Renaming true dragons, revisited

So a feature of the D&D jargon that I've never been fond of is it's idiosyncratic taxonomy of dragons. I've ranted about this at length in previous posts, years ago. I guess it's time to revisit that with what I've learned in the meantime.

Basically, my problem is this: as of 5e (but a variation of this is true for all editions), the term "dragon" is used both for the general creature type as well as a subset thereof. 

The most recent 5e SRD offers the following idiosyncratic descriptions:

[A]n arrow of dragon slaying deals extra damage not only to dragons but also other creatures of the dragon type, such as dragon turtles and wyverns. [...] Dragons are large reptilian creatures of ancient origin and tremendous power. True dragons, including the good metallic dragons and the evil chromatic dragons, are highly intelligent and have innate magic. Also in this category are creatures distantly related to true dragons, but less powerful, less intelligent, and less magical, such as wyverns and pseudodragons.

I don't like the "true dragon" jargon because it's arbitrary, provincial, and confusing, especially to people who aren't D&D buffs. They're not true dragons, they're what folklore classification systems label "Western dragons" (although it doesn't actually make sense to call them that in the fantasy settings) plus a bunch of D&D-specific baggage like a Smaug-esque intelligent disposition and magical powers that vary by edition. Furthermore, the D&D canon includes a bazillion varieties of true dragons, much less their "lesser dragons" and "dragon-kin" cousins. 3pp like Legends & Lairs: Draconic Lore, Octavirate Presents Vol #4: The Forgotten, Pathfinder et al have introduced a bazillion more. At the very least, 5e could have used a slightly less confusing terminology like Witcher's "draconid" for the entire taxonomy including both "dragons" and everything else.

D&D can't even keep its own taxonomy straight, either. This is especially frustrating because it's not just an in-universe taxonomy, but actual game rules with implications for in-universe physics. Why is a dragon turtle considered a dragon but a hydra isn't? Why does an arrow of dragon slaying work against the former but not the latter? What's the criteria being used here? Hydras are giant reptiles with multiple heads and the magical ability to regrow severed heads. They're labeled dragons in folklore classification systems in reality.

The problem stems from trying to mash together myths from all over the world and pretend that they make sense together. In reality, dragon myths varied from region to region. No culture that I'm aware of had myths where the dragons were divided into different kinds based on their anatomy. Western dragons, eastern dragons, lindworms, etc didn't coexist in mythology, so nobody needed special terminology to distinguish them. They were all dragons. Not true dragons, not lesser dragons, not dragonkin... just dragons.

Even Tolkien didn't bother to develop elaborate taxonomies for his dragons. At most he offered functional and practical names like "fire-drakes" (dragons that could breathe fire) and "cold-drakes" (dragons that did not breathe fire).

Given all the various changes across the many editions and spin-offs, the distinction doesn't even provide much meaningful information anymore. It's an artifact of unplanned game development that later developers tried to retroactively justify and make sense of. Trying to keep track of the bazillion varieties of dragons by arbitrarily sorting them into categories based essentially on body type of all things is pointless. As Overly Sarcastic Productions points out, they're not products of natural evolution and their nature varies wildly between stories (such as "Prince Lindworm").

As far as I'm concerned, dragons are dragons. They can look like anything the storyteller wants and don't need a special invented name for every possible configuration. I think it's perfectly fine to use functional descriptive names like "winged quadrupedal dragon," "winged bipedal dragon," "wingless limbless dragon," "wingless bipedal dragon," or "wingless quadrupedal dragon."

Signing off...

On the naming of demons

Demons (and other fiends, I don’t distinguish here) in fantasy gaming have undergone a few naming schemes over the last forty-odd years.

Originally they were named with numerals, but that quickly became unwieldy once they got to "Type V demon"/"Type 6 demon"/"Sixth-category demon" and beyond. Although the Dante’s Inferno-inspired supplements by Judges Guild and Spellbook Games apparently expanded this scheme by adding Latin letters, such as a "Type 3B devil". Similar numerical expansions are apparently used in other OSR products.

