Tuesday, October 6, 2020

MTG Races and Pre-Established Monsters as Playable Races

 While certainly overlapping in many ways, the worlds of Magic the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons do have some pretty big differences.

We've now had two major crossover Campaign Setting books set in MTG worlds - Ravnica and Theros. While the vagaries of planar travel, alignment, and other rather fiddly concepts do come up, at a much simpler level, there are some inconsistencies with playable races.

In Magic worlds, Minotaurs are a common go-to race to affiliate with Red Mana. While they sometimes co-exist with Goblins (as they do on Ravnica,) in other worlds, Minotaurs take on the "proud warrior race" role that is sometimes filled by Orcs (actually, Minotaurs are more common in Magic than Orcs.) No color of mana in Magic is explicitly evil, and the only one that strongly skews that way is Black (though again, there's potential for good guys affiliated with Black mana.) The main thing is that Minotaurs are associated with rage and passion, on top of being brave and tough warriors. But fundamentally, they're just another type of humanoid.

This is a pretty big contrast with the way that Minotaurs are used in D&D. The Dungeons & Dragons Minotaur is a large monstrosity and is chaotic evil. While not demonic themselves, Minotaurs in D&D are affiliated with the demon lord Baphomet, as well as Goristros, one of the tougher types of demons in the Monster Manual. Baphomet is effectively the ultimate minotaur, and his layer of the Abyss is a giant labyrinthine slaughterhouse where he hunts down anything that stumbles in there for fun.

One of the core abilities for all minotaurs - both the standard monstrosity ones as well as the demonic varieties, is their labyrinthine recall.

Of course, in myth, the Minotaur was an individual monster that... well, worked a lot like the way I just described Baphomet, killing anyone inside his labyrinth. In the Theros setting, Minotaurs are, naturally, a playable race option, and the major Minotaur city, Skophos, is built as a giant maze. Yet the playable minotaur race (identical to its Ravnica version) does not have the labyrinthine recall ability that monster stat blocks have. Playable Minotaurs are also smaller, at medium size (keeping playable races to only medium and small) and count as humanoids, even though their Monster Manual brethren are considered monstrosities.

The Ravnica book added a bunch of creatures never seen before in D&D as playable race options - between Simic Hybrids, Loxodons, and Vedalken. But the Centaur was, likewise, already seen in the Monster Manual.

Here, things get even weirder.

Like the Minotaur, the Centaur is a classic creature from Greek myth. Also like the Minotaur, the monster manual entry for it is a large monstrosity. Unlike the humanoid playable Minotaur, the Centaur gets a different creature type, but it is inexplicably fey, rather than monstrosity.

In terms of game mechanics, there aren't as many odd omissions. The Monster Manual version is a pretty basic creature, with just a little charge ability similar to that found on most creatures, but with humanoid-style weapons. While not directly translated, the spirit, more or less, of how the Centaur monster works is inherited by the playable race. I just cannot understand why they decided Centaurs ought to be fey.

While Satyrs are also found in Theros, they do not appear in Ravnica. Here, things make a bit more sense. Satyrs remain medium, and they are also both fey creatures as Monster Manual entries and as a playable race. (Side note, I went to Greece two years ago and saw a ton of illustrated pottery, and I was always kind of shocked to see how Satyrs are actually pretty frequently depicted as having human legs - they're just horny - both literally and figuratively - bald dudes.) Furthermore, the playable Satyr inherits the Monster Manual version's magic resistance, which is arguably insanely overpowered for a playable race. Of the three MTG races that represent classic monsters found in the Monster Manual, the Satyr is the most direct translation.

Of course, we've seen this before, when Volo's Guide to Monsters, in addition to pretty extensive write-ups of new races like Firbolgs and Tabaxi, gave us stats for classic monsters (particularly those that the book focused on - well, except hags and mind flayers, because that's probably not something anyone should be playing.)

The main shared trait for Orcs in the Monster Manual is the Aggressive feature, which lets them move faster toward an enemy as a bonus action. The playable race recreates this nearly verbatim (with just a little more clarification.) While this is a pretty excellent translation of the monster stats to the playable race, the oddity is the way that Half-Orcs are so different from their Orcish parents. Where do the Half-Orc's Savage Attacker and Relentless Endurance come from? I suspect it's that the design of the Half-Orc was not intended to mirror what was then just a monster stat, so we don't see the kind of hybridity of racial features as found in the Half Elf.

Goblins are another fairly direct translation, gaining the monster-defining Nimble Escape trait, with the added playable race bonus of Fury of the Small to give goblins a bit of extra oomph.

Moving onto the next goblinoid race, the Bugbear inherits the Surprise Attack trait from its monstrous antecedent. Oddly, though, rather than the Brute feature (which, to be fair, could be overpowered,) they instead get Long-Limbed, which extends the reach of their melee attacks - which is not something the monster ever got.

Hobgoblins don't have anything really resembling Martial Advantage, which is found in its Monster Manual entries (and a variant called Arcane Advantage for Hobgoblin Devastators found in Volo's, though nothing comparable for Hobgoblin Iron Shadows, also in Volo's.) To be fair, that would probably work in practice as a less flexible version of a Rogue's sneak attack, but if all Half-Orcs can get a minor version of Brutal Critical, I don't see why Hobgoblins didn't get Martial Advantage.

Kobolds inherit the main defining monster traits with Pack Tactics and Sunlight Sensitivity, so this seems like a pretty decent direct translation.

The final monster-translation in Volo's is the Yuan-Ti Pureblood. There's literally a stat block for Yuan-Ti Purebloods, and the playable race retains the ability to cast Animal Friendship on snakes, the Magic Resistance (I guess Satyrs have precedent) and immunity to poison damage (I think this makes them the only playable race with a damage immunity - you'd think Warforged would also have poison immunity, but their feature is more akin to a dwarf's.)

Now, I had actually forgotten, but there are also some playable races in Volo's that have Monster Manual precedence (oh boy, we'll also have to touch of the Gith.)

Kenku just have a single entry in the Monster Manual, but were made a playable race in Volo's. They retain the Mimickry trait and the inability to speak conventionally (a real challenge for RP) but the Ambusher trait is replaced with more broadly applicable rogue-y and deceptive bonuses.

Lizardfolk, as seems typical with these monster-race translations, retain a lot of the defining abilities, such as a swim speed and the Hold Breath trait, as well as Natural Armor. There are a few additional things tossed in, mostly playing into the idea of Lizardfolk as rugged survivors, again, as typical with these.

Finally, we come to the Gith. The main thing that the race inherits from the stat blocks is its Innate Spellcasting (Psionics,) which has historically been treated in 5th Edition as spellcasting that doesn't require any components (as a DM, I rule that this means that you can't tell when they're casting a spell and thus can't do things like Counterspell in response to it - best case scenario the spell take effect before you can respond, but if it's one with a subtle effect, you might not even realize it's taken place.)

It seems that all NPC Githzerai are monks, gaining armor from Psychic Defense, which works exactly as a Monk's Unarmored Defense, but the subrace does not automatically gain this benefit.

Githyanki really just retain the psionic innate spellcasting spells associated with their subrace, which makes sense as I'd argue one of the real defining githyanki monster traits is their silver greatswords - a piece of equipment, rather than something they possess innately.

Many Eberron races evoke classic monsters/creatures, but they make a point to give them different names - Changelings rather than Doppelgangers, Warforged rather than Golems - and so I think they've really taken a license to not be tied down to the precedent set by entries in the Monster Manual.

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