Honestly, I've gone back and skimmed through my old copies of 3.5E and 4E Monster Manuals and realized just how much the 5th Edition Monster Manual actually manages to stuff into its pages as far as trying to give lore about these creatures to us. So much of 3E's prose is devoted to 'battle tactics', abilities and massive stat-blocks while the blurb about some of the creatures could honestly be barely a paragraph. (Although for the 'big races' like dragons or illithids, 3E goes super rambly) Meanwhile, 4th Edition spends so much of its page just listing like twelve different variations and classes of the same monster. As someone who's far more interested in the role-playing and world-building aspects of this game, I've definitely grown a significant amount of respect for how they handled the Monster Manual.
Click here for the previous part, covering Oozes to Sahuagin.
Click here for the next part, covering Treants to Zombies.
Click here for the index.
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Salamander
The original "Salamander" in mythology was just a, well, salamander that had an affinity with the element of fire. But D&D has basically transformed the term Salamander to refer to these snake-bodied race that live in the Elemental Plane of Fire. I'm not quite sure why they went from 'fire lizard' to 'snake devil-men', but Salamanders are just one of those things that has been around in D&D since the very beginning, and basically copied wholesale into World of Warcraft (as "Flamewakers") and... well, here we are! The Elemental Plane of Fire is easily the one that's the most destructive compared to the three other 'classic' Elements in D&D, and that's why so many of the Fire Plane ended up getting the focus and being adapted into monsters. We've got the Efreeti, the Azer, and the Salamanders as entire sentient races that live in the Fire Plane, whereas I'm actually hard-pressed to think of their equivalents for the other four elements. They do have a fair amount of relationship among them, with the Salamanders being a race that is mostly subservient and enslaved by the Efreeti. While they hate the Efreeti, they've as a race easily manipulated enough by the Efreeti to fight against their enemies. Not all Salamanders are slave-servants, though, and some are led by powerful 'nobles' that lead their armies of Salamanders as raiding parties across the plane of fire.
And through most of the editions, the Salamanders still haven't changed. Snake-like lower body, humanoid upper body, and they're all positively bristling with horns, spikes and deer-antlers in older editions. Plus they carry a massive spear/trident weapon. 4E and 5E's Salamander go for a bit more of a demonic look, making the spiky protrusions look more like flames instead of generic spikes. In combat they're basically fire-manipulating dudes, immune to fire and causing everything around them to slowly heat up. Apparently, this also makes them pretty useful and skilled as blacksmiths.
Salamander: Fire Snake
In 2E, the Salamanders were lumped under a category called "Elementals: Fire-kin", alongside with the Fire Snakes, and they represent the (non-djinni) sentient races of the fire plane. And the Fire Snakes were exactly that, just little fire-snakes that hang out their bigger Salamander buddies. I don't have the 2E Sourcebooks on hand to look up if this has always been the case, but 5th Edition makes the Fire Snakes into the juvenile form of the Salamander, and these critters hatch from Salamander eggs! It's a pretty cool looking snake, with an unnaturally fanged mouth and lots of locks of rolling tendrils... and, like the many dragon wyrmling stats out there, it's yet another newly-hatched creature with stats that your adventurers can kill, you baby-murdering monsters! I do like the concept of these alien fiery snake-men elementals having a life cycle that essentially includes a brief metamorphosis from a limbless, far-less-humanoid snake-like form before they become the more humanoid version of the creature we're familiar with.
Satyr
I dunno, but I really do think that the fey offerings in 5E felt a bit... minimal? And so many of them are explicitly neutral or good. And I know that a lot of the tropes associated to the fair folk is that they do harm more because they don't quite understand that us mortal folk don't really operate by the same wacky Midsummer's Night Dream rules that they work off of, but I dunno... I've always thought that the fey choices in 5E -- even including supplementary material -- felt weak. I guess we're just waiting for a proper Feywilds adventure supplementary book to come out?
