What's your favorite part of this book?

>>50622067
closing it

monster races

I've only just gotten into DnD recently, but favorite part is easily the Beholder info

>>50622067
I think I liked the information on the Gnolls/Goblins.

>>50622067
I really like the concept of Guard Drakes. I want more art of cool dog/panther versions of various dragons

The goblin pantheon's pretty cool, as is the beholder physiology. Not a fan of the changes to gnolls and mindflayers. Giants were always boring. Monster race stats suck

>>50622645
What did it change about gnolls? No longer Demon worshippers or something?

I like all the monster lore, the charts, and everything. But I think my favorite is the NPC statblocks towards the end, they've already seen a lot of use in my game.

In no particular order
>Kenku
>Firenewts
>Grungs
>Guard Drakes
>Flail Snails
>Froghemoth

>>50622684
They played up the chaotic evil people eaters aspect, removed the lazy slavers and asshole tricksters aspects. They're just more one-dimensional now.

Statblocks are boring as fuck, so it's nice that there's lots of stuff in there that is just meant to prompt the imagination.

The NPC statblocks are for sure my favorite part.

Favorite:
Firenewts

Least Favorite:
Genderfluid transbolds

>>50622830
>Genderfluid transbolds
That's because you have to insert your politics into everything, anon.
Fantasy reptiles doing a thing real reptiles/amphibians do is nothing to note twice.

>>50622725
>>50622824
>NPC statblocks are favorite
But...they're just a bunch of casters with school specific spell lists and like one PHB subclass feature on recharge.

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>>50622067
Genderfluid Kobolds.

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>>50622684
They're roaming packs of insane raiders that exist only to kill and eat.

They have no needs or desires beyond slaughter, since that satisfies every component of their lives (they worship through slaughter, eat through slaughter, obtain all their fashioned materials through slaughter, and even procreate through slaughter).

>>50622894
The point is you can quickly grab and use one when you need it. If they're fighting a bunch of Drow, and I want a Drow Warlock among the enemies, I don't have to stat one out on my and and I can just refer to the NPC blocks.

They're really nice for lazy DMs who don't stat out NPCs for combat too often.

>>50622864
Mike Mearls is on record for saying that he believes that we are living in a time of "Post-Game-of-Thrones Fantasy", which in part means to him that fantasy must now be used to address "important issues" instead of merely dealing with childish ideals.

He's also a bleeding heart liberal of the worst kind.

It's a bit of a shame, but as long as that dumb shit can be ignored like people ignored how 2e "didn't have Demons or devils in it *wink wink*", we can get through these dark times where people hamfist their political agendas into fantasy roleplaying games.

>>50623007
yep, it couldn't possibly be the guy ranting about the bloody liberals who is the one making this about politics
i hope the sjw boogieman doesn't keep you up with nightmares tonight

>>50623007
I do think exotic biology enriches fantasy

>>50623055
I'm not even the guy you were initially replying to.

I don't particularly care about kobold biology, nor about politics, but I'm not going to act blind and say "Oh, they genuinely thought this would be a good idea" as opposed to "This isn't that great and was probably included because of the dumb Social Justice Quota they need to meet."

>>50623160
i'm also not that guy that was originally replying, i just think it's fucking stupid to dislike something because maybe it could possibly be a political view someone could have

>>50623214
Is it alright to hate genderfluid kobolds because that's a dumb idea on its own merit then, alongside disliking it because Mearls allowed his political agenda to push that forward?

>>50623275
>alongside disliking it because Mearls allowed his political agenda to push that forward?
is a really dumb thing to say though hey

>>50623275
Why is it a dumb idea?

>>50623275
Kobolds are weak, easy to kill, and are reptilians. It makes logical sense for them to be able to change gender like other types of reptiles.

>>50623214
Personally, I like the idea in and of itself (as others have noted, it's pretty fitting), but I'm a bit peeved at how it's obviously a politically-driven inclusion first and foremost.

>>50623469
Do you have anything to support this conclusion?

