Let's Read: The Dungeons and Dragons 5e Monster Manual!

[Regitnui]

I would think that cocatrices have a symbiotic relationship with basilisk. Cocatrices help Basilisks petrify things, and the basilisk provides the cocatrice with more protection than they normally would.

There's an idea for how cockatrices survive in the wild. Nest cleaners, like how owls will keep small snakes in their nests to control vermin.

(David Attenborough voice) "Here we see the lowly cockatrice. While armed with a petrifying bite, very few of the larger monsters of its habitat would hesitate to take one down. The flock stops grazing as they hear a sound, which of their many predators do thy face today? A basilisk! This most terrifying of beasts has much stronger petrifying powers. Capable of killing with but a glance, it instead lunges for the cockatrice, wanting to keep them alive. As it drags the screeching bird back to its nest, we find that its intentions were altogether more peaceful. This basilisk is a parent, and while the cockatrice cannot free itself from the nest, it finds a plentiful supply of food in the scavengers and vermin ready to infest the juvenile basilisks in this, the most vulnerable time of their lives."

[Nifft]

infest the juvenike basilisks in this, the most vulnerable time of their lives."

the juvenike basilisks

juvenike

Some kind of adolescent victory goddess?

Zeus: "Turn down that damn music! You're giving me a headache again!"

[Broken Crown]

Zeus: "Turn down that damn music! You're giving me a headache again!"

Juvenike: 1, Zeus: 0

Another victory!

---

Though, wasn't it Athena who gave Zeus a headache?

[Regitnui]

Some kind of adolescent victory goddess?

Zeus: "Turn down that damn music! You're giving me a headache again!"

Oh, go pikachu yourself. You know what I meant. People complain for weeks when autocorrect 'fixes' their sentences wrong, but jump all over anyone else whenever it doesn't work for them.

[Tallis]

I think I might make Juvenike a goddess in my world :)

On the subject of cockatrices I have a tough time placing them. The one thing that keeps coming to mind is an adventuring party coming upon a farm where the farmer and all the chickens have been turned to stone. A cockatrice has moved in, just looking for a home and a hen. Unfortunately for him every time he tries to make friends he accidently turns them to stone.

[JackPhoenix]

Some kind of adolescent victory goddess?

Zeus: "Turn down that damn music! You're giving me a headache again!"

Juvenike: 1, Zeus: 0

Another victory!

Permission to (multiquote) sig?

[Broken Crown]

Permission to (multiquote) sig?

Permission from me, anyway.

[Nifft]

Oh, go pikachu yourself.

You made a funny mistake and someone pointed it out. Get the hell over yourself.

I think I might make Juvenike a goddess in my world :)

She could be pretty interesting, even at the most shallow interpretation of just "Athena" + "youth", specifically because the Victory of Youth might spell doom for a culture which relies on rule by elders.

Welcome to the disobedient children, and generation warfare... talkin' 'bout every g-g-g-generation.

Raises the question: what happens to a Cleric of Juvenike who doesn't die before he gets old?

Permission to (multiquote) sig?

"Sig what thou will" is the whole of mine law.

[Mith]

Mandatory daily Trial by Combat from the age of 27 onward.

[MrConsideration]

The Coautl
The Coautl has always interested me - its Mesoamerican inspiration gives it a tonne of flavour but makes it hard to fit into most campaign worlds - and any setting with a distinctly Mesoamerican flavour will struggle to accommodate most other beasties that D&D is packing. The D&D interpretation of Quetzacouatl suffers from being Lawful Good, too, which doesn't give us access to all the fun bits of a Mesoamerican setting: namely tearing people's hearts out and kicking their lifeless corpses down the step pyramid.. The nerdy Coautl would really struggle to fill Quetzacoatl's shoes, if he needed such things.
I've mentioned before in my Angel review that I always felt your Lawful Good monsters were a bunch of schoolmatronly Mary Sue do-gooders used by authoritarian DMs to push their players around, and the Coautl seems no better.

