CR4

That's right class, today we will be talking about Owlbears. Now, you may well ask "Why Owlbears?". But then that's my point entirely.


I must admit to having a soft spot for the Owlbear, in much the same way as I have a soft spot for the Myrka. It is, after all, a rubbish monster. As a poster child for rubbish D&D monsters I think the Owlbear is superior in it's sheer randomness. You can keep your invisible cats with tentacles and your baffling array of deadly desserts. The Owlbear is not only inherently ridiculous, but also large and angry. And of course he serves as reminder of that classic D&D excuse for everything that is obviously makes no sense whatsoever:

A Wizard Did It.

Of course the great part here isn't that an insane wizard crossbred an owl and a bear to use a guard monster or whatever. That's actually believable. It's the fact that he created a sustainable breeding population of the damn things. Whether it was him that let them out or whatever it is that passes for animal rights protesters in D&D is a separate question entirely.

In real life of course it's not a wizard that we need to blame for the creation of the Owlbear, but Gary Gygax. Or, if wikipedia is correct, rather a packet of breakfast cereal. That the Owlbear was apparently inspired by some random made in Hong Kong kaiju knock off candy toy suddenly makes everything about the Owlbear make a lot more sense.

Who can honestly say they never had a small brightly colored piece of plastic shaped like that as a child? It might not look particularly scary, or even remotely related to either owls or bears, but it DOES look like it could take a punch from an UltraKamenRanger. Which I always find rather endearing.

Of course time moves on and art budgets increase, and the Owlbear has gone through some level of redesign in an attempt to make it look more like a credible monster and less like something a schoolboy doodles in the margins of textbooks (much like every other D&D monster). However, whilst there is some pretty badass looking artwork out there, no matter how much you're trying to go for something like this:

When you say "Owlbear" Everybody's still going to be thinking this:

Which is a shame in a way, for as ridiculous as the Owlbear is, there is at least one aspect to it that doesn't really get explored in games.

THAT NOISE. Take that and scale it up to something the size of a bear. THAT would be fucking terrifying.

Of course, sound effects can only take you so far, and as been noted elsewhere, there is something of a dearth of decent Owlbear miniatures available. Baring in mind how ridiculous the Owlbear itself actually is this shouldn't really come as much of a surprise. You stick a head with big old owl eyes on top of a tubby furry body and it will never look any less that adorable. However I'm pleased to say there is at least one, and a rather surprising one at that.

A while ago I was looking for information on some old citadel Ghouls, and I found a picture of some Shadows. Which may well sound like a rather roundabout way of buying an Owlbear, but bear with me. See, the Shadows were by Otherworld Miniatures, a rather fine little company who specialize in sculpts based on old school D&D artwork.

And when we say old school we MEAN oldschool

So, browsing around their site I found their Owlbear. And I REALLY liked it. Having always found the Owlbear to be thoroughly daft, here was a version that actually looked pretty damn badass. All I really needed was a suitable excuse to get one.

Then my character leveled up and I discovered that Summon Undead II gives you a Skeletal Owlbear. And if there's one thing that's actually dafter than a regular Owlbear it's an Undead Owlbear.

And so here he is. My beloved Owlbear. I decided to go for a kind of albino vibe, which somehow translated into whitish fur and red plumage. The face and claws were all done bony, to try and get the whole undeadness thing happening a bit more. I must admit that it did take a lot of mucking about with inks and highlighting to get the fur into a state I was happy with, but I think he came out looking pretty damn good if I do say so myself.

And the bizarre part is that this sculpt is of course based on the ORIGINAL artwork. None of your fancy pants proper artist modern rubbish. And this is still the only Owlbear mini I've found that actually looks mean instead of vaguely silly.

Go figure.