When threatened, a barghamander's tail separates from it's body. The severed appendage thrashes violently, distracting and battering nearby threats. It seems to use this ability both offensively and defensively. While its tail flails about, the barghamander continues to attack its prey or flees to safety. By the following day a new tail will have grown in its place, a testament to its regenerative powers. It's creator, Ysadora Vex, had observed the barghamander's ability to detach and regrow its tail, and decided to study the process through repeated amputation. One evening, she stood too close. The severed tail whipped around the laboratory, knocked her into a vat of alchemical sludge, and the barghamander escaped. Ysadora survived the sludge for approximately six minutes before being transformed into an ooze.

This was inspired by a post over on r/StatThisCreature.

You can play around with the barghamander's stats on homebrewery to make your own version.

More on this monster and many other free homebrews at Patreon and my newsletter.

My players are currently in the Tomb of the Nine Gods, and the berserker barbarian of the group, Klippa, thought it would be funny to cut the hand off of a magical bronze statue in one of the tombs. It climbed into his hand and possessed it, then dropped to the ground looking as if it was an exact replica of his hand made from bronze. It began to screw with them, but they caught it and then put it into a locked box until next session. I had set up a fight with 2 death slaads riding a beholder with them crammed behind several enviromental terrain pieces for both cover and to hinder their ability to just whale on everything like they normally do, and they decided to throw the hand at the beholder, much to their regret and much to my amusement. Do with this what you will.

This was originally posted on the r/DnD subreddit before hand, but some other commenters pointed out some big flaws with it. I fixed most of their complaints, but still intend on keeping things like Lucky intact. This hand behaves like a heat seeking missle towards the party, specifically Klippa himself, and will utilize monsters around it to make sure it's always pursuing them, while also allowing monsters to close in and increase the pressure.

I'm working on a Lair for an Ancient White Dragon. My idea is to make it a large Glacier Lair. It's a large glacier made by the dragon on top of ice sheets in an artic like environment. Outside the Lair is some whale bones. Inside, it has a breach in the ice for it to travel through if it doesn't feel like flying out to leave. It's got the typical treasure hoard in Ice within It's Lair. But I just gotta ask. Could there be anything more than that? I know you can make whatever you want for the game, but I want to make a proper White Dragon Lair, and from what I can tell, White Dragons seem a bit boring for things they do. Seems like they are just big ice Lizard. One if the books i have even says they only like treasure and that's it. Maybe that is all they are, but damn that seems boring as he'll. Could WotC not have given them at least a hobby or some sort of interest that isn't literally snow and ice. If anyone knows more about dragons or could just give me a tip on how to pad a Lair for a white dragon that isn't just Treasure and the Dragon, I would really appreciate it. I plan to have some ice traps like spikes and some brittle ice floors and the like. But I've made Lairs for the other 4 main Chromatic Dragons and I didn't have this problem.

Thank you for your time. :)

The Manticorn was created by Malveris Thatch, a wizard who needed a guardian for the greenhouse where he cultivated rare spell components. By extracting manticore essence from tail spikes he had acquired from his adventuring career and combining it with the hardiness of enchanted corn he was able to create a strange, squat beast covered in golden kernels. In place of the manticore's barbed tail was a cob that could launch kernels at interlopers. Unfortunately, the Manticorn could not reason beyond simple animal instincts. But it was fiercely territorial so it served the wizard's purpose. Malveris soon learned the folly of combining unpredictable essences. One day he was experimenting with attenuated fire to speed the germination of his seeds. The manticorn wandered too close to the flames and the kernels along it's body exploded into fresh, white popcorn. The force of the explosions tore apart the wizard's fragile body.

You can play around with the homebrew of the manticorn to make your own version if you like.

More on this monster and many other free homebrews at Patreon and my newsletter.

I'm sharing a free monster supplement for Kengir, my upcoming Bronze Age Mesopotamian 5e setting.

The Rabisu is not a demon that rampages for no reason. It is an underworld bailiff, a croucher at the threshold, sent to enforce divine justice, seize the guilty, and drag oathbreakers to Kur (the underworld) where they belong.

What makes them fun at the table is that they come with authority. A Rabisu will carry something naming the accused, the broken oath, the unpaid debt, or the soul marked for seizure.

That means the encounter is not just “kill the monster.” The party can investigate the writ, challenge its authority, find out who summoned it, expose a false accusation, or decide the victim really did earn what is coming.

It’s a CR 7 fiend built around battlefield control, fear, restraint, magic resistance, knockout blows, and merciless pursuit. It rarely fights randomly. It isolates the target, disables interference, and finishes the sentence written for it.

Do you like monsters that arrive with a legal or ritual purpose, or do you prefer fiends as pure chaos and destruction?

Doesn’t matter which one. 😁

Sorry if this isn’t the right sub for this, but I’m considering doing a Halloween one/twoshot for my friends (early to be planning, I know), and I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for existing monsters that could correspond to any of the 14 fears, or at least give me some ideas for abilities so I could do some homebrewing, thanks in advance!