Art

It's a difficult concept to capture, the feathered serpent. The images that inspired the creature are all heavily stylised, but the artist has gone for quite a realistic, nuanced image with gentle shifts of tone. None of the blocky, primary colours of the original pieces. It captures a sense of grace, of lithe but threatening beauty - the weird dignity of a snake. I don’t know if I like it, per se, but its certainly a brave and accomplished piece. The wings just look too…vestigial?

Purpose and Tactics
It's a quest-giver. It literally exists to accomplish some lofty goal, or prophecy, or divine mandate – it lives in natural symbiosis with the. plot hook and the need to drop it in to the laps of player-characters. this role I’d ham up its surroundings – players are going to have to machete their way through an awful lots of Pulp-Conan-Jungle to get to the benevolent snake, which would be elusive and strange. It has a number of spells which are clearly intended to aid in quests, such as Scrying or Dream, as well as a number of spells that exist as quest rewards, like Greater Restoration. It can speak all languages and is Telepathic, so your players have to talk to the bloody stupid thing eventually (see my point above re: authoritarian DMs).

But….I don’t like it as a quest-giver. Despite looking like cobra at the Rio Carnival, it is painfully vanilla to have some tedious preachy Lawful Good monster give the players a quest. I like my quest-givers to have some edge (recent culprits have included: a jumped-up mercenary who calls himself a King, a Queen of Harpies with the gift of prophecy, a corpulent hag with a retinue of goblin slaves, a Dwarf Merchant prince who probably assassinated his predecessor…). There’s no edge to the Couatl – and not just because it is a snake. Its because it has no connections to the world – no hopes or dreams or grubby, petty little ambitions – it just wants to do something really nice. Now, big daddy Quetzalcoatl had edge in spades. He literally desired sacrifices to keep the universe spinning. He’s a beastie straight out of Warhammer. The fact that Couatl speaks every language and is telepathic and has truesight and can magically become human and you can’t read it mind or emotions, nerr, nerr, nerr, just in order to be a quest-giver makes me really dislike this thing.

If you fight it – and I secretly hope if a DM tries to inflict one on you that you do - it is a complete milquetoast. CR 4? What kind of flimsy divine guardian is this? I understand it’s basically a living feather boa.

OK, so the Couatl fights by using a number of annoying strategies – it has a number of resistances and immunities, mighty saves and a great fly speed. It can easily avoid damage (almost as though the good people at Wizards don’t want you to kill it…) and heal itself. However, its actual offensive options are rubbish – low damage output and a gimmicky grapple. I’d give it some kind of nasty poisonous bite, so it could skirmish and pick you off one-by-one in a jungle where you can’t even see the damn thing, but that would hardly be very Lawful Good.

Fluff
It sits in some idiotic niche between the mythic and the utterly mundane that ruins it completely. It has loads of weird gimmicks straight from some dramatic, high-fantasy legend – it can forsee its death a century in advance, it was made by the gods – with a load of boring ecological rubbish where it seeks out a mate only if it hasn’t given anyone a quest yet. Then the controlling helicopter parent Couatl dumps its quest on youngster and promptly dies. Its is so…..silly, and there’s not much that’s gameable aside from the obvious.

Hooks
Deep in the jungles of Mixzapticlin, they say, a beast guards the temple. It tends the gardens, cleans the ritual rooms, and bows and honours all comers. The fact that the temple is abandoned to the jungle seems not to concern it. A group of treasure hunters will give you a cut if you tie the creature up for a few hours….or permanently.

Deep in the jungles of Mixzapticlin, a Couatl reigns supreme over a tribe of degenerate troglodytes. Trapped in a cargo-cult mentality, he tries sacrificing every type of creature they can abduct – after all, when his civilization was great, many sacrifices were performed. If the Couatl could just find the right person to sacrifice…

At the heart of the Emperor’s security, they say, is the one they call The Serpent. A man who seems to know the very thoughts in your head – who can speak to Ambassadors from every land – who disappears and appears like smoke whenever assassins might be near. How can The Serpent be pinned down? What secrets is he hiding?

Verdict: Rubbish. Reskin them as the baddies from a Conan story.

