Dungeons and Dragons, "Legions of the Undead"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 19- Favorite Undead

            There are 10,000 monsters in this gods damned game.  Today is Undead, my favorite type of monster.  Look to my blog about Vecna (and undead god) for a little more, but generally it can be summed up with, “Undead encapsulate a good metaphor for Dungeons and Dragons.  Exploring the ruins of the old world, plumbing for their secrets, and facing the horrible monsters they left behind”.

            Let’s go.

#7 Morhg/Ghoul

            I think these two are closer to one another than their appearances might lead you to believe.  One is a skeleton that has purple flesh running thru it and causes paralysis with its tongue.  The other is a gaunt purple skinned creature that causes paralysis with its claws.  They have the same sort of role in a combat encounter, stop the movement of characters with weak Constitutions.

            I’ve never used these guys for anything but goons, they are not exactly thinker types and I would say that they are probably not the first choice on the Necromancer’s “To-Make” list.  They are a good monster to sprinkle into an encounter to make things more dangerous, but not more dynamic, they literally slow things down.

#6 Bone Claw

            These guys look so cool, and their use of the reach rules makes them strong encounters in any situation in which closing ground is difficult, a narrow bridge, an elevated area, that sort of thing.

            I haven’t used these to great effect, but have had them used to great effect against me back when they first came out in 3^rd edition.

#5: Devourer

            Another awesome looking monster with a cool concept.  They slowly burn a trapped soul within their chest to grant them power.  I can’t even think of a way to make that better.  4^th edition did by providing 3 types which took the concept and cranked up the extremeness of it.  Kudos to 4^th edition.

#4: Vampire

            Quintessential bad guys of literature and screen.  They have been translated everywhere and are almost always great.  They are kind of the best monsters in fiction for all that has and can be done with them, but are not necessarily the best in Dungeons and Dragons.

            I actually think these guys were interpreted too faithfully in 3^rd edition.  The number of weaknesses and abilities got to be cumbersome, so much so that I just never bothered.

            Even the best movies and books about Vampires tend to leave some of the mythology at the door so that they do not have to comment on running water; holy water; holy symbols; sunlight; silver; garlic; OCD; blood of virgins; the ability to talk to wolves, bats, insects; the ability to shapeshift into creatures of the night; the ability to transform into monsters; the ability to turn into mist; the need for soil of their homeland; the need for a coffin; vulnerability to fire; vulnerability to falling in love with bland women who consider “clumsy” to be a personality trait; the need for torpor; blood potency; spellcasting ability; the nature of the soul; transformations of one’s face in order to feed; strength level; flight; drinking blood; hypnosis; rivalry with werewolves; and jiminy cricket this list could go on forever.

            I think that a “Make your own vampire” feature might have been cool.  Pick two weaknesses of varying strength, pick three abilities of various strength and get an approximate challenge rating for facing your players.

            Oops, thought of another one, Lack of Reflection.

#3: Wight

            I had a really good use for these guys in a 3^rd edition campaign in which a magical plague transformed hundreds of people into wights to be used as somewhat intelligent slave labor in the excavation of a section of underground city.

            When the players found the whole thing while looking for missing people, all of the wights had been left in holding pens and cages, they then began crying out for help in low moaning voices, “Save me,” “Save us,” “Where am I,” “Please help me,” and I do lots of voices so it was pretty creepy.  I managed to pull off some rather haunting images of pale clawed hands reaching out from between bars not to strike but to beg for mercy.

#2: Mummy

            Mummies, much like Rats from my entry on “Favorite Animals” have access to disease as a secondary rules benefit.  Beyond that, they have a lot of pop culture recognition, obvious exploitable weaknesses, and plenty of significance as a cultural marker in certain settings (Egyptian theme being the most obvious).

