On Illusions

I recently ran a handful of sessions in a 5e game in which the player characters had earned the enmity of an arch-illusionist (more on that later). An illusionist is like most good Batman villains - not a particularly powerful adversary in combat (Batman will usually beat the piss out of the Joker, the Riddler, or the Mad Hatter once he gets his hands on them), but extremely frustrating up until the moment they can finally be confronted. I wanted my antagonist illusionist to feel like that. 

With that in mind, I started familiarizing myself with the school of illusion, thinking of how best to make this scenario as difficult for the player characters as possible. It was time for them to experience the terrifying power of light and sound.

Illusions are something of a prickly topic in D&D. Players whose characters rely on illusions require a DM who is willing and able to roleplay their monsters and NPCs with fidelity to the in-character/out-of-character knowledge divide. DMs whose monsters and NPCs rely on illusions require players who are willing and able to do the same. 

There are a variety of spells which create images, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations of differing complexity. These spells create sensations which sometimes appear real to all who see them, and sometimes appear only in the minds of a chosen creature or creatures, and it can be challenging to keep track of which spells do what. 

Illusions are only as powerful as we allow them to be. To take away their power, one only has to stop believing in them...right?

The Illusionist

The illusionist, as we know it today, did not exist in the original, 1974 version of D&D. While a magic-user earned the title of "Conjurer" at 3rd-level, "Enchanter" at 7th-level, and "Necromancer" at 10th-level (all names of what would later become "specialist" wizards), there is no level at which an OD&D magic-user becomes an "Illusionist".

That's not to say illusions did not exist in OD&D - phantasmal forces, invisibility, hallucinatory terrain, and projected image all appear in Book I: Men & Magic.

In 1975, Peter Aronson created the Illusionist class for D&D, which was later published in Strategic Review and Dragon magazine. Around the same time, Len Lakofka, in his fanzine Liaisons Dangereuses, put forth four "specialties" for magic-users - one of which was the Illusionist. 

Between Aronson and Lakofka is probably the origin for the very idea that spells in D&D could be sorted into "schools", and that magic-users could choose to "specialize" in one of them. So, for all those people who are aggrieved by the inconsistencies present in the schools of magic, or by wizards later being pigeonholed into specialization as a concept - blame them! I for one really enjoy the classification of schools of magic - even when it confounds me - as well as the concept of specialist wizards.

The Illusionist officially appears as "a sub-class of magic-users" in AD&D 1e, with Gary Gygax presenting a retooled version of Aronson's concept. Illusionists gained access to a spell list which was largely distinct from that of the magic-user, including dozens of new spells which were either classified as illusions or were illusion-adjacent (1e being the first edition in which spells were sorted into schools in the PHB or its equivalent), many of which would go on to become iconic spells which survive to this day - others would be collapsed and consolidated.

In AD&D 2e, the Illusionist appears as an example of a specialist wizard - wizards could now specialize in any of the eight schools of magic, all of which had similar benefits, but different restrictions tied to the character's race, ability scores, and the types of magic they could utilize. Like all specialists with their associated schools of magic, the Illusionist was better as memorizing, casting, resisting, learning, and researching illusions. The 2e Illusionist could be only a human or a gnome, needed a Dexterity score of 16 or higher, and was unable to cast spells from the schools of abjuration, evocation, and necromancy.

Illusionists appeared in 3e and 4e, but I don't find those editions' conceptualization of the class to be particularly interesting or worth discussion. Moving on.

In 5e, wizards can choose Illusion as their Arcane Tradition. Doing so allows them to copy illusion spells into their spellbooks more quickly and for less gold, automatically grants the minor illusion cantrip (an improved version of it, which allows the wizard to create both a sound and an image with a single casting of the spell), allows the wizard to change the nature of an existing illusion (i.e., without casting the spell again), create an illusory duplicate of their self to force an attack against them to automatically miss, and make an illusory object temporarily real (the example being the illusion of a bridge across a chasm, which is "real" just long enough for the wizard's allies to run across it).

As with 5e's version of the Necromancer, it's worth pointing out that - with the exception of the improved minor illusion and the 14th-level Illusory Reality feature - none of these features encourage 5e's Illusionist to actually use illusion spells. Sigh. As with all 5e wizards, shield, counterspell, and fireball are the Illusionist's bread and butter - but hey, they get minor illusion for free, so...there's that.

Anatomy of an Illusion

What exactly is an illusion? From 2e:

Illusions deal with spells to deceive the senses or minds of others. Spells that cause people to see things that are not there, hear noises not made, or remember things that never happened are all illusions.

And from 5e:

Illusion spells deceive the senses or minds of others. They cause people to see things that are not there, to miss things that are there, to hear phantom noises, or to remember things that never happened. Some illusions create phantom images that any creature can see, but the most insidious illusions plant an image directly in the mind of a creature.

Pretty similar. The 5e definition touches on the distinction between "phantom images that any creature can see" and images planted "directly in the mind of a creature". The 2e PHB actually goes into far greater detail regarding illusions (in Chapter 7, in a section that definitely should have instead been in the DMG):

Spells of this school fall into two basic groups. Illusions are creations that manipulate light, color, shadow, sound, and sometimes even scent. Higher level illusions tap energy from other planes, and are actually quasi-real, being woven of extradimensional energies by the caster. Common illusions create appearances; they cannot make a creature or object look like nothing (i.e., invisible), but they can conceal objects by making them look like something else.

Phantasms exist only in the minds of their victims; these spells are never even quasi-real. (The exceptions to this are the phantasmal force spells, which are actually illusions rather than phantasms.) Phantasms act upon the mind of the victim to create an intense reaction - fear being most common.

I say that this section should have instead been in the DMG because it goes into great detail about adjudicating illusions - believability, monster and NPC expectations and reactions, when a saving throw is warranted, how to handle "damage" from illusions, whether illusions can scare a creature to death, when to roll for system shock, and the like (I'll get to this later). 

As is often the case with AD&D, it's verbose, but not at all unhelpful or unwelcome. There is even more text on adjudicating illusions in Appendix 2 of the PHB - really, a section titled "Adjudicating Illusions" is in the Player's Handbook!

3e goes into even greater detail when distinguishing the types of illusions. There are figments, glamers, patterns, phantasms, and shadows:

A figment spell creates a false sensation. Those who perceive the figment perceive the same thing, not their own slightly different versions of the figment. (It is not a personalized mental impression.) Figments cannot make something seem to be something else.

A glamer spell changes a subject’s sensory qualities, making it look, feel, taste, smell, or sound like something else, or even seem to disappear.

Because figments and glamers are unreal, they cannot produce real effects the way that other types of illusions can. They cannot cause damage to objects or creatures, support weight, provide nutrition, or provide protection from the elements. Consequently, these spells are useful for confounding or delaying foes, but useless for attacking them directly.

Like a figment, a pattern spell creates an image that others can see, but a pattern also affects the minds of those who see it or are caught in it. All patterns are mind-affecting spells.

A phantasm spell creates a mental image that usually only the caster and the subject (or subjects) of the spell can perceive. This impression is totally in the minds of the subjects. It is a personalized mental impression. (It’s all in their heads and not a fake picture or something that they actually see.) Third parties viewing or studying the scene don’t notice the phantasm. All phantasms are mind-affecting spells.

A shadow spell creates something that is partially real from extradimensional energy. Such illusions can have real effects. Damage dealt by a shadow illusion is real.

Someone who is more well-versed than I in the workings of 3e could probably explain why all of these distinctions are necessary or how they interact with the game's other rules.

5e makes no attempt to delineate different types of illusions. As is often the case in the most current edition, the spells' individual descriptions simply say what each does in game terms - that is, whether the spell creates a sensation which can be observed by anyone (and which sensation or combination of sensations it produces) or a sensation entirely within the minds of the affected creatures, whether it can be interacted with, whether it imposes some condition, whether it can cause damage, how to overcome it, and the like. One can assign most of the 5e illusions to any of the above categories: minor illusion is a figment, disguise self is a glamer, hypnotic pattern is (isn't it obvious?) a pattern, phantasmal force is a phantasm, and creation is a shadow.

