Someone asked me why I don't put ratings here and it's honestly simply because I don't really feel that strongly about many of these monsters. Any given monster has so many different interpretations from edition to edition and from GM to GM, and I freely admit that I'm not the most well-learned in regards to D&D lore and flavour as a whole that I kinda feel that I'm way too much of a "casual" to really be rating these.
Click here for the previous part, covering Mind Flayers to Oni, featuring PC character classes.
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Ooze: Gelatinous Cube
The concept of slime or ooze like enemies have always been a neat one for me, and, of course, D&D has a wide range of oozes to choose from. The Gelatinous Cube, in addition to looking pretty tasty, has always been pretty fun-looking. They're part of their own unique classification of creatures, not being counted as a 'monstrosity' or 'aberration' or 'elemental'. 3E and 5E associate oozes with the demon lord Juiblex, but they're not even classified as demons! They're just oozes, and they are mindless, they goop around, and they tend to have acidic touch as they dissolve on their prey. There's just something neat about fighting a giant glob of gooey goop. Are they more like giant amoebas? Are they just living globs of jelly? Or a massive biofilm-style organism? Animated slime goop? Whatever the case, they're oozes, they're hard to fight with swords and fists, and when you hack them sometimes you cause the split-off parts to become smaller versions of themselves.
Honestly, how can you not love the Gelatinous Cube? Once just part of one of many 'oozes', like the Mimic, the Gelatinous Cube has became kind of a staple part of D&D, having appeared over the multiple editions. And it's something that honestly probably wouldn't make too much sense -- the whole point that this particular ooze is a giant block is because D&D's combat tended to make use of grid-squares, and it's this little convention that ended up with the Gelatinous Cube being, well, a cube. Throw in the near-constant depiction of Gelatinous Cubes having pieces of random hero gear inside them (the cube only dissolves the flesh) and it's basically tailor-made as a game enemy, yeah? It's pretty charming. And besides, y'know, just how charming is that name? "Gelatinous Cube"? Come on, even saying it is pretty dang fun. I've always liked the Gelatinous Cube due to how unapologetically part-of-the-game-world it is, and how unlike some of the older monsters, we don't get any sort of attempt to justify why the Gelatinous Cube is a cube. It just is.
Ooze: Black Pudding
Ever since the 1st edition, we've had multiple oozes listed under the 'ooze' banner. 3E went hog-wild with ooze variations, but there are a couple that's always consistently shown in these monster manuals. The Gelatinous Ooze. The Ochre Jelly. The Gray Ooze. The Black Pudding. And among the other goopy oozes, the Black Pudding is perhaps more deadly than the others, being a blob of black goop that just sneaks around before attacking any organic creature to dissolve them. Unlike the Gelatinous Cube, the Black Pudding will also dissolve metal and wood. They don't look particularly impressive, but 5th Edition gives us that awesome image of a Black Pudding just engulfing and consuming a helpless ogre.
Ooze: Gray Ooze
Gray Ooze actually has an origin! It's "stone turned to liquid by chaos". In practice, though, it's still kind of similar to the other oozes, except that they apparently like to move around like a snake, and they can't gloop around on walls and ceilings as well as the other ooze types. I love that 1E artwork showing the Gray Ooze just moving down the stairs... or is it just waiting for a foolish adventurer to walk up the stairs? 5th Edition gives us the Psionic Gray Ooze, a variant of a Gray Ooze that's lived for a long enough time that they end up developing psionic abilities by living around mind flayers and apparently mimicking their abilities. Okay! That's a neat addition to what used to be the most boring of the basic oozes.
Ooze: Ochre Jelly
Ochre Jelly looks kind of like a turd, huh. I love that 5th Edition artwork, it's like the jelly's waving to us! I just love any time someone describs an ooze monster as a 'jelly'. The Ochre Jelly is noted to be cunning like an animal to avoid large groups of enemies, waiting for there to be a great opportunity to attack a member of the group that breaks free. Like the Gelatinous Cube, they can only digest flesh. There were a lot more variations in the past editions, but honestly? They're kind of redundant and I do agree with the decision to pare down a lot of the more superfluous ones. One of the 1E oozes, the Green Slime, actually shows up in 5th edition, but not as a monster and more as a potential trap.
Orc
There are a lot of "evil brutish humanoids" races out there. Goblins and their ilk. Lizardfolk. Troglodytes. Trolls. Giants and ogres. Not to mention actually evil humans and elves. But none are quite as iconic as the orcs, the evil race as defined by Tolkien's work. While Tolkien's orcs are basically the epitome of an evil marauding force, evil but intelligent enough to understand wartime strategy and whatnot, in various fantasy settings they've grown to adopt a different identity, with Warcraft and Warhammer both being the biggest franchises that gave the orcs a huge unique flavour. And... again, like the goblin problem I talked about before, D&D's orcs felt pretty... simple. Originally depicted like pig-men or boar-men in 1E and 2E, they sort of spent some time trying to capitalize on Warhammer/Warcraft orcs while still trying to look different in 3E, before 4E and 5E eventually just shrugged and copy-pasted what's now the common pop culture appearance of orcs. There was some confusion on how more monstrous the orcs are supposed to look like compared to half-orcs, and since both orcs and half-orcs are just as likely to be a playable race, I guess the game designers just sort of shrugged and went "well, they have a lot of variation within their race, okay?"
D&D orcs are... well, they're savage raiders and pillagers that sort of went from lawful evil servitors of an organized raiding army to chaotic evil barbarians. They serve the evil one-eyed god Gruumsh, who, in their religion, was denied all of the territories by the gods of the other races, so Gruumsh declared that he and his people will burn all the beautiful parts of the world that the gods of the dwarves and elves have claimed. They move around in war-bands and tribes, and basically exist to pillage and raid, and work off a leadership-by-might mentality, they breed quickly to make their tribe as strong as possible, and only banding as massive hordes when there is a large enemy to plunder. Unlike most other races, though, orcs reject the notion of racial purity, and they proudly welcome any warrior from any race (as long as you're not a filthy elf) into their ranks, be it ogres, trolls, half-orcs or giants. Also, since Gruumsh is a one-eyed god (the elf god plucked out one of his eyes), some orc spellcasters will pluck out one of their eyes and offer it to Gruumsh in exchange for powerful spellcasting abilities, becoming unique warriors called "Eye of Gruumsh".
Again, other sourcebooks sort of go back on this and gives us examples of orc tribes that are cowed by a more reasonable but more powerful war chief, or orcs that actually end up building kingdoms and brokering a pact of peace with non-orc kingdoms, like King Obould Many-Arrows, a character from the Forgotten Realms setting -- the 5E Monster Manual suggests Obould Many-Arrows and characters like him to be an interesting adventure hook. Is it a smart and cunning orc that's biding his time to launch a surprise attack on the other civilizations? Or is he truly an orc who wants peace, but in doing so his tribe's earned the ire of Gruumsh and other orc tribes?
Orog
The 5th edition gives us an additional orc variant, the Orog, blessed by the orc goddess Luthic with intelligence and cunning. The Orog was previously briefly described in 2E as one of the many orc sub-types, and in 3E in a relatively off-handed manner. Orogs are... well, basically smarter, paler orcs that tended to live in the Underdark. They're sort of a way to give orc tribes a way for them to end up actually having some sort of tactical cunning since most orc war-leaders tended to mainly be just good in fighting and not much else. It's just that the orogs themselves tended to have such a detached worldview on anything that they are pretty likely to betray the tribes they've joined because the neighbouring orc tribe has more strength or something along those lines. The orogs are thus sort of a pariah sub-type among the orcs.
Otyugh
A lot of the earlier sillier monsters get a lot of flak from the D&D fandom for not being cool or awesome enough. But I am pleasantly surprised that some of them like the Grell or the Beholder or the Otyugh, despite on paper not really being any less silly than the Flumphs or Modrons or Thought Eaters, end up being popular enough to be included in every single edition of this game. And the Otyugh is perhaps one of the more bizarre entries because... well, to put it mildly, this thing is basically a creature that eats the poo of larger dungeon-dwelling creatures, essentially serving the role of something like a cockroach or catfish in the dungeon ecology. Sure, newer iterations tend to soften this by using terms like "refuse", "filth" and sort of trying to make them alternate between poo-poo and carrion, but hey, the Otyugh is a monstrous trash-dwelling tentacle-beast. Own that, Otyugh.
