So Much Art From the 2025 Monster Manual

Here's some preview art from the 2025 Monster Manual, courtesy of Wizards of the Coast's "Everything You Need to Know Video" on the new book.

A classic Faceless Stalker:

A demon of some kind:

Arch-Hags:

Some kobolds:

A Nalfeshnee, perhaps?

A revenant:

Blue dracolich:

Death Knight:

Death tyrant:

Chimera:

Githyanki (with the central warrior recreating a classic pose):

A mummy lord:

A marrow:

A balrog balor:

Mimics:

While I'm tempted to say a tressym, this actually might be a new sphinx design:

Bone fiend:

Sladd:

Rust monster:

Platinum(?) dragon:

Bronze dragon:

Hezrou, perhaps?

Fire giant, not Karlach:

Cloud giants:

Zombies:

Red dragon:

Hags (including a male hag):

Dryads (including a male dryad):

Horned devil:

Incubus and succubus:

Vampires:

Vampire:

Colossus:

Spirit naga:

Copper dragon:

White dragon:

Blue dragon:

Gold dragon:

Black dragon:

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

D&D has a history of different types of sphinxes, this is just a new type (and it is already in the PHB). Also, IIRC, the sphinx head is of a pharaoh, which I believe were mostly (always?) men?

In Greek myth, the Sphinx (a singular creature that put Oedipus on his tragic path) had the head of a woman.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I mean... gorgon vs medusa, or the lamia being a tiger creature (or in 4E, a swarm of scarabs). Don't expect D&D to be normal.

As I've mentioned in a previous thread, the 2014 Monster Manual was the first D&D book I ever owned. As a huge mythology nerd (I will die on the hill that Percy Jackson is better than Harry Potter), the Gorgon and Lamia representations made me angry when I first read them. Weird lion-women still don't interest me, and I don't think I've ever used a Lamia in one of my campaigns.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Also man sometimes I forget that 1E art often just had monsters with their boobs out.

The 1970s were a crazy time.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As I've mentioned in a previous thread, the 2014 Monster Manual was the first D&D book I ever owned. As a huge mythology nerd (I will die on the hill that Percy Jackson is better than Harry Potter), the Gorgon and Lamia representations made me angry when I first read them. Weird lion-women still don't interest me, and I don't think I've ever used a Lamia in one of my campaigns.

Previous editions actually had the "real" lamia as a higher level variant. Not sure why they never made it the real one in later editions.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean... gorgon vs medusa, or the lamia being a tiger creature (or in 4E, a swarm of scarabs). Don't expect D&D to be normal.

Gorgon v. medusa is actually the fault of a very weird medieval bestiary. So it's dumb, but with a pedigree.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Gorgon v. medusa is actually the fault of a very weird medieval bestiary. So it's dumb, but with a pedigree.

I remember being confused by what seemed to be a mix of a Catoblepas and Colchis Bull being called a "gorgon."

 

[Chaltab]

Considering I first encountered the creature in a 2001 Castlevania game I was especially confused. How do you make that mistake when google exists? Copying D&D of course.

 

[dave2008]

Considering I first encountered the creature in a 2001 Castlevania game I was especially confused. How do you make that mistake when google exists? Copying D&D of course.

Your the original source material (the aforementioned medieval bestiary)

 

[Reynard]

I am always amused when folks admonish D&D for its take on mythological creatures, citing some personal knowledge of mythological when it is clear that they mean they read Bulfinch's in high school and maybe had one of those Time/Life hardcover series as a kid.

Mythology is gloriously weird and relentlessly inconsistent. Actual mythological sources don't agree on much of anything, and most of what you "know" was distilled from the least offensive (to Victorian sensibilities) bits of 1000 tales.

There is no "true" Mythology, and no hard canon. Gygax and Co. did what a thousand storytellers had done before them, and their "gorgon" is as valid as any other.

And, as an aside, I think a few D&D creatures will have filtered into the mythosphere and are forever part of that broad, grotesque Menagerie of weird crap humans created.

 

[Sacrosanct]

As I've mentioned in a previous thread, the 2014 Monster Manual was the first D&D book I ever owned. As a huge mythology nerd (I will die on the hill that Percy Jackson is better than Harry Potter), the Gorgon and Lamia representations made me angry when I first read them. Weird lion-women still don't interest me, and I don't think I've ever used a Lamia in one of my campaigns.

I failed part of my 7th grade language arts class--the mythology part. I was super stoked when it came up because I was enthralled with mythology.

So why did I fail? Because my knowledge of mythology came from the Monster Manual and Dieties and Demigods books. Who knew that my source material was flawed?