Satyrs (or fauns) are a creature that show up a lot in Greco-Roman mythology, being men with the lower body and horns of a goat, and go around playing their flutes and musical instruments to enchant travelers, sometimes just because they want to have a good time, and sometimes out of malice. For obvious reasons, D&D exorcises some of the more... date-rape-y aspects of the mythological satyr, and instead has them be curious hedonists, being more about PG-13 Disney hedonism of booze, music and parties. D&D Satyrs will kidnap and steal just to sate their own hedonism, but that's the extent of their malice -- they simply doesn't understand the concept that, hey the musician they kidnapped is freaking out about being spirited away to the forest by a goat-man and forced to participate in drunken revelry. Overall, satyrs are neat, but feel more like a fun side-encouter full of hijinks. Which is all nice and good! 5E describes that in each satyr party, there's one holding a Panpipes, allowing them access to stronger hypnotism-themed spells. 3E turned them into more badass warriors, I believe, which certainly makes them more threatening but a lot less fey-like, I feel.
Scarecrow
I've always been a huge, huge fan of Scarecrows in general as a monster design. I'm not sure what inspired my love for scarecrows -- is it the DC comics supervillain? Is it the somewhat scarecrow-looking Jack Skellington? It might very well be the fact that many games really like to use pumpkin-headed scarecrows as a general symbol for Halloween enemies, something I am a huge, huge fan of. Surprisingly, though, I've always thought that Scarecrows were, if not a staple monster in D&D, recurred often enough. But apparently they were... pretty rare? They keep showing up in secondary books, anyway, and often times the Scarecrow was mostly treated as a minor type of golem or as a setting-specific monster. It's not until 4E that the Scarecrows are included in a core Monster Manual, and even then it's the Monster Manual III. Oh well, at least we got them now! I always loved scarecrows in general as a monster enemy, they just have the right amount of creepiness and scariness, adding a lot to the horror theme of a setting, while simultaneously looking fragile enough for any badass group of adventurers to slay.
5E gives us a bit of a neat lore blurb about Scarecrows, giving them a bit of unique flavour instead of just being a mere golem in the shape of a scarecrow. These Scarecrows that loom above fields are bound with a slain evil creature, so it's not completely mindless like most golems and constructs. The spirit doesn't retain its memories or any sort of independence, but aspects of its personality might surface. The fact that it has a spirit trapped within it causes it to be extra-scary and able to inspire fear to those that it gazes upon, and we even get the note that apparently, hags and witches love scarecrows and they often bind the spirits of demons. Pretty neat look, and I'm a huge fan of that gangly artwork with straw limbs and a burlap sack face, although I'm also a big fan of that 4E artwork where the Scarecrow has big-ass sickles for fingers.
Shadow
My favourite Shadow depiction has to be that 4th edition artwork, where some dude is being choked in the foreground, but the shadow of the artwork shows that the Shadow monster is, in fact, choking his shadow. Not that the "shadows attacking you" look of the other editions aren't inherently cool (because, hey, attacking shadows!) but there's just something about that 4E artwork that made me feel like the capital-letter Shadow felt so much more neat than just yet another incorporeal enemy. Their lore has changed around a bit since their introduction in 2E, but Shadows in 5E are undead creatures that feed on living creatures, particularly good people, because "the brightest light casts the darkest shadows" or something along those lines. After a Shadow consumes a living person, that dude's shadow becomes a brand-new Shadow monster, making this a pretty interesting take on the ever-spreading undead plague thing. We even have a neat little detail talking about how if a person whose Shadowis running around is resurrected (because, hey, this is D&D) the Shadow will try and fight its 'parent' and said 'parent' won't cast a shadow until he kills his associated Shadow. Very Peter Pan-y! Not the most intricate monster, but definitely one that has enough of a unique flavour to set it apart from just any ghost or specter.
Shambling Mound
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| 2E Shambling Mound |
And I do like this -- unlike the Treants or other living plant monsters, the Shambling Mounds are actually the anathema of a balanced environment, because they sap and consume everything in their path, with the MM writeup noting that if left unchecked, Shambling Mounds can wipe out entire ecosystems. Their origin is pretty neat, too -- no demonic or silly wizard experimentation here, Shambling Mounds are created by lightning, striking a swamp plant just right as it gets transformed and reborn into what would eventually become a Shambling Mound as it grows vines and roots that chokes the life from the plants aroud it, like some sort of twisted invasive vine. It's this core, the 'root-stem', that basically controls the resulting Shambling Mound organism, which, from the description, makes it look like some sort of colonial organism.
