Anyway, we're not done yet. Far from it! The next segment in this "Reviewing D&D Monsters" segment is going to briefly go through the appendix of the Monster Manual, where we get some of the more mundane creatures (like "just a bear" or "a big bear"), but since that honestly doesn't make for an interesting article, I'll go through the other player races introduced in Volo's Guide to Monsters and the Elemental Evil Player's Handbook. Afterwards, we're going to tackle the secondary monster manuals in 5th edition, Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordekainen's Tome of Foes, at the very least, before I decide where to go. Do I go through all of the other 5E material and talk about the monsters there? Do I jump straight into older editions? Which edition, then, do I go to? 1E, 2E, 3E. 4E? Some other RPG like Call of Cthulhu or Pathfinder? I do plan on maybe going through the original 1st Edition AD&D Monster Manual (and maybe Fiend Folio?) at some point, but we'll see when or how I decide to do things.
Anyway, brief apologies for the length of this one. I didn't expect it to be this long, and really should've anticipated it, what with the yuan-ti being in this segment alongside vampires and yugoloths... but eh, I kinda went on a writing binge and ended up finishing all of it in a single sitting. Huzzah?
Click here for the previous part, covering Salamanders to Thri-kreen
Click here for the next part, covering the Monster Manual Appendix and PC races in Volo's.
Click here for the index.
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Treant
A brief jaunt to wikipedia confirms that, yes, the term 'Treant' was coined by the Dungeons & Dragons team as a trademark-friendly way to represent the Ents of Tolkien's works without using the exact name. Like 'Halfling' and 'Balor', I suppose. The Treants have been drawn with differing looks, going from just straight-up pasting a face and limbs onto a tree in 1E, to a ganglier look that is more of a "tree that is bent into a humanoid figure", to a Grumpee McTree in 4E with that hilarious face, and his far chiller-looking counterpart in 5E. Growing up on Warcraft material, I've always viewed Treants as looking more like the 4E/5E artwork, with huge, massive limbs and being more large and lumbering, but honestly, it's pretty logical for there to be a wide variation of treants out there, yeah? In D&D lore, Treants are basically 'awakened' trees in ancient forests, with trees that would become treants meditating for decades to centuries before eventually 'awakening', and often they need to be in a place rich in nature magic. Treants are often associated with the likes of elves and fey, and they protect their forests and the creatures that live within from outside threats.
Treants are able to root their massive humanoid legs back into the soil, and basically end up gaining a far better appreciation and awareness of its surroundings, being able to 'see' events taking place miles away. They aren't hostile and even classified as 'chaotic good', but try to carelessly cut down trees or fuck with their patch of forest, and suddenly the treants will animate the surrounding forests and then start whacking you to death. Because while 'ha ha it's a tree with a face' is funny, being hit by a goddamn tree is not funny at all. Overall, there's not a whole ton of innovation they do with the base treant, but there doesn't need to be. It's an ancient living tree that protects its forest.
Troglodyte
I always kind of forget Troglodytes exist. They're one of those 'always show up in the core series' creatures, but I've always written them off as basically 'Underdark Lizardfolk', which isn't exactly fair, but when we already have the lizardfolk, kobold, dragonborn, yuan-ti and probably a couple other reptilian races that I can't think up of on the top of my head, the troglodyte sort of ends up being the less interesting version of all of these. Again, just like most other Underdark counterparts of surface races, the Troglodytes are degenerate savages that war against everything around them, highly territorial and marking their territories with bones, skulls, or sometimes even dung. The 5E Monster Manual note how these things dwell in filth, and their caves are dirty as all hell, with their only motivations going around to get food and are too dumb to plan about anything in the future, just living to hunt and to kill, and even murdering the weak members of their kin. The 5E artwork at least gives us an absolute unit of a troglodyte, with a pretty grisly-detailed set of rippling muscles. I also really love the white, pale skin, which fits the look of some blind cave lizards. Previous editions are extremely inconsistent, with 4E having them look pretty civilized as chunky albino lizardmen, while 3E goes for a lankier look. Overall, I'm surprisingly pretty indifferent about the troglodytes. It's just that there are so many other monsters that fill their niche but have something more to them instead of just being dumb, dirty savages, y'know? Even the Grimlocks have something going on.
Troll
Speaking of dumb, dirty savages... trolls! Trolls are very different across different media, depending on just how different they want to portray them. The term 'troll' is so ingrained in Western pop culture that most fantasy franchises have their version of trolls, but they're also a creature that designers always try and take liberties with. Whether it be the gangly, tusked tribal voodoo-practitioners from Warcraft, to the rocky-exterior mercenary-like bridge guardians from Witcher, or the three-eyed yeti-like beasts from Elder Scrolls... just how sentient they are, or even their size, vary from franchise to franchise. D&D Trolls are basically gangly, green-skinned giants that are pretty tall, being basically 'small giants', lurking in swamps and caves to catch anything they can eat. They're noted to be intelligent enough to know that they will work for food, but are pretty much at the bottom of the rung of 'dumb huge beasts, being employed and subjugated by orcs, giants, hags, and even ogres.
One thing that D&D trolls consistently have is the ability of regeneration, because they basically have a Wolverine-esque ability to regenerate their flesh and bones, and even regrow decapitated limbs (and even heads, depending on the edition), and sometimes the body parts will act on their own. Only acid and fire can curb this regenerative ability, making them an interesting inventory-based enemy to fight against. While the 5th Edition Monster Manual only describes the basic troll, it also notes that trolls are particularly susceptible to mutation, hinting at the many, many disparate variations of trolls that have existed ever since the 1st Edition. We won't see any of these mutations in 5E until some of the later bestiaries. They can sometimes also gain aspects of the creatures they eat, although this is apparently pretty rare. My favourite troll, I think, has to be the 2nd Edition artwork, which looks like some hideous beast out of a Roald Dahl book, although I do like the look of both the warty, hunch-backed 4E trolls and the lankier 5E creature. I do like the little regeneration ability, it helps to make the trolls feel a lot more unique compared to the sheer glut of giant humanoids that populate the D&D world.
Umber Hulk
Another bug creature, the Umber Hulk is an... interesting monster. Originally depicted as just being a muscular chunky dude with the face with a bunch of insectoid parts attached to it, subsequent editions have made the Umber Hulk's main body look a lot more bug-like, while keeping the proportions decidedly a lot more... gorilla-esque. It's a 'hulk', after all! The Umber Hulk's general look has remained similar since 2E, where they're basically a gorilla-esque humanoid with a bug face vaguely based on a stag beetle, with massive chitinous armour and bug legs. It's a completely different take of a bug-based humanoid compared to the Thri-kreen (which is essentially a bug standing up and given human proportions) or the Ettercap (which is a lumpy human with a spider face), straddling the middle ground in terms of design aesthetics on just how much of the creature is 'bug' and how much of it is 'humanoid'. Also, I absolutely love the very buggy bristles that the Umber Hulks are consistently drawn with. Overall, a pretty fun design, and I do like the contrast between the fragile-looking but threatening pincer fangs, compared to the brutish, chunky arms.
The Umber Hulk is pretty big, and established to be a burrowing monster similar to the Bulette or Purple Worm, bursting out of the ground and attacking adventurers in caves. Somewhat surprising to a creature who you'd think is a simple melee fighting monster, however, is the fact that the Umber Hulk has a unique feature of being able to scramble the minds of anyone that looks into its eyes, which is definitely not a feature you'd expect from a hulking brute of a bug-man. The Monster Manual describes the Umber Hulk almost as a supernatural, unknown boogeyman that murders and kills exploring parties and miners, with the survivors of the assault remembering nothing about the creature that attacks it. I remembered that 4th Edition added an extra bit of detail about how the Umber Hulks are such an ancient race that they spontaneously sprouted from the matter in the midst of the gods creating the universe, or something. A pretty interesting random power to give to this bug monster, but one that definitely ends up making it feel a bit more flavourful than just "big scary bug muscleman".
