D&D 5E MM Firesnake up on Christopher Burdett's Blog

[Savage Wombat]

Baby monster killing is one thing, but I think we can all agree that the most morally reprehensible thing to do would be to enslave a baby monster, and then make it fight and kill other baby monsters or else subjugate them as well.

No, no, those monsters are your friends. Which is why you keep them in small balls.

 

[Leatherhead]

why? those dragons were not very tough when hatched, it was this season before they were anything other then cats with breath weapons...

Cats in DnD have been able to take out a commoner for a few editions now. *

But more importantly, in DnD all actions are governed by statistics, including the non-combat ones. Familiars are a good example of something that isn't very tough in a fight (especially in 5e), but still very useful to have around, and thus useful to have the stats for.

*This is not meant to imply that going around to kill cats is a heroic or socially acceptable thing to do, it's a quip about a rules quirk.

 

[KarinsDad]

IT IS NEVER OK TO KILL A BABY AND BE THE HERO WITHOUT REPERCUSSIONS...

I think this is where you and I disagree.

A dangerous evil newly hatched Firesnake is not a baby. It's a monster. It might be newly hatched or born, but it is not a baby.


Several people here arguing against you is making this same point. Just because something is newly born does not make it helpless, or less dangerous, or less evil. It's just as evil and dangerous as most other 5 hit dice evil creatures.

The Firesnake is not called a baby in the text.

You and Savage Wombat are calling it a baby. This is your spin on the subject. Nowhere is this called a baby except by you two.

Please point to the text where this is called a baby.


Having your PC hero kill Firesnakes and save the town from an invasion of Salamanders a year from now is a very heroic thing to do.


This is an emotional argument by you because human babies are helpless. You are humanizing a fictional creature. Firesnake newborns are fully capable of being deadly killers the second they are hatched.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I find it funny my whole 2eish retro clone came to a hault for two weeks becuse of similar discussions


Although I am unsure if I will start my own thread in general would his be better served in its own thread since we are way past just fire snakes?

 

[Savage Wombat]

A fire snake is whatever the game designers wrote it to be. It has no real world existence.

The designers could have chosen to make it something other than the underage offspring of a sentient race, and you would have been none the wiser.

This is the point you keep deliberately avoiding.

There is nothing about the "story" of salamanders that requires them to have smaller counterparts that are easier to kill. Why include them?

I think you are merely defending an imagined attack on your preferred playstyle.

 

[ThirdWizard]

A fire snake is whatever the game designers wrote it to be. It has no real world existence.

The designers could have chosen to make it something other than the underage offspring of a sentient race, and you would have been none the wiser.

This is the point you keep deliberately avoiding.

There is nothing about the "story" of salamanders that requires them to have smaller counterparts that are easier to kill. Why include them?

I think you are merely defending an imagined attack on your preferred playstyle.

But, you could do some really neat stuff. Imagine an adventure with a former priest of Imix trying to create demonic salamanders out of fire snakes in order to gain favor with a power of the Abyss. When the PCs go to investigate, they find that the fire snakes have escaped and now they have fire snakes + maybe a priest of Imix somewhere to deal with. Or perhaps a fire snake is pretending to be a god in a village by a volcano, and the PCs need to save the villagers from their own superstition. Then, during the battle with the fire snake it falls into the volcano, and several levels later they find that their new enemy is the snake, now a salamander, getting his revenge.

These are all off the top of my head, but doesn't the relationship between the two monsters being the same thing spur the imagination? If you just want a relationship similar to goblins and hobgoblins, that's cool too, but we already have that in spades with monsters merely working together. Two monsters being the same part of a natural progression is something somewhat unique and something that can really be worked into the game to create some really fun sessions.

 

[Savage Wombat]

But, you could do some really neat stuff. Imagine an adventure with a former priest of Imix trying to create demonic salamanders out of fire snakes in order to gain favor with a power of the Abyss. When the PCs go to investigate, they find that the fire snakes have escaped and now they have fire snakes + maybe a priest of Imix somewhere to deal with. Or perhaps a fire snake is pretending to be a god in a village by a volcano, and the PCs need to save the villagers from their own superstition. Then, during the battle with the fire snake it falls into the volcano, and several levels later they find that their new enemy is the snake, now a salamander, getting his revenge.