Clearly inspired by something similar to the Dianoga from Star Wars, the Otyugh isn't just a bunch of spooky tentacles... you actually fight the entire body, and said body is a wacky chunky set of crocodilian fang attached to a vaguely reptilian body. It's got three tentacles, and it takes a while for you to realize that one of those tentacles has three eyeballs, a particularly goofy-looking detail particularly in the very stylized and borderline-cuddly 2E Otyugh, or the far more grisly-looking 4E Otyugh. Apparently, they even have limited amounts of telepathy to try and pretend to be another creature and lure dumb adventurers to the pile of refuse they hide in. They are always consistently noted to live in symbiotic harmony if they live with larger creatures that employ them as essentially a living garbage disposal system. It's a poo-dwelling monster. They do play it down a lot, but I am genuinely surprised that with the more serious bend that D&D took in later editions, the Otyugh is still such a commonly recurring monster.
Owlbear
Speaking of silly-but-iconic monsters... the god damn Owlbear! Mixing two mundane animals to form a scary abomination of a monster is a no-brainer, people've been doing that since forever. Chimeras, Manticores, Sphinxes, Griffons, hell, even dragons to some extent. So, uh... here's the owlbear! All the musculature and ferocity of a bear and... and the angry, judgmental glare of an owl. God, just look at this thing. It's so ridiculous, it's a patently dangerous predator combined with a kooky-looking owl and I absolutely love it. Hell, the Owlbear doesn't even get wings out of the deal, just the owl face and a bunch of feathers. The official backstory for this thing is that it's made by a mad scientist, and, shit, yeah, it damn well looks like the insane creation of a particularly crazy scientist... although elves swear up and down that owlbears are apparently native to the feywild. Either/or, I guess. I absolutely love that utterly wretched looking 1st Edition artwork, it doesn't even look like any sort of natural combination of owl and bear! 3E and 4E tried way too hard to make the Owlbear look menacing and spooky, but thankfully, 5th Edition ends up embracing just how goofy the basic concept of the Owlbear is and just slapped a slightly-irritated owl face on a bear's body, and the more natural-looking bear body ends up actually making the 5th edition Owlbear look a fair bit more unsettling than the 3E Owlbear.
Speaking of which, I've only been talking about their visual appearance. In combat, these dumb-looking bird-bear fuzors are actually pretty devastating, particularly for lower-level parties.I do really like the little blurb that the 5th edition Monster Manual gives the Owlbear, noting just how feared of a reputation the owlbear has for its ferocity, aggression and generally ill temper, and the hoot of an Owlbear is apparently feared by all. Also, in addition to essentially acting like war beasts, it's possible but difficult to domesticate owlbears.
Pegasus
It's a horse with wings. It's really kind of unfortunate that the Pegasus is stuck between the Owlbear and the Peryton, two other far more fascinating and interesting-looking 'fusion' animals, because... well, the pegasus is pretty freaking boring. And it's not the poor pegasus' fault, it's just that pegasus are so commonly featured in fantasy settings that just a horse-with-wings is sort of... there, y'know? Apparently they are bred from the holier planes, and they will only allow good-aligned people to ride them. Definitely a pretty appropriate and badass mount for paladins and angels and the like for sure -- if I sound a bit down on the Pegasus, I apologize. I just find them kinda there, although part of my exhaustion with pegasi might stem from just how often they show up in M:TG's white offerings.
Peryton
I had to google if the Peryton was a real mythological creature, and it kinda is? I assume "The Book of Imaginary Beings" is the 1950's equivalent of a Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. In any case, the Peryton has shown up in most editions, only skipping out 4th Edition, and basically takes the concept of a "deer headed bird" to its ridiculous conclusion. 1E went for the goofiest-looking look, but 2E and 3E ended up giving the Bambi half of the Peryton a savage, brutal-looking maw. 5E goes for a slightly goofier look, but I feel part of why 5E Peryton feels so fancy is because of the far less drab colouration they have. I'm not sure why the specific combination of a deer and a giant colourful bird (I love the colours on 5E Peryton) ends up as a carnivorous monster -- with owls and bears, at least both of those are pretty brutal carnivores for their niches -- but I suppose the bird that the Peryton is based on is some sort of giant bird of prey? Also, the Peryton always goes for the heart when they attack and murder humanoids. Also, they have inexplicably powerful resistances against most non-magical weapons, so they're not just a goofy-looking bird.
Most interestingly, and it's a detail that I'm genuinely baffled how you could work into a setting, is that the shadow of the Peryton somehow appears as that of a human instead of the bizarre bird-deer form. So, uh... I'm not sure how this is going to play into an actual encounter. Does the adventuring party mistake a flying, swooping Peryton as Superman passing by or something? The 5E Monster Manual offers two possible origin stories, with the first being a boring "human transformed by curse and/or magical experiment gone wrong", while the second is a bardic tale about how there was a man whose infidelity caused his wife to go full yandere and murder her rival and eat her heart in some profane ritual, and the resulting murders caused the woman to be hanged, and the birds that fed on her transformed into the Perytons. But where did the deer part come from, then? Overall... yeah, there's a lot more to the Peryton than I thoguht there was, and this was, like the Nothic, another creature I just dismissed as another one of the many, many strange creatures that populate the world of D&D, until my GM sprung a couple of these crazy fuckers on us.
Pixie
Sprites, pixies, sylphs, brownies, leprechauns, nixies, grigs... there are a lot of 'tiny, mischievous fey creatures' in the world of D&D, and I've always felt like they were one of the less consistently portrayed ones. In 1E and 2E, Pixies are portrayed as being angry little elf-men in Legend of Zelda style clothing with butterfly wings that stab adventurers in their shins. In 3E, Pixies are just one of several type of "small fey" or Sprites. 4E and 5E go for a more interesting route, making them a fair bit more unique with butterfly wings, a culture that has them live in a lot of folk culture inspired stuff. Pixies are inquisitive and curious, and in the 5th Edition Monster Manual, is sort of the 'default' face for the more mystical parts of the fair folk. The Pixies will watch and observe those that wander into their territory, watching but never really interacting for fear of being captured and placed in a bottle (damn it Link) and they have a culture where they basically enact a fairy-tale style setting where everyone is a prince and princess, and they do whimsical fun things like rouse the plants and gather the sundew and spread pixie dust. A reference to how fairy dust have been portrayed in different stories, the 'pixie dust' left behind by these creatures can either make someone fly, fall into a slumber, or maybe even get really high. They're basically Tinker Bell, yeah?
The pixies are nominally 'neutral good', but they're also still fey creatures, and they're far more likely to have differing motivations depending on the individual as opposed to some other fey creatures. They like to play tricks and harmless pranks to gauge just how likely a certain group of travelers are going to respond to them. Whenever possible, they avoid conflict, and they essentially end up being more spellcasters with "fuck with you" style spells in combat. Also, good luck trying to hit a bunch of invisible, intelligent fairies the size of an insect with the ability to cast spells like polymorph, entangle and phantasmal force. The ever-popular Critical Role D&D show certainly had an awesome sequence where the party ended up coming into conflict with a group of pixies because of what essentially amounts to the pixies not really having a good understanding of 'normal' culture. Pixies are neat.
Pseudodragon
Lumped alongside other not-quite-dragons called "dragonets" in 1E and 2E and lumped alongside other not-quite-dragons called "drakes" in 4E, the poor Pseudodragon has been sort of a staple in all the editions, being... well, a teeny-tiny little dragon with a scorpion tail that, well, is about the size of your average housecat, if the 3E and 5E artwork are anything to go by. They are of dragon blood, but nowhere as intelligent as their actual-dragon cousins and definitely nowhere as powerful. The whole point of a Pseudodragon's existence is essentially just to serve as a cool familiar for the spellcasters of your group, and holy shit, that's certianly a pretty awesome thing to do! You have a cat-sized dragon as a pet. It's awesome. They live in secluded little caves and are reclusive, but like most cats and dogs, treat it well and the pseudodragon will remain loyal to you. They communicate with telepathy that allow them to share basic ideas, and this is basically what makes them ideal familiars, as they can communicate sight and sound over this link with their masters. While certainly not the most exciting enemy to fight, the Pseudodragon is a pretty cool 'flavour' creature either for your PC group or for an NPC to have as a pet.
