Rules as written, are Orcs and Drow now functionally the same?

Question

The new Monster Manual has gotten rid of a lot of classic humanoid monsters. There are no more drow, orcs and duergar. The book is instead instructing us to use NPCs. Here is the text (in excerpts, p. 374 MM)

Every monster in 2014 Monster Manual either appears in this book or has a CR-appropriate replacement. If you're using material published prior to this book and are unable to locate a stat block herein, consult the Stat Block Conversions table to find the equivalent stat block you should use.

2014 Stat Block	2025 Equivalent
Deep Gnome	Scout
Drow	Priest Acolyte
Drow Elite Warrior	Gladiator
Drow Mage	Bandit Deceiver
Drow Priestess of Lolth	Fiend Cultist
Duergar	Spy
Lizardfolk	Scout
Orc	Tough
Orc Eye of Gruumsh	Cultist Fanatic
Orc War Chief	Tough Boss

This question came out of a friendly comment discussion, where @Obie2.0 suggested that if I want to run orcs using the 2024 rules, I should use the NPC stat blocks as provided in the Monster Manual, and add the Orc species traits darkvision, Adrenaline Rush and Relentless Endurance from the PHB.

Now, I agree that this is a logical way to make an Orc NPC more orcish, or, using the Elf of Drow lineage species features, to make a drow NPC more drow-like. And this is also the way published modules often do this, for example here from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, where there is a dwarven mage named Zephixo (p. 41):

He uses the mage statblock , with the following changes:

• Zephixo (chaotic good) speaks Common, Dwarvish, Gnomish, and Sylvan.
• He has darkvision out to a range of 60 feet, resistance to poison damage, and advantage on saving throws against poison.

But my question is not how reasonable as a practical solution this is, and also not how user-friendly. Compared to being able to just pick your drow warrior or orc grunt ready-made from the Monster Manual, like you still can do it with goblin warriors because, thank the gods, those are fey, not humanoids, it is obviously a lot less user friendly. It is putting work on the DM every time they want to use one of these hitherto common foes.

The text quoted above is literally the entire introduction text to that replacement list. There are no instructions to customize this, instead we are told that these are the equivalent stat blocks we should use (without any mention of modifications).

So in the past, Duergar could turn invisible, or enlarge themselves as a racial trait. Now they can't? In the past, drow would fight with hand crossbows, use drow poison, and had superior darkvision, now they don't have any darkvision, and fight with Maces and by casting Radiant Flame?

Is adjusting NPC stat blocks with PC racial traits what the rules say, or are all these replacements as bland and unfitting to decades of published lore as they seem, so that if I had an orc Scout and a drow Scout, they would be functionally the same now?

Answer 1

You can adjust the NPC stat blocks, but it is not straightforward to recreate the archetypical monsters

First, there is instructions that you can modifiy monster statistics in general in the front matter of the MM, p. 5:

Official D&D adventures refer to the monsters in this book, and you may use these monsters-along with the rules for monster customization and encounter building in the Dungeon Master's Guide -to build your own adventures.

Evidence from Adventures published so far

So, when we buy an official adventure, we should expect to see a similar write up for modifications to the NPC stat. However, in the few adventures published so far for the 2024 ruleset, we do not see this. For example, in the freely available Adventure Scions of Elemental Evil, that says:

Scions of Elemental Evil is a single-session adventure that spotlights the world of Greyhawk and is compatible with the 2024 Core Rulebooks.

There is an encounter with elf cultists

The six elf Cultists and four elf Cultist Fanatics of the Order of Falling Ash camp here. All ten are ashen creatures (see the “Ashen Creatures” sidebar).

and they link straight to the unmodified stat blocks for the Cultist and the Cultist Fanatic (the only modification they have is that they disintegrate into a cloud of Ash upon death. So these elves lack Fey Ancestry, Darkvision, etc.

Guidance in the DMG

If we are not using a pre-made adventure, then the work to make a proper duergar, drow or orc out of a generic NPC now is on us. The Monster Manual points us to the DMG for customizing stat blocks, so what does the DMG say? Under Nonplayer Characters, on p. 84:

The Monster Manual contains stat blocks you can use to represent NPCs in your game. You can add details to make them distinctive and memorable.

It then goes on to recommend that for more detailed NPCs, you can provide a Name, Alignment, Appearance, Stat Block, Personality and Secret. So we can set the alignment to CE, or whatever we think approporiate. Let's look at what it says for Stat Block.

Choose a stat block from the Monster Manual to represent the NPC's game statistics. You don't need to do this if you don't expect the NPC to engage in combat or use any special abilities (such as casting spells). You can customize the stat block using the guidelines under “Creating a Creature” in this chapter to better reflect the NPC you have in mind.

