Sea Lion

Sea Lions in the real world are pinnipeds - amphibious mammals closely related to seals, whom they look a lot like, who live a fairly harmless life swimming around in the sea and eating fish. In Dungeons & Dragons, however, the sea lion is a vicious aquatic predator that you can basically describe as a merfolk, but instead of half human and half fish, it's half lion (or other big cat) and half fish!

As crazy as this may sound, such creatures - also called sea-lions and merlions - have been a real thing in heraldry, especially in the Phillipines. A merlion is even the national symbol of Singapore.

Sea Lions first made their debut in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition, showing up in the original Monster Manual. They got an Ecology of the Sea Lion in Dragon Magazine #107, and were then updated to 2e in the Monstrous Compendium Volume 2, before going on to the 1993 Monstrous Manual.

They were really lucky in 3rd Edition; not only was the Sea Lion - now rebranded as the Sea Cat - present in the original Monster Manual, but the sabertoothed Sea Tiger was introduced as an aquatic mount in the MM3 for that same edition.

Sea lions skipped 4th edition, but made a return in 5th Edition through the adventure Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

Official 3e Lore

This article is boring and stinks of being copypasted from a gamebook or another wiki. You can make it better by making it less unfunny.

Sea Cats

A sea cat is fish-like, most closely resembling a small, long shark (despite being sea green in color), only with a feline head, reminiscent of that of the cougar. It also has arms with clawed paws towards the front of its body. At the back of it, it has a whale-like tail. A spined dorosal fin is located a little back from the head, and another around the center of the body. Also, growing down the spine is a long mane of glossy hair.

The sea cat is an animalistic beast and has no special properties or habits. It makes its home near shores, on rocky islands, and other such sub-oceanic environments, and hunts to feed itself and its young, defends its territory, and basically acts like many real life animals. It may be the result of a magical experiment on a cat and a fish. Despite the fish-like appearance, it is not either a fish or an amphibian, it cannot breathe underwater and though a good swimmer, it needs to come up for air, like a seal, whale, polar bear or penguin. It is a highly courageous creature, and fights to the death to defend its home. Though sometimes solitary, it also lives in prides of 5 to 12 individuals.

Sea Tigers

Sea tigers are aquatic mammals similar to sea lions and walruses. They hunt anything they can catch, including fish, birds, and animals foolish enough to stray too close to the shore. Sea tigers can often be seen on rocky shorelines, sunning themselves in large family groups.

Sea tigers have the intelligence of dogs and wolves, and they can be trained much the same way.

The biggest, strongest member, regardless of gender, leads a sea tiger pod. A pod includes females (half as many as males) and young (half as many as females).

A typical sea tiger is about 20 feet long and weighs 3 tons.

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