "craaaazzzzyyy!"

You don't have to have only one version of flight that is super-great like DnD has always done. You can have a 1st level version of flight that makes it so that you can't attack or cast spells and makes you more vulnerable to attacks and liable to crash if hit. Then flight stops being an insta-win combat power and it becomes a simple movement ability like climb. The upshot is that you don't have to do the weird thing with Raptorian flight where you start with jumping and then get some gliding and finally get flight.

Higher-level versions of flight can be the awesome kind that allows you fly and make ranged attacks and get hit with powerful attacks without dropping out of the sky. You can do simple replacement where picking up the better version of flight opens up the lower ability slot for something else. It could show up when people start picking up comparable powers like D-door or incorporeal powers.

This seems a bit heavy handed, but it doesn't much violate conventions or personal experience. D&D has always tried to have "maneuverability classes" that determine what you can do with different levels of flight. The problem of course, is that the maneurvability rules have always been a hot mess and no one knows how they work. Rules too complicated to use don't see play. The other problem of course, is that the lower grades of maneuverability are such a pain in the ass to even figure out how they are supposed to work that people just skip them and hand out Good and Perfect maneuverability instead.

Now that having been said, I would find it pretty weird if flying characters couldn't attack. I mean, birds fucking attack things and they aren't even first level. Hell, the most basic attack from flight is just dropping stuff on people who aren't flying. And I would think I would be able to let go of a bottle of alchemist's fire no matter how strenuous flapping my wings was.

I've never gotten the meme that flight is too powerful from level one. It fucking isn't. If you could play a race that had no racial bonuses except for a 30 foot fly speed how many of you would pick that regularly. Any game that gives decent ranged options makes flight just a sort of kryptonite. It's great against giant scorpions or wargs but irrelevant against any foe with an intelligence score. The reason "flight is too powerful" is a myth is because the ability to beat giant scorpions super hard has always existed from level one because horses can be bought for 75 gold and that's within everyone's price range. If a party wanted to beat everything they could by plinking it to death with arrows they can do that whether or not you give people functional flight from level one.

Basically this. I think part of the problem is that flying around doesn't make you any weaker in fights against people with bows and does make stronger against enemies who don't have them. Yes, there are horses, but riding around on a horse has actual disadvantages in game that flapping wings mysteriously doesn't have. People flying around should at least be taking mounted archery penalties, and they should probably risk falling when struck. Characters who actually fly while shooting arrows should be rare, as it should usually be more advantageous to fly to a good position, land there, and shoot from there.

Actually, that's another reason I'm against a blanket ban on attacking while flying. It doesn't actually change things that much because you can usually fly to an inaccessible place and shoot from there. If a player wants to drop rocks while flying, they presumably have a good reason to do so, and the game should have actual rules for that.

-Username17

[tussock]

Now that having been said, I would find it pretty weird if flying characters couldn't attack. I mean, birds fucking attack things and they aren't even first level.

Aerial-attack birds (falcons, others in nest disputes) have a dive attack, and that's it. They get about 45 degrees above and behind their target, up to about 20' above, follow the same path a bit and then smash down onto it with their claws.

Poorly trained falcons are known to try this with birds so big that they kill themselves in the act, so birds aren't smart, and that may play a part. But there really is just the one move in nature. Actual human pilots vastly prefer the same trick in dogfights, because it's the only way to actually keep someone stationary relative to your line of aim.

The counter is for the target bird to do a roll and present claws to divert the diver, most slower predatory birds learn that one pretty quick in territory disputes.

Birds that hit ground targets use the same trick, but are all much more cautious about their hight and speed, almost stalling just 10' up or so before diving. Dragons diving at 200+ speed from over a hundred feet in the air should make nothing but muddy dragon soup. But of course, gargantuan beasts falling at all should just die, so, uh ... how does the Tarrasque work again?


Ground-strafing war planes are also very low flying, very slow, and prefer their targets lined up along a strait road or rail line so they can actually hit something. Dive bombers are the only planes that could hit anything the size of a large building with a single munition reliability, and they had to pull out a long way above to avoid slamming into the ground.

Yes, these days we have laser-guided munitions and gps-enabled terrain-following tv-guided missiles, but that hardly describes anything in D&D. It's surprising hard to drop things from any height and expect them to hit anything by eye, unless you've got a perfectly stable platform with good, modern sighting equipment.



Then again, horse archery is really fucking difficult too, if you're shooting at anything smaller than an army and forget to stop when you shoot. Archery in general, real archers who can hit a stationary man at 200' get gold medals at the Olympics. Ah, D&D, shitting on melee fighters since forever.