D&D MONSTER RANKINGS - BEASTFOLK 

What beastfolk monsters were left out of this video? Leave a comment. Tabaxi Kobold Medusa Slaad Dragonborn (?) Shifter Additional Note: My attribute system was off slightly. On my next monster ranking video, the five attributes have been developed as follows. Mechanics. Interesting abilities and fun combat options Style. Appearance and overall tone Roleplaying. Social interaction with the characters Lore. Ecology, myths, story Flexibility. Diversity of roles and expressions Another Additional Note: I overlooked the Thri-Kreen's sidebar with exotic weapons and psionic spells, and my oversight caused me to judge them too harshly. I'll update them in Part 2.

Did this just say Owlbears aren't cool looking? Dude, it's a bear that can turn it's head 180 degrees. That shit's badass.

evil snails are all over medieval manuscripts

The Firenewts are actually based on the alchemical elementals of fire, the salamanders.

Kenku stems from Tengu, a Japanese Bird Demon, you might wanna reconsider the level of mythology on them a bit more, and role-playing as one is really interesting because they CANT speak common, they're cursed to speak in a strange mimicking language, so think about how you would role-play Bumblebee from transformers in fantasy terminology

The Myth criteria really bothers me. Partly because I really don't see the point, and moreso because it feels like a much more opinionated criteria to rate things by. it seems based more on the mythical connection to you, rather than the mythical connection in general.

You called Owlbears lame. You've lost all credibility lol.

Sorry but I looooove the aesthetics of owlbears. They are a DnD mainstay. Way better then boring generic tree headed skelletor over there. Also bearowls.

I mean... Thri-Kreen do have psionic powers and unique weapons.

Okay no. The Giff are actually pretty badass. Stocky tanks that move with shocking speed and grace. Accidental imperialists with a love of food, travel, and things that go “Boom!” A militaristic society that values discipline and respect for command, but also happens to be highly egalitarian and meritocratic. Insular, but not xenophobic, and will get along just fine for the right price. Often found as mercenaries, and will loyally obey just about any order short of harming their own kind. Industrialists and technologists who are skeptical (maybe even a little fearful) of magic, but begrudgingly accept its use for the utility it brings. A somewhat gruff and guttural native tongue, but often have proficiency in Common (sometimes exclusively speak Common), and tend to adopt names in Common that have gravitas and an aristocratic ring. They’re basically Teddy Roosevelt if he were a Swiss mercenary, and they happen to be humanoid hippos with a penchant for steampunk. And you mean to put them at the very bottom of F tier? What the hell is wrong with you? This is one of the most interesting races in all of Dungeons & Dragons.

I wonder why a DM is complaining about monstres not having this not not having that. You know you can edit and change the monstres to suit your need. That's what makes dnd different. You can give them any lore, ability, or skill you went than to have.

You're playing 5e, a system developed so that dms and players can play around with the world and monsters more easily than before. Your scales are also rather odd, why does everything need to be related to a real world myth for us to be able to relate to them? Also what is your issue with cute things? If ever you look at the real world, we have things like adorable dogs and cats, we also have things like the angler fish, cute and horrifying exist in the same world. Also, if you want to look at it game play wise, you're essentially complaining that an artist in faerun didn't draw a picture of these creatures that you like and find acceptable.

Respectfully, I think Owlbears are iconic and capture the essence of DnD perfectly. They are a little bit silly, but still dangerous and have the sort of design someone who hasn't heard of DND would never even think of.

Step one: take any animal Step two: edit any animal to be able to manipulate the environment, manipulate fire, and communicate with complex language, and give it human intelligence Step three: take custom now intelligent organism and give it culture and stats, boom done.

My opinion: get rid of the Myth category. I don't care about earth mythology in a different universe.

