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.

 

[TwoSix]

Serious question, when was the last time anyone fell for the "scantily clad pretty girl in the dungeon" trope? Every player who has played for 15 minutes knows she's a succubus/medusa/siren/doppelganger/mimic or something like that. If she's lucky, they will escort her out shackled and at swordpoint, at worst they will go full Spanish Inquisition on her. Does anyone fall for this anymore?

I mean, obviously not out of character (as a player), but it can be fun to have a character fall for it.

 

[abirdcall]

I am not talking about gender. Gender is a social construct. I'm talking about sex.

A satyr or nymph can dress and identify however they chose.

Sex is also a social construct because it depends on the criteria we have chosen to put people in one bucket or another.

There are many properties that make up sex and people have them in different quantities and variations.

I'm not just talking about being intersex either.

We end up on agreed terms because it is easier to speak broadly using them. Like with any science, it is a mistake to abide by the concepts we simplify to teach the basics when we engage in deeper considerations.

Men are X and women are Y doesn't actually work which is why we are seeing male and female satyrs.

 

[Chaltab]

Serious question, when was the last time anyone fell for the "scantily clad pretty girl in the dungeon" trope? Every player who has played for 15 minutes knows she's a succubus/medusa/siren/doppelganger/mimic or something like that. If she's lucky, they will escort her out shackled and at swordpoint, at worst they will go full Spanish Inquisition on her. Does anyone fall for this anymore?

I have a feeling that it worked better when 'scantily clad pretty girl in the dungeon' is something one was likely enough to find because D&D's target audience was heterosexual young men.

 

[Hussar]

It turns a creature with exceptional ecology into another case of not so exceptional.

But isn’t the point of dryads to be alluring to straight men? They use their sexual wiles to entice men? So having male dryads means that now you have enticing encounters for all players.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

The original Tome of Beasts from Kobold press has at least half a dozen varieties of this exact same idea (evil pretty seductress who tempts men to their deaths). Boring.

Ugh, I remember that. It was one of my several complaints with the book. There was seriously a ridiculous amount of them. I remember thinking that there were way too many of them and that it was a bit sexist. One would have sufficed and they should also be of any gender.

Tangentially, soon after I read that book I read through one of the old Spelljammer monster books that had one of those Aquatic Female Seduction monsters but in SPACE. I remember thinking space Naiads/Sirens was an amazing idea, but that it was really emblematic of the ridiculous amount of “evil, aquatic, seducing naked women” monsters present in D&D. I was glad that monster wasn’t in the new Spelljammer monster book.

 

[Chaltab]

Ugh, I remember that. It was one of my major complaints with the book. There was seriously a ridiculous amount of them. I remember thinking that there were way too many of them and that it was a bit sexist. One would have sufficed and they should also be of any gender.

Tangentially, soon after I read that book I read through one of the old Spelljammer monster books that had one of those Aquatic Female Seduction monsters but in SPACE. I remember thinking space Naiads/Sirens was an amazing idea, but that it was really emblematic of the ridiculous amount of “evil, aquatic, seducing naked women” monsters present in D&D. I was glad that monster wasn’t in the new Spelljammer monster book.

The first TOB was pretty rough, yeah. Some of the art for various monsters also didn't match the descriptions at all. I wonder if that was fixed in the 2023 rework.

Spelljammer had a lot of monsters I was disappointed to see cut for the 5E version, like bionoids and witchlight marauders, but there were some that really ought to have been left on the cutting room floor even for 2E. The Vistani were already iffy enough, did they really need the Aperusa too?

 

[Hussar]

But you already have that. And I’m not opposed to that being how gnolls are typically depicted, so long as they aren’t exclusively that. Gnolls are a step further removed from real-life bigotry than orcs are, but they are still a sapient species native to the material plane who have a culture and babies and all that jazz. making them inherently evil has the same fundamental problems as making orcs inherently evil does, and changing their creature type to fiends to dodge that issue is just snubbing those of us who want to be able to play gnoll characters.

Oooh. There’s a neat inroad for pc gnolls. Say monster manual gnolls are created at a young age through rituals devoting them to Yeenoghu. But if rescued, they grow up normal (well for a given value of normal) humanoids.

Makes for a sweet answer to what we do with baby gnolls. Rescue them of course.

 

[Chaltab]

I mean there's also the particularly horrific gnoll birth sequence from BG3 as an explanation for fiend gnolls.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

One of the interesting things - even before given them multiple genders is that because in D&D, myth and fairy tales are kinda true, all these prejudices that existed in the real world that created those tales now are actually true things. However, the "mundane" and (usually by comparison harmless) version also exists. SO even if all mysognist and misantrophic and misandric tropes and prejudices are given reality - but also their opposite. The world is really a scarier place, because that woman or man over there could really be a disguised monster. But, if you arrange a mob and try to kill it - you might be just killing a harmless grandmother, which will leave you a bit emberassed. But if it's really a monster, you might die horribly. In the real world, the latter never happened, there are no witches, hags, succubus, nymphs, dryads, shape-shifted dragons, ogres, or demon-possessed people that could tear you apart or suck out your life force. There were never life-threatening consequences for the prejudiced. Worst thing to happen would be a bad conscience, basically.

This might alter the behaviour of the people in fantasy notably. Sure, their fears are more justified, but that mob assembly thing can turn out really bad for t hem. So, yeah, maybe that old woman is a hag. But let's not assemble a mob just yet. Hire some adventurers. They actually know how to fight such monsters, and they probably can even tell if she's a real monster. And the adventurers reputation will hurt if they keep killing old women, so they have to figure out how to identify the real monsters.

 

[Hussar]

Mine aren't villains. As I mentioned previously, a recent campaign arc had the party helping a hag coven reunite after they had to hide from persecution.

If you want them to purely be villains in your campaign, that's fine. No skin off my nose. But be aware that just because you see them that way, doesn't mean't mean everybody does.

Edit: a sympathetic portrayal of fantastical creatures that have traditionally been depicted as evil is hardly a new idea. Why is this even a discussion? These are all made-up creatures - we can do whatever we want with them.

Heh. A sympathetic hag was one of the first npcs in my Candlekeep campaign and wound up owning the inn in Beregost. Became a recurring and well loved character.