>>50623469
literally just you politicizing it but alright

I don't even give a shit about kobolds, but regardless of any political agenda or not, I like that it asspains people who are obviously retarded.

that's sex, not gender. a genderfluid kobold is a just a kobold wearing his sister/brother's clothes.

reptilian sexflips produce actual working reproductive organs, not just long hair and painted nails.

>>50623486
>>50623506
It's called pattern recognition, it's a basic function of higher reasoning. You can't honestly believe that it's mere coincidence that this is coming when gender theory is The Big Thing in our culture right now. Particularly with how the primary emphasis in the paragraph is not on the weird biology, but "no gender roles, I repeat, NO GENDER ROLES".

>>50623527
better keep that tinfoil hat on or the sjws will come and destroy everything you love

>>50623439
I don't think you really appreciate just how rare sequential hermaphroditism is. It's not something that develops because "oh wow, wouldn't that be convenient?", and it carries with it a wide variety of drawbacks including genetic redundancy that makes it completely illogical for a species that reproduces so rapidly.

It's an awkward complication attached to the race that I honestly think it's better without.

>>50623543
I dunno, I've been thinking of trading it in for a nice hole in the sand, yours looks pretty comfy there.

>>50623527
Why would there be gender roles when they can freely change their gender and you don't know what gender someone is going to be when they get to breeding age?

>>50623605
The book specifies that there's no gender roles as well, as both male and female kobolds pull their own weight. Even after laying eggs, the females just put them in a 'community nest' along with all the other eggs.

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>>50623559
You're talking about genetics in Forgotten Realms lore?

>>50623605
It's not the fact that there are no gender roles, it's that this is the major emphasized focus. The structure of the paragraph highlights the lack of gender roles as the primary takeaway, with the sex-switching simply a detail added in to support that main point.

The way in which things are presented is just as important as the content itself. It's not that there's anything wrong with the facts presented per se, but rather that the WAY they're presented clearly reflects a primary emphasis on resonating with the political zeitgeist.

>>50623712
>they're called microaggressions, shitlord

>>50623712
...good? We're talking about our favourite parts of the book, not the part that makes us afraid and angry.

>>50623712
I thought the main point was how they quickly repopulate, because it's talking about a monstrous pest species.

>>50623702
I'm talking about biology in regards to biology, as a counter to someone saying something illogical made sense thanks to their naive understanding of the subject.

>>50623752
It's bookended by statements about gender equality. If rapid repopulation was your main takeaway from the whole thing in context, your reading comprehension is probably a little lacking.

But in this case, ignorance is bliss, so you just do you.

>>50623783
>gender equality bother me
>everyone who doesn't believe what I think is ignorant
>let me gesticulate my fedora at you

>>50623783
Or you could be so focused on sjw boogeymen that you're jumping at shadows.

>>50622777
I mean, as a DM I can just ignore that and make them a matriarchal or patriarchal society if I wanted, because it's ultimately up to me.

>>50623742
There's no rails on a discussion. Him including what he didn't like in the book is at least directly tangent with the opening topic.

>>50623752
Both sequential and simultaneous hermaphroditism are terrible for genetically complex creatures that breed rapidly, due to the collapsing genetic pool. That's one of the reasons its such a rarity in the animal kingdom to the point of being almost nonexistent among vertebrates. They are an extreme, extreme, extreme, extreme, extreme minority, with most vertebrate examples being fish, with the next most found in amphibians, and then only a handful of reptile species.

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They managed to make a good catfolk race in both flavor and mechanics.

>>50623943
This didn't stop the /pfg/ fetishists from latching onto it.

>>50623896
Its not noted as occurring in any other species in the book, so rare enough.

Also, shit has magical floating heads covered in eyes that shoot disintegration beams. I'm not sure how concerned we have to be about identical, or even similar, evolutionary patterns as earth.

>>50623966
I'm helping explain why hermaphroditism is not as convenient as would initially be expected.