In later editions of D&D the demons got gibberish names (apparently meant to be demon language) by species like balor, marilith, and glabrezu. This also quickly becomes unwieldy because these names don't mean anything in English. There are a bazillion demons and those names aren't memorable.

Many writers across many 3rd-party publishers opted to use simple descriptions of the demon’s obvious shtick, such as ice devil, fly demon, two-faced demon, jester demon, etc. Pathfinder 2e takes this approach: balor becomes "fire demon", glabrezu becomes "treachery demon," marilith becomes "pride demon," shemhazian becomes "mutilation demon," succubus becomes "lust demon," vrock becomes "wrath demon", etc.

I see nothing inherently wrong with all of these approaches. I think it makes sense for all demons to have numerical indexes, names in the demon tongue, and descriptive names in English.

Giants that aren't physically large?

In Norse mythology, a jötunn was not necessarily gigantic. They could be excessively beautiful or ugly. For that matter, they did not have to be humanoid. Norse mythology includes giants with multiple heads or the forms of freakish or giant animals like Sleipnir, Fenris, and Jormungandr. Other mythologies didn't limit themselves either. Greek giants had weird features like snakes for legs and the heads of lions, among other things. The size of single giants wasn't consistent either: they didn't change their size, it just never seemed to impede them.

I touched upon these topics in previous posts. In this post, I want to imagine some kind of comprehensible taxonomic distinctions for giants that accounts for all these diverse depictions. Groups referred to as "giants" or "titans" in world mythology include the Greek titans and gigantes, the Norse jotnar and vanir, the Hindu asuras, the Persian daevas, the Arabic jinn, and the Irish fomorians and firbholg. Generally, giants in world mythology are distinguished by great stature (literal or metaphorical), a primordial origin, and an enmity with the gods.

So the D&D definition is just needless pigeonholing, as D&D is wont. Instead, as I previously did with trolls, I propose a list of criteria that may be used to define giants. A giant will not necessarily have all the traits on this list, but they should have several of them to avoid excessive debates about what qualifies as a giant.

1. Great stature. Often literally referring to great (albeit inconsistent) size, but other times referring to incredible beauty or ugliness, or multiple such traits. Anything of great physical size will not necessarily be a mythical giant, even if that is otherwise the literal definition of the word giant.
2. Chaotic. Often, but not always, acted in opposition to the gods, as with the Norse jotunn, Hindu asuras, Irish fomorians, and Greek gigantes. Where the gods represent order and civilization, the giants/titans represent chaos and disaster. May be composed of or descended from a prior pantheon that was overthrown, even related to the current pantheon.
3. Primordial. Often the first race to come into existence or be spawned/created by the primordial gods, predating the world itself even. Thus, they are typically considered to have a divine lineage even if they are not otherwise considered gods (the definition of god is fuzzy in myth). For example, the jotuns were the first beings to arise in Norse myth, and the jinn were the first race created by God in Arabic folklore. 
4. Elemental. An elemental affinity is common too. Giants in fantasy gaming almost always have some kind of association with an elemental environment like the clouds or the mountains. The Norse jotuns come in several varieties including frost giants and fire giants, and the Arabic jinn were created from "smokeless fire" and "scorching wind." Various thunder gods in some Native American cultures may also qualify under this criteria.
5. Not necessarily humanoid. Often have some humanoid features like the Greek gigantes having snakes for legs or the Norse Hel being literally half-alive and half-corpse, but other times appear in the forms of gigantic animals like the Norse's eight-legged horse Sleipnir, the giant wolf Fenris, the world-encircling serpent Jormungandr, and the giant eagle Hræsvelgr (the Villains Wiki labels them "Beast Jötunn" or beast giants), or wholly monstrous freaks like the Greek Typhon being an amalgamation of monstrous features. (Other monsters like the biblical Behemoth and Leviathan would also qualify under this criterion. Indeed, their names are used as improper nouns and synonymous with giant.) Addendum 9/27/2019: Also note the wechuge from Dane-zaa folklore. 
6. Intelligent. This is just an addition I made myself to keep from including any and all kaiju under the giant umbrella. Giants are generally intelligent beings, or at least intelligent enough to speak and do various menial tasks on their own initiative. (This is unrelated to the D&D Intelligence score.) So the various other monsters of Greek mythology like Cerberus, Chimera and Hydra are not considered giants despite their size since they aren't intelligent: they're just vicious beasts with great destructive potential.
7. May (or may not) be dragons. There is a fair amount of conceptual overlap between giants and dragons. In world mythologies, they are both generally primordial beings of chaos that oppose the gods of order. They are generally considered distinct entities... except when they are not. The Greek she-dragons, even though depicted as nymph-dragon-centaurs, are not labeled giantesses. The Greek giant Typhon is not labeled a dragon despite possessing similar dragon features to the she-dragon. The Norse Jormungandr is labeled both a giant and a dragon, born to giant parents in the form of a dragon.

