Lizardfolk

If you are looking for the Warhammer faction, see Lizardmen.

Monstrous humanoids come in many different shapes and sizes across various settings, editions and gamelines. One of the more universal are Lizardfolk - originally known as Lizardmen, but changed during the early 90's, probably for the same reason that Mermaids became Merfolk. As their name suggests, they are a race of humanoid lizards, though they often come in various forms. Generally, though, there's two traits they will have in common; they will be fought in a swamp or marsh, and they will be primitives.

In a world where even gnolls, orcs and goblins manage to cobble together steel weapons to fight with, lizardfolk are usually lucky to wield Stone Age gear like spears and clubs, instead of just ripping things to bits with their fangs and claws. Considering they live in swamps that tend to be home to things like crocodiles big enough to swallow them whole, giant carnivorous slugs, flowers that lay their seeds in your brain to turn you into a zombie propagatory aide, huge crayfish that can snap them in half, giant lumps of swamp muck that hate everything around them, and worse, this makes them either insanely badass or insanely stupid. Maybe a little of both.

Exactly why they're so primitive is never really explained. Dragon Magazine did once do an "Ecology of the Lizardfolk" article, which gave them a religious basis; essentially, in vanilla D&D, Lizardfolk worship a hermaphrodite goddess, Semuanya, who they portray as nothing more than a god-beast - a creature of divine might that concerns itself only with the basic needs of survival, no smarter than any animal. Furthermore, Semuanya once had a mate named Kecuala, who unlike its spouse was actually a thinking creature and so constantly thought about the world around it. Eventually, it thought so much that it split itself into two creatures, one male and one female, so it would be able to properly act on its thoughts. Those two Kecualas were the first Lizardfolk. As a result, lizardfolk literally demonize intelligence as evil, an unnatural and wasteful attribute, and deliberately try to be as feral as possible in hopes of one day restoring Kecuala to life.

Conversely, Pathfinder ties the answer to their environment and biology. They don't breed as quickly or have the same kind of impatient ambition as the warm-blooded creatures, so their population grows slowly and they are more-easily content with meeting their basic survival needs. And because they live in swamps, where metal is hard to get and quickly rusts and cloth or paper quickly rot, they derive less utility from many of the more-obvious trappings of other cultures. Notably, they do actually have a rich tradition of arts and oral storytelling that everyone else tend to ignore, and the xenophobic lizardfolk can't convey since none of them care to learn how to converse with other races.

The meta-reason is probably related to why the lizardfolk are always seen in swamps. Lizards, like all reptiles, are ancient creatures, tens of millions of years old, and haven't needed to change much since they got the basic template down before the dawn of the dinosaurs. As a result, lizards have a "primeval" motif ingrained in pop culture. So, lizardfolk being primitives just builds on that theme. Likewise, the age when reptiles ruled was a time when the world was covered in lush rainforests, swamps and marshlands, so even though modern swamps are more home to crocodilians, snakes and turtles than lizards, lizardfolk and swamp just go together under that motif.

Despite their mutual reptilian looks, lizardfolk are quite distinct from and not related to Dragons, Dragonborn and Draconians. This is probably because the ancestors of dinosaurs and modern reptiles diverged from each other roughly 285 million years ago during the Early Permian epoch. They do, however, speak Draconic, and like kobolds are popular slaves or subjects to various dragons, notably the black dragons that share their environment.

Traditionally, lizardfolk are spooky due to their "coldblooded and pragmatic" mindsets - for example, lizardfolk are usually portrayed as "morally cannibalistic", in the sense that they don't specifically want to eat sapient creatures, but if they do have to kill them for other reasons, they won't waste the protein afterwards - but not actively evil, with their typical alignment being Neutral. However, they also traditionally are prone to the presence of "Lizard Kings" (and, in later editions, Queens); these are demonically corrupted lizardfolk tainted in their egg by the demon prince Sess'inek, granting them significantly increased strength, size, intelligence and ferocity. Consumed by a rapacious hunger for sapient flesh, these Chaotic Evil tyrants drive their followers to uncharacteristic acts of aggression, if only by virtue of the simple fact that if they can't get humanoid meat, Lizard Kings & Queens will happily devour at least two of their own tribe-members a day to sate their appetite.

Variants

Lizardfolk have come in a staggering variety of different forms over the many, many editions of D&D.

The earliest variants appeared for Dungeons & Dragons, the 1977–1999 gameline separate to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2e. These early unique breeds of Lizardfolk hailed from Mystara, and appeared as a PC race at the end of The Voyage of the Princess Ark in Dragon Magazine #185. They consisted of the "common Mystaran" Lizardfolk, the Gator-men, and the Cay-men, the latter races being magical hybrids between lizardfolk with alligators and caimans respectively. Both were failed experiments of the Herathian empire to create superior slave-stock to the earlier failure that was the lizardfolk. Gator-men were larger, stronger, but also barbaric, bloodthirsty and cannibalistic. Cay-men were dumber than the Herathians intended and also incredibly pretensious despite (or perhaps because) of their intellectual ineptitude.

Another new D&D lizardfolk variant, the Malpheggi, appeared as a PC race in the Hollow World Player's Guide.

The first-ever Fiend Folio featured two additions to the lizardfolk family tree. The Babbler is a primitive, avatistic throwback of the lizardfolk, whilst the Firenewt is a flame-resistant water-restricted "cousin".

