What They Don't Tell You About Manticores - D&D

a humanoid phase the body and limbs of a powerful lion the massive wings of a dragon and a deadly tail riddled with porcupine like spines the mantegore has been a staple of Dungeons and Dragons fantasy for a really long time and part with creatures such as ogres chimeras or even medusas today we're going to go through the creature we're going to talk about its entry in the 5th edition monster manual and then scavenge all the lore in the ancient dungeon dragons books to figure out what exactly did 5th edition miss out on left out or perhaps even changed I think you're going to be extremely surprised about a few things that you wish you had known about this creatures but first before we get into it hey guys I just recently released my monster class S4 which I know many of you have been waiting for for a long time for me to finish as you know my monster classes allow for you to play monsters as traditional 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons classes with full features from Level 1 to level 20. the vast man majority of them which have many subclasses for you to further customize your monstrous character and just a few days ago I released monster classes 4 which has the Mind Lord the eye Tyrant and the serpent folk of course for copyright reasons I assure you that these are not meant to be anything but my own original creations and any resemblance to otherwise existing IP is merely coincidental and probably just a figment of your imagination but in any case the Mind Lord is a psionic user which can blast enemies with psychic powers it's my last ability unless you stun enemies it's telekinetic Powers lets you move heavy things out of the way and more importantly it has a large collection of psionic spells that I have painstakingly brought forth from previous DND editions see there were many cool like actually Canon psionic spells from Third Edition that never made it to 5th edition because well we don't really have a psionic class for fifth edition so I went back and reconstructed them and rebalanced them so that you can use them with the Mind Lord we're talking about 36 spells here that I have crafted for you and the most that I have done for any of my PDFs then we have the I Tyrant who can produce magical Rays out of its eyes and many of which can burn electrocute wither and much much more much like the Mind Lord I wanted you to have many choices so I crafted 30 different IRAs that you can play with and use with with the eye Tyrant also I should say the eye Tyrant has some of the coolest non-combat features that I have put on a monstrous class it makes actually role playing them so much fun and they are crazy good at finding suspicious things in rooms and have an insane ability to formulate convoluted plants that just simply work somehow and then lastly we have the serpentful who are so resourceful that they can use their High Intelligence to perform acts that are usually reserved for other attributes such as wisdom or Charisma so long as they have time to plan and trying to find ways to use your intelligence score in exchange for strength for say you know opening a door it's just half the fun of this class and the other half is with the crafting of fun and exotic poisons you can craft poisons that can put your enemies to sleep paralyze them or just deal tremendous damage to them the usage of poisons is sadly an underdeveloped part the fifth edition that the serpent folk enhance and bring right into the Limelight all of these monster classes have lore so that you can learn what the creatures are all about and how you can role play them but they also have rollable tables that should help you tremendously in designing the look and backstory for your character these monster classes function as both your race and your class so all you need is it right here to build a fun thematic and powerful monster that feels like the real thing and then play it in any campaign please check out my monster classes and specifically my new monster classes for at Mr Rex dot store is Mr racks.store the link is in the video description thank you guys so much for all of the support you all keep the channel alive and let me continue to talk lower with all of you so much appreciated thank you also very much and now on to the video foreign so let's go ahead and check out the fifth edition monster manual entry for the Manticore it says here a monster in every sense of the word a manticore has a vaguely humanoid head the body of a lion and the wings of a dragon a bristling Mane stretches down the creature's back and its long tail ends in a cluster of deadly spikes that can impale prey at impressive range now it is true that the term monster truly describes the manticorn in 5th edition in particular the term monster is used for really any bizarre creature of typically evil alignment but the term monstrosity though is a bit more defined and it's different a monstrosity in fifth edition really just means magical Beast as something that might had normally just being a normal munding natural beast but it's not so much so anymore because of weird magic or some abnormal characteristic that fits this creature fairly well because it is a combination of many otherwise normal magical beasts per probably except for the dragon wings but but traditionally the Manticore was supposed to have bat wings not really dragon wings but I digress now it then says here that the mantegores are Fierce killers that hunt far and wide for prey they work together to take down particularly large or dangerous creatures sharing the meal once the kill is made ematicore begins his attack with a volley of tail spikes and then lands and uses its claws and bite when outdoors and outnumbered it uses his wings to stay aloft attacking from a distance until its spikes are depleted so it is unfortunate though that they do not talk at all about the tail spikes considering that it is one of the primary features of the creature they also don't mention what the spikes are made out of which is actually very very important but moving on it says that a manticore is in particularly bright but it possesses a malevolent nature and the ability to Converse in the course of attacking it denigrates its foes and offers to kill them swiftly if they beg for their lives if a manticore sees an advantage to be gained by sparing a creature's life it does so asking for a tribute or sacrifice equal to its loss of food now nothing to comment here it's a pretty good paragraph All Things Considered and knowing what kind of tribute it might like that is presumably not food it would have been good to know since the entry doesn't really