            Magic the Gathering just did an Egypt themed setting and the clever thing they did was take Zombies and Mummies, undead creatures associated with Black Magic, and making them more associated with the veneration and societal order of White Magic.  This is a subversion and I like it a great deal.  I think this sort of twist on what is expected can be applied to mummies in DnD and I think I will attempt something like it in the future.

            I have used Mummies before, in 3e and 4e, both times to good effect.  They make good slow moving goons that deal a lot of damage and leave an impact on play in the form of Mummy rot.  They are good monsters.

#1: Lich

            They are the best bad guys.  HARD STOP.

            I don’t know what else to add.  They are a threat up close, at range, they are capable of plans, their weaknesses are not debilitating but still exploitable.  They are the best bad guys.

            I already talked about the king of the liches, Vecna in my “Favorite Deity” entry.  They are the best.

A Special Mention: Zombies

            As I write this I have learned that George Romero died just this past Sunday.  If you don’t know, he invented the modern idea of what a zombie is with the movie “Night of the Living Dead”.  I would like to point out that do to a strange error when securing the Copyright, the movie entered the public domain almost immediately, meaning George made only a tiny fraction of the money he should have for all the times the movie has appeared or been shown.  The converse of that is the movie ended up appearing everywhere and on everything which led to it being so iconic and influential.

            The reason I want to point that out is it illustrates everything wrong with copyright law, the law does not protect creators, it protects people who know how to fill out paperwork.  It also shows how valuable and powerful the Public Domain is.  The ability for things in the public domain to be used by a wide audience allows those bits of media to quickly transcend what might have only been a cult status and change the way people look at fiction.

            I wish there had been a compromise on this.  That Romero had been able to make money off of his insanely influential movie, and the movie to be diffused into the public consciousness without needing a marketing machine like Disney or Warner Bros behind it.

            I wish more things, after having made back a healthy profit, could be released to the public domain so as to be seen as part of media culture.  So as to benefit the creators and the creative community.  Kind of like how Dungeons and Dragons provides rules and materials to help people be more creative, but at the same time is a brand that sells books and materials.  It is a business, but it is a business that serves as a powerful tool to educate people about their own creativity.

            George Romero leaves behind a potent legacy.  He was vastly more influential than I think he ever pictured himself being and added to the world.  The world is a better and more interesting place for him having been in it.  We should all be so lucky to live as long and be as positive an influence as George was.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about my least favorite monster.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "Creatures of Nature"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 18- Favorite Elementals, Fey, and Plants

            There are 10,000 monsters in this gods damned game.  Expect several top 5 lists this week as there are not too many specific “favorites” more like “preferred”.  Today is Elementals, Fey, and Plants.  These are not boring, but they are also not terribly interesting (I mean, a monster made out of water would be interesting in many contexts, but they are not all that interesting by the standards of the fantasy kitchen sink approach of Dungeons and Dragons).  Let’s see what I can do with this.

            Let’s go.

 

This is art from a Magic the Gathering Card.
I just especially liked it.

#4: Efreeti

            Starting off, we have a classic figure in fantasy, the genie.  I found the old designation of “Outsider” to be misleading when talking about the Efreeti and other genies because they all occupy the elemental planes.  While that does make them extraplanar, they make more sense as elementals, as they are obviously coordinated to them.  They are living fire.  5^th edition to the rescue they made them elementals.

            I have made use of one of these guys before.  A snuff box was stolen by the party’s rogue from a Mindflayer villain and the party had access to 3 wishes, which was pretty helpful when it later allowed them to kill a Lich without too much trouble, wishing for the villains phylactery to appear and then torching it.

            While wishes are potent, and require the DM to be clever in order to corrupt or bend them toward a useful story element they are something interesting to add to the game.  Too useful to squander, but too useful to leave unused.

#3: Azer

            No joke, before “Savage Creatures” and before I had any idea what I was doing, I let my brother play an Azer as his first character in a game I was GG for.  I had no clue how overpowered he was and how much he overshadowed the other players.  I had no idea how challenge ratings worked or how to make encounters fun.  It was a rough learning experience.