The rules for Creating a Creature (starting on p. 56, DMG) walks us through that, stating that we can make "minor alterations" that do not influcence the functionality, such as changing the creature type, adjusting ability scores, changing known languages, swapping or adding a couple proficiencies or even expertise, and adding or removing senses like darkvision, swapping out existing spells for others of the same level (except changing damage spells for non-damage spells or vice versa), or changing the name and damage type of attacks, or changing, adding or removing one or two resistances or immunities.

The first thing to observe is that this is not telling us to apply any species templates. Instead it is a piecemeal approach, where you change propterties individually as you see fit.

It then also allows you to add traits to the monster:

You can add traits to a creature's stat block to communicate aspects of the creature's nature. See the Creature Traits list for sample traits. You can also use traits from other stat blocks in the Monster Manual, provided you don't add traits that alter a creature's Hit Points, confer Temporary Hit Points, or change the amount of damage the creature deals to other creatures.

This allows for a lot of flexibility as there are a huge number of traits to choose from across the MM. The example trait list also includes Fey Ancestry, which works slightly better than the elven Fey Ancestry species trait (it also makes you immune to sleep effects, wich in the species moved under the Trance trait).

However, it still would not allow you to replicate applying a species template if you wanted. For exmaple, no monster has the Trance trait of elves. Also, trying to reconstruct racial templates from monster traits pillaged from the MM seems a lot of work. You would have to search to find the fitting trait. And because the guidance is to not change spell levels, it is very questionalbe if you could replace two cantrips with a cantrip, and a level one and a level 2 spell such as faerie fire and darkness.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, you cannot, following the rules in the MM, reconstruct an NPC of a species like duergar, drow or orc. You can only cover some aspects, like adding darkvision or adjusting the languages spoken or swapping spells for better matching ones.

As far as I am concerned, I will, for convenience's sake likely continue to use the 2014 drow, duergar and orcs for adventures I write myself, or apply the racial templates on the fly if I happen to have them memorized.

Answer 2

There will be tailored humanoid stat blocks in upcoming books

The changes were made on purpose and explained in the pre-release video New Constructs, Plants, Beasts & Humanoids | 2024 Monster Manual (around 15:28).

They went into the reasons for it and also explained that there will be specific monsters and versions depending on certain books.

This is the transcription (emphasis mine):

[...] We have also the humanoid category which has a lot of our NPC stat blocks which have already recently made my life so much easier. It's just to have that like okay I need Cultists we talked about this before, I need Pirates there's an entire pirate category now, Toughs you know like if you're looking for a tough guy to put up against the party. This is independent of species or anything else this is giving you a stat block of like if this person is a Bruiser this is what you would have in this type of environment. This is so helpful because there's so many different versions of this now. I'd love to pause for a moment on something you said here and that is these stat blocks work for humanoids of any species, so humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, gnomes so on and so forth, we have you covered with these stat blocks and then just as we mentioned in the 2014 books, here again if a DM wants to flavor any of these stat blocks with sort of rules elements from the playable versions of the species, you can always take traits from the Player's Handbook and apply them to these stat blocks, and I encourage also DMs to not only think outside the box where like don't fall into the trap of thinking humanoid means human, but also don't get trapped by the names of stat blocks. More than I think any other category in the monster manual, the humanoid stat blocks, their names are suggestions only, what I do as a DM when I'm looking for humanoid stat blocks, I usually am looking at what the stat block does more than I'm looking at the name and so I might take a pirate stat block but use it for a rascally noble or a bandit and I'd say go through all of them look at what they do and as you're doing stat block selection as a DM consider you can use these for a whole variety of things and they also make it easy for you to populate communities of really any humanoid species that you are using in your game, also for anyone who's eager to see more sort of species tailored humanoid stat blocks, people are going to get to see more of that in our setting books that are coming up, so you're going to see that in the Forgotten Realms product for example, where in that setting the Malevolent Drow of Menzoberranzan are an important part of that setting and so they get their own stat blocks in that product, and this is really true of all the creature categories in the Monster Manual. This is your massive starting toy box of monsters that are usable anywhere in the Multiverse and then the bestiaries in our setting products that's then where we can provide you versions of things tailored to the cultures and histories of our different worlds [...]

Another resource that explains this redesign and its goal

• The pre-release article, What’s New in the 2024 Monster Manual?, explains the intent:

The stat blocks of monsters with the Humanoid creature type have been redesigned to represent any Humanoid species. Now, these stat blocks include distinct mechanics aligned with a certain role or profession. So, whether you're introducing your player characters to a charismatic drow performer or a questing goliath knight, you can find inspiration for your NPCs.

With over 40 of these stat blocks that range from CR 1/8 to CR 12, you'll be able to find the perfect nonplayer character for every occasion!