I'm halfway into the video so far, and I've found it lacks foundational methods of unbiased analysis. Much of the commentary thus far has been opinionated without explanation as to why the points should be considered valid. What makes the Tortle design "childish"? How is a centaur different than a Twincalli other than one shows up in greek mythos and the other doesn't? Why does ancient mythos validate one type of beastfolk moreso than those that are created via modern Mythos? Why does the fact that one person (Tolkein) wrote about certain races validate them moreso than other races? Are the archetypes you speak of missing from the beastfolk you've analyzed? Why does the familiarity of a race make it more valid than a more obscure race? What makes a race one dimensional? What would solve the one dimensionality? Why value the race more if turned fully human, but had the same traits? Why is there a line between classic fairytales and new ones being added to your analysis? You only start to touch on the actual mechanics in more detail when you reach Merfolk, and even that is fairly glanced over. As far as the Tenku, Sahvagin, and further on, what makes their races better developed? What about their lore makes them higher ranked than other races? And vice versa, what is missing from the lower ranks? Specifically, not just a vague mention of the lore being lacking or developed. What limitations do Lycanthropes have that you are using to justify their ranking? What makes "grittiness" the better trait for beastfolk to have? Why is comicality in design a failure? Why is serious design better than comicality? If an NPC could function well as a human instead of beastfolk, where is the harm in making a character beastfolk? It seems the more in-depth commentary about the lores of various beastfolk started when you reached the top tier. I think this kind of content has a lot of potential, however needs a bit of refinement and opinion to take a back seat to unbiased analysis.

While I like much of the criticism on the vanilla monsters, I feel like many of the “issues” you have are easily fixable by good dungeon masters. Also I disagree with the connection to real life mythology being important what so ever. A species doesn’t need to fit into current mythology to have the aspects needed to be interesting and relatable/interesting. A good DM should be able to make their own unique mythology that is exciting and at best NOT predictable. As long as you flush out their culture, I don’t think they need to fit into any pre-existing style. If you base too much off mythology, I find games becoming unexciting and too predictable. Nothing is better than watching your players surprise when they learn something new about the people and cultures they are interacting with that makes sense in hindsight, but gives them that bewilderment of learning unexpected lore. I feel some monsters are left vanilla to be blank slates for DMs to mold with. If everything had crazy flushed out lore you’d have a bunch of players making assumptions and having expectations that you’d need to adhere too or deal with players getting a completely wrong idea about YOUR world that you built for them. That’s why I like home brew monsters so much, you don’t need anything but a basic idea and a visual to create amazing creatures, all you need is the blank slate, which many of your lowest ranked creatures fulfill the role of well. You even said what could make them amazing in your view, others might have different opinions for their games, thats why the game is so great, it is not limited by anything written anywhere.

The bullywug is very similar to the loveland frog (a criptid) so it does have connection to the “real” world in a way. All of them are connected to some mythology, criptid, and other.

I played a Thri-Kreen in Dark Sun years ago, and it was one of my favorite characters to play.

Im really not on board with anything youre saying about myths and legend. I just really dont care in the slightest wether or not a creature has any sort of connection to human history. Other than that i enjoyed the video quite a bit

Why do I get the feeling that this guy wouldn't even allow his players to be certain races. Like say if someone wanted to play as a Giff, he'd be shown the door, even if he had a serious and robust backstory for it. I say if it's in the game, it should be given a chance.

how dare you diss the majestic owlbear

1:23 - Owlbears are one of the coolest creatures in d&d. fight me! but seriously, terrible example for the low there. a random zombie would be better

....uh why does it have to be based on irl culture and why do you rank them by how direct those references are? I would believe that a unique culture that could only have been formed due to the beast race unique traits could have been pretty darn interesting in itself.

Not sure rating high on myth and culture is necessarily a good thing or makes for a more interesting concept.

I don't know about you but depending upon how you use these monsters their story aspects can change. You ranked oozes as low on the list for that but I play them as an elder God that was evaporated by three Dragon Gods in my homebrew setting the ooze are super intelligent beings however they have no way of communication and are viciously deceptive when appearing non threatening.

