The Unusual Nature trait in Monsters of the Multiverse is a replacement for the old Undead Nature, Celestial Nature, etc, traits in previous monster books: these are all of the traits that allow a creature to not need some combination of food, drink, rest, and air. This trait used to be tucked away at the end of a monster essay; now it’s been moved to the stat block.
Talking with alphastream about the new trait has got me thinking about more problems I have with it. These are all minor quibbles, but minorly quibbling is a proud D&D tradition.
Its placement – in the essay or in the stat block – is not actually an easy call. As a piece of monster information, it’s neither fish nor fowl. It doesn’t really belong as a subhead in the essay because it’s technical rules text, not expository text. And it doesn’t really belong in the stat block because it’s not about combat – at least most of it isn’t. In the heat of combat, you might need to know whether a creature breathes, but you’ll never need to know if they need to eat. It makes a bit more sense to me to put the trait in the essay rather than the stat block, just because a lot of monster entries contain one essay and several stat blocks so you’d avoid repetition. But I can’t really fault WotC much for the placement of this trait as the trait is written now: it’s a proud nail either way.
Here are my two bigger objections to Unusual Nature.
It’s inconsistent. If it’s important enough to put into stat blocks, it should actually be in more stat blocks. Just going through the Monster Manual, does a dao need to breathe, or does it asphyxiate while phasing through the earth? does a modron eat (and if so what)? does a salamander or magmin need to drink even though mephits don’t? does a blight, death knight, fungus, or gibbering mouther need sleep? Demons and devils don’t have any such feature for some reason – do they really need all of these things? The pattern continues in Monsters of the Multiverse. An alhoon is an undead mind flayer lich and doesn’t eat brains: why doesn’t it have Unusual Nature? Elementals don’t need to eat or drink, but phoenix, elder tempest, and air elemental myrmidon do? Not only does a water elemental myrmidon need to breathe air, it doesn’t even have the Amphibious trait – it drowns in water! Same with the leviathan. The retriever, a robot spider construct, needs to eat, drink, sleep, and breathe.
My guess is the lack of these traits is not actually causing anyone problems – no one, except a theorycrafter or a nitpicker like me, has ever been troubled about whether a death knight or gibbering mouther is thirsty or tired. In that case – if their lack causes no problems – maybe we don’t need these traits at all. If a creature doesn’t need air or can breathe water, that seems worthy of going in the stat block. A creature’s need for sleep, food, and drink seems like an interesting aside that can be mentioned in passing in the essay if you need to fill up column inches, or else ignored.
My other problem with Unusual Nature is maybe more subjective: it’s not poetic. “Unusual Nature” is just an unlovely name for a trait. As a label, it is content-free. Every D&D monster has an “unusual nature” of some kind, and so do a lot of animals, especially ones from Australia. Wombats poop cubes. A trait’s name should say what it does, and “unusual nature” doesn’t say anything about what this trait actually does.
I think if I wanted to come up with a catch-all name for the old “undead nature”, “construct nature”, “elemental nature”, “ooze nature”, and so on, I’d use this:
Immortal. The creature doesn’t die of old age. Additionally, it doesn’t need to [any one of sleep, eat, drink, or breathe, depending on the monster]
That’s really what all of the Unusual Nature creatures have in common, and what the trait is grasping for I think. Undead, oozes, constructs, and celestials don’t really age. The fact that they don’t need various forms of mortal sustenance are side-effects of their immortality.
I’d extend this Immortality trait to fiends too. Sure, Graz’zt might like a gobbet of mortal flesh and a nice glass of Chianti, but I don’t know that he needs it to live. I don’t think that bearded devils travel with bedrolls so that they can sleep when they’re away from their beds, and I just bet that Juiblex doesn’t drown. Hell, I might give Immortality to some or all fey creatures too.
Besides, Immortality is a word to conjure with. It says something about the monster’s story in a way that “Unusual Nature” does not. And it could be used as a keyword. Spells and monster could key off immortality. Maybe a ghost’s horrifying visage can only age mortal creatures, and all the spells that list “celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead” can just say “immortal creatures”.
Heck, while we’re adding this new trait to a million monsters, let’s add “and its attacks are considered magical.” Then we can get rid of all that force damage. Two for one sale on Monsters of the Multiverse fixes!
I think you’re right, and I appreciate you detailing this out! I probably would not have noticed this before while running the monsters, but the fix is elegant and I think inspires potentially fun d&d stuff
Not needing to sleep *would* be a big deal if it made you immune to Sleep spells and the like, but for some reason that’s only the case for Elves and Warforged …
Unless I’m missing something, RAW you can cast Sleep on a Bronze Scout, Animated Object, or Flying Sword just fine, but not on the “living construct” that is a Warforged.
Right! And sleep immunity is covered by immunity to the Unconscious condition and doesn’t need to be in a trait.
Actually, I forgot that the Sleep spell has a special exception for creatures that can’t be Charmed, so it doesn’t work on a lot of constructs. The same isn’t true for other spells that put creatures to sleep like Symbol or Eyebite, though, so it’s not a great way of doing things.
Oddly, AFAICT only Elementals get immunity to the Unconscious condition.
IIRC back in first edition didn’t each monster have an ecology section where it would talk about this stuff then go into more essay about the monster?
In any case this is why I’ve always felt that monster stat blocks need to evolve more into monster sheets in a similar way to PC’s not just having a stat block but full Character sheets.