Just curious why orcs and drow are no longer in the Monster Manual. They are my two favorite races in D&D and make for excellent adventures. To anybody out there that can tell me why, Id be appreciative. Thanks.
None of the core playable species have stat blocks in the monster manual - instead, they opted for universal job titles (bandit, mage, noble, etc.), which can be applied to any species.
If you want to customize those jobs to fit the flare of a playable species, it is not hard to add one of that species’ defining traits. For example, you could add Relentless Endurance to an Orc bandit or increased Darkvision and the Darkness spell to a Drow Noble.
None of the core playable species have stat blocks in the monster manual -
Just to be clear, core here refers to the core species in the PHB, where both appear in the 2024 PHB but Orc does not appear in Free Rules at all. since half-races/half-species were removed, new species needed to be included, thus half-elf and half-orc are gone, replaced by Aasimar, Goliath and Orc.
Drow was just odd in 2014 being in both PHB and MM.
The lord of the rings roleplay expansion gives a pretty good take on the original orc and this is what I will use. The portrayal here is rather absurd.
I miss the old EVIL drow and the Lolth inspired matriarchal culture. The story of Drizzy breaking away from this was an enjoyable read back in the day.. Disappointed that it's gone from here however no reason not to use the older sources which have many options.
The lord of the rings roleplay expansion gives a pretty good take on the original orc and this is what I will use. The portrayal here is rather absurd.
I miss the old EVIL drow and the Lolth inspired matriarchal culture. The story of Drizzy breaking away from this was an enjoyable read back in the day.. Disappointed that it's gone from here however no reason not to use the older sources which have many options.
None of that is gone. What is gone is the idea that, as a matter of biology, some things are inherently evil. You can still have evil Drow, evil Drow cultures matriarchal Drow cultures,, and stories of exceptional individuals who break away from their culture. You can still do whatever you want with orcs.
Wizards, however, is not going to make that part of their biology - there is no “evil” genome. And there is good reason for Wizards scaling that back - the “evil as part of their biology” element of D&D was expressly included as a racist trope. Gary Gygax even spoke about this - he was quoted talking about how he was a eugenicist and compared orcs to Native Americans when advocating for genocide. Nothing wrong with Wizards removing the biological politics of a self-proclaimed bigot from the game.
Yeah, the “ black is evil/bad/sinful trope I can do without. Personally if I were retconning this I would use biology as my guides. Here two different examples both biologically/ physicsly accurate: 1) cave animals - lose their original colors and become pure white ( or clear) skinned and lose their hair/fur bless it surveys a sensory purpose. So turning the originally brown dark elves a pure white/clear with white/no hair would make sense. 2) the fairness apperently glows slightly with a blue- violet shade so very faint blue to violet ( and maybe UV) light suffuses the underdark, Similar to the deep ocean. To hide and fade not this many ocean creatures from the the zones where different colored lights have been absorbed are colored in those shades so that they become essentially invisible. So having the underdark creatures be varying shades of reds, oranges, yellows etc would work nicely as they would absorb the blues/violets and appear black or invisible in the underdark.
It’s just people complaining about things that aren’t there
We know these things were there because Gary Gygax told us they were there. He was an outspoken supporter of eugenics - and firmly believed things like “some real world cultures are biologically programmed to be savages” and “women are biologically incapable of enjoying D&D.”
He was very clear he based things like Orcs on his belief that biological evil exists… and he was very clear he based orc culture on his stereotypes of native Americans and African tribal cultures. He included stat blocks for orc children in a book so the “heroes” could commit genocide against the tribe.. and when asked about it, quoted a real world military officer giving an order to commit genocide to justify his belief that “good” characters should commit genocide against tribal groups. Hell, this is a guy who literally praises Hitler in the original DMG - it’s right there, plainly spelled out in the text.
Gygax was a great game designer - but he was an evil, small-minded man who bragged about how he included racism in the game. You can pretend it is not there all you want - Gary Gygax himself disagrees with you.
None of the core playable species have stat blocks in the monster manual - instead, they opted for universal job titles (bandit, mage, noble, etc.), which can be applied to any species.
If you want to customize those jobs to fit the flare of a playable species, it is not hard to add one of that species’ defining traits. For example, you could add Relentless Endurance to an Orc bandit or increased Darkvision and the Darkness spell to a Drow Noble.
^ This, and In fact, DMG Creating a Creature (pg 56-57) gives you guidance on doing exactly this. The sample traits on page 57 are not the only ones you're allowed to use, you can pull traits from anywhere, including species traits.
