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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Hello, I need some help with a problem Im having involving a Player's character.
Recently me and my school's DnD Club have been preparing for a new campaign that is fairy tale/fable themed, and as part of that, we made it so that all the PCs had to be from a fairy tale, fable, nursery rhyme, what have you. So one of players, who I'm not gonna name, decided to make a ranger based on the Japanese fable Momotaro. This is where the problem is. You see, as part of that story, Momotaro has three animal companions, being a dog, a monkey, and a bird. That part is fine, he's a ranger, but this player heard somewhere that apparently in one version of the story, the monkey has psychic powers and is now begging me to let him have a telepathic monkey. I've been trying to explain to him that I can't give him a psychic monkey cuz of stuff like stat blocks, but it's been flying over his head and he keeps asking me. I understand this player has Autism so its hard for him to get some cues(Im also on the spectrum), but I need to get this out of the way so I can help the other club members with their characters.
Does anybody have any tips/advice on what I should do here?
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Hello, I'm Aidan! Your friendly neighborhood CN druid and/or other characters I play! I have a pet pseduodragon/homonculus named Bee who sounds exactly like Chloe Price for unknown reasons and a crippling arson addiction! Currently DMing an urban fantasy campaign for my school's DnD Club.
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I think it would be fine to just give him a monkey stat block with 30 feet of telepathy. It shouldn't seriously unbalance the game and it could easily lead to many great moments with the group, which is what many people play for.
If you still don't think that the player should have that, it's okay to tell him that and draw a line. It's your game, and you are the one running it. If you say that it won't work, then he needs to understand that, and you can have a straight talk with him, not just dropping clues.
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
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Just out of interest, what level are you playing at?
I don't see too many issues with this - mechanically the ranger will have his primal beast at level 3 and can summon another animal at level 5. As far as the 3rd animal goes, you're not going to overpower him by allowing him to replace a spell with Find Familiar and flavor that as a monkey - they get a form of telepathy with the player anyway. Or homebrew him a figurine of wondrous power that is a monkey with telepathy - it really won't break your game. The only real issue is whether you let it attack in combat - but as he'll be using his concentration on Summon Beast, I don't see it being too much trouble as long as its attacks are not op.
I'm not any kind of expert, but from a quick look on Wikipedia, Momotaro picked up the animal companions on his journey so that could play really nicely into a campaign and will motivate him to collect all his pets.
Could actually be really fun.
I mean there's no harm in having the monkey be telepathic, but only able to communicate with the PC in question.
Realistically, and the horse has kinda already bolted on this one: the premise of the campaign needs an experienced hand to make it work. If they are occupying the part of the spectrum where the player in question tend to take things very literally, then this is sadly a result of trying to fit the star shaped characters into the square shaped campaign. So the follow-up I have for you here is if you've discussed that the characters need to be 'inspired by' the fairy tales or what have you, or have you said that the characters must be the ones from the tales in question. There's a world of difference between those two aspects.
D&D is great for characters 'inspired' by other media, but absolutely awful for porting whole characters into without massive levels of extra work and homebrew. For that reason my approach would be to say that I mis-spoke and intended the characters to be 'inspired by' but that of course they had to fit within the rules and mechanics of the game we're playing. To do otherwise would create unreasonable levels of work for the DM and risk the entire adventure.
If as I suspect we are talking about a literal part of the spectrum, I suspect the clarification would be more helpful. It's possible that the loop being considered by said player is as follows:
- DM told me I needed to have a character from fables
- I chose such a character
- These things are part of who this character is
- The DM won't let me have them
- Why did the DM allow characters who can't be played if they're against the rules?
To break this kind of cycle of thought in a literal thinker, it is important to own our mistakes in communication. I say this occupying part of the spectrum too. By 'correcting' earlier parameters it is potentially possible that the player will be able to better understand what you intended.
That's all a guess of course.
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Do it as an buffed mage hand
That’s telekinesis.
My advice? Like Wolfe said, monkey stat block plus 30 feet of telepathy works perfectly fine. If you want full Psionics, give him the ability to cast Mage Hand 3 times a day or something like that.
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Looking up the character in Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momotarō#:~:text=Momotarō (%E6%A1%83%E5%A4%AA%E9%83%8E%3B%20Japanese%20pronunciation%3A%20%5Bmo.mo%EA%9C%9C.ta.%C9%BEo%CB%90%5D%2C&text='Peach%20Boy')%20is%20a%20popular,a%20common%20Japanese%20given%20name.
Nothing about telekinesis or telepathy. Where did this person come across telepathy as a feature? Not that the player made it up , but could it be some just added because they could and the telepathy has nothing to do with the actual fable?
"I've been trying to explain to him that I can't give him a psychic monkey cuz of stuff like stat blocks, "
Well, first of all, if youre the dm, you can do literally anything. The only thing you dont want to do is give one player a lot more power than the other players to the point that they always dominate the game.
I.e. you wanna keep some balance between players so the other players dont feel left behind. There are several ways to give the player this monkey and be totally rules as written, but just keep in mind, as dm, you can do anything, you just dont want to tip things out of balance.
So, ways to get a pshychic, telepathic monkey in base rules:
Warlock:
One level.of warlock and pact of the chain. Paxt of chain gets the IMP familiar. Just need a charisma score of 13 or higher for the dip.
They could then multiclass into ranger if they want (need dex and wis to be minimum 13 for the multiclass requirements) probably point buy to max dex as high as possible, and use a bow. Done.
Or they could avoid multiclassing and just go pure warlock. 2024 warlocks can take the invocation called "lessons of the first one" which lets them take any of the Origin Feats. They can take this invocation multiple times. So they could take the Skilled origin feat and pick up ranger skills like nature, survival, and perception.
I think the Fey warlock would give flavor for a ranger-like character.
If they want martial weapons, it might be easier to dip into fighter, the multiclass requirement for that would be a str or dex minimum of 13. Use dex for that, you get all the weapons and armor, buy a longbow, and they are off to the races.
So use one level of warlock and the warlock imp familiar for the psychic monkey, and then (1) full warlock and lessons of first ones to get ranger like features or (2) multiclass into ranger (watch for dex,wis, cha mininum scores when first building the charavter to make sure this is possible as they level up) or (3) go fighter for slightly easier multiclass requirements, and pick up archery fighting style and nature survival skills.
Wizard familiar:
Wizard familiars allow any cr0 beast as a familiar and give a 120 foot telepathic connection between pc and familiar. Easiest way to do this would be take the magic initiate feat(wizard). One way to get that is the Sage background. Sage background only allows ability score increases of int, wis, and con. Rangers will want a high dex. So one option is they choose human as a species and that allows them to choose one extra, free, origin feat. Where they can choose sage and learn find famliiar spell. Then choose Guide as their background, get magic initiate druid feat, dex and wis increases, and put all levels in ranger.
Ranger Beast Master
The beast master subclass gives a ranger an animal companion, though it isnt paychic. I dont think it has telepathy.
Sidekick
Tashas caldron of everything discusses sidekicks. They are basically npcs that characters adopt and become one player's sidekick. Robin to the players Batman.
A sidekick would need to be able to speak a language to become a spellcaster sidekick. But then they could pick up spells like telepathy and mage hand.
There are quite a few ways to create what this player.wants that would be raw. And a number of ways to do it with just a smidge of homebrew.