            I have not had an opportunity to make good use of these guys since (that is to say I have never made good use of them) and aside from liking their look, the basic premise of being flame dwarves, and the nostalgia for a time when I was still learning to play, I don’t have much to say about them.

 

Another Magic card.
Almost like Magic has produced more high quality fantasy art than any other fantasy franchise.

#2: Dryads and Nymphs

            I think I might be the only person that thinks Dryads and Nymphs should be rolled together into one creature with a weaker and stronger form.  Most people outside of gaming would have a hard time seeing the two as different things, and while they are different in the game to a significant degree, they still fill a similar role as the nice forest spirit that looks like a beautiful woman.

            I have made little to no use of these guys in the past.  In spite of running long campaigns with Druids, Rangers, Barbarians, and a Scout, I tend to play a more urban game, with the action taking place in a major city that serves as a hub for the story and several other communities that exist around it.

            Aside from having little experience with them, I like Dryads and Nymphs as story elements.  They are interesting when they show up, indicators of a pure and safe world that can serve as an oasis to the players in the midst of an adventure.  Also, their presence is kind of a reverse of the usual, they serve to protect and guide the heroes even though they are young (looking) women, normally such an archetype in fiction is the one being saved.

#1: Treants

            These guys are great.  They’re perfect metaphors for the powerful and ancient mind of nature.  They are kind and wise, but not particularly active and involved, much like the Dryads and Nymphs they serve as a tree to rest under to take a break from adventuring.  I actually had an ancient Druid reincarnate as one to guard an important forest in the game world and it served as a good recurring set piece that is not at all lifted straight from “World of Warcraft”.

            Since I have not run a game with staunchly evil PC’s in it, I have not had an opportunity to use them in a major combat encounter.  Much how I like the Kyton from my entry on “Fiends” animating chains to generate more attacks, Treants can animate trees for a similar boost to its attack power.  That is a cute idea.  Like the orchard scene from “The Wizard of Oz”.

For a Change of Pace: Some Shit Ones

            I give 4^th edition a lot of props.  It took some chances (HUGE CHANGES IN GAMEPLAY MECHANICS for instance) and I feel the negative overreaction to 4e caused Wizards of the Coast to walk back too many things and drop many good ideas.  A “baby with the bathwater” reaction that I hope they revisit in the future to look for some interesting places to add in things to 5e.

            That being said, there was some god-awful shit in 4e too.  Let’s look at two big issues, the Fomorians and the Cyclops.

 

You can tell they are evil because they're fugly.

            I have no idea why the Fomorians were elevated to the status that they were in the 4e core books.  I do not know why they were given an army of Cyclops to do their bidding.  I do not know what appeared in TV, Literature, or Film that encouraged the developers at Wizards to go in for these guys.  I don’t know why they are fey when they are both clearly giants.

            Between the two, they take up 5 pages in the monster manual.  One of which is just a full page of two Fomorians looking ugly.  I cannot for the life of me see this as a logical use of page space.  I suspect they were to be the paragon (levels 11-20) monster races of choice, but that only works if you ignore the traditional giants who are there and in the same range of challenge.

            I do not see it.  I do not see the appeal of them as setting pieces.  I do not see the coupling of the two as a society.  Maybe there is a Celtic Mythology Nerd working at Wizards who was just super persuasive to pull for the Fomorians.  But then why the Greek Mythology creature, the Cyclops to go with them?  Why are they not giants?

            I know that when I talked about dragons yesterday, I encouraged going with the Oriental Adventures Dragons as my favorites and said they should have been made core in 5e for the novelty.  There is some novelty in the Fomorians and Cyclops’ status being elevated in 4e.  My issue is this, they didn’t take it far enough.

