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

[humble minion]

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?

I do remember there being a brief phase in later 2e where gnolls were, to a limited degree, being portrayed as the 'better' humanoid monsters - more redeemable, bit more of the shamanic-tribal-warrior type tropes were in use for them vs orcs etc who were still basically just killing fodder. There was a major sympathetic gnoll character in Zeb Cook's novel 'Soldiers of Ice', who was heavily implied to become a Harper post-book for instance, and while I don't have references, I vaguely recall bands of relatively reasonable gnolls, or mercenary companies of gnolls etc showing up in a number of supplements around that era. Yeenoghu was always around, but so was Gorellik, the gnoll hunting/strength deity who some gnolls followed. Gorellik wasn't exactly nice, but he wasn't a demon lord either.

I suspect this attitude started to wane with the 3e PHB re-introducing the half-orc as a playable race, so the 'monster PC' niche was kinda filled. And orcs in general followed along, because if you don't have orcs who are at least reasonable then the existence of half-orcs leads to Unfortunate Implications, as they say.

Then 4e happened along and Gorellik was retconned to have been killed in the Dawn War (or possibly eaten by Yeenoghu), and all gnolls were Yeenoghu-spawn, which neatly meant that they could be killed without qualm of conscience by adventurers far and near. Basically, they had entirely the opposite narrative trajectory to orcs, who became less Tolkienesque irredeemable evilspawn and more independent sentient beings as time passed. Gnolls devolved and became more evil. Which I thought was sad. Soldiers of Ice remains one of my favourite FR books, and it gave me a lasting soft spot for gnolls, which is hard to maintain with the current lore around them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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).

I don't think this is a trend over time, but just the effect of edition maturity. The 1st edition MM only had basic elementals, xorn, salamanders and invisible stalkers. It gradually acquired more through adventures, Fiend Folio (which added lots) etc. 2nd edition, being pretty much backwards compatible, continued to expand on that. Back then new content was released at a much faster rate, including new monsters.

5e didn't actually remove anything - right at the start they put out guidelines for converting monsters from earlier editions to 5e. WotC has never done a really big monster manual expansion like the Fiend Folio for 5e.

 

[Mirtek]

I always thought the change to become reptile happened to Kobolds because of one artist/designer looking at an old black and white picture from an earlier edition and misstook the scale armor the Kobold wore on this picture for the Kobold actually having scales

 

[Yora]

Kobolds didn't really change that much.

The only really dog-like kobolds I've ever seen were in Baldur's Gate.

 

[Yaarel]

She's turning into a swarm of beetles.

In 4e as a player, our party encountered one. I am unsure what went wrong, but it was a near TPK. It never occurred to me, that what we encountered was probably a Lamia.

 

[Yaarel]

4e introduced many cool concepts, even while it was sometimes disruptive to the traditional lore.

Splitting the Elf into a druid/ranger concept versus a wizard/bard concept is solid. Despite the disruption by recruiting the name eladrin.

The concept of Primordial elementals is solid, despite recruiting the name archon.

And so on.

 

[Yora]

While I was never interested in 4th edition, even I took notice that there's something going on with a new implied setting, that looked interesting as it's own thing.

 

[Yaarel]

Eladrin ≈ Elf
• Tulani ≈ Grey Elf
• Shiere ≈ Wood Elf
• Fierre ≈ Half Elf
• Bralani ≈ Wild Elf
• Ghaele ≈ High Elf
• Noviere ≈ Aquatic Elf (but much like Naiad Nymph and Nixie)
• Coure ≈ (would be Drow Elf but exiled and replaced by) Pixie

When 4e treats the Eladrin as a kind of Elf that is more Faerie, the decision is solid, ... despite disrupting the traditions concerning both the Elf and the Eladrin.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Then 4e happened along and Gorellik was retconned to have been killed in the Dawn War (or possibly eaten by Yeenoghu), and all gnolls were Yeenoghu-spawn, which neatly meant that they could be killed without qualm of conscience by adventurers far and near. Basically, they had entirely the opposite narrative trajectory to orcs, who became less Tolkienesque irredeemable evilspawn and more independent sentient beings as time passed. Gnolls devolved and became more evil. Which I thought was sad. Soldiers of Ice remains one of my favourite FR books, and it gave me a lasting soft spot for gnolls, which is hard to maintain with the current lore around them.

Gnolls did at least get an article during the 4E era of the magazines that described gnolls who broke away from Yeenoghu that could be used as PCs (which would still be a challenge in the default setting, whose last major empire was destroyed by gnoll hordes led by an aspect of Yeenoghu). It wasn't nearly as much attention as minotaurs got as a PC race, though, as the latter got a spot in the PHB3 and supplemental lore throughout various publications; Madness at Gardmore Abbey even has a tomb dedicated to minotaur paladins of Bahamut).

As far as I'm aware, gnolls effectively being demons wearing humanoid hyena skins was a 5E invention. Baldur's Gate 3 also has a scenario early on where the player can witness gnolls being "born" by exploding as adults from the bellies of normal hyenas.

Gnolls pretty much morphed in 5E, for whatever reason, into the ideal version of an "always Chaotic Evil" mortal race; no young to worry about, essentially being demons made flesh through exploding out of corrupted natural beasts, intrinsically-linked to the essence of a demon lord, etc.

For what its worth, Critical Role doesn't use the default 5E take on gnolls. They still have ties to Yeenoghu, but the Kryn Dynasty of Wildemount has a large number of gnolls living peacefully with goblins, minotaurs, ogres, etc as part of that civilization's effort to divorce its people from the various evil gods and demon lords who used their ancestors as minions.

 

[Mind of tempest]

While I was never interested in 4th edition, even I took notice that there's something going on with a new implied setting, that looked interesting as it's own thing.

I think someone had an entire thread about all the 4e setting lore on rpg.net it was more detailed than you might think.