Combat isn't the be all and end all of DnD , or at least for MY tastes shouldn't.
Moon Druids are very combat focused and are less useful outside of combat.  Meaning in actual Roleplay and doing stuff outside of combat.

For example, the Ranger, commonly seen as a weak Class, mainly due to it's less usefulness in combat (which is debatable).
But the Ranger has LOTS of great uses OUTSIDE of combat.

I suppose if you play DnD with a view of it nearly all being combat, this could be a problem, but that sounds like a boring campaign for my tastes.

For me, I prefer about 25% to 30% if appropriate to what's going on, to be devoted to combat.
I've run and played many sessions where there was very little or no combat at all and it was great fun.

Obviously I'm not saying other people are doing it wrong.  Whatever floats your boat for YOUR DnD is no skin off my nose.

Kefra and a few other druid players, moon or otherwise would disagree with the idea of the Moon druid being combat focused. They actually get a fair spread of animals that can be applied to all manner of different problems.

Kefra for example in 5e has her Moon Druid as a former spy. She would assume a bird form and just hang around eavesdropping. And as mentioned before she got herself killed trying to scout a swamp region as a swamp snake. Another player I met would scout areas as a spider for what she termed the "ATV" ability to scout from unexpected directions.

One thing I like to emphasize that players oft overlook is... scale.

Small or really small critters are dealing with things on a vastly different scale. A table leg becomes something like a tree trunk to a mouse or spider. A 20x20 room becomes a vast expanse the equivalent of I believe a 480x480 cavern.

Or on the flip side. A Mammoth is going to have a potentially damn hard time in any room with a 10ft ceiling. WHAM!

Quote from: Omega;1055909Or on the flip side. A Mammoth is going to have a potentially damn hard time in any room with a 10ft ceiling. WHAM!

Yeah, I never saw Huge forms used much, except for overland transport via giant elk. My Druid certainly never changed into a mammoth.

Quote from: Omega;1055909One thing I like to emphasize that players oft overlook is... scale.

THIS is a huge (no pun intended, but laughter accepted) issue.  No one seems to realize just how tall giants are compared to the average person.

Quote from: Omega;1055909Small or really small critters are dealing with things on a vastly different scale. A table leg becomes something like a tree trunk to a mouse or spider. A 20x20 room becomes a vast expanse the equivalent of I believe a 480x480 cavern.

Or on the flip side. A Mammoth is going to have a potentially damn hard time in any room with a 10ft ceiling. WHAM!

Fun fact, the average modern house interior is 8ft high from floor to ceiling.

Quote from: estar;1055881Spoke like a true snob. When it comes to the fantastic and supernatural is all made stuff whether it is last year, 40 years ago, or a thousand years ago. The point of the exercise is to present one's take on the material. If your goal is to help hobbyist pretend to be character in a setting where Norse mythology is real and part of the world. Then using Poul Anderson's take on troll is a good point of criticism for that work.  

I acknowledge and apologize for my rudeness and stupidity. I wrote my last post on my phone in the middle of after-work traffic and I was not thinking or explaining myself clearly.

I think D&D trolls are overused and have lost any novelty. That is why I love Trollhunters and the breath of fresh air that is Trudvang Chronicles: while based on Scandinavian myth and folklore, it still puts it own spin on things to provide diversity and imagination. Like the giant dwarf, which is awesome.

But back to my original complaint, the types mechanic is borked. Many of the types are arbitrary and poorly defined, so what monsters get placed into them often feel arbitrary. For example, the stirge, tressym and cranium rat are beasts, the centaur, owlbear and griffin are monstrosities, and the dryad, satyr, blink dog and hag are fey. The definitions of the types do not help to explain this and are often contradicted by the monsters. Monstrosities are supposedly unwholesome or whatever, but the centaur, owlbear and griffin are natural allies of the druid so this definition makes no sense. The beast type does not solely cover animals that exist in reality or lack magic powers, since it includes giant bugs and fictional creatures and spell-casters.