Also, were it the case of bullywugs being sequential hermamphroditic, that would still be bizarre, but it would at least be within the realm of "we used real life animals for inspiration", while with kobolds it's a bit of a stretch. A leap even.

As a bit of an aside, Michael Crichton had to work around the extreme rarity of hermamphroditism in all but a handful of species in the lowest orders of a reptiles (which would be quite genetically distant from dinosaurs) in order to make his "Life finds a way" sequential hermamphroditism plot point work, so he had the genetic gaps in the dinosaurs of Jurrassic Park filled with sequences that included those from amphibians.

>>50624074
And we're saying fucking magic.

>>50624105
Nonsensical magic that wasn't thought through all the way, by people less concerned with a race's biology from a biological standpoint and more concerned with it from a political one?

>>50623712
Man, you sound really mad about the implications of a paragraph in a book. I'm glad though that you're taking your frustration out on the internet in blocks of text that won't have any meaningful effect on the work.

>>50624138
You sound like you're upset about someone taking issue with your political leanings being thrust rather unceremoniously where they don't belong.

If you're playing the denial game, that's fine, but that just splits the conversation into the people addressing the issue and the people demanding that no is allowed to see it as one. That's a nasty split, and one where you're futilely left hoping to disguise the obvious.

>>50624191
Literal /pol/ack here.
I think it adds a nice touch to the little lizard guys. The race itself is so used to being crushed and destroyed that having them be able to make a new colony out of two lizards and a jar of jam makes sense to me.

Dragons, in this fantasy game, are also shape changers.

But above all else, the thing I'm realy glad about with Kobolds is
>>Women finally being fucking useful instead of just shitting eggs and pretending

>>50622135
funny meme friend

politely end your life

>>50624243
>Literal /pol/ack here.
I stopped taking you seriously right at this point.

>I think it adds a nice touch to the little lizard guys.

It's a dumb bit of awkward complication that doesn't make sense from either a dragon (who are not hermaphrodites and who's main deities are a diametrically opposed male and female), lizard, or rapidly reproducing higher order vertebrate perspective.

>Women finally being fucking useful instead of just shitting eggs and pretending

Which was never really the case.

It's dumb and awkward, and absolutely unnecessary, since kobolds have plenty of interesting things about them aside from a rather impractical and unnecessary gender quirk.

>>50623943
Whoever drew this did a fantastic job of making it an inhuman humanoid without being uncanny.

Those kobolds aren't even genderfluid, they're genderless. They have sexes, but no dimorphism, so no genders.

>>50624191
Lemme ask you a question: do you hate it when people tumblr blog about the latest thing that triggers them? Because that's what you're doing right now, complaining on the internet about a potential implication of some small aspect of some shit that everyone else seems to be enjoying fine.

Then again, I'm sure you don't really care about being a hypocrite. Hell, you might be okay with tumblr blogs and shit.

If anything, you're thrusting your political leanings into this, you're making it about your agenda. Hell, you're finding reasons to be upset about something that's a paragraph in a 200 page book. Do you enjoy being frustrated, especially when there's nothing you can do about it?

To answer the OP, I really like the mind flayer stuff coming back, with the neothelids and elder brains. Mind flayers are some of my favorite enemies to use, and being able to have some more material to throw out is always fun. Lords of Madness was one of my favorite 3.5 books (and it's still usable, minus the rules itself).

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>>50624354
They polymorph. It doesn't say they polymorph into a creature of the same gender. Doesn't even mention it. So a Gold dragon could polymorph into a Gold dragon of the opposite sex.

If you are worried about the realism in your fantasy game there are worse offenders. If you just don't like the way that Kobolds can shit out eggs and ignore them; don't have a kobold mating scene.

Fuck, it doesn't even say that Kobolds are sexually dimorphic anyway. Ignoring the fa/tg/uys putting dresses on them, the males and females of the species are the same. When the colony is in danger they get down to bashing butts in the most efficient way possible.

