Wandering Monsters: Easy Answers

The focus of this week’s Wandering Monsters is less monsters and more questions that can all be answered with the following statement: it depends entirely on the Dungeon Master and her setting.

Is it okay to kill orc babies? Do orcs even have babies? Both depend on the setting. In a lot of settings they seem to be used as a convenient monster that players can kill and rob without having to think about it too hard. Kind of like zombies, just stronger, faster, and technically smarter. Simple and straightforward, and there is nothing necessarily wrong with that because…

…you do not have to explain what they are or where they come from.

Orcs can just be destructive humanoids that randomly surge from beyond the mountains to plague “civilized” lands. Do they have babies? Who knows. Maybe they are corrupted elves, grow from Gruumsh’s lost eye, were cursed by a fiend (or angel), or worship a god of destruction. The point is if your players are never going to go over those mountains and try to put a stop to them once and for all, then why bother thinking about it too hard?

Well for one there are plenty of monsters that can already fill the role of guiltlessly-slayable humanoids, and do it better: most undead, fiends, and constructs come to mind. Lumping in orcs—and goblins, drow, gnolls, kobolds, etc—with them seems pretty boring and lazy. One of the many, many reasons I enjoy Eberron is because it made monsters more interesting, giving them a culture and involving them in the lives of the “civilized” races beyond ugly Medium-size humanoid bag o’ XP and cash.

My other gripe concerns D&D’s laughable alignment system: how does an “often Chaotic Evil” society even operate? There are plenty of parents in our society ill-suited for rearing children, but I cannot imagine that they would regularly perform worse than your average orc. If I wanted to throw orc babies into the mix and I had to use alignment (which I thankfully do not) I would make them Neutral/Unaligned; there are more creative ways to bring them into conflict than “because Evil!”.

I was unaware that in any Dungeons & Dragons source ever that someone tried to pitch the idea that dragons evolved from dinosaurs (which I prefer just being called behemoths, or something else). While I think there is a very good reason that both 3rd nor 4th Edition omitted that even as a potential theory (it sounds really stupid), does it really matter if dragons are reptiles, mammals, or something in between? Is it going to change anything? Who gains from either answer?

As with orcs, perhaps even more so because they are dragons, you do not have to determine where they come from. Their origins—and motivations, goals, capabilities, etc—could be a complete mystery, especially since it is very unlikely that a campaign is going to explore them: dragons just are, always have been, and will always be. Of course if I make the effort to establish an origin, you can bet that I am going to err on the fantastic side of things, having them born from gods, if not created around the same time that gods came into existence.

I really do not get the hangup on dragonborn. I have no problem with “dragonboobs” because like dragons—and really D&D things in general—they do not have to abide by real-world classifications. Again, does it really matter? Does anyone really care? My only issue with them is that they “officially” all look the same. In my campaigns Bahamut and Tiamat created their own race, which have scale colors, crests, horns, tails, etc similar to those of true dragons.

When it comes to combined monsters I am kind of on the fence. I have nothing against wizards doing weird experiments with weird results, I just find it hard to believe that a wizard created enough owlbears to make a self-sustaining species, though I would love to have a kind of chimeric toolbox to make it easy for Dungeon Masters to build one-off monsters to throw at their players.

Most of the time I see combined monsters as not combined at all, but just as “natural” as the animals that we expect to see in real life: griffons, hippogriffs, sealions, displacer beasts, owlbears, etc. If you had to create an origin, I would run with “naturally occuring”, nature spirit, god, or extraplanar transient before checking out the “wizard did it” angle. Maybe a magical event merged a bunch of stuff, but that might be stretching it.

Finally, races. The more the merrier. Make as many as you want, touch on their personality, appearance, and culture, but do not try to tell me which ones are common or unusual. In an upcoming setting I am working on dragonborn and devas are a pretty big deal, while halflings and dwarves are right out. Group them up thematically or whatever, but ditch the rarity system/unusual label; it serves absolutely no purpose except to potentially throttle the creativity of new DMs.

Bloodlines of Arkhosia: Dragonfear

So now dragonborn can swap out dragon breath for dragonfear, and I guess losing the ability to belch out a gout of elemental energy somehow makes you more intimidating? To be fair, I can see where they’re going with this: get rid of one draconic quality and exchange it for another, and the concept has merit. Dragonfear is a daily encounter (errata kplzthx) racial that lets you hit all baddies within 5 squares with a Will attack that makes them take an attack penalty, and grant combat advantage for a turn. Its keyed off of Strength or Charisma, which is good for a lot of classes, but the passive bonus starts at +2 and never scales (MOAR errata?).

The article does add in five feats that all require it, which give you a bonus against Fear effects, to Intimidate, or even let you regain it when you trigger second wind (which could potentially let you use it twice each battle). The paragon path supplied (fear walker) also demands dragonfear, meaning that its got decent hefty support if the theme fits your character. Since all the attacks are keyed to Strength or Charisma, it’ll fit any class that dragonborn are naturally suited for.