Unicorn
More legends portray unicorns as badasses, so they get a more powers than their other good-aligned majestic horse, the pegasus. Again, I really don't have a whole ton to say here -- it's definitely a very common trope in fantasy and one I welcome in the basic 'core' monsters, but I really don't have a whole ton to say about the unicorn beyond the fact that it's neat. It does most of the things that you expect a unicorn to do, being good-aligned, intelligent, having healing properties, wandering realms, and only allowing those that are worthy to mount it. The different editions wiffle-waffle on what the unicorn is, with 3E describing it as a 'magical beast', 4E describing it as a horse from the fey realms, and 5E straight-up considering it a celestial. I do like that D&D's Unicorns aren't weaklings by any stretch, being noted to be absolutely brutal in hunting down evildoers that make the mistake of entering their territories. I do like the pretty fun writeup for the unicorn in 5E, which honestly boils down to it having a similar lore to a treant or a dryad as the protector of sacred groves, but the description of it knowing every single thing going on in the place that the gods have charged it to protect is pretty well-written. They're surprisingly tough, having a whole load of neat abilities and even have legendary actions! Unicorns are so favoured by gods that any who slay them are likely to become targets of a god's retribution, although, of course, their horns are a very powerful magical ingredients. Also, unicorns will only allow those chosen by their gods to mount them, usually the likes of paladins.
Vampire
Another bit of blending of classical gothic horror into fantasy is the vampire, which, somehow, ends up fitting particularly well into all the knights and dragons and kings and liches that's running around. After all, vampires are just another flavour of undead, right? Just one that has some amazing class. Originally envisioned as essentially just Dracula in 1E and 2E, from 3rd Edition onwards we end up having vampires that alternate between, well, Nosferatu to gaunt skeletal spellcasters with the most gothic outfits ever, to my personal favourite, the classy, dressed-up-like-nobility barons and baronesses that barely look distinguishable from an anemic noble, and command powers both political and magical. These last types of vampires seem to be what D&D's 5th edition are pushing towards, and certainly part of it ends up thanks to the relative popularity of Count Strahd von Zarovich, star villain of the Ravenloft setting of the original D&D, and has basically appeared in some form on-and-off throughout the various editions. And while the specifics of powers have varied depending on how many features the game designers want the vampires to have, they've always been equipped with a tonne of vampiric powers drawing on decades of vampire depictions in media. Essentially, vampires sort of form the upper echelon of undead main villains alongside liches and mummy-lords in 5E.
And thanks to the sheer amount of vampire depictions in media, your GM is actually free to pick and choose which specific amount of vampiric tropes they want to toss at you. The basic 5E vampire has a bunch of fun vampiric powers, of course -- charming abilities, shapeshifting into mist or bats, climbing onto walls and ceilings like a psychotic spider, biting and sucking blood, transforming the corpses of those it kills into lesser vampires, and summoning swarms of bats/rats/wolves. Also, a bunch of weaknesses, like the classic burned-by-the-sun, being disabled if he/she is staked in the heart with wood in their resting place, and being unable to stand running water. Plus, we get some additional fun fluff properties, where they are unable to enter someone's home uninvited, they don't cast shadows or reflections and they are bound to a coffin or grave site that they must spend some time resting in the day. A lot of these later ones are actually a bit unconventional, and I definitely was surprised to find out that D&D vampires are weakened and actually take damage by running water... and, again, a lot of these properties may be flexible depending on the setting. Maybe your GM rules that the vampires are not burned by sunlight, they just lose some of their abilities. Maybe they don't have to stay in their coffin throughout the entire day, so long as they avoid the sunlight.
And, again, vampires are so versatile and variable in fiction that GM's are free to pick whichever version of vampire they want to choose. Maybe the vampire terrorizing the town acts like a ravenous serial killer, barely being better than an animal as it kills the beggars and vagabonds of the city to satiate its hunger. Maybe the vampire you're facing is actually the baron of the land, relatively benign and using the prisoners in the stockades to slake its hunger for blood. Maybe it's a part of an intelligent coven slowly building an army of vampire-spawn in the sewer system of the city. Maybe it's just a template to make a different sort of NPC be just that extra-powerful. Maybe it's a James Bond style charming villain who's just as likely to shake the hands of your adventurers during a dinner party with the nobles of the land, and you don't even realize that the suave NPC turns out to actually be a vampire, and one of your party members is charmed. Some of my favourite D&D-related material had great mileage out of their vampiric villains.
While the 5E Monster Manual does describe how vampires are twisted in how they see the world, there's enough ambiguity to allow vampires to essentially continue on with the same personality they had in life, and D&D's various editions tended to be vague on whether upon transformation into a vampire, your character remains the same, or if they are inherently transformed by the dark energies. Again, it's specific to the setting, which means... yes, maybe your GM will allow your character to be a vampire. Just be prepared to invest in umbrellas and hoods and whatnot.
Vampire Spawn
We're not over yet! Since 3E, vampires that kill a person can choose to raise them as vampire spawn, which are essentially lesser vampires. They are far more ravenous and have less control over their hunger, but are completely subservient to the vampire that sired them. Their relationship with their creators could either be antagonistic, or friendly, depending on the circumstances that the vampire spawn was created, and 5E notes that if the vampire spawn is allowed to draw blood from its master, then it will be transformed into a free-willed, independent vampire. Again, it's up to you and your GM just how much of these vampiric properties and tropes you want to work into your story. Vampires can easily end up being the main villain of a campaign for sure!
Water Weird
Water Weirds are... well, weird! I've never actually seen the word 'weird' be used as a noun, and apparently it's an archaic term for 'fate', 'destiny' or 'soothsayer', neither of which really applies here. Introduced all the way back in the 1E's Monster Manual, the Water Weird was a sentient serpent-like being that rises up of a body of water to protect a part of a dungeon or castle, bursting out of an innocuous pool to drag interlopers down and drown them and feed on them. 2E ended up making it part of the 'elemental water-kin', making them lesser elementals under the command of other water spirits like Nereids. 3E... ended up expanding the Weirds into encompassing all the elementals, giving us variations for each elemental, but 3E's Weirds end up being ladies made up of water and wind, which... sort of feel bizarrely redundant with the large amount of nymphs, dryads, nereids and other sorts of sexy-naked-women-made-out-of-the-elements out there. Not a big fan of 3E's Weird. 5E's Weird ends up going back to the water snake, but hoo boy look at that absolutely awesome-looking creature, with a body that looks more like some sort of aquatic dinosaur or dragon with two long tendrils hanging down from its beak-like mouth. Pretty damn cool, and certainly a much-needed reversal to the Water Weird's roots. Ultimately, a pretty damn cool water elemental! There's not much lore to this dude other than 'it's an elemental, it's essentially created/contracted to guard a location, that's about it.'
Wight
'Wight' is sort of a term that originally meant just an unfortunate dude, until Tolkien used the term Barrow Wight to describe undead beings in crypts and whatnot. D&D ended up borrowing the term 'wight' to represent one of the many, many types of undead monsters, and thanks to Game of Thrones, 'wight' has essentially became almost as commonplace as 'lich' or 'revenant' among fantasy genre. D&D's been using wights for decades, though! In a fun little nod to the origin of the actual term 'wight', even the Monster Manual notes that the word 'wight' originally didn't refer to undead. Wights in 5E are mortals that, upon their dying breath, are unable to let go of their desire and vanity, and cry out to dark forces like the demon lord Orcus, asking to be transformed into an undead being. And lo, they become wights, which are essentially reanimated corpses, but with all the memories and abilities they had when they were alive... just without any of the fancier abilities that the coolest undead dudes like liches and vampires have. A wight's special feature in combat is the ability to essentially drain life energy from the living by touch, and, like many other undead, they hide from the sun although they don't quite burn-in-the-sun like specters or vampires. They hide in tombs and catacombs, and those they slay transform into zombie minions, or they serve as minions of greater undead creatures. They are essentially the 'slightly stronger than the shambling dead' sort of enemies, and, well... it's a neat little variation! They also essentially look like just any other reanimated corpse, and they seem to be as intelligent as how they were when they're alive, so they may very well masquerade as just part of a bunch of lesser zombies that moan and groan, when suddenly -- surprise life drain!
Will o' Wisp
Another creature whose appearance has been consistent as floating balls of light, the Will-o'-Wisp have undergone a lot of changes over the various editions, alternating between being air elementals, fey creatures, or, in 5E, undead spirits of evil people who perished in anguish and misery, and are trapped in places seeped in sorrow and misery. What's consistent is that these glowing balls of light are always evil, and are always asshole tricksters. I don't remember the specifics and this article's gone long enough without me going into the five different incarnations of Wisps, but 5E has Wisps as evil spirits that pretend to offer hope, resembling lantern lights, and luring travelers to come to what they think is safety... when instead, they're hovering over quicksand, dangerous swamps, or the lairs of monsters. They feed on the suffering and the death throes of their victims, transforming them into a new wisp.