I miss the old EVIL drow and the Lolth inspired matriarchal culture. The story of Drizzy breaking away from this was an enjoyable read back in the day.. Disappointed that it's gone from here however no reason not to use the older sources which have many options.
Why would that be in the Monster Manual or Player's Handbook? It's specific to one setting (Forgotten Realms), not universal to all of them. Eberron Drow for example have nothing to do with Lolth, Drizz't, or Menzoberranzan's matriarchy.
If you want real confusion, read the entry on Lizardfolk.
While I like the flexibility and other bits about what they’re trying to do… the lizard folk specialists are Elementals but they make mention of others being humanoids with humanoid professions/roles.
Even basic abilities that I’d assume are fundamental characteristics of the species are not discussed. Movement modes, dark vision, etc… what is a RAW focused DM supposed to do?
I’m happy to make my own decisions as a DM, but I at least like to start from RAW and only deviate when needed. Now we need to go through trying to decide what’s a biological characteristic vs a learned ability. Would it really have killed the team to spend time on one page of info that spells it out?
If you want real confusion, read the entry on Lizardfolk.
While I like the flexibility and other bits about what they’re trying to do… the lizard folk specialists are Elementals but they make mention of others being humanoids with humanoid professions/roles.
Even basic abilities that I’d assume are fundamental characteristics of the species are not discussed. Movement modes, dark vision, etc… what is a RAW focused DM supposed to do?
I’m happy to make my own decisions as a DM, but I at least like to start from RAW and only deviate when needed. Now we need to go through trying to decide what’s a biological characteristic vs a learned ability. Would it really have killed the team to spend time on one page of info that spells it out?
[Redacted] the entry on Lizardfolk:
Lizardfolk dwell in wildernesses suffused with primal magic. While many lizardfolk are Humanoids with varied skills, some forge powerful bonds with the Elemental Plane of Earth, granting them magical connections to the cycle of growth and rebirth.
Praising Hitler was spelled out in the text - a specific praise? I doubt that that. Evil and small minded? Over-the-top. That old style DND was little roleplay and equivalent to a giant rat killing maze. No difference than many of the MMPORG or anything similar. Kill everything. You might as well say everyone that played was small minded and evil.
Praising Hitler was spelled out in the text - a specific praise? I doubt that that. Evil and small minded? Over-the-top. That old style DND was little roleplay and equivalent to a giant rat killing maze. No difference than many of the MMPORG or anything similar. Kill everything. You might as well say everyone that played was small minded and evil.
Yes. A specific praise. Gygax used three examples of exemplary charismatic individuals - Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler. Three dictators and no other examples, held up by Gygax as his prime examples of charismatic individuals. Gygaz also gets weirdly lusty over Hitler, pontificating on how much more Hitler would be if Hitler was also physically attractive. Ruminating on sexy Hitler and how much more successful he would have been is not really in the preview of a good person.
Your point about the old game being just a dungeon crawl is also wrong. Plenty of folks have been doing roleplay heavy games for the past fifty years - heck, the very first proto-D&D session started with them stuck in an inn and having to roleplay their way out. The idea that old school D&D was dungeon crawl heavy is a myth perpetuated by a very certain select of gatekeeping players who want to pretend the “new” roleplay heavy way of playing is somehow wrong… even though it is hardly new and has been an aspect of the game for five decades.
So, no. I’m not saying old school players are small minded and evil. But there were some folks, including Gygax, with small minded views. It is those views that are specifically what Wizards was removing when they took out the eugenics component of creature stat blocks.
Thankfully, Wizards is finally doing something about that - and ignoring all the grognards who confuse “remove the immoral politics of Gygax” with “adding politics to the game.”
So, setting aside the issue of who brought what to earlier editions of the game- not discounting anything, just not tackling that angle- the fundamental point here is that writing "X race and/or culture (yes, spec fic commonly correlates the two; no, that is not an inherently problematic trope, it's just one possible worldbuilding tool) tends towards Evil because they hold X, Y, Z values" works when you're writing for a single setting. You see it in other game lines like the two Warhammer series and all the World of Darkness products. D&D, having already moved away from being written simply for a single setting or a few points within that setting's timeline well before 5e was anywhere close to development, is not following that model, and so dictating a set of attitudes for these beings becomes a non-starter in relation to the larger paradigms of the product. There are pros and cons to this approach- the current PHB and MM do provide little in the way of writing prompts to flesh out a character or population's societal identity- haven't looked at the Greyhawk section of the new DMG yet, so not sure if that managed to give some starting points. Hopefully, the upcoming Forgotten Realms sourcebooks will provide these details, which is a more fitting place for it since rather than indicating "all orcs in general have these values", it says "these are the values of orc culture in this specific setting". Thus the absence of specific humanoids in the new MM. Granted, it does hurt the ability to use off the shelf stat blocks that have a particular vibe to them rather than the generic NPC stuff; once again if we get some of that covered in the new Forgotten Realms books I can be content they're just taking a different approach to how they present the info, otherwise I will grant that we're getting into a distressing trend of "lowest common denominator" simplified writing at the expense of immersion, flavor, and verisimilitude.
