In Dungeons and Dragons, sphinxes are the guardians of ancient sites and forbidden knowledge. They look like giant lions with enormous feathered wings stretching from beneath their shoulder blades and often are adorned in pieces of beautiful jewelry so that all who encounter them know their worth. Sphinxes carry sacred missions, bestowed upon them by the gods themselves, to guard the gods’ hallowed temples and divine artifacts.
Only those worthy enough in the sphinx’s eyes will be permitted to know exactly what it is the sphinx guards. While sphinxes are popular for testing supplicants of their treasures with riddles, a sphinx is free to test those lucky enough to encounter it by any means the sphinx deems appropriate. But beyond tests and treasures, what more lies behind the guise of the sphinx?
10 Sphinxes Can Time Travel
Among the many powers granted to sphinxes by the gods, perhaps the most powerful is time travel. For those unaware, time travel magic is outlawed throughout the D&D multiverse. There are even constructs from the plane of Mechanus whose sole purpose is to search out and apprehend anyone powerful and crazy enough to attempt it. Nonetheless, sphinxes are able to alter the flow of time while inside their lairs, which they never, ever leave. Any character who really rubs a sphinx the wrong way might just find their age suddenly changed. Worse yet, they could also be transported to another period in time entirely with a 9th level wish spell being the only means of return.
9 Sphinxes Are Immune To Divination Magic
Due to their unique inscrutable ability, sphinxes are immune to all divination magic. A player or character can’t read the thoughts or emotions of a sphinx, nor can it determine the creature’s location unless the sphinx allows them to do so.
However, player characters can make insight checks on a sphinx, though these checks suffer the penalty of disadvantage. All in all, reading a sphinx is like trying to understand a foreign language: nearly impossible.
8 Sphinxes Often Kill Those Who Fail Their Trials
It’s just a test, right? Anyone who fails the class can always take it again. Well, not in the case of a sphinx’s trials. In fact, most sphinxes are obligated by their god to kill those who attempt to obtain the secrets and treasures they guard. There are some sphinxes that are granted the power to teleport failed supplicants away and prevent them from ever finding the sphinx’s lair again, but this is a small minority. In other words, accepting a sphinx’s test is no small matter. Success in this endeavor is likely the difference between life and death.
7 Only Sphinxes Can Bestow Their Treasures
Foolhardy adventurers might reason that failing a sphinx’s test is no problem. After all, they can just kill the beast and take its loot if it doesn’t want to give it up. Unfortunately for them, the gods are a little bit more careful with their precious artifacts than that. The only way to receive a sphinx’s treasure is by the creature deeming a recipient worthy. Killing the sphinx will bring a player character no closer to claiming its prize. In fact, those who kill a sphinx are forever barred from claiming the treasure it once guarded. No matter how hard they try to obtain it or how powerful they might become.
6 Sphinxes Have Truesight
Sphinxes may not be all-knowing, but they are all-seeing. Creatures with truesight are capable of seeing any and everything in their plain of view. This includes creatures obscured by invisibility, magical darkness, and the true form of shapechangers.
Most impressive of all, truesight allows its wielder to see into the ethereal plane, allowing sphinxes to even perceive creatures on an alternate realm of existence.
5 Sphinxes Are Lawful
As one might surmise due to their oath given purpose, the nature of all sphinxes is bound by law. A sphinx cannot perform any action that goes against its sacred guarding business. In this way, the creatures are actually quite limited despite the great powers they wield. For example, a sphinx never leaves its lair and is compelled to present all who approach it with its trials. No matter how much a sphinx might like or dislike someone, it treats everyone the same as far as its treasure keeping responsibility is concerned.
4 Sphinxes Come In Four Varieties
The Monster Manual only has entries for the male androsphinx and the female gynosphinx, so it may be surprising to learn that there exist two other kinds of male sphinxes: the criosphinx and the hieracosphinx. These two other male sphinxes are far more bestial in nature than their Monster Manual cousins, possessing no human-like facial features. Instead, the criosphinx has the head of a goat while the hieracosphinx sports the head of a bird. These bestial sphinxes are also far less intelligent and, as a result, do not share the burdensome duty of guarding the treasures of the gods.
3 Sphinx Reproduction Is Complicated
While sphinxes can be created by the whim of a god, immensely devout prayer, or divine intervention, they are also capable of reproducing naturally. However, only the mating of an androsphinx and a gynosphinx produces offspring of these same natures. If a gynosphinx mates with a criosphinx or a hieracosphinx, the offspring always receives the genetic material of its father.
Consequently, gynosphinxes desire to mate with androsphinxes, but androsphinxes always play hard to get. While androsphinxes might be more physically powerful, they are inferior in intelligence to their gynosphinx kin, and this reality annoys them so much that they prefer to avoid gynosphinxes altogether. As we said, it’s complicated.
2 Some Sphinxes Are High Priests
Because they are endowed with such an important purpose, some sphinxes also possess the title of high priest. It almost goes without saying that gods who name the sphinxes that guard their treasures high priests would be very dismayed with anyone who harms these creatures. Maybe even to the point of drawing the god’s wrath. If it hasn’t been made abundantly clear, there’s really no upsides to defeating a sphinx in combat. The ire of a god is like the cherry on top of the dessert that is “don’t fight a sphinx.”
1 Sphinxes Sometimes Abandon Their Duties
That being said, there are very infrequent cases of a sphinx abandoning its god-given duties. Such a creature no longer serves a god’s purposes, and a high-level adventuring party might even be tasked by a god to slay a rogue sphinx. This is mostly because even when a sphinx abandons its treasure keeping duty, it still feels compelled to stay in the place it has always guarded, making it difficult for the god to appoint a new guardian without becoming too directly involved. It seems that in the case of sphinxes, old habits really do die hard.
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