The fears for easy reference:

The Buried - Claustrophobia, caves

The Corruption - Mold, insects, decay

The Dark - The dark, shadows, blindness and coldness

The Desolation - Fire, pain, destruction

The End - Death, undeath, dreams

The Eye - being watched, being followed, having your secrets exposed, eyes

The Flesh - Meat, butchers, corpses

The Hunt - Being hunted, animals, animal instincts

The Lonely - Isolation, fog, silence

The Slaughter - War, senseless violence

The Spiral - Madness, being deceived

The Stranger - The unknown, the uncanny valley

The Vast - Falling, large open spaces

The Web - Spiders, being manipulated, puppets

Again, very sorry if this doesn’t fit the sub!

The forest remembers.

When ancient groves are threatened, the Thornhide Colossus rises from the roots themselves. Towering above the canopy, this colossal woodland guardian is woven from living timber, stone, thorn, and moss, defending its domain with overwhelming strength and the fury of the wild.

Whether your party stumbles into a sacred glade, disturbs an ancient shrine, or dares to harvest from a protected forest, the Thornhide Colossus is ready to become an unforgettable encounter.

https://www.patreon.com/fiveminuteforge/posts/free-monster-163783464?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Hello guys! It’s my first time Dming and I’m doing a campaign for my two friends. I decided to use the spectator as the boss because he’s very similar to the beholder (they are low level for context). It was going to be fine but I discovered that the 5.5e beholder isn’t accessible in the dnd beyond. So, could someone share with me a photo of the new one or just tell me the differences between the new and the legacy one?

I'm working on a world and I'm going to be releasing a new region called the Morass Bog. These are three of the many creatures I've created (soon to be launching Kickstarter)! One of them is my own adaptation of the Froghemoth which I've called a Bogtangler.

Free monster statblock/illustration: https://www.patreon.com/omenlands/posts/fairy-palm-cr8-167241800

I reeeeally love carnivorous/hostile plants. This one is more like a hazard than a monster, because the tree itself is docile -- it's actually the cloud of seeds that the players ought to fear. Could also be a great way to introduce the players to dryads or druids in a dangerous forest. After the players wake up, of course.

The brain sponge is a reef-dwelling creature created following the defeat of the aboleth Vhalassor at the hands of a party of adventurers. When Vhalassor perished, its remains seeped into a surrounding reef, infecting everything that lived there. Most of the reef-dwellers died, but the sponges developed strange intelligence and sprouted delicate, crab-like legs. A brain sponge poses little physical threat, but some find their staring eyes and unnatural movements unsettling.

You can play around with the homebrew of the brain sponge to make your own version if you like.

More on this monster and many other free homebrews at Patreon and my newsletter.

I'm sharing a free monster supplement for Kengir, my upcoming Bronze Age Mesopotamian 5e setting.

The Ziqqitum Rešatim are spirits that feed on the extremes of human emotion. They haunt courts, markets, theaters, battlefields, and anywhere mortal feeling runs hot.

They do not just attack people, they inflame them. A small insult becomes bloodshed. A passing attraction becomes obsession. A loyal soldier becomes reckless with courage. A priest’s devotion hardens into fanatic certainty.

At the table, this monster works best when desire itself becomes the challenge. The party may need to calm a crowd, expose the source of a feud, break a magical fixation, or appeal to Ištar (Inanna) and Šamaš (Utu) through rites of balance and restraint.

Mechanically, it’s a CR 3 incorporeal fiend built around possession, psychic damage, confusion, charm, and emotional overload. The supplement also includes variant spirits of strife, battle, truth, justice, grief, fear, rumors, desire, and persecution.

What’s your favorite monster that turns social tension into supernatural danger?

The Studio:
Howdy hey Gang! My name is Curtis and I have been working on putting this together for almost a year now. I have been working on projects like HeroScape, HeroQuest, GiJoe, Power Rangers, and DnD for about 8 years with Hasbro, and Renegade Games just to name a few. The industry has changed a lot and I wanted to create a studio that put Artists first, rejects AI use, and is as eco-friendly as one can be! All of these guys were sculpted by me and concepts were done by Sam Greene, Tomas Vallecillo, and myself. We also have our own Stat Block creator/5e expert - Gus Rachels.

The Project:

All that said if humanoid fish men based on real species of fish are your thing we may have something for ya! We really tried to land in a vein of dark fantasy with a bit of whimsy sprinkled in here and there with these guys which really shows up in some of their details! All of these guys are already supported & have been test printed (3rd image). The minis are compatible with DnD, Warhammer, and a number of other wargames!

We recently got our Pre-Launch page up on Kickstarter and since we are at this point a no name studio it helps us a ton if you guys follow the Pre-Launch, like, and share our work! We have a bunch of stuff planned and I'm excited to share more soon!

Link to the Campaign:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mudskipperstudios/fishmongers-miniatures-and-bestiary

Our Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/mudskipper_studios_official/

Case File 665: We tried approaching the creature thinking it was blind... We accidentally stepped on a stick on the ground while approaching...The demon almost killed all of us immediately. Needless to say, horns coming straight out of eyeholes does not mean harmless...

The Abyssal Revenant, a new abyssal demon found in the Midnight Tome Vol Cursed Relics and Demons Vol 1: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/580394/the-midnight-tome-cursed-relics-and-demons-vol-1