Click here for the previous part, covering Goblins to Kenku.
Click here for the next part, covering Mind Flayers to Oni, and also featuring the basic PC classes.
Click here for the index.
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Kobold
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| 3E Kobold |
See, they're little cowardly and genuinely petty reptile people, but they're driven by an interesting little gimmick. They worship evil dragons (who are happy to have minions) as basically deities! And it is kind of an obvious nod to how so much of the original D&D concept is just a system to populate a labyrinthine dungeon with monsters, so the kobolds (borrowing its name from a term for a Germanic sprite) are essentially created to be a default 'servant race' to the dragons without too much justification for motivations. Hell, they're even noted to really like to tinker and invent traps, which justifies all those nasty spike pits and the good ol' green-ooze-stuffed-in-a-trapdoor one-two. Viewing themselves as 'blood-kin' to their mighty draconic brethren, they end up having a fair amount of racial pride on being 'selected' to look visually similar to their godlike cousins. They also really, really hate gnomes, and they will even do something as cruel as spit in their milk bowl or rearrange their dishes. (Actual scenarios provided by a 5E sourcebook).
I do really like the little detail that kobolds have the potential to live to centuries old (referred to as 'wyrms')... but since the kobolds reproduce very rapidly and tend to be in the crossfire between their dragon masters and uppity adventurers, kobolds don't have a long projected life-span. Their entire way of combat and life involves trying to simply overwhelm their enemies by simple numbers, or, failing that, by taking advantage of the tiny tunnels and rickety bridges that allow access to their little reptilian forms and not you, Artix Bonesmasher, half-orc paladin in full plate armour. They live in massive clutches and tribes with each kobold being given a role, which ends up being mostly detailed in 5E's Volo's Guide to Monsters. My favourite part of the Kobold chapter in Volo's (which admittedly dealt more about the fancy traps and lairs the kobolds build more than kobold society itself) has to be the description of "City Kobolds", where their warrens extend into the sewers of a city and it's either an infestation... or a warren of kobolds invited by humans that pay them with food and a promise of non-aggression. Non-hostile kobold NPC's? In my D&D? Awesome. While it doesn't go too in-depth as the Kenku, Volo's also recommends Kobold as a possible monster PC race. Yay!
Winged Kobold / Urd
Volo's would give us a bunch of 'elite' kobolds like the Scale Sorcerer, the Inventor and various others, but the 5E Monster Manual dug through D&D's history and resurrected the "Urd", a winged relative of the kobolds from the 2nd edition. Largely ignored since its single appearance (where you can see the identity of a kobold as a lizard-person hasn't been solidified yet), 5E brings it back from obscurity and presents it to us as an elite version of a kobold, one born with draconic wings. We don't get much prose written about the Winged Kobolds, other than the fact that the wingless ones are rightfully jealous of their winged brethren, and I really do wish we had gotten a lot more about the role of winged kobolds in a kobold hive. Are they like the kobolds' society's version of X-Men, having great power but ultimately ostracized?
Kraken
Another creature from real-life myths is the Kraken, a giant octopus from Scandinavian folklore that crushes ships and drags them down into the depths of the ocean. In 3E and 4E, the Kraken is just an impossibly large giant squid, which gets extra-creepy with the description that they have a sentient, evil mind under those unblinking cephalopod eyes and how they've existed deep beneath the ocean "for ages untold". There's a hint of some Elder-creature inspired flavour there, but it doesn't really take way the fact that it's still just ultimately a big squid. 5E goes for a completely different way -- the kraken tends to be combined with the Cthulhu mythos in many fantasy settings, and they sort of go all the way here, and the 5E Kraken ends up being a creature with the vague body outline that sort of resembles a squid, but with very little cephalopod anatomy other than the tentacles, with its face being where the squid's head tip would be, where it terminates in a massive, angry reptilian face with a tentacle beard and a pair of stumpy hands. Because of the Cthulhu influence, the Krakens are noted to be former minions of the gods during some primeval war (against the aboleths, maybe? There are a lot of 'ancient pre-civilization battles' in D&D's lore) that ended up leaving their master's yoke, and they periodically rise up from the abyss to wreak havoc upon civilization, manipulating the storm and the seas as it rises from the depths of the ocean.