            If you want to make a whole new bunch of giants with the Fomorians as the ugliest and most powerful magically, fine by me.  You could unite the Ogres, the Cyclops, Trolls (even come up with different types), Ettins, and others and drop the traditional Hill/Frost/Fire/Cloud/Storm Giants altogether.  Hell, introduce other names for giants like Nephilim or Daityas.  Make new giants based on existing mythology, like a fire breathing race of giants named for Cacus.

            If you are going to break with something.  BREAK HARD.  Clever spins on existing material are not going to be noticed or appreciated.  Bigger departures are more interesting.  Again, I am the guy who likes “Spelljammer” and “Ravenloft” more than “Forgotten Realms” so my opinion should be taken from the perspective of wild imagination.

            The addition of “weird eyes for the giant guys” was different but didn’t displace the still present safe option of traditional giants.  They were just another monster given more space in the book than they really deserved.

 

Maybe I don't know what I am talking about.
To me though, the Cyclops clash with the Fairy Tale like atmosphere of the Feywild.
They should have been replaced with Trolls which at least originate in the same regional folklore as the Fomorians.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about Undead.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "Dragons"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

 

Kaiju Fight!

Day 17- My Favorite Dragons

            There are 10,000 monsters in this gods damned game.  Expect several top 5 lists this week as there are not too many specific “favorites” more like “preferred”.  Today is Dragons.  Here is a twist for you, I don’t really give a fuck about Dragons.  I emphasize the Dungeon part of Dungeons and Dragons and mostly see Dragons as the iconic… and underwhelming part of the game.  That being said, I will do my usual thing, be super contrarian and pick things outside the box.

            Let’s go.

#6: Dragon Turtle

            I like turtles.  They feature in lots of elegant artwork painted on the sides of vans and surf shops.  Aside from that I grew up in Florida, and one of the more interesting animals you often see at reptile presentations at the local library, county fair, or school presentation is the Snapping Turtle.  The obvious inspiration for the dragon turtle.

            I have nothing special to say about this.  Aside from, it reminds me of things in the real world that I have seen and as such feels more real than most dragons.  It has little personality beyond that.

 #5: Wyvern

            Considering Wyverns were the way dragons were portrayed in “Skyrim” I am surprised no effort was made to create Wyvern variants in the core books of 5e, but aside from some cool art they did nothing to ape material from Elder Scrolls.

            Let’s look past that though.  Wyverns are solid monsters.  Flight, a combination of attacks, and a poison stinger.  They are not bad, just not magical which is one of those aspects of Dragons that shows up a plenty in western civilization.

#4: Metallic Dragons

            Rather than talk about how much I like these things (a bit, they're fine) I want to point out something that rubs me the wrong way about these things.  I cannot fathom why they went with Brass, Bronze, and Copper.  Copper (being redder and with a green fringe) and Brass (being yellow-ish) fine, but why Bronze?  It is too much like the other two.  Not like this is hard to fix either.  Just replace it with Iron to serve as a dull grey, a color not found among the metal or chromatics.

            What is really weird, the bronze dragon is the wrong color in the 3^rd edition monster manual.  Bronze is not an especially yellow metal, and definitely not green.  Green trim makes sense for copper dragons because as copper oxidizes it becomes green (hence the statue of liberty).  What is more the 3e Brass dragon is almost orange (which would be cool, but makes no sense).  They tried to fix this in 4e by getting rid of both the brass and bronze dragons to replace them with Iron (good) and adamantine (WHAT!?)

Am I crazy or do NONE of these colors look right?

            Adamantine is a magical and unbreakable metal.  Which implies that a dragon embodying it would be an epic dragon (like how an adamantine golem is an epic monster).  Having it be one of the core five metallic dragons undermines the Gold Dragon’s status at the top of the heap and beyond that YOU GET RID OF DRAGONS BECAUSE THEY LOOK TOO MUCH ALIKE AND THEN HAVE TWO THAT ARE THE EXACT SAME COLOR!?  HOW DOES THAT HELP!?

            Bad designers.  NO!