The types cover a variety of things that are not comparable, such as extraplanar origin, body type, and so forth. It would make vastly more sense to split these things up, like how 4e had separate origins, types and keywords.

It is also very easy to create monsters that do not fit the existing types. For example, is a "junk elemental" or "spontaneous construct" applicable as a construct or an elemental? What type do you place an anthropomorphic spirit of law or neutrality that is not a construct, fiend, or celestial? What type do you place nature spirits (a la RuneQuest, Encyclopaedia Divine: Druids, etc) that dwell in the spirit world and interact with the physical world by manifesting in incorporeal visage, materializing a physical avatar, or possessing objects/bodies? Where do you place a cyborg or biomechanical entity? Where do you place a physical living creature whose existence was caused by strong emotion/desire and who ceases to exist when a condition is met, a la ghosts? Where do you place an air elemental animated from the dying breath of a dead person? Where do you place a nature spirit who has permanently incarnated into a physical form without losing their spiritual nature? Where do you place humans and demi-humans who were created and live on the elemental, upper or lower planes? Where do you place the hybrid animals that make up all animal life in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender? Where do you put the alien animals from speculative fiction documentaries like Darwin IV? Where do you place any monster which can easily fit into multiple types or none at all?

When WotC debuted 3.0, they had two types for "animal" and "beast". "Animal" covered real or historical animals, whereas "beast" covered ahistorical animals. This distinction was arbitrary and nonsensical: why should Earth matter to a fantasy world? The "magical beast" type displayed a similar problem, since the D&D implied setting is built around the arbitrary conceit that magic is unnatural and transient even though that is at odds with all fantasy, fairy tales, folklore and myth that predates D&D. IMO, that model of magic is inherently nonsensical and not holistic at all; it makes the gods who created the fictional world look like immigrants from our Earth who had no idea how to build anything from first principles, so they just copied Earth and then crudely tacked magic on.

But I digress...

The types were invented ad hoc by WotC to cover a bunch of obscure concepts. This promotes lazy design and forces anyone writing a setting or bestiary to force their world building to fit the rules rather than use the rules to support their world building. Probably the single worst restriction is that monsters may only have one type, even though the Rules Cyclopedia which implemented the first type mechanic allowed monsters to have multiple types. This forces designers to pigeonhole their monsters and arbitrarily restricts creativity. We don't need that many types either, especially not as arbitrary and restrictive as they are: five types for "animates", "beasts", "folks", "spirits" and "monsters" can easily cover all possible concepts.

The article "The Frustration of Fantasy Taxonomies" probably puts it better than I can.

EDIT: On a related note, I think D&D does its monsters a disservice. Taking monsters from mythology and then mutilating them beyond recognition does not somehow make them better or more game-able or whatever. It just makes them bland and boring IMO. For example, the Greek monsters like lamia, minotaur, gorgon, etc had their own stories and diversity in mythology but in D&D they are reduced to generic obstacles for parties to kill. Many of the myths had some kind of moral message that is completely lost in the transition.

So that's why I like re-imaginings of the monsters which go back to their roots, introduce new ideas, and remove the unnecessary D&Disms. Pathfinder is a perfect example of IMO the wrong direction to go, since they just double down on the arbitrary bizarre D&Disms. To add insult to injury they lie about it and claim to be truer to mythology when they are totally not.

Quote from: Omega;1055909One thing I like to emphasize that players oft overlook is... scale.

Small or really small critters are dealing with things on a vastly different scale. A table leg becomes something like a tree trunk to a mouse or spider. A 20x20 room becomes a vast expanse the equivalent of I believe a 480x480 cavern.

Or on the flip side. A Mammoth is going to have a potentially damn hard time in any room with a 10ft ceiling. WHAM!

In terms of flavor, that's a good point. In terms of damage, I think that's already accounted for by the creature's low hp.