Shield Guardian
Oh hey it's a robot! The Shield Guardians only show up in 3E and 5E, and look relatively consistent across the two artworks we've seen them in, with only differences due to the art style. Chunky lower arms and lower legs, a massive chest, and a relatively knight-like look, I'm a huge fan of them appearance-wise, even if they do feel relatively redundant with the various iron golems, animated armors and helmed horrors running around, to say nothing of the Warforged. The Shield Guardian is essentially a self-made bodyguard by a wizard or a mage, bound to an amulet carried by its maker, and only functioning as long as the amulet is active. There's also a unique 'spell storing' mechanic with the Shield Guardian, making it extra-ideal for wizards to have one. Not the most exciting monster, and honestly feels more like a neat magical item, but definitely neat to sort of spice things up in an encounter against wizard or something, or as a general flavour-based addition to a mage-heavy culture.
Skeleton
Hooray, skeletons! The one constant in any fantasy setting is that these buggers always exist. Skeletons and zombies, the two constants as far as 'disposable undead enemies' go. They exemplify the general disturbing qualities of the risen dead, while also simultaneously looking pathetic and fragile enough for your badass barbarians and warlocks to blast through en masse. Skeletons in general are always an interesting concept as an enemy, really -- the fact that these are just ambulatory bones without any musculature really means that they probably shouldn't be able to have much strength behind their strikes... but they are ambulatory bones, and do you think they care whether they have muscles or not?
Anyway, skeleton peeps are basically just the fleshless corpses of people reanimated from battlefields or tombs, either by actual necromancers, or simply by dark energy seeping into the bones and reanimating them. They're basically just... well, skeletons with undead energy coursing through them, and if they don't have a master, they just sort of shamble around, attacking anything living that comes near. They're sort of like golems, being dumb and withot any real free will, but theyre described to be competent enough as far as it's something practical -- like, say, behaving like soldiers, or form shield walls, or load trebuchets. They basically have some basic instincts and habitual behaviours, as I get it, making them a mite more smart than zombies... but sometimes they also just pantomine 'ingrained' behaviours, particularly if they become independent from their masters. Overall, though, skeletons and skeleton-based enemies are pretty cool and a very atmospheric addition into any D
Skeleton Variants
In most editions, we've got a bunch of guides in describing 'alternate' skeletons. After all, while the most common skeleton you'll face is probably a human (or humanoid) skeleton, what's to stop your local necromancer from making something far larger? Minotaur skeletons (as the 5E Monster Manual shows off in the artwork), skeletons of massive beasts like worgs or dinosaurs, dragon skeletons... 4th Edition is also the edition filled with many, many 'variant' monsters, and among the basic skeleton variants, it also describes skeletons that are constantly on fire, skeletons that have replaced their arm bones with swords, and a dust-themed enemy. Again, since these are basic undead creatures made by psychotic necromancers and wizards, it's always neat and a nice showcase of creativity to throw in a bunch of neater-looking minions while also not making them too much of a roadblock for your players.
Slaad: Red Slaad
And hey, here's another one of my favourite monsters in D&D, and a long mainstay ever since their introduction in 1st Edition's Fiend Folio. While on the surface the Slaad looks like one of D&D's many, many frog-men, they're actually the embodiments of the chaotic plane of Limbo, in more or less the same way that the Modrons embody law. It's just that the Slaadi are crazy, crazy motherfuckers, and their response to most things is just "giant frog", and they all end up running around as, well, giant, gangly toad-men. The different editions have experimented on how monstrous or how comedic they want the Slaadi to look like, and how humanoid they look as opposed to how monstrously frog-like, and for once, I feel like this is a monster whose base concept means that both aspects of comical and overly-gritty works relatively well.
