Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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A recent article has shown how WotC plans to translate all 40 class specializations from World of Warcraft to D&D in November's WoW-D&D crossover supplement. It looks like we won't just be getting the typical new species/subclasses/feats/spells that we can expect from splats nowadays. but there will also be a selection of variant class features, something I haven't seen in the game since Tasha's. For example, it looks like Moon Druid is finally getting a feature I've wanted basically since 5.5's release, scaling templates instead of needing to dig through the Monster Manual.
Are there any class translations/skins from the article folks are looking forward to? Any you feel skeptical or curious about?
I know absolutely nothing about WoW, but everything I’ve read about the mechanics of this book makes me excited for its release.
The class article in particular has me interested to see how much the variant mechanics might play into a class. I was always a little disappointed with the Tasha ones, since most of them were “take this, it is just better” rather than side-grades where you could pick and choose from parallel abilities to better customize your class and provide more character options. I am sort of getting the impression that is the intent with these, which seems super cool to me.
I've not had a chance to read the article but I've seen a few YouTube videos talking about the mechanics for this and have to say I feel pretty excited about this. I was expecting the WoW book to be interesting but fairly disposable but it's starting to sound like it could open the door to some genuinely interesting new mechanics and a whole new way that classes are handled. If this works then in the future the use of alternate features that come online if you choose a certain subclass (along with the Feat trees we've seen in UA) means they have a relatively easy way to introduce whole new classes just by tweaking a few things on an existing chassis
Anyone know how they have implemented the druid scaling templates?
I hated this idea when WoTC first proposed it in a UA because, even though it scaled, it completely lost the versatility of the feature that, to me, is the entire point of a druid (especially the Moon Druid).
That is, because the templates were just Land, Sea or Air it didn't matter whether you were a spider, an elephant or a squirrel, you just used the same stat block without any of the advantages of that animal form (like being able to climb walls and shoot webs as a spider)!
If they at least changed the template categories to be based on a 'role' rather than just Land, Sea, Air (like an 'attack' form, a 'stealth' form etc) then it may be ok...otherwise I'm still going to hate it :)
Just as an aside, this is how Daggerheart does it for its Druids and it works really well.
pronouns: he/she/they
The reality is, while people complain about turning D&D into a video game, there's actually a lot of things that can be learned from video games. In particular, while there's not a lot to learn about role-playing from most video games, there's plenty to learn about encounter design, set layout, and the like.
I haven’t had a chance to look closely, but DH seems to be a much softer game than D&D, so that’s not the best point of reference since the former would seem to run a lot more on leaving it to the group to fill in such details rather than being a case of “this block describes what you are capable of in this form”.
The main problem with the first pass on templates is that the templates were very low in number and mostly horrible. While templates lost a lot of the utility of wild shape, it wouldn't take that much to bring it back; in my experience the main decision points for picking a wild shape to use were:
Yeah, but if you just pick and choose a selection of such traits, it becomes more like creating a chimera than a natural creature- and yes, I’m aware that you can argue a lot of chimerical creatures like owlbears are natural to a fantasy setting, but it’s a pretty strong thematic point of Druids in D&D that the default is Beasts and it takes a secondary class choice to change that. And if you start trying to write up a bunch of extra stat blocks to cover the variants, you’re basically just reinventing the wheel of picking from the existing Beast blocks.
I wasn't necessarily suggesting that. However, if the combat stats are standardized into a couple of templates, you can list a bunch of creatures by just giving a template and a list of traits, with a glossary for the meaning of those traits.
At which point we've hit my second point and are essentially just reiterating a sizeable chunk of the Beasts from the MM. And being combat capable in Wildshape seems by design to quickly become a subclass feature, so trying to build it into the base class seems like an odd point to be working from to begin with.
The big problems with beasts are people hunting through sourcebooks for weird things (mostly uniques) classed as beasts, the bloat of keeping them all listed, and the lack of guidelines for things that aren't listed.
"When choosing known forms, you may look in the Monster Manual or elsewhere for eligible Beasts if the Dungeon Master permits you to do so." 2024 explicitly spells out DM veto power, so this is only an issue insofar as any given DM learning to say "no" in general is.
8 max is not a huge number, especially when there's a good 40 odd entries available here in the Basic Rules, meaning anyone can access the blocks to bookmark or print off for personal use. Plus the class will already have you tracking 12 different known spells- 15 if we count cantrips- minimum at that point. I don't think tracking creature blocks- particularly when they'll mostly be "here's my flying one, here's my swimming one, here's my small stealthy one, here's my big stealthy one, etc." ups the complexity that much.
What things, exactly? A quick perusal of the Basic Rules options shows a decent spectrum of forms and features. Cosmetics- as with weapon and armor shape/materials- such as a classic katana and lacquered armor look- character appearance, trinkets, etc.- are just a matter of talk between player and DM. And there's always going to be the "can I try this?" space. I'm not seeing anything particularly unique to Wild Shape here.