Conjuring Enchanting Illusions

Illusion is one of the more consistent schools of magic in 5e. The spells found there are about what one would expect. There are some oddballs, and they are usually spells which would fit into the latter three categories presented in 3e - patterns, phantasms, and shadows.

Patterns and phantasms are illusions which affect the mind to "create an intense reaction - fear being the most common". Sounds kind of like an enchantment, no? Examples include fear, hypnotic pattern, phantasmal killer, and weird. It makes sense to me that these spells are in the realm of illusion, because it's the images being created which cause the mental effect. Whereas enchantments affect the mind directly, illusion can affect the mind only to the extent that the target is susceptible to the illusion itself.

Fear in particular is often brought up as being an oddball. In AD&D, the wizard "sends forth an invisible cone of terror", which, yeah, that doesn't really sound like an illusion at all. But in 5e, the caster projects "a phantasmal image of a creature's worst fears". The spell affects a 30-foot cone, so presumably each creature is seeing a different image, assuming that their fears are different. I've always thought of this as being like that scene in Fellowship of the Ring where Gandalf gets really tall and bellows at Bilbo "I am not trying to rob you!" He instills fear in Bilbo, but he does it by changing the way he looks and sounds.

Shadows, on the other hand, create "something that is partially real from extradimensional energy", which sounds a lot like conjuration. The "extradimensional energy" is usually drawn from the Plane of Shadow, and is magically woven into the illusion to make it quasi-real. Conjuration, on the other hand, involves "the transportation of objects and creatures from one location to another" or the creation of "objects or effects out of nothing." Conjuration transports or creates real things - shadow magic does not (it uses extradimensional energy to make an image temporarily real). Phantom steed is shadow magic, but find steed is conjuration. Creation is shadow magic, but create food and water is conjuration.

There are a few other oddballs, like color spray, which creates "flashing, colored light", yet other spells which create light (light, daylight) are evocation, as is prismatic spray (a more notorious spray of multicolored light). 3e classifies color spray as a mind-affecting pattern, so it's meant to be similar to hypnotic pattern.

Magic mouth is also odd, since nothing in the spell's description identifies the mouth as being illusory. It can make something like a painting or a statue appear to speak, but there's nothing saying that the mouth itself isn't real. 3e classifies the spell as a glamer, so the intention is clearly for it to be a trick of light and sound, not a real mouth that is conjured or an ordinary object like a statue that is magically altered.

I was surprised to see that silence is an illusion (3e classifies it as a glamer). I could see an argument for it being an abjuration (a magical barrier that traps sound), but I suppose it makes sense as a glamer (a spell which can make something sound like something else, or, in this case, make something sound like nothing at all).

Lastly, simulacrum - this is a doozy of a spell, and I'm not going to get into the weeds on it, but basically, the caster creates "an illusory duplicate" of a creature, which is "partially real and formed from ice and snow". However, the illusory duplicate is a creature (a construct, specifically) with its own hit points and all of the abilities and statistics of the creature it is based on. 3e classifies the spell as a shadow, so I guess shadow magic is used to give the duplicate a semblance of life.

This is a spell people love to whine about. A lot of DMs don't like that a high-level caster can make an almost exact duplicate of themselves or someone else in the party. A party of all wizards (or bards, with Magical Secrets), could hypothetical double the size of their party if they all cast this spell. I think it's iconic and awesome, and something that high-level casters should be able to do. 

Besides, the spell is plenty limiting - even if a character can get their hands on all that ruby dust, how readily available is the ice and snow to make a snow man? Sounds to me like every campaign needs a calendar with distinct seasons and a system for randomly generating weather!

Real Eyes Realize Real Lies

The way in which illusions work in D&D has changed a lot throughout the editions. Most notably, there has been a great deal of consternation regarding belief in illusions. In OD&D, phantasmal forces can only do damage if "believed to be real". In AD&D, phantasmal force grants a saving throw only to creatures which "disbelieve" the illusion. Allegedly, this led to AD&D players shouting "I disbelieve!" at anything and everything they encountered, on the off chance that they were experiencing an illusion and could benefit from a saving throw.

2e cracks down on this nonsense to a reasonable extent. From Appendix 2 of the PHB:

Disbelief must be stated by the player, based on clues provided by the DM. Players stating disbelief must give a reason for disbelief based on sensory information available to the character. Failure to give such a reason results in failure to disbelieve. The DM can impose additional requirements or delays in recognizing illusions (such as Intelligence checks) as needed, such as when one player is obviously parroting a discovery made by another. Disbelief automatically forfeits a saving throw if the effect is real.

Chapter 7's section on illusions states "disbelieving is an action...and takes a round". So, shouting "I disbelieve!" at anything and everything is not exactly a foolproof strategy. It takes a full round to attempt to disbelieve an illusion (the character foregoes attacking, casting spells, and perhaps even moving or defending themselves, as they focus on the supposed illusion and attempt to see through its tricks), and if the "illusory" fireball happens to be real, the character forfeits their saving throw against it - they were too busy trying to think the fireball away, and got blasted in the face by it.

On top of all that, to even attempt to disbelieve an illusion, the player must provide the DM with some sort of logic for doing so. This is usually tied to believability, which is exhaustively detailed in Chapter 7:

The key to successful illusions or phantasms is believability, which depends on three main factors: what the caster attempts, what the victim expects, and what is happening at the moment the spell is cast.

The type of image chosen by the caster affects the reaction of the victim. ... Spellcasters are well-advised to create images of things they have seen.

The next important consideration is to ask if the spell creates something that the victim expects. ... The key to a good illusion is to create something the victim does not expect but can quickly accept.

This then leads to the third factor in the believability of an illusion, how appropriate the illusion is for the situation. ... The best illusions reinforce these expectations to your character's advantage. 

The text is littered with helpful examples for each of these three factors, which I've left out for brevity. Suffice to say, in typical 2e fashion, there's a lot of verbose advice given, which seems largely meant to help the DM adjudicate things in a way informed by "common sense".

2e also provides some guidance for situations in which some creatures are affected by illusions while their allies are not:

In many encounters, some party members will believe an illusion while others see it for what it really is. In these cases, revealing the truth to those deluded by the spell is not a simple matter of telling them. The magic of the spell has seized their minds. Considered from their point of view, they see a horrible monster (or whatever) while a friend is telling them it isn't real. They know magic can affect people's minds, but whose mind has been affected in this case? At best, having an illusion pointed out grants another saving throw with a +4 bonus.

2e also touches on Intelligence as a factor in disbelieving illusions, though it isn't very specific: 

Intelligence is the best defense against illusions. Low and nonintelligent creatures are more vulnerable to illusions, unless the illusion is completely outside their experience or the illusion touches on an area of the creatures' particular competence. 

One has to consider how this would affect an animal, such as a wolf. It has low Intelligence, but heightened senses. A wolf may be startled by the illusion of a bear, but if it doesn't smell like a bear, the illusion won't be convincing. Thus, the limits of believability must be determined by the effected creature's experience and senses.

Furthermore, creatures with sufficiently high Intelligence are immune to low-level illusions. A creature with an Intelligence of 19 is immune to 1st-level illusions, and a creature with an Intelligence of 25 is immune to 7th-level illusions.

Others have taken the idea of Intelligence as a determining factor and run with it (interestingly, this post suggests instead that low-Intelligence creatures ought to be less susceptible to illusions - they simply don't fully process them). Using Intelligence this way might be useful for DMs who don't trust themselves to be unbiased when determining whether their monsters and NPCs might reasonably come to disbelieve an illusion, or those who simply want more mechanical heft when adjudicating this sort of thing.

That brings us back to 5e, where Intelligence plays much more of a role in disbelieving illusions. Many illusions in 5e do not involve a saving throw at all.  Generally, an illusion in 5e only requires a saving throw if it can damage the target or inflict some condition (phantasmal force, fear, hypnotic pattern, phantasmal killer, dream, or weird). The saving throw has nothing to do with disbelieving the illusion, but simply resisting the illusion's effects.

