Just out of curiosity, how do you all prefer to class your monsters? I'd like to see what others' approaches are to this often-overlooked part of monster homebrew.
To start, here's my own personal guidelines:
Humanoid - Fairly natural; capable of civilian life
Giant - Humanoids with monstrous traits; being 'giant' is more of a trend than a rule (for example, centaurs could be considered giants)
Beast - Fairly natural; non-civilian
Monstrosity - Beasts/plants with biologically impossible traits (ridiculous size, chimeric parts, magic in general, etc.)
Aberration - Giants, monstrosities and misc outliers with PHYSICALLY impossible traits (lack of vital organs, feeding on the intangible, actual hive mind, etc.)
Plant - Somewhat unnatural; potentially capable of movement, speech and magic despite being a plant
Ooze - Animate mass of otherwise inanimate material; doesn't necessarily have to be liquid
Construct - Artificial objects/machines, either piloted or alive; also applies to bio-engineered life
Undead - Anything from the categories above that has lost its soul, body, mind or never had one/them to begin with
Elemental - Anything from the categories above, but irradiated with elemental energy
Fey - Creatures/spirits from made-up tales/rumors, made real by cultural attention
Celestial - Like fey, but born from religious faith
Fiend - Like fey, but born from fears
Dragon - Monstrous, magical creatures with a near/above-human intelligence and the ability to speak
Just out of curiosity, how do you all prefer to class your monsters? I'd like to see what others' approaches are to this often-overlooked part of monster homebrew.
To start, here's my own personal guidelines: