Do owlbears have teeth?

[aramis erak]

I've always assumed they didn't, but I suppose they could have retained them from their dinosaur-arctoid ancestors.

Ducks have tooth-like bristles...
a number of birds have keratinous tooth-type structures called tomia - colloquially called teeth by some.
Some birds have an ossified tooth to peck out of their egg, lost in the first day or two. Others it's keratinous.

 

[Tonguez]

I guess it depends on which picture I'm using.

So I guess, in my campaign, some owlbears do, some don't.

Going by owlbear illustrations in the Monster Manuals (or edition equivalent), most have serrated beaks.

clearly serrated: 1e, 2e compendum, 4e essentials, 5.0e, 5.5e
unclear, maybe serrated: 2e MM, 4e
single tomial tooth and notch: 3.Xe
probably no tomia: OD&D


OD&D Greyhawk Supplement - probably a normal owl's beak:
View attachment 431872
1e Monster Manual - a bunch of small serrations, like a goose:
View attachment 431878
2e Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1 - large, jagged, teeth-like serrations:
View attachment 431875

2e Monstrous Compendium Annual Vol. 3 - The Arctic Owlbear also has teeth-like serrations:
View attachment 431882
2e Monstrous Manual - the inside edges of the beak look a little jagged. I think it's supposed to be small serrations, but it's pretty subtle:
View attachment 431876

3.Xe Monster Manuals (both use the same illustration) - looks more like a falcon's beak with a single tomial tooth on each side and corresponsing mandibular notches, used for severing spines:
View attachment 431873

4e Monster Vault - like the 2e Monstrous Manual, it's subtle, but I think the underside of the top beak is intended to look serrated:
View attachment 431874

4e Essentials Monster Vault - serrations prominently displayed on the cover:
View attachment 431879

5.0e Monster Manual - serrated:

5.5e Monster Manual - definitely serrated:

Oh I really like the 5.5 depiction, I hadnt seen that before.

I always assumed the different pictures depicted different species of Owlbear too - so if we just go by fur/feather colour theres seems to be 3 or 4 different types depicted - the standard brown (1e, 2e, 3e, 4e), a grey (5e), snowy white (2e) and maybe a hybrid (4e Essentials).

The poor guy in the 2e Monstrous Compendium Vol.1 looks a bit munted, so I'm going to presume it was either mutated by wizard experiments or disease. Also I always thought the 3e version looked blind so, so also going to presume that one is also a mutated form

 

[Fenris-77]

So, I'll admit to not reading the thread. But I have questions. None of which, I suspect, have much to do the OPs reason for posting. That said, here's a pic of what the inside of a penguin's mouth looks like, if that helps:

 

[messy]

A simple question that came up in the last session.

Care to elaborate?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

We're talking about real animals like like owls, owlbears, and bears. Fantasy creatures like dragons have no place in the discussion.

Toothless actually has teeth.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That said, here's a pic of what the inside of a penguin's mouth looks like, if that helps:

View attachment 431986

It doesn't help with my night terrors.

 

[Deset Gled]

Care to elaborate?

Sure.

I'm playing through "The Radiant Storms" with my group. It's a 5e adventure by Bill Slavicsek (better known for Star Wars work) that I'm extending to make a longer campaign out of.

At one point, the adventurers encountered two sleeping Shadowfell Owlbears. The group completely failed to quietly sneak past them, but succeeded in killing them. Afterwards, the party wanted to loot the corpses. I told them that there wasn't any treasure or anything like that. But, without even thinking about it, I said that they were free to take anything they wanted from the bodies like meat, feathers, or teeth. At the mention of teeth, everyone in the group stopped for a second, which lead to a brief OOC discussion: do owlbears have teeth?

For the purposes of the game I said yes, but told the group I would look into it more. My ruling was 100% based on this illustration from the module:

But, I have to admit that my initial reaction was "probably not", which I think is largely influenced by this early owlbear picture:

Owlbear - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I think the research that @Milieu did is the most comprehensive and makes it look like they commonly do, but the poll makes it look like most people have the same gut reaction that I did.

 

[Autumnal]

Looking at the history of owlbear illos, it appears that artists with any grasp of anatomy and detail work mostly draw them beaky, sometimes with serrations and sometimes with adjacent fangs or tusks. That works for me. If owlbears are a genus, I’d do st least one species with bear-like dentition, another with the horror show that is the penguin mouth, and a few wild cards outfitted with lamprey mouths or conodont mouths or something else weird.

 

[mamba]

I think the research that @Milieu did is the most comprehensive and makes it look like they commonly do, but the poll makes it look like most people have the same gut reaction that I did.

huh? their pictures predominantly do not show teeth, with the possible exception of the 2e one

 

[Tonguez]

huh? their pictures predominantly do not show teeth, with the possible exception of the 2e one

of the 10 images displayed 6 have teeth-structures in their beaks, thats 60%