Probably going to cause a shitstorm, but in my opinion Volo's Guide made 5e *the* edition for me, with one minor caveat being that the crafting rules irritate the fuck out of me. But this isn't the thread for that debate.

I loved the Monster Codex that Paizo put out, and Volo's Guide took the concept and added way more lore and information at the cost of less monsters, which is what I prefer to be honest. My favorite aspect of the book is just that, the wealth of lore and information that really breathed a lot of life into monsters and can make for some really cool roleplaying scenarios.

>>50624460
People who get triggered by one paragraph of monster lore, that they don't even have to use, are as bad as SJWs.

>>50624537
I guess you could see it like that. But Kobolds being genderless seems like the opposite of identity politics to me. They aren't smashing gender norms because they have none. They can be either sex and the race has no concept gender. It's kinda like Dwarves and their beards.

>>50624431
Polymorph is different from what we're discussing, and more importantly isn't universal among dragons.

Overall, it's something I don't plan on including in my games, and if a DM calls attention to it in theirs I'll just politely roll my eyes and wait for whatever they're trying to do to pass.

Kobolds being either genderless of sequentially hermaphroditic is such an unappealing level of lame slathered onto a pretty cool race.

My favorite bit is how asshurt people get over a single paragraph saying kobolds can change sex.

>>50624515
Whatever you say, "normal person."

Keep in mind, no one here is going through post traumatic stress flashbacks. They just don't like it when people are obviously hamfisting their politics in places they don't belong.

>>50624621
You have a right to bitch.

We have a right to laugh at you for being triggered little cunts, just as bad, no worse, no better, then the SJWs, as you howl and beat your chest and jump at shadows.

Just. Like. They do.

Deny it all you want, but, well, that just makes you even more like them, and it is hilarious, you hypocritical triggered little cunt.

>>50624621
That's very mature of you.

I'm sure that the D&D devs are browsing this thread and kobolds will be changed in the next printing of Volo's guide.

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>>50624621
>implying you've ever been reasonable
Enjoy bitching about continually losing the culture war, anon.

Meanwhile I'll be over here enjoying my hermaphrodite kobolds fighting supersonic cat people.

>>50624638
Normal person, give it up. This is embarrassing to watch.

>>50624587
I have nothing against it, it's just that my first thought upon reading that part was "Yeah, they probably got the idea from watching Jurassic Park."

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>>50624621
Hopefully the next lore book will have more information about the herm elves.

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>>50624684

>>50624679
>Call both sides piles of shit, exactly the same in their shittyness
>STOP DEFENDING THE SJWS

Illiterate too, I see.

>>50624684
Obama.

>>50624703
Yeah, okay, you're the "normal person". We see the writing on your shirt.

But please, stop embarrassing yourself.

>>50624569
I just re-read everything and I think I melted together the Lizarman PC description and Kobold description. But there was something appealing to me about creatures so unattached to their lives and so aware of their life expectancy that they just don't give a shit about it. Every Kobold has to pull it's weight. Being hermaphroditic fits in with that theme.

It's not realistic. But neither is daemon toads from other planes of existence.

>>50624578
My first games had Kobolds as weird Dog creatures (what I now imagine as tiny Gnolls); but other than that I am pretty new to the hobby. Did they do anything in particular with gendered Kobolds? Could you teach me what was exciting about it? I'd genuinely love to know. I loved the moment when my players examined the Kobold corpses and found out it was both males and females. It showed that these creatures weren't human. They had warrior females. Not mighty barbarian power fantasy females, but we have to fight to survive ones.

>>50622067
The new firbolgs

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>>50624692
>judicial precedence and continued cultural sway
My smug is gonna stay strong.

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>>50624733
Your smile ain't really smug. :)

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Apprentice Wizard a cute! CUTE!

I really love how we managed to turn a discussion about a book of fucking monster ecology into a frothing smug - off and shouting match about political bullshit instead of talking about mind flyers slurping brains through crazy straws or beholders being big weirdos.

