Wandering Monsters: Riddle of the Sphinx

This is admittedly not a bad start for sphinx flavor and lore. Mind you it still needs some adjustments, but it is much better than many of the previous Wandering Monsters columns. First, the good.

Despite kind of treading on the angel’s concept, I do not mind the divine origin: they look different, are more grounded in the natural world, and not every god has to have angels on tap. I really like the description of various tests, from withstanding an androsphinx’s roar, to escaping a gynosphinx’s imagination zone, to fighting against a grossly unfair friend-to-foe ratio. This not only makes it easy to use them, but allows you to use them in some really inventive and memorable ways.

And now the bad, or at least the parts that I disagree with.

Being created by divine power is fine. I have nothing wrong with gods making things, especially since they are, ya know, gods. What I am less keen on is making them transformed priests and monarchs. Having to sit in one place for who knows how long just to test people would quickly become tiresome to someone with a human’s (or human-like) mind, and I cannot think of many faithful that would be doing divine backflips over the prospect of being told that, in exchange for a life of devotion and service, to stay in one spot, repeat the same test over and over for anyone that happens to drop by, and kill them if they fail.

Given a lack of mortal needs, and to a point capabilities, I see no reason to assume that they think like humans, or even mortals in general. Why would they shirk their duties? They apparently were not created with the need to eat or sleep, so why would you give them the ability become bored? I liken this to Eberron angels and demons, who are eternally locked in a never ending symbolic war against each other. They do not get bored of the fight because they are not capable of becoming bored, or even realizing the futility of it all; it is an intrinsic part of their nature.

This is a reason why I am largely against “free-range” sphinxes (or glorified hippogriffs), but I guess if I had to include them I would have them serve dead or forgotten gods. I mean they do not need to eat or sleep, so what else are they going to do with their eternity?

Another issue are the types of sphinxes. Yes, 2nd and 3rd Edition had a variety of sphinxes with random heads, capabilities, and alignments, but I am going to do something unprecedented and suggest a break from tradition: instead of establishing a quartet of sphinxes, each with a specific appearance and suite of capabilities just so you can introduce more down the road in the Next Desert Supplement, why not get rid of sphinx presets entirely and…wait for it…give us a toolbox of sphinx parts, powers, and tests?

There are a lot of gods. They have their own portfolios, and many have an animal associated with them: Ares has his boars, Horus has falcons, and so on. So while some might go with the standard male-lion package, a female god of war might want a female-lion, or even female-wolf, to test someone’s valor. What about a god that creates a kind of skeletal, bat-winged sphinx that tests fear? I get that yeah, you can homebrew your own sphinxes and change the flavor, but I think it would be a lot better if they made things more inclusive and easier from the start, instead of doing what anyone can do and swap faces and spell-like abilities.

Speaking of spell-like abilities, given the lists that some of them had in 3rd Edition I am surprised that they each seem to only have one defining trait. 4th Edition proved that you can have quality over quantity (both in terms of spells and monsters), so hopefully they do something unique and interesting instead of just referring you to the spell chapter in the Player’s Handbook.

What I am also hoping is that if an androsphinx decides to test your valor by having you withstand its roar, or you have to escape from a gynosphinxes maze-effect that it boils down to more than just making a saving throw and calling it good. Really the other, more complex tests are the best part of the article, so rather than directing us to a dimensional pocket spell, or citing hard rules and restrictions for building extraplanar testing grounds, it would be nice if all we got were some examples and advice on making a fun, memorable encounter.

Like, if the sphinx wants to test your endurance by forcing you to climb a cliff in a storm, maybe even while fighting off flying monsters, it should not need to have control weather, summon monster y, and, I dunno, greater conjure cliffs; it can just do all of those things because that is what you need it to do. So that is where I stand. Make them somewhat alien in their thoughts and mannerisms, give them unique capabilities that not just any mid- to high-level wizard can do in a couple six seconds, and give us the tools to customize them on a god-by-god, test-by-test basis.

Wandering Monsters: Hellenic Horrors

It is Greek Week over at Wandering Monsters, where James gives us the early draft of the sphinx, chimera, and hydra.