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| 3E Kraken |
Kuo-toa
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| 4E Kuo-toa |
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| Archpriest (5E) |
Lamia
Lich
D&D is perhaps the reason why the term 'lich' ends up becoming one of the most common undead-monster tropes in fiction. I double-checked, and 'lich' was just originally another generic word for a corpse before D&D basically turned the Lich into one of the most memorable monsters ever. Other than dragons and fiends, I feel that liches embody the other potential 'final boss' of a campaign. Liches are the undead forms of particularly powerful wizards who attempt to preserve themselves, either in search of true immortality, or the true meaning of magic, or just because they're crazy, and this ends up causing them to embark on a ritual that transforms them into an essentially-immortal undead... while retaining all the powerful magical spellcasting abilities they had when they are alive. The method to become a lich differs from setting to setting, but other than a couple of exceptions (the Archliches and Baelnorns of 3E), they tended to almost always be evil. Or neutral at best. They transform themselves into liches through a secret ritual (again, depending on the setting, this is guarded by fiends or evil gods), and when they become a lich, a unique part of lichdom is the existence of a phylactery, a little magical bauble that contains the lich's soul. It is this little item that makes Liches so dangerous. Destroy a lich's physical form, and they can straight-up just regenerate from their phylactery, which might be anywhere in the world, or even in a different plane altogether! And the phylactery itself is such a mighty magical artifact that you might sometimes even need some special way to destroy it. Maybe it must be thrown into the lava pools of Mordor or something. Depending on the edition, liches also have to sometimes feed souls to the phylactery to preserve the magic.
And while Liches can very well just be another stopgap or a boss in a sufficiently high-level dungeon, they can definitely step up to be the mighty manipulators of a campaign's events, and, in fact, many of the most infamous D&D or D&D-related main villains have been liches. Like Vecna! Or Acererak! As a highly intelligent creature that isn't pigeonholed into any specific mentality or motivation, the lich is very versatile for dungeon masters to properly develop a character out of. It's easy to handwave a lich as just a powerful undead, but a combination of the phylactery gimmick, the fact that they have access to basically a large proportion of the spells that your group of motley adventurers have, and the sheer flavour of the lich makes it the ur-example, alongside vampires, for a mighty undead villain in a campaign.
Lizardfolk (a.k.a. Lizardmen)
Originally called Lizardmen, the race ends up being renamed to Lizardfolk in 3.5E. And they are another pretty common sight in derivative fantasy works, being a humanoid with lizard-like features. They tend to be portrayed as a savage, shamanistic people that lurk in forests and swamps, but ultimately fall under the 'neutral' side of things. And it's these races that's always going to be interesting, because it's absolutely easy for your GM to make a plot hook for your adventuring party. Provoke the large tribes of the swamp and make an enemy of the entire tribe? Or maybe attempt to understand these strange people with their strange culture and make allies out of them? Of course, the lizardfolk themselves are noted to be pretty damn territorial and xenophobic. Their idea of morality also differs a lot from what conventional humans and elves and gnomes view as 'moral'... and I've heard them being described as basically a 'video game protagonist', where death and murder is just a way to expedite things in life. They kill trespassers not out of malice or hatred, but because in their mind, it's their fault for entering their territory, and it's up to any outsider to essentially prove their worth to a given Lizardfolk tribe. They eat their fallen dead, not out of disrespect, but because, hey, it'd otherwise be a waste of meat that could nourish warriors who need it desperately.
