The MM previews continue over at athas.org with a look at the 5e monster version of the thri-kreen:
http://athas.org/articles/5e-Thri-Kreen
Yay. Now I can talk about the quick-and-dirty method of turning magic into psionics by dropping the components and letting things like mage hand be invisible.
It's just a shame there's no "thri-kreen as PCs" sidebar.
Those are some funky clown hands.
Happy to see a lot of quirky and distinct monsters in the upcoming MM.
pukunui wrote:
The art is very weird. Where is the iconic Thri-Kreen "tail"?
The one in this new art is, well, an insectoid man, but aside from that doesn't look much like a Thri-Kreen.
Unless it's some other sort of more obscure Thri-Kreen I'm not familiar with from another setting, but as far as I know the Athasian one and the one in the Monster Manual (both the same creature, basically) don't look much like this new one.
That said, the stats conversion to 5e seem all right.
The "chameleon carapace" thing confounds me a little... Thri-Kreens have no color-changing inate abilities, but the psionic power Chameleon Power was actually one of the racial favourites for hunting, so maybe it's just a makeshift adaption since we don't have an official psionicist for 5e yet. Considering that I suppose it's ok.
Despite the new art which I dislike, the creature seems like fairly well converted.
Although CR1 for a 6 HD creature seem a little... what?
Rastapopoulos wrote:
I prefer the WotC take on them over the TSR take. They shouldn't look like mantis' so much, IMO. A more humanoid appearance is better.
Yeah, I'm finding a problems like that in the MM entries I've seen so far. Hard to tell what's a racial ability, what's a spell-like ability, and what's a psionic ability.
Also, I posted the intellect devouerer MM page here a few days ago, and that talked about it's ability to drain your INT to 0, and how you are stunned until it's restored. There is no mention of restoring ability drain in the free pdfs, or the PHB (IIRC).
5e is seeming more and more half-assed as time goes on. "Meh, let them figure it out" -The Devs.
I prefer the Darksun look than just anither human in a bug man look. I think people would have kittens over the original kreens stats lol.
+5 AC
4 arms= 4 attacks
And various other abilities. The new kreen look is from the 3rd ed psionics book.
seti wrote:
The abdomen (Not a tail) of the Kreen has been gone since 3.5E
Its quite a few years too late to complain about their version of the Kreen
Mecheon wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Preview was interesting but the author of the article messed up something. The Thri-Kreen illustrated is using the racial weapon not a glaive. I think the author missed the partially visiable second blade on the lower left end of the picture, perhaps they were distracted by the rest of the image as they seemed unhappy with the way it was drawn.
Zardnaar wrote:
Fingers and Toes crossed for Pc-able stats in the Monster Manual
for Thri-Kreen Ranger please 
seti wrote:
seti wrote:
arderkrag wrote:
Rastapopoulos wrote: