D&D General D&D monsters that have been changed the most over time

[Hexmage-EN]

So here's one that's a bit of a sore spot for me personally:

Here are fomorians as depicted in 2E, 3E, and 5E:

Pretty standard between editions. Aside from the older ones being pale and the newer one being purple, they're all basically big ugly underground alternatives to hill giants.

In contrast, 4E made them the masters of the Underdark's Feywild counterpart and introduced a whole lot of variety: fomorians that could control enslaved ghosts, fomorian assassins that could stalk prey at Medium size before returning to full, Huge height, fomorian witches that assumed the form of giant elves through draining the beauty from other creatures, etc.

Turning fomorians into the rulers of despotic underground kingdoms with an array of bizarre powers went a long way towards making me actually care to use fomorians, and even with 5E going back to basics I've taken it upon myself to homebrew 5E adaptations of the various 4E fomorians. I just wish they had created more than one clothed fomorian mini during 4E.

 

[Faolyn]

@Hexmage-EN, which 4e book had the info on fomorians? I happen to like fomorians (and other giants like ettins and cyclopses, far more than I like the "true" giants) and wouldn't mind gathering some more info on them.

 

[Sacrosanct]

1989/1993, Gnolls get more evil. They will eat anything meat, including other races, and they like hearing you scream as they eat you. They are ecological nemeses, eating everything in sight and moving on. In 3rd Edition, they keep nasty and hate giants too. But, they shrink from Large to Medium. In 2005, we get the option to play gnolls, because Drizz't did it so why not? Is that why they had to shrink?

View attachment 139667

Actually, you got the ability to play a gnoll in 1993, with the Complete Book of Humanoids. Well, technically we always has the ability to, as we could play anything, but it didn't show up in official books until 1993.

 

[Demetrios1453]

There seems to be some conflation between between Orcs and the Isles of Orkney.

Etymologists usually interpret the element orc- as a Pictish tribal name meaning "young pig" or "young boar".[Notes 3][1] Speakers of Old Irish referred to the islands as Insi Orc "islands of the young pigs".[15][16] The archipelago is known as Ynysoedd Erch in modern Welsh and Arcaibh in modern Scottish Gaelic, the -aibh representing a fossilized prepositional case ending.

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Orknies are counted among the army of the White Witch.

Cruels and Hags and Incubuses, Wraiths, Horrors, Efreets, Sprites, Orknies, Wooses, and Ettins. In fact here were all those who were on the witch's side and whom the Wolf had summoned at her command.

I wonder if Lewis wanted to use "Orcs" but didn't want to step on his friend Tolkien's toes, so he changed the name a bit?

 

[Hexmage-EN]

@Hexmage-EN, which 4e book had the info on fomorians? I happen to like fomorians (and other giants like ettins and cyclopses, far more than I like the "true" giants) and wouldn't mind gathering some more info on them.

There was a lot of info on the fomorians in 4E, actually. I'll list everything I'm familiar with, but I'm sure I'll leave some things out.

• Dragon #362, which was released a few months before 4E became available, detailed the new take on the fomorians in an article called The Eye of Madness: Tyrants of the Feydark. The article has a ton of details that include mad fomorian tyrants, spy networks of fey underlings, general paranoia in fomorian society due to rampant treachery, opposition to the drow who attempt to gain a foothold in the Underdark of the Feywild, various forms of cruelty to captives (slavery, forced combat, magical experimentation, etc), and a desire to plunder eladrin civilizations for their magic.
• The fomorian warrior and painbringer are in the first Monster Manual for the edition.
• Monster Manual 2 introduced more variety with the ghost shaman (who has ghostly slaves), cackler (an assassin that can shrink to help stalk prey), totemist (who fights with a chain of curse-inflicting severed eladrin heads!), the blinder (a sage that collects the eyes of victims), and the straightforward butcher.
• Dungeon #166 featured the adventure Throne of the Stone-Skinned King, in which the goal is to parley with a fomorian lord during a banquet for ambassadors and expose his manipulative advisor, who is secretly an agent of Tiamat. This was part of the Scales of War adventure path.
• Dungeon #176 added even more fomorians in a Creature Incarnations article. These included the portal lord (who specialize in teleportation), the witch (which turns enemies into animal-like hybrids), and the abyssal eye (who has a link to demons but is terrified of becoming one).
• Dragon #420 included an article on the greatest of the fomorian lords, the immortal Thrumbolg, his portal-ridden fortress of Mag Tureah, the members of his court, and how a meeting with the First Lord of Mag Tureah is likely to go. Thrumbolg was prophesied by Baba Yaga herself to live until slain by the actions of one of his own sons. Though he slew them, the sword that the last son had forged to kill Thrumbolg with was lost through one of the fortress' random portals and is the only means by which he can be killed. After traveling through the portal the sword, Fragarach, ended up in the Temple of Elemental Evil.
• Underdark details Inbharann, a wealthy fomorian kingdom with rivers of liquid gold whose king has been prophesied to perish within the next few years. Rather than the firstborn becoming the new sovereign, the children of the king are each candidates for appointment upon the king's death. As such, each potential successor is scrambling to prove themselves the most worthy heir to take the throne.

4E also repurposed the cyclopes from their usual role as big dumb brutes to the intelligent and highly skilled servants of the fomorians. They revere the fomorians as gods and create magic items for them that rival anything produced by dwarven and elven artisans.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think dragons are the obvious ones as well. In 1e, a white dragon could be 5HD and 20ish hit points as a young adult. Every edition they got much beefier and tougher. In the older days, you could expect to encounter them fairly early on, but now they are mid to high level encounters for an adult or older.

 

[Black Dougal]

I think dragons are the obvious ones as well. In 1e, a white dragon could be 5HD and 20ish hit points as a young adult. Every edition they got much beefier and tougher. In the older days, you could expect to encounter them fairly early on, but now they are mid to high level encounters for an adult or older.

I know in 3rd edition they became more feline-esque. I watched Todd Lockwood discuss it on a youtube video. Of course, aesthetic design has influenced many monsters over the years, sometimes with a purpose other times just because the artist had a different image in their head.

I think the evolution and the changes from edition to edition keep us "older" folks more on our toes. Older is probably the wrong word, those of us that have experienced multiple editions.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I wonder if Lewis wanted to use "Orcs" but didn't want to step on his friend Tolkien's toes, so he changed the name a bit?

Or they are there as a nod/joke between friends? Wooses sounds a lot like woses too.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

So this is more about elementals in general than a specific monster, but I find it interesting how D&D has shifted over time from having a number of strange elemental creatures to largely favoring masses of elemental energy (with a few holdouts, like salamanders).

Vardigg

Bzastra

Thoqqua

Arrowhawk

With the introduction of the Elemental Chaos in 4E a new emphasis was put on unique hybrid elementals, with the default elementals (earth, fire, air, water) not appearing until Monster Manual 3. Though these were fun new concepts, there was a distinct lack of the more animal-like elementals from previous editions (save for some of the Primordials themselves, such as Tziphal and Mual-Tar). The elemental archons (myrmidons in 5E) were a fun new concept, though.

5E got rid of the hybrid elementals (I miss a few of them; I really would have liked a fire lasher mini...), but for the most part did not restore the more animal-like elementals. An interesting exception is the flail snail, which previously was not considered an elemental but was established as one in 5E.

I'm a big fan of elementals in general and ideally would have a mini of every single one I've mentioned here.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Here's the Geonid over time. Any guesses which one was the 4E take?