Of course since we are dealing with mythology and myths are notoriously fluid, I doubt these criteria are perfect. I fully acknowledge that, and I believe the real problem is that fantasy gaming tries to impose arbitrary taxonomies on fictitious concepts. However, having multiple criteria to select from should make it easier to justify labeling Hræsvelgr a giant but not all giant eagles: in that case, Hræsvelgr is still a primordial being of chaos whereas the giant eagles are not. Unlike a lot of gaming taxonomies I could name, that distinction does not feel wholly arbitrary. Although this ambiguity problem vanishes if you allow a monster to be labeled as multiple types. So Hræsvelgr would be [giant] type because of his lineage, size, and sky powers, and [beast] because of his form. Hence, beast giants!

Speaking of beast giants, I wonder how they contrast with the beast lords and elder beasts I mentioned in other posts. Would they be distinct, or different titles for the same beings? For example, the Norse Garm is considered the exemplar of canines, yet elsewhere the race of Moongarm's are labeled giants. In the interest of simplicity and reducing confusion, I would happily consider them synonymous.

Additional links

Addendum 10/29/2019

• http://mentalfloss.com/article/84109/10-mythical-giants-around-world
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/giant-mythology
• http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Fi-Go/Giants.html
• https://www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/giants.html
• https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Human-Giants-in-Lore-Myth-and-Life
• https://www.crystalinks.com/giants.html
• https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/giants/

Monster types in Pathfinder 2e

So the second edition Pathfinder rules have showed up on the online SRD sites. The formatting is terrible, but I was able to look past that.

Anyway, I wanted to address the monster types. Monster types are one of those rules that D&D and its derivatives have generally executed horribly. Pathfinder in particular had an atrocious type mechanic that was used to determine combat statistics. This new edition seems to have just adopted a similar mechanic as D&D5e, which has its own problems but I'll address those soon. So let's see how PF2 has revised its mechanics...

So the list of monster types is aberration, animal, astral, beast, celestial, construct, dragon, elemental, ethereal, fey, fiend, fungus, giant, humanoid, monitor, ooze, and undead. Let's not kid ourselves: this is a shameless copy of the 5e type mechanic with slight changes. Compared to 5e, PF2 subtracted the monstrosity type (good riddance!) and added the animal, astral, ethereal, fungus, and monitor types.

Unsurprisingly, PF2 hasn't learned from its mistakes so some of the types still have stupid arbitrary baggage rules attached, like elementals not needing to breathe. So an air elemental or fire elemental can survive just fine in the vacuum of space. That doesn't make any logical sense and it isn't thematic either.

PF2 divides 5e's beast type into animal and beast type, with the only distinction being that animals are limited to low intelligence. While this isn't an improvement over 5e's beast type (which covers all intelligence ranges), it is a massive improvement over PF1 which divided the same things into animals, magical beasts and vermin. Now animals may be ahistorical or have magical abilities: the ankheg and griffon are now typed as animals. Yay!

The PF2 beast type is unnecessary and nonsensical. Centaurs are typed as beasts, whereas medusae, merfolk, and minotaurs are typed as humanoids. Speaking of humanoids, the distinction between giants and humanoids is now fuzzier than ever. All giants are at least large size, but humanoids may be of at least large size too (e.g. minotaurs). So what gives?

