Humanoids

[Ashe]

There's a few spells in the game that are restricted to 'humanoids' but when used on, what would be classified as a humanoid (zombies for instance) it'll say that they're not. Hold Person is one that comes to mind but I'm sure the restriction shows up in others as well.

[bcat]

"Humanoid" is a creature type like Fey, Undead, Aberration, Monstrosity, etc.. It may seem strange, but creatures very rarely (almost never, really) get more than one creature type in 5E to prevent cases of imbalance relating to those kinds of spells. The game would be a bit different if you could cast Hold Person on a lich, for example, rather than the more expensive Hold Monster.

[Ashe]

Originally posted by bcat:

"Humanoid" is a creature type like Fey, Undead, Aberration, Monstrosity, etc.. It may seem strange, but creatures very rarely (almost never, really) get more than one creature type in 5E to prevent cases of imbalance relating to those kinds of spells. The game would be a bit different if you could cast Hold Person on a lich, for example, rather than the more expensive Hold Monster.

I'd agree but it's not including undead. For instance, the undead hospital staff. These are the ones that sparked this discussion as I wanted to stall their attempts to assist the surgeon.

Also would it really be imbalanced? Since usually high level enemies in humanoid form have high stats to make the saves.

[Atlas Veldine]

Originally posted by Ashe:

Originally posted by bcat:

"Humanoid" is a creature type like Fey, Undead, Aberration, Monstrosity, etc.. It may seem strange, but creatures very rarely (almost never, really) get more than one creature type in 5E to prevent cases of imbalance relating to those kinds of spells. The game would be a bit different if you could cast Hold Person on a lich, for example, rather than the more expensive Hold Monster.

I'd agree but it's not including undead. For instance, the undead hospital staff. These are the ones that sparked this discussion as I wanted to stall their attempts to assist the surgeon.

Also would it really be imbalanced? Since usually high level enemies in humanoid form have high stats to make the saves.

You aren't the only one thinking this. No, it would not be imbalanced, and yes, it's dumb as ♥♥♥♥. Not only do they not adhere to the literal definition of "humanoid" which is "like or resembling a human," and can be expanded to, "resembling a human, but often incomplete or not entirely human." The prefix "-oid" literally means "resembling; like; often incomplete or malformed," and we know what a damned human is.

DND 5E lists numerous creatures as being humanoid, which BG3 considers to not be. There's nearly zero consistency: succubi are considered humanoid, goblins are not (even though they absolutely should be). If they were to describe these spells accurately, they should specify that the target's TYPE should be HUMANOID. This way, at least, we could easily determine that a Skeleton isn't a Humanoid (EVEN THOUGH IT ABSOLUTELY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ IS) due to its type being listed as Undead, while a random Elf's type is Humanoid and thus would be allowed.

I'm honestly shocked at how little I was able to find on this topic. You'd think many more people would be annoyed by this, you'd even think mods would exist to rectify the problem by adding more allowed Types to these spells (the sloppy way, which would result in some creatures being targetable when they shouldn't be), or by adding a flag to every creature "IsHumanoid" and manually determining if it is or isn't, then checking against this flag instead of against the creature's Type (the right way, but takes a lot more work). Yet, I was unable to find much of anything on Reddit or Steam, and definitely did not find any mods fixing this problem.

At the very least, Humanoids should be what 5E considers them to be (even if this is still inaccurate to the true meaning of the word, it's significantly less restricted than BG3's idea of a Humanoid), instead of arbitrarily set to only be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ playable races and, VERY rarely, a 'monster' that closely resembles a human and isn't undead. DND defines it as being restricted to bipedal human-like creatures who aren't naturally (read: born with the ability to use magic, able to do so without typical human restrictions like spell slots and such) capable of magic - though often are capable of learning to cast spells, which, OK, but this still isn't the way BG3 determines it. BG3 just arbitrarily decided on a small few non-playable races that are Humanoid, then added in playable races and called it a day. It's dumb, and it's lazy.

The spells affecting Humanoids aren't even that great. I play a bard, and my god, it feels like half my most powerful spells can't be used due to this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I'm nearly useless in combat, at least allow me to lock down an enemy for a few turns with Hold Person or drive someone mad or whatever, ♥♥♥♥♥.

[Ashe]

I've since found out that the drider is considered humanoid.

Despite being a half spider abomination.

It's a little arbitrary sometimes. And definitely not OP since there's Command a level lower that does practically everything Hold Person does with more flexibility and the same save type.

Kobolds, Gnolls and Bugbears are humanoid too.

Yet I can't 'Hold' a zombie without a level 5 slot?