Monsters from the myriad worlds of Dungeons & Dragons.

Notes on the Entries

A creature's Origin denotes the specific campaign setting it debuted in, if any. This is not to say that setting is the only place that creature can be found — D&D has a long history of repackaging creatures from sub-settings for general use, and ultimately the DM decides what appears in a game.
A creature's listed Challenge Rating may be for "baseline" examples of the monster, rather than listing every advanced variant presented in Monster Manuals. Also remember that 3rd and 5th Edition use a 1-20 scale for "standard" Challenge Ratings, while 4th Edition uses 1-30.
Not all Playable creatures are created equal, especially in 3rd Edition, in which Monster Adventurers can have significant Level Adjustments for the sake of party balance.
A creature's listed Alignment is typical for the race as a whole, not an absolute for every individual in it — even supposed embodiments of Good and Evil can change their alignment. Also, if there are two alignments listed, and one is for 4th Edition (in which Good encompasses Neutral Good and Chaotic Good, Unaligned encompasses the morally neutral alignments, and Evil encompasses Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil from other game editions), assume that the other alignment holds true for all other editions. Finally, the "Always Neutral" alignment listed in the first three editions for nonsapient creatures has been equated with the "Unaligned" alignment of 5th Edition.

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A

Aarakocra

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E), Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E), 6 (4E), 1/4 (5E)
Playable: 2E-3E, 5E
Alignment: Neutral Good

A race of avian humanoids with a connection to the Elemental Plane of Air. See the Playable Races subpage for details.

Aartuk

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Plant (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Intelligent, nomadic plant creatures who exult in battle.

Arch-Enemy: Aartuk have an ancestral hatred for beholders, as the Eye Tyrants destroyed their homeworld.
Bizarre Alien Senses: Aartuk's sensory organs allow them to perceive the world by vibration, smell and infrared, but they can't actually see what humans consider visible light.
Large and in Charge: Elder aartuk are noticeably larger than their lessers.
Overly-Long Tongue: They can extend their long, sticky tongues out to 30 feet to grapple and draw in opponents, so the aartuk can crush them in their branch-limbs. Said tongues, if cut off and dried, make for serviceable ropes.
Plant Aliens: They are in fact plants, covered in thick but flexible bark, the appearance of which varies by an aartuk tribe's natural environment — some resemble rough stones, while other aartuk let small plants and fungi grow on their bark for additional camouflage.
Proud Warrior Race: They live and die for war, which is important to both the aartuk religion and life cycle. They'll attack small settlements or starships without provocation, but if their opponents are obviously weaker, the aartuk usually take them prisoner, question them as to where they can find a more suitable opponent, and then let their captives go. The only treasure aartuk appreciate are gems (which they use for currency), magic weapons, art pieces related to warfare, and war trophies, and they're drawn to warlike gods like Gruumsh, Hextor and Sargonnas.
Space Pirates: They have no ability to make their own spelljammer vessels, so aartuk resort to stealing other races' ships, then converting them into environments resembling rocky asteroids or flying gardens, depending on the aartuk tribe aboard.
Starfish Aliens: Aartuk have starfish-like bodies with a mouth on the underside, though they also have suction cups on the end of each branch-limb, each containing retractable pseudopods for fine manipulation. They can also extend the heads in their body's center on a six-foot-long stalk.
Starfish Language: The aartuk language consists of rustling sounds, snaps, pops and hisses, and has no written form.
Super Spit: They can spit damaging pellets at foes — in AD&D, these pellets solidify into rock-hard projectiles upon contact with air, hitting like sling bullets, but in 5th Edition, aartuk can instead spit pellets of radiant energy.
The Virus: Aartuk reproduce by infecting an unconscious victim with a disease that reduces them to jelly over the course of a few days, then a month later, a fully-grown aartuk warrior with the memories of its parent aartuk emerges from the mess. This "rite of birth" is considered a great honor to be granted to Worthy Opponents, and a ritual that must be presided over by a tribe's elder.

Abalin

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_aballin_3e.jpg

Classification: Ooze (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Fluid oozes also known as "living water," which disguise themselves as ordinary puddles to ambush and drown prey.

Achilles' Heel: Transmute water to dust can kill an abalin instantly, while lower water releases someone trapped inside the monster.
Blob Monster: When prey draws near, they transform into 10-foot-tall columns of living liquid and lash foes with their pseudopods.
Murder Water: In their passive state, abalains look like large puddles or pools of water (usually with coins, jewelry or other items scattered beneath them), and if an abalin enters a larger body of water, it's effectively invisible. That said, abalins are actually comprised of a weak acid, not water, hence why you'll never find fish in their "puddles."
No-Sell: Slashing or piercing weapons deal no damage to an abalin, and might at most damage someone trapped inside it.
Sinister Suffocation: They hunt by grabbing prey with their pseudopods and pulling it into their mass to drown.

Abeil

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ir0oswv.png

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (vassal), 6 (soldier), 12 (queen) (3E)
Alignment: Lawful

A species of humanoid bees who live in great hive-cities.

Bee People: Both biologically and socially speaking. Their reproductive habits aren't described in depth, but it's implied that there are both male and female vassals and soldiers and that both reproduce amongst themselves, but there are only female queens, and they reproduce by mating with male vassals. Vassals provide menial labor for the entire hive-city, but are individuals who have lives outside of their work, and some privileged individuals become part of the royal court (equivalent to drones). Each hive-city has a caste of queens, one of whom rules the hive and has inherent magic powers; when the old high queen dies or a new city is founded, one of the lesser queens consumes royal jelly and becomes a full-fledged queen.
Beware My Stinger Tail: Being bees, abeils can deliver a venom with their sting attack.
Evil Colonialist: Abeils aren't as openly, militantly imperialistic as the ant-like formians, but they're still expansive. They prefer to rely more on resourcefulness and industry to overcome their rivals than outright conquest, but whenever the abeils set up a new hive-city, it puts them into competition with other races for space and resources, sparking conflict.
Forced Sleep: All abeils can make a droning sound with their wings that can put other creatures to sleep.
Hive Caste System: Abeil vassals and queens have slender and sinewy limbs, while soldiers are considerably taller and more muscular.
Hive Mind: All abeils within 25 miles of their queen are in constant telepathic communication.
Make Some Noise: Abeil warriors can, in addition to droning with their wings, use them to make a sonic attack that affects all non-abeil within 40 feet.

Aberrant Zealot

Classification: Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Rubber Man: An aberrant zealot, including any carried equipment, is unnaturally flexible and can move through any space as narrow as 1 inch without squeezing.
Was Once a Man: After reaching out to the powers of the Far Realm, these cultists have been reached back by something that imparts them with vicious might.

Aboleth

^3e

Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E), Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 17 (4E), 10 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Primordial creatures which resemble enormous three-eyed fish, aboleths dwell in the deep places of the world, using their psionic powers to dominate other intelligent beings.

And I Must Scream: If an aboleth becomes trapped outside of water and dehydrates, it enters a state of suspended animation called the "long dreaming", in which they can remain indefinitely and only leave when exposed to water. In this state, they remain fully capable of thinking and seeing the world around them, but cannot move, use their psionics or do anything else, and their other senses are deadened as well. Aboleths consider the long dreaming to be a fate worse than death.
Animalistic Abomination: Aboleths are also an entire species of borderline-incomprehensible Eldritch Abominations who look like big, tentacled fish.
Art Evolution: There have been subtle but noticeable changes to the aboleths' design over the years. Editions 1 through 3 depict them as a sort of armor-plated fish with four tentacles and three eyes, 4th edition removes the armor plating to give them a smoother appearance, and the 5E aboleth is basically a giant eel with three tentacles and a Lamprey Mouth.
Body Horror: An aboleth's touch transforms human skin into a slimy, transparent membrane that requires constant moistening to keep it from drying out. It also secretes a transformative mucus that takes away a creature's ability to breathe air outside the water.
Combat Tentacles: An aboleth that needs to fight will smack meddlesome adventurers around with its tentacles.
Flying Seafood Special: Uobilyths, or aerial aboleths, are a kind of aboleth that cannot swim or breathe water but instead flies through the air. They're reclusive beings who prefer the solitude of the high air, and are rarely seen within more than three miles of the ground. They still need moisture, however, and so prefer to live within large, dense clouds they maintain with magic.
Genetic Memory: Aboleths have flawless memories, and pass on their knowledge and experience from generation to generation, resulting in a staggering amount of information being in their head at birth, and allowing two aboleths to see how they're related based on how far back their memories diverge. They can remember a time before gods came along and created the world.
Making a Splash: 5th edition aboleths can control the water in their lairs.
My Brain Is Big: Aboleths begin their lives with brains contained in the usual manner within their craniums. However, these include four tendril-like lobes that grow as they accumulate memories and psionic power, eventually extending from gaps in the back of the aboleth's skull all the way to the base of the tail.
Resurrective Immortality: In 5E, aboleths cannot truly die — if one is slain, its spirit flees to the Elemental Plane of Water, where it slowly grows a new body.
Starfish Language: The aboleth language is a complex tongue devised to be spoken from multiple mouths, as aboleths use the numerous orifices on their sides to produce sounds. An aboleth's oratory skill is directly tied to how many lateral orifices it has, as this determines how many words it can form, and other beings who attempt to speak are usually either limited to a small set of simple words or have to use wind instruments such as flutes, bagpipes or tubas to imitate the complex harmonics of a speaking aboleth.
Telepathy: Aboleths have innate telepathic powers which they can use to learn a creature's secrets or take control of its mind.
Time Abyss: Aboleths are unimaginably ancient beings. Individual aboleths are immortal, and are powerful and cautious enough to outlive mortal nations on their own; their Genetic Memory also allows them to remember everything their ancestors experienced — and the aboleth species predates the current cycle of creation. Aboleth lives and civilizations exist on geological scales, and they can recall the birth of the first mortal nations and religions, the slow drift of continents and seas, and the ages before the gods came into being.
Underground Monkey: Lords of Madness describes a number of environmental aboleth variations, including amphibious aboleths (aboleths native to swamps and shallow water, which developed the ability to move on land without falling into the long dreaming), aerial aboleths (who live high in the sky in isolation from other aboleths) and stygian aboleths (native to the frozen oceans of Stygia in the Nine Hells, and who possess the fiendish template).
Vampiric Draining: 5th edition aboleths can heal their injuries by draining psychic energy from their thralls.