talk about whether the creature likes you know treasure or or magic items for example but otherwise it's pretty solid now the last set of paragraphs here say that the manticores serve Wicked Masters that treat them well and provide regular prey a mantegore might provide aerial support for an orc horde or a hobgoblin Army another could serve as a hunting companion for a hill giant Chief or guard at the entrance to a lamia's lair the mantegore's greatest territorial Rivals include chimeras Griffins Puritans and wyverns Manticore is haunting as a pack often have the advantage of greater numbers in addition to these creatures manticore's fear dragons and avoid them now not much to say here either romanticores Can Be Tamed though it is extremely difficult and probably easier to just say that they Ally with others rather than Be Tamed by others ultimately mantegores only serve themselves and will always betray others the second that it is most beneficial but that's the lore that we're given now let's check out the stat block now lawful evil is an interesting point of note here uh mantegores have been lawful evil since first edition and I think it is very important and very telling really to to understand the behavior of this creature a manticores are not really visual in the sense that they're not really going to just like Slaughter you arbitrarily it will eat you if it's hungry but if it's not and you're not threatening its lair in any way it's actually possible for the creature that it might just strike a conversation with you to get perhaps some something else out of you in essence a manticores are not driven by bloodlust or hatred or greed and there is no arbitrary desire for Destruction on this creature it thinks before it takes even if it's thinking it's somewhat limited by its intelligence now here we get some information about the tail spikes though only a small mechanical input about it it says here that the Manticore has 24 tail spikes and when you stop they regrow on a long rest but that's that's all we get and then down here we just have the attacks that one would expect they can bite they can claw and then here we are shown that they can throw those tail spikes from a range of 100 to 200 feet but uh there you have it the Manticore entry for fifth edition so now let's talk about what the fifth edition monster manual did not tell you about manticores one of the most important factors that the 5th edition entry left out for this creature has to do with what the tail spikes are actually made out of and that is in fact so important that it might change the way you play this creature all together when you look at the 5th edition art for the creature you might be led to believe that it might be perhaps I don't know calcium spikes like bones or perhaps they're made out of keratin like nails or hair but in reality they are made out of iron pure grade A Polished and cleansed of impurities iron now why is that so important it is important because to create the iron needed for the creature to produce those iron spikes in the first place it is necessary for the creature to consume enough iron have you wondered why does the Manticore have so many rows of teeth and whether you're looking at the fifth edition art or the third decision art and you will notice that they do have a ton of teeth however unlike an animal like say the shark who actually hunts with its mouth and then of course requires those teeth to catch Slippery prey the Manticore doesn't actually hunt with his mouth or bite it instead uses it still spikes or its claws to hunt remember that the manticore's mouth is a physiologically made to resemble that of a person if its head looked like a lion or a tiger then it would make sense to try and bite prey to hunt it because it could fit part of the creature's body instead of its maw before it bit it but humans can't do this as well as a lion or a dog because our mouths are just different biting something in the middle of combat for a human is just very very difficult so then why the massive rows of teeth well it is because manticores are actually designed to be able to destroy and Pierce through men battle with their teeth and their teeth have iron in them as well which of course allow them to do this but in the event that they lose a tooth or 10 during a particularly difficult chewing of metal then that proves to be not a problem for the Manticore who has dozens and dozens of teeth and can regrow them relatively easily this need for metal is actually also as important if not more important than their desire for meat this brings us back to the question we were asking during the fifth edition entry of what would a manticore even want from the people that it threatens the matikoras need a diet that is balanced between meat and metal and not getting any of the two would result in mild nourishment and likely death for the creature so as you can see suddenly this bit of information about the Manticore that was not found in the monster manual starts answering a plethora of questions that didn't make as much sense before now you can see that manticore's need to layer close to human settlements it's not just that they love the taste of human flesh which they do but it's just that they cannot survive but just hunting wild game they need to hunt human Caravans and human settlements because they need to eat their metal the lore also states that manticores even have the ability to smell metal though likely from only a fairly short range basically it is mostly useful for being able to know whether a material is ferrous in nature so that they know to eat it but now let's move on to a different topic let's talk about reproduction so romantic Wars made for life meaning that once a partnership is made the Manticore couple will continue to find and reproduce with one another every few mating Seasons a mating season for the Manti chorus is Autumn and it usually only takes about five months of gestation to finish which usually brings about litters of one to three manticores now imagine baby is basically helpless and requires the assistance of its parents in order to survive the parents are meant to go out to hunt and then bring back both meat and metal for the baby to consume the parent of course will also be expected to make sure that the metal sizes are actually manageable for the babies to consume because while the baby will not develop iron teeth or claws or tail spikes for that matter until about a year has passed and then it'll take another year for the wings to grow strong enough to be able to hold the baby alive in the air so overall it takes about two years of nurturing before a baby Manticore can survive