Quote from: Omega;1055909One thing I like to emphasize that players oft overlook is... scale.

Small or really small critters are dealing with things on a vastly different scale. A table leg becomes something like a tree trunk to a mouse or spider. A 20x20 room becomes a vast expanse the equivalent of I believe a 480x480 cavern.

Or on the flip side. A Mammoth is going to have a potentially damn hard time in any room with a 10ft ceiling. WHAM!

While obviously scale does matter, I think it can be misconstrued. For example, I've seen mice scamper up or down a table leg in the blink of an eye - which is vastly different than a human or even a monkey and a tree trunk. In a flat out run they're roughly a third of human speed - so 10 foot move for D&D would be appropriate - which is quite out of scale with the height difference.

This strikes me as quibbling. Sure, one should properly adjudicate limitations of animals - but overall, the ability to change into any animal is still an extremely useful power.

Quote from: jhkim;1055990While obviously scale does matter, I think it can be misconstrued. For example, I've seen mice scamper up or down a table leg in the blink of an eye - which is vastly different than a human or even a monkey and a tree trunk. In a flat out run they're roughly a third of human speed - so 10 foot move for D&D would be appropriate - which is quite out of scale with the height difference.

This strikes me as quibbling. Sure, one should properly adjudicate limitations of animals - but overall, the ability to change into any animal is still an extremely useful power.

A fun exercise I like to do is eyeball remake D&D classes in GURPS and see who has crazy higher point values.

Wildshape is like a combination Morph and Extra Life, which for Moon Druid forms nets around 200 points (or only 125 for smaller animals) by itself and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy characters start at 250 total points.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1055968the D&D implied setting is built around the arbitrary conceit that magic is unnatural and transient even though that is at odds with all fantasy, fairy tales, folklore and myth that predates D&D.

It's a trope which has strong basis in the 1930s-40s Modernist swords & sorcery and horror fiction that was a huge influence on Gygax: RE Howard, HP Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber (slightly surprisingly given Nehwon's cosmology) are the three big ones that come to mind. In these works, Magic is an unnatural force of the Outer Dark, trickling in from the dark depths of space. It's not a natural part of the human cosmos, it's something sorcerers work with and blast their sanity engaging with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.

That's where it comes from. D&D ran with this 0e through 3e, then discarded it in 4e (creating a much more Mythic feel), then of course 5e brought it back with the rest of the pre-4e baggage.

Quote from: S'mon;1055998It's a trope which has strong basis in the 1930s-40s Modernist swords & sorcery and horror fiction that was a huge influence on Gygax: RE Howard, HP Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber (slightly surprisingly given Nehwon's cosmology) are the three big ones that come to mind. In these works, Magic is an unnatural force of the Outer Dark, trickling in from the dark depths of space. It's not a natural part of the human cosmos, it's something sorcerers work with and blast their sanity engaging with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.

That's where it comes from. D&D ran with this 0e through 3e, then discarded it in 4e (creating a much more Mythic feel), then of course 5e brought it back with the rest of the pre-4e baggage.

I question that line of logic. None of those inspirations worked remotely like D&Ds conception of magic and antimagic. Quite the contrary, Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch-House" outright states that what humans call magic is just really advanced mathematics a la Clarke's Law. (You have to keep in mind he was a romantic and considered scientific progress to be existentially terrifying.)

D&D, by contrast, treats magic as a force which suffuses the universe and lets casters cheat physics. Antimagic can negate it without any detrimental effects on the rest of reality. Although it makes absolutely no sense for any universe to be structured this way, as shown by the fundamental forces observed by scientists being equally fundamental to everything, this conceit is used by the majority of modern fantasy since modern writers cannot world-build from first principles but can only iterate. In short, monkey see monkey do.

