The Gith Are Now Aberrations in Dungeons & Dragons

The githyanki and githzerai are officially reclassified as aberrations in Dungeons & Dragons. In a video released today about the 2025 Monster Manual, D&D designers Jeremy Crawford and F. Wesley Schneider confirmed that the two classic D&D species are now being classified as aberrations. The reasoning given - the two gith species have been so transformed by living in the Astral Plane and Limbo, they've moved beyond being humanoids. Schneider also pointed out that the illithid's role in manipulating the gith also contributed to their new classification.

The video notes that this isn't technically a new change - the Planescape book released in 2023 had several githzerai statblocks that had aberration classifications.

The gith join a growing number of previously playable species that have new classifications. The goblin, kobolds, and kenku have also had their creature classifications changed in the 2025 Monster Manual. While players can currently use the 2014 rules for making characters of those species, it will be interesting to see how these reclassifications affect the character-building rules regarding these species when they are eventually updated for 2024 rules.

 

[MerricB]

Goblins, gith and so on are not ordinary folks. Player species are.
And by all means, in my experience, humanoids are the most common enemies. And those spells are very low level for what they do.

Part of it dates back to humans getting better at saves at higher levels. The higher level the opponent, all types were more likely to resist. With monsters/NPCs now having "weak" saves, hold person retains effectiveness against many foes far longer than it originally did.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Possibly. Next thing you know... halflings are aberrations as well!

(Gnomes already should be!)

Recategorizing classic antagonist species as "monsters" helps solving some dilemmas.

One of the reasons I'm reacting so negatively to this change is that this isn't a new edition. If they'd say 2024 was 6E, I'd be fine with all these changes.

I wish they had been going a bit farther in the base rules. I wish the whole spell section got an overhaul. No more single save and suck spells.
But I enjoy seeing a bit more courageous changes in the MM. And I don't like some of them (some infos in the stat block missing or some formatting).

But there's stuff here that actually changes how the game plays in significant ways. You can find old adventures that assume the spells work one way and now that is illegal.

To say nothing of how the daylight spell now produces sunlight... and makes Curse of Strahd a lot easier. Just bring in a driftglobe! Do I think a spell called daylight should produce sunlight? Absolutely. At that level? No.)

Against vampires, lets see how they are rebalanced in 2024. For kobolds and other creatures I do like that thwy are affected by daylight spells.

Strahd (and high level vampires) could just get a limited immunity to spells that produce daylight below level x.

For the bog standard vampire, it is actually cool. Think about it: daylight is a third level spell. The same as fireball. I have not seen daylight being cast a single time by players. I have once cast it as a dispell magic vs darkness. But dispell magic would have been equally efficient.

I remember when daylight ("continual light") in AD&D as a wizard spell was level 2 and could be cast at a creature to reduce saving throws and attacks and AC by 4.

A priest had the spell "sunrise" at level 3, which dod produce sunlight and could damage vampires.

So giving the spell back some of the power it once had seems good.

Ultimately, I'll keep playing and enjoying D&D (2024 most likely), but wow it's giving me the strangest vibes.

Cheers!

Yeah. The feel of change. I really love that.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Yes, yes, this all makes sense!

I guess you missed the Halflings as Oozes part

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Part of it dates back to humans getting better at saves at higher levels. The higher level the opponent, all types were more likely to resist. With monsters/NPCs now having "weak" saves, hold person retains effectiveness against many foes far longer than it originally did.

In 5e, hold person is way weaker than in ADnD. A hit from hold person took you out of the whole fight. Saves vs paralyzation were not that good for many characters.

Then consider that it was a multi target spell by default which gave a penalty if you only targeted two persons (-1) or a single person (-spell level, 2 for priests and 3 for wizards).

Priests were great. Wizards were still terrible at high level. Actually at level 20 they are as good as level 1 priests (10 or higher).

You really did not want enemies to cast any spell at you. One of our spellcasters with wizard spells always used fast low level spells to disrupt enemies. Hold person was devastating.

Rogues start ok and end bad. Warriors have the best progression.

So I think you are not remembering the power of hold person correctly.

 

[Tonguez]

There used to be monstrous humanoids. Or humanoid as a subtype.

Both were not affected by hold or charm person as they were not humanoid.

Goliath, kuo toa, yua-ti all fall under that category. So in some ways for some creatures, those new categorizations are actually bringing them closer to an older edition (3e) by making them immune to some spells.

So I am baffled by the reactive outrage.

Oh Im not complaining just observing that they may as well make elfs and gnomes fey, and dwarfs constructs, to the point that only Humans remain as Humanoids - do we need the category?

and making all the changes just to nerf one spell would be dumb when they could just change the spell instead

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Oh Im not complaining just observing that they may as well make elfs and gnomes fey, and dwarfs constructs, to the point that only Humans remain as Humanoids - do we need the category?

It used to be that everything but humans were demihumans or monsters.

Elfs, dwarves, gnomes, halflings were classified as such. Humans had special rules regarding multiclassing. So you are not totally out of your mind.

Having dwarves and elves as very close to humans is tradition, probably too much of a sacred cow to change.

I do not disagree with you that much. If you want to go back to a human centric game, humans should be a special category that has rules advantages that encourage being a human. And those advantages might be canceled by them being effected way more easily by some spells.

and making all the changes just to nerf one spell would be dumb when they could just change the spell instead

I am not sure that nerfing the spell was the intention. I think they wanted to make players species stand out as humanoids.

 

[Mind of tempest]

this is dumb if they wanted an aberration player character option this feel like the wrong way to do it, if they wanted to make them more acceptable to kill that depends on their ethical conduct and extradimensional pirates coming to loot everything not nailed down are not exactly unjustifiable to oppose.

if they wanted a better aberration player option give me a scribe and an artist and I will have it forged I do not even care about the money.
which reminds me I need to go check on my artist.

I will need to finish watching the video before I know exactly how far off the mark aberrations are.

 

[Cergorach]

Ultimately, I'll keep playing and enjoying D&D (2024 most likely), but wow it's giving me the strangest vibes.

This is pretty much how I feel about D&D 2024/2025 in general, as if they took D&D and started cutting left and right, tacking on all kinds of stuff and it's all being done by different contractors, not coordinating well... Now we're stuck with an upside-down house.

We generally play D&D (2e, 3e, and 5e), so we're likely to move to this edition SOON(tm). And what a character could do from the PHB 2024 looks cool, but now 6 months later there are still major changes happening to the new D&D...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The categorisations were pretty arbitrary to begin with, but somehow these now seem even more so. If goblins are fey, why aren't elves and gnomes fey too? If kobolds are dragons, why are dragonborn not as well? Goliaths are giants, tieflings should be fiends, aasimar celestials and the genasi elementals. This would at least makes sense, though it would nerf "person" affecting spells hard. But that's already happening.

Though of course most of the categories are meaningless for most of the time anyway. It usually just matters if something is humanoid or not. Most other categories do not interact much with the rules except beasts for druids.

 

[AlViking]

It doesn't really make much difference to me since I rarely use anything other than the standard humanoid races as repeat enemies in the first place, particularly at low levels. But in this particular case as others have pointed out it makes sense that gith aren't humanoid because they are a race created by aberrations. If it really bothers people they can always ignore it or expand hold person to affect any creatures they like.