Because of 5e's very literal rules language, there are spells which explicitly state conditions under which illusions are automatically revealed. Minor illusion, disguise self, silent image, major image, hallucinatory terrain, seeming, programmed illusion, and project image are all revealed to be illusions when physical contact is made.

These same spells, with the addition of phantasmal force, all allow creatures to use their action to make an Intelligence (Investigation) check to attempt to see past their illusory nature. The DC is equal to the spellcaster's spell save DC. This is, essentially, 5e's version of the "disbelieve" action. Like in 2e, a character forfeits the bulk of their turn in order to attempt to disbelieve an illusion. 

I would also use 2e's "common sense" guidelines to determine whether a check is possible in the first place - the player would have to give me some sort of justification as to why their character would disbelieve the illusion, although a player is unlikely to forfeit their turn anyway unless they have good reason. 

Similarly, if one creature has already seen through the illusion or is unaffected by it, and alerts an allied creature to its presence, I would give the affected creature advantage on their Intelligence (Investigation) check to see through it (based on 2e's suggestion of +4 to the saving throw).

I would also utilize 5e's concept of "passive" skill checks to give additional clues to players. A passive skill check value equals the characters skill check modifier plus 10. A 1st-level wizard with 16 (+3) Intelligence and proficiency in Investigation would have a an Investigation modifier of +5, and a passive Investigation score of 15. 

Thus, if this wizard encountered an illusion created by a monster or NPC with a spell save DC of 15 or less, they would "passively" notice something "off" about the effect. They would not automatically be immune to the illusion, but it would be enough to justify an Intelligence (Investigation) check to see past it on their turn (if they're willing to use their action to attempt to do so, as normal).

Scared to Death

Can illusions do damage? Is damage done by illusions "real" damage, which persists after the illusion has ended? Can illusions kill? This is probably the biggest, most confusing change in illusions from edition to edition. 

In OD&D, "Damage caused to viewers of a Phantasmal Force will be real if the illusion is believed to be real," but also, "the illusion will continue unless touched by some living creature." If the orcs believe that the phantasmal unit of archers is real, does the illusory volley of arrows "damage" the orcs, or does the illusion cease to be once the arrows touch the orcs?

In AD&D, phantasmal force explicitly does damage: "the magic-user creates a visual illusion which will affect all believing creature which view the phantasmal force, even to the extent of suffering damage". An illusionist who concentrates on the spell can cause it to "react appropriately" to contact with an opponent, allowing it to persist even after being touched. 

However, phantasmal force is a visual illusion only. I don't see how a visual illusion alone can convince the orcs that they are being fired upon with real arrows, since they wouldn't feel the arrows (or even hear them whistling through the air). Perhaps the visual component is so convincing that the target's mind tricks the orcs into believing they have taken damage? Much and more must be read between the lines.

Tom Moldvay's Basic D&D states that "[Phantasmal Force] never inflicts any real damage. Those 'killed' will pass out, those 'turned to stone' will be paralyzed, and so forth. These effects wear off in 1-4 (1d4) turns."

2e provides a broader ruling:

Illusions are spells of trickery and deceit, not damage and destruction. Thus, illusions cannot be used to cause real damage. When a creature is caught in the blast of an illusionary fireball or struck by the claws of an illusionary troll, he thinks he takes damage. The DM should record the illusionary damage (but tell the player his character has taken real damage). If the character takes enough damage to “die,” he collapses in a faint. A system shock roll should be made for the character. (His mind, believing the damage to be real, may cause his body to cease functioning!) If the character survives, he regains consciousness after 1d3 turns with his illusionary damage healed. In most cases, the character quickly realizes that it was all an illusion.

When an illusion creates a situation of inescapable death, such as a giant block dropping from the ceiling, all those believing the illusion must roll for system shock. If they fail, they die -killed by the sheer terror of the situation. If they pass, they are allowed a new saving throw with a +4 bonus. Those who pass recognize the illusion for what it is. Those who fail faint for 1d3 turns.

Illusions are a powerful thing in AD&D! In 2e, phantasmal force is a 1st-level spell, affects a 500 square-foot area - at 1st-level, plus 100 square feet per additional level! - and can create an effect which can instantly kill every creature caught within it. The limits regarding believability and the affected senses - the spell creates only a visual effect - are still present, but those don't seem particularly difficult to overcome for a savvy player.

Phantasmal killer creates an illusory 4 HD monster in the target's mind. If the illusory monster makes a successful attack roll against the target, the target dies instantly. Only one attempt to disbelieve is allowed, and the spell lasts for 1 round per level of the caster - that's a lot of attempts to instantly kill any creature!

Weird causes targeted creatures in a 20-foot radius to see "phantasmal images of their most feared enemies". Even those who successfully save versus spell are paralyzed for a round and lose 1d4 Strength for a turn (10 rounds). Those who fail have to actually fight the phantasmal creatures with an entire separate combat playing out entirely in the minds of the affected:

Actual combat must then take place, for no magical means of escape is possible. The foe fought is real for all intents and purposes; affected creatures that lose will die. If a creature's phantasmal nemesis from the weird spell is slain, the creature emerges with no damage, no loss of items seemingly used in the combat, and no loss of spells likewise seemingly expended. The creature also gains any experience for defeating the weird, if applicable.

Although each round of combat seems normal, it takes only one-tenth of a round. During the course of the spell, the caster must concentrate fully upon maintaining it.

Appendix 2 of the 2e PHB suggests some limits on what kind of phantasmal monsters can be created and how to handle their combat statistics:

Monster Special Attacks: Before the caster can effectively duplicate a monster's special attack, the wizard must have undergone it (a wizard cannot conjure up the twinkle in a medusa's eye correctly without actually experiencing it - i.e., having been turned to stone by one).

Option: Illusionary monsters attack using the wizard's attack values. This would be a subtle clue that the monsters are fake.

Option: Extend the spell level control to monsters - the caster can create monsters only if the total monster Hit Dice are equal to or less than the caster's level (an 8th-level caster could convincingly do one hill giant, two ogres, or four 2nd-level fighters).

Thus, a 20th-level wizard could force the affected creatures to face a phantasmal 20 HD very old red dragon. It's unclear to me if the affected creatures experience the phantasm together or separately - that is, would a party of affected player characters fight the phantasmal dragon as a unit, or would each of them need to battle the dragon individually?

Modern editions of D&D have simplified things, for better or worse. It is readily apparent which illusions are capable of doing damage, because they say as much. Unfortunately, the damage-dealing capability of these spells has been greatly reduced. 

In 5e, phantasmal force does 1d6 damage per round (if the target fails the initial Intelligence saving throw, if concentration is maintained, and if the target doesn't successfully disbelieve the illusion). An instant-death illusion of a falling stone block it is not, but the caster could make it look like, I don't know...individual bricks are falling from the ceiling and plunking the target on the head every round.

Another wrinkle is that the spell does 1d6 psychic damage, but the creature "perceives the damage as a type appropriate to the illusion". Since the spell allows the caster to create an effect which occupies a 10-foot cube, the caster could create an ogre and have it do what seems to be bludgeoning damage, but what ogre does 1d6 damage? 

There's also the issue of damage resistances and immunities. If a raging barbarian is resistant to bludgeoning damage but not to psychic damage, how do they react to taking phantasmal bludgeoning damage which is actually psychic damage? If I tell the player, "You take 4 bludgeoning damage" and they say "I'm resistant to bludgeoning damage, so I instead take 2 damage", do I say "Well actually, it's psychic damage" or "No, you're not resistant to this damage...for reasons." 

It's entirely unconvincing, and almost any player will see through the ruse immediately. Maybe this is a feature, rather than a bug. Maybe phantasmal force is meant to be an obvious illusion, since it is a low-level one. Maybe.

Phantasmal killer now frightens the target if they fail the initial Wisdom saving throw. Then, at the end of each of their turns, the target repeats the saving throw, taking 4d10 damage on a failed save - not even close to instantly killing most creatures at 7th-level, which is when a caster can first learn it. What's in a name?

Weird works similarly, but affects all creatures in a 30-foot-radius sphere. It still does 4d10 damage per round, despite being a 9th-level spell. Meteor swarm, by comparison, does 40d6 damage in four separate 40-foot-radius sphere. Power word kill does effectively 100 damage. Wish can do basically anything.