Purple Worm
I'm not sure where the fantasy of a gigantic subterranean worm began. Was it Dune? Was it the Mongolian Death Worm? Tremors? Lovecraft's Dholes? Whatever the case, the Purple Worms are certainly a staple in D&D ever since their appearance in the very first monster manual, and I absolutely love that they retained the goofy-ass name of "Purple Worm" despite being a giant, terrifying death-monster that can consume entire adventurers in a single gulp. Their appearance have varied, with 1E going for a simple circular almost lamprey-like maw and a segmented body, 2E keeping the lamprey maw but giving it a sleek body, 3E going for an armoured body and a cool four-jawed maw, 4E giving it a more reptilian jaw and a more segmented body, and 5E giving it a somewhat more cavernous maw and multiple row of bony ridges... the purple worms are always pretty damn awesome looking, especially once 3E onwards kept portraying them as bursting out of the ground, coiling and ready to consume poor tiny humanoids. I'm not sure what my favourite Purple Worm artwork is... I tend to want to go with 5E, because that mouth is pretty badass, but 3E is also cool and I love the sheer wackiness of the original 1E design. In addition to being a big critter, they also have the ability to just straight-up gulp one of your adventurers through a 'swallow' mechanic.
The Purple Worm is yet another monstrous creature to hail from the Underdark, chewing through rock and blindly eating anything in its path, basically being a far, far more efficient and monstrous version of the Bulette. They are attracted by loud sounds, and they are apparently well-known for interrupting large battles between the many Underdark civilizations and completely fuck up battlefields by virtue of, y'know, being a big-ass giant worm. Apparently, all of the Underdark civilizations like the drow, illithid and duergar all maintain special wards to repel these purple worms. These creatures are meant to be treated as more like force of natures in the tunnels of the Underdark, creating brand-new tunnels as they charge through them in search for prey. They don't tend to have much in terms of lore, but I love them nonetheless. They're giant hungry worms that fuck everyone's shit up.
Quaggoth
Speaking of the Underdark... here's the Quaggoth, a race that shows up in every single edition, but every single time I see one of these I went, "oh, neat, is this a new race?" before realizing that, hey, they showed up in every single damn edition before. They're weird bear-men bred for slavery by the Drow, although the 5E Quaggoth has a far more hulking stance and a decidedly not-bear spiky face that makes it look more like some sort of weird, intelligent troll of sorts. 5E tells us that the proto-Quaggoth race was driven underground after numerous wars with elves, and eventually, the Drow enslaved the Quaggoth after luring them with promises of revenge against the elves. So kind of like the Grimlocks, but a fair bit more boring. There are apparently psionic variations, called Thonots, and the race as a whole practice cannibalism, believing that they can pass down desirable abilities to successors by this. They're a neat accessory to the Drow, I suppose, sort of serving as the meat shields for the Drow, but ultimately I'm really stretching to find anything interesting to say about them. I dunno. I just genuinely don't find the Quaggoths memorable at all.
Rakshasa
The term "Rakshasa" borrows from a specific type of creature in the Hindu and Buddhist religions, a race of shape-changers, and some of them were good, and some were evil. And... again, a bit of a disclaimer here about borrowing a term from a real-life religion's term, and all that. D&D's Rakshasas were tiger-men with fancy dresses and a love for hookah pipes. While the original 1E and 2E edition referenced a fair amount of real-life cultures, a lot of those were dropped and made more ambiguous in subsequent editions. Oh, and they have reversed hands, with palms facing outwards, just to throw in an extra layer of weirdness into the whole thing. They were pretty cool, though, despite their deceptively simple appearance of yet another beast-men race. See, while seemingly just being tiger-men, the Rakshasa in D&D were actually lawful evil fiends. The different editions vary on whether the Rakshasa were a breed of devils, or were just their own separate thing altogether, but what's certain is that they were bad news, and they were the expert in employing misdirection, infiltration and generally making liberal use of their shapeshifting powers to manipulate events to their favour. Rakshasas can take any guise it wants, although as a race they tend to be on the very proud side and always wants to take on the guise of a noble or a rich merchant. 5E's origin for the Rakshasa has them as former devils who were transformed due to a ritual to escape the Lower Planes.
The Rakshasas tended to indulge in the vices of humanoid flesh, and being relatively bound to the mortal plane, the traditional death-and-reformation that fiends can do is particularly painful for them. Even moreso than other demons and devils, Rakshasas are described to be super-vengeful and will explicitly go on a vendetta run against the person who killed him or her, even targeting their allies, friends and family specifically out of spite. Outside of 4E (where the Rakshasa were a race of tiger-men with far more warriors as opposed to devil-born fiend spellcasters), most Rakshasas tended to be villains that felt far more awesome as NPC's or as a recurring threat. They are decent spellcasting enemies, for sure, but the reason the Rakshasa is going to be dangerous or formidable is less about the fight you engage with them, but more about the simple style of how a Rakshasa villain is going to manipulate events in order to benefit it and to cause ruin and inconvenience to you and your allies, or to shapeshift into one of your allies to stab you in the face. Easily a prime material for a recurring villain if I've ever seen one. I've always found them to be pretty neat and cool, and while the concept of a reverse-hand tiger-man is pretty silly, I also found it to be such a neatly cheesy-yet-still-threatening 'true form' of these shapeshifting fiends.
Remorhaz
YEAH THIS GLORIOUS BEAST. The Remorhaz is a giant monstrous giant centipede monster, and since 3E onwards it has been depicted with a pretty badass appearance, with a massive weird cobra-like hood, a face with the most awesomely terrifying skull-bug face and four prominent tentacles, and, well, it's just a giant, scary kaiju-sized bug. And one of the most badass Remorhaz artworks is this Ralph Horsley piece from 3.5E's Monster Manual 2, featuring the Remorhaz bursting out of the snow all legs and fangs and antennae bristling about the place. I just really love the Remorhaz, y'know? It's a giant frost centipede the size of a dragon, and while power-level wise the Remorhaz is always going to play second fiddle to the actual big bads of the game, I love that the Remorhaz exists in the D&D world as just this giant creature that lives and prowls the colder regions of the world. The Remorhaz isn't just an icy creature, either, because its body is actually very hot and it bursts out of snow and ice in massive clouds of steam... and it uses this high internal body heat to melt its way through snow. Never mind the logistics on how such a massive creature is even able to find enough nutrition to keep that body going, let alone generate some Godzilla-style amount of internal body heat. The Remorhaz is described as an ambush predator, hiding deep underground and lowering its body temperature until it detects vibrations above, be it elk, polar bear, young white dragon or, of course, hapless bands of adventurers.
While the Remorhazes are ultimately (and sadly) not the most impressive enemies once you reach the double digits in levels, they apparently associate with Frost Giants and sometimes prowl white dragon lairs. Older versions of the Remorhaz seem to be going for a more dragon-like head and a snake like main body, but I really do appreciate them dropping it and going for a purely arthropod-based monster. Overall, one of the more visually spectacular original creations from D&D, I feel. We never got a whole lot of lore about the Remorhaz, but it's fine. Like the purple worm, its whole existence is just to be a big force of nature to ruin someone's day when they burst out of the ground to wipe out travelers and adventuring parties.
Revenant
"Revenant" is one of those words that could basically be any sort of undead creature, being yet another word that's equivalent to 'ghost'. In D&D, Revenants are essentially a more powerful version of a zombie, but going in a different direction than a ghoul. Where ghouls are just the undead version of a feral animal, the Revenant is driven by hate and anger of some soul who was killed in a cruel and undeserving fate, and their whole reason for coming back as an undead being is to seek revenge against those that wronged it. Also, in combat, revenants are pretty tough, being able to regenerate its wounds against anything that isn't fire or radiant damage. The spirit of the Revenant tends to inhabit its own body, but it's not picky and will jump to any nearby corpse if its original body is destroyed, and they will single-mindedly hunt their marked adversary or killer... but are given the time of exactly one year to do so, else it's dragged back to the afterlife. The same thing presumably happens if it succeeded in doing its revenge quest.
