Legends & Lore: Medusa? More Like Medon’tsa

One thing that I have been critical of with Next, aside from virtually everything involving mechanics, is the flavor, which I guess means pretty much everything. Normally it is the Wandering Monsters column that tries to pitch confusing, contradictory, and/or boring backstories, but today Legends & Lore takes over with the medusa.

The Greek Medusa was a beautiful woman who was cursed by Athena for the “crime” of being raped in one of her temples by another god. Her hair was transformed into snakes, her gaze turned anyone that saw it to stone (no save), and in at least one version of the story she is eventually beheaded by Perseus.

In both 2nd and 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons the medusa is by default not a unique creature, but a female-only race that mates with humanoid males to produce offspring. Unless you count their save-or-die gaze attack (which I do not) there is nothing interesting about them: they are hateful, live in caves, and depending on the Dungeon Master utilizing them might inexplicably leave statues around to make sure adventuring parties know exactly what to expect.

4th Edition kept them as a race but provided several unconfirmed origin stories; cursed elven worshippers of Zehir, a yaun-ti slave race created from mingling other yaun-ti and basilisks, or humans or dragonborn corrupted by Zehir. There is also a bit of flavor content tying them with yaun-ti, which makes sense what with all the mention of Zehir. As an added bonus they get some actually decent combat mechanics.

You have got the gamut of evil monster that pretty much lives in caves and exists to be killed, and a variety of stories to pick, modify, combine, and/or ignore, so what does Next do with all of this flavor content?

Since the backstory of an ugly humanoid monster that is always evil was not compelling enough, they decided to add more depth by having them be created from a curse. That is actually surprising in a good way, since it is not only not just what was done before, but it also sounds a lot better than a snake-haired woman that dupes men into heading back to her cave.

Really the only problem is that the curse makes absolutely no sense at all:

“Medusas are created by a curse whereby a human trades a decade of great beauty and personal magnetism for an eternity of a visage so wretched that it turns onlookers to stone.”

I guess that this was the best that they could come up with? What is surprising in a bad way is that more than a few of the comments on the page think that this is in anyway interesting or even reasonable. Ten years of beauty for an eternity of snakes and murder-eyes? How does it work? Do you pray to a god of horrible bargains? What does the being that fulfills these curses have to gain? Why is the curse and period of time so oddly specific? Like, what if I just need a few points of Charisma? Where do snakes fit into the whole theme?

You know what makes more sense and still retains everything good about the concept? Having the curse be levied by the gods as punishment for vanity. I am not even necessarily talking about those that dare to compare themselves (or be unfortunately compared to) to a god of beauty, though that is certainly an obvious use. Anyone that is excessively vain could be a potential target, particularly those that use their looks to deceive people, which plays with the snake theme.

With this origin they can still be in positions of power, especially if they were rich beforehand), but whether the curse is placed on bad people that deserve it or innocent people unaware of the ramifications of their boasts (or the boasts of others), it will help rationalize their hatred and possibly make them sympathetic villains.

Wandering Monsters: Turned to Stone

Petrification is one of several iconic save-or-die effects that have persisted throughout many Dungeons & Dragons editions, whether forcing a save versus petrification or making a Fortitude save, your survival boiled down to a single die roll.

One of 4th Edition’s controversial changes was reducing the immediate impact of save-or-die effects: if you got his with a medusa’s gaze attack and it beat your Fortitude defense, you would be initially slowed. On subsequent rounds you got to make more saving throws, with additional failures immobilizing you, then finally turning you to stone after strike three.

I liked this because I felt that it added more tension to the game, especially if you or other characters had access to powers that granted saving throw bonuses. I also liked that some monsters had ways to restore a petrified character, such as by creating a poultice from a cockatrice’s feathers and blood. To me this helped mitigate the former game-stopping impact of a few bad rolls, which would have been nice in 3rd Edition, where a party of seven was wiped out in the first random encounter against a pair of cockatrices.

Basilisk
I like the idea of basilisks as an ambush predator, as it helps separate them from the rest of the petrifying participants. I kind of wish that they would have borrowed the bit about how the mythological basilisk’s presence could kill plant-life and crack stone. This could make for good foreshadowing, as well as an adventure hook where one or more basilisk’s are intruding into a region and gradually destroying it. I also liked a lot of the 4th Edition variants, such as the venom-eye.

Cockatrice
Though small, these guys come in flocks and can fly, which already contrasts greatly against the largely solitary basilisk, gorgon, and medusa, but they also have a fairly unique petrifying bite attack. I really have no complaints about them, though I never did understand why they could see ethereal creatures. I guess being able to stun ethereal creatures is different.

Gorgon
Large size, a petrifying breath weapon, and presumably some kind of goring attack gave been the gorgon’s staples throughout the editions, and I have no real complaints about them now. The gorgon sets itself apart by being much more durable than the cockatrice, more mobile than the basilisk, and having an area-affect breath weapon, so you cannot simply avert your eyes or rely on heavy armor to keep it at bay.

As with the cockatrice, I am confused by their ability to see ethereal creatures, as well as their ability to turn them to stone, and as with the basilisk I hope that they throw some variant gorgons at us, too.

Medusa
Up until now I had no real problems with any of the monsters, but I have no idea why, in a game where the gorgon is a metallic bull instead of a trio of snake-haired sisters, and the basilisk is an multi-legged, lizard-like beast instead of a snake, that they want to stick with the medusa–which was the name of one of the aforementioned gorgons–as a unique creature.

Personally I think that if a DM wants a medusa to be a unique creature, that it is easier to increase its overall power, than to potentially have to decrease it in order to accommodate a race of medusas. One of the Planescape monster books had some legendary monster entry, and I recall a few templates in 3rd Edition that let you really ramp up a monster’s power.

This means that the default medusa might gradually petrify her victims, while the “medusa of legend/paragon medusa” might have an instantaneous gaze. This could also extend to other monsters, giving us, among other things, a much tougher minotaur, hydra with no head-cap, and a lion that must either be strangled to death or cut with its own claws.

This does not mean that I think that they need to be a true-breeding race with maedars and all: they could still be the results of curses, spontaneously arise from the blood of other monsters, or created through dark rituals. I just think that the default assumption should be that there is more than one.