In the 2024 version of 5e, all three spells have received some love. Phantasmal force now does 2d8 damage per turn, phantasmal killer does the same damage but does so immediately upon a failed save (rather than requiring a second failed save), and weird does 10d10 damage initially and 5d10 damage on subsequent turns. It's a step in the right direction, but still rather underwhelming compared to what AD&D offered.

Illusionist wizards in the 2024 version will also have a few conjuration spells always prepared, which they can cast as illusions. This is similar to AD&D's idea of using illusions to create phantasmal creatures, rather than having phantasms do arbitrary damage determined by the spell. I was somewhat opposed to this at first, as it makes the Illusionist feel like a Great Value Conjurer, but the more I've read about how illusions worked in AD&D, the more I've come around to it.

I'm not sure how to feel about all of this. Clearly, the illusions of D&D's early days - with even the weakest spells having the potential to instantly kill anyone who failed a saving throw - were far to powerful, while also being nebulous enough to be entirely defanged by DM fiat and "disbelieving" players. The illusions of modern D&D are much more mechanically hard-coded - as is almost everything else in the game, at least when it comes to doing damage in combat - but feel totally lacking in potency compared to what came before.

Is there a way to split the difference? Damned if I know.

So You've Pissed Off an Illusionist

I've been running my buddy's 5e campaign as a guest DM for a month or two now. I was burned out from running my own game, and so was he, but I felt up to the task of designing a couple of quick adventures for his campaign, where the player characters are 9th-level - much more exciting than 4th-level AD&D, in my opinion.

I start planning all of my adventures by determining the primary antagonist. For this adventure, I rolled up an archmage. Because I love specialist wizards, all of my wizards have a school in which they focus their studies. For this one, I rolled a d8 and got a 6, which according to alphabetical order meant that my archmage was an illusionist.

I started to think about how to design an adventure around an adversarial illusionist, and it came to me very quickly. Really, just look at the spells available to an illusionist and think of all the trouble they can get up to.

I decided that this arch-illusionist had it out for the party - the circumstances are too specific to get into here, but there was a good reason (in the eyes of a megalomaniacal archmage, that is). Looking at the list of illusion spells I see disguise self, illusory script, Nystul's magic aura, creation, dream, seeming, project image, and others.

Here's what happened: While the party was returning to the city after their most recent adventure, they started having terrible dreams, which prevented some of them from resting, leading to accumulating levels of exhaustion (one of 5e's nastiest mechanics). 

When they got back to civilization, they found that they suddenly had a bad reputation. Shop owners had closed their doors to them, stating that the party had sold them phony goods or paid in counterfeit coins and gems. Apparently, they had forged documents to get access to a royal gala, and had angered a number of important NPCs there.

The party knew that something was amiss, and started contacting the few friends they had left in the city. The party eventually learned that people who looked exactly like them had been going around town sullying their reputation. Some people claimed to have seen the party traveling to and from a minor noble house's estate.

The party asked around and found out that this minor noble house had recently dismissed many of their servants and guards. The dismissed workers reported that the family had begun behaving strangely - they played elaborate pranks on each other and the staff, enjoyed different food and wine than usual, stopped entertaining guests, and the like.

The party went to the estate to investigate, and found that while it appeared ordinary at first glance, it was all an illusion - the estate had become a rundown frat house. Mercenary thugs were magically disguised as noble knights, goblins as the noble children, and a cabal of illusionists as the noble family. In a secret cellar, they found the real noble family locked in a cage, trapped in a magical dream state, believing themselves to be at a high society gala with the city's greatest movers and shakers.

At the center of the deception, of course, was the arch-illusionist. He appeared in every room of the house, taunting the party until they struck him, at which time he disappeared, and a magic mouth appeared to taunt them into finding him elsewhere. In AD&D style, I gave the illusionist the ability to summon phantasmal monsters for the party to fight - they could either "kill" the monsters (exhausting their resources in the process) or "disbelieve" them to determine that they were illusions (this being a master illusionist, that was no easy feat).

The party finally found the illusionist and battled an illusory dragon he had created. They cornered him, slew him, and...he melted into a pile of ice and snow. A magic mouth appeared again, swearing that they would never find him. He was everyone, and no one. He could be anywhere he wished, and when next they found him, it wouldn't be him at all. Since the party had overcome his house of illusions, he made a gentleman's agreement to let bygones be bygones, but he warned them - he would be watching.

And that is the power of illusionist. They can be anyone. They can make someone see, hear, smell, taste, or feel anything. They can make themselves appear anywhere - even in someone's dreams. The illusionist can force someone to battle enemies that aren't there, trap them in a prison within their own mind, or scare them to death. When the illusionist finally shows up, it might not be them at all. And just like that, they're gone.

An Update on Necromancy

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't paying attention to OneD&D 5.5e D&D 5e 2024 (?) at all. I'm definitely not interested in playing the new version of 5e - I like the 2014 version of 5e just fine, know it very well, have already put considerable effort into house ruling it to my liking, and can simply take the very few bits and pieces that I like from the 2024 version and insert them into 5e without switching over entirely - but I'm plugged in enough to catch wind of some of the changes now and then.

One thing I found interesting was this Reddit thread compiling a list of spells whose school of magic has been changed in the transition from 2014 5e to the 2024 version.

The categorization of spells into schools of magic has always been fascinating - and at times, confounding - to me. I am particularly interested in how the categorization changes over time. I like to think about the fictional reasons for the changes as well. Does a spell get assigned to a new school because the fictional understanding of how these spells work or the most popular method of creating this magical effect has changed? Has some sort of world-altering event caused the realignment of the schools of magic?

The answer is, probably, no. There are "meta" motivations to these changes - that is, motivations the designers have, such as making a "better", more "balanced", or more consistent game. The game designers simply wanted fewer spells in the evocation school, or wanted spells which create a telepathic effect to be consistently in the school of divination. 

I'm particularly interested in those spells which were either moved into or out of the school of necromancy, since I wrote a good deal about necromancy and the type of magic it represents in the recent past. Here is a summary of the changes which pertain to that oft-discoursed school of magic:

• Poison spray has moved from conjuration to necromancy. Why? The spell creates a puff of poison gas, which is a conjured substance, so conjuration seemed fitting. Perhaps the spell now creates a burst of grave dust and does necrotic damage? No, it creates "toxic mist" and still does poison damage. Odd.
• Blindness/deafness has moved from necromancy to transmutation. This actually makes some sense. Instead of being a malign curse, the spell now alters the makeup of the target's ocular or auditory organs such that they cannot see or hear.
• Wrathful smite has moved from evocation to necromancy. This is a magical smite attack which induces fear in the target, so it fits right in with cause fear as an "Evil, scary" spell. Why this was evocation in the first place, and why are both fear-inducing spells not enchantment? That's anyone's guess.
• Reincarnate has moved from transmutation to necromancy. Rejoice! This is actually a spell which I called out in my previous post. The spell creates a new body for the target, rather than transforming their old one, so transmutation never made sense to me. It's more like a combination of conjuration (creating the body) and necromancy (binding a soul to that body), but since clone (which also creates a body) is necromancy, putting reincarnate into necromancy makes plenty sense to me.

That's all, except...what's this? Pretty much all of the healing spells (healing word, cure wounds, prayer of healing, mass healing word, aura of vitality, mass cure wounds, heal, and mass heal) are now abjuration spells. I bring this up only because my previous post touched on healing spells, how they used to be necromancy, and how they've changed pretty much every edition (from necromancy to conjuration, then evocation, and now abjuration).

I'm perplexed by this change. Abjuration is the magic of protection, counter-magic, and magic negation. I suppose one could argue that healing is a kind of protection, but it's not like these spells are creating a magical buffer against harm (which would probably be represented by temporary hit points) - they are healing damage that has already been done. Healing those wounds does not protect a creature from suffering additional wounds.

The oddball is power word heal, which is now an enchantment spell, along with all the other power words like fortify (which one could argue should be abjuration) and kill (which one could argue should be necromancy).

