Smarmy pedantism ill-suites you, Rag – you've seen, read and even quoted back the relevant quotes multiple times over the past year. You know, exactly, which quotes I'm referencing, and pretending otherwise is being contrary and arguing for the sake of doing so, as well as being deeply disingenuous.
It doesn't matter if you have a personal idea about what those quotes mean, or what we should interpret them to mean – That's just your opinion, as you so often like to confront others with – regardless of what you think we should all interpret them to mean, these things were still said. It doesn't matter if they were said with a tailing caveat that alters the pitch of them in the slight manner that a tailing caveat can – the statement itself was still made. For all the times you've objected to it, you've never acknowledged that this was, indeed said – you've just wiggled about what it means, and what we're supposed to assume it means, in order to define Larian's actions as honest; that's your opinion – it's not factual. Factual is that they said these things. They said “as faithfully as possible†in their description of how they wanted to implement the ruleset. They said the game would be using the 5e ruleset. They've even more recently said that they want their game to be the benchmark for 5e D&D in video games – and Always when they mention changes and deviations, they use reductionist, diminutive language to strongly imply that the changes that do deviate from the ruleset will be minor.
You like to ignore All of that, and cling instead to the little diminutive caveat (without acknowledging its language as diminutive...), that some things might not work and so they have to make a few little changes... Which is not a thing that anyone else has ever disputed, but which you seem to think is some kind of ultimate impervious shield against any criticism of Larian's designs as presented versus their statements as advertised. Sorry; it's not. It does not meaningfully change the situation.
It is not a lie to say that they have not implemented an 80-90% faithful rendition of the ruleset – They Haven't. By all means, however, if you'd like to contest that I'm wrong here, please go ahead and set out an ordered and fairly weighted list of the core 5e rules, and show where Larian have followed and where they have deviated from these (and bear in mind that anything that you have to check off as 'not implemented at all yet' is, by definition, 'not faithful implementation'); you will not reach 80% green checks.
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The real question tho isnt "what" is a problem ... but "why" is that a problem?
The only answer i have found so far is that people are pissed off that they cant metagame their enemies ... that is something i would expect from some around here as well, but not you, Niara. O_o
Someone asked
what the problem was; I explained. Please pay attention.
Metagaming the statistics has been no part of the complaints thus far, either. Again; please pay attention.
If you see an iconic D&D creature and you get a little excited/happy thrill from encountering it, that emotional reaction mostly comes from your understanding of the creature and what it is – that's not metagaming and that's not using your understanding in a game sense – this is purely at the emotive and experiential level. If these creatures then turn out to, actually, not be much like themselves, and don't really behave like the icons they're claiming to be, then, really, they're just not those creatures, and it's disappointing and deflating. It's a negative experience.
If you don't know anything about these creatures and you aren't a D&D player, and you don't really have any understanding of them, they you don't get that reaction – you just get the general excitement and positive adventure feeling of encountering something new and unknown to engage with and be surprised by. That's great too.
Point is, however, that you who does not know these things or have this understanding would get the same positive experience from a creature that fits its behaviour and matches up visually and aesthetically with what it does, and had a name and a creature type and behaviour... and you wouldn't experience any difference between whether it was named one thing or another. This is a positive experience, and more pointedly, your experience of it is the same either way.
So... why are you raising objection to people wanting their experience to not suffer that kind of negative impact, in a way that literally does not affect you at all? … Or are you really saying that if the creatures you fight on the ship had not,
specifically, been intellect devourers – creatures that you aren't familiar with and don't have any real understanding of – but had instead been some
other illithid-themed creature that patrolled their ship and had a simple ability set to match their actual behaviour, which was the same... that somehow, despite having zero frame of reference and zero understanding of the difference, or that there is even was a difference... that somehow, this would negatively impact your experience of the game, enough that you'd feel unhappy about Larian's decision to do this?
If they'd had you fight stray cats in the ship, sure, that would have been narrative inappropriate... but the point that's being made here is that Larian have the freedom to create things that are appropriate, if nothing appropriate exists, and that it is their duty to do so. If Intellect devourers were too powerful creature for us to be facing (and they are), then they could and should create something else – a variant creature that has the restricted capabilities and strengths – and name it as a variant clearly, so players can build up their grounding of the world lore reliably - or a completely new illithid-themed creature that matched what they wanted.
