Talk:Illithid and Alhoon

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These actually made it to current development phase? Expected WotC/Hasbro to send C&D notice long ago as they are notoriously aggressive about IP - Fafner (talk) 11:18, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I think a free mod for an old game that's mostly popular in Eastern Europe is going to be noticed. Though Day of Reckoning, when it actually release, might make more of a splash than Tides of War. That said, I do agree that those are creatures that personally I don't think fit the world at all and should be cut.
Perhaps replaced with something else. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find an idea for an alternative warlock creature to replace it; the whole schtick of the warlocks has been to make mutated chimerical creatures (harpies, medusas, minotaurs, manticores; in the first two titles they also had centaurs, griffins, and hydras). How about sphinx, rakshasas (evil tiger people, appear in HoMM 5), ettins (two-headed giants)? Or perhaps something like the Faceless and Faceless Puppeteer from HoMM 6, which fit a niche not too different from the mind flayers.
Beholders are one thing: the name is just generic enough, and the upgraded version is the "evil eye", not the "eye tyrant"; whereas "illithid" and "alhoon" are distinctly not (not even using the name "mind flayer" here); the design is also completely different (if anything, the HoMM beholders look more like the grells from D&D than the D&D beholders) whereas those illithids and alhoons look exactly like the D&D creatures. That unit is the biggest sticking point against the idea that DoR fits with what NWC might have made back in the days if they had had more money and development time. No way they would have included such a blatant lawsuit bait in their game! --Turnam (talk) 11:55, 24 January 2025 (UTC)
And then there's me, who already that said these guys are getting renames and remakes and only the base idea of a mysterious, cthulhu mastermind will make it in the end (which... are actually very much implied to be a possible thing in MM's deep lore). Also, wait, Dungeon? I don't see Lovecraft in Dungeon.
P.S. The Succubus is not T4 and has different abilities. Not the only such case.--FirePaladin2 (talk) 14:41, 24 January 2025 (UTC)
Also, to be fair, Beholders are more of a blatant lawsuit bait, they were DnD's own creation and poster-monster for a loooong time, basically one of the most classic ideas of the IP, to the point of being synonymous with it to a good extent. However, even if borrowing ideas from DnD just like NWC did, we prefer to avoid using DnD names, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that NWC might have liked to stop doing it after H3's release (and that was the case, in 2001 - they stopped using DnD names with H4 and other games).--FirePaladin2 (talk) 14:55, 24 January 2025 (UTC)