2025 Monster Manual to Introduce Male Versions of Hags, Medusas, and Dryads

The upcoming Monster Manual will feature artwork depicting some creatures like hags and medusas in both genders, a first for Dungeons & Dragons. In the "Everything You Need to Know" video for the upcoming Monster Manual, designers Jeremy Crawford and Wesley Schneider revealed that the new book would feature artwork portraying both male and female versions of creatures like hags, dryads, satyrs, and medusas. While there was a male medusa named Marlos Urnrayle in Princes of the Apocalypse (who had a portrait in the book) and players could make satyr PCs of either gender, this marks the first time that D&D has explicitly shown off several of these creatures as being of both male and female within a rulebook. There is no mechanical difference between male creatures and female creatures, so this is solely a change in how some monsters are presented.

In other news that actually does impact D&D mechanics, goblins are now classified as fey creatures (similar to how hobgoblins were portrayed as fey creatures in Monsters of the Multiverse) and gnolls are now classified as fiends.

Additionally, monster statblocks include potential treasure and gear options, so that DMs can reward loot when a player character inevitably searches the dead body of a creature.

The new Monster Manual will be released on February 18th, 2025.

 

[dave2008]

A fantasy setting that draws directly upon this problematic trope from European folklore . . . and in the case of the hag, almost directly translates it into the game.

Tweaking the hag to include male hags doesn't really fix the trope, IMO.

I don't know why, but hags don't bother me. In fact I like them. I am more interested in reclaiming the term than abandoning it.

 

[Hussar]

On the other hand, people who really like hyenas might be. Also, obligatory “offense is not the point.”

Again, "I like hyenas, so no one can have fiendish hyenas" isn't really a group that I honestly care about. I'm sorry, but, there's absolutely no way that this should preclude the use of anthropomorphic animals in demons. I'm willing to go a long way towards being understanding, but, nope, this is a jump too far for me.

 

[pawsplay]

A fantasy setting that draws directly upon this problematic trope from European folklore . . . and in the case of the hag, almost directly translates it into the game.

Tweaking the hag to include male hags doesn't really fix the trope, IMO.

I would rather leave hags "broken" the way they have been, and try to fix the setting in other ways, than to just say there are male hags and call it a day. I also don't think it really fixes anything.

 

[Hussar]

Huh?

IRL hyenas can't be offended, true. IRL orcs also can't be offended, for different reasons. The trope remains problematic.

What trope?

Since when are gnolls described using language similar to how real world peoples were being described?

What am I missing here?

 

[pawsplay]

It is weird that hyenas are distinctly African, and gnolls are saddled with tropes about savage people, the worship of Chaotic entities, and other Lovecraftian stuff about non-Europeans. It's not 1:1 but the tropes are there.

 

[dave2008]

It is weird that hyenas are distinctly African, and gnolls are saddled with tropes about savage people, the worship of Chaotic entities, and other Lovecraftian stuff about non-Europeans. It's not 1:1 but the tropes are there.

Currently, but extant species of Hyena cohabitated with humans in Europe and Asia. So distinctly African is on true in a modern sense.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If any animals can be said to have the capacity for evil, it would be cetaceans. Even then though, I don’t think it’s correct to apply human morals to an animal’s behavior.

Yet we apply human morals to fictional nonhuman sentient beings all the time. If animals are also sentient, shouldn't the same judgements apply to them?

 

[Hussar]

It is weird that hyenas are distinctly African, and gnolls are saddled with tropes about savage people, the worship of Chaotic entities, and other Lovecraftian stuff about non-Europeans. It's not 1:1 but the tropes are there.

kinda sorta, but, that's stretching quite a bit. They're demonic and evil and happen to look like hyenas. There's never really been much of a connection between POC and hyenas in the same ways that the far more simian descriptions of orcs.

I get where you're going with this, but, again, I'm thinking that this is perhaps not as big of a deal as all that. It's not like people have been complaining about the depictions of gnolls for the past forty or fifty years. Gnolls just don't have that much baggage and have never really had very much in game lore written about them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, I haven't really looked at the lore, if any, of nature spirits in D&D, but they might as well change their name then, if they are going to change their core identity. Their 5e entry so far doesn't mention their sex practices in great details, so it wasn't impossible so far to have them as counterpart as their origin implies.

I agree that if you change the core identity of a thing, you should change the name as well, no matter how recognizable or commercially valid that original name is.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A snake body ? Honestly I have never heard this one. Where does it come from?

Edit: maybe they mix with Echidna (I'd say she is even more obscure than Medusa's sisters, so it's quite unlikely?

Clash of the Titans