D&DN Q&A: Modular Features, Paladin Alignment & Legendary Creatures

I have blogged numerous times about why I do not like wizards, ways I might do magic, and how to make some of the existing classes more interesting, so it was nice to see a positive response in this week’s Question & Answers column as to whether modular features will change the core abilities of a class. Though the answer specifically mentions a “robust point-and-bonus based skill system module”, maybe that means that we will see rules for a magic system that will approach some semblance of sense.

I can dream. After all, they did feature a variety of alternate rules for magic in 3rd Edition’s Unearthed Arcana (hint hint).

The next question asks about decoupling alignment from the rules, something that was mentioned near the tail-end of this week’s Legends & Lore article, despite the paladin still requiring a Lawful alignment. The answer is yes, but they just have not gotten around to it yet because they are working on some “major changes across all classes” in an upcoming packet. Maybe some alternative, understandable, thematic spellcasting systems based on class?

WHAT?

Seriously, as I also mentioned earlier this week I think it would be a lot cooler to have class features tied to something like FATE’s aspects or Exalted‘s virtues and intimacies. Giving paladins class features based on these would go a long way to separating them conceptually from clerics, though this could be great for any character.

Finally more about Legendary status, specifically if an army of peasants can defeat a Legendary creature. The answer uses the tarrasque as an example, which is an iconic unique creature that is virtually impossible to defeat in most editions without a handful of wishes on hand. The part that rubs me the wrong way is when Rodney specifically mentions building in a safe guard that renders it immune to attacks from creatures of a certain level or lower.

Huh? That makes about as much sense as pseudo-Vancian magic.

Sorry, sorry, I will stop. Well, I will try to at any rate. In this article, anyway.

I just have this vision of peasants trying to push boulders on top of it, only to have them harmlessly bounce off. Then a high-level fighter walks up, does the same thing, and crushes its skull. Why not just re-introduce a more granular weapon resistance, like we had in 3rd and 4th Edition? This way the tarrasque can have something like DR 10, making it virtually impossible for a peasant to even damage it, but high-level fighters, what with their scaling damage output suffer a minor inconvenience. Makes much more sense than some arbitrary level-based threshold.

D&DN Q&A: Legendary Difficulty

Earlier this week we got our first glimpse at 5th Edition’s kind-of answer to 4th Edition’s solo monster. Understandably this raised a lot of questions, some of which are covered by this week’s Questions & Answers column.

One of the traits about legendary creatures is that they can have lairs that not only are capable of independently taking their own actions, but can expand on the out-of-turn actions that the legendary monster can perform. In the example black dragon, the pools of water in its lair could automatically surge forth at a specific initiative count, potentially dragging characters underwater. The dragon also gained the option to spend legendary actions while underwater to heal itself.

This lead to questions about a monster’s XP value, specifically as to why it only had one when such a dragon encountered outside of its lair would be at a greater disadvantage than one inside. The column states that they will “probably” present two XP values for encounter-building, but it sounds like it would be pretty a simple matter to just attach an XP value to the lair.

That being said these “lair” rules could be great for handling environments for any kind of creature, and it would be a wasted opportunity to just attach them to legendary creatures: guards armed with crossbows could take shots at you on a catwalk, a planar gate could randomly unleash destructive energies (or vomit forth monsters), and rocks might fall from a ceiling while fighting an earth elemental underground.

There was an article awhile back that talked about making some monsters like the medusa into unique creatures by default. My reaction was one of confusion as Dungeons & Dragons is not particularly known for sticking close to an established mythology, mentioning that gorgons are metallic bulls, basilisks have like, six legs, hydras come in a variety of forms, and depending on your campaign setting minotaurs might be a true-breeding race, blessed cultists, or something else entirely. Really the only unique monster that I am aware of that is not a god is the tarrasque.

As I also said before I think that WotC should focus on interesting, useful monsters and let DMs decide when/if they want to make a monster unique because it is way easier to power up a single monster than to strip away a lot of stuff if you, say, want a nation of monsters. Of course, I also think that they need to bring back elite and solo monsters, because I do not believe that a monster that does not exceed an arbitrary size category need be “legendary” in order to hold its own against a handful of people.

Finally, artifacts. It was briefly mentioned that artifacts could make a creature legendary. While I am fine with this, as there are plenty of instances where a magic item makes someone incredibly powerful, there are also examples of people being capable of seemingly magical feats of awesomeness, and it is disappointing that after 4th Edition made it possible for “mundane” classes to remain viable at any level that to be legendary you either must be made of magic, capable of using magic, and/or have a magic item.