            And of course, 5^th edition just went back to 3e’s sorting instead of taking another swing at the somewhat good idea of 4e to fix it up.  They even got the color wrong on the bronze dragon again.

 

Sometimes the art on these things gets so epic it kind of gives me a headache.
I don't even know what that means.

#3: Chromatic Dragons

            Chromatic Dragons are fine.  They are color coded.  They have a range of difficulties.  I have no trouble telling them apart from one another and have an easy time recalling which one goes in which environment.  They are classic bad guys.  They are, for most people, the right kind of boring.

            They are 99% of what you expect from a Dragon.  Maybe 85% as I feel “Game of Thrones” and “Skyrim” have shaken up people’s expectations, but they are what people think of when they think of dragons.  Though I guess most normal people would picture a green dragon living in a cave, shooting fire.  Those things don’t line up here, they spread out those traditional elements, but like I said, 85-99% of what people are looking for in a classic fantasy bad guy.

I imagine these things were even more popular when Lockheed was the pet of Shadow Cat from X-Men.

 #2: Pseudodragon

            This thing is awesome.  Honestly, who doesn’t want a pet dragon.  I don’t even give a shit about dragons as icons of mythological wonder and even I find the idea of a cute little dragon pushing its head into my chin like a surly attention craving kitty to be freaking adorable.

 

"Behold!  Jugan, the Rising Star!"

 #1: Lung Dragons

            YEAH!  I am going for the dragons so obscure at this point I had to use an image from Magic the Gathering’s faux Asian setting “Kamigawa” because finding a non-shit image of the dragons from 3e Oriental Adventures is damn near impossible.

            I am not going to lie, picking this has everything to do with me wanting to point out that the Drake-style Western tradition dragons that define the look of Dungeons and Dragons are overused to the point of being kind of shit.

            While I know, these are all just charts of statistics with some cool artwork sitting next to them the fact is, I want some new artwork.  Asian style dragons (I think) would have been a good change to the status quo that should have been put in with 5e.  Not Samurai, Not Wu Jen, you don’t need any other Asian style monsters to start.  But, this, this sort of transgression.  It would have turned some heads.

It's not like a blending of Eastern and Western Influence can't produce something special and beautiful.

            I hate to be “that guy” who campaigns of diversity for the sake of diversity, but let’s at least try to shake up what we think of as core.  The Giants that were more interesting in 4e got more boring in 5e.  The angels that were more interesting in 4e got more boring in 5e.  Koblods, Goblins, and Orcs all got more boring in 5e.  The Dragons stayed as boring as they have ever been.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about Elementals, Fey, and Plants.

            Super interesting.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "Best Evil Fantasy Races"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 16- My Favorite Humanoids and Giants

            There are 10,000 monsters in this gods damned game.  Expect several top 5 lists this week as there are not too many specific “favorites” more like “preferred”.  Today is Humanoids and Giants.

            I have already talked about giants a bit back in my extra-long discussion about “Exotic Monsters” and how I prefer to see them as elemental beings.  Pointing to the oft maligned 4^th edition as having the best giants compared to the 3^rd and 5^th editions might rob me of some credibility in the eyes of readers.  Truth be told that edition had plenty of good ideas that are getting overlooked because people have a hard time parsing good ideas from bad ones.

Eat your vegetables and one day you'll be a TITAN!

            Humanoids have been mentioned in the context of “My Favorite Fantasy Races”.  Since we don’t really need me talking about how cool Warforged are again I will try and keep things fresh.  What is a good way to spin this?  How about “Best Evil Fantasy Races”

            Let’s go.

#6: Orcs

            I mentioned how you might change Orcs to make them more objectively monstrous back in my “Exotic Monsters” blog.  I pointed to the Orks of “Warhammer 40k” as an example of how it might work.  The typical Orc in Dungeons and Dragons I feel has become really old hat.

Am I supposed to be viewing this image as if it were at some kind of Dutch-Angle?
Cause it looks like the two on the left are about to fall over.

