Epic Monsters: Cerberus (5E)

Today on Epic Monsters we visit the underworld which means of course crossing paths with Hades’ guard dog: Cerberus!

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This three-headed (possibly as many as 100 heads depending on where you look) canine keeps the dead from escaping the afterlife—really though Cerberus’ claim to fame is his capture by Heracles/Hercules as one of the twelve labors, a story celebrated again and again throughout both Greek and Roman arts. The hero is initiated into the Eleusian Mysteries and then travels into the underworld probably by way of a cave in Tainaron, guided afterward by Athena and Hermes. Once he’s down there Heracles/Hercules runs into Theseus and Pirithous (held captive for trying to rescue Persephone from hell—that whole pomegranate seeds and winter thing) then wrangles the beast. How he does so (and much more) is written about in great length and changes from author to author, but at the end of the day comes back up with Cerberus, typically with Theseus, and sometimes Pirithous too.

Design Notes:This is actually a conversion from Sean K. Reynold’s excellent New Argonauts with a little bit extra tacked in (a breath weapon). He thought a smaller puppified version would be useful for folks and I am in full agreement on that—if you are too here’s a cerberean hound.

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Cerberus
Huge monstrosity, neutral

Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points 152 (16d12+48)
Speed 50 ft.

STR​	DEX​	CON​	INT​	WIS​	CHA​
22 (+6)​	15 (+2)​	17 (+3)​	7 (-2)​	12 (+1)​	10 (+0)​

Saving Throws Dex +5, Con +6
Skills Insight +5, Perception +7, Stealth +5, Survival +4
Damage Resistances cold, fire, necrotic, radiant
Senses darkvision 200 ft., passive Perception 22
Languages Common
Challenge 8 (3,900 XP)

Ageless. Cerberus cannot suffer from frailty of old age, die from old age, or be aged magically.

Snake-Tail. Cerberus’ uses its Dexterity modifier for attack and damage rolls with its snake-tail.

Three Heads. Cerberus gains double his proficiency bonus to and has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks. In addition, he has advantage on saving throws against being blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, stunned, or knocked unconscious.


ACTIONS

Multiattack. Cerberus makes three bite attacks and one snake-tail attack.

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (1d10+6) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 17 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.

Snake-Tail. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6+2) piercing damage plus 7 (2d6) poison damage.

Poison Foam (Recharge 5-6). Cerberus exhales a spray of toxic liquid in a 20-foot cone. Each creature in that area must make a DC 17 Dexterity saving throw, taking 35 (10d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

 

[dave2008]

Evslin has several interesting takes (I would definitely recommend them). His Cerberus, in particular, was a good (although sad) one: As a young monster, Cerberus befriends a mortal girl; Hades wants Cerberus as a guard dog, and so has the girl killed; Cerberus rampages through the realms of the dead, killing off a bunch of Hades' monsters (thus deserving a high CR); Hades promises to bring her back to life in a 1,000 years if Cerberus serves as his guard dog during that period, and the book ends without us ever finding out if he ever got her back.

Hades questionable human resources practices gives Cerberus a chance to rampage through various monsters of the underworld in the Sphinx book (although sadly Cerberus and the Sphinx never get to fight, although they are on opposite sides).

Interesting - I will have to check them out! Thanks for point me in his direction.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It's not really a convention, though, if only an extreme minority of the relevant population knows about it and/or cares to use it. This really sounds like you having heard a term being used, having adopted it for yourself, and now hoping you can get it over so it's the "cool" term to use.

Once is a novelty. Twice is a coincidence. Three instances make a trend.

Draculas aside, medusa may be the better reference here, since it shows up in similar contexts to cerberus. That is to say, it's used as the creature name for the countless waves of video game monsters. Cerberuses are less common than medusas, but they still show up as normal enemies in (for example) Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

For the purposes of this particular discussion and how the work was represented in the debate, it actually does make it exponentially lesser, your opinion on the quality of the work notwithstanding.

Citing "Harry Potter" as a reference to support your notion of the commonality of using the name Cerberus to refer to a class of beings in pop culture is at best disingenuous if the work that you're referring to is not actually the ubiquitous, widely admired, and greatly respected work of J.K. Rowling and instead the significantly less ubiquitous, derivative work of someone who has little standing in the literary world (said author's work in the field of artificial intelligence notwithstanding).

I suppose it was ambiguous, but I wasn't actually attempting an appeal to commonality; Rowling, regardless of how widely she's been read, is still just one author. I was attempting an appeal to authority, since Yudkowsky is so highly regarded as a writer and rationalist. (That's why I provided sufficient detail to pinpoint the work, by citing the scene in such a way that nobody would mistake it for the original.) If Yudkowsky calls it a cerberus, and he imagines that a well-read eleven-year-old in 1992 would call it a cerberus, then that's good enough for me.

My appeal to commonality was through comics, since The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl actually is an award-winning comic that's been among the highest rated Marvel series for as long as it's been in print.

The work in question is likely the only one you'll find where the mythological three-headed dog is referred to as "the Cerberus."

I find that highly, highly unlikely.

 

[ParanoydStyle]

I'll reserve judgement on how reasonable is but seriously thank you for linking me to that article, that question has been bothering me for DECADES. Mad appreciation.

However, I think in these times there are a lot of people who know what a vampire is, but not Dracula. I think they have moved passed that. There are lots of vampire stories in many different media that have little to nothing to do with Dracula and everyone knows what your talking about - Lestat being a good example. People know what vampires are, whether or not they know who Dracula is.