5E's backstory notes that it was Primus, lord of the Modrons, that accidentally caused the creation of the Slaadi, by casting a stone of order and law that would supposedly help stop the spread of chaos out of Limbo... but instead this ended up with the creation of the frog-like Slaadi. I'm 90% sure the Spawning Stone showed up in previous editions, but I think 5E is the first time the Modrons are connected to the origins of the Slaadi. The Slaadi as a whole show up in a bunch of different colours with different abilities, and they have a horrific, Alien-style of reproduction by infecting humanoids with a disease called the 'chaos phage', or sometimes by implanting them with eggs outright. And then the Slaad Tadpole bursts out of these humanoids. Either way, despite what would be natural, the Slaadi of a certain colour will produce eggs of differently-coloured Slaadi. Each Slaad has a different power-set, and even size. The tadpole has stats in 5E, and you can definitely try and kill it before it grows legs and stuff.
The Red Slaad is the most mechanically basic of the base Slaadi, just being a hulking, grinning toad-man with massive claws. It's got the same batch of resistances and the ability to inject its enemies with Slaadi eggs, which, according to lore, will always produce Blue Slaad tadpoles, or Green Slaad tadpoles if the prey is a sufficiently magically-inclined humanoid. Red Slaadi tended to be depicted as the most toad-like in the 3E and 4E artworks, but I'm a huge fan of the more sinister looking 5E artwork.
Slaad: Blue Slaad
The Blue Slaad is a hulking brute, and his face in the 5E artwork looks almost like a crocodile or monitor lizard as opposed to a toad-with-fangs. It's a buff boy with two gigantic X-23 claws sprouting out of his knuckles, a very welcome feature he gained ever since 3E and sported every edition since. Blue Slaadi are large and massive (both Red and Blue variants of the Slaadi are considered 'Large' creatures, by the way), and where the Red Slaadi prefers to inject eggs directly, the Blue Slaad uses the toxins secreted by his claws to infect its prety with the chaos-phage disease instead. So Red Slaadi are the basic Alien, while the Blue Slaadi are Prometheus? Okay, then.
Also, the Slaadi born out of the Spawning Stone naturally always has a specific Slaad-stone bound to its brain, and anyone who manages to obtain this gem can control the Slaad. Those born out of other means don't have this stone. Which is another random neat little detail that the race has.
Green Slaad
The last of the 'basic' coloured Slaad is the Green Slaad, which perhps went through the most changes from a visual standpoint, alternating between being unreasonably gangly to rotund and comical. 5E opted for the latter, making him look pretty wacky and wouldn't look too out of place in a Star Wars set. I love the random catfish barbels he's got on his massive chin. Also, despite being hunched over and looking somewhat tiny, Green Slaadi are still considered large creatures. Green Slaadi are the smart ones of the bunch and are born when their host had any sort of spellcasting ability, and are themselves spellcasters. Green Slaadi are also born with shapeshifting abilities, and, of course, they like to shapeshift into the shape of their humanoid host. And, honestly, that's pretty dang cool and horrifying, meaning that this powerful spellcaster who's taken over the identity of the local wizard or head cleric might be actually a psychotic frog-man that's hiding the spreading of a plague that will transform entire towns into more frog-men... and that's not all either!
Gray Slaad
...because like a god-damned Pokemon, Green Slaadi that grow powerful enough will spontaneously permanently transform into the much more powerful Gray Slaad. Thin, gangly and far more sinister looking, the Gray Slaad were smaller compared to their more colourful cousins, and in both 4E and 5E, artwork has consistently portrayed them with this armpit-cape of bat-wing-esque membranes, as well as the same X-23 claws that their Blue Slaadi brethren have. Gray Slaadi are essentially a souped-up version of a Green Slaad, but instead of just mindlessly spreading toadman chaos, Gray Slaadi are actually sinister and intelligent enough, being connected to their masters and actually trying to do something in the material plane. Something sinister. And toad-like.
Death Slaad
And who are the masters of the Gray Slaadi, you ask? Well, the Death Slaad, the 'final' evolution of the Slaadi, at least in 5th Edition. 3E had a lot more variations, I believe. Death Slaadi are the Slaadi transformed and mutated with energy from the negative energy plane, and are transformed into absolutely sinister-looking motherfuckers with evil spikes, gangly arms and a perfectly evil-looking face. (Gray Slaads can also transform into Death Slaads upon consuming the flesh of a dead Death Slaad) Look at that 3E Death Slaad, who actually looks straight-up regal in robes and holding weapons and stuff! I like that 5E goes back to the basic creepy toad-man look, for sure.