Poking my head in to remind folk to be careful of focusing on real world political figures instead of the question at hand.
As folk have pointed out, there re no individual stat blocks for each and every type of humanoid version of Bandit, Cultist so on. Instead we have this instruction in 'How to Use a Monster':
Versatile Groups. Nonplayer characters now appear alongside other monsters and can represent individuals of any Humanoid species.
And in Monster conversions they have guidelines on which statblock to use for the 2014 specific humanoid ones such as:
You can see this as being similar to the 2014 Lycanthrope variant rule for Non-human werewolves. You use the generic statblock and can give traits representing a species if you like, such as dark vision or a species trait.
Maybe there could have been better guidelines on how to do so, or perhaps a side box with common variants such as 'Fiend Cultist- Priestess of Lolth', or what are some recommended traits to give to represent a species in a stat block. But this isn't really anything new and what you'd have to do in 2014 as well if you wanted a bandit to be an elf or halfling or dwarf instead of the assumed human.
Maybe there could have been better guidelines on how to do so, or perhaps a side box with common variants such as 'Fiend Cultist- Priestess of Lolth',
Its just really a shame to take iconic baddies like the Priestess of Lolth, immortalized in the Drizzt novels, and have to reduced it to a generic stat block that captures none of the essence.
Honestly the 2024 Monster Manual is unusable without the 2014 content.
I really hope they do a lot better with the 2030 version.
Maybe there could have been better guidelines on how to do so, or perhaps a side box with common variants such as 'Fiend Cultist- Priestess of Lolth',
Its just really a shame to take iconic baddies like the Priestess of Lolth, immortalized in the Drizzt novels, and have to reduced it to a generic stat block that captures none of the essence.
Honestly the 2024 Monster Manual is unusable without the 2014 content.
I really hope they do a lot better with the 2030 version.
Beyond this, I'm going to make a really bold and/or controversial statement with this: The whole evil society is what made Drow interesting as a race.
Because now they're just... elves with a different skin tone and innate magic.
Maybe there could have been better guidelines on how to do so, or perhaps a side box with common variants such as 'Fiend Cultist- Priestess of Lolth',
Its just really a shame to take iconic baddies like the Priestess of Lolth, immortalized in the Drizzt novels, and have to reduced it to a generic stat block that captures none of the essence.
You know where I expect to see them?
In the upcoming Forgotten Realms sourcebooks.
That Drow culture is entirely a FR thing. Greyhawk Drow are at least a little different. Eberron Drow are a lot different. Drow in my campaign are different along a different axis. Etc.
Maybe there could have been better guidelines on how to do so, or perhaps a side box with common variants such as 'Fiend Cultist- Priestess of Lolth',
Its just really a shame to take iconic baddies like the Priestess of Lolth, immortalized in the Drizzt novels, and have to reduced it to a generic stat block that captures none of the essence.
Honestly the 2024 Monster Manual is unusable without the 2014 content.
I really hope they do a lot better with the 2030 version.
Beyond this, I'm going to make a really bold and/or controversial statement with this: The whole evil society is what made Drow interesting as a race.
Because now they're just... elves with a different skin tone and innate magic.
Once again, you are confusing society for biology.
You can still have an evil society of Drow. They are evil because their society has made them that way. What has been changed: They are now evil because of their society, not evil because they are biologically evil.
This actually leads to better stories - you can now explore why their society evolved in a way that would be considered “evil,” as opposed to the eugenicist belief that “some races are just inherently evil because it is baked into their DNA.”
Just curious why orcs and drow are no longer in the Monster Manual. They are my two favorite races in D&D and make for excellent adventures. To anybody out there that can tell me why, Id be appreciative. Thanks.
None of the core playable species have stat blocks in the monster manual - instead, they opted for universal job titles (bandit, mage, noble, etc.), which can be applied to any species.
If you want to customize those jobs to fit the flare of a playable species, it is not hard to add one of that species’ defining traits. For example, you could add Relentless Endurance to an Orc bandit or increased Darkvision and the Darkness spell to a Drow Noble.