The astral, ethereal, and monitor types were thrown in to cover corner cases. Astral creatures are from the astral plane, ethereal creatures from the ethereal plane, and monitors from the neutral planes. There isn't a type for creatures from the shadow plane or any other obscure planes, so it's up in the air what those will be typed.

So there are distinct types for good and evil (celestial and fiend), but chaotic, lawful and neutral are thrown into the monitor type. Because D&D and its clones use a stupid alignment system in which law and chaos play second fiddle to good and evil. I think that's stupid and vastly prefer 4e's origins tagging mechanic; if you need a type specifically for whatever aligned beings are supposed to be, then just add an immortal type or something.

The fungus type... dear God. Do we really need a fungus type of all things? Can it really not be covered by a tag applied to some plants and oozes?

In short, the new monster types mechanic is a marked improvement over PF1 but overall much worse than 5e. How difficult is it to devise a non-hierarchical tagging mechanic with separate tags for planar origin or whatever? 4e was vastly superior but these idiot writers keep ignoring its improvements because of stupid grognards complaining about it being too similar to MMOs.

Dear God. This isn't effing rocket science!

Elemental humanoids

So a weird aspect of pre-5e D&D editions is that the taxonomy of elementals was pretty nonsensical. Azer, genies, salamanders, etc were not typed as elementals despite originating from the elemental planes. So this led to a number of attempts by third party products to introduce elemental humanoid equivalents.

The Slayer's Guide to Elementals introduced CR6 "higher elementals," described as "the sentient denizens of the Elemental planes, quite capable of building a civilization hidden from regular planar pathways." These included the gnomides of earth, royal salamanders of fire, sylphs of air, and undines of water.

Monster Encyclopaedia I introduced CR8 "emergents," described as "Not all elemental life is quite so simple – just as oozes and slimes give way to higher forms such as elves or humans, so too do primitive elemental forms lead to the rise of the higher elemental entities called emergents."

Legends & Lairs: Elemental Lore introduced CR11 "noble elementals," described as "Whereas normal elementals are the everyday inhabitants of the elemental planes, noble elementals consider themselves the more civilized elite." They held court on a demiplane at the center of the elemental planes called "Nexus."

Tome of Horrors 4 introduced CR20+ "elemental lords," described as "For every type of elemental, there is a ruler, a huge elemental of massive size and strength that holds dominion over its own kind. These rulers are often worshiped by elementals and some are even worshiped by cults on the Material Plane." The fire lord was Inder, the water lord was Lypso, the earth lord was Onyst, and the air lord was Susir.

In 4e, the elemental type was changed to an "origin" that could apply to beasts, humanoids, and so forth. In 5e, the nuance from 4e was discarded and all these elemental beasts and elemental humanoids are now simply typed as elementals. Hence, the emergent/higher/noble/lord elementals are no longer distinguished from azer, genies, salamanders, etc.

For example, I incorporated the royal salamanders in my post on salamanders. The gnomides could likewise be reflavored as earth-centric azer. I'd like to explore elemental humanoid races in future posts.

New monster's types for 5e

The type mechanic is nonsensical. I ranted about this numerous types. But now I am going to throw caution to the wind and introduce new types to D&D 5e because I can. I care not for how it disrupts the rules as written, because one of the guiding principles of this new edition is that the GM can arbitrate whatever they want to rather than relying on the rules to make the decisions for them.

I would introduce a few new types: biomechanoid, immortal, manifestation, sphinx, and spirit.

The biomechanoid type is adopted from Infernum. Biomechanoids are Giger-esque creatures that straddle the boundaries between constructs and living creatures in the creepiest way possible. In the lower planes, biomechanoids are used instead of conventional machinery and they are fueled by the tears of the damned.

The immortal type is adopted from the immortal origin in D&D 4e. Immortals are... not mortal. It is used for the many corner cases that wouldn't fit into the aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend and undead types, but should be in a comparable type rather than shoehorned into construct or monstrosity.