Ah well. This is all just a reminder that try as I might, there is not much fictional justification for these categorizations. It's indicative of a greater problem I have with the direction of the 2024 version of the game, which is that many rule changes are inexplicable, or are made in the name of "balance" without any regard for what those changes actually represent within the fiction. There are a few other changes listed in that thread which are similarly baffling to me, although I'm not interested in digging into each of them here.

On Fantastic Beasts

I've frequently encountered problems with the use of real-world animals in D&D. 

Like other "monsters", animals might appear in dungeons or in the wilderness. Many animals don't seem to belong in a dungeon - there might be a pack of giant rats, a nest of spiders, or a poisonous snake in a toilet for some reason, but there probably won't be a herd of deer on level 3. 

It makes more sense for animals to be encountered in the wilderness, but it's never been particularly compelling to me to include a wolf den or an eagle's nest in my sandbox. As a result, animals tend to show up in my games most often as the result of a random encounter check.

I use reaction rolls for every encounter in my games. I modify the reaction roll based on the creature's alignment, so that Lawful and Good creatures are more likely to be friendly or helpful, and Chaotic and Evil creatures are more likely to be unfriendly or hostile. Because animals are typically Neutral or unaligned, their reaction roll is unmodified, and because indifferent is the most common reaction rolled, animals tend to be indifferent towards the player characters. 

This makes sense for animals, but doesn't usually make for engaging gameplay. As a result, animals tend to be little more than wilderness set dressing - the players see a herd of deer and look at them for a while before moving on; they hear wolves howling in the distance and anticipate a fight, but the wolves are simply in the area, doing their own thing - nothing happens.

While unexciting, the even less desirable outcome, for me, is when the animals behave entirely unlike animals - attacking large groups of armed, fire-bearing humans for seemingly no reason and, often, fighting to the death (particularly if the DM isn't using morale rules). I suspect this is more common with inexperienced DMs, who may feel that every encounter needs to be a fight, or who may not know what to do with indifferent creatures.

So, most animals are randomly encountered in the wilderness, rather than in dungeons, and they're either just kind of there, indifferent to the party, or they're bizarro world bloodthirsty killing machines unlike any animals that exist in the real world. But there are things the player characters might do with animals other than observe them or fight them.

Player characters can magically talk to animals, charm them, and bond with them - which are all potentially cool things to do. A random encounter with a frog might be an opportunity for certain player characters to gather information, or, they might want to make the frog their pet (players love pets). But, animals are often also treated as being dumb. It might be fun to talk to a frog, but does it have much to say? The player might delight in having a pet frog, but does it serve any purpose besides being a roleplaying aide?

An encounter with mundane animals might grant other opportunities - they can be killed for food, or for specific resources like fur, blubber, ivory, venom, and the like. I'm not particularly interested in these uses for animals for a number of reasons. 

Food is hardly a concern in my D&D games after 1st-level or so, especially if the party has a druid or ranger among its numbers. It is usually trivial in D&D to forage enough food to feed a party of adventurers or simply carry enough rations to do so. Spells like goodberry and create food and water exist to further trivialize the issue.

I consider this a feature rather than a bug. The exploration "pillar" of the game is about a lot more than whether the characters have enough food and water. I don't want to worry about it past a certain point - if the party has a pack animal, a proficient hunter, or a magical food producer among them, we simply stop keeping track of it. The side effect of this is that there's little reason to take down a randomly encountered deer, which eliminates yet another way of interacting with mundane animals.

I also don't care to establish an economy based on fur, blubber, ivory, or other animal resources. This is probably going on in the background of the setting, but I don't want the players to decide to retire from the adventuring life and pursue a career in ivory poaching instead. That's not the game I'm trying to play - if an animal like a giant spider has a deadly venom the players want to harvest, that's another thing, because the venom has an obvious mechanical benefit. 

One also has to imagine that in a world populated by fantastic mythical monsters, animal materials which are valued in the real world would likely play second fiddle to more fantastic products - a king draped in a lion hide cloak is a cool image, but what self-respecting king in a D&D world wears lion hide when manticores exist?

Which brings me to that other animal-like D&D category of monster, the monstrosity. In 5e, it's a bizarre category for many things, some of which may have animal parts, but are intelligent and can talk (chimeras, sphinxes, the aforementioned manticore, etc.), but also many that are basically the D&D/fantasy equivalent of mundane animals - that is, creatures that are simplistic in their motivations and exist within a larger ecological framework: bulettes, griffons, purple worms, etc. 

This latter group is basically "animals, but a wizard made them." They're a little more interesting than mundane animals - even if they're still used in basically the same boring ways as mundane animals - because they're fantastic. A bulette is a shark that lives underground and can leap 20 feet into the air - that is sufficiently cooler than a real-world shark such that I can use it as is in my games.

So, how does one make animals in D&D interesting? Well, make them fantastic. Humans in the real world didn't always perceive animals through a scientific lens - there were legends and folklore attributed to them. They were viewed as having certain defining traits. 

There is no reason why, in a fantasy setting, owls can't be infinitely wise. A trio of stubborn billy goats might literally guard a bridge that the party needs to cross. A lion might literally be the king of the jungle which the party needs to appease. An elephant might literally never forget.

One tool I like to use in making animals interesting is medieval bestiaries. Specifically, I'm referring to Western Christian bestiaries, because I'm American and my D&D games tend to have that pseudo-European, pseudo-medieval pastiche. 

These bestiaries are a product of the time in which they were written and the people who wrote them. They're written from a Christian perspective, and often have some sort of moral meaning which is tied to God or the devil. Luckily, gods and devils are real, tangible things in most D&D settings, so we can still make use of these bestiaries by loosely interpreting them. 

D&D settings inspired by other cultures should instead use that culture's folklore and mythology for this same purpose. Most animals' Wikipedia entries have a section under "Relationships with humans" which discusses their cultural significance in a variety of regions.

Similarly, a DM can draw on other pop culture references to inform the use of animals in their setting. An entire civilization of human-like apes - akin to that of the Planet of the Apes films - might exist in the setting and be a formidable faction in the world. There may be a Redwall-style civilization of small mammals in the great forests of the world. Domesticated livestock animals across the realm may be embracing Communist ideology, overthrowing their farmer masters and installing porcine party leaders in their stead.

For some reason, animals in D&D are often excluded from the fantasy and magic that pervades the rest of the game. There are flying, talking, spellcasting lizards that can burn entire cities to ash, and chickens that can turn a man to stone with a look, but animals are still used as livestock, pets, mounts, and game. There are hundreds of fantastical, monstrous, and alien humanoid civilizations with their own cultures, languages, politics, and religions, but regular real-world animals still live on the plains and in the forests, hills, mountains, deserts, swamps, and seas, doing exactly what they do in the real world. 

Low fantasy settings do exist, and in those settings it makes plenty of sense for animals to be utterly mundane, but even back in the days when most player characters didn't cast spells or make it beyond 10th-level, D&D was never a low fantasy game, and treating it like one has always been a disservice. There is little reason why every part of the world shouldn't be suffused with the fantastic, and that applies to animals as well. This can all get very silly very fast, but D&D is a silly game, and the silly is often worth embracing.

On Monster Manuals

I recently picked up Skerples's The Monster Overhaul and have been using it to spice up classic monsters in my AD&D 2e campaign. It's a great book, with lots of random tables, advice, and generic maps that go along with the featured monsters. Despite that, it's not everything I want out of a bestiary, but I'm yet to find any single book that is.

When I run a D&D game, my primary bestiary is always the Monster Manual for that edition of the game. I like to run the edition "as is" for a while to get a feel for it before I start tweaking things or creating new stuff, so in a similar vein, I try to run the monsters by the book for a bit as well. After a while, I develop a sense for which monsters are particularly potent or not, and which ones are fun or boring to use, and I make adjustments as needed.

But again, no bestiary has proven to be everything I want it to be. So, I like to supplement the primary text with Monster Manuals from other editions, third party products like The Monster Overhaul, folklore and medieval bestiaries, and inspiration from books, films, video games, and the like. Sometimes I just Google "[monster name]" and see if I can find anything interesting on wikis, Reddit, YouTube, and the like (as much as I may denigrate D&D Redditors and YouTubers, they are occasionally capable of producing interesting ideas).