[Tanarii]

What is the Coautl's type? Fey, Celestial, Fiends, Animals, and Elementals are all needed for a variety of Player summon, gating and binding spells,

That covers Angels btw. Clerics can summon one with Conjure Celestial can't they? Also Gate & Planar Binding can affect them.

[Naanomi]

More useful than angels but still not great. Foils for yuan-ti in a jungle 'snake men' game

[Envyus]

I like them as Low level good Celestials. They are not amazing monsters but I do like them.

[Tallis]

I like the idea of them but I'd be more inclined to take them back to their origins and make them a bit more dangerous.

[Regitnui]

Hmm... What is there to say about coatls? Back in 3.5, they were CR10, and had poisonous bites, the ability to read minds (detect thoughts), sorcerer spellcasting and three cleric domains, along with the grapple upgrades and telepathy. The Eberron setting brought them to prominence for me; they were the 'celestials' of the Age of Fiends, when Rakshasa ruled and dragons were slaves. They gave up their lives to bind the most powerful fiends with pure LG life force, and since then, only appear in times of great peril. The last time one was seen was when the paladin Tira Miron founded the Silver Flame by physically merging with one to destroy Bel-Sharoth.

Admittedly, they've come down a bit since. The idea here, i think, isn't so much to use them as a magic mouthquest giver, but a sign that this quest is Serious Business™. Imagine having a coatl wake as you enter the dungeon/evil temple/Mordor to warn them off, but instead decide to join them in the effort to keep them safe. Coatls are also prime fodder for monster advancement; give them cleric or paladin levels and get a good flying smite/spell-focused ally.

Not everything in the MM is battle fodder, and the coatl is one of the scene-setting monsters rather than an aggressive obstacle.

Alternative Quest Hooks
- The villagers know you don't head into the woods at night; the serpentine Guardian warns off all who head too close to the ruined castle at the centre.
- Monsters threaten the Town! The players are recruited by the mayor to find and wake the town's patron, somewhere down in the old catacombs.
- A coatl has appeared near the adventurers' home base. It bears a message from the Great Wyrm Cacilondryx that the players must hear.

[twas_Brillig]

Admittedly, they've come down a bit since. The idea here, i think, isn't so much to use them as a magic mouthquest giver, but a sign that this quest is Serious Business™. Imagine having a coatl wake as you enter the dungeon/evil temple/Mordor to warn them off, but instead decide to join them in the effort to keep them safe. Coatls are also prime fodder for monster advancement; give them cleric or paladin levels and get a good flying smite/spell-focused ally.

But how Serious can this Business be if they're only CR4? Maybe if your cosmology restricts how much the Powers What Be can interfere directly, a Coatl might be the highest order of divine being that can be dispatched without disrupting the cosmic balance. Maybe they're formed out of the stuff of the Material Plane, bound together with divine energy, and so are far more efficient as a way to get feet (wings?) on the ground (...). In that case, maybe Coatl have a lot of Good but not a lot of Grace--they're fallible, in other words, and various flavors of loopy, misguided, and gullible. Coatl are used to bring mortal heroes on board because mortals get less attention from The Forces of Evil (tm) per unit heroism.

[Regitnui]

But how Serious can this Business be if they're only CR4? Maybe if your cosmology restricts how much the Powers What Be can interfere directly, a Coatl might be the highest order of divine being that can be dispatched without disrupting the cosmic balance. Maybe they're formed out of the stuff of the Material Plane, bound together with divine energy, and so are far more efficient as a way to get feet (wings?) on the ground (...). In that case, maybe Coatl have a lot of Good but not a lot of Grace--they're fallible, in other words, and various flavors of loopy, misguided, and gullible. Coatl are used to bring mortal heroes on board because mortals get less attention from The Forces of Evil (tm) per unit heroism.

Precisely. A coatl in 3.5 was a native outsider; something native to the Material Plane with a lot of extraplanar qualities. The coatl are what the gods use as eyes and ears in particular Material Plane locations, whereas angels are the gods' hands and swords. A coatl is an active piece of Celestial Goodness© on the Material, in the same way a Cambion could be for their infernal parent or an imp for their master.

