D&D (2024) New Celestials | 2024 Monster Manual | D&D

dave2008 said:

I don't know about the 2024 art, but the 2014 manticore had a monstrously human head:

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I feel this image does a good job of portraying a humanlike face but being a nonsapient "beast".


Apparently, the concept of a manticore (Persian mard-kordan "man eater") originates from reports of encounters with this kind of animal in India. Some said it was a garbled description of a tiger. However, via Plinius mentioning it, the manticore became a vivid archetype in the medieval bestiaries of Europe.

Bae'zel said:

I wonder why that changed in Fantasy media in general?

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If you mean for manticores, my best guess would be because in fantasy they're generally seen as more beast-like. Putting a human head on a hostile beast doesn't gel well with most people's expectations.

If you mean for sphinxes... AFAIK that change hasn't really occurred. This is very much one of those "D&D is just weird about this" things. It might have knock-on effects in other media, but I've seen plenty of actual sphinxes there, too. Pathfinder, for example, has actual sphinxes:


MtG also has actual sphinxes, and that's also WotC. They get more creative with the idea sometimes, and my absolute favorite sphinx design in MtG is Ormos:

Her design really captures the avian subtheme in a way not many sphinx designs do.

Although you have also reminded me that another one of the reasons I dislike 4e/5e winged lion sphinxes is how visually similar they are to D&D manticores. The texture of the wings and thickness of the tail are just not enough of a difference to me - I want something as thematically distinct as sphinxes and manticores usually are to be visually easy to differentiate at a glance. (Yes, I know real-world mythology manticores are pretty similar in appearance to the real-world mythology sphinxes in many cases, but if one gets the human face and not the other, then IMO sphinxes - the ones with explicitly human-like sapience - should be it.)

Yaarel said:

I feel this image does a good job of portraying a human face but being a nonsapient "beast".

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I agree, and I especially like the commitment to the manticore's 3 rows of teeth. A face like this could still be called human-like, but still different enough to be obviously more feral. I think the size of the head also helps with that.

dave2008 said:

Nice solar too!

View attachment 394766

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He looks like a Harold.

"Hark! The Harold angel sings!"

Personally, I would rather the Valkyrie was some kind of controller (to use the 4e term) that could inflict a state of rage (similar to barbarians) in someone she could see (of course, the victim could choose to fail the save and choose the rage) and then had spells to power up her warrior. She doesn't want the warrior to survive. That gives the PC's a reason to fight her, to save a party member, a party member's loved one, or someone they were hired to save (or someone they want alive).

I have been fooling around with the idea of Leannán sídhe being the CN exemplars who motivate mortals to dream big and follow up on it with regardless of whether it leads to good things to the wider world or the mortal in question. Valkyries for the melee types, I forget the name of the winged snake centaur women for bards, and some kind of angel-like creature that inspires martyrdom (maybe based on Vildeis from PF) for clerics and paladins.