In a holistic fantasy universe the magic would be the equivalent of technology. Indeed, it would replace real world technology because the underlying physics would logically prohibit the development of real world technology. If the universe is composed of the five elements of air, earth, fire, water and aether, where the hell are you going to get the electrons needed to create electronics? Can you even make gunpowder in this universe? Is coal and steam power even physically possible?

It isn't surprising that most writers take the easy path and just crudely tack magic into our real world physics rather than rewrite physics to run on magic. It would take a lot of work to figure out from first principles.

Anyone who did design a holistic magical universe from first principles, publish it and become wildly successful... you would cause a paradigm shift in the fantasy genre equal to or greater than that caused by Tolkien. You would set the standard for every future magic system.

Quote from: S'mon;1055998It's a trope which has strong basis in the 1930s-40s Modernist swords & sorcery and horror fiction that was a huge influence on Gygax: RE Howard, HP Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber (slightly surprisingly given Nehwon's cosmology) are the three big ones that come to mind. In these works, Magic is an unnatural force of the Outer Dark, trickling in from the dark depths of space. It's not a natural part of the human cosmos, it's something sorcerers work with and blast their sanity engaging with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.

That's where it comes from. D&D ran with this 0e through 3e, then discarded it in 4e (creating a much more Mythic feel), then of course 5e brought it back with the rest of the pre-4e baggage.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1056012I question that line of logic. None of those inspirations worked remotely like D&Ds conception of magic and antimagic. Quite the contrary, Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch-House" outright states that what humans call magic is just really advanced mathematics a la Clarke's Law. (You have to keep in mind he was a romantic and considered scientific progress to be existentially terrifying.)

D&D, by contrast, treats magic as a force which suffuses the universe and lets casters cheat physics. Antimagic can negate it without any detrimental effects on the rest of reality. Although it makes absolutely no sense for any universe to be structured this way, as shown by the fundamental forces observed by scientists being equally fundamental to everything, this conceit is used by the majority of modern fantasy since modern writers cannot world-build from first principles but can only iterate. In short, monkey see monkey do.

I'd agree with BoxCrayonTales about Lovecraft and Howard, at least. I can't picture anything like an "anti-magic field" in either Lovecraft or Howard. For Lovecraft, the Things That Man Was Not Meant to Know are in a sense extremely natural - they are the real truth that we can't stand to see. A recurring theme for him is the terrifying evil that is within or among the mundane. In R.E. Howard's stories, I'd agree magic is usually alien to the natural world - but that's more a source rather than a distinct energy. I'm not sure about Fritz Leiber. I have seen this in non-D&D fiction, though, like in Larry Niven's "The Magic Goes Away". Although that story was published after D&D, I think it has precursors in some earlier fantasy fiction.

To my mind Anti-magic fields feel more Vancian.  

Not that I can recall anything of the sort in the Dying Earth - but they fit a concept of magic as decadent poorly understand superscience in which magic is an alien or extraplanar force to be manipulated and with which to manipulate the world.

If we were to split 3E animals and beasts categories into "earth animals" and "aliens" then the division would make sense.  

So many D&D conceit's just make a lot more sense if we assume a Dying Earth/New Sun, style of setting.

Quote from: jhkim;1056017I'd agree with BoxCrayonTales about Lovecraft and Howard, at least. I can't picture anything like an "anti-magic field" in either Lovecraft or Howard.

Elder Sign? Or is that a sub-HPL writer?

D&D treatment of magic is very similar to how you see it treated in comics, certainly Superhero comics (& Savage Sword of Conan) of that era.

Quote from: TJS;1056020To my mind Anti-magic fields feel more Vancian.  

Not that I can recall anything of the sort in the Dying Earth - but they fit a concept of magic as decadent poorly understand superscience in which magic is an alien or extraplanar force to be manipulated and with which to manipulate the world.

If we were to split 3E animals and beasts categories into "earth animals" and "aliens" then the division would make sense.  

So many D&D conceit's just make a lot more sense if we assume a Dying Earth/New Sun, style of setting.

Yes. Good point.