And this basically means that the Revenant is one of the few undead creatures to be just as likely to be an adversary as it is a quest-giver or a wild-card. Maybe the Revenant has the same goal, the destruction of some being your adventuring party is planning to kill. But do you trust an undead creature? Will it fuck up your well-crafted plans? It's as likely to wreak havoc with its single-minded obsession against its target, after all, and might really end up causing more trouble than it's worth. It's also a way for a GM to give a dead player a second chance to exact revenge on the specific creature that killed him, which I thought was kind of cool. Overall... kind of a neat monster.
Roc
Taken from Arabian myths, the Roc is a BIG BIRD. And honestly, that's all there is to the Roc. Of course, in real life, a simple gigantic bird that's large enough to pick up elephants and whales with their talons is pretty horrifying enough -- Rodan's a monstrous kaiju for a reason -- but in a world with dragons, demons, perytons, gricks and atropals, "a big fuckin' bird" doesn't quite have the same pizzazz. It does have the pretty considerable wingspan of 60 feet, and 4th edition at least tried to make the Roc relevant by making other mythological birds like the Thunderbird or the Phoenix as sub-species of the Roc, but ultimately, in most editions, the Roc's just a big angry bird. An impressively sized one, but a creature I genuinely always found to be a bit boring. 5E's Rocs get involved in the primordial giants-vs-dragons war, and apparently the Rocs were allied with the giants and were meant to challenge the dragons for air superiority. Post-war, the Rocs are now independent, and basically spend their entire lives hunting for sufficiently large creatures. Like elephants. Or dinosaurs. Or their former giant masters. Probably not going to be a creature your campaign revolves around, but probably a neat side-quest material.
Roper
Y'know... I was about to go into a rant on how the Roper's another one of those "haha, it's pretending to be an innocuous part of the dungeon background" like Mimics, Lurkers and old-school Cloakers... but y'know, the Ropers tend to have a far more intricate design. Sort of. The original Roper's certainly goofy as shit, and it's one of those designs where the more creepier artistic reinterpretations in subsequent editions end up making them look a lot cooler. The 2E edition looks particularly like play-doh, and not something that could feasibly pretend to be a massive rocky stalagmite. But 3E gives us this amazingly looking Roper with a hauntingly gaping mouth, thin, wispy tendrils and the perfect eye for a rock creature. 4E and 5E's Ropers are a bit more organic, featuring a more intelligent-looking eye and a far more massive maw o' doom, but I definitely appreciate just how suddenly badass the Roper looks. It's no longer an angry face on a weird stone critter, but rather now looks like a proper rock-based monster.
I don't think we ever get any sort of confirmation on what Ropers really are. Are they equivalent to earth or rock elementals? Some kind of cousin to the Mimic? Either way, they disguise themselves as stalagmites (and you can single-handedly thank this creature for teaching a generation of geeks how to differentiate stalagmites and stalactites) and then when some fool comes close enough, it will unfurl its whip-tendrils and drag prey into its massive maw. Said tendrils are sticky, and also has a paralytic venom. It's not stationary, either, with the various sourcebooks establishing that the Roper can move like a slug or anemone, going up cave walls and ceilings. We get the detail that Ropers can digest anything it eats other than platinum, gemstones and magic items. Coincidentally, the very items that make for good loot when you kill one of these angry beasts. A pretty classic monster. I like it.
Piercer
Originally not associated with the Roper and sort of abandoned after 2E, the 5th Edition re-introduces the Piercer as the larval stage of the Roper, and the Piercer even gets its own entry in as an individual monster instead of being a footnote in the Roper's entry! Yay! Originally, the Piercer was essentially the stalactite version of the Roper, being described as a bizarre snail-like creature (evident in its 1E version) or some bizarre rock monster with stubby bug-feet (2E) whose entire existence is to drop down and stab foolish adventurers on the head. And... that's kind of lame, since they functionally could be replaced by actual stalactites falling on the adventurers' head without much of a change. Eventually, Ropers were given the ability to move around and be either stalagmites or stalactites, and is a far more dangerous threat with its tentacles and maw as compared to "dumb rock snail that tries to stab you when they drop from the ceiling". With the Darkmantles also being introduced in 3E as a far cooler cave-ceiling-masquerading threat, the Piercers are phased out... for a couple of decades.
5th Edition's Piercer, though, is described as the larval form of the Roper, and it gives us a fascinating look at what a Roper would look before it grows that rocky exterior. It still has one eye, but it now looks like some sort of bizarre, mutated beetle grub! It's got little bug legs on its abdomen, a massive lamprey-like mouth with fangs that presumably help it to grab onto cave ceilings, and it's got a closed, grinning Roper mouth underneath that eye, a detail that was so fine I didn't realize it was there. While Ropers can attack from cave floors or cave ceilings, Piercers can only do so from the ceiling, and tended to work in tandem with their mature cousins to attack their prey, although a unique ability that Piercers have is unleashing foul-smelling slime when they are threatened, sort of like a millipede. We get the hilariously sad description that "a piercer that misses its chance to kill must make its slow way back to the ceiling". Poor rock slugs! Overall, this is such a great update to a monster I wouldn't think anyone would've cared all that much about. Pretty neat!
Rust Monster
Oh man FUCK THESE THINGS. The Rust Monster, fro a visual standpoint, isn't that deadly looking. The original 1E version looked like some sort of bizarre hybrid between a rocky armadillo and some sort of bizarre reptile. Since 2E, we've gotten various different bug-based creature. And they've always looked relatively consistent. Somewhat beetle-like body, four cricket-like legs, a tail that splays out into weird spike-like structures, two massive antennae-feelers, and a bug face. ANd they have a name called "Rust Monster", which you think isn't quite as scary as some of the other monsters in D&D like "Intellect Devourer", "Thought Eater", "Soulspike Devourer" or "Mind Flayer". But man, you know what's great in a D&D game? Getting magical weapons with awesome effects. You know what sucks in a D&D game? Losing said magical weapons with awesome effects to what's essentially a giant hungry cricket. 5E does give it two particularly moth-like feathery antennae, and also a face that... if an insect is capable of having a face that says "fuck you", that'd be what it looks like.
Like, seriously, I have a love/hate relationship with this thing. On one hand... it's a pretty cool-looking bug creature, and I love me my bug monsters. It's not quite as awesome-looking as the Ankheg, but it has enough of a unique charm that even my sorbiquet of a 'cricket monster' isn't quite accurate. But the most fearsome thing about the Rust Monster is that they eat the metallic armour of anything, and these fucks up everything from regular cheap start-of-the-game swords and armour to anything super-magical. They just sort of roam around dungeons and caves and act relatively docile until they smell metal... at which point, they will attack any sort of weapon. Doesn't matter if your equipment is made out of the finest mithral, they will eat all of your metallic stuff and cause them to corrode and rust. And, what, you think your paladin can do any good against a giant doberman-sized cricket-beetle with their bare fists? The monster manual note that the Rust Monster could easily be domesticated a pet... which... actually, come to think about it, next time you play a beastmaster ranger, point to that final sentence in the Monster Manual and beg your GM to let you have a Rust Monster companion, and watch it wreak havoc with allies and enemies alike.
Sahuagin
The Sahuagin are evil fish-men! And where the Kuo-toa are more... weird and alien and wacky, being hunched-backed and more themed towards madness, the Sahuagin are angry fish-men that are violent raiders that are the designated 'evil race' of the ocean, because they live to raid and conquer. There's admittedly kind of an overlap with other fish-men races like the merfolk, triton and kuo-toa, but I do feel like they each do have enough of their own identity to remain distinct from each other. The original 1E Sahuagin was a generic Creature of the Black Lagoon ripoff called the "Devil of the Deep", but 2E and 3E turned the Sahuagin into a flipper-legged, green-skinned, fin-backed beast-man with the head of a snarling fish-creature, like an angry eel or anglerfish or something. And while this version does admittedly kind of look kind of comical (and froggy), it definitely has charm. I especially like the 3rd edition artwork. 4E turned them into an even more monstrous set of fish-men, essentially having the proportions of a muscular human and making the head be a lot less fishy, making them look more like underwater lizardfolk more than anything. 5E also sadly kept the more muscular body shape, although it does at least slap a far fishier looking face on it. I still feel like I like the 2E/3E Sahuagin a lot better, but your mileage may vary on this one.