Honestly, these things aren't super-threatening or scary once your adventurers or players know what they are. They've got an inconvenient amount of immunities and resistances, sure, on account of being a ball of light, but ultimately they're not an actual threat. Instead, the threat is the fact that they've somehow lured your characters into the lair of a black dragon or an oni, and depending on the GM's skill of description, they might not even realize they're dealing with Wisps until it's too late. Not the biggest fan of the Wisps, but it's certainly a pretty interesting -- if assholish -- monster.
Wraith
Yet another different type of undead, where the wight is essentially a souped-up zombie, the wraith's a souped-up specter. Sure, the Monster Manual has different-looking artwork for them, with the wraiths consistently depicted as swirling spirits of dark shadow with a ghoulish, evil-looking face (I'm a huge fan of the 4E artwork, it's very dynamic), but good luck figuring out whether you're fighting a ghost, a specter, a wraith, an allip, a shadow, a nightshade, or something else entirely like an air elemental variant or a shadow demon or something. Wraiths are pretty neat, and they're essentially concentrated spirits made out of malice and negative energy, and one thing that can make you tell that what you're dealing with is a wraith is that its passing will cause nearby plants to wither and die, and fires to be put out. The creation of wraiths in 5E is... interesting. Apparently, humanoids that are destined to go to hell sometimes are so infused with negative energy that it "collapses in on itself and ceases to exist the instant before it can shuffle off to some horrible afterlife". Yes, not even a contract with Asmodeus is enough to prevent your evilness from collapsing upon itself to transform you into an evil shadowy torso, becoming essentially a moving, mindless void that just wants to kill all other life! There are a lot of ways that evil people can die and become undead in D&D it gets somewhat repetitive after a while.
Wraiths don't quite have the same memory or attachment to their former life like proper ghosts, though, and they basically operate similarly to skeletons -- maybe sometimes they mimic or give pause at something that they associate with their old life, but then they go straight into moaning and murdering again. Wraiths, upon killing other beings, apparently qualify for the "violent death" requirements for the creation of a specter, so in combat against a wraith, it'll reanimate anything that it kills as specters. The Monster Manual describes some wraiths as being powerful enough they command massive legions of the dead, and even if they are foiled, they often leave the lands bleached and blighted. Overall, pretty neat greater undead!
Wyvern
Y'know, we've had so many lesser and greater undeads, what about dragons? Are dragons just doomed to have their younger brethren be the 'lesser' minions? Turns out, well, wyverns exist! I've seen a lot of debate on whether this Game of Thrones/Skyrim bat-like anatomy of dragons with only hind legs and wings should be considered 'dragons' or 'wyverns', but honestly, the wyvern body shape are probably chosen since they're easier to animate and easier to base upon actual bats and birds to draw inspiration from. In D&D, wyverns are just a sub-type of dragons, being considered a 'draconic' creature, albeit a lesser one. (Except for 4E, which had the wyverns look like dragons but are actually reptiles. 4E's weird like that sometimes.) Wyverns are far less intelligent than their draconic cousins, although they're sentient enough to actually speak the draconic language.
In addition to being a big fuck-off flying lizard, wyverns also have a stinger tail with a potent poison, an exaggeration of the 'arrow-tipped tail' of the mythological wyvern. Due to their lower intelligence, wyverns are far more often used as mounts by warriors, and are far more easily tricked compared to their draconic cousins. Wyverns do fill a neat niche as 'lesser' dragons, an damn is that 5E artwork cool, and while I know other editions go overboard with the amount of 'lesser dragon' variants, wyverns are relatively simple and easy to incorporate into most settings.
Xorn
When I flipped through the 3.5E Monster Manual, I chanced upon the Xorn and brushed it off as one of the many bizarre 'let's see what kind of weird-ass abomination we can make!' in 3.5E. Then I encountered it again, in 4E's Monster Manual II, and in the very first Monster Manuals for 1E, 2E and 5E. I am legitimately and pleasantly surprised that despite a lot of the mockery leveled at some of the sillier monsters in the earlier editions, the Xorn (god even it's name is ridiculous) somehow is considered enough of a staple monster to show up as part of the core sets of basically every edition out there. Look at this thing! And I thought the Otyugh was weird. They go around in search for gemstones, and when they get stranded in the material plane, get pretty savage thanks to the lack of proper gemstones and minerals.
The Xorn are described as creatures from the earth elemental plane. Which, fair enough, there's no reason for creatures from other planes to look like what our brains think as 'normal' humanoids or beasts. In fact, I encourage it, even! Why should creatures living in the elemental planes look like regular creatures? Of course, they decided to go super-duper alien for the Xorn, and I love it. Just look at how fucking weird this thing is. A body shaped like a bulbous trash can, a massive maw on top, eyes dotting around the body, three jointed arms ending in claws, and three tripod-like legs. And just look at how different the Xorns look over the years! 1E Xorn looked like it was made out of bricks and rocks, with an almost fish-like maw. 2E Xornhad droopy arms and feet that are clustered together, and the end result looks like a sentient version of those egg pods from Alien. 3E Xorn is far more fleshier, with massive frog-like lips and limbs and eyes that are all over the place, looking like some hideous deflated balloon. 4E and 5E goes all-in on the 'rock creature' thing, making them very rocky, but also adding a pretty organic-looking set of fangs and mouth. Sort of reminds me of the modern-day Roper, too, in fact.
Xorns are just so fucking weird, and while I definitely wouldn't count on this thing on the top of my favourite monsters list, it's still a bizarre and charming and certainly strange addition to any battle sequence. Honestly, just look at this thing. It's amazing to go from expected monster tropes like wraiths and vampires and unicorns to this fucking thing. Xorns are great. The Monster Manual describes them as being honestly straight-up desperate for gemstones, begging and pleads and bargaining with adventurers (who always have coin in their person), trying their best to give some sort of information or aid because it's just so goddamn hungry. It's a genuinely interesting subversion from a creature that you think would be a simple bestial abomination to fight.
Yeti
Ah hey, the yeti. Yetis are pretty common cryptids in pop culture, based on a Himalayan legend. These abominable snowmen look like some sort of giant, monstrous gorilla/bear-man that lopes through snowstorms and haunts mountains. In D&D, Yetis are... well, they're horned, ape-like beasts. The description of their howls reverberating throughout the snowy blizzards in 5E's Monster Manual is pretty neat, and for some reason, they have a gaze that deals cold damage. The MM describes an interesting scenario where warring snow-dwelling tribes might release herd animals to lure the local yeti into attacking the rival tribe's settlement. We also get the description of the Abominable Yeti, which is three times as large as a regular yeti. Ultimately, I've honestly never been super-enamoured with the yeti, although I like that it exists in the Monster Manual. S'not as impressive as the white dragons or frost giants or remorhazes, but hey, sometimes you need a big monkey-bear to be a simple brutish encounter.
Yuan-ti: Abomination
And here we are with my favourite D&D race, the Yuan-ti. A bunch of snake-folk with a huge amount of sub-types and differing amounts of snakification. They're nominally evil, and have a vaguely Mayan/Aztec blood-sacrifice theme associated with them (even though their name sounds like it's probably based on something Asian, I don't think they're based on anything specific). The Yuan-ti has appeared in every single edition of D&D, and we've got a bunch of sub-races among them. Their main desire is to supplant and dominate all other races, and eventually rise into godhood as an entire race. Interestingly, though, the Yuan-ti were once human, and a tribe that worshiped snakes as totem animals ended up being warped into a religion that worshiped the serpent gods, causing them to become fanatics that indulged in blood sacrifice and cannibalisms, and eventually merged with snakes in dark, sorcerous rituals (older editions, I think, straight-up had them 'breed' with snakes), sacrificing their humanity to become like their serpent gods and to 'shed' their past selves like a snake sheds their dead skin. Hell, they don't even respect the gods they respect, seeking it as more of a means to gain power, and they will readily discard the gods and supplant them if they find the means to do so. After the creation of the first Yuan-ti civilization, the sheer amount of blood they shed from slaves and conquered nations to transform every single person in the nation ended up causing a variety of enemies to attack them and ended up causing the yuan-ti to withdraw to various underground temples or forest settlements. In modern day, Yuan-ti empires are filled with snake-folk of various forms, and the various Yuan-ti civilizations tend to try and present themselves with promises of wealth and power, lulling other societies that have forgotten about the dark past of their race into trusting them, using manipulation and infiltrators to make allies since they know that they cannot afford open warfare.