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| 4E Lizardfolk |
The Lizardfolk is another race that Volo's Guide to Monsters recommends as a good player race, and it details the more bestial, instinctual mind of these pragmatic people. And while not quite as gimmicky as the Kenku, I do really like how the Lizardfolk is cast as a race of cold, calculating pragmatics, devoid of proper emotion and just acting as the situation demands, noting that lizardfolk that ally themselves with other humanoid races mostly mimic their cultural bits not out of respect, but rather because "it'd be troublesome" if the other humanoid allies get angry that Scalebane the Lizardfolk feasted on the bodies of the dead guards. Overall, a pretty neat race -- visually they're something that is commonly found in many other fantasy games and settings, but I always do have a soft spot for these iguana-men.
Lycanthrope: Werebear
Of course lycanthropes are a monster in D&D. Vampires and werewolves are all the rage, and perhaps one of the few monsters that sort of work in almost any setting ever. In D&D, though, you're not just limited to werewolves, and there's a whole load of potential half-man half-animal creature you can transform into -- and lycanthropes can pick whether they want to transform into the beast, or to a half-man, half-beast form. Like One Piece Zoans! Lycanthropes are not a proper species of their own, but rather a cursed humanoid that is able to access their mighty half-beast forms. Lycanthropes are a 'template', and depending on the individual character, they might be a serial killer who hunts in the guise of a wolf under a full moon, or if they're good, they just wander in wildernesses to enjoy the wild. People become a lycanthrope when they are bitten or wounded by another lycanthrope, or if they're born out of a lycanthrope parent. Naturally-born lycanthrope can't have the curse be removed outside of the Wish spell, while any spells that can remove curses can cure acquired lycanthropes. If you don't remove the curse, though, the curse will transform your character particularly under the full moon, with the bestial urges often times clouding the lycanthrope's mind. In true werewolf-story fashion, sometimes the lycanthrope doesn't even remember that he or she has transformed into a wolf and mauled half the village to death, and they need time, experience and acceptance to properly control their lycanthrope powers. It's like the druid class's bestial transformations, I suppose, but with a whole danger of being taken over by your bestial side.
We're starting off alphabetically, and we'll probably blaze through these quickly. The Werebear is the only one that has the default alignment of 'good' among the five basic lycanthropes in 5th Edition, and I'm not sure what it is about bears that makes them far easier for a lycanthrope to maintain their conscience, but okay. I really do like just how weirdly friendly the 5th edition Werebear looks, in comparison to the 90%-muscle-by-mass Werebear from 3E. They're essentially loners, not wanting to accidentally hurt people when he/she transforms, and even if forced to fight, they tend to try to utilize weapons in order to not to resort to biting and spreading the curse. They're described as sort of guardians of an area, only passing the curse down to apprentices or their own children. Sort of like druids, but one where their lifestyle is less of a career and more internalized.
Lycanthrope: Wereboar
Wereboars are just there to make it a bit confusing with Werebears. They're pig-men, and there's just something about boar-men with tusks that makes them so easily used as dumb, brutish enemies. Wereboars are essentially the dumb muscle of the lycanthropes, charging through towns and whacking people with their hammers and goring them with their tusks, infecting their curse indiscriminately. Perhaps in a neat nod to the fact that orcs used to be depicted as pig-men in the past, the wereboars apparently often build settlements and ally themselves with the brutish orcs. They're neat, but nothing too spectacular. Oh, and most lycanthropes have some degree of command over the beasts that they turn into -- wereboars, for example, can control boars and pigs.
Lycanthrope: Wererat
The Wererat is perhaps one of my favourite lycanthropes, for the simple reason that rats are one of those creatures that elicit disgust and a bit of hilarity when they appear. The weakest of the lycanthropes physically, they're also the most cunning and sly, and I do like the note that this tends to extend to their humanoid forms as well. Even when un-transformed, the Wererats look pretty ratty. They tend to like to use ambush tactics and a wererat clan apparently operates similarly to a thieves' guild, with them using the curse as something like a ritual to induct new members of their clan-guild. It's a bit of an exclusive club, and they'll hunt down and kill deserters. Obviously, they live in sewers, catacombs, and tunnels underneath cities. I like these guys. I think they were originally just a generic 'Rat Man' race before being retconned into being a type of lycanthrope in 2E.