The manifestation type is adopted from Relics & Rituals: Excalibur. A manifestation is a creature whose physical existence is caused by a powerful emotion, strong desire, etc.

The sphinx type is adopted from the Nefret campaign setting. The logic goes that: if dragon is a type, then so should sphinx. It generally includes creatures with the forequarters of one animal and the hindquarters of another: sphinx, naga, manticore, hippocampus, pegasus, peryton... even lamia and centaur, I suppose.

The spirit type is adopted from a number of sources: Encyclopaedia Divine: Shamans, Relics & Rituals: Excalibur, and OGL reprints thereof. The concept of spirits is universal in world mythology, so I shouldn't need to explain it.

Classifying undead: the dread lords

The "undead lords", also known by many other names like "dread undead", are the upper tier of undead monsters. They are often legendary monsters, more powerful variations of the more generic undead monsters.

Non-humanoid giants

In mythology, there is typically little or no distinction between giants and giant monsters.

Orcs and hobgoblins: what’s the diff?

As 1d4chan points out, there isn’t really that much of a difference between hobgoblins and orcs. There’s any number of ways you could world build a more convincing explanation in my opinion.

Jotuns versus trolls

In Norse and Scandinavian mythology we have jotuns and trolls (including their various cognates in the Scandinavian languages). They never coexisted in mythology, with jotuns being Norse and trolls being Scandinavian. This is because of Christianity, which caused the Scandinavians to forget their Norse myths and develop new myths to replace them. The replacement of jotuns with trolls is one such instance of this.

To put it bluntly, trolls are just a later incarnation of the jotuns. They aren't distinct species. Of course, this hasn't stopped modern writers from trying to force them to coexist in the same stories. I too am guilty of this.

Having jotuns and trolls in the same story sounds redundant, doesn't it? When you get right down to it, the only difference is that jotuns are always gigantic whereas trolls may range in size from giants to dwarves (in the dictionary and folkloric sense, not modern fantasy gaming's definition taken from Tolkien). In fact, trolls seem to be closer to more generic conceptions of fairies and nature spirits as compared to other cultural mythologies of Europe (e.g. the "wood nymph with a hollow back" is considered a type of troll). So you could easily argue that jotuns are a subset of trolls, specifically the biggest.

Of course, since we aren't making any pretensions of being accurate (insofar as that ever made sense for myths that weren't consistent in the first place) then maybe we could devise different criteria for distinction? Trudvang Chronicles, for example, maintains the distinction that jotuns are elemental beings whereas trolls are not. However, trolls are commonly considered giants in fantasy gaming. Could this be reconciled?

I think that, mirroring the evolution of Norse mythology into Scandinavian mythology as a result of Christianity, the trolls could be explained as degenerate jotuns that have lost their elemental power and sometimes shrunk in size. One side effect of this is that trolls are photosensitive, often turning to stone under sunlight.

Although it isn't mentioned nowadays, jotuns were originally thought to turn to stone under sunlight. This explains both why they aren't around anymore and why a lot of rock formations resemble faces (in reality, the human brain is simply wired to see faces where none exist). Since trolls are an evolution of the jotuns in folklore, they inherited this weakness.

However, not all trolls myths describe them as photosensitive. Depending on the country of origin, the trolls in stories may be entirely photosensitive, not photosensitive, or photosensitive only sometimes. In fact, aside from the names being cognates there are seemingly no traits that all trolls in all Scandinavian tales share in common.

Of course that's really annoying to us modern folks with our anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive taxonomies, so lets just pretend that for the purposes of our modern stories and games that all trolls have common properties selected from a single list. That list is:

• Tufted tails
• Horns (and/or tusks and/or other bony growths)
• Huge noses (and/or ears and/or other cartilaginous growths)
• Photosensitive (variable severity ranging from being nocturnal to dying)
• Turn to stone upon death (and/or entering any comatose state)
• Like other giants, may have extra limbs and/or heads

Trivia: The "wood nymph with a hollow back" has a number of different names in the Scandinavian languages. 