[Naanomi]

Coatl are also outside of the basic 'outsider paradigm'; they are good outsiders but not part of the Cosmic Good; and thus can be slightly looser morally. They make good 'doing bad thing for the greater good' types... Angels would meltdown of they had to use daily human sacrifices to keep a demon lord sealed in the temple, a coatl might pull it off

[Durazno]

I think that it might also be helpful to play up their weirdness. It might not even be a matter of being looser morally; the extraplanar snake-bird-thing just sees the world differently than you do. How would the party cleric deal with encountering a paragon of goodness and finding it bizarre or even repulsive? That'd almost be worse than encountering a demon!

[Eldan]

Psh. Angels are no cosmic good. Not even a bit. That's Archons, or Guardinals or Eladrin. Angels are empowered errand-boys for the gods and subjects to all their petty squabbles.

Now, for Couatl, I always liked to connect them to the serpents of law. Play up the connection to Jazirian, and if you want, their position as a counterpoint to Ahriman. I'd always use them as lawful before good. You can bring them into the large cosmological conflicts, that way. Asmodeus' fall. The war of law and chaos. The blood war. Good and evil are, after all, newcomers on the cosmic battlefield.

Plus, I've always liked Jazirian's dogma: " Good must be tempered by temptation". It has potential.

Anyway, if I used one directly, then yeah. Mystery. A great and shadowy hall, moist and stinking of reptile. There's bits of cast-off skin, with rainbow-shimmering scales the size of dinner plates. There are scattered bones. Were those elephants? Was that an elf? There are pillars, each engraved with the oroboros, and wound around them something scintillating in the dark, huge like a freigh train, slowly shifting. Then it speaks in your minds with a voice like thunder.

Good is, after all, not nice. Especially LAWFUL (good).

[TripleD]

It kind of feels like you read "Lawful Good" and just gave up. This is a creature that's told from the moment it's born "this is your job. The sole reason you exist. Don't @&:$ it up or horrible things will happen" and you can't think of anything interesting to do with that mentality?

Really between that, the focus on vision via dreams, the telepathy, pre-emotive death, and Shapeshifting, there are tons of potential questlines.

Couatl as Questgiver

• Madame Cortana's Fair of Mystery
  The PCs find themselves in a small hamlet when a travelling carnival comes to town. It's "hall of mystery" contains such wonders as a "baby dragon" (iguana), "satyr" (actor with furry pants) and, most pathetically, a "couatl from the distant jungles of Ar" (snake with fake wings).
  That night, one of the PCs has a dream of the last cage. Inside, wreathed in flames of every colour, is a true couatl.
  "Free me small mortal", says the voice in a language they don't speak yet understand, "and I will make you a god".
  The next day the carnival is gone without a trace.
• Hard Boiled Funeral
  Imelda the Fox is grumpy, abrasive detective who nonetheless remains the best investigator the city watch has ever had. She seems to have a six-sense for when crimes will take place. Sometimes overly physical when arresting, she nonetheless ensures that each criminal gets a fair trial.
  After arresting the PCs on trumped up charges, she reveals that she is in fact the latest in a long line of couatls tasked with protecting the city. A cabal of Ithilids have posed as a crime family and slowly been corrupting the nobility. Their psychic warfare has stretched Imelda to her limits, and she needs the PCs help. She knows that the Mind-Flayers will make their final move within one week, just as certainly as she knows that she will be dead before then.
• Mark of a Coward
  Couatl are taught to contemplate their deaths. Yet some grow proud in their mission. It's not that they fear dying, they just don't trust anyone else to fulfill their mission. So they begin to look for ways to barter for more time...
  They PCs are travelling when suddenly, a shadowy grey mass attacks them. The fight is easy, but leaves the party with a bloated, rotten corpse of a couatl, and several strange black splotches that won't wash off.
  That night the ghost of the couatl appears to them. He confesses that he cut a deal with dark powers to extend his life "in the name of a greater good". The marks will eventually kill the PCs, unless they can either reach the female couatl he was meant to mate with, or defeat the dark power once and for all.