What if, for example, you'd been forced to fight Ceratopedes about the ship instead of statistically crippled intellect devourers? These critters are a CR ¼ creature that scuttles about Illithid ships often doing cleaning and maintenance on its organic parts. They're about the size of a medium-sized dog, but about six feet long, and crawl about on about twenty or so spindly legs, each with a little grasping tetra-claw on the end. Their main bodies look like stretched out strips of crenellated brain matter, fused to flexible muscle fibre (often with a variable number of smaller, finer sensory feelers that extend from their body like thick, wavy hairs); they can crawl on walls, and are fast, but not overly sturdy; they can deliver painful claw stabs to creatures when threatened, or when defending the ship, and are perpetually tied into the ships neural network, as other creatures of the illithid's ritual designs are. Killing one of these as they escape from their confinement would be a perfect challenge for a fresh level one adventurer on their own.
Then we might later learn that we were
lucky not to encounter any intellect devourers, another common feature on nautiloids, and learn about how lethally dangerous that would have been – and then maybe later still we might encounter them, and be excited by the anticipation of this greater danger.
Why are you arguing against this? Why are you contending that the current situation is better? Explain that to me.
You're saying that this would make you unhappy.... even though you didn't know what Intellect Devourers were before experiencing them, and had they not been used you still wouldn't – and this creature would instead have been your first experience of illithid-themed servant creatures on their ship. Do you legitimately say that you'd have been unhappy with this, and with anything else, except actual intellect devourers, which you didn't know existed before hand? Because that is simply not possible; it would be a lie for the sake of being contrary.
Why do you hate Ceratopedes so much, that their presence would make you unhappy? Why are you against them scuttling about on the nautiloid, being a challenge appropriate creature for level one adventurers to fight in the intro? Why do you object to Larian using them, or something similar, instead of statistically- and capability-crippled intellect devourers, that undermine how legitimately dangerous those iconic creatures are?
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Below this you say a bunch of things that are directly addressed by other parts of the same comment, so, I'm going to ignore all of that, since you can answer it yourself by actually reading the comment I made as a full response, rather than nit-picking single lines and complaining that they aren't relevant, while the very next line illustrates their relevance. I'm not going to play that game, Rag. Read, Comprehend, THEN respond. I know you've said that doing that is difficult for you; at this stage, that's not my problem anymore – it just reflects poorly on you and I'm trying to offer you some well-intended advice for how to mitigate that.
This however:
I hope this is a joke ...
No; I'm dead serious. The fact that you think I might be joking here is just showing that you are somehow not on the same page as most other people discussing here. I'm completely serious. As I said: they are free to invent new creatures, and new variant creatures, as much as they like, to fill in the exact niches of creature type and behaviour they want, if they don't find something suitable. It's even encouraged. If they want a troll that spits fire and flies, however, what they can't do is just call it a normal troll. They have to call it something new, because it
is something new. It's as simple as that; that's
literally all they need to do... and they're
not doing it.
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I didnt play Solasta […] but all enemies i have seen were wolves, bears, and some lizards ...
The first required encounter in the first story dungeon contains TA custom monsters. I'd suggest you go play the game, or watch someone else play it, or read up on its bestiary, or do whatever else you need to do to improve your understanding of the point before making ill-informed comments against it ^.^ It'll save everyone else some time. My comment about their creature creation stands; your ignorance of it doesn't constitute a counter-point.
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What you describe in your personal anecdote is not homebrewing; it's re-skinning (and it might not even be that), which is part of the DM's standard toolkit. It sounds like you weren't the DM, so you don't even really know what you fought, in that sense; you're guessing – you say giant lizard, because it was described to you as a giant lizard creature – but if it were one of the other large lizard creatures (large subteranean lizard, for example), then it would have about three times the hp as a generic giant lizard, a tail attack, its attacks would be capable of grappling (Re, pinned to wall), and in general it would be a more appropriate challenge for a party of adventurers. Sounds like it wasn't a homebrew at all actually. Sounds like you fought a very large lizard, and you're guessing incorrectly about which creature it was.
Either way, your example is not even remotely analogous to what is being discussed here.