• elverpige (elver "an elves" + pige "a girl", "a she-elf")
• ellepige (elle "an alders" + pige "a girl", "a dryad")
• huldra ("the fairy")
• skogsrå (skog "a forest's" + rå "a fairy", "a dryad")

Why are giants distinct from humanoids?

One of the problems encountered by D&D is that it shoves a bunch of monsters from unrelated world mythologies and expects them to play nice. Giants are a perfect example. D&D arbitrarily limits creatures of the giant type to giant humanoids, ignoring the diversity of giants in myth. Furthermore, there isn't an actual distinction between giants and humanoids besides giants being humanoids of at least "large" size in the game rules. Why are they not a humanoid (giant) tag?

In mythology, giants were distinguished by having fairly clear origins. Norse giants were the children of Ymir and ranged from humanoids, to multi-headed humanoids, to giant animals like Fenris, Jormungand and Sleipnir. There wasn't a clear distinction between giants and half-giants, either. Greek giants were the children of Gaia, and similarly included non-humanoid monsters like Typhon and Leon. The Fomorians, who might have been giants but it's difficult to tell, had only vague origins in the wilderness. And so on.

D&D's giants don't have a clear reason to be giants. Even Trudvang has a better distinction by making them into elemental beings leftover from the creation of the world. (Which I am totally using, by the way.) So my idea for giving them a distinct origin, which justifies being their own type, is to treat them as the children of the primordial titans or primal creation or whatever the equivalent is and that is why they have an elemental affiliation too. Humanoids are either their degenerate descendants (a la Warcraft), created from weaker stock or such (e.g. in Sumerian myth humanity was made from the blood of Tiamat).

Converting monster types from 3.x to 5e

Aberrations
The definition of aberration has changed between 3.x and 5e. As of 5e, it only refers to monsters from the realms of chaos (e.g. Limbo, Far Realm). So any aberration that is literally an alien remains an aberration. Those which are merely strange are placed into another type: e.g. will-o-wisps are undead and naga are monstrosities. (Although I hate the monstrosity type, so in my house rules naga become dragons instead.)

Magical beast and monstrous humanoid
The magical beast and monstrous humanoid types have been deprecated. You might think they have been replaced by the monstrosity type, but this is not the case. Although many are placed in monstrosity, several magical beasts and monstrous humanoids from 3.x have been classified as other types: e.g. stirge, blood hawk and giant eagle are beasts; pegasus and unicorn are celestial; fire snake and gargoyle are elemental; blink dog and hag are fey; aarakocra, grimlock, kuo-toa, jackalwere, sahuagin, thri-kreen, and quaggoth are humanoid. The new type should be determined on a case-by-case basis. (I personally hate the monstrosity type as a catchall because that encourages lazy design.)

Outsiders
The outsider type has been deprecated as of 5e and replaced with more clearly defined types including aberration, celestial, construct, elemental, fey, fiend and so forth. Sometimes the new type is easy to determine: demons, devils, rakshasa, etc are fiends, angels, archons, couatls, etc are celestials, proteans are aberrations, genies are elementals, etc. Note that some of the subtypes may need to be dropped, e.g. archons no longer exist in 5e being replaced by angels. Other types the type may be different that you expect because of changes in 5e cosmology: e.g. the eladrins/azatas and guardinals/agathions are now typed as fey.

Sometimes the new type is not easy to determine or there may not be a good equivalent. For example, the only type that seems applicable to kami would be fey. In another example, aeons and psychopomps seemingly have no appropriate type so the only choice would seem to be "monstrosity" because it exists to hold monsters that cannot fit into other types (which I think is stupid and indicates the type mechanic is broken and needs fixing). However, if you are using a simple Moorcockian chaos/order/balance alignment system rather than the retarded good/evil/whatever system, then aeons and psychopomps make sense as celestials since they defend the balance (which is good in Moorcockian cosmology, whereas law and chaos are evil).

Distinguishing constructs, elementals and undeads

The monster types mechanic in D&D has always been iffy due to the arbitrary definitions and distinctions between the monster types.