Shaboath

Classifiaction: Construct (3E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Strange constructs crafted by aboleth savants using water tainted with their slime and subjected to a specific sequence of spells. They serve their masters as guardians and general servitors.

Blob Monster: When at rest, they're nothing more than a pool of water or sphere of thick, transparent liquid, but in combat they form four pseudopods.
Dumb Muscle: They can follow simple instructions ("attack any non-aboleth") but utterly fail to comprehend complex orders ("attack any non-aboleths except creatures wearing red robes with gray hair").
Golem: Technically they're an aboleth variant of golem, being constructs animated by a bound (water) elemental, but unlike most golems they never go berserk.
An Ice Person: They can cast wall of ice once per minute.
Murder Water: Shaboaths are very hard to distinguish from ordinary water, especially when submerged.
No-Sell: Besides their construct-based immunities to things like paralysis or energy drain, shaboaths are also immune to acid or cold damage.
Sinister Suffocation: They can simply engulf smaller opponents, dealing crushing damage and putting them in danger of drowning.

Skum

^4e

^3e

Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E), Aberrant Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E), 18 (4E), 5 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil, Unaligned (4E)

These loathsome amphibious humanoids were created out of human stock by their aboleth masters, who use them as minons or beasts of burden.

Art Evolution: Big time. In 1st and 2nd Edition, skum are essentially stocky fish with arms and legs, making them essentially the same as kuo-toa. 3rd Edition presents them as piscine humanoids reminiscent of Deep Ones, while 4th Edition turns them into slimes, being a failed experiment by aboleths to make servants from humanoids. 5th Edition takes elements from the previous two editions, making them semi-humanoid, slimy blends of octopodes and jellyfish.
Blob Monster: Their 4th Edition incarnation is a "barely-sentient pile of aqueous sludge" with various organs floating in it.
Brown Note: 4th Edition skum are surrounded by a damaging aura of psychic dissonance. In 5th Edition they have a Mind-Breaking Touch which inflicts psychic damage and gives the target temporary disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws, making them more vulnerable to the psychic powers of the skum's aboleth master.
Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: 3rd Edition skum can be created from captive humanoid females, who usually don't survive the birthing process.
Fish People: Prior to 4th edition, skum shifted to various spots on the fish-to-person continuum of this trope. 2nd Edition's are basically fish with articulated limbs, while 3rd's are more clearly humanoid but with fishlike tails and heads and slimy skin.
Slave Mooks: Skum are bound to their aboleth master by a psychic bond that compels them to serve its every sinister whim.
Tentacled Terror: The 5th edition skum is a grotesque creature which combines traits of humans, jellyfish, and cephalopods, and it moves around on four slimy tentacles.
Was Once a Man: In 4th and 5th edition, skum are instead created through failed xperiments or prolonged exposure to an aboleth's transformative mucus, respectively; older editions have them as the descendants of humanoids, but not as transformed individuals themselves.
Weaksauce Weakness: 5th edition skum need constant hydration and can't stay out of the water for long. If they spend more than 10 minutes out in the open air, they start taking acid damage as they dry out.

Abomination

Divine mistakes, these grotesque abortions of spirit spend eons sealed away by their ashamed creators, and most never become known to mortals. But sometimes these abominations break free or are accidentally released by meddlers, at which point they unleash their hatred of their forebearers and all naturally-formed creatures.

Anti-True Sight: They are under a constant nondetection effect.
Contractual Boss Immunity: As epic-level threats, all abominations are immune to involuntary polymorphing, petrification, ability loss or drain, mind-affecting effects, and at least one energy type.
Enemy Summoner: All abominations can summon powerful monsters appropriate to their parentage.
A God Am I: Some abominations end up worshiped by mortals, though they don't have the power to grant spells to believers.
Rage Against the Heavens: Abominations seethe with hatred for the deities who sealed them away, and take out their rage on the worlds the gods created.
Semi-Divine: Abominations are the result of misguided deific concourse, and while not quite proper demigods, they have enough of a divine spark to be damned hard to kill. They age so slowly as to be functionally ageless, and rarely if ever need to breathe or eat, so violence is the only way to end them.
Super-Senses: All abominations have blindsight out to a whopping 500 feet, and constantly enjoy a true seeing effect.
Telepathy: Abominations can communicate telepathically out to a thousand feet with anything that has a language.

Anaxim

Classification: Construct (3E)
Challenge Rating: 22 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Crafted by gods of the forge who were seized by some apocalyptic impulse and didn't properly dispose of the result, these abominations were allowed to develop a spark of life and now seek revenge against the creators who consigned them to a divine scrap heap.

Enemy Summoner: They can summon iron golems four times per day.
Helicopter Pack: Anaxims can fly (at a speed of 200 feet per round!) with a set of rotating blades that deploy from their backs. Said blades can also be used in combat to make a Rend attack.
Make Some Noise: They can unleash a 60-foot cone of devastating sonic energy each round.
Mechanical Abomination: They are unbalanced, unwieldy constructs of metal and clockwork covered with far too many weapons.
Shock and Awe: Anaxims can make a shocking melee attack, or fire bolts of lightning.
Spike Shooter: Another ranged attack is a barrage of spikes out to 120 feet.

Atropal

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/a5b1421816a156ad3d628d4cc1f4fcb01518205836.jpg

^4e

^{Atropal Scion, 3e}

^{Atropal, 3e}

Classification: Undead (3E & 5E), Immortal Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (atropal scion), 30 (atropal)(3E); 13 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil (3E), Evil (4E), Neutral Evil (5E)

Malformed and immensely powerful creatures, these stillborn godlings have spontaneously arisen as undead, filled with an unholy hatred for everything living.

An Ice Person: The 5E atropal can zap distant targets with a powerful ray of pure cold. Its 3E counterpart, meanwhile, can cast cone of cold at will.
Attack Its Weak Point: The 5E atropal is connected to the Negative Plane through its umbilical cord. Cutting the cord breaks this connection and weakens the atropal, though this is easier said than done.
Breakout Character: Of all the abominations, atropals have made the most appearances across editions, no doubt because of their thoroughly creepy design.
Brown Note: 5th edition atropals can use a legendary action to wail. Those who hear the wailing grow exhausted and may die if their exhaustion gets deep enough.
Came Back Wrong: Even if an atropal is destroyed, clumps of its flesh may form an atropal scion, a smaller, weaker undead abomination that is no less malignant than its progenitor.
Fetus Terrible: It has the appearance of an undead fetus, complete with umbilical cord, and is driven by a desire to spread death and destruction wherever it goes.
It Can Think: Don't let an atropal's baby-like appearance or inability to speak fool you. These things are extremely intelligent.
Life Drain: While the specifics vary between editions, an atropal usually has an ability which drains life from a victim to heal itself.
Make Them Rot: The touch of an atropal necrotizes flesh in 4th and 5th edition.
Summon Magic: 3rd and 5th edition atropals can summon powerful undead allies to back them up. They can summon nightcrawlers in the former edition and wraiths in the latter.
Undead Abomination: Depending on the edition and the sourcebook, atropals may be undead god-fetuses that were aborted or stillborn, a race of immortals which the gods modeled after themselves but never finished, discarded bits of godly flesh which came to hideous unlife on their own, or aspects of the planet-sized Elder Evil Atropus. Whatever the case may be, atropals are hateful undead things which possess godlike powers and cruise through the multiverse in search of things to kill.
Walking Wasteland: Atropals project a constant aura of negative energy which harms the living and bolsters the undead.

Chichimec

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 21 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

The unwanted offspring of gods of the air and sky, these abominations are clumps of madly-flapping wings attached to body trunk with a long, trailing tail. They are usually sealed in demiplanes or lonely reaches of the Elemental Plane of Air, but some chichimecs are imprisoned on strange worlds made up solely of poisonous gases.

Enemy Summoner: They can summon air elementals.
Feathered Serpent: A distortion of the concept, since chichimecs have altogether too many wings and not enough serpent. It takes a dissection of a dead chichimec to reveal that its body trunk is studded with little eyes and mouths.
Good Wings, Evil Wings: Subverted; some chichimecs have white feathered wings, others batlike wings, but they're all evil.
Shock and Awe: They can use powerful lightning spells like chain lightning and lightning storm a few times per day.
Tail Slap: Beyond a number of wing buffets, chichimecs can make a tail slam attack that deals Charisma drain.

Dream Larva

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 31 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These living night terrors were birthed by gods of dream or fancy, then sealed away in the darkest corners of the Realm of Dreams. But some are called by forbidden rituals or unwittingly uncovered by troubled dreamers, at which point they plunge the waking world into a nightmare.

Dream Walker: They can use the epic-level dreamscape spell to enter the Realm of Dreams as an Extra-Dimensional Shortcut, or use it to travel to other planes. Dream larva can also seemingly absorb a victim into their bodies, which physically casts the creature into a shrieking, nightmarish maelstrom for several rounds, dealing heavy Wisdom and potentially Constitution damage.
Enemy Summoner: Dream larvae can summon undead nightwalkers.
I Know What You Fear: The first time a living creature comes within thirty feet of a dream larva and gets a good look at it, the abomination becomes for an instant that creature's worst nightmare, forcing them to succeed at a high Will save or die instantly. This is not a phantasm or illusion, a dream larva actually, physically transforms itself based on an observer's worst fears, and this ability works even if a crowd of creatures looks upon it at once. Should a creature survive seeing a dream larva (or be resurrected after dying to this effect), they aren't subject to this ability any further.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Their natural forms have six arms, which they can use to make multiple claw and pincer attacks.
The Worm That Walks: Their "true" form is that of a large horned, clawed humanoid comprised of thousands of crawling larval worms.

Hecatoncheires

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 57 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

The "hundred-handed ones" were created by proto-deities at the dawn of creation and immediately made outcasts, but later gods have found a use for the hecatoncheries' incredible martial might. Each time these abominations are released from their divine prisons, pantheons fall.

BFS: Each of their hundred hands carries what a normal humanoid would consider a greatsword.
Boulder Bludgeon: Instead of attacking with their swords, they can hurl boulders for even greater damage, with no range increment.
Enemy Summoner: A hecatoncheries can summon another of its kind once per day, but is reluctant to do so since it is then obligated to answer a future summons by its sibling.
Expy: To the Hekatonkheires of Classical Mythology, natch. Their bodies are basically big fleshy trunks covered in fifty heads and a hundred arms.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: And how! True to their names, hecatoncheires can make a hundred attacks with their greatswords or hurled boulders each round. That said, they can only focus their full attack potential on other Huge or larger targets, so they can at most make twenty attacks against a single Large target, fifteen against a Medium one, or ten against a Small foe.
Our Titans Are Different: They're primordial semi-deities with monstrous bodies and enough raw power to threaten even gods.

Infernal

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 26 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil or Lawful Evil

Should a god be seduced by a fiend, the result is an infernal abomination that is bound by divine decree to the Lower Planes, leaving these creatures to plot and scheme until the time is right to tear down creation.

Adaptive Ability: In addition to an epically-high Spell Resistance, infernals have a form of learned spell immunity that means even if a caster manages to affect them with a spell, the infernal becomes immune to any further attempts by that particular caster to use that specific spell on them.
Born of Heaven and Hell: They're the godly equivalent of cambions, part-divine, part-fiend. That said, their godly parent doesn't necessarily have to be a Good deity.
Enemy Summoner: They can summon up to four pit fiends or balors per day, depending on the infernal's alignment.
Magic Eater: An infernal's bite causes its victim to forget one of their highest-level spells, or deals Intelligence damage if the victim isn't a spellcaster or has run out of spells for the day.
Magic Knight: Infernals are devastating in melee combat, and also have a wide array of at-will spell-like abilities, from fireball to major image to animate dead, and once per day can drop even more dangerous magic like the aptly-named, epic-level hellball.
Removing the Rival: An infernal's power rivals that of demon princes and archdevils, leading these other fiends to work to isolate infernals whenever possible and assassinate them when they can.

Phaethon

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 34 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

The rejected progeny of fire gods, phaethons are often sealed in the molten heart of worlds, but should they ever break free, they make a volcanic return to the surface and proceed to incinerate everything in reach.

Achilles' Heel: As they have the fire subtype, phaethons take double damage from ice or cold attacks.
Blob Monster: Though classified as Outsiders, phaethons have many ooze-like immunities such as not being vulnerable to flanking or Critical Hits.
Enemy Summoner: They can summon elder fire elementals several times each day.
Fast Tunnelling: Frightfully fast. A phaethon's movement speed is four times that of a normal human, even when melting their way through solid rock.
Living Lava: They're basically living, Gargantuan, white-hot lava flows, and mere contact with them deals fire damage.
Playing with Fire: They can throw around spells like fireball, flame strike or fire storm at will.
Swallowed Whole/Trampled Underfoot: A phaethon can simply flow over enemies, engulfing them to deal both a tremendous amount of fire damage as well as bludgeoning damage from their superheated bulk.

Phane

Classification: Outsider (3E), Immortal Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 25 (3E), 26 (4E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (3E), Unaligned (4E)

Shadowy creatures with unmatched power over time itself, born from deities of time and fate. They usually dwell so far in the distant past or future that time itself has lost all meaning, but sometimes they escape into the greater timestream to alter the fate of nations, worlds and planes, always for the worse.

Move in the Frozen Time: Think you can beat a phane at its own game by casting time stop? Think again. It has an epic feat which gives it the benefit of any time stop spell cast within 300 feet of it, letting it join whoever cast the spell in their accelerated timeframe.
Our Centaurs Are Different: A phane is vaguely humanoid from the waist up and has the body of a panther from the waist down.
Rapid Aging: 3rd edition Phanes steal the potential future from anyone that has been frozen in time by their stasis touch, causing the victim to age several years every few seconds until they age to death or break free. 4th edition phanes instead have Wizening Ray and Wizening Tempest attacks which temporarily age their targets to the point of decrepitude.
Time Master: Beyond stopping time in various ways, a phane can innately cast haste, jump 24 seconds backward in time, summon duplicates of its enemies from alternate timelines to fight on its behalf, or just blast people with harmful chronal energies.
Time Stands Still: They can cast time stop once per day, their touch puts people into temporal stasis, and their mere presence can render the flow of time static for nearby creatures.

Xixecal

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 36 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These icy colossi are the progeny of evil gods of winter, often sealed in prisons of black ice at a world’s frozen pole. Should they break free, xixecals form the walking hearts of lethal blizzards that often kill other creatures before the abomination can crush them beneath their frozen fists or feet.

Achilles' Heel: As they have the cold subtype, xixecals take double damage from fire attacks.
Beast of the Apocalypse: It's noted that xixecals are released when some calamity causes the world to shudder and quake, breaking the abomination’s prison and setting it free. Thus, while xixecals may not cause a time of great upheaval and change, the abominations can accompany them.
Breath Weapon: A xixecal can exhale a cone of freezing cold 300 feet long, three times per day.
Endless Winter: Xixecals are surrounded by a permanent dire winter epic-level spell, a magical blizzard so fierce that everything within a thousand feet takes continuous cold damage unless they have magical protection.
Enemy Summoner: They can call five fully-grown white dragons each day. These creatures can often be found roosting on a xixecal’s shoulders like pigeons on a statue.
An Ice Person: They're evil, ambulatory glaciers that can use spells like wall of ice or cone of cold at will, and are so cold that anything that makes contact with them suffers a slow effect.
Life Drain: A xixecal’s slam, bite or rend attacks deal permanent Constitution drain, which heals the abomination of damage.

Abrian

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Aggressive, ostrich-like beings found across the Lower Planes and the Outlands, though their hunting parties make occasional forays into the Upper Planes as well.

Barbarian Tribe: These creatures are nomads who wander the planes, voraciously eating everything in an area before moving on. They tend to view every other creature as either prey or a threat to their fledglings, but some well-fed flocks might attempt to trade with outsiders — these interactions tend to end badly, however, as abrians "appear to have little concept of civilized behavior or communication."
Feathered Fiend: Abrians look something like ill-tempered ostriches with weak, atrophied arms rather than wings, and are likely to attack anything they encounter. They're thought to have originated in either Carceri or Hades, but can now be found all over the worst parts of the Great Wheel.
It Can Think: Abrians are smarter than they look, and their intelligence is most evident when they hunt as a flock, laying ambushes, cooperating in chasing down prey, and employing Hit-and-Run Tactics. They can speak Abyssal, but are more likely to attack someone trying to speak with them than engage in conversation.
Super-Scream: They have supernaturally loud and distressing shrieks. A single abrian can daze nearby creatures with its shriek, but if multiple abrians shriek together, the combined cacophony can deafen victims, and even deal sonic damage.

Achaierai

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Quadrupedal flightless birds from the plane of Acheron.