Just to be clear, core here refers to the core species in the PHB, where both appear in the 2024 PHB but Orc does not appear in Free Rules at all. since half-races/half-species were removed, new species needed to be included, thus half-elf and half-orc are gone, replaced by Aasimar, Goliath and Orc.
Drow was just odd in 2014 being in both PHB and MM.
The lord of the rings roleplay expansion gives a pretty good take on the original orc and this is what I will use. The portrayal here is rather absurd.
I miss the old EVIL drow and the Lolth inspired matriarchal culture. The story of Drizzy breaking away from this was an enjoyable read back in the day.. Disappointed that it's gone from here however no reason not to use the older sources which have many options.
None of that is gone. What is gone is the idea that, as a matter of biology, some things are inherently evil. You can still have evil Drow, evil Drow cultures matriarchal Drow cultures,, and stories of exceptional individuals who break away from their culture. You can still do whatever you want with orcs.
Wizards, however, is not going to make that part of their biology - there is no “evil” genome. And there is good reason for Wizards scaling that back - the “evil as part of their biology” element of D&D was expressly included as a racist trope. Gary Gygax even spoke about this - he was quoted talking about how he was a eugenicist and compared orcs to Native Americans when advocating for genocide. Nothing wrong with Wizards removing the biological politics of a self-proclaimed bigot from the game.
Yeah, the “ black is evil/bad/sinful trope I can do without. Personally if I were retconning this I would use biology as my guides. Here two different examples both biologically/ physicsly accurate:
1) cave animals - lose their original colors and become pure white ( or clear) skinned and lose their hair/fur bless it surveys a sensory purpose. So turning the originally brown dark elves a pure white/clear with white/no hair would make sense.
2) the fairness apperently glows slightly with a blue- violet shade so very faint blue to violet ( and maybe UV) light suffuses the underdark, Similar to the deep ocean. To hide and fade not this many ocean creatures from the the zones where different colored lights have been absorbed are colored in those shades so that they become essentially invisible. So having the underdark creatures be varying shades of reds, oranges, yellows etc would work nicely as they would absorb the blues/violets and appear black or invisible in the underdark.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
It’s just people complaining about things that aren’t there
We know these things were there because Gary Gygax told us they were there. He was an outspoken supporter of eugenics - and firmly believed things like “some real world cultures are biologically programmed to be savages” and “women are biologically incapable of enjoying D&D.”
He was very clear he based things like Orcs on his belief that biological evil exists… and he was very clear he based orc culture on his stereotypes of native Americans and African tribal cultures. He included stat blocks for orc children in a book so the “heroes” could commit genocide against the tribe.. and when asked about it, quoted a real world military officer giving an order to commit genocide to justify his belief that “good” characters should commit genocide against tribal groups. Hell, this is a guy who literally praises Hitler in the original DMG - it’s right there, plainly spelled out in the text.
Gygax was a great game designer - but he was an evil, small-minded man who bragged about how he included racism in the game. You can pretend it is not there all you want - Gary Gygax himself disagrees with you.
^ This, and In fact, DMG Creating a Creature (pg 56-57) gives you guidance on doing exactly this. The sample traits on page 57 are not the only ones you're allowed to use, you can pull traits from anywhere, including species traits.
Why would that be in the Monster Manual or Player's Handbook? It's specific to one setting (Forgotten Realms), not universal to all of them. Eberron Drow for example have nothing to do with Lolth, Drizz't, or Menzoberranzan's matriarchy.
If you want real confusion, read the entry on Lizardfolk.
While I like the flexibility and other bits about what they’re trying to do… the lizard folk specialists are Elementals but they make mention of others being humanoids with humanoid professions/roles.
Even basic abilities that I’d assume are fundamental characteristics of the species are not discussed. Movement modes, dark vision, etc… what is a RAW focused DM supposed to do?
I’m happy to make my own decisions as a DM, but I at least like to start from RAW and only deviate when needed. Now we need to go through trying to decide what’s a biological characteristic vs a learned ability. Would it really have killed the team to spend time on one page of info that spells it out?
[Redacted] the entry on Lizardfolk:
Lizardfolk dwell in wildernesses suffused with primal magic. While many lizardfolk are Humanoids with varied skills, some forge powerful bonds with the Elemental Plane of Earth, granting them magical connections to the cycle of growth and rebirth.
Praising Hitler was spelled out in the text - a specific praise? I doubt that that. Evil and small minded? Over-the-top. That old style DND was little roleplay and equivalent to a giant rat killing maze. No difference than many of the MMPORG or anything similar. Kill everything. You might as well say everyone that played was small minded and evil.
