Timeline for How exactly is Volo's Guide to Monsters obsolete?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
19 events
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| Mar 19 at 20:33 | history | edited | V2Blast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 19 at 6:45 | history | edited | Nobody the Hobgoblin | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 18 at 21:49 | vote | accept | enkryptor | ||
| Mar 18 at 14:31 | comment | added | Jack | The point @GuybrushMcKenzie makes about "much less supporting material" might be really important. Losing supporting material in VGtM is a significant loss to DMs. | |
| Mar 18 at 14:26 | comment | added | Jack | Yeah. I want the conjure spells and simulacrum and the like to be complicated. I just want them to fix the obvious broken things. Our last campaign, there was this renegade mind flayer. It's a bit of a hackneyed trope, but it was fun. We didn't need "typically" in the alignment to give ourselves permission to have this one mind flayer who wasn't like all the others. | |
| Mar 18 at 14:09 | comment | added | Mindwin Remember Monica | @Jack - thanks - I can see how Undead creatures devoid of personality or souls,[...] cruel and relentless hunters, either of their own volition or at the behest of some greater power [...] being only typically chaotic evil. #sarcasm The devs will dilute the game so much it will one day every game entity will be an amalgam of numbers with some interchangeable hologram on top. After all, Earth needed 3 books to go from harmless to mostly harmless | |
| Mar 18 at 13:17 | comment | added | Guybrush McKenzie | I think it’s relevant that this is mostly a digital way of dealing with a physical book problem. They let Volo’s Guide and the original Mordenkaiden’s Guide go out of print, and replaced them with a single book which has updated stat blocks for most of the races and monsters in both, but much less supporting material. Likely because DM books always sell fewer copies. The “Legacy” tag is only required on DDB because they continue to support that content for anyone who bought the earlier books, which are no longer on sale, and needed a way to differentiate the versions for anyone who owns both. | |
| Mar 17 at 21:29 | history | edited | Nobody the Hobgoblin | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 17 at 21:21 | history | edited | Nobody the Hobgoblin | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 17 at 21:12 | history | edited | Jack | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 17 at 21:09 | history | edited | Nobody the Hobgoblin | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 17 at 21:03 | comment | added | enkryptor | @NobodytheHobgoblin could you please add this to the answer? I mean, the essense of the question is — what does this "legacy-ness" mean for DMs. | |
| Mar 17 at 20:45 | history | edited | Nobody the Hobgoblin | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 17 at 20:39 | comment | added | Nobody the Hobgoblin | @enkryptor I don't think you have to worry about balance issues here. Most of the original MM monsters were never revised and are still playable. If there is any trend, it has been towards making the PCs even more powerful relative to monsters, and IMO, they already were plenty strong after tier 1, and most of the monsters here are for higher level play. For your private game, you can safely ignore MotM. It only is an issue for official play like in AL, which mandates the official, latest version. | |
| Mar 17 at 20:36 | comment | added | Eddymage | @enkryptor For what is worth, I personally never used the "updated" version and I had never had problems. For example, the fights with casters are a lot more interesting. | |
| Mar 17 at 20:23 | comment | added | Eddymage | Imho, the second point is the worst: in order to simplify the life for players, making the fights easier, they removed all the personalization, strategies and differences between the enemies. To me, Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse does not exists. | |
| Mar 17 at 19:52 | comment | added | enkryptor | Can I still use these outdated materials in my own adventures? What the repercussions could be, in terms of game mechanics and balance? | |
| Mar 17 at 19:45 | comment | added | Jack | I swear this page has hints as to the reasoning, but I can't quite dig it out: dnd.wizards.com/sage-advice/book-updates. In part, the old bodak was "chaotic evil", and the new bodak is only "typically chaotic evil". It's apparently an effort to unify and soften the approach to alignment across all material. The doc uses drow, mind flayers, and beholders as examples, implying they're now just usually evil, not always or inherently evil. Somewhere there was a statement about stat block formatting changes, but I can't find it. | |
| Mar 17 at 19:22 | history | answered | Nobody the Hobgoblin | CC BY-SA 4.0 |