Feathered Fiend: Achaierais are evil, clever predators with a penchant for torture.
Our Monsters Are Weird: They are giant, roughly spherical birds with four legs, useless little wings, and the ability to spew toxic gases.
Poisonous Person: Achaierais can release clouds of toxic smoke which ravage both body and mind.
Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: Unlike normal birds, achaierais have four instead of two legs in addition to their (vestigial) wings.

Actaeon

Origin: Mystara
Alignment: True Neutral

Towering elk-like humanoids who serve as woodland protectors.

Beast Man: They're basically nine-foot-tall elk-folk. Mystarans sometimes call actaeons "elk-centaurs" because their bodies combine human and animal elements, but they obviously don't share a true centaur's body shape.
Forced Transformation: Their most dangerous ability is to, once per day, exhale a ten-foot cube of warm green vapor that transforms other beings, body and mind, into woodland creatures such as squirrels, deer or boars. Unless countered by another polymorph spell or high-level dispel magic, even those who succeed their saving throws against the effect will be transformed for a day, while those who fail will find their transformation permanent.
Forest Ranger: Actaeons are solitary beings who act as champions of their woodland, and are regarded as heroes by other sylvan folk like centaurs and dryads. They favor oversized spears over bows, and will ambush hunters who wantonly slay forest animals. Actaeons will work with Druids to counter a serious threat to their forest, and a few become druids themselves.
Horned Humanoid: They can make gore attacks with their antlers.
A Kind of One: The Actaeon of Classical Mythology was a hunter transformed into a stag by Artemis, but here D&D has once again created an entire species from that singular example.
Stealth Expert: Actaeons can perfectly camouflage themselves in woodland, effectively becoming invisible and allowing them to attack with surprise most of the time.
Worthless Yellow Rocks: Averted; actaeons have an eye for treasure, and understand its value to others. They'll stash small hoards of coins and jewels in hidden locations, and trade with intelligent beings for tools and, in harsh winters, food.

Adherer

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Strange cave-dwelling creatures with a resemblance to mummies.

The Beastmaster: Adherers seem to have the ability to communicate telepathically with Giant Spiders, and commonly cooperate with them to entrap prey. Adherer lairs tend to house at least one monstrous arachnid.
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Sages speculate adherers reproduce by fission if there's enough food in the area to support another creature.
Mistaken for Undead: The folds of their skin can be mistaken for the linen funerary wrappings of a mummy, which isn't helped by adherers' practice of draping themselves in cobwebs.
Signature Scent: Their resin gives them a distinct "sour, mucilaginous" odor that helps differentiate them from mummies.
Sticky Situation: As per their name, adherers' bodies are covered in a sticky resin. The creatures use this to coat themselves in leaves and twigs as a form of camouflage, while in combat, adherers grab onto victims, trying to smother them or use them as human shields while they're stuck to the creature. This adhesive is so strong that it can entrap weapons used to strike an adherer, though boiling liquid, fire, or a solvent exuded by the creature can weaken the bond. It also loses its potency soon after an adherer's death, so there's no way to harvest this natural glue.

Aeorian Hunter

An Aeorian absorber, nullifier and reverser (5e)

Origin: Critical Role
Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (reverser), 10 (absorber), 12 (nullifier) (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Monsters bred by an ancient civilization to take down supernatural beings, they now haunt that culture's ruins, attacking other creatures.

The Ageless: Aeorian hunters do not age and don't require sustenance.
Amazing Technicolor Population: All Aeorian creatures are unnaturally- and brightly-colored.
Anti-Regeneration: Aeorian reversers can nullify another creature's healing, causing it to take additional damage instead.
Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Aeorian hunters have never been seen attacking each other, despite their prospensity for violence.
Attack Reflector: If an Aeorian absorber takes damage from a spell, it can convert some of that magical energy into an Eye Beam fired from its tail.
Bioweapon Beast: They are unnatural monsters created by the flying city of Aeor during Exandria's Age of Arcanum, bred to combat anything from fey and fiends to angels and the gods themselves.
Eyes Do Not Belong There: An Aeorian absorber has a giant eyeball on the end of its tail.
Mage-Hunting Monster: All varieties of Aeorian hunter are resistant to magic, and have some ability that lets them punish spellcasting opponents, whether by countering their spells or turning them back on their casters.
Photographic Memory: Each Aeorian hunter has perfect recall of every experience since the moment of its creation.
Too Many Mouths: An Aeorian nullifier's torso is covered in grotesque mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth, which can drive other creatures mad with a cacophony of gnashing.

Ahuizotl

^2e

Origin: Maztica
Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Intelligent amphibious predators that drag their prey into the water to be devoured.

Art Evolution: The 3rd Edition ahuizotl is mammalian, looking something like a squat, elongated, quadrupedal monkey, but its AD&D incarnation was as a bipedal crocodile with long, feather-like scales.
Breath Weapon: In 2nd Edition, ahuizotls can spray water from their mouths hard enough to deal damage, which then becomes animate, with stats similar to that of a water weird.
Eye Scream: Any time a 3rd Edition ahuizotl scores a Critical Hit with its claws or bite, its victim is permanently blinded.
Prehensile Tail: 3E ahuizotls have a full-on hand on the end of their tails, which they use to grab and drown prey.
Sinister Suffocation: Their preferred hunting method is to grab a victim and pin them underwater until they drown.
Trademark Favorite Food: Ahuizotls particularly relish their victims' eyes, teeth and fingernails.
Voice Changeling: 3E ahuizotls can mimic humanoid voices, usually imitating cries for help to lure prey close to the body of water the monster is hiding in.

Akikage

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Assassins who died while on missions of murder, and now linger as spirits obsessed with finishing their task.

Back Stab: Unsurprisingly, they can deal Sneak Attack damage like rogues and assassins.
An Ice Person: Akikage are incorporeal spirits and so cannot wield normal weapons, instead their ghostly touch is cold enough to deal damage.
Invisible Monsters: Akikage can turn invisible at will, allowing them to constantly carry out sneak attacks.
One-Hit Kill: An akikage can make a special freezing strike deep into its target's body — if the victim fails a saving throw (in 2nd Edition) or if the akikage rolls a Critical Hit (in 3rd Edition), the victim dies instantly as their heart freezes solid.
Silent Antagonist: Though capable of understanding speech, akikage never speak themselves, not even when under a speak with dead spell. It's unclear whether they can't speak or choose not to.
Unfinished Business: Theirs is simple, to kill their target, after which point the akikage vanishes for good. However, should an evil cleric kill an akikage's target and cast a control undead spell on the corpse, they become able to command the assassin spirit indefinitely. As an ansasshia, these spirits may yearn for freedom, but their commitment to duty renders them unable to disobey their new master.

Alaghi

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Playable: 2E
Alignment: Often Neutral

Hair-covered humanoids who are generally shy and peaceful, living as nomads or in crude settlements in the wilderness.

Barbarian Tribe: Alaghi are actually more barbaric the more settled they become. Their nomadic families don't necessarily live In Harmony with Nature, but they at least respect it and are competent enough not to destroy the lands they rely upon. Alaghi clans that lay permanent claim to a territory, on the other hand, frequently deplete the local resources, forcing them to raid their neighbors to survive, hence why their villages tend towards an Evil alignment.
Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: They're more or less sasquatches, being burly, primitive humanoids covered in hair, and their 2nd Edition write-up describes them as distantly related to the yeti.
Druid: A rare few alaghi become hermits, taking up the druid class and living lives of solitude, vegetarianism and philosophy. Such alaghi can be quite loquacious if befriended, and are often on good terms with their neighbors.
Smart People Play Chess: Their AD&D write-up mentions that alaghi druids love both riddles and games of strategy, and are smart enough to play chess in their heads. "A human or demihuman who can beat an alaghi hermit at chess is rare indeed."

Albino Wyrm

Alignment: Neutral Evil

Savage dragon-kin adapted to life in the Underdark.

Arch-Enemy: Deep dragons, who have adapted to the Underdark much better than these dragon-kin, consider albino wyrms to be despicable creatures worthy only of destruction, and exterminate any they come across.
An Ice Person: Their Breath Weapon, delivered after a rattling hiss, is a blast of cold capable of also freezing and shattering objects that fail their saving throws.
The Morlocks: They're thought to be descended from true dragons that got trapped underground and devolved into pallid, flightless predators, losing their spell-like abilities in the process. "If, indeed, this species is an offshoot of dragonkind, then the albino wyrms have fallen far; most are barely sane, barely able to express a coherent thought, despite their Intelligence."
Swallowed Whole: To make up for their useless wings and weak claws, albino wyrms' jaws have expanded, allowing them to potentially swallow prey if they roll high enough during attacks.
Wings Do Nothing: Albino wyrms' wings have atrophied to the point where they're useless for flight or combat, only used for threat or courtship displays.

Alchemy Beetle

Origin: Eberron
Classification: Construct (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Four-foot-long mechanical insects with glass reservoirs containing an alchemical fluid.

