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]

Yep... That's the problem when D&D lore names things that aren't closely related to existing lore and change them extensively. Many people will say they are not bothered. I am, but I won't prevent people from enjoying the game with botched representation of real life myth.

It is good to remember that mythology was not stagnate and was constantly changing. If we had two people write a story about Medusa (which we do) then the stories were different. If 100 people had written down the stories they told at home we would probably have 100 different stories of "real life" myth. It is wise to not mistake our record history for the full breadth and depth of a lived mythology / religion

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

If we had two people write a story about Medusa (which we do) then the stories were different. If 100 people had written down the stories the told at home we would probably have 100 different stories of "real life" myth. It is wise to not mistake our record history for the full breadth and depth of a lived mythology / religion

Sure. However, several subsets of Medusa's stories have been compiled and have become widely known, and in none of them, medusa is a species. It's extremely consistently depicted as a single person. The odds of a conflicting lore lost to time is really low. And since it's lost, even if it ever existed, it matters less. While it might not matter to the (supposedly many) people who aren't familiar with the stories about Medusa, among groups of people who share that cultural familiarity, it's jarring to hear even the plural form of medusa, let alone a masculine form of the word.

Even if there are variations in lore about Kappas, ask someone what it evokes them, and it won't be a three-headed giant. So, calling a putative giant like that in D&D a Kappa wouldn't sit well with me. The fact that kappa evokes a type of cucumber dish in Japanese restaurant to most people wouldn't make it better (unless it was a bona fide coincidence of course).

I won't be burning my books over it, I just accept it as a silliness of D&D, like a line of peasants moving objects at the speed of light or barbarians stabbing themselves in the eyes with a dagger saying "no worry, I can easily stand even the critical damage from a dagger and I'll go to sleep just after that so I'll be all fine".

 

[Chaosmancer]

My solution to the problems with hags was to change them from evil fey who appear as old people to fey of any alignment who appear as old people.

Good, Evil, Neutral, Lawful, or Chaotic, a Hag is always OLD.

They're fey representations of old age, a mortal can become a hag but the majority of them are old from the moment they take form and they take pride in their wrinkles.

A Hag might be a stern Lawful Good elder who helps a community stay on the right path (like Granny Weatherwax from the Discworld series), a Chaotic Good bon-vivant dedicated to helping the youth live their lives to the fullest (No Time At All from the musical Pippin is an excellent example of that), a Neutral Good long-timer at a senior living home who does their best to keep the other residents comfortable (where the mortal staff are likely to eventually end up as residents with them since hags are biologically immortal), a Chaotic Neutral woods-dweller who might help or devour whoever calls on them depending on their mood and the manners of their visitor (like Baba Yaga), a Lawful Evil bargainer who's more interested in the results of the deal than the actual exchange (like Rumpelstiltskin from Once Upon a Time), the stereotypical Chaotic Evil hag, or any other archetype of old age.


I did the same with other fey, although my version of fey have the different fey types basically be costumes fey spirits wear depending on what they want to be in the mortal world. Adventurers might spend a night partying with a satyr only to meet the same fey again later as a dryad after the fey spirit got partied out and felt like resting for a few centuries (or more) as a tree-person.

That isn't a bad take. I've been partial to Pointy Hat's hags, which devour different emotions. so you can have hags who cultivate certain emotions (ambition, happiness, envy, ect) in mortals to feast upon the emotions created. Very interesting take with some cool archetypes in it.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That isn't a bad take. I've been partial to Pointy Hat's hags, which devour different emotions. so you can have hags who cultivate certain emotions (ambition, happiness, envy, ect) in mortals to feast upon the emotions created. Very interesting take with some cool archetypes in it.

I do like that idea, but I use Incubu/Succubi as the energy vampire creatures in my games. They feed off of passion of any type. Lust, an artist’s passion for theirs creations, intense friendships, bloodlust, and more can all feed a Succubus. Having energy vampire hags would be a bit redundant for me.