Couatl As Antagonist

• Night Terrors
  A young man, disheveled with bags under his eyes, appears before the PCs, pleading for help. He comes from a noble family of Zenoctaxin. Pledging himself as a sacrifice months earlier, at the last minute he got cold feet and ran. Every night he has visions of winged serpent. He knows it is hunting him, a band of jaguar warriors at its back. He is out of money and out of distance; the party is his last hope.
• A Nightmare on Orc Street
  It started small. A Beserker making odd petting gestures in his sleep. "Soft Kitty" he'd mutter. Then his slay-wives started making little happy faces with Arakokra eggs and hum-acon, claiming they'd been sleepwalking. Soon every soldier was reporting the same thing: a mysterious winged serpent appearing in their dreams with the battle-cry of "well let's turn that frown upside down!"
  They'd returned the treasure, every last scrap of it, to the temple, but that wasn't enough to sate it's vengeance. Now the Orc Chief Bangabad is offering twice his weight in platinum to anyone who will venture into his dreams and fight off this nightmarish figure who stalks them with visions of warm sweaters and fresh-baked muffins.
• The Other Guys
  Couatls don't always win. When you fail the one task you were given in life, what comes next?
  In the case of Feathered Daughter of Moon, you decide to make yourself useful. Amassing wealth is easy when you have all the time in the world, and whom to give it to is just as easy with telepathy. But that's not enough for atonement. You must actively seek out and eradicate evil. That's when you hire other people to help you.
  Unfortunately for your PCs, she hired another group of adventurers.
  While not an enemy per-se, she's still a royal pain in the ass. How are you supposed to stay ahead when your rivals' boss knows the minute you've sniffed out a job?

This list long enough as is, but I also had an idea for a couatl as part of a "Magical Girl" team of lawful good shapeshifters (Angel, Couatl, Silver Dragon, etc.) that didn't realize they weren't humanoid until puberty, but I'm too tired to think of a quest for it.

[Dimolyth]

Well, LG doesn`t mean "nice". Just to precise, weren`t they CG back in 3 editions, rather than CG?
Back at 3.5, we were almost TPK`ed from one by traveling via portal to return to our home plane.

For tactics, I`d used constrict, then fly up, then bite, fly futher to the sky - and drop your poisoned target from 90ft height. That is really fearsome for early levels, so you can use it as natural solo guardian of a portal/territory and so forth. First, this snake tries to negotiate party to not come in. Then, it attacks...

And according to description of their mating ritual... Well, "LG alignment" is not an exuse of interrupting some intime life. Party can just interrupt coatles occasionnally - and get both lawful and good rage on their mortal adventuring heads.

Not great, but can fit. Espessially, if yuan-ti snakes are already present in your campagn.

[twas_Brillig]

Well, LG doesn`t mean "nice". Just to precise, weren`t they CG back in 3 editions, rather than CG?

I thought there had been an alignment swap at some point, too, but no. SRD link. Maybe we were both thinking of lillends which are another flavor entirely of flying, extraplanar, reptilian do-gooders.

[DireSickFish]

My biggest problem with them is CR. I -want- them to be a big good the party can unleash against fiendish horrors or travel to a abandoned temple to request aid from. Then you help complete it's divine quest and convince it your the good guys for realz and it sinks its near immortal good guy fangs into that Pit Fiends head.

How important can a divine quest be if it's entrusted to something so piddly and small?

If I were to use them as presented in the book I'd have them be once-powerful entities that are reduced to there mere CR4 form. Perhaps they are caging a great evil and after doing so for so long it has left them diminished. Or the Tarasque is waking up to early an the heroes must help the Coutal recover its divine powers so that he can face the legendary beast in combat.

[Brendanicus]

To all of those who are hung up on the Cotl's low CR, bear in mind that they don't have to be the solitary guardians of whatever. A group of about four of them could be entrusted to guard the same holy sight for years, possibly being "assigned" to work with another guardian of good- a gold dragon, ancient temple, or even the tomb of a fallen angel.

