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.

 

[lefthandopal]

Exactly. Lore can be anything the narrator wants it to be for their setting.

It's also a Goldilocks thing. Too much lore and you crimp what a narrator can do for their setting in terms of creativity. Too little and there won't be enough for the players to go by as they adventure within the setting. The amount of lore is just right when both the narrator and the players are enjoying themselves.

I'll enjoy myself by not playing this "4e in sheep's clothing"

 

[nevin]

That would also include giants and medusas too, which have a long history of immunity to charm/hold person. Though, I've long wondered why giants weren't just Large/Huge/Gargantuan Humanoids - or honestly Humanoid (Giant).

<shrug>

 

[Azzy]

This is what I got when I googled what defines a person.

A person ( pl. : people or persons, depending on context) is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility.

A sentient being regardless of what type they are, is still a person.

Sapient is the proper word.

 

[Remathilis]

I'll enjoy myself by not playing this "4e in sheep's clothing"

"Everything I Don't Like is 4e"

 

[Azzy]

"Everything I Don't Like is 4e"

The more people complain about 4e, the more I regret skipping it. It's like, let it go already.

 

[InkTide]

...but they still get transported to a "harmless demiplane" first though?

The old wording separated the spell into two different effects - banishing to the demiplane, or banishing to native plane, depending on whether the creature was native or not to the plane you're on.

The new version seems to be replacing the "returns to the original space" effect specifically, but it's moot either way. The creature is incapacitated for the duration, so all you need to do is hold concentration for one minute and they've got to find their own way back to your location.

I mean, if a spellcaster banishes a Fey creature from the Feywild... they shouldn't be too surprised that it eventually comes right back into the Feywild?

Yes, but that's not the problem - the problem is the "random location" is no longer optional and the DM RAW is only mentioned as choosing the plane. It is, essentially, a randomized Teleport that can target hostiles when in the Feywild, despite all those targets being native to the plane you're on. Given the size of these planes, the odds of the random location being anywhere within reach of the party are negligible, so it's effectively a removal from the combat and likely the session (possibly even the campaign) that would require a DM to create a method to return the target to within range of the party through the plane in question.

That's not the kind of overhead concentrating on a 4th level spell for one minute should create for a DM, and it really feels like this was a case of clarifying what types are extraplanar to the Prime Material without realizing the implications of the rewording when the description is shortened to exclude the "If the creature is not native to the plane you're on" clause.

I'm not trying to rag on this for no reason. I like the creature type changes, but creature types in general are only as meaningful as the things that interact with them. Since a lot of the stuff that interacts with them is sloppy, the type changes as a whole don't have a cohesive system to fit into. I know it's never been cohesive, really, but with Banishment in particular I also know this isn't something that they couldn't do, since Dispel Evil and Good still works in a perfectly reasonable way (though it only specifies planes for Fey and Undead, it won't randomly teleport them on their own home plane like Banishment does). That inconsistency is part of what I'm getting at with "sloppy."

 

[Charlaquin]

I'll enjoy myself by not playing this "4e in sheep's clothing"

This is not 4e, by a long shot.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To be fair...Goblins/Orcs in Tolkien are actually malevolent immortal Fey creatures (people often miss out on the Orcs being undying and ageless, to the point where it is occasionally a point of Tolkien lore Co teoversy...but it's there in Lord of the Rings).

Is it?

I think orcs being made out of elves is only in Silmarillion and I don't think it is ever stated that they retained the elven immortality. (It also is just one of the several orc origins considered by Tolkien. In some versions are made out of men. The elf version is just what ended up in the book.)

 

[Parmandur]

Is it?

I think orcs being made out of elves is only in Silmarillion and I don't think it is ever stated that they retained the elven immortality. (It also is just one of the several orc origins considered by Tolkien. In some versions are made out of men. The elf version is just what ended up in the book.)

In the Hobbit, the Goblin King recognizes the swords from the fall of Gondolin over 5000 years prior, and there are a lot of dialogue cues in the scenes where the Orcs talk amongst themselves that they remember the War of the Last Alliance over 3000 years previously.

It is, admittedly, somewhat subtle, but whatever Tolkien's varying ideas where about Goblons/Orcs, massive longevity was part of it, probably immortality. Kind of makes then significantly worse.

 

[MGibster]

If not Jedi, Jean Grey (minus Phoenix). Usually no tentacles there (except that one time when Masque turned her arms into tentacles for gits and shiggles).

I don't understand why that matters. Jean Grey doesn't exist in D&D. D&D is not the Marvel universe. Both can handle psionic powers in completely different ways.