Seeing as how I've not found a single bestiary to rule them all, it got me thinking about what exactly is everything I would want out of a bestiary. What is my ideal Monster Manual? To answer that question, I'll look at past and present Monster Manuals, what I like about them, and what I feel they're missing.

Lost Knowledge

The actual descriptions of the monsters in original D&D's Book II: Monsters and Treasure are pretty sparse, but charming and utilitarian in their presentation. The book introduces a few details which are important to me, which no longer appear in modern Monster Manuals: number appearing, % in lair, and treasure type. A few entries also have miscellaneous information like when, how many, and what types of leaders are present in a group (for example, 30 bandits will be lead by a 4th-level Fighting-Man), or whether an orc band is transporting a wagon train, how many wagons there are, and how much gold they're carrying. By comparison, modern D&D Monster Manuals have none of the above guidance, and they rarely get so specific about things like group composition or wagon train contents (for better or worse). 

In 5e, four to six young red dragons might be a "balanced" encounter for a party of six 20th-level characters, but does it "make sense" in the context of the fictional world? How many dragons typically travel together? The answer can be whatever the DM wants it to be, but this wasn't always the case: OD&D tells me that one to four dragons will be encountered - two dragons will be a mated pair of adults, and any additional dragons will be very young offspring of the two.

I know, of course, that most dragons - particularly a family of dragons - will have a lair, but unless I intentionally place a dragon's lair on my map, how do I know when one is found? OD&D tells me that randomly encountered dragons are 60% likely to be in their lair. We can also intuit from the % in lair value how significant the lair is to the monster - dragons are encountered in their lair more often than not, while elementals, by comparison, never are (presumably, they don't have lairs).

Obviously, dragons hoard treasure. In 5e, treasure hoards are generated based on a monster's CR. CRs are broken into tiers (1-4, 5-10, 11-16, and 17+) and, aside from the whims of the dice, hoards within a certain tier are identical, so an ancient red dragon's treasure hoard will be comparable to and maybe indistinguishable from a Demon Lord's (Fizban's Treasury of Dragons does change this, but hopefully my point is still clear - if not, imagine that I'm using any monster other than dragons as my example). OD&D tells me how big of a hoard (if any) and what type of treasure different monsters collect. Some collect primarily coins, or gems, or art objects, or magic items. Some don't collect treasure at all. Dragons have treasure type H, which is more or less the largest type of hoard in the game.

5e has "leader-type" monsters like the goblin boss, hobgoblin warlord, and bugbear chief, but little information is provided as to how these monsters actually organize themselves into groups. Not only do I not know how many goblins typically make up a dungeon gang, wilderness scouting party, or warband - I also don't know how many goblins are typically marshalled under a boss, or in their lair, how many bosses might be present. Certain 5e books - like Volo's Guide to Monsters, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, and Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants - have details like these for certain monsters, and it's no surprise that these more specific monster manuals are some of my favorite - and some of the most useful - modern D&D supplements.

Now, I want to take a quick detour to the 1981 D&D Basic Set, because I think this is the first time individual monster types are given their own morale scores (OD&D had morale rules based on Chainmail, but I don't think morale scores became a part of monster "statblocks" until Basic - I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong). With unique morale scores for each monster, the DM is given a simple metric for determining which monsters are more or less likely to run at the first sign of trouble or fight to the death, as well as those - like most undead - which never flee, no matter what, making them especially dangerous opponents.

5e has an extremely lacking optional rule for morale which is just a DC 10 Wisdom saving throw for every monster. Aside from that, the default assumption, presumably, is that the DM simply decides if and when it makes sense for the monsters to flee. I've written before about 5e's underwhelming morale mechanics and how I handle morale in my own 5e games.

It probably sounds like I'm being willfully obtuse. It's not especially onerous for a DM to figure out on their own how many dragons should appear in a group, something as simple as a coin flip could determine whether they're encountered in their lair or not, any remotely genre-savvy DM knows that dragons have big hoards of treasure, the number of goblins under a goblin boss is however many I need for the "story", or however many makes for a "balanced" encounter, and I have a pretty good idea of which monsters are likely to flee a combat and when. 

But, as someone who is imagining so much and making so many decisions already in order to prepare for a game, I appreciate the guidelines which are provided in a Monster Manual like this. They obviate the need for me to imagine or decide yet another thing for myself. One could also argue that because these details are all a matter of setting, their exclusion provides the DM more "freedom" to decide what they want for their unique world. However, the 5e Monster Manual is not setting-agnostic - every bit of flavor text assumes the DM is using the default Forgotten Realms setting. If it's fine to include those details, why not these other guidelines from Monster Manuals of old? Even if they were included, the DM is still free to change whatever they like.

Fantastic Naturalism

AD&D's Monster Manual provides a hint of what's to come in 2e's Monstrous Manual. This is where we get what I call "companion monsters", or monsters that are typically found in the lairs of other monsters. For example, 60% of goblin lairs will be protected by 5-30 huge wolves, and 20% will contain 2-12 bugbears. 

Like with OD&D's detailed accounting of "leader-types", these still serve a gameplay function- in OD&D, it's important to detail the number of bandit leaders because the player characters might end up fighting them, and the same can be said of AD&D's wolf- and bugbear-filled goblin lairs.

However, AD&D is also where "Gygaxian Naturalism" explodes. That is, we start to get a lot of information that serves seemingly little or no gameplay function:

"The intention behind Gygaxian Naturalism is to paint a picture of a "real" world, which is to say, a world that exists for reasons other than purely gaming ones. The implication is that monsters have lives of their own and thus go about their business doing various things until they encounter the player characters. Exactly what they do is described by reference to game mechanics, whether it be the numbers of non-combatants in a lair or spell-like abilities that help the monster do whatever it naturally does when it's not facing off against an adventuring party."

Monsters begin to be treated like real-world animals or people. For example, a goblin lair will contain female goblins and goblin children equal to 60% and 100% of the number of male warriors, respectively. If goblins are less like monsters and more like people, it only makes sense that they would have children in their lairs. 

Sometimes these creatures are given stats, like "infant giants fight as ogres", but more often than not, the assumption seems to be that they are noncombatants. They could serve other gameplay functions - maybe the player characters need to sneak through a nursery of slumbering goblin infants, or could (Evilly) occupy said nursery and use the infant hostages to draw out the goblin chief - but more often than not, as in The Keep on the Borderlands, the grisly implication is genocidal - if the players want to wipe out the goblin lair, they better be ready to butcher a bunch of goblin workers, wet nurses, and children!

This is ultimately a matter of taste. For me, if a campaign is going to feature a quest like cleaning out the Caves of Chaos, then in that campaign, monsters are going to be monsters - the goblins spawn out of the underworld fully formed, supernatural and Evil, and must be destroyed at their magical root. If instead goblins are like people, then any quest involving goblins will be much more nuanced and reflective of real-world conflicts between people - they won't be inherently Evil, and the goal of the quest will never be to go kill all of them in their home (but certainly, if the characters are Evil, that is an avenue they might pursue).

As a result of Gygaxian Naturalism, we also get nice little tidbits like 75% of griffon lairs will have one or two eggs or fledgling griffons for every two adult griffons. Fledgling griffons sell for 5,000 gold pieces and eggs sell for 2,000 gold pieces. One could argue that this is problematic in another way, in that money-hungry players (i.e., most players) are incentivized to go out and drive griffons into extinction in order to make a quick buck. 

I like it though, mostly because it generates a quest hook other than "slay the griffons" (i.e., "acquire a griffon egg or fledgling griffon", which doesn't necessitate killing the griffons), and because it allows player characters to obtain young griffons which they could potentially raise and train as mounts, which is fantastic in the literal sense. It is also up to the players to decide if the coin is worth compromising their characters' morals (if they have any). In my 2e game, the party declined a quest from an Evil wizard who wanted them to acquire pegasus eggs for his sinister experiments. Later, they encountered an adventuring party who gleefully took the wizard up on this job, which provided an Evil contrast to the party's Goodness.