Yuan-ti consistently get a lot of words written about them in all editions, and I'm going to draw a bit from Volo's Guide to Monsters specifically for the 5E incarnation. Essentially, in separating emotion from intellectualism, the Yuan-ti view themselves as the most enlightened beings in the world. They understand how to manipulate emotions in the non-snakey races, and they work off the fact that 'lesser lives are cheap'. They don't waste the lives of Yuan-ti Purebloods (they've got non-yuan-ti slaves for fodder, after all), but they work off the fact that the lower-caste are more disposable than the upper-caste. Their modus operandi is infiltration, as mentioned before, and they put so little care on the lives of anything that's not yuan-ti that they're happy to commit dishonourable and deceitful acts. Harm children, sacrifice lives, mind control... the only thing that they draw a line in the sand for is the sort of senseless slaughter. They want to dominate and subjugate, after all, not to mindlessly wipe out everything. They don't even needlessly bully and torment their slaves, because, hey, it's not the pragmatic thing to do. Best to let them be content, and only be mean to them when it's sacrifice time.
Despite their different sub-races, they all can breed, although all females will lay eggs no mater how human they look. Best not to think too much about the specifics, really. Interbreeding between different yuan-ti types apparently always produced eggs of the 'lesser' type. Apparently, rituals exist to 'level up' Yuan-ti so they can become a greater subtype, but it's expensive and very rarely done. In older editions (or maybe that's a 3E thing?), Yuan-ti are also one of the races with psionic abilities, but in 5E they're just snake-dudes.
The three basic Yuan-ti sub-types are the Abomination, the Half-blood and Pure-blood. The Yuan-ti Abomination is the most iconic-looking one, basically being a massive snake with the muscular torso and arms of a human. They're the highest caste of the Yuan-ti society, being the closest to actually being a serpent. In addition to being a giant fucking snake with all of the powers of a snake, they're also spellcasters, and actually can shapeshift into a snake (which, uh... I'm not sure what the advantages are, honestly, their 'abomination' form has arms and weapons).
Yuan-ti Malison (Halfblood)
The Yuan-ti Malison, or "Halfblood", is introduced in 3E, and they're basically a hideous combination of human and snake-like features. In 3E, the Malison shown had the lower body of a snake, and the upper body of a humanoid, sort of like the traditional depiction of lamias. But in 4E and 5E onwards, the artwork tends to represent Malisons as muscle-men with snake heads (you can see a Malison in the foreground of that 4E artwork). 5th Edition still notes that three versions of Malisons exist: "human body with snake head", "human upper body, snake lower body", and, the weirdest, "human body, but snakes for arms". I can't find any artwork of that last one, sadly, and that must be really weird, being just a regular dude, but your hand are snakes. How does that even work? Volo's describes two extra types: "human, but with one or more snake tails", and "human form, completely covered in scales". Okay?
The Malisons are essentially the middle caste of Yuan-ti society, and each 'type' of Malison gets a different set of attacks. They're also spellscasters, but also sometimes end up as warriors. I've always liked this fact about the Yuan-ti, because they're not just a race of uniform snake-people. There are many subtypes, and there's a neat little hierarchy and this really ends up making this race of crazy snake-men feel more nuanced, so to speak.
Yuan-ti Pureblood
And, of course, there's the "Pureblood", the lowest caste of Yuan-ti society, and it's so weird to have something called 'pureblood' be treated as a negative thing, and for the highest-caste of the race to be called an 'Abomination'. Honestly, I've always assumed that Pureblood, Half-blood and Abomination are the human (or, well, non-yuan-ti) names for the sub-races, and the Yuan-ti probably name the sub-races in reverse.
These Yuan-ti purebloods are essentially almost human-like, but with features that hint at its true reptilian nature. Snake-like eyes, scaly skin, forked tongue... the 5E Pureblood appear to only have snake eyes and slight scaling on her shoulders, which is a bit easier to hide, perhaps, but the 3E pureblood straight-up have glossy snake skin and a general posture and features that are just not quite right. They're the weakest among the yuan-ti, yet they're still able to do basic snake-people spells like spray poison and the like. The Purebloods are still as thoroughly evil as their kind, though, masquerading and infiltrating other lands to gather information or kidnap sacrificial victims for their Yuan-ti culture. Volo's describe Purebloods as being able to interbreed with humans (the resulting child is always a Pureblood), but the Purebloods are disgusted by it, and will only do so if "seduction is necessary" for their machinations. Purebloods are noted to still be treated fairly, because they are still Yuan-ti, but are very much second-class citizens compared to the Malisons and Abominations.
The Purebloods are one of the playable 'monstrous races' suggested in Volo's, and thanks to some innate resistances and bonuses, apparently Yuan-ti Warlocks are pretty dang game-breaking if you min-max things properly. It's actually interesting, roleplaying as a Yuan-ti, because, pureblood or otherwise (you know everyone wants to play as the cooler-looking malisons and abominations), they always feel superior to humanoids in the same way that "humans feel superior to chicken or rabbits". Of course, the Purebloods, due to the nature of their jobs, sometimes end up having to walk among humanoids, so they know how to socially interact... but they're still ultimately viewing themselves as a proper, chosen sentient being speaking to meat. So, again, it's interesting to decide whether your Yuan-ti character is just someone forced to interact with humanoids meat because of the nature of their job to so for the glory of the Great Yuan-Ti Empire? Or are you one of those Rebel-Against-My-Evil-Race or Exile-From-My-Evil-Race types? And even then, do your character still have a haughty sense of superiority compared to the lesser races? All pretty interesting questions to ask, and honestly, due to the bizarre, alien nature of the Yuan-Ti culture, all pretty fun to roleplay.
Of course, the Abominations, Halfbloods and Purebloods aren't the only Yuan-ti subtypes. My favourite's probably the Anethema, particularly the 4E incarnation of it, but we'll talk about the other sub-types when we review Volo's. This article's already long as it is. As you can tell... I do like the Yuan-ti. They're cool, creepy snake people.
Yugoloth (a.k.a. Daemons): Arcanoloth
Originally called "daemons" in 1E, during the ban on anything that vaguely sounds satanic throughout 2E, the "daemons" were sort of... an afterthought, really. Introduced in the original Fiend Folio, they always played second fiddle in the amount of lore and variations compared to their demonic and devilish cousins. Even their role as being the 'neutral evil' fiend is sort of one that's pretty hard to define. Hell, 4th Edition did away with yugoloths entirely, shunting their members into the 'demon' and 'devil' category. And while this is understandably very unpopular with the fans, sometimes it's not hard to see why that decision is considered and even done at all. In 5E, yugoloths are given the identity as fickle mercenaries, who are basically the embodiment of selfishness and avarice, and will do anything as long as they get something out of it. Basically, they're a mid-way point between demons and devils -- they can be reasoned with (unlike demons), but can't be trusted to keep their word (unlike devils). In practice, though, so many demons and devils break the mold of the "always chaotic evil" and "always bound to laws" respectively that it's a bit hard to even think of this trait as unique at all. While 5E restored the yugoloths as their own group of fiends, they still kind of got the short end of the stick, only having four members of their kin represented in the basic Monster Manual.
5E's backstory tells us that the yugoloths were created by a group of night-hags under the direction of the Archdevil Asmodeus, in order to create a new brand of fiends not bound to the laws of the Nine Hells. They hang out in Gehenna, instead. Originally, the entire race of the yugoloths were subservient to these powerful night-hags, who recorded all the names of the yugoloths and thus bound the race to them... but the expected evil infighting and whatnot caused the alliance to dissolve, and the yugoloths are free. These Books of Keeping end up being sort of a holy (unholy?) relic among the Yugoloths. Oh, and they also work under the same "regenerate in their home plane/only killable in their home plane" rule that demons and devils work with.
Anyway, our first Yugoloth is the Arcanoloth, known as the "Arcanodaemon" in 1E. They're... uh... they're fox-men! Honestly, just showing me the artwork, particularly the farless sinister-looking 5E Arcanoloth, I would be hard-pressed to call this a fiend and not one of the many funky animal people that dot the lands of D&D. The original 1E Arcanodaemon had devil horns and sinister fangs, while 2E's Arcanoloth had far creepier hollow eyes. The Arcanoloths are essentially shapeshifters, though, and they act like the fiendish equivalent of a swindler, so I guess it is appropriate that the Arcanoloth has such a non-assuming appearance? They're manipulators and spellcasters who hunt for more power and knowledge, taking delight in maintaining the contracts and accounts of lesser yugoloths. So great is their charisma and their command of negotiation and language that they are often hired to broker treaties and alliances, or to subjugate such talks. It's a pretty interesting little villain for sure, and I do like the idea of a daemonic entity sneaking into an intricate political situation to either help defuse conflict or to incite conflict... for a price. Definitely a fun RP villain for sure.