These are all off the top of my head, but doesn't the relationship between the two monsters being the same thing spur the imagination? If you just want a relationship similar to goblins and hobgoblins, that's cool too, but we already have that in spades with monsters merely working together. Two monsters being the same part of a natural progression is something somewhat unique and something that can really be worked into the game to create some really fun sessions.

You could do the same story with baby fire giants too, but you wouldn't.

You could do the same story by making fire snakes the non-sentient, ancestral relative of salamanders and use dark magic to transform them, much like turning monkeys into orcs or something. And then blow up the Statue of Liberty for good measure.

A lot of cool ideas don't make it into published material. WotC already made a decision to dis-include several "baby" monsters because of this reaction. Why include fire snakes, just because?

I just don't see why this particular monster is suddenly something these people are defending to the death.

 

[ThirdWizard]

You could do the same story with baby fire giants too, but you wouldn't.

That's because fire giants are human-looking so one expects the same kind of life cycle from a fire giant as one would from a human. That would create all kinds of baggage about what it means to be a "baby" as you put it. However, there's no such thing when we're talking about the life cycle of non-humanoid, extraplanar, creatures. For all we know, salamanders are 100 years old, sprung forth from the plane of fire, waiting to one day grow to their full potential.

I mean, even if they were 1 month old when you fight them, if they are created with a full sentient and alien mind to that of (demi)humanity, then why are we using human standards to relate to them? Would not that make as much sense as referring to a "baby" Cthulhu? Does referring to a even newly formed monstrosity from another world as a "baby" or "infant" or "toddler" even make one bit of sense? What if that dretch just came into existence 5 minutes ago? Do we not kill it because we saw it spring forth from its larval cocoon?

If the fire snake never turned into a salamander, would you care how old it was? Would killing the week old salamander really bother you? Is the distinction here because it isn't fully formed so there is some inherent wrongness to a battle with it until it reaches maturity?

 

[Imaro]

I just don't see why this particular monster is suddenly something these people are defending to the death.

Probably for the same reason you are advocating it's exclusion to the death (whatever that means)...

 

[Savage Wombat]

That's because fire giants are human-looking so one expects the same kind of life cycle from a fire giant as one would from a human. That would create all kinds of baggage about what it means to be a "baby" as you put it. However, there's no such thing when we're talking about the life cycle of non-humanoid, extraplanar, creatures. For all we know, salamanders are 100 years old, sprung forth from the plane of fire, waiting to one day grow to their full potential.

I mean, even if they were 1 month old when you fight them, if they are created with a full sentient and alien mind to that of (demi)humanity, then why are we using human standards to relate to them? Would not that make as much sense as referring to a "baby" Cthulhu? Does referring to a even newly formed monstrosity from another world as a "baby" or "infant" or "toddler" even make one bit of sense? What if that dretch just came into existence 5 minutes ago? Do we not kill it because we saw it spring forth from its larval cocoon?

If the fire snake never turned into a salamander, would you care how old it was? Would killing the week old salamander really bother you? Is the distinction here because it isn't fully formed so there is some inherent wrongness to a battle with it until it reaches maturity?

This may be true - but it's only true because WotC decided to make it true. It's not an unfortunate fact of life that we who encounter salamanders and their offspring have to deal with. It's just a particular thing they made up. (Well, I'm told the original Fiend Folio submitter made up.)

We're using human standards to relate to them because, as we read in their entry, they have human-like intelligence and are capable of human emotions like jealousy. It's like watching Star Trek and saying that we have no reason to assume Klingons care about their children.

And again - there's nothing in the entry that makes them particularly monstrous or inimical to humanity apart from alignment. It doesn't say they eat humans, attack humans for treasure, capture and torture trespassers, or anything. It's all about their enmity with other fire creatures. People on this forum like to compare the fire snakes to facehuggers because it effectively says "they're monsters, I am allowed to kill them."

Over the generations of D&D, many gamers and writers have become disgusted with the idea of assuming all non-human monsters are enemies and valid targets. It's why most critters are engaged in some sort of actual villainy, like banditry, to make it OK to fight them. There's nothing in the entry suggesting that fire snakes do anything to humans - it's just an assumption posters are making "because they're evil monsters".

People keep arguing that there's no reason not to be able to kill juvenile salamanders. I'm pointing out there's no reason TO be able to kill juvenile salamanders. Leave them out of the book, and the game suffers not one iota.