Basically, the Death Slaadi aim to be less un-directed chaos and to be far more encompassing in the spread of corruption and chaos, being actually sadistic and evil and actively directing the spread of Slaadi toadiness throughout the world. I did feel like 5E still felt a wee bit too serious, highlighting the creepy Alien-esque reproduction and the ever-encroaching gravity of chaos as opposed to embracing the fact that the embodiments of chaotic energy in the D&D world is a race of rainbow toads. I still like the Slaadi a lot, but I kinda wished that they highlighted a bit more of the general chaos and madness that comes with the Slaadi -- whether the whimsical or sinister sort.
Specter
More ghosts! Specters are a lot less ambiguously-evil than the basic ghost template, though, being described as always being angry spirits that have been prevented from passing into the afterlife. While ghosts are tied to something in the mortal plane through some reason or other, specters have lost a lot of the memories of what they once was, but are condemned to walk (or float, I guess) the world forever, and they become this way because of some dark magic. They cannot move on the same way a ghost or revenant can, and all they can await is the sweet release of oblivion once they're released. They're basically little better than crazed killers at this point, enraged at the sight of living beings, and attacking them with no real reason. Mechanically, they don't have the same sort of fancy possession powers that a ghost has, and gain an extra vulnerability to sunlight, so they end up sort of becoming a far weaker and easier-to-slay incorporeal undead enemy. Older editions emphasize that they died violently, and marks of the cause of their death often show up in their appearances.
Poltergeists are described in 5E as an alternate variant to the specter, where instead of being malicious and resentful, they're just utterly confused and just rage by throwing things around thanks to its shattered psyche, and is also permanently invisible. Overall... yeah, they're neat enemies, I suppose!
Sphinx: Androsphinx
A creature that shows up a lot in Egyptian and Grecian culture, sphinxes are well-remembered for being creatures that guard temples, treasures and godly secrets, only allowing those who are worthy to pass -- usually by answering a riddle or two. And a lot of GM's can make a pretty interesting dungeon crawl where the adventurers had to figure out a sphinx's riddle before they can enter the final room, or if a sphinx's riddle is going to force them to sit down and try to think about all the world-building lore that the GM's given them throughout the past couple of sessions. Or maybe you can just pull out any "Collection of Riddles" book and just have the Sphinx rattle off riddles, and it will get bonus turns or something depending on whether your adventurers can answer the riddles. The MM also describes sphinxes of having the ability to access extraplanar spaces for their 'tests' to take place in, so in lieu of riddles, your adventuring party might have to engage them in some Harry Potter style chess game or something. Or Yu-Gi-Oh. That's fantasy Egypt, sort of, right?
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| 2E Androsphinx |
The Andro- and Gynosphinxes are essentially similar in terms of flavour, but are given different tactics in battle and different priorities. Androsphinxes are a lot more assholish, and while noble, will often taunt and insult the supplicants, and while not lying, it also often chooses words as carefully as possible to guard its secrets and further test its supplicants. They also test the bravery and valor of the supplicants, and have a bunch of roar-type abilities that scare off weaker souls. Because, hey, if they're truly worthy, they should be able to solve puzzles and riddles while fighting a giant lion-man, right?
Sphinx: Gynosphinx
Meanwhile, the Gynosphinx is a bit more tricky. Where the Androsphinx test the bravery and valor, Gynoshpinxes are far more riddle-oriented, testing knowledge and lore. A gynosphinx's special ability is her eyes, which can see beyond time-and-space, penetrating through all magic, and can even magically displace individual members of an adventuring party into a custom-made plane, each with their own riddle. Oh, speaking of plane rifts and the like, one of the possible lair actions that sphinxes of both gender are able to do is basically fuck up time, so your adventurers might be suddenly find themselves a couple of decades older because they failed to answer a riddle or two.
Visually, I've always preferred the 5th edition iterations of both Andro and Gynosphinxes compared to everything else that came before. The combination of leonine and human features, coupled with the majestic wings and an almost rock/statue-like exterior really set these creatures up as timeless guardians of god-like secrets. 4E and 3E had their sphinxes look like just some weird lion with wings and a human face, which isn't too far removed from a 'mere' magical beast like a Manticore. And that's without taking into accout the random titties on the original 1E Gynosphinx.