The Sahuagin, or as they are known by anyone living near the oceans, are known by the nickname of 'sea devils', and they basically raid merfolk and triton civilizations underwater, and rise up to the land to raid human ships and coastal villages. They hate everything and everyone, particularly aquatic elves. They don't just do so for resource gathering, either, but as part of their blood sports. They worship the dread shark god Sekolah, and thus they train sharks as attack animals. While not actually given stats in 5E, the Sahuagin entry describes the Malenti, a Sahuagin that is born with the appearance of an aquatic elf, and ends up often used as spies and assassins thanks to their elvish features. I like the Sahuagin, despite them being relatively simple rah-rah warlike race. They're neat.
Sahuagin Baron
A sub-type of the Sahuagin that was introduced in... I'm 90% sure 3E had mention of them, but the artwork I can find are those from 4E and 5E. Basically, the Sahuagin Barons are mutants born with four arms instead of two, and they are essentially the bosses and the rulers of the Sahuagin kingdoms. I've always found the proportions of the 5E Sahuagin Baron to be particularly odd... which I suppose might be what the artist was going for. Nothing much to really say here, it's kinda neat that we get an in-built 'tribal boss' enemy variant here.
Overall... the Sahuagin are neat, but I've always felt like they were pretty lackluster compared to other sea-dwelling threats. They were neat as one-off villains, and they have just enough plot hooks to set up something more with their civilization, I suppose. I don't think the Sahuagin were ever presented as a potential playable race? Kind of redundant with the Triton essentially being the same, but with a less-one-dimensional culture to build upon.
The 5E stuff for the creatures we covered here:
Ooze: Gelatinous Cube
The concept of slime or ooze like enemies have always been a neat one for me, and, of course, D&D has a wide range of oozes to choose from. The Gelatinous Cube, in addition to looking pretty tasty, has always been pretty fun-looking. They're part of their own unique classification of creatures, not being counted as a 'monstrosity' or 'aberration' or 'elemental'. 3E and 5E associate oozes with the demon lord Juiblex, but they're not even classified as demons! They're just oozes, and they are mindless, they goop around, and they tend to have acidic touch as they dissolve on their prey. There's just something neat about fighting a giant glob of gooey goop. Are they more like giant amoebas? Are they just living globs of jelly? Or a massive biofilm-style organism? Animated slime goop? Whatever the case, they're oozes, they're hard to fight with swords and fists, and when you hack them sometimes you cause the split-off parts to become smaller versions of themselves.
Honestly, how can you not love the Gelatinous Cube? Once just part of one of many 'oozes', like the Mimic, the Gelatinous Cube has became kind of a staple part of D&D, having appeared over the multiple editions. And it's something that honestly probably wouldn't make too much sense -- the whole point that this particular ooze is a giant block is because D&D's combat tended to make use of grid-squares, and it's this little convention that ended up with the Gelatinous Cube being, well, a cube. Throw in the near-constant depiction of Gelatinous Cubes having pieces of random hero gear inside them (the cube only dissolves the flesh) and it's basically tailor-made as a game enemy, yeah? It's pretty charming. And besides, y'know, just how charming is that name? "Gelatinous Cube"? Come on, even saying it is pretty dang fun. I've always liked the Gelatinous Cube due to how unapologetically part-of-the-game-world it is, and how unlike some of the older monsters, we don't get any sort of attempt to justify why the Gelatinous Cube is a cube. It just is.Ooze: Black Pudding
Ever since the 1st edition, we've had multiple oozes listed under the 'ooze' banner. 3E went hog-wild with ooze variations, but there are a couple that's always consistently shown in these monster manuals. The Gelatinous Ooze. The Ochre Jelly. The Gray Ooze. The Black Pudding. And among the other goopy oozes, the Black Pudding is perhaps more deadly than the others, being a blob of black goop that just sneaks around before attacking any organic creature to dissolve them. Unlike the Gelatinous Cube, the Black Pudding will also dissolve metal and wood. They don't look particularly impressive, but 5th Edition gives us that awesome image of a Black Pudding just engulfing and consuming a helpless ogre.
Ooze: Gray Ooze
Gray Ooze actually has an origin! It's "stone turned to liquid by chaos". In practice, though, it's still kind of similar to the other oozes, except that they apparently like to move around like a snake, and they can't gloop around on walls and ceilings as well as the other ooze types. I love that 1E artwork showing the Gray Ooze just moving down the stairs... or is it just waiting for a foolish adventurer to walk up the stairs? 5th Edition gives us the Psionic Gray Ooze, a variant of a Gray Ooze that's lived for a long enough time that they end up developing psionic abilities by living around mind flayers and apparently mimicking their abilities. Okay! That's a neat addition to what used to be the most boring of the basic oozes.
Ooze: Ochre Jelly
Ochre Jelly looks kind of like a turd, huh. I love that 5th Edition artwork, it's like the jelly's waving to us! I just love any time someone describs an ooze monster as a 'jelly'. The Ochre Jelly is noted to be cunning like an animal to avoid large groups of enemies, waiting for there to be a great opportunity to attack a member of the group that breaks free. Like the Gelatinous Cube, they can only digest flesh. There were a lot more variations in the past editions, but honestly? They're kind of redundant and I do agree with the decision to pare down a lot of the more superfluous ones. One of the 1E oozes, the Green Slime, actually shows up in 5th edition, but not as a monster and more as a potential trap.
Orc
There are a lot of "evil brutish humanoids" races out there. Goblins and their ilk. Lizardfolk. Troglodytes. Trolls. Giants and ogres. Not to mention actually evil humans and elves. But none are quite as iconic as the orcs, the evil race as defined by Tolkien's work. While Tolkien's orcs are basically the epitome of an evil marauding force, evil but intelligent enough to understand wartime strategy and whatnot, in various fantasy settings they've grown to adopt a different identity, with Warcraft and Warhammer both being the biggest franchises that gave the orcs a huge unique flavour. And... again, like the goblin problem I talked about before, D&D's orcs felt pretty... simple. Originally depicted like pig-men or boar-men in 1E and 2E, they sort of spent some time trying to capitalize on Warhammer/Warcraft orcs while still trying to look different in 3E, before 4E and 5E eventually just shrugged and copy-pasted what's now the common pop culture appearance of orcs. There was some confusion on how more monstrous the orcs are supposed to look like compared to half-orcs, and since both orcs and half-orcs are just as likely to be a playable race, I guess the game designers just sort of shrugged and went "well, they have a lot of variation within their race, okay?"
D&D orcs are... well, they're savage raiders and pillagers that sort of went from lawful evil servitors of an organized raiding army to chaotic evil barbarians. They serve the evil one-eyed god Gruumsh, who, in their religion, was denied all of the territories by the gods of the other races, so Gruumsh declared that he and his people will burn all the beautiful parts of the world that the gods of the dwarves and elves have claimed. They move around in war-bands and tribes, and basically exist to pillage and raid, and work off a leadership-by-might mentality, they breed quickly to make their tribe as strong as possible, and only banding as massive hordes when there is a large enemy to plunder. Unlike most other races, though, orcs reject the notion of racial purity, and they proudly welcome any warrior from any race (as long as you're not a filthy elf) into their ranks, be it ogres, trolls, half-orcs or giants. Also, since Gruumsh is a one-eyed god (the elf god plucked out one of his eyes), some orc spellcasters will pluck out one of their eyes and offer it to Gruumsh in exchange for powerful spellcasting abilities, becoming unique warriors called "Eye of Gruumsh".Again, other sourcebooks sort of go back on this and gives us examples of orc tribes that are cowed by a more reasonable but more powerful war chief, or orcs that actually end up building kingdoms and brokering a pact of peace with non-orc kingdoms, like King Obould Many-Arrows, a character from the Forgotten Realms setting -- the 5E Monster Manual suggests Obould Many-Arrows and characters like him to be an interesting adventure hook. Is it a smart and cunning orc that's biding his time to launch a surprise attack on the other civilizations? Or is he truly an orc who wants peace, but in doing so his tribe's earned the ire of Gruumsh and other orc tribes?
