D&D General What would a Semanticore do?

[RangerWickett]

The name is a pun, but I'm not sure what to do with it. Ideas?

 

[overgeeked]

It would be a rules-lawyering monster. The PCs would take psychic damage from the inane nature of his arguments and the tortured logic and reading required to make them.

 

[GreatestHonor]

As a reaction it could say something along the lines of “um Actually…” and change the damage type of an attack or ability associated with a saving throw.

 

[Chaltab]

It would probably be a lawyer. Constantly getting into arguments about the meaning of a sentence.

 

[Chaltab]

Ooh, thought. Maybe if the party has to deal with devils, an NPC will recommend a hellish lawyer and give you her card.

If/when the PCs actually summon the lawyer, she turns out to be a semanticore.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

To twist things in the other direction: What if the semanticore is a nonsapient beast, but its innate magic enforces semantic-ness onto others? A living embodiment of "you are technically correct, the best kind of correct." In their presence, technicalities become magically-binding truths, and semantic arguments hold magical weight.

They could be sought-after pets by lawyers, devils, wizards who deal with devils, and various other people who care about this sort of thing. Perhaps they came about as the result of Modron experimentation on regular manticores, which failed to produce the intended result, but instead accidentally spawned a creature that makes the world around it just a little more like Mechanus. The Modrons saw it as a failure because its magic has no effect on Mechanus, so they dumped the experiments elsewhere in their ignorance.

Statted up, this could have various effects depending on exactly HOW "semantic" you want to get with things, but you could almost certainly think up various ways to make them both desirable and profoundly annoying--much as how correctness IRL is quite desirable but demanding correctness of others can be so terribly tedious.

 

[Charlaquin]

Traditionally a manticore has the body of a lion and the face of a human (and the tail of a scorpion, but ignore that part cause it’s irrelevant to my point). A sphinx also has the body of a lion and the face of a human. And sphinxes are associated with riddles. So, maybe a semanticore is a sphinx variant who asks easily-solved riddles, but then refuses to accept the answer as correct on some technicality or other, and any counter-argument you try to make will be met with shifting of goalposts and other cheap rhetorical tactics until you tire of the debate and just stop talking to him.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

Fling poison spines at those who not phrase things to their exacting, arbitrary, and often inconsistent standards?

 

[overgeeked]

Traditionally a manticore has the body of a lion and the face of a human (and the tail of a scorpion, but ignore that part cause it’s irrelevant to my point). A sphinx also has the body of a lion and the face of a human. And sphinxes are associated with riddles. So, maybe a semanticore is a sphinx variant who asks easily-solved riddles, but then refuses to accept the answer as correct on some technicality or other, and any counter-argument you try to make will be met with shifting of goalposts and other cheap rhetorical tactics until you tire of the debate and just stop talking to him.

I was also thinking about a sphinx but crossed with a djinni. It speaks only in riddles so you’re never quite sure if it’s granted you three wishes but if you do figure it out, it will twist and turn the wishes in the worst possible way.

 

[humble minion]

I don't know what it would do, but I do know where it would live.

Down a well, actually...