Yugoloth: Ultroloth
Where Arcanoloths are the smart manipulators among the Yugoloths, the Ultroloths are the strong warriors. Their appearance has differed a lot from edition to edition, going from a somewhat Gray-alien-esque, mouthless gangly being in 1E, to this bizarre long-headed robed figure with tiny eyes in 2E, to various flavours of bizarre humanoids with an elongated cranium... 4E's Ultrodemon, in addition to making him a demon, ended up giving him a pair of creepy skull-mouth, but I've always thought that the consistent, mouthless alien appearance that the Yugoloth had in all other editions to be far creepier than yet-another-snarling-demon-man. I really love 5th edition's Ultroloth, where it keeps a lot of the bizarre sinisterness of the original two editions, while throwing in a bit of somewhat alien-inspired vibes into the whole deal. He's also gotten a bunch of neat robes in the process, too! Those eyes apparently have some disabling powers. The Ultroloths are the ultimate mercenaries, often hired by either devils or demons to harass their rivals, and when they're not doing that, they fight among themselves to enhance their own station. When they're not doing that, apparently they go around to other planes to become crime bosses. The Monster Manual's words, not mine.
Apparently the leader of the Yugoloth race as a whole is a particularly mighty Ultroloth called the General of Gehenna, who wanders the wastes of Gehenna as a mythical figure among the yugoloths, and all yugoloths aspire to serve under him. The General of Gehenna's source of power, among others, is the fact that his name is not recorded in the Book of Keeping.
Yugoloth: Nycaloth
Treant
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| Treant (3E) |
Treants are able to root their massive humanoid legs back into the soil, and basically end up gaining a far better appreciation and awareness of its surroundings, being able to 'see' events taking place miles away. They aren't hostile and even classified as 'chaotic good', but try to carelessly cut down trees or fuck with their patch of forest, and suddenly the treants will animate the surrounding forests and then start whacking you to death. Because while 'ha ha it's a tree with a face' is funny, being hit by a goddamn tree is not funny at all. Overall, there's not a whole ton of innovation they do with the base treant, but there doesn't need to be. It's an ancient living tree that protects its forest.
Troglodyte
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| Troglodyte (4E) |
Troll
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| Troll (2E) |
One thing that D&D trolls consistently have is the ability of regeneration, because they basically have a Wolverine-esque ability to regenerate their flesh and bones, and even regrow decapitated limbs (and even heads, depending on the edition), and sometimes the body parts will act on their own. Only acid and fire can curb this regenerative ability, making them an interesting inventory-based enemy to fight against. While the 5th Edition Monster Manual only describes the basic troll, it also notes that trolls are particularly susceptible to mutation, hinting at the many, many disparate variations of trolls that have existed ever since the 1st Edition. We won't see any of these mutations in 5E until some of the later bestiaries. They can sometimes also gain aspects of the creatures they eat, although this is apparently pretty rare. My favourite troll, I think, has to be the 2nd Edition artwork, which looks like some hideous beast out of a Roald Dahl book, although I do like the look of both the warty, hunch-backed 4E trolls and the lankier 5E creature. I do like the little regeneration ability, it helps to make the trolls feel a lot more unique compared to the sheer glut of giant humanoids that populate the D&D world.
Umber Hulk
Another bug creature, the Umber Hulk is an... interesting monster. Originally depicted as just being a muscular chunky dude with the face with a bunch of insectoid parts attached to it, subsequent editions have made the Umber Hulk's main body look a lot more bug-like, while keeping the proportions decidedly a lot more... gorilla-esque. It's a 'hulk', after all! The Umber Hulk's general look has remained similar since 2E, where they're basically a gorilla-esque humanoid with a bug face vaguely based on a stag beetle, with massive chitinous armour and bug legs. It's a completely different take of a bug-based humanoid compared to the Thri-kreen (which is essentially a bug standing up and given human proportions) or the Ettercap (which is a lumpy human with a spider face), straddling the middle ground in terms of design aesthetics on just how much of the creature is 'bug' and how much of it is 'humanoid'. Also, I absolutely love the very buggy bristles that the Umber Hulks are consistently drawn with. Overall, a pretty fun design, and I do like the contrast between the fragile-looking but threatening pincer fangs, compared to the brutish, chunky arms.
The Umber Hulk is pretty big, and established to be a burrowing monster similar to the Bulette or Purple Worm, bursting out of the ground and attacking adventurers in caves. Somewhat surprising to a creature who you'd think is a simple melee fighting monster, however, is the fact that the Umber Hulk has a unique feature of being able to scramble the minds of anyone that looks into its eyes, which is definitely not a feature you'd expect from a hulking brute of a bug-man. The Monster Manual describes the Umber Hulk almost as a supernatural, unknown boogeyman that murders and kills exploring parties and miners, with the survivors of the assault remembering nothing about the creature that attacks it. I remembered that 4th Edition added an extra bit of detail about how the Umber Hulks are such an ancient race that they spontaneously sprouted from the matter in the midst of the gods creating the universe, or something. A pretty interesting random power to give to this bug monster, but one that definitely ends up making it feel a bit more flavourful than just "big scary bug muscleman".
Unicorn
More legends portray unicorns as badasses, so they get a more powers than their other good-aligned majestic horse, the pegasus. Again, I really don't have a whole ton to say here -- it's definitely a very common trope in fantasy and one I welcome in the basic 'core' monsters, but I really don't have a whole ton to say about the unicorn beyond the fact that it's neat. It does most of the things that you expect a unicorn to do, being good-aligned, intelligent, having healing properties, wandering realms, and only allowing those that are worthy to mount it. The different editions wiffle-waffle on what the unicorn is, with 3E describing it as a 'magical beast', 4E describing it as a horse from the fey realms, and 5E straight-up considering it a celestial. I do like that D&D's Unicorns aren't weaklings by any stretch, being noted to be absolutely brutal in hunting down evildoers that make the mistake of entering their territories. I do like the pretty fun writeup for the unicorn in 5E, which honestly boils down to it having a similar lore to a treant or a dryad as the protector of sacred groves, but the description of it knowing every single thing going on in the place that the gods have charged it to protect is pretty well-written. They're surprisingly tough, having a whole load of neat abilities and even have legendary actions! Unicorns are so favoured by gods that any who slay them are likely to become targets of a god's retribution, although, of course, their horns are a very powerful magical ingredients. Also, unicorns will only allow those chosen by their gods to mount them, usually the likes of paladins.
Vampire
Another bit of blending of classical gothic horror into fantasy is the vampire, which, somehow, ends up fitting particularly well into all the knights and dragons and kings and liches that's running around. After all, vampires are just another flavour of undead, right? Just one that has some amazing class. Originally envisioned as essentially just Dracula in 1E and 2E, from 3rd Edition onwards we end up having vampires that alternate between, well, Nosferatu to gaunt skeletal spellcasters with the most gothic outfits ever, to my personal favourite, the classy, dressed-up-like-nobility barons and baronesses that barely look distinguishable from an anemic noble, and command powers both political and magical. These last types of vampires seem to be what D&D's 5th edition are pushing towards, and certainly part of it ends up thanks to the relative popularity of Count Strahd von Zarovich, star villain of the Ravenloft setting of the original D&D, and has basically appeared in some form on-and-off throughout the various editions. And while the specifics of powers have varied depending on how many features the game designers want the vampires to have, they've always been equipped with a tonne of vampiric powers drawing on decades of vampire depictions in media. Essentially, vampires sort of form the upper echelon of undead main villains alongside liches and mummy-lords in 5E.