Honestly, sphinxes are pretty damn cool, particularly 5th Edition's emphasis on just how different their lairs and abilities can be, and it really could be a great exercise in your DM's dungeon-designing capabilities to set up something far more cerebral and creative.
Sprite
Sprites are basically the more war-like cousins to the pixies, and unless I'm mis-remmebering, the last fey creature in the Monster Manual. Older editions had a lot of these 'tiny fairy' people, and while I did bemoan the lack of fey representation in 5th Edition, I do appreciate not really overwhelming us with atomies, brownies, nixies and like a half-dozen other tiny fairies. They've never been that consistently depicted and honestly, the terms for fey creatures are sort of muddled, with 'Sprite' being used for both a generic term for small fey creatures, or a specific tribe of small fey creatures -- 5E uses the latter.
Sprites have dragonfly wings as opposed to the pixies' butterfly ones, and instead of being curious and playful, sprites are dicks. They are very protective of their home glades and territories, and they will judge the moral character of interlopers that come into their territory (through a 'heart-sight' ability that allows a sprite to tell their intentions), and depending on the hostility of the particular sprite tribe, will either put them to sleep or drive them off with poisoned arrows. Oh, yeah, they are super-experts in au naturel poisons. Just because they live in toadstool houses and in verdant lakes doesn't mean they tolerate interlopers... but if you're in a quest that directly opposes evil feys or are trying to protect their forest, a tribe of sprites might very well end up becoming your allies. Not my favourite fey creature out there, and if we're being honest they're a wee bit basic, but, hey, they're pretty neat.
Stirge
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| Stirge (3E) |
Still, whichever version of the Stirge's design you prefer, they always look pretty neat and they all fill the concept of a massive, winged pest very well. Being massive blood-suckers that are harmful if they appear in swarms, there's not a whole ton to the Stirge's tactics other than being a particularly scary, large, monstrous mosquito monster, and if we're being practical, their niche in the world of D&D could easily be filled by a "Dire Vampire Bat" or "Giant Mosquito"... but I do really like that such a creature exists in the D&D bestiary. It's just the right amount of combination of features to feel bizarrely exotic but also not too far off from real-life fauna. Also, Stirges are considered a natural beast, meaning that your rangers can keep one as a companion (if you want to keep a stirge instead of a more powerful animal for some reason) and your druids can shapeshift into them no problem.
Succubus & Incubus
Of course you have to have succubi and incubi in a fantasy game. The succubi and incubi are perhaps one of the more recognizable mythological/fantasy demons to a casual, non-RPG-playing person... well, because, they're sex demons, and we humans have such a huge fascination about sex. Depending on the edition, succubi either end up having their own entry in the Monster Manual, or are classified among the 'devil' entry, and the various editions have flip-flopped on whether they are demons or devils until they decided to just shrug and say 'fuck it, they're neither, they're somewhere in between'. It's noted in 5E that the succubus and incubus are essentially the same thing, and they can swap genders as they please. They also sometimes reproduce with humanoids and create Cambion babies. For the rest of this review, I'll refer to the species as 'succubus'.
I do like the 5E MM's description of a succubus' tactics, where it draws from the original myths regarding a succubus' modus operandi, and details how they often appear to their victims in ethereal form, swooping in through walls like a ghost to whisper forbidden pleasures and manipulate their prey's dreams -- and some older religions tended to attribute lewd dreams or nightmares to these 'tempter demons'. Eventually, as their victims slowly indulge in their debauchery, the succubus appears in the guise of a beautiful mortal to further corrupt their victim, and the more the creature gets corrupt, the more the succubus has a grip on their soul. And once a specific set of corruptions are done, the succubus will then kill their prey, where their condemned soul falls down to their master in the Lower Planes. A pretty neat depiction of a sinister temptation demon for sure! Design wise, 5E keeps it simple by making them bat-winged attractive humanoids with sexy clothing.