Orog
The 5th edition gives us an additional orc variant, the Orog, blessed by the orc goddess Luthic with intelligence and cunning. The Orog was previously briefly described in 2E as one of the many orc sub-types, and in 3E in a relatively off-handed manner. Orogs are... well, basically smarter, paler orcs that tended to live in the Underdark. They're sort of a way to give orc tribes a way for them to end up actually having some sort of tactical cunning since most orc war-leaders tended to mainly be just good in fighting and not much else. It's just that the orogs themselves tended to have such a detached worldview on anything that they are pretty likely to betray the tribes they've joined because the neighbouring orc tribe has more strength or something along those lines. The orogs are thus sort of a pariah sub-type among the orcs.
Otyugh
A lot of the earlier sillier monsters get a lot of flak from the D&D fandom for not being cool or awesome enough. But I am pleasantly surprised that some of them like the Grell or the Beholder or the Otyugh, despite on paper not really being any less silly than the Flumphs or Modrons or Thought Eaters, end up being popular enough to be included in every single edition of this game. And the Otyugh is perhaps one of the more bizarre entries because... well, to put it mildly, this thing is basically a creature that eats the poo of larger dungeon-dwelling creatures, essentially serving the role of something like a cockroach or catfish in the dungeon ecology. Sure, newer iterations tend to soften this by using terms like "refuse", "filth" and sort of trying to make them alternate between poo-poo and carrion, but hey, the Otyugh is a monstrous trash-dwelling tentacle-beast. Own that, Otyugh.
Clearly inspired by something similar to the Dianoga from Star Wars, the Otyugh isn't just a bunch of spooky tentacles... you actually fight the entire body, and said body is a wacky chunky set of crocodilian fang attached to a vaguely reptilian body. It's got three tentacles, and it takes a while for you to realize that one of those tentacles has three eyeballs, a particularly goofy-looking detail particularly in the very stylized and borderline-cuddly 2E Otyugh, or the far more grisly-looking 4E Otyugh. Apparently, they even have limited amounts of telepathy to try and pretend to be another creature and lure dumb adventurers to the pile of refuse they hide in. They are always consistently noted to live in symbiotic harmony if they live with larger creatures that employ them as essentially a living garbage disposal system. It's a poo-dwelling monster. They do play it down a lot, but I am genuinely surprised that with the more serious bend that D&D took in later editions, the Otyugh is still such a commonly recurring monster.
Owlbear
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| Owlbear (4E) |
Speaking of which, I've only been talking about their visual appearance. In combat, these dumb-looking bird-bear fuzors are actually pretty devastating, particularly for lower-level parties.I do really like the little blurb that the 5th edition Monster Manual gives the Owlbear, noting just how feared of a reputation the owlbear has for its ferocity, aggression and generally ill temper, and the hoot of an Owlbear is apparently feared by all. Also, in addition to essentially acting like war beasts, it's possible but difficult to domesticate owlbears.
Pegasus
It's a horse with wings. It's really kind of unfortunate that the Pegasus is stuck between the Owlbear and the Peryton, two other far more fascinating and interesting-looking 'fusion' animals, because... well, the pegasus is pretty freaking boring. And it's not the poor pegasus' fault, it's just that pegasus are so commonly featured in fantasy settings that just a horse-with-wings is sort of... there, y'know? Apparently they are bred from the holier planes, and they will only allow good-aligned people to ride them. Definitely a pretty appropriate and badass mount for paladins and angels and the like for sure -- if I sound a bit down on the Pegasus, I apologize. I just find them kinda there, although part of my exhaustion with pegasi might stem from just how often they show up in M:TG's white offerings.
Peryton
I had to google if the Peryton was a real mythological creature, and it kinda is? I assume "The Book of Imaginary Beings" is the 1950's equivalent of a Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. In any case, the Peryton has shown up in most editions, only skipping out 4th Edition, and basically takes the concept of a "deer headed bird" to its ridiculous conclusion. 1E went for the goofiest-looking look, but 2E and 3E ended up giving the Bambi half of the Peryton a savage, brutal-looking maw. 5E goes for a slightly goofier look, but I feel part of why 5E Peryton feels so fancy is because of the far less drab colouration they have. I'm not sure why the specific combination of a deer and a giant colourful bird (I love the colours on 5E Peryton) ends up as a carnivorous monster -- with owls and bears, at least both of those are pretty brutal carnivores for their niches -- but I suppose the bird that the Peryton is based on is some sort of giant bird of prey? Also, the Peryton always goes for the heart when they attack and murder humanoids. Also, they have inexplicably powerful resistances against most non-magical weapons, so they're not just a goofy-looking bird.
Most interestingly, and it's a detail that I'm genuinely baffled how you could work into a setting, is that the shadow of the Peryton somehow appears as that of a human instead of the bizarre bird-deer form. So, uh... I'm not sure how this is going to play into an actual encounter. Does the adventuring party mistake a flying, swooping Peryton as Superman passing by or something? The 5E Monster Manual offers two possible origin stories, with the first being a boring "human transformed by curse and/or magical experiment gone wrong", while the second is a bardic tale about how there was a man whose infidelity caused his wife to go full yandere and murder her rival and eat her heart in some profane ritual, and the resulting murders caused the woman to be hanged, and the birds that fed on her transformed into the Perytons. But where did the deer part come from, then? Overall... yeah, there's a lot more to the Peryton than I thoguht there was, and this was, like the Nothic, another creature I just dismissed as another one of the many, many strange creatures that populate the world of D&D, until my GM sprung a couple of these crazy fuckers on us.
Pixie
Sprites, pixies, sylphs, brownies, leprechauns, nixies, grigs... there are a lot of 'tiny, mischievous fey creatures' in the world of D&D, and I've always felt like they were one of the less consistently portrayed ones. In 1E and 2E, Pixies are portrayed as being angry little elf-men in Legend of Zelda style clothing with butterfly wings that stab adventurers in their shins. In 3E, Pixies are just one of several type of "small fey" or Sprites. 4E and 5E go for a more interesting route, making them a fair bit more unique with butterfly wings, a culture that has them live in a lot of folk culture inspired stuff. Pixies are inquisitive and curious, and in the 5th Edition Monster Manual, is sort of the 'default' face for the more mystical parts of the fair folk. The Pixies will watch and observe those that wander into their territory, watching but never really interacting for fear of being captured and placed in a bottle (damn it Link) and they have a culture where they basically enact a fairy-tale style setting where everyone is a prince and princess, and they do whimsical fun things like rouse the plants and gather the sundew and spread pixie dust. A reference to how fairy dust have been portrayed in different stories, the 'pixie dust' left behind by these creatures can either make someone fly, fall into a slumber, or maybe even get really high. They're basically Tinker Bell, yeah?
The pixies are nominally 'neutral good', but they're also still fey creatures, and they're far more likely to have differing motivations depending on the individual as opposed to some other fey creatures. They like to play tricks and harmless pranks to gauge just how likely a certain group of travelers are going to respond to them. Whenever possible, they avoid conflict, and they essentially end up being more spellcasters with "fuck with you" style spells in combat. Also, good luck trying to hit a bunch of invisible, intelligent fairies the size of an insect with the ability to cast spells like polymorph, entangle and phantasmal force. The ever-popular Critical Role D&D show certainly had an awesome sequence where the party ended up coming into conflict with a group of pixies because of what essentially amounts to the pixies not really having a good understanding of 'normal' culture. Pixies are neat.
Pseudodragon
Lumped alongside other not-quite-dragons called "dragonets" in 1E and 2E and lumped alongside other not-quite-dragons called "drakes" in 4E, the poor Pseudodragon has been sort of a staple in all the editions, being... well, a teeny-tiny little dragon with a scorpion tail that, well, is about the size of your average housecat, if the 3E and 5E artwork are anything to go by. They are of dragon blood, but nowhere as intelligent as their actual-dragon cousins and definitely nowhere as powerful. The whole point of a Pseudodragon's existence is essentially just to serve as a cool familiar for the spellcasters of your group, and holy shit, that's certianly a pretty awesome thing to do! You have a cat-sized dragon as a pet. It's awesome. They live in secluded little caves and are reclusive, but like most cats and dogs, treat it well and the pseudodragon will remain loyal to you. They communicate with telepathy that allow them to share basic ideas, and this is basically what makes them ideal familiars, as they can communicate sight and sound over this link with their masters. While certainly not the most exciting enemy to fight, the Pseudodragon is a pretty cool 'flavour' creature either for your PC group or for an NPC to have as a pet.