Everyone knows who Dracula is. At least, I personally have never conversed with anyone who doesn't.

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

I mean, there aren't any in popular culture. There isn't a show or comic or anything about someone who is a medusa. There aren't even any famous medusa side-characters, or love interests. It's just the original story, and then no-name monsters that show up in random encounters.

Yeah, that's one problem with a lot of the Greek mythological monsters as they're not very easy to extrapolate to modern day settings that make up the bulk of fiction.

Does nobody read comic books anymore? What is the world coming to?

I don't anymore, but I imagine that what we're talking about is so limited in scope that 99% of people who do read comic books even encountered it.

I'm not a big fan of attaching images in these forums, but here's part of a comic from like five years ago:

Deadpool is probably the last character you want as your reference. LOL

The comment he made was clearly in jest and aligned with the snarky, "stupid 'cause he wants to be" attitude that he has. LOL

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

I posted the origin with link in post #20

I saw a couple of articles talking about this very connection as well. It's all speculation, but the evidence seems to point to that writing as the source of the idea. It seems like Gygax went with the altered version of the gorgon from that book as a play on it having the same name as the sisters and went with "medusa" as a generic name for the creature in order to be able to have both monsters in that first Monster Manual.

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

I think it is unlikely to take root with the strength of the term vampire and no good reason to abandon it in favor of draculas. I maintain the language is evolving away from draculas as the know of Dracula himself becomes less and less important. Vampires stand on their own merits without Dracula.

Add to that the fact that while Dracula was the catalyst for a new lore of vampires as these seductive, "noble" beings who just so happened to murder people for sustenance, the public's idea of what a vampire is these days is no longer aligned with the Dracula mythos. Lestat and Strahd are "noble" vampires, but most people these days are going to think of "normal" high schooler Edward from "Twilight", biker-looking Blade, leather-clad Selene from "Underworld", Bill and Eric from "True Blood", the nasty Strigoi from "The Strain", and so on and so forth.

Dracula is neither the stereotypical nor archetypical vampire character anymore... he's just _a_ vampire character among many diverse ones.

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

Once is a novelty. Twice is a coincidence. Three instances make a trend.

I never knew that all I needed to do was say something is so three times to make it a trend. ROFL.

Draculas aside, medusa may be the better reference here, since it shows up in similar contexts to cerberus. That is to say, it's used as the creature name for the countless waves of video game monsters.

I would agree with the sentiment at a high level, and I personally wouldn't be bothered one bit by an IP labeling a species of three-headed dogs as cerberi. That said, I think the relative rarity of the creature in popular culture points to not enough people seeing it as a generic term rather than a specific individual's name.

Yudkowsky is so highly regarded as a writer and rationalist.

He is well regarded in his field, but he is virtually unknown outside of it, which makes him unfit as a reference for popular thinking.

(That's why I provided sufficient detail to pinpoint the work, by citing the scene in such a way that nobody would mistake it for the original.)

Sure, but you first misrepresented it as "Harry Potter" which, without clear documentation of that you're referencing fan fiction, implies the ubiquitous original literature.

If Yudkowsky calls it a cerberus, and he imagines that a well-read eleven-year-old in 1992 would call it a cerberus, then that's good enough for me.

He didn't imagine that, though. His audience for that fan fiction was not children but rather adults to whom he was promoting the subject matter covered by his academic research and on his website.

My appeal to commonality was through comics, since The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl actually is an award-winning comic that's been among the highest rated Marvel series for as long as it's been in print.

I've heard numerous good things about the comic series. It is well regarded, but it is also not very well known. Relatively few comic book readers will actually know who this character is, let alone have read it and would recognize any reference to it. It's a non-starter in mainstream pop culture, and if we're talking about common usage of a word, then mainstream pop culture, regardless of critical regard (or lack thereof), is going to trump less known, if award-winning, material each and every time.

I find that highly, highly unlikely.

And I find it incredibly likely. I've seen the creation of a generic species of three-headed dogs that were labeled as cerberi (case in point God of War), but its very unlikely that a property has referred to that specific mythological entity as "the Cerberus" instead of "Cerberus", but that's beside the point since any such work, if it existed, would just be another in the extreme minority when compared to the countless number of works that correctly used the word as a proper name.

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

Everyone knows who Dracula is. At least, I personally have never conversed with anyone who doesn't.

I think most people will have heard the name before, but there's certainly a large group of people now (especially the younger generations) who don't know the lore and just know him to be "some vampire."

 

[dave2008]

I'll reserve judgement on how reasonable is but seriously thank you for linking me to that article, that question has been bothering me for DECADES. Mad appreciation.



Everyone knows who Dracula is. At least, I personally have never conversed with anyone who doesn't.
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I'm 45 and I know some of my children's friends who grew up on twilight and similar do not know who Dracula is.

 

[dave2008]

I was attempting an appeal to authority, since Yudkowsky is so highly regarded as a writer and rationalist.

But Yudkowsky is not an authority on greek mythology or harry potter or, most importantly, popular culture. I don't know anything about is work in AI or Rationalism, but that bit of fan fiction was pretty cringe worthy IMO. He has no more authority on the subject than JKR and a lot smaller popular reach then JKR. So which has more cultural influence:

1) the 3-head dog referenced in the 400 million copies of Harry Potter & the Philosophers Stone (+ the movie of course), or...

2) the Cerberus reference in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality