The principle of four humors

A common peeve of mine is the tendency for fantasy writing to rely on real science to inform how the fantasy world works rather than on the obsolete scientific theories believed by the classical philosophers. So forget everything that you know about real world biology. This is fantasyland, where real physics take a back seat to fantasy physics!

Monster ecology needn't be constrained by reality

Many bestiaries devote word count to describing the place of fantastical creatures within the ecology of the fantasy world they live in. Commonly, they are described in ways analogous to the animals of our own reality. They eat and procreate in the fashion of real animals, sometimes with a fantastical twist. All to often, however, these monsters feel less like monsters and more like cryptids or speculative alien biology projects.

Avoiding the frustrations of taxonomies

This post isn't strictly about planar revision, but it will inform my design goals.

Since third edition rolled around monsters have been classified into a convoluted and inconsistent taxonomy. For simplicity’s sake, I will ignore all these distinctions in favor of something simple, consistent and easy to remember but which may be added onto without falling apart.