Purple Worm
I'm not sure where the fantasy of a gigantic subterranean worm began. Was it Dune? Was it the Mongolian Death Worm? Tremors? Lovecraft's Dholes? Whatever the case, the Purple Worms are certainly a staple in D&D ever since their appearance in the very first monster manual, and I absolutely love that they retained the goofy-ass name of "Purple Worm" despite being a giant, terrifying death-monster that can consume entire adventurers in a single gulp. Their appearance have varied, with 1E going for a simple circular almost lamprey-like maw and a segmented body, 2E keeping the lamprey maw but giving it a sleek body, 3E going for an armoured body and a cool four-jawed maw, 4E giving it a more reptilian jaw and a more segmented body, and 5E giving it a somewhat more cavernous maw and multiple row of bony ridges... the purple worms are always pretty damn awesome looking, especially once 3E onwards kept portraying them as bursting out of the ground, coiling and ready to consume poor tiny humanoids. I'm not sure what my favourite Purple Worm artwork is... I tend to want to go with 5E, because that mouth is pretty badass, but 3E is also cool and I love the sheer wackiness of the original 1E design. In addition to being a big critter, they also have the ability to just straight-up gulp one of your adventurers through a 'swallow' mechanic.The Purple Worm is yet another monstrous creature to hail from the Underdark, chewing through rock and blindly eating anything in its path, basically being a far, far more efficient and monstrous version of the Bulette. They are attracted by loud sounds, and they are apparently well-known for interrupting large battles between the many Underdark civilizations and completely fuck up battlefields by virtue of, y'know, being a big-ass giant worm. Apparently, all of the Underdark civilizations like the drow, illithid and duergar all maintain special wards to repel these purple worms. These creatures are meant to be treated as more like force of natures in the tunnels of the Underdark, creating brand-new tunnels as they charge through them in search for prey. They don't tend to have much in terms of lore, but I love them nonetheless. They're giant hungry worms that fuck everyone's shit up.
Quaggoth
Speaking of the Underdark... here's the Quaggoth, a race that shows up in every single edition, but every single time I see one of these I went, "oh, neat, is this a new race?" before realizing that, hey, they showed up in every single damn edition before. They're weird bear-men bred for slavery by the Drow, although the 5E Quaggoth has a far more hulking stance and a decidedly not-bear spiky face that makes it look more like some sort of weird, intelligent troll of sorts. 5E tells us that the proto-Quaggoth race was driven underground after numerous wars with elves, and eventually, the Drow enslaved the Quaggoth after luring them with promises of revenge against the elves. So kind of like the Grimlocks, but a fair bit more boring. There are apparently psionic variations, called Thonots, and the race as a whole practice cannibalism, believing that they can pass down desirable abilities to successors by this. They're a neat accessory to the Drow, I suppose, sort of serving as the meat shields for the Drow, but ultimately I'm really stretching to find anything interesting to say about them. I dunno. I just genuinely don't find the Quaggoths memorable at all.
Rakshasa
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| 4E Rakshasa |
The Rakshasas tended to indulge in the vices of humanoid flesh, and being relatively bound to the mortal plane, the traditional death-and-reformation that fiends can do is particularly painful for them. Even moreso than other demons and devils, Rakshasas are described to be super-vengeful and will explicitly go on a vendetta run against the person who killed him or her, even targeting their allies, friends and family specifically out of spite. Outside of 4E (where the Rakshasa were a race of tiger-men with far more warriors as opposed to devil-born fiend spellcasters), most Rakshasas tended to be villains that felt far more awesome as NPC's or as a recurring threat. They are decent spellcasting enemies, for sure, but the reason the Rakshasa is going to be dangerous or formidable is less about the fight you engage with them, but more about the simple style of how a Rakshasa villain is going to manipulate events in order to benefit it and to cause ruin and inconvenience to you and your allies, or to shapeshift into one of your allies to stab you in the face. Easily a prime material for a recurring villain if I've ever seen one. I've always found them to be pretty neat and cool, and while the concept of a reverse-hand tiger-man is pretty silly, I also found it to be such a neatly cheesy-yet-still-threatening 'true form' of these shapeshifting fiends.
Remorhaz
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| 1E Remorhaz |
While the Remorhazes are ultimately (and sadly) not the most impressive enemies once you reach the double digits in levels, they apparently associate with Frost Giants and sometimes prowl white dragon lairs. Older versions of the Remorhaz seem to be going for a more dragon-like head and a snake like main body, but I really do appreciate them dropping it and going for a purely arthropod-based monster. Overall, one of the more visually spectacular original creations from D&D, I feel. We never got a whole lot of lore about the Remorhaz, but it's fine. Like the purple worm, its whole existence is just to be a big force of nature to ruin someone's day when they burst out of the ground to wipe out travelers and adventuring parties.
Revenant
"Revenant" is one of those words that could basically be any sort of undead creature, being yet another word that's equivalent to 'ghost'. In D&D, Revenants are essentially a more powerful version of a zombie, but going in a different direction than a ghoul. Where ghouls are just the undead version of a feral animal, the Revenant is driven by hate and anger of some soul who was killed in a cruel and undeserving fate, and their whole reason for coming back as an undead being is to seek revenge against those that wronged it. Also, in combat, revenants are pretty tough, being able to regenerate its wounds against anything that isn't fire or radiant damage. The spirit of the Revenant tends to inhabit its own body, but it's not picky and will jump to any nearby corpse if its original body is destroyed, and they will single-mindedly hunt their marked adversary or killer... but are given the time of exactly one year to do so, else it's dragged back to the afterlife. The same thing presumably happens if it succeeded in doing its revenge quest.
And this basically means that the Revenant is one of the few undead creatures to be just as likely to be an adversary as it is a quest-giver or a wild-card. Maybe the Revenant has the same goal, the destruction of some being your adventuring party is planning to kill. But do you trust an undead creature? Will it fuck up your well-crafted plans? It's as likely to wreak havoc with its single-minded obsession against its target, after all, and might really end up causing more trouble than it's worth. It's also a way for a GM to give a dead player a second chance to exact revenge on the specific creature that killed him, which I thought was kind of cool. Overall... kind of a neat monster.
Roc
Taken from Arabian myths, the Roc is a BIG BIRD. And honestly, that's all there is to the Roc. Of course, in real life, a simple gigantic bird that's large enough to pick up elephants and whales with their talons is pretty horrifying enough -- Rodan's a monstrous kaiju for a reason -- but in a world with dragons, demons, perytons, gricks and atropals, "a big fuckin' bird" doesn't quite have the same pizzazz. It does have the pretty considerable wingspan of 60 feet, and 4th edition at least tried to make the Roc relevant by making other mythological birds like the Thunderbird or the Phoenix as sub-species of the Roc, but ultimately, in most editions, the Roc's just a big angry bird. An impressively sized one, but a creature I genuinely always found to be a bit boring. 5E's Rocs get involved in the primordial giants-vs-dragons war, and apparently the Rocs were allied with the giants and were meant to challenge the dragons for air superiority. Post-war, the Rocs are now independent, and basically spend their entire lives hunting for sufficiently large creatures. Like elephants. Or dinosaurs. Or their former giant masters. Probably not going to be a creature your campaign revolves around, but probably a neat side-quest material.
Roper
Y'know... I was about to go into a rant on how the Roper's another one of those "haha, it's pretending to be an innocuous part of the dungeon background" like Mimics, Lurkers and old-school Cloakers... but y'know, the Ropers tend to have a far more intricate design. Sort of. The original Roper's certainly goofy as shit, and it's one of those designs where the more creepier artistic reinterpretations in subsequent editions end up making them look a lot cooler. The 2E edition looks particularly like play-doh, and not something that could feasibly pretend to be a massive rocky stalagmite. But 3E gives us this amazingly looking Roper with a hauntingly gaping mouth, thin, wispy tendrils and the perfect eye for a rock creature. 4E and 5E's Ropers are a bit more organic, featuring a more intelligent-looking eye and a far more massive maw o' doom, but I definitely appreciate just how suddenly badass the Roper looks. It's no longer an angry face on a weird stone critter, but rather now looks like a proper rock-based monster.I don't think we ever get any sort of confirmation on what Ropers really are. Are they equivalent to earth or rock elementals? Some kind of cousin to the Mimic? Either way, they disguise themselves as stalagmites (and you can single-handedly thank this creature for teaching a generation of geeks how to differentiate stalagmites and stalactites) and then when some fool comes close enough, it will unfurl its whip-tendrils and drag prey into its massive maw. Said tendrils are sticky, and also has a paralytic venom. It's not stationary, either, with the various sourcebooks establishing that the Roper can move like a slug or anemone, going up cave walls and ceilings. We get the detail that Ropers can digest anything it eats other than platinum, gemstones and magic items. Coincidentally, the very items that make for good loot when you kill one of these angry beasts. A pretty classic monster. I like it.
