The fifth edition of D&D has a decent amount of dinosaurs in the Monster Manual, but it doesn’t really have any options players can use to channel their energy inner dinosaur. Since D&D is a game of roleplaying, it only makes sense that players should be able to enjoy roleplaying something that is related to one of the coolest type of creatures in existence.
1DD recently made the Ardling, a creature that has a celestial heritage but can be used to cover a different range of “Beastfolk”. One of the options under Racer for the Ardling is triceratops! Meaning, you can play a person with a triceratops head. This is a really cool option, and it goes to show that dinosaurs can have a place as player options in our beloved game.
So, now that we've seen how dinosaurs can fit into D&D, do you want to see more of them? If so, how would you like to see them implemented and what dinosaur options would you like to see? If not, why do you think dinosaurs shouldn't have more of a role in this game, and what do you think should be put there instead of them?
Personally, I would love to keep the dinosaur monsters in the game, while adding more player options for dinos and maybe a whole species for them.
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I would love a dinosaur themed splat book. But I don't think we need them in the PHB, and what is in the Monster Manual pretty much covers all the different dinosaur types. Adding more would get really redundant like having separate frog and toad statblocks...
Insert obligatory "This poll is skewed and doesn't do a good job of representing the D&D community."
It doesn't do a perfect job of representing the D&D community, but the more replies we get and the more people interact with the poll, the more likely the results are to be accurate.
I would love a dinosaur themed splat book. But I don't think we need them in the PHB, and what is in the Monster Manual pretty much covers all the different dinosaur types. Adding more would get really redundant like having separate frog and toad statblocks...
A dinosaur themed book would be great. I do so your point about adding more dino stat-blocks potentially getting redundant, though there a lot of types of dinosaurs that aren't covered in the Monster Manual.
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BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
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Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
For the Ardling, I wasn't personally very invested in them at the start. Of course, it is very important to me that players get options that speak to them, so I very much care in that regard. But I didn't figure I would play one very often myself. Then they wrote 'Triceratops' in the new one. And that one word made me actually excited to play one. I'll keep working on trying to help build an Ardling that make as many people happy as possible. All it took to make me happy was a dinosaur. :)
From the overall game perspective, Dinosaurs are incredible. I try to include them in almost every game I've run in some fashion. They're almost essential for some game themes - sword and sorcery, lost world islands or valleys, hollow worlds, post apocalyptic wildlands, etc.
Dragons are iconic, but they can get old and they usually travel alone. But Dinosaurs travel in herds! If you want to challenge a high level party with something new, a stampeding group of Triceratops or an angry family of Tyrannosaurus are perfect.
They're also great for so many in game abilities. They're Beast type creatures that are intersting and often higher CR than most other Beast monsters. They're cool different options for Speak with Animals, Conjure Animals, Wild Shape, and Polymorph. Sure turning into a bird is neat, but a Pterodactyl is so much cooler!
We have 11 Dinosaur options between the MM and Volo's. They do cover a lot of types. I can always reskin a Stegosaurus to be a Kentrosaurus. But there are also a ton of types of dinosaurs that aren't represented that would be harder to homebrew for people. Beasts don't take up much space in a book. They don't need art or lengthy descriptions because we know what they are, or can find out with a quick search. So I'd love to see a few more options squeezed into the next Monster Manual.
I have included an "Isle of Dread" in every campaign world I have created over the past 40 years. I would be pretty happy with a Dino themed source book.
I have included an "Isle of Dread" in every campaign world I have created over the past 40 years. I would be pretty happy with a Dino themed source book.
D&D stands for Dungeons and Dinosaurs after all... :)
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BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
The fact that they mentioned triceratops in the ardling description doesn't really mean anything. It's just an example of how creative you may get with the freedom they're giving you. Does that mean they should add more dinosaur options for players? No, because you already have them if you use your imagination and flexibility that the game provides you with. However, I do wish they had better and more fleshed-out dinosaurs for monster manual. They're an excellent fit for jungle biome and more primal settings like "Fire and Ice" or Conan world.
The reality is, at the resolution of D&D, you can represent most dinosaurs as just "like X, but bigger/smaller", because most of the things that would distinguish them are not things D&D cares about (I do notice a bug: the dinosaurs in MMM aren't tagged as dinosaurs, though the equivalents in VGM are).
A dinosaur themed book would be great. I do so your point about adding more dino stat-blocks potentially getting redundant, though there a lot of types of dinosaurs that aren't covered in the Monster Manual.
Not really though. Sure there are hundreds of different named dinosaurs, but a huge number of those are just variations on the same general style. We already have several dinosaurs that are basically the same just a smaller and bigger version : Allosaurus & T rex, Velociraptor and Dinonychus. In terms of dinosaurs with different sets of mechanics rather than just scaling up hit points / damage dice. There are : Flying dinos, Swimming dinos, Fast pack-hunting raptors, solo-hunting big therapods, little herbivores that run fast, big herbivores that are amphibious, big herbivores that can charge-attack, big herbivores with tail attacks, completely massive herbivores. I think we're only really missing a Streutheomimus-type from the Monster Manual, and maybe one of the fully aquatic shark-like ones. TBH dinosaurs have much the same problem as mammals & beasts - there are huge numbers of different known ones, but mechanically they aren't very interesting or different from each other. They all just run around and bite, scratch, headbutt or kick.
I feel like the really... weird and back-handed... bit is that Dinos top out at CR7 and that's a T-rex. For something that should be, well, GODLY it feels... weak. The T-Rex is always the pinnacle of any movie in which they exist. Make it at least a CR10-12 and get some more dinos to fill in the other slots.
It's a T-REX! It should look at that limit and devour it in one mighty chomp all while 'I'M A MOTHER****ING T-REX' plays in the background! There may be a 'limit' but for a beast like the rex I'm sure we'd all be fine not only ignoring it but at the least making it something scarier than a CR7! IT'S A MOTHER****ING T-REX!
I feel like the really... weird and back-handed... bit is that Dinos top out at CR7 and that's a T-rex. For something that should be, well, GODLY it feels... weak. The T-Rex is always the pinnacle of any movie in which they exist. Make it at least a CR10-12 and get some more dinos to fill in the other slots.
Dinosaur movies feature normal people as the protagonists facing off against the dinosaurs, D&D characters are super human heroes by level 5.
Dinosaur movies feature normal people as the protagonists facing off against the dinosaurs, D&D characters are super human heroes by level 5.
Dinosaur movies also generally feature normal people being dumb; a dinosaur really wouldn't be that hard to kill (somewhat more dangerous than a rogue elephant).
Anyway, if you want dangerous dinosaurs, I recommend just Kaiju-izing them. The Tarrasque is basically a scaled up dinosaur.
The fifth edition of D&D has a decent amount of dinosaurs in the Monster Manual, but it doesn’t really have any options players can use to channel their energy inner dinosaur. Since D&D is a game of roleplaying, it only makes sense that players should be able to enjoy roleplaying something that is related to one of the coolest type of creatures in existence.
1DD recently made the Ardling, a creature that has a celestial heritage but can be used to cover a different range of “Beastfolk”. One of the options under Racer for the Ardling is triceratops! Meaning, you can play a person with a triceratops head. This is a really cool option, and it goes to show that dinosaurs can have a place as player options in our beloved game.
So, now that we've seen how dinosaurs can fit into D&D, do you want to see more of them? If so, how would you like to see them implemented and what dinosaur options would you like to see? If not, why do you think dinosaurs shouldn't have more of a role in this game, and what do you think should be put there instead of them?
Personally, I would love to keep the dinosaur monsters in the game, while adding more player options for dinos and maybe a whole species for them.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.I would love a dinosaur themed splat book. But I don't think we need them in the PHB, and what is in the Monster Manual pretty much covers all the different dinosaur types. Adding more would get really redundant like having separate frog and toad statblocks...
Insert obligatory "This poll is skewed and doesn't do a good job of representing the D&D community."
On a more serious note. Dinosaurs are cool.
She/Her College Student Player and Dungeon Master
It doesn't do a perfect job of representing the D&D community, but the more replies we get and the more people interact with the poll, the more likely the results are to be accurate.
Agreed.
A dinosaur themed book would be great. I do so your point about adding more dino stat-blocks potentially getting redundant, though there a lot of types of dinosaurs that aren't covered in the Monster Manual.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Dinosaurs are awesome!
For the Ardling, I wasn't personally very invested in them at the start. Of course, it is very important to me that players get options that speak to them, so I very much care in that regard. But I didn't figure I would play one very often myself. Then they wrote 'Triceratops' in the new one. And that one word made me actually excited to play one. I'll keep working on trying to help build an Ardling that make as many people happy as possible. All it took to make me happy was a dinosaur. :)
From the overall game perspective, Dinosaurs are incredible. I try to include them in almost every game I've run in some fashion. They're almost essential for some game themes - sword and sorcery, lost world islands or valleys, hollow worlds, post apocalyptic wildlands, etc.
Dragons are iconic, but they can get old and they usually travel alone. But Dinosaurs travel in herds! If you want to challenge a high level party with something new, a stampeding group of Triceratops or an angry family of Tyrannosaurus are perfect.
They're also great for so many in game abilities. They're Beast type creatures that are intersting and often higher CR than most other Beast monsters. They're cool different options for Speak with Animals, Conjure Animals, Wild Shape, and Polymorph. Sure turning into a bird is neat, but a Pterodactyl is so much cooler!
We have 11 Dinosaur options between the MM and Volo's. They do cover a lot of types. I can always reskin a Stegosaurus to be a Kentrosaurus. But there are also a ton of types of dinosaurs that aren't represented that would be harder to homebrew for people. Beasts don't take up much space in a book. They don't need art or lengthy descriptions because we know what they are, or can find out with a quick search. So I'd love to see a few more options squeezed into the next Monster Manual.
I have included an "Isle of Dread" in every campaign world I have created over the past 40 years. I would be pretty happy with a Dino themed source book.
She/Her College Student Player and Dungeon Master
D&D stands for Dungeons and Dinosaurs after all... :)
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.The fact that they mentioned triceratops in the ardling description doesn't really mean anything. It's just an example of how creative you may get with the freedom they're giving you. Does that mean they should add more dinosaur options for players? No, because you already have them if you use your imagination and flexibility that the game provides you with. However, I do wish they had better and more fleshed-out dinosaurs for monster manual. They're an excellent fit for jungle biome and more primal settings like "Fire and Ice" or Conan world.
The reality is, at the resolution of D&D, you can represent most dinosaurs as just "like X, but bigger/smaller", because most of the things that would distinguish them are not things D&D cares about (I do notice a bug: the dinosaurs in MMM aren't tagged as dinosaurs, though the equivalents in VGM are).
Not really though. Sure there are hundreds of different named dinosaurs, but a huge number of those are just variations on the same general style. We already have several dinosaurs that are basically the same just a smaller and bigger version : Allosaurus & T rex, Velociraptor and Dinonychus. In terms of dinosaurs with different sets of mechanics rather than just scaling up hit points / damage dice. There are : Flying dinos, Swimming dinos, Fast pack-hunting raptors, solo-hunting big therapods, little herbivores that run fast, big herbivores that are amphibious, big herbivores that can charge-attack, big herbivores with tail attacks, completely massive herbivores. I think we're only really missing a Streutheomimus-type from the Monster Manual, and maybe one of the fully aquatic shark-like ones. TBH dinosaurs have much the same problem as mammals & beasts - there are huge numbers of different known ones, but mechanically they aren't very interesting or different from each other. They all just run around and bite, scratch, headbutt or kick.
You could maybe toss in something like spinosaurus, but at D&D resolution it's pretty much a tyrannosaurus with a swim speed.
I feel like the really... weird and back-handed... bit is that Dinos top out at CR7 and that's a T-rex. For something that should be, well, GODLY it feels... weak. The T-Rex is always the pinnacle of any movie in which they exist. Make it at least a CR10-12 and get some more dinos to fill in the other slots.
In the end, it's just a mundane beast, there's a limit to flesh and blood and bone.
It's a T-REX! It should look at that limit and devour it in one mighty chomp all while 'I'M A MOTHER****ING T-REX' plays in the background! There may be a 'limit' but for a beast like the rex I'm sure we'd all be fine not only ignoring it but at the least making it something scarier than a CR7! IT'S A MOTHER****ING T-REX!
Dinosaur movies feature normal people as the protagonists facing off against the dinosaurs, D&D characters are super human heroes by level 5.
Dire Dinosaurs. You're welcome for that idea.
Dire dinosaurs that went through ceremorphosis.
Dinosaur movies also generally feature normal people being dumb; a dinosaur really wouldn't be that hard to kill (somewhat more dangerous than a rogue elephant).
Anyway, if you want dangerous dinosaurs, I recommend just Kaiju-izing them. The Tarrasque is basically a scaled up dinosaur.
Ceremorphosis, corrupted by the abyss, lost in the feywild, touched by the far realm...the possibilities are endless.
I'm a big fan of Elemental/Primordial Dinosaurs.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms