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.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I thought the advice you're referring to was to rein in problem players. I was specifically told it wasn't general advice I should take as any kind of design philosophy statement.

Didn't know I could get a point that high over a person's head.

What I'm talking about is that people are losing their minds about the biology of Gith, but the designers are not biologists, the category of Aberration is not a biological descriptor with a robust definition. Magic doesn't care about biology. None of this is ever a concern the makers of a fantasy game should ever have had to worry about at all.

Because this isn't a hard sci-fi series with its own encyclopedia with to-scale accurate anatomical drawings of Gith Anatomy, with peer-reviewed studies of their true biology under varying influences.

But people are still raging about how the biology doesn't make sense to them. When none of this is about biology.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Didn't know I could get a point that high over a person's head.

What I'm talking about is that people are losing their minds about the biology of Gith, but the designers are not biologists, the category of Aberration is not a biological descriptor with a robust definition. Magic doesn't care about biology. None of this is ever a concern the makers of a fantasy game should ever have had to worry about at all.

Because this isn't a hard sci-fi series with its own encyclopedia with to-scale accurate anatomical drawings of Gith Anatomy, with peer-reviewed studies of their true biology under varying influences.

But people are still raging about how the biology doesn't make sense to them. When none of this is about biology.

To be fair, the kinds of drawings you are talking about absolutely existed for several types of creatures in previous D&D games, most notably in 2e's Monstrous Arcana series, and the Draconomicon.

D&D existed long before 5e did.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The Chaos forces of Limbo could conceivably work as an explanation for the Githzerai but the Githyanki have no connection to Limbo. They are born and raised on the Prime then live agelessly on the Astral until they hit X level (depends on edition) and Vlaakith eats them. The astral turning things aberration from its influence seems incongruous.

It could just be the Illithid Far Realms manipulation so you get both Gith as aberrations but then that leaves you with the PC/prime non-aberration issue to account for narratively.

The particular cellular changes made by the Illithid react to the timeless thought energy of the Astral plane, much like Kryptonians absorbing sunlight, activating enough energy to create a resonance tipping the Githyanki into Abberration energy signatures.

Done. An explanation that works with the Illithid changing them and the Far Realms. Is this the truth? Frankly.... it really, really, really doesn't matter. You are dealing with a fraction of a fraction of a percent of people who this could ever matter to.

This is taking their narrative explanation and trying to make sense of it. It does not gel for me.

I could come up with a convoluted explanation to work out everything though. Say that they all start humanoid but have an ancient adult ceremony ritual dating back to before the split that turns them into aberrations and immune to charm and hold and dominate person Illithid powers and this was key to them turning from Illithid slaves to Illithid hunters. This would leave the humanoid Githyanki on the Prime as young adults who have not had the ceremony yet. It seems fairly contrived though and requires a new thing to be added to the lore (a cultural changing ritual) and determining the age of NPC Gith the party meets to appropriately handle the different powers.

Cool, that works too. The thing is, the explanation isn't needed. The fact that they have two different sets of immunities only matters if both groups appear at the table, and you have those effects sent against both, and you didn't offer an explanation. And you just came up with a cool explanation! That ritual would be sick and a great thing to include, a thing that could not have existed if this change wasn't made.

But instead of embracing cool ideas like this, we have people demanding that other people tell them how the game term of a fantasy race in a fantasy game changes between individuals. Like there is some book somewhere with the full magical biology of these people on the shelf at our local library.

 

[Chaosmancer]

True, I don't have to like it. But like @Azzy said, nobody has to be beholden to the tags that WoTC puts on species. If I want the PC Gith and NPC Gith to be humanoid, then as far as I am concerned, they are humanoid. If you want them to be Aberrations, you are free to see them as such.

I am stating a series of opinions regarding the topic of this thread. You are likewise stating your own opinions. We are agreeing to disagree.

We can agree to disagree on if Gith are Humanoid, Abberation, or swap between them, sure.

I'm not going to agree to disagree that Crawford said "If a Gith PC were to retire from adventuring, would they undergo a Type change back to Aberration" Yes, I know you did the little winky face, but since there are so many people misrepresenting what the explanation was, I'm not going to just ignore it when people keep doing it. If you thought that the was truth and based your dislike on that, it was a lie. That's not how it works from their explanation.

 

[Chaosmancer]

To be fair, the kinds of drawings you are talking about absolutely existed for several types of creatures in previous D&D games, most notably in 2e's Monstrous Arcana series, and the Draconomicon.

D&D existed long before 5e did.

And none of those books have been printed for twenty years or more. So why would you expect a new change to come with the type of information they no longer provide? These sort of changes existed long before 5e too.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And none of those books have been printed for twenty years or more. So why would you expect a new change to come with the type of information they no longer provide? These sort of changes existed long before 5e too.

All I expect is that blanket statements like you posted above not be taken as some kind of unalloyed truth. D&D has done these things. You don't care about that, or think any kind of explanation matters. And that fine, for you.

 

[AlViking]

All I expect is that blanket statements like you posted above not be taken as some kind of unalloyed truth. D&D has done these things. You don't care about that, or think any kind of explanation matters. And that fine, for you.

What kind of explanation would suffice at this point? It's pretty obvious to me that the explanation is simply that they wanted to clear up the classifications and that creatures that originate from or were manipulated by the far realms are aberrations. That includes the gith. You don't have to agree with that, you don't have to change your game if you ever actually play DnD, you don't even have to like it. But an explanation was given.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What kind of explanation would suffice at this point? It's pretty obvious to me that the explanation is simply that they wanted to clear up the classifications and that creatures that originate from or were manipulated by the far realms are aberrations. That includes the gith. You don't have to agree with that, you don't have to change your game if you ever actually play DnD, you don't even have to like it. But an explanation was given.

Can't argue with any of that, including your assessment of my feelings about it.

 

[Akodoken]

Gith are Aberrations because of "space magic." I am cool with that.

 

[Corinnguard]

Level Up has it where Aberrations are unnatural beings that don’t belong to this plane of existence. Many aberrations are telepathic and use a mental power known as psionic power instead of magic.