Creative Director
|
I think wizards can't really put a claim on kuo-toas. They are clearly just deep ones copies, as are the murlocs of Warcraft.
Simply say you use a copy of deep ones and you're save. You're just not allowed to use the D&D-specific terms. Like whips and monitors.And Blippy.
They can't put a claim on the idea of a fish-man race... but the actual name "kuo-toa" and their specific suite of abilities ARE their intellectual properties. In a home game, there's no problem using them, of course. But in published material, they're one of the monsters WotC has set aside for themselves, and as a user of the SRD, we have to honor that.
In any event, there's nothing keeping GMs from substituting in kuo-toa on their own to replace skum in the Darklands.
Perhaps a bit OT but...
For those who have read Fritz Lieber, did you ever wonder if Ningauble of the Seven Eyes was really a beholder underneath that robe?
|
I read a lot of "I miss [insert creature name here]" posts on these boards. I understand the sentiment, but personally, I don't miss these creatures in the least, while Paizo are telling their own stories, with their own creature creations, which will become recurring villains, nightmarish legends, and icons in their own right.
It's pretty much like lamenting on other messageboards that you cant use Sinspawn or other Pathfinder antagonists in your Forgotten Realms campaign.
Let Beholders and Mindflayers be icons of a past era in gaming, and lets enjoy what will inevitably become the icons of a new era!
The only closed content monster i'd really miss are the Mind Flayers. They're plain awesome in every respect ( : €
But the most important part about them (being a tentacle-faced aberration spreading madness over the world) is just as taken from Lovecraftian stories as Fish-men are. So something like that should be possible to bring back up.
Yuan-Ti are, as far as I know already been taken care of accordingly and about Beholders.... I also never could take them seriously. A floating ball with a mouth a main eye and a mass of eyestalks around is not creepy, its just funny (in both the "huh?" and the "haha" kind of ways).