"that's just like your opinion man."

I disagree with almost everything on this list and I don't believe myth should've even been a factor

This video goes by the false assumption that any monster that isn't totally badass is bad, as if funny and goofy shit isn't the best part of d&d. Solid video but I found the commentary subjective at best and just overly negative in other spots.

Shadows are a personal favorite of my DM after a mishap in one of our adventures. In our castle, there was a shadow trapped in the basement. We were all low level at the time so no one really wanted to risk/bother fighting it. In an attempt to kill off the shadow, one chaotic evil member decided to send an army of 35 kids to kill the shadow. Then we had 36 shadows in our basement.

I'd turn that whole list upside down, lacking in lore is what gives you room for creativity. The hippo people are a spelljammer easteregg btw.

The Kenku is part of Japanese mythology, a creature like it.

All these "low tier" enemies you list off are just perfect opportunities for a DM's creativity. In other words: Git Gud.

Sorry mate, but this whole "Folklore"-thing you got going here is somewhere between useless and damaging! The importance of mythology in RPG-creatures is very subjective to begin with and then you give more or less arbitrary scores, based on much much you like something. You give sea spawn high marks in mythology, just because they remind you of pirate stories and merfolk look like mermaids, so they get 100% in it, JUST ON LOOKS ALONE! According to the same logic the Firenewt should get at least a 4, because there are myths of lizards connected to fire! D&D Merfolk doesn't sing beautiful songs to lure in sailors, so they can be pulled under water and be feasted on. The connection to mythology is in name and visuals alone, so this part of the ranking is completely useless! Let's take the minotaur to really hammer this point home: In Mythology Minotaur is a punishment the king Minos got from Poseidon for not sacrificing to him. So his wife fucked his favorite bull and birthed a monster. Said monster was locked in a labyrinth and fed with human prisoners. This is NOT what the D&D minotaur is! it got 5/5 on looks and name alone!

I like the owlbear...

The Poisonous Grung Frog is in fact, poisonous. My character rolled a 1. He forgot said Grung where poisonous

I feel you put too much stock into the mythology outside of the game when it and the present mythological themes aren't really expereinced in the game

I once ran an encounter with three grungs, the party paladin thought they were cool so he befriended them, they acted as a trio of servants for said paladin. UPDATE the paladin has decided that he wants to become the god of frogs.

I don't really agree with your ranking system. I find connection to real world mythology to be a pointless statistic to determining how good a monster is. I think you could have a perfect monster with no connection to any real world myths, so perhaps the category should simply be the "Lore" category you already have, judging them purely based on how good their place in the world / story is. "Activating some deep wiggly woo brain connection" is a poor excuse for the category. Look at Bloodborne where the story starts using classic and 'identifiable' horror tropes like vampires, but isn't scary until it starts to become a surreal eldritch horror with creatures we have no mythological connection to, who aren't relatable, or personable, or rooted in our history. I'd say that if you made a D&D campaign with nothing but creatures top ranked in your myth category, people would get bored of how generic it is... What matters is if the creature is well written, and doesn't take an essay to grasp the basics of, but has enough lore to look deeper into via the story. Focusing on connection to real world mythology is just leaning on people's knowledge of fantasy tropes so you don't have to be creative, or tel the story you're trying to tell. It's lazy.

That's the magic of homebrewing

Okay... the more you talk about the Thri-Kreens the more it sounds like they are there to be the local Murderhobo creature. Hell... just have their entire culture be a culture of Murderhobos Murderhoboing. Have the encounters with the Thri-Kreen consist of a swarm of them taking a liking to your party. With them moving the parties interactions Murderhobo tendencies up to the next level... and then start throwing "Chosen One Heroes"at your party--talking about how the party is a villainous evil group of evil legends, "We shall take you down, so your reign of terror ends." Only do the "hey... I saw you were not going to stop Murderhoboing... so I figured, why not help that along" if you've attempted to offer various ways to have them not be such Murderhobos (like having a home base, a house to live at, a family--responsibilities to run)... and after throwing at them various ways to stop being such Murderhobos... just be all, "Okay... Thri-Kreen encounter. They just keep coming... and oh hey--turns out they really like you guys, and view your legends in awe."