And thanks to the sheer amount of vampire depictions in media, your GM is actually free to pick and choose which specific amount of vampiric tropes they want to toss at you. The basic 5E vampire has a bunch of fun vampiric powers, of course -- charming abilities, shapeshifting into mist or bats, climbing onto walls and ceilings like a psychotic spider, biting and sucking blood, transforming the corpses of those it kills into lesser vampires, and summoning swarms of bats/rats/wolves. Also, a bunch of weaknesses, like the classic burned-by-the-sun, being disabled if he/she is staked in the heart with wood in their resting place, and being unable to stand running water. Plus, we get some additional fun fluff properties, where they are unable to enter someone's home uninvited, they don't cast shadows or reflections and they are bound to a coffin or grave site that they must spend some time resting in the day. A lot of these later ones are actually a bit unconventional, and I definitely was surprised to find out that D&D vampires are weakened and actually take damage by running water... and, again, a lot of these properties may be flexible depending on the setting. Maybe your GM rules that the vampires are not burned by sunlight, they just lose some of their abilities. Maybe they don't have to stay in their coffin throughout the entire day, so long as they avoid the sunlight.And, again, vampires are so versatile and variable in fiction that GM's are free to pick whichever version of vampire they want to choose. Maybe the vampire terrorizing the town acts like a ravenous serial killer, barely being better than an animal as it kills the beggars and vagabonds of the city to satiate its hunger. Maybe the vampire you're facing is actually the baron of the land, relatively benign and using the prisoners in the stockades to slake its hunger for blood. Maybe it's a part of an intelligent coven slowly building an army of vampire-spawn in the sewer system of the city. Maybe it's just a template to make a different sort of NPC be just that extra-powerful. Maybe it's a James Bond style charming villain who's just as likely to shake the hands of your adventurers during a dinner party with the nobles of the land, and you don't even realize that the suave NPC turns out to actually be a vampire, and one of your party members is charmed. Some of my favourite D&D-related material had great mileage out of their vampiric villains.
While the 5E Monster Manual does describe how vampires are twisted in how they see the world, there's enough ambiguity to allow vampires to essentially continue on with the same personality they had in life, and D&D's various editions tended to be vague on whether upon transformation into a vampire, your character remains the same, or if they are inherently transformed by the dark energies. Again, it's specific to the setting, which means... yes, maybe your GM will allow your character to be a vampire. Just be prepared to invest in umbrellas and hoods and whatnot.
Vampire Spawn
We're not over yet! Since 3E, vampires that kill a person can choose to raise them as vampire spawn, which are essentially lesser vampires. They are far more ravenous and have less control over their hunger, but are completely subservient to the vampire that sired them. Their relationship with their creators could either be antagonistic, or friendly, depending on the circumstances that the vampire spawn was created, and 5E notes that if the vampire spawn is allowed to draw blood from its master, then it will be transformed into a free-willed, independent vampire. Again, it's up to you and your GM just how much of these vampiric properties and tropes you want to work into your story. Vampires can easily end up being the main villain of a campaign for sure!
Water Weird
Water Weirds are... well, weird! I've never actually seen the word 'weird' be used as a noun, and apparently it's an archaic term for 'fate', 'destiny' or 'soothsayer', neither of which really applies here. Introduced all the way back in the 1E's Monster Manual, the Water Weird was a sentient serpent-like being that rises up of a body of water to protect a part of a dungeon or castle, bursting out of an innocuous pool to drag interlopers down and drown them and feed on them. 2E ended up making it part of the 'elemental water-kin', making them lesser elementals under the command of other water spirits like Nereids. 3E... ended up expanding the Weirds into encompassing all the elementals, giving us variations for each elemental, but 3E's Weirds end up being ladies made up of water and wind, which... sort of feel bizarrely redundant with the large amount of nymphs, dryads, nereids and other sorts of sexy-naked-women-made-out-of-the-elements out there. Not a big fan of 3E's Weird. 5E's Weird ends up going back to the water snake, but hoo boy look at that absolutely awesome-looking creature, with a body that looks more like some sort of aquatic dinosaur or dragon with two long tendrils hanging down from its beak-like mouth. Pretty damn cool, and certainly a much-needed reversal to the Water Weird's roots. Ultimately, a pretty damn cool water elemental! There's not much lore to this dude other than 'it's an elemental, it's essentially created/contracted to guard a location, that's about it.'
Wight
'Wight' is sort of a term that originally meant just an unfortunate dude, until Tolkien used the term Barrow Wight to describe undead beings in crypts and whatnot. D&D ended up borrowing the term 'wight' to represent one of the many, many types of undead monsters, and thanks to Game of Thrones, 'wight' has essentially became almost as commonplace as 'lich' or 'revenant' among fantasy genre. D&D's been using wights for decades, though! In a fun little nod to the origin of the actual term 'wight', even the Monster Manual notes that the word 'wight' originally didn't refer to undead. Wights in 5E are mortals that, upon their dying breath, are unable to let go of their desire and vanity, and cry out to dark forces like the demon lord Orcus, asking to be transformed into an undead being. And lo, they become wights, which are essentially reanimated corpses, but with all the memories and abilities they had when they were alive... just without any of the fancier abilities that the coolest undead dudes like liches and vampires have. A wight's special feature in combat is the ability to essentially drain life energy from the living by touch, and, like many other undead, they hide from the sun although they don't quite burn-in-the-sun like specters or vampires. They hide in tombs and catacombs, and those they slay transform into zombie minions, or they serve as minions of greater undead creatures. They are essentially the 'slightly stronger than the shambling dead' sort of enemies, and, well... it's a neat little variation! They also essentially look like just any other reanimated corpse, and they seem to be as intelligent as how they were when they're alive, so they may very well masquerade as just part of a bunch of lesser zombies that moan and groan, when suddenly -- surprise life drain!
Will o' Wisp
Another creature whose appearance has been consistent as floating balls of light, the Will-o'-Wisp have undergone a lot of changes over the various editions, alternating between being air elementals, fey creatures, or, in 5E, undead spirits of evil people who perished in anguish and misery, and are trapped in places seeped in sorrow and misery. What's consistent is that these glowing balls of light are always evil, and are always asshole tricksters. I don't remember the specifics and this article's gone long enough without me going into the five different incarnations of Wisps, but 5E has Wisps as evil spirits that pretend to offer hope, resembling lantern lights, and luring travelers to come to what they think is safety... when instead, they're hovering over quicksand, dangerous swamps, or the lairs of monsters. They feed on the suffering and the death throes of their victims, transforming them into a new wisp.
Honestly, these things aren't super-threatening or scary once your adventurers or players know what they are. They've got an inconvenient amount of immunities and resistances, sure, on account of being a ball of light, but ultimately they're not an actual threat. Instead, the threat is the fact that they've somehow lured your characters into the lair of a black dragon or an oni, and depending on the GM's skill of description, they might not even realize they're dealing with Wisps until it's too late. Not the biggest fan of the Wisps, but it's certainly a pretty interesting -- if assholish -- monster.
Wraith
Yet another different type of undead, where the wight is essentially a souped-up zombie, the wraith's a souped-up specter. Sure, the Monster Manual has different-looking artwork for them, with the wraiths consistently depicted as swirling spirits of dark shadow with a ghoulish, evil-looking face (I'm a huge fan of the 4E artwork, it's very dynamic), but good luck figuring out whether you're fighting a ghost, a specter, a wraith, an allip, a shadow, a nightshade, or something else entirely like an air elemental variant or a shadow demon or something. Wraiths are pretty neat, and they're essentially concentrated spirits made out of malice and negative energy, and one thing that can make you tell that what you're dealing with is a wraith is that its passing will cause nearby plants to wither and die, and fires to be put out. The creation of wraiths in 5E is... interesting. Apparently, humanoids that are destined to go to hell sometimes are so infused with negative energy that it "collapses in on itself and ceases to exist the instant before it can shuffle off to some horrible afterlife". Yes, not even a contract with Asmodeus is enough to prevent your evilness from collapsing upon itself to transform you into an evil shadowy torso, becoming essentially a moving, mindless void that just wants to kill all other life! There are a lot of ways that evil people can die and become undead in D&D it gets somewhat repetitive after a while.
Wraiths don't quite have the same memory or attachment to their former life like proper ghosts, though, and they basically operate similarly to skeletons -- maybe sometimes they mimic or give pause at something that they associate with their old life, but then they go straight into moaning and murdering again. Wraiths, upon killing other beings, apparently qualify for the "violent death" requirements for the creation of a specter, so in combat against a wraith, it'll reanimate anything that it kills as specters. The Monster Manual describes some wraiths as being powerful enough they command massive legions of the dead, and even if they are foiled, they often leave the lands bleached and blighted. Overall, pretty neat greater undead!