Tarrasque
Vaguely borrowing the name from the French mythological dragon Tarasque, the Tarrasque is the final boss. Or, at least, in theory. I'm not big on mechanics, but as I've been told, the Tarrasque has been nerfed in each consecutive edition (most notably, in 4E and 5E, it no longer regenerates huge portions of its health pool every turn), originally starting off as essentially the Godzilla of the setting -- an unstoppable beast that is tremendously difficult to kill, exists only to destroy, and is more of a walking force of nature than an actual creature. Its design is relatively simple, just a giant, dinosaurian creature with massive horns jutting out of its back and head. Some editions sort of emphasize and almost turtle-like shell on its back, while others integrate the spikes and armoured hide a bit more. Special mention goes to the 2E Tarrasque, which looks a lot more humanoid, and 4E Tarrasque, who definitely draws a bit more from its kaiju inspiration. In either case, it's a pretty neat not-quite-Godzilla.
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| 3E Tarrasque |
5E sadly removes a lot of the Tarrasque's fancier and overpowered abilities (although it makes up with generally a whole lot of numbers in its stats -- there's a lot of discussion out there on whether 5E Tarrasque is much stronger or weaker compared to its predecessors), and it feels less of an almost god-like unstoppable kaiju. It's still a mighty beast in its on right and a lot of its "giant living disaster that pops out of nowhere, and cannot be reasoned with" properties still remain. And there's no stopping your GM from house-ruling some of the more 'broken' powers from the previous editions if they want the Tarrasque to be more of a survival run. In any case, I do like the relatively minimalistic flavour of the Tarrasque -- it's just a big angry lizard sleeping at the depths of the earth, and it's really, really hard to kill. It's not my favourite monster by any means, but it's a classic.
Thri-kreen
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| Thri-kreen (3E) |
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| Thri-kreen (4E) |
In a neat, refreshing break from most bug monsters, the Thri-kreen are not tied to some sort of hive-mind mentality. 5E doesn't detail their society too much, but I know enough from previous editions that the Thri-kreen are portrayed more as nomads and wanderers, moving around the lands in small groups. I've never actually realized just how many insect-themed monsters in fantasy tended to fall into the tropes of a giant hive-mind of disposable workers with a central queen, and I am happy that the Thri-kreen are not one of them. It also means that making a Thri-kreen player character or NPC is a lot easier, since despite the lack of emotion, the fact that they wander around means that it's far likelier for a Thri-kreen individual to end up being exposed to more culture out there. Overall, a pretty awesome bug-man race, and I'm genuinely surprised that as far as I can tell, 5E doesn't have official rules for playing a Thri-kreen yet!
The 5E stuff for the creatures we covered here:
- Fire Snake: Medium elemental; neutral evil; CR 1
- Salamander: Large elemental; neutral evil; CR 5
- Satyr: Medium fey; chaotic neutral; CR 1/2
- Scarecrow: Medium construct; chaotic evil; CR 1
- Shadow: Medium undead; chaotic evil; CR 1/2
- Shambling Mound: Large plant; unaligned; CR 5
- Shield Guardian: Large construct; unaligned; CR 7
- Skeleton: Medium undead; lawful evil; CR 1/4
- Minotaur Skeleton: Large undead; lawful evil; CR 2
- Warhorse Skeleton: Large undead; lawful evil; CR 1/2
- Red Slaad: Large aberration; chaotic neutral; CR 5
- Slaad Tadpole: Tiny aberration; chaotic neutral; CR 1/8
- Blue Slaad: Large aberration; chaotic neutral; CR 7
- Green Slaad: Large aberration - shapechanger; chaotic neutral; CR 8
- Gray Slaad: Medium aberration - shapechanger; chaotic neutral; CR 9
- Death Slaad: Medium aberration - shapechanger; chaotic evil; CR 10
- Specter: Medium undead; chaotic evil; CR 1
- Poltergeist: Medium undead; chaotic evil; CR 2
- Androsphynx: Large monstrosity; lawful neutral; CR 17
- Gynosphynx: Large monstrosity; lawful neutral; CR 11
- Sprite: Tiny fey; neutral good; CR 1/4
- Stirge: Tiny beast; unaligned; CR 1/8
- Succubus/Incubus: Medium fiend - shapechanger; neutral evil; CR 4
- Tarrasque: Gargantuan monstrosity - titan; unaligned; CR 30
- Thri-kreen: Medium humanoid - thri-kreen; chaotic neutral; CR 1
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