The Gith Are Now Aberrations in Dungeons & Dragons

The githyanki and githzerai are officially reclassified as aberrations in Dungeons & Dragons. In a video released today about the 2025 Monster Manual, D&D designers Jeremy Crawford and F. Wesley Schneider confirmed that the two classic D&D species are now being classified as aberrations. The reasoning given - the two gith species have been so transformed by living in the Astral Plane and Limbo, they've moved beyond being humanoids. Schneider also pointed out that the illithid's role in manipulating the gith also contributed to their new classification.

The video notes that this isn't technically a new change - the Planescape book released in 2023 had several githzerai statblocks that had aberration classifications.

The gith join a growing number of previously playable species that have new classifications. The goblin, kobolds, and kenku have also had their creature classifications changed in the 2025 Monster Manual. While players can currently use the 2014 rules for making characters of those species, it will be interesting to see how these reclassifications affect the character-building rules regarding these species when they are eventually updated for 2024 rules.

 

[AlViking]

gith looks bascily human they are half a step away from were elves are, I have seen star trek aliens far more removed

Take away the face tentacles and mind flayer and they're humanoid as well. There are a lot of creatures that have the same body structure as humans that have never been considered humanoid so I don't see an issue.

 

[Voadam]

From the 5e 2014 MM:

Aberrations are utterly alien beings. Many of them have innate magical abilities drawn from the creature's alien mind rather than the mystical forces of the world. The quintessential aberrations are aboleths, beholders, mind flayers, and slaadi.

It will be interesting to see what the 2024 MM actually says here.

 

[Yaarel]

Generally, the Astral Plane is the realm of thoughts. If something can exist conceptually in any way − it is Astral.

Thus the Astral Plane overlays everything that exists, whence it is the plane for traveling to anywhere, any story, any multiverse, including Magic The Gathering settings and their own separate multiverse. If something is thinkable, it exists somewhere in the Astral Plane, no matter how far away.

The Farrealm is ... "anti astral". It is also thoughts, except the thoughts that are conflictive and suppressed because they conflict with and destabilize that thoughts that are in use to structure and sustain reality itself. To some degree, the Farrealm is the "collective unconscious" of a multiverse.

As a creature type, an Aberration is a phenomenon that manifests the reality-unraveling dissonance of the Farrealm.

The Farrealm is ethically neutral. It can be a source of new possibilities, albeit it is mostly dangerous, destructive, and less helpful.

 

[Voadam]

4e MM: "aberrant [origin]: Aberrant creatures are native to or shaped by the Far Realm." Mind Flayers were aberrant humanoids, Githyanki were natural humanoids.

3.5: "Aberration Type: An aberration has a bizarre anatomy, strange abilities, an alien mindset, or any combination of the three." Mind Flayers were aberrations, Gith were extraplanar humanoids.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is really starting to look more like an imposed change to me, one no one asked for. So the obvious question is: why is it happening?

 

[Mind of tempest]

Take away the face tentacles and mind flayer and they're humanoid as well. There are a lot of creatures that have the same body structure as humans that have never been considered humanoid so I don't see an issue.

a mindflayer is but one morph of several depending on what they corrupt.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Its something that has been there in Githzerai art for a while. A lot of fu manchu facial hair for one thing.

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any one else kind of want their cloths?

 

[abirdcall]

The Gith aren't the only playable species that have been messed around with by Mind Flayers. There's also the Duergar. Anyone know how they are being typed in 5.5e? Humanoid or Aberration? If being messed around by the Mind Flayers makes a species into an Aberration, then the Duergar ought to have the same type.

It is more about where they live.

From what I can see, if their communities have been on the material plane for some time they are humanoids.

If they reside in the upper or lower planes, the feywild, astral plane, limbo, etc. then they have a different type.

This is a neat sort of world building as it, in effct, makes many creatures like angels devils more human-like. They still have their own personalities, desires, and free will, they are just plane touched.

So more creatures gain a magical nature through being plane touched and also creatures with magical natures gain sapience in a way they were implied to not have before.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Calling an obvious humanoid race with absolutely zero aberration characteristics an "aberration" in the game, and saying it's because another races did mean things to them is very obviously messed-up and reflects a whole bunch of dodgy racial tropes from the real world. It's not something WotC should be getting into.


What on earth are you talking about? They just added this dude! This isn't some longstanding thing. This is a new weird and frankly kind of silly thing WotC have added in. If they'd always been seen as aberrations, then you could say "Well it's TRADITION!" < starts singing Fiddler On The Roof >. But that's absolutely not the case. This is just a wild and silly new thing.


If you can't see how having that happen to them leading to them being labelled an "aberration" is uh, not cool, then I think you might not exactly be sensitive here.

/rolleyes come on. That's just posturing. This is a bizarre and silly decision to label Gith as "aberrations", a very racially loaded term that should probably never be applied to a PC race, when it doesn't even make sense. By this logic, basically everyone with psionics is an "aberration", because that's the only change lore indicates the Illithids made.

What is an "abberation characteristic"? As far as I'm aware, Abberations don't share a common aesthetic or set of characteristics. And there are no racial tropes associated with then. Oceanic tropes, maybe, but even that doesn't cover all aberrations.

You don't counter personal opinion or personal theories, however dumb, by calling them "misinformation", so maybe get down off your high horse for a minute and look at what's actually happening?

Even if the original person presented it as a theory, you coming in and loudly proclaiming WoTC is wrong to have done this because of egg-laying is still wrong and still misinformation. Because that isn't why they did it.

Given they have often have and still do have connections to Asian culture, not least via monks, martial arts, etc., and fit with some crude Asian stereotypes, even down to their appearance... That's the sort of thing that can be ignored when they're being handled otherwise well, maybe, but when you're doing stuff like classing them as "aberrations".

Eh, maybe? I can sort of see the Githzerai having some asian connotations because of Buddhism analogues, but that is more based on their religion and spirituality than their race. You may as well say dwarves are a stand-in for greeks because they have a pantheon like the greeks did. It doesn't really fit well.

And while there are some faint hints of asiatic features in their artwork... again it is mostly just the Githzerai, using buddhist imagery and clothing patterns to reflect their monasterial society. The Githyanki certainly never struck me as asiatic with their western armor and dragon riding.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You're not making any kind of rational or logical argument here. None of this supports your claim that they're "abnormal" and thus them being aberrations makes sense.

Also, humanoid literally means "having a human-like form", which Gith undoubtedly do, so I'm not even sure what you think your second sentence means in English! Gith are far closer to humans in form than say, Dragonborn or Tieflings, both of which are still humanoids. So that's obviously a losing idea.

It seems like we're in a very weird situation where we're edging towards "humanoid" meaning specifically what "demihuman" used to mean, which is bizarre because the term "humanoid" was used in D&D specifically to differentiate from "demihuman"!

I think this would be a lot smaller problem if they'd done this more evenly, and Goliaths were Giants, Tieflings were Fiends, Elves and Gnomes were Fey, Dragonborn were Dragons, and so on. But it's weird as heck to make Gith, one of the more conventional humanoid races, "aberrations", a term generally associated be-tentacled monstrosities, the most humanoid of which was the Mind Flayer.

Yes, the game term "humanoid" does not match its scientific meaning. Studded leather also doesn't exist. DnD takes liberties. This isn't an issue until you make it an issue by ascribing traits to humanoid that do not exist in the game