Piercer
Originally not associated with the Roper and sort of abandoned after 2E, the 5th Edition re-introduces the Piercer as the larval stage of the Roper, and the Piercer even gets its own entry in as an individual monster instead of being a footnote in the Roper's entry! Yay! Originally, the Piercer was essentially the stalactite version of the Roper, being described as a bizarre snail-like creature (evident in its 1E version) or some bizarre rock monster with stubby bug-feet (2E) whose entire existence is to drop down and stab foolish adventurers on the head. And... that's kind of lame, since they functionally could be replaced by actual stalactites falling on the adventurers' head without much of a change. Eventually, Ropers were given the ability to move around and be either stalagmites or stalactites, and is a far more dangerous threat with its tentacles and maw as compared to "dumb rock snail that tries to stab you when they drop from the ceiling". With the Darkmantles also being introduced in 3E as a far cooler cave-ceiling-masquerading threat, the Piercers are phased out... for a couple of decades.
5th Edition's Piercer, though, is described as the larval form of the Roper, and it gives us a fascinating look at what a Roper would look before it grows that rocky exterior. It still has one eye, but it now looks like some sort of bizarre, mutated beetle grub! It's got little bug legs on its abdomen, a massive lamprey-like mouth with fangs that presumably help it to grab onto cave ceilings, and it's got a closed, grinning Roper mouth underneath that eye, a detail that was so fine I didn't realize it was there. While Ropers can attack from cave floors or cave ceilings, Piercers can only do so from the ceiling, and tended to work in tandem with their mature cousins to attack their prey, although a unique ability that Piercers have is unleashing foul-smelling slime when they are threatened, sort of like a millipede. We get the hilariously sad description that "a piercer that misses its chance to kill must make its slow way back to the ceiling". Poor rock slugs! Overall, this is such a great update to a monster I wouldn't think anyone would've cared all that much about. Pretty neat!
Rust Monster
Oh man FUCK THESE THINGS. The Rust Monster, fro a visual standpoint, isn't that deadly looking. The original 1E version looked like some sort of bizarre hybrid between a rocky armadillo and some sort of bizarre reptile. Since 2E, we've gotten various different bug-based creature. And they've always looked relatively consistent. Somewhat beetle-like body, four cricket-like legs, a tail that splays out into weird spike-like structures, two massive antennae-feelers, and a bug face. ANd they have a name called "Rust Monster", which you think isn't quite as scary as some of the other monsters in D&D like "Intellect Devourer", "Thought Eater", "Soulspike Devourer" or "Mind Flayer". But man, you know what's great in a D&D game? Getting magical weapons with awesome effects. You know what sucks in a D&D game? Losing said magical weapons with awesome effects to what's essentially a giant hungry cricket. 5E does give it two particularly moth-like feathery antennae, and also a face that... if an insect is capable of having a face that says "fuck you", that'd be what it looks like.
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| Rust Monster (2E) |
Like, seriously, I have a love/hate relationship with this thing. On one hand... it's a pretty cool-looking bug creature, and I love me my bug monsters. It's not quite as awesome-looking as the Ankheg, but it has enough of a unique charm that even my sorbiquet of a 'cricket monster' isn't quite accurate. But the most fearsome thing about the Rust Monster is that they eat the metallic armour of anything, and these fucks up everything from regular cheap start-of-the-game swords and armour to anything super-magical. They just sort of roam around dungeons and caves and act relatively docile until they smell metal... at which point, they will attack any sort of weapon. Doesn't matter if your equipment is made out of the finest mithral, they will eat all of your metallic stuff and cause them to corrode and rust. And, what, you think your paladin can do any good against a giant doberman-sized cricket-beetle with their bare fists? The monster manual note that the Rust Monster could easily be domesticated a pet... which... actually, come to think about it, next time you play a beastmaster ranger, point to that final sentence in the Monster Manual and beg your GM to let you have a Rust Monster companion, and watch it wreak havoc with allies and enemies alike.
Sahuagin
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| Sahuagin (2E) |
The Sahuagin, or as they are known by anyone living near the oceans, are known by the nickname of 'sea devils', and they basically raid merfolk and triton civilizations underwater, and rise up to the land to raid human ships and coastal villages. They hate everything and everyone, particularly aquatic elves. They don't just do so for resource gathering, either, but as part of their blood sports. They worship the dread shark god Sekolah, and thus they train sharks as attack animals. While not actually given stats in 5E, the Sahuagin entry describes the Malenti, a Sahuagin that is born with the appearance of an aquatic elf, and ends up often used as spies and assassins thanks to their elvish features. I like the Sahuagin, despite them being relatively simple rah-rah warlike race. They're neat.
Sahuagin Baron
A sub-type of the Sahuagin that was introduced in... I'm 90% sure 3E had mention of them, but the artwork I can find are those from 4E and 5E. Basically, the Sahuagin Barons are mutants born with four arms instead of two, and they are essentially the bosses and the rulers of the Sahuagin kingdoms. I've always found the proportions of the 5E Sahuagin Baron to be particularly odd... which I suppose might be what the artist was going for. Nothing much to really say here, it's kinda neat that we get an in-built 'tribal boss' enemy variant here.
Overall... the Sahuagin are neat, but I've always felt like they were pretty lackluster compared to other sea-dwelling threats. They were neat as one-off villains, and they have just enough plot hooks to set up something more with their civilization, I suppose. I don't think the Sahuagin were ever presented as a potential playable race? Kind of redundant with the Triton essentially being the same, but with a less-one-dimensional culture to build upon.
The 5E stuff for the creatures we covered here:
- Black Pudding: Large ooze; unaligned; CR 4
- Gelatinous Cube: Large ooze; unaligned; CR 2
- Gray Ooze: Medium ooze; unaligned; CR 1/2
- Ochre Jelly: Large ooze; unaligned; CR 2
- Orc: Medium humanoid - orc; chaotic evil; CR 1/2
- Orc War Chief: Medium humanoid - orc; chaotic evil; CR 4
- Orc Eye of Gruumsh: Medium humanoid - orc; chaotic evil; CR 2
- Orog: Medium humanoid - orc; chaotic evil; CR 2
- Otyugh: Large aberration: neutral; CR 5
- Owlbear: Large monstrosity; unaligned; CR 3
- Pegasus: Large celestial; chaotic good; CR 2
- Peryton: Medium monstrosity; chaotic evil; CR 2
- Piercer: Medium monstrosity: unaligned; CR 1/2
- Pixie: Tiny fey; neutral good; CR 1/4
- Pseudodragon: Tiny dragon; neutral good; CR 1/4
- Purple Worm: Gargantuan monstrosity; unaligned; CR 15
- Quaggoth: Medium humanoid - quaggoth; chaotic neutral; CR 2
- Quaggoth Thonot: Medium humanoid - quaggoth; chaotic neutral; CR 3
- Rakshasa: Medium fiend; lawful evil; CR 13
- Remorhaz: Huge monstrosity; unaligned; CR 11
- Young Remorhaz: Large monstrosity; unaligned; CR 5
- Revenant: Medium undead; neutral; CR 5
- Roc: Gargantuan monstrosity; unaligned; CR 11
- Roper: Large monstrosity; neutral evil; CR 5
- Rust Monster: Medium monstrosity; unaligned; CR 1/2
- Sahuagin: Medium humanoid - sahuagin; lawful evil; CR 1/2
- Sahuagin Priestess: Medium humanoid - sahuagin; lawful evil; CR 2
- Sahuagin Baron: Large humanoid - sahuagin; lawful evil; CR 5
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