Wyvern
Y'know, we've had so many lesser and greater undeads, what about dragons? Are dragons just doomed to have their younger brethren be the 'lesser' minions? Turns out, well, wyverns exist! I've seen a lot of debate on whether this Game of Thrones/Skyrim bat-like anatomy of dragons with only hind legs and wings should be considered 'dragons' or 'wyverns', but honestly, the wyvern body shape are probably chosen since they're easier to animate and easier to base upon actual bats and birds to draw inspiration from. In D&D, wyverns are just a sub-type of dragons, being considered a 'draconic' creature, albeit a lesser one. (Except for 4E, which had the wyverns look like dragons but are actually reptiles. 4E's weird like that sometimes.) Wyverns are far less intelligent than their draconic cousins, although they're sentient enough to actually speak the draconic language.
In addition to being a big fuck-off flying lizard, wyverns also have a stinger tail with a potent poison, an exaggeration of the 'arrow-tipped tail' of the mythological wyvern. Due to their lower intelligence, wyverns are far more often used as mounts by warriors, and are far more easily tricked compared to their draconic cousins. Wyverns do fill a neat niche as 'lesser' dragons, an damn is that 5E artwork cool, and while I know other editions go overboard with the amount of 'lesser dragon' variants, wyverns are relatively simple and easy to incorporate into most settings.
Xorn
When I flipped through the 3.5E Monster Manual, I chanced upon the Xorn and brushed it off as one of the many bizarre 'let's see what kind of weird-ass abomination we can make!' in 3.5E. Then I encountered it again, in 4E's Monster Manual II, and in the very first Monster Manuals for 1E, 2E and 5E. I am legitimately and pleasantly surprised that despite a lot of the mockery leveled at some of the sillier monsters in the earlier editions, the Xorn (god even it's name is ridiculous) somehow is considered enough of a staple monster to show up as part of the core sets of basically every edition out there. Look at this thing! And I thought the Otyugh was weird. They go around in search for gemstones, and when they get stranded in the material plane, get pretty savage thanks to the lack of proper gemstones and minerals.
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| 2E Xorn |
Xorns are just so fucking weird, and while I definitely wouldn't count on this thing on the top of my favourite monsters list, it's still a bizarre and charming and certainly strange addition to any battle sequence. Honestly, just look at this thing. It's amazing to go from expected monster tropes like wraiths and vampires and unicorns to this fucking thing. Xorns are great. The Monster Manual describes them as being honestly straight-up desperate for gemstones, begging and pleads and bargaining with adventurers (who always have coin in their person), trying their best to give some sort of information or aid because it's just so goddamn hungry. It's a genuinely interesting subversion from a creature that you think would be a simple bestial abomination to fight.
Yeti
Ah hey, the yeti. Yetis are pretty common cryptids in pop culture, based on a Himalayan legend. These abominable snowmen look like some sort of giant, monstrous gorilla/bear-man that lopes through snowstorms and haunts mountains. In D&D, Yetis are... well, they're horned, ape-like beasts. The description of their howls reverberating throughout the snowy blizzards in 5E's Monster Manual is pretty neat, and for some reason, they have a gaze that deals cold damage. The MM describes an interesting scenario where warring snow-dwelling tribes might release herd animals to lure the local yeti into attacking the rival tribe's settlement. We also get the description of the Abominable Yeti, which is three times as large as a regular yeti. Ultimately, I've honestly never been super-enamoured with the yeti, although I like that it exists in the Monster Manual. S'not as impressive as the white dragons or frost giants or remorhazes, but hey, sometimes you need a big monkey-bear to be a simple brutish encounter.
Yuan-ti: Abomination
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| 4E Yuan-ti |
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| Yuan-ti (2E) |
Despite their different sub-races, they all can breed, although all females will lay eggs no mater how human they look. Best not to think too much about the specifics, really. Interbreeding between different yuan-ti types apparently always produced eggs of the 'lesser' type. Apparently, rituals exist to 'level up' Yuan-ti so they can become a greater subtype, but it's expensive and very rarely done. In older editions (or maybe that's a 3E thing?), Yuan-ti are also one of the races with psionic abilities, but in 5E they're just snake-dudes.
The three basic Yuan-ti sub-types are the Abomination, the Half-blood and Pure-blood. The Yuan-ti Abomination is the most iconic-looking one, basically being a massive snake with the muscular torso and arms of a human. They're the highest caste of the Yuan-ti society, being the closest to actually being a serpent. In addition to being a giant fucking snake with all of the powers of a snake, they're also spellcasters, and actually can shapeshift into a snake (which, uh... I'm not sure what the advantages are, honestly, their 'abomination' form has arms and weapons).
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| Malison (3E) |
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| Malison (5E) |
The Malisons are essentially the middle caste of Yuan-ti society, and each 'type' of Malison gets a different set of attacks. They're also spellscasters, but also sometimes end up as warriors. I've always liked this fact about the Yuan-ti, because they're not just a race of uniform snake-people. There are many subtypes, and there's a neat little hierarchy and this really ends up making this race of crazy snake-men feel more nuanced, so to speak.
Yuan-ti Pureblood
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| Pureblood & Abomination |
These Yuan-ti purebloods are essentially almost human-like, but with features that hint at its true reptilian nature. Snake-like eyes, scaly skin, forked tongue... the 5E Pureblood appear to only have snake eyes and slight scaling on her shoulders, which is a bit easier to hide, perhaps, but the 3E pureblood straight-up have glossy snake skin and a general posture and features that are just not quite right. They're the weakest among the yuan-ti, yet they're still able to do basic snake-people spells like spray poison and the like. The Purebloods are still as thoroughly evil as their kind, though, masquerading and infiltrating other lands to gather information or kidnap sacrificial victims for their Yuan-ti culture. Volo's describe Purebloods as being able to interbreed with humans (the resulting child is always a Pureblood), but the Purebloods are disgusted by it, and will only do so if "seduction is necessary" for their machinations. Purebloods are noted to still be treated fairly, because they are still Yuan-ti, but are very much second-class citizens compared to the Malisons and Abominations.
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| Pureblood (5E) |
Of course, the Abominations, Halfbloods and Purebloods aren't the only Yuan-ti subtypes. My favourite's probably the Anethema, particularly the 4E incarnation of it, but we'll talk about the other sub-types when we review Volo's. This article's already long as it is. As you can tell... I do like the Yuan-ti. They're cool, creepy snake people.
Yugoloth (a.k.a. Daemons): Arcanoloth
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| Yugoloths (3E) |
5E's backstory tells us that the yugoloths were created by a group of night-hags under the direction of the Archdevil Asmodeus, in order to create a new brand of fiends not bound to the laws of the Nine Hells. They hang out in Gehenna, instead. Originally, the entire race of the yugoloths were subservient to these powerful night-hags, who recorded all the names of the yugoloths and thus bound the race to them... but the expected evil infighting and whatnot caused the alliance to dissolve, and the yugoloths are free. These Books of Keeping end up being sort of a holy (unholy?) relic among the Yugoloths. Oh, and they also work under the same "regenerate in their home plane/only killable in their home plane" rule that demons and devils work with.
Anyway, our first Yugoloth is the Arcanoloth, known as the "Arcanodaemon" in 1E. They're... uh... they're fox-men! Honestly, just showing me the artwork, particularly the farless sinister-looking 5E Arcanoloth, I would be hard-pressed to call this a fiend and not one of the many funky animal people that dot the lands of D&D. The original 1E Arcanodaemon had devil horns and sinister fangs, while 2E's Arcanoloth had far creepier hollow eyes. The Arcanoloths are essentially shapeshifters, though, and they act like the fiendish equivalent of a swindler, so I guess it is appropriate that the Arcanoloth has such a non-assuming appearance? They're manipulators and spellcasters who hunt for more power and knowledge, taking delight in maintaining the contracts and accounts of lesser yugoloths. So great is their charisma and their command of negotiation and language that they are often hired to broker treaties and alliances, or to subjugate such talks. It's a pretty interesting little villain for sure, and I do like the idea of a daemonic entity sneaking into an intricate political situation to either help defuse conflict or to incite conflict... for a price. Definitely a fun RP villain for sure.