Despite my love for Greek mythology, the number of times I have used all of these monsters could be counted on one hand, mostly because it was pretty difficult in 4th Edition to get characters high enough level to tackle them (as they were each level 10 or higher). Hopefully with 5th Edition’s flat-math I can throw them at my players much sooner.

Sphinx
I almost got an Ecology of the Sphinx article published in the last issue of Dragon that was released under Paizo’s tenure, which unfortunately–or perhaps fortunately depending on who you are–got hedged out for an ecology article on the tarrasque (I also wrote up a gynosphinx monstrous class that I used for 12 levels in the last 3rd Edition campaign that I played in).

I remember describing them as mortal creatures created specifically to function as the stewards of the gods, which was a kind of way of explaining why some, like Egyptian gods, had animal heads. That may be why I prefer the idea of them being mortal spirits caught in the middle of a divine transformation. To me it provides a more engaging explanation for why they enjoy hanging out about temples, tombs, sacred sites, and the like.

Also, animal heads.

When it comes to spells I am mostly fine with androsphinxes casting as clerics due to their divine association, though I am not a fan of massive spell lists (especially when they feature spells too low level to be useful). As for the roar, I would prefer to it as a recharging ability that does more as the androsphinx is wounded.

I like the idea of giving gynosphinxes special divination traits as opposed to pretty much every divination spell out there, as powers that are not easily replicated by magic will make it more likely that characters–even fairly powerful ones–might have a reason to seek one out instead of just dropping a bunch of cash on a spell scroll.

Chimera
The chimera is one of the few monsters that I am totally cool with being manufactured by someone (or thing) else, which makes me wonder why they must all have a fire-breathing dragon, goat, and lion head. Think about it, the chimera is the perfect monster that lets Dungeon Masters mix and match other monsters to create something entirely new to throw at their players, and it makes sense in the game’s fiction because a wizard did it.

Limiting it to just one kind of dragon and two animals is a huge missed opportunity, and it does not make sense unless for whatever reason in the game’s fiction it is the only viable three-way combination. What if druids made a chimera out of a green dragon, stag, and wolf? A blasted wasteland might be inhabited by a chimera made up of a blue dragon, elephant, and…I dunno, some form of desert-dwelling hunting cat.

The most dangerous weapon of a sand cat is its cuteness.

3rd Edition had a chimera template, but you do not really need to go that far. Just make a Customization Options sidebar with some guidelines on adding/replacing abilities with some damage benchmarks, because, after all, does it matter if a chimera has two bite attacks instead of a bite and gore?

Hydras
Oddly there is no flavor text attached to these. Were they created by the gods long ago, perhaps for use as a weapon during some ancient war (after all, in Greek mythology Hera raised it to slay Heracles)? Did they spring from the wounds of a primordial? Given that they have at least five heads, maybe they are related in some way to Tiamat?

Mechanically hydras have operated pretty similarly throughout the editions:

• In 2nd Edition hydras lost heads automatically as they took damage. They had maximum hit points per Hit Die, so once each head was severed then the hydra was slain. Its body was immune to attacks unless it dealt damage equal to its original hit points, making it possible to obliterate one with a single, powerful attack. Your standard hydra model did not grow extra heads; that was specific to the Lernaean hydra variant, which could have up to twelve and whose body was completely immune to attacks.
• 3rd Edition required that you declare that you were trying to sever a head using the sunder action (and could ready an action to attack it as it tried to bite you). If you dealt enough damage to sever a head, two more would grow in 1-4 rounds unless you used fire or acid on the stump and inflicted 5 points of damage. Unlike 2nd Edition you could attack the body, but its scaling fast healing made this fairly difficult.
• 4th Edition kind of combined the approach from previous editions: heads were automatically destroyed through hit point damage, but would grow two heads on the following round unless it took any amount of acid or fire damage. This meant that while it eventually die, the fight could get progressively harder if you lacked the ability to deal acid or fire damage. At least it did not have regeneration.

If I had to choose I would pick 4th Edition’s take on hydras, as the fact that it automatically loses heads while taking damage escalates the danger (unless someone applies fire or acid before its turn comes about, which adds a tactical element to things). It is also easier to juggle at the table than in 3rd Edition.

The only problem is that it begs the question as to why characters can chop off hydra heads, but not an ettin’s, or any other part of any other creature for that matter.