on its own then it will get to full size about after the third year and then will become sexually active after the fourth year now generally speaking uh the Manticore father only stays for perhaps the first few months of rearing for the children a living only to come back when the mother is ready to reproduce again years later so it is the mother that generally stays in the lair raising the children this means that oftentimes when adventurers find like packs of manticores more than likely it tends to be a mother with his children rather than say you know a mated pair though like the 5th edition monster manual did note it is possible that different manticores do bond together when they're hunting particularly dangerous prey but only when they're doing that generally they stay far away from each other and have their own individual layers now the hunting of mantigors can actually be a particularly lucrative experience see many mantegores hoard different kinds of metals for their feeding which can be looted from their layers but they also tend to generally take most of anything that the humanoids that they haunt were carrying quote manticores collect their victims valuables for a variety of reasons including curiosity emulation of other monsters who collect treasure the man scent of the things or because they know humans value the things and therefore might come looking for them their lack of real hands prevents most mantegores from using what magical items fall into their possessions however matagors that have allied with evil humans May possess magical items designed specifically for their use examples include magical colors or bracelets that are in effect oversized magical Rings end quote now on top of it there are plenty of visual menageries that that would be more than happy to take a live Manticore if you were to capture one see they can sell for upwards of 1 000 gold pieces if you could catch one see many people think that they can be tamed and possibly even written But ultimately unfortunately for them they cannot manticores are such that any kind of excitement or combat or loud noises might trigger a manticore's evolutionary response to go feral and start attacking or just defending itself in fact the lore even states that manticores that have been Charmed even have a chance of breaking that charm when their instincts kick in resulting in them throwing their tail spines at anything that they can perceive could be a thread anywhere near them this of course makes them extremely difficult to tame which you know brings me to a point that I made much earlier when I said that it is just so much better to make a deal with a manticore and to get it on your side it willingly rather than to try and overpower it and tame it even if you start the taming process from when they're young or babies it just does not work you could just be riding the Manticore and at any point if there's a loud noise or if combat ensues the Mantic or matches end up eating you or stabbing you even if he doesn't intend to because that is just in its nature now even if like a wizard might not be able to make use out of a live Manticore they can certainly find a use for a dead one the eyes of a manticore can be used as ingredients in potions of Clairvoyance their blood in the ink for Scrolls that protect you from arrows or missiles and the Heart of a Mantic ore actually counts as the Heart of a Lion for the purposes of crafting potions of heroism but finally all the metal that one can extract from the teeth nails or tail spikes of a manticore are excellent sources for the purposes of crafting magical items since the metal is pure and considered to be high grade having been lens of his impurities during the natural blood circulating you know tail Spike crafting process of the body though ironically the most value that one could ever get from a manticore is not actually its ability to be a formidable companion or the magical ingredients that one could extract from its body but instead the respect that one might get from the perfectly cured hide from a manticore so it is said that a manticore Pelt is like a mark of the most powerful hunters and Warriors and many a wealthy Noble dreams of having such a rare and delicate Pelt just hung on their manners in fact an intact cured Manticore hide complete with wings is said to be worth upwards of 10 000 gold pieces which is nuts but now a few interesting things about the Manticore before we finish this video it is interesting that the first and second edition version of the Manticore actually had bat wings rather than dragon wings they were changed to dragon wings during Third Edition but in Third Edition they also changed the face of the Manticore to look more like a monster a kind of like a vague representation of both a monster and a humanoid rather than the straight up like person face that the Mantic Wars originally had in the past then a 5th edition further worked on the hybrid nature of the phase to to Really settle into what we now recognize as the Manticore manticores stand roughly about six feet tall and can measure between 10 to 15 feet in length with a 25 foot wingspan now according to Third Edition DND they weigh around 1 000 pounds they're pretty heavy now the last interesting thing about the Manticore is that you probably didn't know has to do with their voice if you ever wondered what does a manticore sound like you're probably going to be shocked so according to Dragon magazine number 153 the the manticore's voice is much more high pitched than one would expect so the throat of the creature is a bizarre combination of a human and a lion so when it's sound it produces a man's falsetto voice which is not at all what one would expect this compounded by the relatively inflexible lips and jaws of the Manticore severely limits the amount of sounds the creatures can produce which creates a very simple but extremely difficult to imitate voice if you guys don't know what a falsetto voice is just Google it or YouTube it it it's trying to picture a manticore doing that is just hilarious to me but there it is it's it's just it is what it is [Music] now thank you guys so much for watching uh please do make sure to check out my monster classes for at Mr Rex dot store the link is in the video description we have tons of content out right now especially our monster classes Series where you can now play as Davis occupy trians ogres dragons we got tons of different options to satisfy literally almost any kind of play style or what they don't tell you about 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Length: 21min 52sec (1312 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 03 2023