You have your own board for this kind of political debate. It's called pol. Move it there.

>>50622067
Wait how long ago did this hit?

>now just discussing politics nakedly
Wrong board, fucknuggets.

>>50624807
Beginning of November.

>>50624811
The report button's there.

Use that shit.

>>50624782
Do you think that he polishes his master's wand every night?

>>50624787
It's a city in Japan.

>>50624821
Look, "normal person", just shut the fuck up already.

>>50624831
What are you trying to say? English, damnit.

>>50624831
Go be an SJW in /pol/ and fuck off already.

>>50624847
Falseflagging just makes you look like a dumb cunt. Fuck off to /pol/ already.

>>50624822
Of course it is, but I can't necessarily mention it because of global rule 7.

>>50623874
You can, the book doesn't exist to dictate anything. Just provide ideas that you can use

>>50622067
My favorite part is the solid write-up on hags and how they operate. Really makes me want to design a campaign around a coven of hags causing trouble by corrupting the people of a modest sized village. Add to that all the fey creatures in the bestiary section and you have a good amount of material to work with to craft your own Germanic fairy tale inspired campaign.

>>50624884
What in particular caught your eye about them?

>>50624804
I'm surprised no one called you out for being a normal person yet.

>>50624884
I've always loved hags, because they're where all the best parts of witch folklore end up.

>>50624938
More then fair. I never got into them much, but the whole coven thing, and making a magic gem that empowers them all always seemed neat.

That might just be a 3.PF thing, I haven't looked at hags in 5e yet, but it always stuck with me as cool.

>>50624682
Maybe. But that shit happens in a lot of different species, including many contemporary ones. Kind of cool that they are biologically diversifying sentient races, instead of just having everything be a type of human that might be scaly or furry or have long ears, but otherwise just lean towards a stereotype but still be mostly human.

>>50624953
You know I looked up a video of what happened to see what all the hubbub was about and I can't really tell what the big deal was.

>>50624965
Whining on twitter counts as "throwing his weight around"?

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>>50624953

>>50624621
https://www.bustle.com/articles/94615-male-bearded-dragon-lizards-change-sex-and-become-better-mothers-plus-7-other-animals-who-change

>>50624997
>Being vocally opposed to a politician paints a target on you
pls no Stalinist America

>>50625037
Again, as another anon above pointed out, sequential hermphroditism is pretty much exclusively something you find in k-species as opposed to the r-species that are kobolds due to a variety of biological reasons. Give it to lizardfolk if you want, but it doesn't make sense for kobolds.

Oh, thank goodness, the mod's arrived.

>>50625069
Right but we're talking about game developers who probably just remembered that line from jurassic park not people who study biology.

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>>50625052
I'm not trying to start, I'm trying to finish.
>>50625069
And gaze that turns stuff into stone is a feature of... who?
Fantasy, dude. Take it easy.

>>50622067
The art. It's pretty top-notch.
Aside from that, it has some great sidebars. Good advice for DMing or RPing, good insights.

Altogether probably the best put-together book for 5e in my opinion. Maybe literally, given how everybody's PHBs were falling apart for a while.

>>50624537
>the Asian dude in Star Trek 'just happens' to be a homosexual.
George Takei literally just happend to be a cockmuncher

My biggest gripe with it is that I honestly, legitimately felt like several of the beast races were complete afterthoughts, at least mechanically. Hobgoblins are best suited to be fucking Wizards, and hardly serve any benefit for the classes you could most typically see them as. Instead of taking any amount of time to come up with an interesting idea to represent their tactical abilities, they just gave them Intelligence (which doesn't actually do anything to benefit tactics, in-game).

They could give them something similar to Battlemaster's Know Thine Enemy, or something like the Hobgoblin Martial Advantage that's in the Monster Manual (they managed to convert Kobold's pack tactics), or any number of other options.

I also feel like the stat penalties they gave to Kobolds and Orcs are unnecessary for balance and also goes against the design philosophy of 5e. I think Orc would actually be perfectly fine if you just remove the penalty and leave it exactly as it is, which makes me think it was tacked on afterwards.