            Orcs have just been done to greater effect in other games, and as far as having a barbaric race that are in a state of constant war with everyone else, these guys are too much the dumb brute to be interesting.  Without a lot of reworking or making them the servants/minions of a more complex and interesting other party (see: Sauron and Saruman) they are too much the “Crush-Kill-Destroy” type opponent and they need to be better than that to be as prominent in the game as they are.

            As is, Orcs are not inhuman enough, nor complex enough, to work for me as bad guys unless they are in the very narrow role of goon.

I think the black-white-silver color scheme is also a strong factor in their success.
Color theory in regards to character design is a topic worthy of more discussion.

#5: Drow

            Another group (I think) that has been done to death.  At the very least they do it better than Orcs.  They have all the smarts, arrogance, and elegance of an elven race, while being coupled with monstrous elements like an insane god (Lloth), creepy sidekick monster (spiders), and an exotic location (Underdark).

            I can’t deny the popularity of the race and I would be stupid to deny the appeal of Drizzt Do’Urden which has become the quintessential example of heroic outsider (he is beaten out in name recognition only by characters like Ben Grimm or the Incredible Hulk for heroes who have sad music playing for them about the tragedy of their situation).

            Really my distaste for them comes more from seeing them so much.  Kind of like how I used to really like certain songs… Till they were the song I heard everywhere and eventually they lost all appeal.  It is just a matter of overplay.  The fantasy equivalent of the Chainsmokers.

“So, baby, pull me closer

“In the backseat of your Rover

“That I know you can't afford

“Bite that tattoo on your shoulder

“Pull the sheets right off the corner

“Of the mattress that you stole

“From your roommate back in Boulder

“We ain't ever getting older”

Maybe I just think of these guys as assholes because "The Lion King" was big when I was growing up.

#4: Gnolls and Animal People

            I think I might be the only person who is open to more animal-people being put into Dungeons and Dragons.  Aside from Gnolls and the occasional Jackal Headed humanoid in an Egyptian style area there aren’t any I can readily think of.  Rakshasa maybe, but they are so powerful they don’t get played by players.  Lizardmen, Dragonborn, and Minotaur I guess too.  Though I think Minotaur were only playable in 4e, the Bermuda Triangle of good ideas.

            Maybe there is some kind of stigma against it.  Maybe there aren’t enough of that type of fantasy race in conventionally Western folklore/mythology for it to be seen as a necessary aspect of the game.  Pathfinder was better at this I think.  Grippli and Vanara had great art in their Advanced Races Guide.  This section is turning into “My Favorite Fantasy Races” blog entry.  Let’s just move on.

I want to emphasize the version on the left.  Which I have dubbed, "the good version".

#3: Goblins

            Much like Orcs I talked about Goblins in my “Exotic Monsters” blog entry with an emphasis on making them more like a manufactured race of creatures.  I also made fun of how unremarkable the yellow versions of the race were in 5^th edition (I stand by that).  No, the Goblins I really like are the Pathfinder Goblins, which are as Ugly-Cute as a pug dog and pretty much the mascot of their whole game.

            This is the sort of fun emphasis I really like and sometimes feel goes underappreciated.  They are vile and dangerous, but they are so goofy looking and acting, that aspect of them livens the game up, and creates more of an impact when things do take a turn for the serious.  Right now, with the possible exception of the Flumph (who are good guys), there doesn’t seem to be too many silly monsters running around in Dungeons and Dragons.  Pathfinder does not have that problem.

We have complex tactics by the standard of 4th edition, and compared to 5e we are intensely interesting.

#2: Kobolds

            I talked about these guys and how I see them at length in another Blog entry.  My feelings toward them haven’t changed, so I will reference that and say only this, “Another thing that 4^th edition did right were the Kobolds.”

This was a magazine cover.  It is pretty rad.

