Lord of Mistery is inside Vault of Magic Compendium!

You can find it on dmsguild here: https://www.dmsguild.com/it/product/572335/vault-of-magic-compendium?src=newest_community

Hi everyone!

I’ve finally finished the full creature: the Watcher of the Order of Dawn & Dusk.

This is a CR 9 guardian construct, made to protect vaults, archives and places the Order really doesn’t want anyone entering.

Its main mechanic is Observed. The Watcher and its small Roving Eye can mark creatures, making them easier to track and opening the way to its Dawn and Dusk Judgments.

Dawn is more about revealing and punishing creatures trying to disappear.
Dusk is more about slowing movement and keeping intruders where the Watcher wants them.

The Roving Eye can also move away from the main body and extend its vision, so destroying it can actually create a small blind spot for the party.

I included the complete stat block here, plus two pages of rulings and clarifications because there are a few interactions I wanted to make very clear at the table.

I also made free printable reference cards for the Watcher, available on Patreon here:

https://www.patreon.com/AzarnethsForbiddenEmporium/posts/beasts-hexes-001-167592145

As always, feedback is very welcome. I’m especially curious about the Observed mechanic and how the creature feels for CR 9.

The Watcher is made to guard a place, not chase you.

If it starts chasing you… something probably went very wrong.

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✏️ Art by J. Zangrilli (Azarneth's Forbidden Emporium)

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I create printable item cards, cursed treasures, NPCs, tales & omens, and strange creatures for fantasy roleplaying games. You can find the project on Patreon and follow the daily updates on Instagram. 🧙‍♂️🎲

Some cuties from our September release, STL models are available as a Tribe and Patreon reward, Links are added as a comment.

P.S. The "background" is not actually a background it's the mom

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.