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons produced a huge array of lizardfolk variants:

• The Bakali, or Krynn Lizardfolk, appeared in the Dragonlance sourcebooks Rulebook of Taladas and World Book of Ansalon. These also covered their degenerate offspring, the Jarak-sinn.
• Caymans and Gator-men reappeared in the Mystara Monstrous Compendium Appendix, alongside newcomers; the Wallara and the Sis'thik.
  • The Wallara, which everyone tries to forget about, are an all-male species of lizardfolk who just so happen to look like Aborigine men painted up for coroborree in rainbow colors.
  • The Sis'thik are essentially desert-dwelling lizardfolk Amazons; males are smaller, weaker, stupider and delegated all the manual work, whilst the bigger, stronger, smarter, fiercer females handle everything else. Also, they really love the taste of copper dragon flesh.
• Red Steel brought into being the Cayma and Gurrash - literally just renamed versions of the earlier Caymen and Gator-men, alongside the Krolli and the Shazak.
  • Krolli are winged lizardfolk with a propensity for the mercenary lifestyle.
  • Shazak are peaceful lizardfolk who were the origins for the other three.
• Cayma, Gurrash, Shazak and Wallara all received PC writeups in the Odyssey: Savage Coast of Mystara: Orc's Head sourcebooks.
• Dragon Magazine got in on the fun too; issue #268 featured four new varieties of lizardfolk, in the form of the Agrutha (gator-folk), Crocodilians (even bigger and more savage versions of the Agrutha), the Geckonids (peaceful, friendly and inquisitive gecko-people), the Varanids (warlike komodo-people), the Tokay (evil counterparts to the Geckonids), and Iquanids (iguana-people in sea and land form).
• The Varkha, introduced in Dragon Magazine Annual #1 before making it into Volume IV of the Monstrous Compendium Annual, are a race of malevolent aquatic/amphibious lizardfolk that stalk the waterways of the Underdark.
• The Lizardfolk of Dark Sun, originally believed to be extinct, were later revealed to have survived in the infamously divisive "Mind Lords of the Last Sea" sourcebooks. Pterrans are also lizardfolk, albeit with pteranodon ancestry.
• The Malatran lizardfolk appeared in Polyhedron #121.
• Spelljammer had its own take on lizardfolk, too.
• Maztica introduced what is perhaps one of the weirdest lizardfolk; the Ahuizotl is an extra-primitive river-dwelling lizardfolk with the ability to spit out a water weird once per round!
• Ingundi are shapeshifting, psychic, cannibalistic lizardfolk native to Greyhawk.
• Khaasta, from the Planescape setting, are Ferengi-esque plane-traveling cut-throat, back-stabbing traders. No, that's not a type.
• Laerti are desert-dwelling vicious raiders from the Forgotten Realms, more savage in nature than the Sis'thik. They have their own subrace called the Stingtails, whose prehensile tails can be used to wield weapon or deliver slaps covered in contact venom.

3rd edition wasn't so inventive. Eberron mentioned the existence of Blackscale and Poison Dusk lizardfolk; the Monster Manual III confirmed that these were, respectively, larger, dark-scaled, stronger lizardfolk and smaller, smarter lizardfolk with a penchant for ranged weaponry. Many speculate as to the possible influence of the Warhammer Fantasy Lizardmen upon these races. The MM IV added the Dark Talons; evil lizardfolk alchemically infused with black dragon blood.

Playable Lizardfolk

D&D has a long history of monstrous PC race options, particularly of the beastfolk flavor. Lizardfolk are no exception, and have appeared as PC options in:

• Dragon Magazine #185 (Mystaran, Cay-man, Gator-man) - Basic D&D
• Dragon Magazine #186 (Wallara) - Basic D&D
• Hollow World Player's Guide (Malpheggi Lizardman) - Basic D&D
• Dark Sun Campaign Setting, Revised (Pterran) - AD&D 2e
• Complete Book of Humanoids (Common Lizardman) - AD&D 2e
• Spelljammer Boxed Set: Lorebook of the Void (Astromundi Lizardman) - AD&D 2e
• Complete Spacefarer's Handbook (Astromundi Lizardman) - AD&D 2e
• Dragon Magazine #268 (Agrutha, Brute Crocodilian, Master Crocodilian, Varanid, Geckonid, Tokay, Iguanid)
• Odyssey: Savage Coast of Mystara: Orc's Head (Shazak, Caymar, Gurrash, Wallara) - AD&D 2e
• Dragons of Krynn (Bakali, Jarak-sinn) - 3rd Edition
• Races of Faerun (Lizardfolk) - 3rd Edition
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Race Guide
• Volo's Guide to Monsters (Lizardfolk) - 5th Edition

Unified Setting Description

• Unified Setting/Lizardfolk

The Races of Pathfinder
Player's Handbook:	Dwarf - Elf - Gnome - Half-Elf - Half-Orc - Halfling - Human
Advanced Race Guide:	Aasimar - Catfolk - Changeling - Dhampir - Duergar Drow - Fetchling - Gillman - Goblin - Grippli - Hobgoblin Ifrit - Kitsune - Kobold - Merfolk - Nagaji - Orc - Oread Ratfolk - Samsaran - Strix - Suli - Svirfneblin - Sylph Tengu - Tiefling - Undine - Vanara - Vishkanya - Wayang
Bestiaries:	Android - Astomoi - Caligni - Deep One Hybrid - Gathlain Gnoll - Kasatha - Munavri - Naiad - Orang-Pendak Reptoid - Rougarou - Shabti - Trox - Yaddithian
Adventure Paths:	Being of Ib - Kuru
Inner Sea Races:	Ghoran - Monkey Goblin - Lashunta - Skinwalker Syrinx - Triaxian - Wyrwood - Wyvaran
Ultimate Wilderness:	Vine Leshy
Blood of the Sea:	Adaro - Cecaelia - Grindylow - Locathah - Sahuagin - Triton
Planar Adventures:	Aphorite - Duskwalker - Ganzi