The 2e Monstrous Manual is one of my favorite bestiaries of all time (in no small part due to Tony DiTerlizzi's evocative and stylized illustrations). It terms of statistics, it adds little compared to 1e's Monster Manual, but for better or worse, it goes all in on Gygaxian Naturalism. If AD&D 1e is the encyclopedia of D&D in general, 2e is the edition which produced D&D's encyclopedia of monsters.

The text describing each monster is incredibly exhaustive compared to OD&D's and 1e's sparse and often ambiguous entries. The downside is that a good amount of the monsters' game mechanics are buried within paragraphs of what would now be described as "flavor text". When running 2e, I often have to make a bulleted list of notes to accompany the monsters I want to use. As a result, it's not super useful at the table (my random encounters in the wilderness often suffer from a few minutes of dead air while I skim the monster's description for relevant game information), but it's terrific if one has the leisure of reading ahead of time, as it offers an abundance of inspiration.

Modern Manuals

All of this is not to say that I don't like D&D's modern Monster Manuals. I actually quite like the way monsters are presented in 5e's Monster Manual (as usual, I am skipping 3e and 4e because I never DMed either edition, so I'm not super familiar with those entries). 5e's statblocks have most of the information a DM needs. 

I like that the monsters have ability scores and skills (which I think began in 3e), which allow them to interact with the system in much the same way as players (even if I don't see why I might ever need to know how good a monster is at Persuasion or Performance). I like that monster's actions, bonus actions, reactions, and special defenses are all plainly stated. 

5e has an at times bizarre and obtuse rules vernacular that requires some research to parse, but once I familiarized myself with the lingo, I found it exactingly specific and easy to run. A knock-on effect of this is that spell descriptions have been greatly simplified, meaning that spellcasting monsters are no longer a pain to run (some of this is also attributable to the fact that I play online exclusively and am not fumbling around with multiple books, which makes this more difficult).

I like the addition of legendary actions, resistances, and lair actions, which make "boss" monsters more formidable and engaging to run. Some of the more powerful monsters have incredibly lengthy statblocks as a result, but because the information is organized in a standardized way, I've never found it too difficult to use. Compare 2e's dragons to 5e's dragons and let me know which one seems easier to run out of the book.

The presentation of flavor text is streamlined, too. Monster descriptions usually have two or three bolded headings which organize the information into chunks. If one imagines a spectrum of complexity from OSE's easily digestible bullet points to OD&D and 1e's snappy blurbs to 2e's lengthy and jumbled encyclopedia entries, 5e's Monster Manual is between OD&D/1e and 2e, which I think is the sweet spot.

Still, I can't help but mourn for what's been lost since 2e, and books like The Monster Overhaul make me wonder what else is possible. Aside from just mashing books from different editions together to fill in the missing pieces, what more does a Monster Manual need?

Hooks

I don't want monsters that simply exist, but monsters which do things in the world. Them being monsters, these things are often detrimental to the citizens of Fantasyland. Monsters cause problems that need to be solved. Problems generate quest hooks which adventurers can pursue. A hook can be as simple as "the monster is killing people, so adventurers are needed to kill it", but that gets boring fast.

Alternative hooks are often implied in a monster's description, but not always. More recent monster-focused 5e books like the aforementioned Fizban's and Bigby's provide tables of adventure hooks for dragons and giants respectively. Not every monster is suited to having a bunch of quest hooks tied to it, but I would be happy to have as little as a d4 table for more versatile monsters for whom it makes sense.

Goals, Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws

This information is important for roleplaying monsters - after all, they don't exist solely to be battled and killed. Monster Manuals usually provide some information about what a broad type of monster generally wants and how it behaves, but they rarely account for individual variation. 

The Dungeon Master's Guide has tables for generating these details for NPCs in general, but these don't always apply easily to specific monsters. A dragon wants different things, behaves differently, and has different secrets than a giant, and the same can be said of goblins, orcs, kobolds, and the like.

I might settle for some ideas as to what different monster types might want, but I also wouldn't be mad about having one table for beholders, another for mind flayers, and another for aboleths, for example.

Lairs

This is implied or outright stated for a number of monsters, but there aren't often a variety of options presented - trolls live in troll holes, hook horrors live in cliffside caverns, and satyrs live in forest groves. I would like at least three ideas for unique places that each monster could either inhabit or be encountered in. If these options are specific to the various terrain types where the monster can be found, all the better.

I also really like the "generic" maps included in The Monster Overhaul. If I roll a random encounter in the lair of a beholder, lich, or troll, I can easily pull the book out and improvise something using a map from that book. I don't have to make something up spontaneously or go frantically Googling "beholder lair map". The 5e monster-specific books also include some generic monster lairs, which I appreciate, but I would like to see it more - generic caves, burrows, mines, dormant volcanoes, gloomy ruins, camps, shipwrecks, islands, mountain peaks, pocket planes, and so on.

Variants

This is something that's done in quite a few Monster Manuals. 2e's entry for the hydra has the standard hydra, the Lernaean hydra, the pyrohydra, and the cyrohydra. 4e I think had a variety of goblin types - for example the cutter, sharpshooter, and shaman. 5e has variants for some of its monsters as well - the deathlock, an undead warlock from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, has a standard version as well as variants for the Archfey, Fiend, and Great Old One warlock patrons.

It's easiest to do this with humanoids (just design them similarly to the different player character classes) and spellcasters (just change their spell list) but I don't see why we couldn't also have, for example, harpy variants - tropical bird harpies that use illusion magic instead of enchanting songs, or vulture harpies that practice necromancy, reanimating the skeletons of their victims after they've picked the bones clean. Maybe it's not a harpy anymore if its main thing isn't singing, but I don't know - D&D never seems to have a problem with bastardizing real-world mythology, which I think is fine, because D&D isn't trying to replicate real-world myths.

The Monster Overhaul is particularly good at presenting variant monsters - different types of undead dragons, more colors of "chaos frog" (slaads), and t-rexes with special attacks and abilities, for example.

Useable Materials

This element is inspired by Dungeon Meshi, which is of course a manga (and now an anime) about eating monsters. The Monster Overhaul also has some information on what different monsters taste like and what the effects of eating them are. I had a player character in my last 5e game whose whole thing was eating monsters. I like the idea, but it's not exactly why I'm bringing up Dungeon Meshi.

What really amazes me about Dungeon Meshi is how creative it is about how characters in the world make use of monsters and their materials, even if it means challenging popular conceptions about what classic D&D monsters fundamentally are (despite the fact that the original manga's author Ryoko Kui never played D&D, Dungeon Meshi is undeniably very D&D).

For example, when I saw that one episode of Dungeon Meshi was titled "Living Armor", I thought, "How in the world are they going to eat that?" Well, spoiler alert I guess, in Dungeon Meshi, living armor (or animated armor, to use D&D parlance) is actually armor inhabited by an edible mollusk creature. To give another example, mimics aren't amorphous shapechangers that imitate mundane items - they're hermit crab things that live inside of chests. The characters use golems made of earth as living vegetable gardens, and make sorbet out of ghosts. I haven't read the manga or watched all the episodes on Netflix yet, but this kind of creativity is so exciting and inspiring, and I can't wait to see what weird uses for monsters come up next. 

This reminds me of bits in the AD&D Monster Manuals where unique materials are called out for certain monsters: the aforementioned griffon eggs; ankheg chitin which can be fashioned into lightweight, strong armor; manticore pelts which sell for 10,000 gold pieces, and so on. It's not quite as exciting as some of the ideas in Dungeon Meshi, but it demonstrates that those same principles can apply to D&D. 

After all, if monsters are creatures that exist in the fictional world, it only makes sense that people in that world would have all sorts of uses for them. Perhaps kraken ink and cockatrice feathers can be used to pen powerful spells. Harpy vocal cords can be fashioned into magically enchanting string instruments. Griffon eyes can be used to craft magical lenses that grant enhanced eyesight. I don't see any reason why each monster couldn't have at least one or two such uses. This is especially true of those monsters that don't keep treasure, and so don't offer much of a reward when they're defeated.