Absurdly Dedicated Worker: In their home setting, alchemy beetles were created by the giants of Xen'drik as guard creatures thousands of years ago, and can stil be found in their ruined settlements, or patrolling ancient battlefields of the giants' war with the quori.
Elemental Weapon: The alchemical fluid in their glass tanks coats their mandibles, adding extra acid, fire, cold or electricity damage to their attacks. When an alchemy beetle is destroyed, this fluid detonates in a 10-foot-radius explosion.
Lost Technology: While the giants of Xen'drik knew the formulae for the alchemical mixture within this constructs, no record of this process has been recovered as of yet. Fortunately for the constructs, their tanks contain enough fluid for 100 elementally-charged bites.
Mechanical Insects: Magitek beetles, in this case.

Aldani

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Also known as "lobsterfolk," these humanoid crustaceans dwell in jungle lakes and rivers, generally avoiding conflict.

Giant Enemy Crab: They're Medium-sized, Lawful Neutral lobster men. They're thus amphibious and attack with Power Pincers.
Karmic Transformation: In their home setting, the Aldani were a Chultan tribe who overfished their homeland's lobster population to the point of extinction. This angered the regional deity Ubtao, who cursed the fishermen responsible by turning them into lobster creatures. Those affected actually accepted their punishment, but were driven out by their kin. Eventually the Aldani proper died out, leaving only the lobsterfolk behind.
Non-Malicious Monster: As mentioned, aldani are xenophobic but averse to conflict, and would rather hide or frighten away intruders than fight them. Should that fail, they'll offer some of the treasure they collect from their rivers and lakes as a bribe to make interlopers go away.

Aleax

Classification: Construct (3E)
Challenge Rating: As base creature +3 (3E)
Alignment: Any

These manifestations of divine vengeance are sent after those who greatly offend a god, and will either forcibly redeem the offender or enact the ultimate punishment.

Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: According to their 2nd Edition write-up, an aleax looks like a nondescript individual of the same race as its target. But to said target, the aleax looks like a doppelganger wrapped in a Battle Aura that varies by the alignment of the deity who sent it — a Lawful Good aleax glows golden, a Chaotic Evil one has a shifting scarlet and indigo aura, etc.
Deader than Dead: If an aleax kills its target, said target's spirit is instantly brought before the deity who sent the aleax, and given one last chance to barter for their life. If the victim agrees to the demanded service, treasure, sworn oath, etc. they are returned to life, otherwise their soul is utterly destroyed, and the victim cannot be resurrected by any means.
Eye Beams: 3rd Edition aleaxi can fire searing light from their eyes once per round.
Glowing Eyes of Doom: In 3rd Edition, an aleax's eyes glow bright gold or silver.
It Only Works Once: As fearsome as an aleax is, a given deity can only have one active at a time, and if its target manages to defeat it, said diety can't send another to punish the mortal for the same offense.
Mirror Match: Subverted; aleaxi look like their target and have the same stats, abilities, equipment, spells, etc. But they also have additional qualities such as a Healing Factor, Spell Resistance, true seeing, and host of immunities, so it's not a fair fight, hence their CR.
No-Sell: An aleax absolutely cannot be damaged or hindered by anything but their target.
Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: When an aleax reaches its target, it may briefly state its target's name and transgression, then demand that target submit to punishment, all in its creator deity's language (which the target may not understand). Then the aleax attacks without mercy.
Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Should the aleax's target turn the tables and defeat it, they absorb its essence and gain a buff to Wisdom, initiative rolls, Armor Class, even some Spell Resistance. But in 2nd Edition this comes with the caveat that the aleax's essence is still active, and may take control of its conqueror should they find themselves in a situation similar to their original offense, potentially compelling the creature to punish others who offended the deity.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can shapechange at will, and each deity's aleax has one or two preferred alternate forms — Bahamut's for example sometimes takes the shape of a gold dragon.

Al-jahar

Origin: Al-Qadim
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Also known as "dazzles," these shimmering beings can assume humanoid form to infiltrate settlements and incite strong emotions to feed upon.

Anti-True Sight: They can use delude and nondetection at will, though Zakhara's hakima (wise women) can always see through al-jahar's disguises, and genies have even odds of doing so.
Emotion Bomb: Al-jahar can cast charm person, friends and taunt several times per day as spell-like abilities, helping them with the below.
Emotion Eater: These creatures feed on strong emotions such as anger, greed, lust, or even suspicion, and where such emotions are lacking, dazzles will generate them. Typical al-jahar tactics include using taunt and ventriloquism, or friends followed by hypnotism, to stir up fights, or they might tag along with adventurers who "rescue" them and feed on their strong emotions, even while aiding the party in minor ways. The effects of a dazzle's feeding are fairly minor, with victims feeling exhausted and emotionally drained after several hours in one's presence, so a canny al-jahar can feed on the same people for years without them realizing what's happening. If an al-jahar doesn't feed regularly, such as if they've been discovered and run out of town, their powers fade until they're only able to disguise themselves, leading them to adopt the guise of lost travelers and look for people to take them to a city.
Enemy Civil War: Al-jahar do not get along with each other, as each tends to claim a part of a city as their territory, like a dockside tavern where bar fights are common. Dazzles who intrude on another's turf might be attacked.
Eye of Newt: Their blood can be used to make a potion of delusion or other mind-affecting items.
Humanshifting: In their natural forms, dazzles look like genderless Winged Humanoids of sparkling light and shimmering desert heat, but they can use alter self at will, frequently taking the guise of a beautiful human or elven woman. They typically establish several identities in a city, each with their own personalities, but all with many friends to feed upon. If their cover is blown, al-jahar assume their natural forms so they can fight with claw attacks, or take wing and flee.
Light 'em Up: They can also cast spells like light, blindness and rainbow pattern.
No-Sell: Dazzles are immune to any light-based effects or attempts to control emotions.

Alkada

Alignment: True Neutral

Also known as walking eggs and wingless wonders, alkadas are bizarre ovoid things that wander aimlessly around the world without a thought in their tentacled heads, collecting shiny objects and frantically flapping their arms as if trying to fly (they cannot fly). Mostly, they endure as a thing for wizards to turn people into when someone really gets under their skin.

Forced Transformation: While they have no such power themselves, alkadas are a popular byproduct of it — it's something of a fad among wizards to humiliate foes by turning them into these things, and it's thought that around quarter of all wingless wonders roaming the world are in fact former humanoid wizards.
Living Mood Ring: They turn red when they become angry or excited.
Money Spider: Alkadas are fascinated by shiny objects, and when they come across a gem, jeweled item, shiny stone, piece of glass or the like, they stuff it into their mouth to carry around in a growing hoard of treasure and gewgaws, released only on the creature's death.
Our Monsters Are Weird: Blue-green egg creatures that waddle unsteadily on two legs ending in suction-cup feet, with pair of googly eyes beneath a hairdo of writhing tentacles and a mouth sitting at the top of their bodies, which wander in an eternal daze while frantically flapping their arms for no apparent reason. Weirder than that...
Random Effect Spell: Wingless wonders can cast a spell once a day — but that spell's effects are completely random. It may turn your hair pink, summon a random animal, teleport you slightly to the left or call a meteor down on your head, and neither you nor the alkada is going to know what it's going to be until it's cast.
Taking You with Me: If an alkada is slain, it emits a psychic death-scream that unerringly targets and damages every nearby creature that harmed it. Downplayed, however, in that this scream doesn't do a whole lot of damage.

All-Consuming Hunger

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Putrid masses of animate body parts from a variety of creatures.

Blob Monster: Appears to be a liquified mass of skeletal body parts.
Deceased and Diseased: They carry a supernatural disease known as "all-consuming wasting," which similarly to mummy rot keeps eating away at the victim's Constitution until they either die or get cured by magic like remove disease. Those who die rise as new all-consuming hungers a few rounds later.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: All-consuming hungers are surrounded by "a miasma of death and rot," which causes all within 60 feet to have to save against fear.
The Swarm: They're swarms of diminutive undead gibs, more or less.

Allip

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/76d1b6d1e5058d4dff49d3b243d098ae.png

Classification: Undead (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 5 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

A dangerous form of ghost. While their nature varies between editions, allips usually have the power to drive people mad.

Brown Note: The touch of an allip damages the mind, and its babbling can temporarily put anyone who hears it into a stupor.
Driven to Suicide: 3e Allips were spirits of the dead who went mad and killed themselves.
Ghostly Goals: 5th edition allips seek to end their torment by passing on whatever dark secret condemned them to undeath. Once the forbidden knowledge has been transferred to someone or something else in its entirety, the allip can pass on to the afterlife. In older editions, allips instead seek revenge on the person(s) who drove them to madness in life.
Our Ghosts Are Different: In 5th Edition, allips are the tortured spirits of people who discovered some terrible secret in life, for which they were immediately struck down by a godlike entity or a powerful curse. In older editions they are instead the restless spirits of people who committed suicide after going crazy.
These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: An allip emerges when a mind uncovers a secret that a powerful being has protected with a mighty curse. The allip acquires the secret, but the curse annihilates its body and leaves behind a spectral creature tormented by a horrifying insight.

Almiraj

Classification: Fey Beast (4E), Beast (5E)
Challenge Rating: 0 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (2E), Unaligned (4E-5E)

Not-so-ordinary bunny rabbits with foot-long spiral horns jutting out of their heads.