Yugoloth: Ultroloth
Where Arcanoloths are the smart manipulators among the Yugoloths, the Ultroloths are the strong warriors. Their appearance has differed a lot from edition to edition, going from a somewhat Gray-alien-esque, mouthless gangly being in 1E, to this bizarre long-headed robed figure with tiny eyes in 2E, to various flavours of bizarre humanoids with an elongated cranium... 4E's Ultrodemon, in addition to making him a demon, ended up giving him a pair of creepy skull-mouth, but I've always thought that the consistent, mouthless alien appearance that the Yugoloth had in all other editions to be far creepier than yet-another-snarling-demon-man. I really love 5th edition's Ultroloth, where it keeps a lot of the bizarre sinisterness of the original two editions, while throwing in a bit of somewhat alien-inspired vibes into the whole deal. He's also gotten a bunch of neat robes in the process, too! Those eyes apparently have some disabling powers. The Ultroloths are the ultimate mercenaries, often hired by either devils or demons to harass their rivals, and when they're not doing that, they fight among themselves to enhance their own station. When they're not doing that, apparently they go around to other planes to become crime bosses. The Monster Manual's words, not mine.Apparently the leader of the Yugoloth race as a whole is a particularly mighty Ultroloth called the General of Gehenna, who wanders the wastes of Gehenna as a mythical figure among the yugoloths, and all yugoloths aspire to serve under him. The General of Gehenna's source of power, among others, is the fact that his name is not recorded in the Book of Keeping.
Yugoloth: Nycaloth
Nycaloths are the airborne warriors of the yugoloth race, and perhaps the only one among the 'base' yugoloths to look the most like a traditional demon-man, with bat-wings, horns, claws and a more-or-less humanoid figure. 3E and 4E gave the Nycaloth four arms instead of two, which I thought did a fair bit to make the Nycaloth less boring, but on the other hand I also understand why they would want to try and make the Nycaloth look a bit more basic. I prefer the far more distinctive-looking 3E/4E Nycaloth, personally. In combat, the Nycaloth is noted to be terrifying because it doesn't just fly, it also employs liberal usage of both invisibility and illusions to fuck with its enemies. Apparently, Nycaloths are the most loyal among the yugoloths, and will actually stay loyal to a contract as long as their master honours the terms of the contract. You got to have a fair amount of a mercenary race not be treacherous, after all.
Yugoloth: Mezzoloth
The previous three yugoloths were known in older editions as 'greater yugoloths', while there are a bunch of rank-and-file lesser yugoloths that literally just exist to fill up the ranks of the yugoloth army. Only one of those is present in basic 5E, and that's the Mezzoloth, which are noted to make up the bulk of the yugoloth population. They're bug-men! They have a combination of bug and roach like characteristics, and they just presumably troop around as massive bug-men armies holding their tridents and expelling toxic fumes just because. The original artwork for the Mezzoloth doesn't even look particularly buggy, being a bipedal thing with chicken legs and a beak, and it's not until 3E onwards that they were given an extra pair of hands and a far more bug-like texture on their arms and body. Pretty neat-looking, and while still being pretty disposable-looking troopers, their glowing red eyes does make them feel a wee bit more demonic than they otherwise would be. A pretty neat little bug demon-man monster. I actually don't have a whole ton to say about this -- they're neat, they have a distinct different look compared to the other fiend underlings, and they work pretty well as the disposable minions of the far more impressive-looking greater yugoloths.
Zombie
And here we are, the final monster with its own dedicated entry in the 5th Edition Monster Manual. Boy howdy we went through a lot of creatures, huh? And it's the humble zombie! As I mentioned before when reviewing the skeleton, these are the most basic and frankly weakest among the undead. They are shambling, half-rotten corpses that give out groaning moans and move with a single-minded desire to murder anything in its path. They're far dumber and far less intelligent than the already instinct-driven skeletons, and they quite literally only exist to shamble about and do the bidding of their necromancer masters. Zombies basically prevent a corpse from being restored back to life other than with higher-leveled spells, and retain no memory of their past life (so, no, zombies made from the body of a dead archer won't pick up the bow in the way that a skeleton would). The Monster Manual gives us a couple of fun horror movie tropes, noting that zombies could be soldiers slain from the battlefield, or maggot-ridden corpses in a graveyard that crawl out George Romero style, or bloated corpses that rise from where they died in swamps. Unlike skeleton boys, which at least have a rudimentary set of instincts and abilities, zombies are so dumb and single-minded that they ignore everything in their path in hunt for their prey, and you can easily lead zombies into the path of a trap or a river, since they're far too dumb to go around them.
The zombies are relatively simple, and they don't even have anything along the lines of "spreads the disease with a bite", since these are explicitly just corpses animated by necromantic magic. No, if you want a spreading 'plague' with a single touch, there are lycanthropes and slaadi for that. Hell, even disease-spreading ends up being taken over by ghouls instead. They're meant to be the simplest critters around as far as the undead heirarchy goes. Zombies are pretty much basic and simple, and will really only overwhelm your heroes when there's a lot of them, or if the zombies are created from sturdier stuff. Like...
The zombies are relatively simple, and they don't even have anything along the lines of "spreads the disease with a bite", since these are explicitly just corpses animated by necromantic magic. No, if you want a spreading 'plague' with a single touch, there are lycanthropes and slaadi for that. Hell, even disease-spreading ends up being taken over by ghouls instead. They're meant to be the simplest critters around as far as the undead heirarchy goes. Zombies are pretty much basic and simple, and will really only overwhelm your heroes when there's a lot of them, or if the zombies are created from sturdier stuff. Like...
Zombie Variants
5th Edition gives us various alternate zombies, with pretty neat artworks for the ogre zombie and the beholder zombie (not to be confused with the Death Tyrant), although, of course, in previous editions (particularly 4th Ed), you could have as many variations of zombies as a Resident Evil game. Check out that random winged zombie-man in the 4E artwork! Again, you can make zombies just out of anything. Zombie trolls, zombie dogs, zombie dragons, zombie griffons... Absolutely love the glazed-over eyes of that Beholder Zombie artwork, by the way. Basically, this is an excuse for your GM to pick and choose other monsters with abilities that complement a certain powerful undead-themed boss.
But, of course, the best zombo among the zombos:
T-REX ZOMBEEEE
Anyway, see you guys for the next segment, where we break down the far more interesting playable races in 5th Edition, as well as the dozen pages of beasts and whatnot at the end of the Monster Manual.
The 5E stuff for the creatures we covered here:
But, of course, the best zombo among the zombos:
T-REX ZOMBEEEE
Anyway, see you guys for the next segment, where we break down the far more interesting playable races in 5th Edition, as well as the dozen pages of beasts and whatnot at the end of the Monster Manual.
The 5E stuff for the creatures we covered here:
- Treant: Huge plant; chaotic good; CR 9
- Troglodyte: Medium humanoid - troglodyte; chaotic evil; CR 1/4
- Troll: Large giant; chaotic evil; CR 5
- Umber Hulk: Large monstrosity; chaotic evil; CR 5
- Unicorn: Large celestial; lawful good; CR 5
- Vampire: Medium undead - shapechanger; lawful evil; CR 13
- Vampire Spawn: Medium undead; neutral evil; CR 5
- Water Weird: Large elemental; neutral; CR 3
- Wight: Medium undead; neutral evil; CR 3
- Will-O'-Wisp: Tiny undead; chaotic evil; CR 2
- Wraith: Medium undead; neutral evil; CR 5
- Wyvern: Large dragon; unaligned; CR 6
- Xorn: Medium elemental; neutral; CR 5
- Yeti: Large monstrosity; chaotic evil; CR 3
- Abominable Yeti: Large monstrosity; chaotic evil; CR 9
- Yuan-ti Abomination: Large monstrosity - shapechanger yuan-ti; neutral evil; CR 7
- Yuan-ti Malison: Medium monstrosity - shapechanger yuan-ti; neutral evil; CR 3
- Yuan-ti Pureblood: Medium monstrosity - yuan-ti; neutral evil; CR 1
- Arcanaloth: Medium fiend - yugoloth; neutral evil; CR 12
- Mezzoloth: Medium fiend - yugoloth; neutral evil; CR 5
- Nycaloth: Large fiend - yugoloth; neutral evil; CR 9
- Ultroloth: Medium fiend - yugoloth; neutral evil; CR 13
- Zombie: Medium undead; neutral evil; CR 1/4
- Ogre Zombie: Large undead; neutral evil; CR 2
- Beholder Zombie: Large undead; neutral evil; CR 5
Out of curiosity, have you ever seen a Crap Guide to D&D? It's a fun little summary about Classes in D&D.
ReplyDeletehttps://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDnRMnDDjAzK5uZLidDUtHtD1iN06Qe0G
It is glorious. I found out about the creator, Jocat from when he guest-starred in the Unexpectables, one of the online D&D streams that I regularly watch. His series is pretty great!
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