BTW, aaracokra are the best monks around. No idea wtf you complaining about

That hippo man is classy how dare you insult there race you uncultured peasant. But seriously I personally prefer more original monsters not so much to the wackiness of sed hippo man but more like the beloved beholder. mythology is cool and all but I'm more intresteded in original monsters. And no I'm not saying don't put real world mythical monsters in the world would feel like its missing something if you kicked out dragons or goblins but I'm just more intresteded in new original monsters. This gos for all fantasy not just D&D I should clarify.

Rooting for the Lizardfolk here! Happy to see them so close to A-Tier!

You can spice up the Thri-Kreen with material from 2e AD&D Dark Sun ecology.

My favorite video from you yet!

The Giff and Tortle were references to sci-fi TV shows so it's no surprise that they feel out of place. They were meant as joke monsters that could maybe fit in some very specific campaigns, but overall they're basically homebrew gag races.

and i give you the D tier DnD youtuber

Firenewts are bad ass

Loving the tier list style of video! Pretty much insta subscribed

The 5e Monster Manual image of the Kuo-Toa is basically an fsjal meme.

i have ran multiple Gnoll characters because i just love the whole idea of them give the vicious Hyena people a chance they can work in surprising ways of rollplaying as written

I saw the giff and I was sad I love running them in steampunk settings as common guards and such

I’m so glad you put the Giff at the bottom

I enjoyed your analysis but I am not sure it is really a worthwhile endeavor. Almost every monster listing is basic and for good reason. They are a start. Those which are more commonly encountered often get expanded upon as time goes by. Judging encyclopedic monster inclusions by their story value in a game where the story is intended to be created through play and the creativity of the players also seem a bit heavy handed. I appreciate that you acknowledge that any monster can be made into a good encounter.

16:15 Awww, you left out the best part of that picture! No.... One.... HITS LIKE GASTON! NO ONE CRITS LIKE GASTON! NO ONE'S ON PAGE 206 LIKE GASTON!

In general a very well thought out critic of a certain aspect of the D&D Bestiary ... Thank you for that! I am certain that it took a lot of work and thought to put this together...

Hm, ive never encountered a crippled owlbear... we left an owlbear crippled once, but we didnt find it that way

Yuan-ti really need their own video..... Just like the Illithid do. So many possibilities with each.

vanara: *sad monkey noises* ratfolk *loading crossbow with malicious intent*

I had to return to this vid and provide my thoughts regarding Ettercaps, my friend. One of their strongest features I suggest, are their versatility. Most D&D settings contain some type of forested area, swamp, or cave structure, each of which can provide an ideal setting for an Ettercap confrontation. Their stealth skills, ability to marshal spiders combined with their significant area effect using webs, greatly enhance the perils they are capable of. With their (at one time) significant poisonous bite, they can also quickly debilitate an opponent before quickly moving on to another. Their web ability (combined with that of their spider-kin) can provide ideal plot hooks, such as; terrorize a forest, jungle, swamp, cave structure, small village, tiny Fey communities, that requires a group of adventurers to resolve. Their control over spiders can even better assure a party member captured has a better chance of rescue, as spiders alone would just eat them! They do seem to have communicative abilities, at least with each other and with spiders, so plans can be devised and changed on the fly. I do wish they had Blindsight (radius 10 ft) similar to their spider-kin but a DM can assign that easy enough. All in all, I've had great fun with them. I'd suggest they are at least deserving of C Tier. :)

Okay, I love the Ozzy song titles in the rankings. GG my man

Tortles are why homebrew exists, I really do need you to point out that out. Everyone always thinks that D&D is carved in stone but that's not it at all, it merely presents an imperfect system and allows you to do whatever you want with it. Lack of emotion is not necessarily bad. Gnolls and Minotaurs are demon-spawn of Yeenoghu and Baphomet, respectively not beastfolk. Lycanthropy is a curse. Satyrs are Demi-Human. Last but not least, AIR-OH-COK-KRA.