#1: Githyanki

            These guys, aside from a brief collaboration between Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine back when magazines were still a thing, are under used.  They have a cool back story as the first race of humanoids enslaved by the Mindflayers.  They have cool surrounding lore, in that they live in the Astral Plane on the corpse of a dead god; have a pact with Red Dragons for mutual cooperation; they are part of a splintered society with their cousins the Githzerai living in the plane of Limbo as peace seeking monks; and they are ruled by a Lich Queen who eats the souls of any member of their society who grows too powerful.

Look at this fucking thing.  It is amazing.

            Generally speaking, the Githyanki have all the best cultural and game play markers of the Drow (replace Lloth with the Lich Queen, replace spiders with Red Dragons, instead of good elves there are the Githzerai, replace the grab bag of magic powers with a grab bag of psionic stuff, and the Astral Plane is the Underdark of the Multiverse) but they are 100 times more exotic and lack all the baggage that comes with the fan favorite Drow.

            I feel that if you enjoy using Drow in your games that you may want to give more time toward these guys should you ever want to expand your games to the multiverse rather than staying on the material plane.  It will take more work, because their lack of use means you will find fewer premade dungeons and stat blocks, but you might not feel weighed down by expectations and still able to throw some curveballs in regards to behavior and locations.

           

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about Dragons.

            You knew they would eventually make an appearance.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "Celestials"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 15- My Favorite Celestials

            There are 10,000 monsters in this gods damned game.  Expect several top 5 lists this week as there are not too many specific “favorites” more like “preferred”.  Today is Celestials, such as Angels and Archons (not the weird elemental Archons of 4e, that was one of their stranger decisions).

            This is a harder category than yesterday.  As demons are the bad guys meant to be flattened by the heroism of protagonists (or just pragmatism, even if you are an evil PC demons and devils are often rivals and rarely allies) the need for diversity among bad guys makes sense, you fight them the most often so you need the most variety.  Good guys tend to be rather same-same.  How is that expression, all happy families are alike in their happiness, but unhappy families are all unique in their misery.

            There are fewer varieties of Good Guys in the multiverse because you rarely have to fight angels.  You rarely see angels. No joke, I was able to pick the 6 Good Outsider groups from the 3^rd edition monster manual and present them all here without much to comment on.  Even picking a favorite was more about pointing to the least boring group and saying, “that”.

            Let’s go.

 

Inspired by the only god in Aztec Myth that wasn't a complete bastard.

#6: Couatl

            It is a feathered serpent that doesn’t demand blood sacrifice from its worshipers.  I strangely feel like these guys should be cooler and more interesting than they are.  I don’t even think they got a bigger role in 4^th edition and that book had a whole section on magical snakes including a flaming cobra.

            Maybe it is just that the artwork, while colorful and well done, is too small and inactive to entice people to write about it.  Maybe if they had it fighting some other monster on the page, but it is alphabetically wedged between a Cockatrice and a Darkmantle, two low level monsters that would have no business around the angelic snake monster.

            The Couatl was screwed by the alphabet.

 

This is the 4e version of these guys.  The third edition had stranger armor.

#5: Eladrins

            These guys became a player race in 4e, replacing High Elves to be a teleporting, dead-eyed society of weirdos (I did not really care for them).  In 3rd edition, they were knights errant, traveling around the multiverse helping the forces of good in random instances, that is admittedly a lot more interesting albeit harder to identify with.

This is their 3e presentation.  It is not just me right?  The armor is a little strange.
A little too nipple oriented.

            I don’t know why, but even by the standards of boring good guys these dudes were always the most boring.  4e helped by making them a society with their own business to attend to, but as monsters in 3^rd edition they mostly just seem like a story element more easily filled by a Paladin or Cleric of 5^th-8^th level, or better yet a Hound Archon who just flat out looked cooler.

 

Though emphasis on nipples is not uncommon in good guy armor I suppose.