Lycanthrope: Weretiger
Whoever drew that 1E artwork really need to get laid. And also that artwork makes an example why sometimes you really don't want to exhibit too much of a biological accuracy when designing fantasy monsters. The Weretigers have tended to receive artwork that sort of make them look like anime beast-man protagonists, which... I don't mind? They sure got cool artwork in 4E and 5E, although the 5E version really could stand to look a bit more angry. The weretigers are the more civilized, haughty ones of the lycanthrope family, and they even prefer to fight in their humanoid forms instead of transforming. Pretty neat, but not much for me to say. I'll note the fact that 2E and 3E really went super-crazy with lycanthrope sub-types. Werebats, werecrocodiles, weresloths, werebadgers, wererays, weresharks, wereowls, werebisons...
Lycanthrope: Werewolf
And here we go with the all-too-familiar Werewolf. We go back to the basic essence of the myth. Werewolves are savage predators consumed by their instinct, with a trigger-happy temper and a desire to rip and mangle meat. They're able to rip and mangle with their claws, or wield weapons if they prefer to, and the werewolves tend to flee civilization upon being afflicted, tending to roam around in packs of werewolves and real wolves. Noted to be the most common type of lycanthropes, werewolves are... well, they're what you expect from the monster trope, really, and there's enough flexibility in their description that they could be treated as simply a pack of ravenous savages, or if you want to go the route of a tragic cursed person trying to control their bestial side, or even just go the Incredible Hulk way and make the werewolf mode as a 'super mode' that they can control.
Honestly, lycanthropes don't make for particularly interesting enemies on their own, since they're ultimately just people that can transform into animals. And don't get me wrong, the wolf-men and tiger-men and pig-men are cool, but they're just sort of there. It's the fact that they can pass their lycanthropism, and that your character might have to deal with becoming a cursed lycanthrope themselves that ends up making these creatures interesting as encounters. Lycanthropes have never been my favourite part of D&D, but I really do love that they exist and they can end up easily being the focus of a campaign.
Magmin
Okay, this one is a bit different. The Magmin, sometimes "Magmen", have been around since the first edition and showed up in most editions other than 4E, but I just genuinely don't really remember them. They're little gremlins that are on fire, and are essentially fire elementals with a nasty, impish streak to them. I do like seeing more miscellaneous elementals, which really do help in making the Elemental Plane feel a bit more diverse than just "elementals, djinnis and elemental lords". I do particularly the 5th Edition artwork, showing a little humanoid with the skin consistency of molten slag, with flames dancing around their hands and head, with a devilish skull-head. I've always found the more organic-looking previous iterations to be relatively mundane-looking. Their bio notes that when they're summoned from the elemental planes, they're basically psychotic little pyromaniacs that try to burn everything around them down. Not a whole ton to say here, they're relatively neat little fire-shooting little imps -- it's part of a good world-building, I suppose, not everything can be fully fleshed-out creatures with backstories and motivations, and sometimes you need a bunch of imps that quite literally just exist to burn shit and cackle.
Manticore
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| 3E Manticore |
Medusa
If there's a huge pet peeve I have against D&D is the fact that "Gorgon" and "Medusa" are two different races of monsters. It really shouldn't bother me, and I know that the term "Medusa" is far, far more familiar to the general public, but I dunno. It just kinda bothers me. Anyway... another very popular creature based on a character from Greek myths, the Medusas are a race of serpent-haired women who was cursed to turn any who gaze upon them into stone. It's actually interesting just how ghoulish the Medusas of 3E and 4E look, barely looking human. 4E gives us a very gaunt looking Medusa with snake-like skin, while 3E Medusa looks more like a bronze contraption. 5E's Medusa, in contrast, gives us an almost haunting beauty with a non-terrible face, which... I dunno, as cool as the 5E Medusa looks, I think I prefer the older versions? 5E gives them the backstory of Medusas being specifically men or women who pray to gods, dragons, fey and fiends for eternal youth and beauty, and end up eventually being transformed into Medusa eventually. I am actually surprised that never in D&D's history has the Medusa been given the snakey lower body that Gorgons tended to be slapped with ever since Clash of the Titans popularized that look for Medusa. The Medusa in 5E is another creature who gets 'lair actions', which is actually pretty dang appropriate for the Medusa.