Attack Animal: It's noted that if they're captured young, almiraj are surprisingly receptive to domestication and training, "except for the psionic variety, which have an unfortunate tendency to detonate the possessions of their trainers." Their fearlessness also makes them stalwart animal companions, and in 5th Edition they're valid Familiars for spellcasters.
Explosive Breeder: They breed as rapidly as non-lethal rabbits, which can cause problems in areas without natural predators for them, even discounting their other qualities.
Gone Horribly Wrong: Their AD&D entry speculates that almiraj are a failed science experiment, as their name supposedly derives from an old dialect of the gnomes of Krynn, translating to "experiment seventy-two."
Horn Attack: They have what are effectively daggers growing out of their skulls, and utilize them in combat.
Killer Rabbit: Almiraj are nervous, stupid and unpredictable creatures, but when threatened they charge at threats instead of fleeing. They're also herd animals capable of swarming opponents, and just smart enough to use tactics like burrowing to move unnoticed and attacking by surprise. And then there's the psionic variety...
Lucky Rabbit's Foot: Some gnomes consider almiraj feet to be good luck charms, and while they won't carry the items on their persons, gnomes may hang them in their homes.
Mi'raj: The almiraj (occasionally also spelled al-mi'raj) has been a feature of the game since the first edition of the Fiend Folio in 1981. Their characterization tends to vary; their original appearance had them as territorial beings whose small size belies their fearlessness, while later write-ups such as Fifth Edition's Tomb of Annihilation have them as much more timid beings more prone to running away from danger. They often live in lands inspired by Arabia or Persia, such as Zakhara in Forgotten Realms.
Organ Drops: The almiraj's horn can be utilized in cures against poison.
Psychic Powers: In 2nd Edition, roughly one in ten almiraj possess an array of psychokinetic powers, and a deep reserve of power points with which to use them. These "bunnies of the Abyss" can make the sky darken and the wind to blow, telekinetically lift enemies or hurl objects at them, cause victims' equipment to ignite or explode and throw fire around, and effectively fly by levitating and propelling themselves with directed wind, all while their eyes glow red with power.
Teleport Spam: 2nd Edition almiraj are also known as "blink bunnies," as even non-psionic specimens can teleport around in combat, closing the distance and attacking opponents from unexpected angles.

Ambush Drake

^3e

Classification: Dragon (3E, 5E), Natural Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 6 (4E), 1/2 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (3E), Unaligned (4E-5E)

Quadrupedal draconic pack hunters.

Art Evolution: In 3rd and 4th Editions, ambush drakes are stocky, short-necked creatures with stubby wings. In 5th, they're slender and serpentine, with long necks and tails and without wings.
Back Stab: 5th Edition ambush drakes live up to their name by dealing extra damage should they take their foes by surprise.
Hive Mind: In 3E, ambush drakes are in constant telepathic contact with their pack members. If one drake sees or knows something it becomes known to all other pack members, and they cannot be flanked or ambushed unless all pack members are approached so at the same time.
The Paralyzer: Their bites in 3rd Edition inject a Dexterity-damaging poison.
Status Infliction Attack: 3E ambush drakes have a breath weapon, a cone that hits targets with a slow effect.
Took a Level in Dumbass: 3rd Edition ambush drakes have below-average intelligence, but are capable of speaking Common and Draconic (though they rarely see the point in conversing with food). Their 5th Edition incarnation is dumber than an ogre and understands, but cannot speak, Draconic.

Amiq Rasol

Origin: Al-Qadim
Alignment: Neutral Evil or True Neutral

Also known as "deep men" or "dark men," these undead corsairs were cursed with unlife after being lost at sea, marooned, or for turning away from the gods.

Charm Person: They can cast a powerful variant of the spell, usually to lure victims closer, though some Neutral amiq rasol instead force adventurers to travel to their place of death and give their remains a proper burial.
Glamour: Amiq rasol's true form is that of rotting corpses, but to those who lack magical sight, they appear as pale sailors with elongated teeth and fingernails, and eyes that have an eerie green glow in the dark. They can thus pass themselves off as the living and join a crew of sailors, to ensure a steady supply of victims.
Ghost Pirate: They're undead pirates that can roam up to 100 miles from their place of death as they prey upon the living.
Level Drain: Their bite attacks cause victims to lose an experience level. This is actually how amiq rasol feed, and should they go a few years without finding any victims, they'll fade away into wraiths.
Reviving Enemy: Amiq rasol will reconstitute themselves a day after being destroyed. The only way to permanently keep them down is to find and bury their remains, or cast raise dead.

Amoebic Crawler

Classification: Ooze (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Large, ravenous clots of alien space-time often found near the focal point of a Far Realm incursion.

Acid Attack: Its body is coated in an acid that helps it digest prey, externally. Said acid doesn't harm stone or metal, but can be lethal to organic life.
Combat Tentacles: An amoebic crawler attempts to grab and strangle foes with its lashing tentacles.
Go Mad from the Revelation: Creatures grappled by an amoebic crawler's tentacles sometimes glimpse images from the Far Realm, which sends them into fits of screaming nausea.
Invisible Monsters: Amoebic crawlers are made from the hidden marrow of a cerebrotic blot, and are particularly difficult to see, even in ideal conditions. It's entirely possible for an adventurer to walk right into one and get hit by its acid damage.

Amphisbaena

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 10 (4E), 1/2 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Poisonous serpents with two heads in an unusual configuration.

Bizarre Alien Locomotion: When it needs to travel for any extensive distance, an amphisbaena will grasp one of its necks with the opposite mouth, stiffen itself into a circle, and roll like a hoop.
A Head at Each End: An amphisbaena resembles a viper with a second head in place of its tail.
One-Hit Kill: In 2nd Edition, their poison is so virulent that anyone bitten by an amphisbaena has to save or die instantly.
Taken for Granite: If an amphisbaena is about to die, it attempts to bite itself and, in so doing, turn itself to stone.

Anakore

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Aberrant Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (4E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Also known as "dune freaks," these hunched and dimwitted humanoids hide beneath the desert sands by day, but at night burst out to ambush their prey.

Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Anakore are blinded (completely, in 2E) by daylight, but have exceptional night vision, though not full darkvision.
Dig Attack: Their favored tactic is to burrow beneath the sand while stalking victims, then attack from below.
The Paralyzer: Anakore supplement their diet by chewing the roots of poisonous plants, giving them paralytic saliva. This means fallen, rootless plants can be a warning sign that an anakore band is in the area.
Sinister Suffocation: They grapple or paralyze victims, then drag them beneath the sands to take additional damage from suffocation.
Super-Senses: Their dorsal ridges are sensory organs that pick up vibrations through the sand, giving them tremorsense. According to 2nd Edition, dune freaks can detect a single creature moving across the sands from up to five miles away.
The Virus: Their 4E entry relates a rumor that anakore don't reproduce normally, but instead select certain victims to be dragged beneath the sand and converted into more of their kind.
Was Once a Man: Another 4E legend is that the anakore were once ordinary humanoids who were touched by "terrors from beyond the sky," and fled from the sun beneath the sands, becoming monstrous.

Andeloid

Origin: Spelljammer
Alignment: As dominant host

Oozes that fuse with one or more host creatures, forming a horrifying chimeric mass.

Achilles' Heel: Andeloids are harmed by curative magic like cure disease and neutralize poison, while regeneration also forces one to save or go dormant for a few rounds, and restoration might kill them outright. Such magic is one way to try and get a particular creature free of a composite.
The Assimilator: Their signature ability, and indeed an andeloid's only purpose is to survive and grow by adding powerful creatures to its composite. An andeloid can infest a host, first sticking to its body before fully fusing with the other creature at the end of a month, after which point the original creature will die if removed from the andeloid. An andeloid can fuse with multiple creatures based on its size — it cannot sustain more Hit Dice's worth of hosts than it has Hit Dice itself, and might digest an existing host to make room for a better one. An andeloid composite pools the hit points of all its component creatures, can use any attack forms its hosts possess (though each creature makes one less attack than normal), and shares any special immunities, resistances and defenses enjoyed by one of its components (as well as any vulnerabilities, though they might be canceled out by a trait of another host). Their land movement speed always equals that of their slowest host, however, and they can never fly or swim no matter what creatures they absorb.
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: They only reproduce by starving to death. An andeloid that can't feed itself through its hosts will slowly digest its component creatures, starting with the weakest. If an andeloid consumes all of its hosts, it fragments into a number of spores based on its Hit Dice. Each spore looks like a fist-sized gemstone with a "shimmering, shifting color and waxy texture," and can remain dormant for eons, but if exposed to fire damage, or left near a potential host for a minute or so, the spore will assume its ooze form and start hunting.
Blob Monster: An andeloid without any hosts is a Small, mindless blob that instinctively seeks to fuse with another creature, while their composites go the Body Horror route, looking like multiple creatures fused together in a single fleshy mass covered in a half-inch of translucent slime.
Fire Keeps It Dead: Even if an andeloid composite is slain, the blob at its core will merely go dormant for a few rounds before reforming and resuming the hunt for creatures to fuse with. But fire damage will kill an andeloid for good.
Mind Hive: A lone andeloid is mindless, but a composite is a group personality, led by the most intelligent being in it but influenced by all of its components' attitudes, as well as the andeloid's need to survive and grow. An andeloid composite with multiple intelligent beings functions as if led by a committee.
No-Sell: An andeloid in its blob form is immune to weapon attacks, cold damage, and most spells, though its hosts aren't so lucky.