#4: Lillend

            These are snake, wing, Valkyries?  They are apparently the celestial creature of Isgard, the Greyhawk stand in for Asgard.  I don’t get why the creatives chose to make the celestials of Ysgard so strange, but I kind of appreciate that they are.  It would be easy to just have Valkyries in their traditional form, but they chose to add wings and a snake-mermaid-esc tail, take away the battle elements traditional for a Valkyrie, and make them musical.  Lillends are strange.

            That strangeness though, it makes them hard to fit in.  What monster is a logical pairing with this thing?  It is also a grappling spell caster, which in 3e was ALWAYS a contradiction.  They also had nobody else from Ysgard to contextualize them with.

These guys look cool.  Especially because they seem to be super into core exercises.
Shredded, and not just with talons/claws.

#3: Guardinals

            Does anyone recall these guys?  They are kind of badass looking.  Animal people, a trait I think is underutilized.  I think they look like the missing members of a larger group, like there was going to be bears, boars, deer, and others (there probably was now that I let my mind wander to the “Book of Exalted Deeds”).  The Guardinals are also boring.  Or at least the two in the main book are.

            The lion one roars, the bird guy has a… Fear Aura?  I guess that is unique for a good guy, especially for a bird person.  I would have thought the lion would be the fear inspiring guy, he instead has a protective aura.  This is another issue I have with 3e, they spent so much time on creating a massive and ultra-detailed spellbook that they often just gave out a list of spells as “abilities”.  Even though the lists would differ and that is where much of the variation came from, having to look up their abilities in another book made them a pain in the butt.

            I think that these guys should have been merged with my guys at number 1, the Archons.  As their own group, they seem vestigial.

 

Speaking of exercising your core.

#2: Angels

            Angels are boring looking and pretty much to the man, they just have high stats and are diamond hard to kill.  They can take and dole out lots of damage in very straightforward ways, I kind of liked that trait in the Horned Devil from yesterday, but here it is so standard issue for the Angels they just seems less interesting. They all look like physically perfect beings and act like perfect beings.  So, I am going to be the contrarian and say that I preferred angels in 4^th edition.

4e Angels turn down the sexy knob and crank up the mysterious and ominous.

            In 4^th edition Angels were not really thinking beings, they were kind of like celestial constructs, created by the gods (of any alignment) to do the bidding of that god.  They looked like they were made of divine energy and existed to do something, and since they could be doing something evil they occasionally would fight players.  THAT IS AN INTERESTING BREAK WITH PRIOR CANON AND EXPECTATIONS.

            Angels in Western religions were (and this is my assessment) not nice.  They could wipe out armies, deliver edicts, and were not a comforting presence.  The Book of Ezekiel shows them as Lovecraftian monsters rather than anything like what we picture now.  Having Angels be a tool of a higher being is more interesting than having them be pure good.

This is the more dynamic shot of them together, but there were other good ones.

 #1: Archons

            My enjoyment of these guys is mostly inspired by the image of them in the 3.5 edition Monster Manual.  The ball of light, the dogman, and the trumpet player look like they are going on an adventure.  This is fun artwork.  I wish we could see what they are about to go up against, but whatever, there is only so much space on the page.

            While most of their abilities (much like the Eladrins) could be filled in by a Paladin or Cleric of appropriate level I at the very least think this group is diverse enough LOOKING that I do have some affection for them.

            If the Guardinals and Lillend had been rolled into the Archons to create a group of exotic looking alternatives to the angels, to serve as the go-to good guy outsiders I think they would still be around as a group in 5^th.  As is, they were the more interesting looking, but were not numerous or profound enough in the game to measure up.  If the Archons had hung around they could have left the angels as their 4e versions, as manifestations of a god’s will rather than the objective good guys.

 

The term "Archon" in 4th edition was a term for races of intelligent elementals.
I have no idea why they thought they needed another race of elemental inspired monsters.
The ones we already had were boring, these are just boring and more anthropomorphized.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about Humanoids and Giants.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.