I really, really liked how they added different types of staple monsters.

I mean, at some point there's going to be orcs in your game. That's almost unavoidable, they're the classic "bad guy" race. So having five or six new ones to really shake up a combat scenario makes fighting orcs a hell of a lot more interesting.

That right is what I like to see out of a new "Monster Manual," as it were. Compare it to the 4(!) Monster Manuals of 3rd edition. Sure, they added a whole bunch of monsters, dozens of them in fact, but half of them felt lazily slapped together, and more often that not completely redundant. I can't name you a single creature from, say, Monster Manual 3. I'm not sure I ever used one of them.

Volo's, however, manages to add creatures that fill specific roles, and expands on popular monsters that everyone is going to use. It's fucking fantastic. If, going into the future, this is what we can expect from 5th edition's supplement books, then I'm very excited.

>>50622067
The fact that the Goblin name for Wild Magic Sorcerers translates into common as "Magic Magic Magic"

>>50624884
Hags seemed pretty boring to me actually. I was expecting more explanation of what the hell they are

>>50625310
Hobgoblins have always had weird unfitting stats for some reason. They're just carrying on tradition at this point

>>50622777
Amphibian DNA.

>>50622067
I gotta give props to whoever made that cover art. Without any words, it really conveys the spirit of exploration and learning about strange creatures and cultures

>>50626120
>I can't name you a single creature from, say, Monster Manual 3. I'm not sure I ever used one of them.

That's because they'd already covered more monsters than in Volo's three times over, so this isn't really a meaningful point.

MM4 and MM5 were also experiments in presenting more in-depth monsters for specific situations, to so-so success.

MM3 was making more niche monsters and still finishing the updates of a lot of monsters - did you use Kenku? Because that's where they were in 3.5.

>>50626922

>That's because they'd already covered more monsters than in Volo's three times over, so this isn't really a meaningful point.

But, that was one of the main points of my post. That quality is better than quantity. I liked almost every monster I saw when I looked through Volo's, whereas I can remember going through the various MMs of 3.5 and thinking "When the fuck would I ever use that piece of shit?"

>MM4 and MM5 were also experiments in presenting more in-depth monsters for specific situations, to so-so success.

I'm skimming through my PDFs of them now, and yeah, you're right. Totally forgot about that, but hey, it's been a long, long fucking time since I've looked through them. But that brings up a good question: why did it take the 4th and 5th monster manuals to get that? Why wasn't that in, say, Monster Manual 2? Just seems weird to me, since it's such an obvious thing to do: you throw in more options for running the staples of the series (beholders, drow, mindflayers, orcs, goblins, etc.) before moving on to the weirder shit that people would never run. I mean, how many people have used, and this is just looking quickly through MM2, grimalkins? Or jahi? Or meenlocks? Or jermlaines? Or ormyrrs? Or jujajimus? They're all weird as fuck things that don't fit in anywhere. They all feel just lazily designed. They're filler, to make the book seem better than it is by inflating the monster count.

Now that said, there are some fucking gems in here, like the Orcwort. I fucking love the Orcwort, brilliant monster.

>MM3 was making more niche monsters and still finishing the updates of a lot of monsters - did you use Kenku? Because that's where they were in 3.5.

Yet another thing I didn't remember, I always thought they were in the first MM. But to answer your question, I did not use Kenku, no. I do like them, but I never used them in any of my 3.5 campaigns. Which I should really fix now that I'm DMing 5e, Kenku are pretty fucking rad

>>50627105
>They're filler, to make the book seem better than it is by inflating the monster count.
Isn't that the point though? If you don't want to use goblins, three extra pages just on goblins isn't going to change your mind. Better to have a variety in the monster manuals and leave expanded fluff to specialized books/articles.

>all those deleted comments

jeez what did i miss?

also i love me some monster biology

>>50623943
That cat on the cliffside is living dangerously cheesey.