 

[Bae'zel]

Wasn’t Medusa the name of one of the three Gorgon sisters?

Without needing to question whether there should be gender balance, it was actually her name not her species!

Same with Pegasus (a specific winged horse).

Same with Reynard, which was the name of a specific fox (in French folklore, which were called “goupil”, until the character became so popular that the entire species were then called “renard”).

Humans are funny that way.

 

[dave2008]

Sure. However, several subsets of Medusa's stories have been compiled and have become widely known, and in none of them, medusa is a species. It's extremely consistently depicted as a single person. The odds of a conflicting lore lost to time is really low. And since it's lost, even if it ever existed, it matters less. While it might not matter to the (supposedly many) people who aren't familiar with the stories about Medusa, among groups of people who share that cultural familiarity, it's jarring to hear even the plural form of medusa, let alone a masculine form of the word.

Even if there are variations in lore about Kappas, ask someone what it evokes them, and it won't be a three-headed giant. So, calling a putative giant like that in D&D a Kappa wouldn't sit well with me. The fact that kappa evokes a type of cucumber dish in Japanese restaurant to most people wouldn't make it better (unless it was a bona fide coincidence of course).

I have no desire to argue the obvious so I will stop here. You don't seem to get my point and I don't feel like trying to explain it in more detail.

 

[Remathilis]

Same with Pegasus (a specific winged horse).

Same with Reynard, which was the name of a specific fox (in French folklore, which were called “goupil”, until the character became so popular that the entire species were then called “renard”).

Humans are funny that way.

Tom cats were renamed Toms after a novel character. Thus, all male cats became Toms.

 

[kigmatzomat]

That depends on the myth interpretation. In the Greek myths she was a gorgon and not cursed. In the Roman myths she was. Interesting that you note the Greek myths and then blame the Greek gods for the creation of Pegasus when Pegasus was born from the death of Medusa and has nothing to do with the Greek gods.

If Medusa was born of greek gods, then her blood turning into a winged horse is due to her parents divinely weird genetics. Cetus and Phorcys spat out everything; beautiful nymphs, gorgons, the Graeae and a bunch of sea monsters. And sometimes when you chopped up one of their kids, a couple of grandkids could form out of their blood.

 

[Echohawk]

They were all double-sided for the first two sets, but not for those afterwards (although some monsters still did get both sides). It was very frustrating once that started happening since you couldn't keep everything in nice alphabetical order any more if you blended more than one set together. To bring this discussion all around full circle, I distinctly remember that it was the maedar page in the third set that was one of the first to throw things off.​

I think you are slightly misremembering. There are monsters on each side of the page in both Volume One and Volume Two of the Monstrous Compendium. The first two volumes were designed so that, when combined, you'd have an alphabetically sorted set of monsters. However, starting from Volume Three there were pages that didn't fit into this pattern, for example, the Maedar/Meazel sheet could not be correctly sorted given the Manticore/Medusa sheet from Volume One.

Almost as annoying was the fact that some of the sub-category pages didn't retain the main monster name in the heading, so the sheets for Volume Three go:

Death, Crimson
Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs
Allosaurus to Archelon
Brachiosaurus to Camptosaurus
...
Teratosaurus to Tyrannosaurus Rex
Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs
Dracolich

Pulling those off the shelf to investigate has set off my eye-twitch; it's just as annoying now as it was 36 years ago .​

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Sure. However, several subsets of Medusa's stories have been compiled and have become widely known, and in none of them, medusa is a species. It's extremely consistently depicted as a single person.

I don't think D&D has ever treated her that way...

I think Cerberus is only a single entity, as was the Golem. If we go by that standard, D&D worlds will probably be quite monster free...

So tell me what is better:
A monster manual with a wide variety of monsters so you can chose which one live in your world and how many of them, or only those that are present in greek history exactly as they were depicted there, because all worlds have to exactly copy their myths?