Note: I wasn’t satisfied with dragonfear at all at first, because the power is black and not red (meaning that I thought it was a daily power). It wasn’t until I read the Draconic Rejuvenation feat that made me go back and analyze the power block to see that, yep, it’s actually an encounter power. So…I had to rewrite this whole post. XD

Player’s Handbook Races: Dragonborn Review

Player’s Handbook Races: Dragonborn is a ten dollar…book, I guess…that weighs in at 32 pages. I’m a fan of the online articles that Wizards now delivers every damned day via Dragon and Dungeon. They are more often than not sweet and short. I can head over to the site, ignore all the Forgotten Realms articles (and not be terribly disappointed if thats all thats up for the day), and quickly plow through a few pages that get to the point. In a nutshell, small articles that deliver interesting content are better than walls of text that somehow do not.

However when it comes to dead-tree format, I prefer a larger book since it helps whittle away the hours in commute. It is mostly during these times that I can actually read, and with essentially nothing else to do I dont mind having hundreds of pages to plow through. So the size and subject matter didnt do much to bolster my hopes, yet…strangely, I thought it was alright.

Before I talk about why I like it, I’m going to complain about the low points (as I tend to do). First, its soft cover. I fucking loathe that. Also, there’s no table of contents…which I guess is mostly alright since its not exactly the largest book on the shelf. A much more legitimate complaint is that the book pamphlet is a pain in my ass to flip through. I just cannot seem to flip through a page or two at a time, and when I try it just flaps open to the middle part. Finally, almost all of the art (if not all of it) is recycled. I dont like this in any game, period.

Just be gentle with it. I’ve never had a D&D book collapse on me before, but there’s a first time for anything. Now, the pros.

The first nine pages are devoted to recapping the whole racial concept and some story exposition on their history and clan stuff. You get a sidebar for names and a shit-ton of backgrounds, too. Didnt bother to check to see if the information was taken from Dragon, but much of it is shit you already knew if you like dragonborn and kept up on that. Still, having a physical reference on hand has its appeal. I think people are going to bitch about this no matter what. I have a DDI subscription, and I dont really care.

After that its a series of sections that divide them up by power source, talking about how dragonborn in general cope, and also dishing out a pragon path at the end for your efforts. This is good for players that arent terribly sure how to approach building a dragonborn wizard, or barbarian, or whatnot. The paragon paths were well done and stuck to the popular dragonborn approach of a badass melee warrior. Were I to play a dragonborn I’d be tempted to take honorable blade and platinum templar, and the fact that it got me considering dragonborn for reasons other than optimization theory came as a surprise.

Then came feats. Whoo-boy, there are a lot. There is no feat table, and with damn near 40 of them that is bullshit. At least it’ll get lumped into CB so it’ll be easier to handle…next month. There are a lot of good feats in here, as well.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of the feats pertain to dragon breath, but some are thematic to the other aspects of a dragonborn. For example, Glorious Victory lets you burn healing surges when you drop monsters, while Draconic Zeal gives you an attack bonus when you burn a healing surge in addition to a level 12 utility power that lets you auto-heal when you get dropped. A couple let give you even more bonuses while bloodied: Io’s Challenge lets you do more damage with divine challenge, and Rage Drake Form gives you an untyped attack and damage bonus while in beast form.

Magic items has five weapon properties and an item set, Silver Dragon Regalia. The set seems mostly suited to warlocks and martial characters since it includes a rod and weapon, but frankly I could see many people wanting the tabard since it lets you save against all ongoing damage effects at the start of your turn. I really like the weapon because it deals a shitload of damage on a crit if you’re bloodied, and pimps out dragon breath by adding its bonus to both the attack and damage roll, but can also change it into a hefty close burst. This works well if you took the heroic feat that makes dragon breath ignore allies…except by giving them an attack bonus.

Lastly, there’s some pages on dragonborn quests and the avatar of Io epic destiny. Avatar’s of Io gives you a Strength and Charisma bonus, which immediately tells me that its gonna be best for sorcerers, the bard build that also likes Strength (or was it Con?), thaneblood barbarians, many paladins, and inspiring and resourceful warlords. There might be some other Str/Cha types that I’m missing. Probably. Anyway.

Again, it adds shit to dragon breath, this time by having it ignore any kind of damage resistance, changing the damage type on the fly, and gaining an attack bonus right after you do so. You also get an always-on fly effect and a very strange resurrection ability that should just read, “When you die, you are actually only dead (save ends).” The level 26 is kind of weak, letting you make a save right after you get hit by a save-ends effect. Yawn.

What this all boils down to is that I didnt think I was going to like PHR:D one fucking bit. It didnt help that I’m not exactly a fan of dragonborn, but at ten bucks I felt like I got my money’s worth. Lots of good stuff that dragonborn players are going to get a kick out of. I’m looking forward to the one on tieflings, now.