EDIT: They could make great supporting DMPC's. If the Great Golden Wyrm wants to check out several sights that the Ancient Cult of Doom could be, she could send the party to investigate one of them. To aid them in this capacity, she has sent a coutl with them.

Furthermore, with a Coutl's penchant for healing, they could make decent boss monsters that rely on buffing minions. Animals could flock to the side of a Coutl, as could the Ghosts of the original humanoid guardians of the holy site.

[Forum Explorer]

My biggest problem with them is CR. I -want- them to be a big good the party can unleash against fiendish horrors or travel to a abandoned temple to request aid from. Then you help complete it's divine quest and convince it your the good guys for realz and it sinks its near immortal good guy fangs into that Pit Fiends head.

How important can a divine quest be if it's entrusted to something so piddly and small?

If I were to use them as presented in the book I'd have them be once-powerful entities that are reduced to there mere CR4 form. Perhaps they are caging a great evil and after doing so for so long it has left them diminished. Or the Tarasque is waking up to early an the heroes must help the Coutal recover its divine powers so that he can face the legendary beast in combat.

I think lots of people are getting caught up whole divine task thing. I mean it's true, but you can think of it as another way where they were created for every daily task that the god's church could need. They maintain the temples, guard the old treasuries, and stand ready to defend against an enemy that never came. Or have them protecting and aiding descendants of once noble families of a ruined civilization.

And with their god dead, and civilization destroyed, many of them realize that their 'tasks' are pointless and impossible to complete. And they don't know if they should allow themselves to die or seek out a new and comparable task. Others worry that when they die, they will not return to their god's embrace as promised, but will instead be consigned to oblivion, and that scares them.

So yeah, you can do a lot with the idea, and I quite like them when you start to look at them deeper then just another celestial servant.

[Shining Wrath]

I'm disappointed that the Coatl now lacks a certain majesty, but the creature as written retains utility. You just need gods that care about smaller things; if your world has gods that are distant and care only about threats to planetary existence, then Coatls need to be powerful as they will deliver messages of world-shaking import. If, however, the gods care about villages and hamlets, then a CR 4 Coatl can deliver a quest to save such a village.

Given that the villagers presumably pray to one or more deities, it makes sense that the gods care about the villages, perhaps indirectly; a demigod is responsible for the 50 person village of Tiny, and if something comes up that really requires the Top Boss's attention the demigod has to pass the message along through several layers of "bureaucracy". In such a setting, a Coatl could be sent by a demigod to help Tiny village out, and the players are still on a Mission From God (cue I'm Your Soul Man).

My take on the MM is that it has gaping holes waiting to be filled, and celestials are one creature class that got very little attention. Fey are another that comes to mind as needing some splatty love.

[JackPhoenix]

I kinda miss the "X in <setting>" from the latter 3.5e Monster Manuals. Couatl is a example of monster that works very differently in certain setting (Eberron, in this case) then in the default "It's Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms, but with the numbers filled off" setting.

I don't mind the lowerd CR compared to previous editions. Eberron is my favorite setting. Couatls were big deal there once, divine children of Siberys who had sacrificed themselves to bind the Overlords in the Silver Flame, but now, hundreds of thousands years later? They are weak because the few guardians they left behind to watch over the fiends' prisons sacrificed their power to keep the wards strong. Their role in the Prophecy is over. They are lorekeepers, mentors and advisors, its up to mortals to make sure the Overlords stay where they are.

[Regitnui]

Coatl can also be given cleric/druid/sorcerer spells if you want to hand out a few tricks and add a CR or two. I'm sure either the DMG or MM has rules for that.

[Durazno]

If, however, the gods care about villages and hamlets, then a CR 4 Coatl can deliver a quest to save such a village.

It might even be that the whole purpose of Coatls is to care about smaller things than the gods care to see. It's hard to make out fine details from way up on not-Olympus, but they do understand that such things are important. When an era or land starts to have a rough time, part of the solution might be dispatching one or ten or fifty coatls over a period of decades to determine what needs doing on the ground level. (I guess this depends on how specific their quests are.)