>>50627365
Just a bunch of /pol/ shit, nothing important.

>>50622067
Monster races and monster lore parts.

>Lizardmen: the roleplaying guidelines were actually realy good for playing a realy alien species, with the cavemen schtick that lizardmen got going on in DnD i expected this to be boring, i was positiveley surprised.

>Goblinoids

i like that they made them so different from other greenskins, on the other hand it feels very strange how military like the non hobgoblin goblinoids also appear to be in this book

>Minflayers

honestly not much new there, but a nice roundup.

>>50627157

>If you don't want to use goblins, three extra pages just on goblins isn't going to change your mind.

I have to disagree though. Even if you personally don't want to use goblins in your game, no one can argue that they're an extremely common thing found in almost every single campaign out there. They're a staple monster. So expanding on them a bit is important for the many, many people out there that use goblins in their games, to make them more interesting in both interaction and combat.

And as for those three extra pages not changing someone's mind: how can you say that for sure? It's entirely within the realm of possibility that someone will read those three pages and suddenly come up with a good way to fit them into their game, same as any of the other races they cover. Like, I had never given Yuan-ti too much thought, but after reading the bits of lore in the book (and seeing the fucking awesome Anathema) I now want to fit them into my next campaign.

>Better to have a variety in the monster manuals and leave expanded fluff to specialized books/articles.

Except that we're not getting that with 5th edition. This is technically the second supplement we've gotten in a few years of the game being out, and I would argue that SCAG isn't even much of a supplement and more of a source book that just happens to have a few class options in it. Volo's is, as I see it, a sort of compromise between the traditional Monster Manuals of the past and the specialized books you're talking about. As for variety, there's still plenty of weird ass monsters in Volo's that only get one page, like the Flail Snail always been a favorite of mine, I love that thing so much or the Deep Scion.

>>50627508
>I had never given Yuan-ti too much thought, but after reading the bits of lore in the book (and seeing the fucking awesome Anathema) I now want to fit them into my next campaign.
Funny thing is there's nothing really new about Yuan-ti in Volo's

Instead of making all species of kobolds being able to change gender..just make a couple different species of kobolds. I like kobolds, not all kobolds are evil. Some are intelligent and noble

>>50627629
>I like kobolds, not all kobolds are evil. Some are intelligent and noble
This is worse than genderfluidbolds

There are many different species of kobolds just like there are different dwarfs. Some kobolds are more intelligent and noble

>>50627629
This.

>>50627524

Well yeah, I know that, but reading their bit in Volo's got me thinking about them again, and more importantly thinking about how to use them in a campaign. My point is that when you clear the space a little bit, and focus on the staple monsters instead of churning out, say, 200 new ones, it makes the old monsters more interesting, because they're not competing with a flood of options. It's easy to forget that Yuan-ti are a thing when there's 700 other monsters you can also be using.

>>50624600
You mean like what you're doing now?

I liked the table for monstrous backstories, especially the inclusion of "victim of curse" as an option

>>50624782
I like that he was unofficially named Jeremy by the WotC staff.

>>50623439
>It makes logical sense for them to be able to change gender like other types of reptiles.

Reptiles don't do this.

>>50627419
>it feels very strange how military like the non hobgoblin goblinoids also appear to be in this book


Aren't goblinoids all Lawful Evil in RAW D&D?

>>50629183
Only hobgoblins are lawful. The rest are different flavors of evil

>>50629183
Not only that, but IIRC goblins are basically a race the hobgoblins force to work as grunts for military ends. They clean latrines and handle animals and cater to nobility and bugbears. Then they get the privilege of dying in the front lines.

>>50629264
Older fluff suggests all non-hob goblinoids were engineered by hobs to be various kinds of slaves. I remember those weird worg-gobs from one of the MMs were the biggest proof goblinoids were literally bred

>>50629183
>>50629262
>>50629264
Early goblins and orcs were lawful. It's why planescape put their gods on Acheron.