My Own Private Monster Manual

In short, my ideal Monster Manual would have clean, detailed information about the mechanical abilities of monsters in my chosen system. The 5e Monster Manual statblocks are a good example as to how relatively complex monsters can be outlined in a specific, rules-oriented language that is (usually) easily parsed by someone who's proficient in it (although the language sometimes leaves something to be desired).

Monster entries would also have flavor text descriptions akin to slightly more detailed bullet points - perhaps three to four very short paragraphs that describe the monster in some sort of default setting which the DM is free to alter. The bulk of the description would instead be replaced by a series of tables with quest hooks, roleplaying prompts, and lists of lairs, monster variants, and usable materials for each monster.

Finally, the monster's combat statistics would be supplemented with statistics and information which root it firmly in the fictional world's imagined ecology - where is the monster found, how many of them form a group (in a dungeon, the wilderness, or a lair), what other monsters it associates with, how likely is it to be found in its lair, and what treasure can be found there.

That's quite an ambitious Monster Manual. I'm certainly not going to be the one to write it, and I don't begrudge the Monster Manuals we have for not being all of these things. The point I guess is that it's worth it for the DM to have a few different Monster Manuals in their collection, and to collate the parts into a more complete whole when possible. 

AD&D 2e Play Report: Session 20

We played the 20th session of our AD&D 2e campaign earlier this week. Last session's play report is here.

To recap, the party had concluded the previous session by ambushing a heretical priest and zombie lord, Themar, and his zombie minions. The clerics in the party used their godly powers to turn the majority of the lesser zombies. The warriors in the party - and their numerous elf henchmen - held the remaining zombies at bay and picked off the turned zombies at their leisure while a select few battled Themar. Themar unleashed a powerful burst of dark energy which instantly slew the party's beloved elf henchman, Yinvalur, and raised him as a zombie.

Eventually, the party defeated Themar, made the hard decision to kill the Yinvalur zombie. They found a bunch of gems on Themar's corpse, and we concluded the session.

Party Roster

• Bernhardt Dalton, NG human cleric 5
• Magicheart, NG pseudodragon
• Orlina, CN human cleric 1
• Corym Vadercast, NG elf fighter 3/mage 3
• Haymond Baler, LG human fighter 4
• Yuliana, NG human cleric 3
• Karven Stone, LE dwarf thief 5

The party had an hour of overland travel left in the day, and they had some elf hirelings to return, so they headed off towards the wood elf camp, which was about a day's travel from Themar's lair. As they set up camp in the forest, I rolled a random encounter. The party was approached by another group of adventurers.

I determined that this was a low-level group, and had already prepped one for such an occasion: the Combatants of Composure. This was yet another iteration on the Gladiators of Patience, and got a bemused chuckle from my players.

The Combatants, it turned out, were on their way to Ryl Themar. The party had been gone for a while, so another group had gone looking for them. The Combatants were led by the LE human fighter Corbyn, so I reasoned that they were probably hoping that the party had cleared out some of the tomb's monsters while, unfortunately, dying in the process, allowing the Combatants to mop up and take the treasure. I described the Combatants as friendly, but maybe somewhat disappointed to find the party still standing.

The party was certainly in a weakened state, but they also had a total of thirteen members (four PCs, two henchmen, and seven hirelings). The Combatants had four characters with class levels (one 2nd-level and three 1st-level) and six hirelings. If the numbers were more in their favor, the Combatants may have tried strong-arming the party into surrendering their plunder. I rolled a morale check for them and concluded that they weren't willing to risk a fight.

One of the player characters let slip that they had left a few areas of the tomb unexplored - namely, burial chambers where there might be treasure. This piqued the Combatants' interest, and they began to entertain the idea of continuing on to the tomb and poking around. The elves in the party didn't like the sound of that, and urged Corym to convince them to reconsider, or else they might have no choice but to stop them.

The party worked together to convince the Combatants that there were powerful undead still haunting the tomb, along with traps and ancient elf curses. Haymond's +6 reaction roll modifier from Charisma managed to persuade them. Instead, the Combatants joined the party at camp, intending to head back to town in the morning.

In hindsight, I could have pushed things a little more here. The wood elf camp is supposed to be a secret. The party was accompanied by a band of wood elves and wasn't immediately returning to town. The Combatants could have pressed this issue, inquiring as to where the party was headed, or even attempting to follow them there. The elves would probably have done quite a bit to prevent these brigands from finding their camp. 

That night, Corym's watch was interrupted by a piercing shriek. A pride of griffons crashed through the forest canopy, talons outstretched towards the party's many mules.

This was something of another flub, as technically griffons are active only during the day. Not a big deal, but I wanted to mention it.

The most interesting thing about griffons - besides just looking cool, or the possibility of riding one - is their love of horse meat. When horses or horsekin are present, griffons have a 90% chance of attacking, foregoing the need for a typical reaction roll. It doesn't matter how sizeable or well-armed the party is - the griffons simply can't resist.

The party currently had five mules, including one which the Combatants had brought along. So, the griffons attacked. The party was roused by the griffons' shrieks, and moved quickly to defend their mules. I made it clear that the griffons were after the mules, and that the player characters could choose whether to stand in their way or let them go.

There were five griffons in total. After the first round, two of the griffons lost morale and flew off. The remaining three were eventually killed by the large party. Many of the player characters were bloodied during this fight. One of the elf hirelings and one of the Combatants' men-at-arms were killed. 

The party harvested beaks, talons, feathers, and eyes from two of the griffons, allowing the Combatants to harvest the third one. I use The Thieves Guild's Harvesting and Loot tables to determine what valuable resources can be collected from monsters as a quick and easy reference in the event that players want to carve up their kills. According to that resource, griffon feathers are used in the fletching of +1 arrows, and their eyes can be used to craft eyes of the eagle, both of which are fun, thematically satisfying applications that excited the players. They preserved the griffons' eyes in Bernhardt's ever-present barrel of pickled fish.

The next day, the parties parted ways. The elves carried their dead with them. The Combatants left their fallen mercenary to rot. The party made it back to the wood elf camp without incident, returned their elf hirelings, and set out again. They had two hours of travel left in the day, and it would take them ten hours to get back to Mythshire, so if they spent the rest of the day traveling, they would reach town at the end of the following day. It might have been safer to stay with the elves and recuperate, but they decided that they were in a hurry.

While they were making camp at the end of the day, they heard a large group of small humanoids approaching. Bernhardt cast obscurement to create a 50-foot-wide blanket of fog around their camp. The approaching creatures split into two groups to encircle the fog. A voice cried out that they knew the party was using magic to hide, and the creatures would wait until the fog cleared and then they'd take all their treasure.

Karven snuck silently out of the fog past the creatures, then around the perimeter to count them. There were about thirty kobolds. Karven silently backstabbed one and pulled its body into the bushes. He tried to take out another, but was detected. 

The kobold who would have been Karven's victim cried out that there was a heavily-armed, scary-looking dwarf hunting them in the fog. I made a morale check, which the kobolds failed, and they scattered into the woods. Karven threw three darts at them as they fled, hitting for maximum damage with each. With their d4 hit die, three more kobolds were killed.

Satisfied with this result, the party continued setting their camp. The night passed without incident, and they reached Mythshire the following day. They met with Zylra, the matriarch of the elf enclave which had given them the quest to defeat Themar. They collected their reward of gold, and Zylra presented Corym with a suit of elven chain, which would have been Ash's, had he lived.

I new that Karven's player was fiending for some elven chain, and I had already decided that completing this quest would net the party some. It made sense that a young elf warrior like Ash would be gifted some eventually, and now that the character was dead, it made sense to gift it to another elf who had helped the enclave; especially since Corym is a fighter/mage. It made less sense to give the chain to an evil dwarf.

Still, I made it clear that this was Corym's to do whatever he wanted with it. If he wanted to give it to Karven, he could. The player chose to keep it. There will be more elven chain down the line, I'm sure - just keep helping out the elves.

The party rested in Mythshire, then traveled for a day to Southreach. This is where we concluded the session. The party has plenty of errands in the city, and we were close to our end time, so it made sense to leave all that for next session.