“Like the difference between Disney world and a brochure of Disney world” At least with a brochure of Disney world, you don’t have to wait in a line for 95% of your experience.

Once I was in a campaign where the party had to find out what was stealing children from a nearby village. Turned out to be two Ettercaps living under the island and feeding the kids to a giant undead tree monster. These were not your ordinary Ettercaps though, for they not only could speak common, and not only did they decide to hunt down my druid specifically while she was split from the part, but they also were voiced by Bear Grylls and Crocodile Dundee respectively. It was a fun session.

This was a good video but I can see how your ranking videos have improved since, both in style and substance.

Where are the Tabaxi? You included Aaracokra, Kenku, and Yuan-Ti, all of which are possible PC races, but forget Tabaxi?

No Tabaxi? :(

I like the setup of the video with the rating

One of my favorite things to do is to take any creature, dire wolf, giant spider, dinosaur, etc and make them Awakened. This opens up so much potential for making regular beasties into something with a backstory and now challenging

I feel like most of this list is subjective

Making the mythological category equivalent to "relatable" seems kind of off to me. There's a lot of weird things in mythology that is expressly designed to not be relatable, while some of the previous things you mentioned as not relatable could completely be such. After all, it's how a DM chooses to use what's available to them that makes it relatable or not to the players. And sometimes that non-relatability is what the DM is looking for. Saying that things *should* or *needs* to have some pull from mythology to be a decent addition limits the creativity of anyone trying to create a unique creature for a game. And that's just one of your categories. As for mechanics...well, here you have a basic form of X creature, now DMs, you are free to create your own stronger, more specialized versions. After all, if you are fighting merfolk, you're underwater, and unless you have a swim speed or a spell that makes it so water doesn't affect your stuff, most players are severely limited underwater, and the merfolk don't need much. I personally like some of the creatures that have not much story--because that means I can twist it to fit my own world. I do enjoy reading creatures with a deep story as well, but those are harder to imput into a custom world unless that world is created with them in mind.

Really liked this type of video. Just started a new campaign 2 sessions ago and it's good show of what one could use. Alreasy started with hints to ancient snake people (yuan-ti) civilation :D Any hopes of getting more videos of this type. Maybe fiends next? I know u already started on them by mentioning succubus being limited by it's fiendish nature, but I feel like there are so many cool fiends with their unique traits and lore that get overlooked while people use the generic imps, pit fiends and succubi.

Agree with nearly everything except the Giff, goofy as they are i LOVE the Giff. A large part of my campaign in nautical and aboard a ship made from a Dragon Turtle and sailed by a Merrenoloth are the two Giff bombardiers Suet and Pudding. They are huge fun to roleplay and pretty cool mechanically (this is an incredibly specific scenario and i can see how in general they are just straight goofy)

One fun thing I suppose you could do with some of these guys is homebrew a few ideas of pumping them up, like mirfoalk. You can take a few ideas, spells, and look into what other aquatic races exist to get some idea.

Taking a page from Tierzoo, that's cool. Its a good way to organize the list while explaining why at a glance. Good Choice.

So my friends played at Aaracokras and they were great at combat, the ability for flight they had came in handy in many cases we dealt with

Good vid, but I think I think you missed the Tabaxi

Haha, thought this would be like tier zoo, but no you got a good concept here. 👍

good videos, keep going

I like you top tier choices. Got any more?

I absolutely adore lizardfolk. I've played one in probably 85% of the campaigns I've played in.