Yes. A specific praise. Gygax used three examples of exemplary charismatic individuals - Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler. Three dictators and no other examples, held up by Gygax as his prime examples of charismatic individuals. Gygaz also gets weirdly lusty over Hitler, pontificating on how much more Hitler would be if Hitler was also physically attractive. Ruminating on sexy Hitler and how much more successful he would have been is not really in the preview of a good person.
Your point about the old game being just a dungeon crawl is also wrong. Plenty of folks have been doing roleplay heavy games for the past fifty years - heck, the very first proto-D&D session started with them stuck in an inn and having to roleplay their way out. The idea that old school D&D was dungeon crawl heavy is a myth perpetuated by a very certain select of gatekeeping players who want to pretend the “new” roleplay heavy way of playing is somehow wrong… even though it is hardly new and has been an aspect of the game for five decades.
So, no. I’m not saying old school players are small minded and evil. But there were some folks, including Gygax, with small minded views. It is those views that are specifically what Wizards was removing when they took out the eugenics component of creature stat blocks.
Thankfully, Wizards is finally doing something about that - and ignoring all the grognards who confuse “remove the immoral politics of Gygax” with “adding politics to the game.”
So, setting aside the issue of who brought what to earlier editions of the game- not discounting anything, just not tackling that angle- the fundamental point here is that writing "X race and/or culture (yes, spec fic commonly correlates the two; no, that is not an inherently problematic trope, it's just one possible worldbuilding tool) tends towards Evil because they hold X, Y, Z values" works when you're writing for a single setting. You see it in other game lines like the two Warhammer series and all the World of Darkness products. D&D, having already moved away from being written simply for a single setting or a few points within that setting's timeline well before 5e was anywhere close to development, is not following that model, and so dictating a set of attitudes for these beings becomes a non-starter in relation to the larger paradigms of the product. There are pros and cons to this approach- the current PHB and MM do provide little in the way of writing prompts to flesh out a character or population's societal identity- haven't looked at the Greyhawk section of the new DMG yet, so not sure if that managed to give some starting points. Hopefully, the upcoming Forgotten Realms sourcebooks will provide these details, which is a more fitting place for it since rather than indicating "all orcs in general have these values", it says "these are the values of orc culture in this specific setting". Thus the absence of specific humanoids in the new MM. Granted, it does hurt the ability to use off the shelf stat blocks that have a particular vibe to them rather than the generic NPC stuff; once again if we get some of that covered in the new Forgotten Realms books I can be content they're just taking a different approach to how they present the info, otherwise I will grant that we're getting into a distressing trend of "lowest common denominator" simplified writing at the expense of immersion, flavor, and verisimilitude.
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ModeratorPoking my head in to remind folk to be careful of focusing on real world political figures instead of the question at hand.
As folk have pointed out, there re no individual stat blocks for each and every type of humanoid version of Bandit, Cultist so on. Instead we have this instruction in 'How to Use a Monster':
And in Monster conversions they have guidelines on which statblock to use for the 2014 specific humanoid ones such as:
and
You can see this as being similar to the 2014 Lycanthrope variant rule for Non-human werewolves. You use the generic statblock and can give traits representing a species if you like, such as dark vision or a species trait.
Maybe there could have been better guidelines on how to do so, or perhaps a side box with common variants such as 'Fiend Cultist- Priestess of Lolth', or what are some recommended traits to give to represent a species in a stat block. But this isn't really anything new and what you'd have to do in 2014 as well if you wanted a bandit to be an elf or halfling or dwarf instead of the assumed human.
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Its just really a shame to take iconic baddies like the Priestess of Lolth, immortalized in the Drizzt novels, and have to reduced it to a generic stat block that captures none of the essence.
Honestly the 2024 Monster Manual is unusable without the 2014 content.
I really hope they do a lot better with the 2030 version.
But they are in the 2024 Monster Manual. At least in the digital copy that I can see.
Beyond this, I'm going to make a really bold and/or controversial statement with this: The whole evil society is what made Drow interesting as a race.
Because now they're just... elves with a different skin tone and innate magic.
You know where I expect to see them?
In the upcoming Forgotten Realms sourcebooks.
That Drow culture is entirely a FR thing. Greyhawk Drow are at least a little different. Eberron Drow are a lot different. Drow in my campaign are different along a different axis. Etc.
Once again, you are confusing society for biology.
You can still have an evil society of Drow. They are evil because their society has made them that way. What has been changed: They are now evil because of their society, not evil because they are biologically evil.
This actually leads to better stories - you can now explore why their society evolved in a way that would be considered “evil,” as opposed to the eugenicist belief that “some races are just inherently evil because it is baked into their DNA.”