For example, the [fey] type is an amalgamation of many different concepts from mythology and folklore. It include Greek rustic gods (dryads, nymphs, satyrs), Celtic nobility of the Otherworld (seelie and unseelie courts), Celtic tricksters (sprites), fairytale hags, the ghostly fairy dogs of the British Isles (blink dogs, yeth hounds), and “celestial fey” invented for Planescape (eladrin, guardinals).

Another example would be the distinctions between the [construct], [elemental], and [undead] types. Although they are self-explanatory, it is very easy to devise monsters that straddle more than one of them or stretch the definition. This reveals weaknesses of the mutually exclusive tagging system.

Creature Collection Revised features the [elemental] “strife elemental.” The strife elemental is a personification of an abstract emotional concept rather than a physical classical element. What else would you type it? [demon]? [monstrosity]? Those are poor fits.

Forgotten Foes features the [elemental] “junk elemental.” The junk element is a spontaneous personification and animation of an artifice, in this case thrown away junk, rather than a simple classical element. It clearly straddles [construct] and [elemental].

Legends & Lairs: Elemental Lore features the [elemental] “last breath.” The last breath is an air elemental animated by the spirit of a dead person, the animated literal last breath. It clearly straddles [elemental] and [undead].

Creature Collection II: Dark Menagerie features the [undead] “siege undead.” (Monsters of Porphyra reprints it as “besieged undead.”) The sieged undead is constructed like a construct from the parts of a corpse, separating the skin, muscles and bones into three separate constructs with other materials (like sand, wood, nails, and wire) to fill the gaps. It clearly straddles [construct] and [undead], if not wrongly typed and more sensible as [construct] to begin with.

Creature Collection III: Savage Bestiary features the [construct] “spontaneous golem.” (Monsters of Porphyra reprints it as “spontaneous construct.”) The spontaneous construct arises naturally (or supernaturally) from crafted objects like pelts and gallows, but never deliberately created. It clearly straddles [construct], [elemental], and [undead], for all the same reasons mentioned prior.

Species names for the four elements?

The concept of elementals seems to have been invented by the famed alchemist Paracelsus. There were four elementals, one for each element: gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders. (Paracelsus seems to have invented the concept of gnomes.) In D&D, these subtleties were discarded. Instead of unique names, elementals were referred to as air elementals, earth elementals, etc. Furthermore, the original names are recycled for other creatures in the game.

Monster types are a stupid rule

I have said it before and I say it again: the monster type mechanic in D&D is stupid. The monster type mechanic is both poorly defined, nonsensically rigid, biologically insane and makes no sense from a holistic world building perspective.

Renaming true giants

As I mentioned before, words like athach and ettin are synonyms for "giant" that were co-opted by fantasy gaming for completely different meanings. Furthermore, the D&D rules make an arbitrary (and confusing) distinction between "giant" as a monster type and an entry in the monster manual. In earlier editions this was a distinction between "true giants" and "giant kin" (or demigiants?), but later editions simplified the terminology and made it as confusing as it is now.

Dragon types? Drakes, dragonets, lindwyrms, wyverns, lyzards, oy vey...

One of the more frustrating aspects of fantasy gaming is the obsessive compulsion to classify things. Like dragons, for instance. Dragons are classified into distinct species by their body plan, size, color, etc. I have said before that my setting has thrown that out the window in favor of depicting dragons as unique mystical entities rather than species. That said, I still take issue with the absurd terminology...

Too many psychopomps

The world building in Pathfinder and Golarion is retarded at the best of times. One of the many, many stupid things is how death and the afterlife are handed.

Classifying the undead

Since the undead do not exist in reality, any attempt to classify them is arbitrary. The best way to classify the undead is by their traits and capabilities, such as their corporeality, appearance, intelligence, motivation, etc. Like others have done, I would prefer to place all undead into a small number of families to keep track.

Fantastical animals are not literally patchwork hybrids

I have already said my piece about the illogical and inconsistent treatment of fictional animals in fantasy gaming and the lack of consistent criteria for determining what constitutes a beast or monstrosity. In this post, I will explain the place of real and fictional animals (or beasts in the D&D rules) within my cosmology.