In 2E through 4E, the Medusa get a significantly larger lore with descriptions of how the male variants of the Medusa race have some differing powers. The male medusa essentially have a weaker version of the females' power, with their gaze merely weakening and sapping strength instead of instant petrification.
Mephits
Unless google has failed me, the Mephits are a race of what's essentially elemental imps that's original to Dungeons & Dragons. And, like the Magmin, it's very neat to have a bunch of extra minions to populate an Elemental-centric storyline with! They're a lot of these Mephits, and they essentially take the role of tiny enemy/familiar for the elementals in the same way that the imps and quasits are. In 5E they all had identical appearances that only differ in the element they're tied to -- in order of the 5E Mephits, we've got the Dust Mephit, Ice Mephit, Magma Mephit, Mud Mephit, Smoke Mephit and Steam Mephit. They all are gangly, crouching little imp-dudes with long-ass noses and little bat-like wings. And I do appreciate the work that went into all of these artwork, particularly with the awesome wing textures for the smoke and magma mephit. The specific types that show up in 5E all meant to represent two of the four base elements combining, I believe -- like, ice mephit represents the combination of the base elements of water and air; while magma represents earth and fire.
They all are pretty neat-looking, and I definitely enjoy all the artwork, but their place in the Monster Manual are essentially just huge chunks of stat blocks, and I really wish they had gone into a bit more detail explaining their nature as elementals, or their personalities beyond "kinda cruel, I guess", but ultimately the only ones whose short write-ups give any personality are the Mud Mephit (who are complainers) and the Smoke Mephits (who are lazy and also like to mock others). Previous editions tended to have each Mephit have a more distinctive proportion, although they're all still winged imp-like humanoids. Previous editions also flip-flop on whether the Mephit is a sub-type of an "Imp", or if they were elementals, or if they were their own thing entirely. I think I prefer the 5th Edition's approach, although that might be just because I really like the long gobln-nose and gangly imp-body of the 5E artwork.
Merfolk (a.k.a. Mermen, Mermaids)
Oh, wow, the 5th Edition Merfolk suddenly got a lot fishier than before, huh? That's genuinely surprising! I've always internalized it that among the water-dwelling humanoid races in Dungeons and Dragons, the merfolk (or mermaids and mermen) are the classic "upper body of a human, lower body of a fish" deal that look very humanoid, while the tritons are the race of more fishy-looking humanoids that incorporate more of the anatomy of aquatic creatures. Seeing the artwork for the 5E Merfolk certainly caught me off-guard, since I was so used to D&D merfolk being perfectly humanoid. I'm not complaining, though, those little fin details look pretty cool! The 5E Manual did say that since the Merfolk kingdoms span so much of the ocean, the merfolk are varied in colour, culture and appearance as the land-dwelling races, so, yeah, canonically, you can make your mermaids and mermen look as variable as you want. Pull something out of One Piece and make each individual merfolk's tail draw from a different, specific type of fish! Some older rulings note that Merfolk could shapeshift their fishy lower bodies for legs when they come on land, although I don't remember which edition I read that in, or if it's just a homebrew thing.