You should focus on these kind of videos. They are so awesome

I feel like Yaun Ti should be maxes out on the mythology aspect

Dark Sun gives a pretty good incentive to use thri-kreens, so they jump a lot higher. You could probably also handwave girtablilu in there if you needed some more of that.

Sometimes you need a laugh in your D&D game. If I use swamp encounter, I'm gonna play Grung like Swamp Kobolds

For some reason this has made me wanna try and play a humanoid slime Like, a slime that has fed on humans for so long that it has evolved to become humanlike I imagine it would be a fun thing to play: -the ability to slip through cracks and gaps -transformation -resistance to physical damage -Engulf and consume (a grapple that eats the target slowly) -duplication (splitting into two or more smaller slimes -watching eye (being able to just rip a part of yourself off and use it to spy Balance it out with a weakness to magic and low intelligence and I think it'd make a good race

I love the concept of the firenewt. I also agree with your rating of it lol. I want to open the panel on That, how would you make the firenewt better? I was thinking strong ties to alchemical metaphor, elemental background, like a literal embodiment of fire created by a mad alchemist in pursuit of the philosophers stone, creating chaos and maelstrom in his wake

Thri-keen can be pretty cool in some places, sometimes a wholly inhuman creature is good, especially splashed into a much more human group. Also they dont really sleep, which can be useful to prevent ambush.

If nobody told you that a monster was based off a myth but it was, would you hate it? The human element is important yes, but that’s part of roll playing. Wizards of the Coast can make a good monster from their own, like they did with beholders.

More of these! :D

Yuan-ti also have connections to Germanic/Nordic, Chinese & Japanese, and Christian & Hebrew mythology and legends. Really every mythology that has snakes... every mythology really.

The Kuo-Toa are not as cool at the deep ones, the deep ones are menacing and vicious, they are enslavers and destroyers. The Kuo-Toa are little fish people who are easily manipulated, messed with, and controlled, they are very lacking in power and are fairly basic. I like the kua-toa, and all other monsters just they ways they are but I pay attention to the fact that the deep ones have only one relationship and that is that they are both fish frog people, otherwise the deep ones are horrific and terrifying aberrations from far far into space during the beginning of time spawned by mother Hydra and father Dagon.

The whole of B-Tier I was wondering "aw man where are the Lizardfolk?" And then top of the B-Tier. Fantastic

The kenku is in Japanese mythology but they are under a different name and are very unknown and left to the side.

for the tlincalli (i didn't know it existed) but i lumped it into my home-brew species of demihumans. essentially half animal half human and one of my created npcs is one of them

I just have to throw it out there, that I'm rewatching your videos for years :) Even those I've already watched 900 times. Too fun. I'll cease the opportunity to bring up the bad memories of 22:28. I was so hyped for this movie when it was announced. When my friends told me that "There is a behold in it!!!!!!!!!", I almost love my mind. I went to the cinema and couldn't wait for this thing to be over. Although the second movie was much better, in my opinion.

Kitsune are pretty cool too, there's actually a third party supplement for them as playable races with four different subraces adding to their depth, and there's quite a bit of Japanese mythology surrounding them as well. Also rakshasa? They may be fiendish creatures by nature, but there's tons of potential for them plus some good mythology to back them up.

I'm surprised at your thoughts on the Thri-kreen! Then again, you are right - they need more. So I put them as a warring desert faction with a "sand mother" beast, a giant horrifying insect that senses movement and bites the head off of its prey.

We have a certain love for Giff in my campaign haha. Aboard the ship of an infamous pirate was two Giff cannoneers named Compote and Suet who were a brilliant laugh, RIP cos that shit got fuuuucked. There is also a Giff Sapphire merchant one of our players is currently doing a deal with (spoilers, its not gonna go well). x I can see why you don't like them, but i think they're pretty awesome with that explosive barrel attack.