I've always had a huge, huge love for the aquatic monsters and creatures in D&D, which I think never really got enough love because aquatic adventures aren't quite as popular thanks to the difficulty in DM-ing combat in three dimensions, or to keep track of something like swimming speed or water-breathing. I think that's the reason for why there's not a whole ton of aquatic monsters out there, and the most prominent ones like the Aboleth or Kuo-toa tend to focus on how their lairs are underground cave pools. Kind of a shame, really, because there's a lot of cool underwater enemies in D&D. The Merfolk are more quest-givers and NPC's, really, and they're described as mostly friendly to other land-dwelling races.
Merrow
Based on the monstrous mermaids of Irish folklore, the Merrow was originally introduced in 2E and 3E as a type of sea ogre (and in 3E it's barely a footnote in the 'ogre' block), but is revamped in 5th edition as an even-more mutated deep-sea merfolk with a particularly awesome looking artwork featuring a particularly badass grisly-looking face, trailing catfish tentacles, a whole lot of fins, and a huge harpoon weapon. Pretty awesome design, really, and they're described as roaming predators that attack land-dwellers and merfolk alike. Apparently these are a kingdom of merfolk who were transformed when they touched a cursed idol of Demogorgon, striking the people with madness that they were transformed when they enacted a ritual to travel to Demogorgon's layer of the Abyss, transforming them into evil monstrosities. They're still not considered 'fiends', which is interesting. I do really love that artwork, and they basically serve the role of an evil band of sea-raiders that lurk in underwater caves, marking their territory with corpses tied to kelp. Honestly, a pretty damn cool monster, although most of what made me really like this thing is really its artwork.
Mimic
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| 3E Mimic |
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| 2E Mimic |
Ultimately, hey, it's the Mimic! I love Mimics. Join us next time as we delve into another one of D&D's flagship iconic monsters, the Mind Flayer!
The 5E stuff for the creatures we covered here:
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| Kuo-toa Whip |
- Kobold: Small humanoid - kobold; lawful evil; CR 1/8
- Winged Kobold: Small humanoid - kobold; lawful evil; CR 1/4
- Kraken: Gargantuan monstrosity - titan; chaotic evil; CR 23
- Kuo-toa: Medium humanoid - kuo-toa; neutral evil; CR 1/4
- Kuo-toa Archpriest: Medium humanoid - kuo-toa; neutral evil; CR 6
- Kuo-toa Whip: Medium humanoid - kuo-toa; neutral evil; CR 1
- Lamia: Large monstrosity; chaotic evil; CR 4
- Lich: Medium undead; any evil assignment; CR 21
- Lizardfolk: Medium humanoid - lizardfolk; neutral; CR 1/2
- Lizardfolk Shaman: Medium humanoid - lizardfolk; neutral; CR 2
- Lizard King/Lizard Queen: Medium humanoid - lizardfolk; neutral; CR 4
- Werebear: Medium humanoid - human shapechanger; neutral good; CR 5
- Wereboar: Medium humanoid - human shapechanger; neutral evil; CR 4
- Wererat: Medium humanoid - humanoid shapechanger; lawful evil; CR 2
- Weretiger: Medium humanoid - human shapechanger; neutral; CR 4
- Werewolf: Medium humanoid - human shapechanger; chaotic evil; CR 3
- Magmin: Small elemental; chaotic neutral; CR 1/2
- Manticore: Large monstrosity; lawful evil; CR 3
- Medusa: Medium monstrosity; lawful evil; CR 6
- Dust Mephit: Small elemental; neutral evil; CR 1/2
- Ice Mephit: Small elemental; neutral evil; CR 1/2
- Magma Mephit: Small elemental; neutral evil; CR 1/2
- Mud Mephit: Small elemental; neutral evil; CR 1/4
- Smoke Mephit: Small elemental; neutral evil; CR 1/4
- Steam Mephit: Small elemental; neutral evil; CR 1/4
- Merfolk: Medium humanoid - merfolk; neutral; CR 1/8
- Merrow: Large monstrosity; chaotic evil; CR 2
- Mimic: Medium monstrosity - shapechanger; neutral; CR 2
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