Angel

^4e

Classification: Outsider (3E), Immortal Humanoid (4E), Celestial (5E)
Alignment: Any Good (3E), Unaligned (4E), Lawful Good (5E)

Sometimes known as aasimon, these beings embody the goodness of the Upper Planes. Though honorable and diplomatic, they do not hesitate when it is necessary to bring battle to the forces of evil.

Adaptation Name Change: They became "aasimon" in 2nd Edition, part of an attempt to distance D&D from religious terminology during the Satanic Panic. While subsequent editions have been more confident calling these winged celestials "angels," this incident does explain why planetouched mortals with a celestial heritage are "aasimar."
Amazing Technicolor Population: Their skin tones range from dark brown and milky white, to green or red skin, to shining silver or gold. Generally speaking, the more fantastic their skin tone, the more powerful the angel.
Beauty Equals Goodness: All angels are quite comely to look at, as they represent the beauty of the heavens.
Fog Feet: 4th edition angels had a wispy tail of light in place of legs.
Healing Hands: In 5th edition, all angels possess a Healing Touch that restores hit points and cleanses harmful conditions like curses or disease. The mightier the angel, the more potent its Healing Touch.
Holy Hand Grenade: In 5th edition, an angel's weapons are magical and inflict large amounts of radiant damage in addition to their regular damage types.
Living Lie Detector: An angel knows a spoken lie when it hears one, so good luck trying to deceive it.
Magic Knight: 3rd Edition angels are both capable in direct combat and able to use a wide variety of spell-like abilities like holy word or flame strike.
No Self-Buffs: An angel can only use its Healing Touch on another creature, not on itself.
No-Sell: All angels are immune to acid and cold damage, as well as petrification effects.
Omniglot: Angels know all languages and can communicate with any creature that has a language.
Our Angels Are Different: They've been reimagined over the past few editions.
- In 3rd Edition, angels are a subtype of celestial, good-aligned beings native to the Upper Planes. Unlike their fellow archons, eladrins and guardinals, angels aren't locked to a specific Good alignment.
- 4th Edition's angels are radically different from those of prior and subsequent editions. They're depicted as winged entities with a wispy tail of light instead of legs and no discernible facial features but their eyes. They were created by and serve deities, even those of evil alignment, and are themselves Unaligned.
- 5th Edition's angels revert to their 3rd Edition appearance and abilities, though their alignment is now always Lawful Good. It's noted that angels will competently serve even Chaotic Good deities, since they're too Lawful to disobey orders that go contrary to their preferences.
Status Buff: 3rd Edition angels are surrounded by a supernatural aura that grants them and allies within 20 feet a deflection bonus to Armor Class against attacks from evil creatures, and simultaneously functions as a magic circle against evil and lesser globe of invulnerability.

Agathinon

The soldiers of the heavenly hosts, wielding mace, sling and spells in the service of goodly powers.

The Armies of Heaven: Agathinon are explicitly warrior aasimon, serving as the vanguard of the heavenly hosts, fighting in formations a hundred strong. However, they'll occasionally be dispatched on solo missions to the Material Plane to aid mortals against evil.
Early-Installment Weirdness: 2nd Edition describes how agathinon often end up facing each other in battle when competing pantheons recruit them by the thousands or even millions for endless "holy" wars over the differences in their ideas of goodness. The 3rd Edition Book of Exalted Deeds asserts that celestials do not engage in this sort of infighting, as it goes against the Good alignment — any "wars in heaven" are the result of Fallen Angels getting violently evicted, or made up by mortal priests to excuse their attacks on rival faiths.
Equippable Ally: They can transform into magic items like lamps, necklaces, or enchanted swords, granting their wielders 1st-level priest spells and the power to Turn Undead. However, agathinon don't let just anyone use them like this — those of Evil alignment will take damage when trying to wield an agathinon in item form, while Neutral individuals will only be granted their powers when using them for good causes.
Intangibility: They can become ethereal at will.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Agathinon are usually only seen in their natural forms, resembling elves with glowing, opalescent flesh and shining eyes, on the Upper Planes. Elsewhere they'll take on forms to blend in, or gain advantages in combat by taking the shapes and combat abilities of pegasi or even dragons (though they retain their starting Hit Dice).
Weapon-Based Characterization: They explicitly use non-edged weapons in combat, evoking how Christian warrior-monks supposedly fought without weapons that shed blood.

Astral Deva

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_deva_5e.png

Challenge Rating: 14 (3E), 10 (5E)

Angels who watch over and aid weaker creatures of Good alignment, the protectors of planar travelers, and allies to those who fight good causes.

Carry a Big Stick: They prefer maces in combat, and in 3rd Edition specifically wield maces that disrupt undead enemies.
A Form You Are Comfortable With: When necessary, a deva can take any shape appropriate to the realm they are sent to, usually that of an innocuous humanoid or animal.
Super-Reflexes: 3rd Edition astral devas have the Uncanny Dodge ability of a high-level rogue.

Light

Energy beings thought by some to be the embodiment of goodness itself, sent by the powers of the Upper Planes to assist worthy mortals.

Armor-Piercing Attack: Their energy ray attacks, which don't affect Good creatures, ignore mundane armor — only modifiers from magic items or a suit of armor's enchantment bonus offer protection.
Energy Beings: They're swirling beings of misty light, coruscating with the colors of the rainbow. Legend has it that good beings can see images of their finest moment within a light, while evil beings instead see the better life they could have led had they made different decisions.
Familiar: Lights are designed to be such. If a hero spends three days meditating and fasting, bathes in holy water, and casts or has someone else cast find familiar, a light may answer the call. Though since there are fewer than a thousand lights in all the Upper Planes, they only stay with a given mortal until their current mission is complete, and they'll never take the place of an existing familiar.
Support Party Member: Lights don't have any flashy, damaging magic, just support and utility spells like bless, dispel evil, hold person, and of course light.

Monadic Deva

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_devas_3e.jpg

A movanic deva (left) and monadic deva (right). (3e)

Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)

These stoic celestials monitor the Ethereal and Elemental Planes, giving them great patience and an appreciation for balance.

Blood Knight: While all angels appreciate battling evil, monadic devas exult in combat as a respite from the tedium of their normal duties.
Carry a Big Stick: Their enchanted maces deal extra damage to constructs.
Charm Person: They can use the charm monster spell at will, but only to affect elemental creatures.
No-Sell: Monadic devas are immune to ability damage or drain, as well as death effects. They're also comfortable on any elemental plane, no matter how hostile.

Movanic Deva

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)

The weakest and most numerous of the angels, movanic devas are still potent warriors against evil. They monitor the Positive and Negative Energy Planes, as well as the Material Plane, making these devas the most worldly of their kind.

BFS: They wield flaming greatswords.
Friend to All Living Things: Unless magically compelled to do so, no plant or animal will attack a movanic deva.
No-Sell: They're immune to the positive- or negative-energy dominant traits of certain planes.
Parrying Bullets: They can use their swords to bat aside incoming ranged attacks, and even deflect the rays of certain spell effects.

Planetar

Challenge Rating: 16 (3E, 5E)

The generals of the celestial warhosts, though they will also aid powerful mortals fighting for good causes, especially against fiends.

BFS: A planetar's weapon of choice is a two-handed sword.
Off with His Head!: In 2nd Edition, they specifically wield vorpal greatswords, which only function in the hands of planetars.
Pest Controller: 5th edition planetars can innately cast the insect plague spell, which summons a swarm of locusts.

Solar

Challenge Rating: 23 (3E), 21 (5E)

The mightiest of the angels, solars act as the champions of deities, or are assigned to some vital task such as the elimination of a certain kind of wrongdoing.

Blinded by the Light: In 5th edition, a solar can use its brilliant gaze to strike other creatures blind.
Bow and Sword in Accord: Solars are generally armed with a dancing greatsword and a slaying longbow.
Flying Weapon: A solar can command its greatsword to dance, making it fly around and attack of its own accord.
Light 'em Up: As you might expect from its name, a solar has many powers relating to light, particularly in 5th edition. Their weapons inflict radiant damage, they can release a burst of divine light that sears nearby creatures of their choice, and they can strike a creature blind just by meeting its gaze.
One-Hit Kill: Their longbows fire slaying arrows that have a chance to instantly kill their target, regardless of its remaining hit points.

Anguillian

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Eel-like aquatic humanoids who live in cold ocean abysses, but occasionally attack passing ships or coastal settlements.

Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Anguillians cannot abide bright light, and only raid the surface during moonless nights.
Fish People: These creatures resemble a humanoid eel, with two stubby legs and two arms tipped with bony pincers.
Lamprey Mouth: The mouth of an anguillian has no jaws and is filled with rings of teeth.
Non-Health Damage: After biting an enemy, an anguillian can latch on and drain blood, dealing Constitution damage each round.
Speaks Fluent Animal: They can communicate simple concepts such as "food" and "enemy" to eels and dire eels.

Animated Breath

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_animate_breath_3e.jpg

Classification: Elemental (5E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Some dragons pick up the trick of manipulating their breath weapon so that it creates an elemental servant instead of emerging as an energy attack.

Elemental Embodiment: Each variety of animated breath looks like a roughly bipedal elemental of the associated energy type: a being of fire, a viscous mass of befouled water, a cloud of Deadly Gas, a flickering form of electricity, or a walking ice sculpture.
Living Weapon: Dragons can learn to draw on magic from the Elemental Planes to shape their breath weapons into bipedal elementals.
Playing with Fire: Anything adjacent to a fire-based animated breath will take damage, and is in danger of igniting.
Poisonous Person: Acid and poison-based animated breaths can poison everything around them, on top of dealing acid damage on contact.
Retcon: In 3rd Edition, any dragon could take the Animate Breath feat, but 5th Edition suggests that only chromatic dragons know the technique.
Weaponized Teleportation: A lightning-based animated breath can use a bonus action to teleport up to 30 feet, zapping everything adjacent to its new location.

Animated Object

Animated table (5e)

Classificaton: Construct (3E-5E)
Challenge Rating: Varies
Alignment: Unaligned

With the right application of magic, ordinary objects can take on a semblance of life, moving and acting on the orders of their creators.

Animate Inanimate Object: Their whole schtick.
Animated Armor: One standby animated object is the suit of armor that walks about without a wearer.
Flying Weapon: Swords or any other weapon can be animated this way to attack independently of wielders.
Foil: They can be considered as such to undead. Undead creatures are formerly-living matter reanimated and given a grotesque parody of life by negative energy, while animated objects were never alive to begin with and are traditionally animated by positive energy.
Sinister Suffocation: The signature attack of the so-called "rug of smothering."

Animator

A greater animator possessing a mansion (2e)

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: As base object +1 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Evil spirits that animate ordinary objects, inspiring fear and other negative emotions.

Animate Inanimate Object: Animators possess objects and cause them to move around like puppets. The weakest animators work with things like articles of clothing, tools, or furniture, while stronger animators can possess the likes of carriages, cottages, or even entire mansions.
Emotion Bomb: They know spells like crushing despair, fear, rage and scare.
Emotion Eater: Animators subsist upon negative emotions, and are drawn towards people surrounded by these emotions. When those emotions are lacking, the animator will do their best to generate some, by encouraging a murderer to sate their bloodlest, nudging a jealous woman to fall for unfaithful lovers, or just terrorizing a group of people.
Evil Counterpart: 3rd Edition treats them as an undead template applied to "normal" animated objects.
Invisible Monsters: In their natural state, animators are invisible and intangible spirits that appear as vague mists when viewed magically.
Pragmatic Villainy: Animators are drawn to individuals surrounded by negative emotion, which they'll adopt as a "ward," possessing an object important to them. The animator will do their best to keep their ward alive, but only so they can continue to feed upon the negativity the undead is fostering in their ward.
Psychopathic Manchild: Animators are compared to angry children, prone to jealousy and tantrums, especially if someone is competing with them for their host's attention.

Ankheg

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E, 4E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Large, insectile monsters that burrow beneath forests and pastures and prey upon surface creatures.

Acid Attack: They produce acid from their mouths, which they normally use to coat their mandibles, though in an emergency ankhegs can spit a short stream of acid as a ranged attack, which uses up their acid reservoirs for the next several hours. These digestive enzymes can be harvested from a dead ankheg for use as regular acid.
Big Creepy-Crawlies: Ankhegs are horse-sized multi-legged insects.
Crafted from Animals: Their AD&D entry explains that ankheg shells can be dried and cured for use as armor just as good as field plate.
Dig Attack: Ankhegs hunt by tunneling upward until they're just beneath the surface, then bursting to attack anything they detect passing nearby. This tunneling habit has the helpful side effect of helping aerate and water the soil, which is further fertilized by the ankheg's waste, so while "a hungry ankheg can be fatal to a farmer, it can be quite beneficial to the farmland."
Super-Senses: They have tremorsense out to 60 feet, allowing them to detect anything in contact with the ground.

Aoa

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_aoa_3e.png

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (droplet), 15 (sphere) (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Born from the interaction of positive and negative energy, these floating, silvery blobs wander planar borderlands, seeking concentrations of magic.

Asteroids Monster: If an aoa sphere reflects 50 or more points of damage from a single targeted spell attack, it splits off an aoa droplet.
Attack Reflector: Any magic that fails to overcome an aoa's spell resistance is rebounded upon its caster, and similarly, any gaze attacks are reflected upon their source.
Dispel Magic: An aoa's slam attack also carries a dispel magic effect, while their spheres can, three times per day, release a reflexive pulse that carries a greater dispelling effect and will destroy any magic items that have all their abilities nullified.
Giant Mook: Aoa spheres are simply Huge-sized aoa droplets, with a corresponding stat increase.
Magic Eater: Aoa normally drift lazily through the air, but once spells start flying, aoa will bob about erratically, trying to get in the way as much as possible. Then they seek out the strongest magical aura in the area and slam into it, feeding off the energy released by their dispelling touch attack. This does, however, mean that aoa can be summoned and used as guardians, so long as they're appeased by low amounts of magic.
Supernatural Sensitivity: Aoa can detect magic at will, which they use to identify creatures with strong magical auras.

Aranea

Hybrid form (2e)

Origin: Mystara
Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: True Neutral

Intelligent, shapeshifting giant spiders with an affinity for magic.

Arch-Enemy: On Mystara, they are "in a constant state of war" with the phanatons.
Eyes Are Mental: Aranea in spider form can be distinguished from "normal" giant spiders by their eerily human-like eyes.
Fantastic Racism: In their home setting, the aranea have done some horrible things in the past, like unintentionally reducing the wallara from a mighty civilization to scattered, wandering bands of Stone Age primitives. Modern aranea just want to be left alone, but are still the subject of "bogeyman" stories, and any whose true identities become known are likely to be hunted down by their neighbors (and other aranea trying to preserve their own cover).
Mage Species: They're natural spellcasters, and even without character levels function as 3rd-level mages.
My Brain Is Big: In their spider form, aranea possess a distinctively engorged, hunch-like growth on their thorax, which holds their enlarged brain.
Poisonous Person: In their spider and hybrid forms, aranea can make a poisonous bite attack, dealing a bit of Damage Over Time in 2nd Edition or Strength damage in 3rd Edition.
Primal Fear: Aranea, as forest-dwelling, web-spinning creatures, are quite fearful of fire, and thus almost never learn fire-based spells.
Projectile Webbing: Like properly monstrous spiders, they can throw webbing to entangle foes.
Properly Paranoid: The aranea designed the original identify species spell to ensure that it wouldn't work on them, thus thwarting anti-aranea bigots' attempts to hunt them down.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Aranea have three forms, that of a pony-sized Giant Spider, a spider-humanoid hybrid, and a unique humanoid form. This makes it hard for other creatures to determine an aranea's nature unless they're caught shifting between shapes — they effectively have two "true" forms, so a true seeing spell used on their hybrid form might reveal their giant spider or humanoid form. Another twist is that their humanoid forms can be that of a variety of races, and are independent of an aranea's parentage, so two aranea with elf humanoid forms can produce an aranea with a gnoll humanoid form.

Arcadian Avenger

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral

The legions of the Peaceable Kingdoms of Arcadia, who protect the plane and are occasionally dispatched on missions to uphold law and order.

Dual Wielding: They commonly carry two masterwork longswords into battle, and if both hit the same target, they can make a special Rend attack for addtional damage.
Our Angels Are Different: Arcadian avengers look like female angels, but technically aren't celestials, and lack the angel subtype. Even the Lawful Good examples are devoted more to Law than Good, so while they'll get along fine with the other inhabitants of Arcadia, the avengers can clash with Material Plane beings, who find "their outlook and thoughts are as alien to the mortal races as are those of demons and devils." Arcadian avengers also have several traits more in common with the constructs of Mechanus than the beings of the Upper Planes, such as their metallic skin, habit of scanning their surroundings in a looping cycle, and their symmetrical movement, so that their right blades never go forward more than their left blades go back.
Razor Wings: Subverted; their wings look to be made from the same silvery metal as their armor, weapons and flesh, but Arcadian avengers don't have wing attacks on their profile.
Winds of Destiny, Change!: Three times per day, an Arcadian avenger can tap into the power of Law to avoid uncertainty, letting her act as though she'd rolled a 10 on an attack roll or saving throw.

Arcanian

Classification: Undead (4E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (green), 10 (blue), 19 (red) (4E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These undead mages seethe with elemental energy, destructive power they unleash upon the living.

Acid Attack: Green arcanians are trembling, partially-melted creatures that drip with acid and blast foes with bolts or streams of the stuff.
Attractiveness Discrimination: Green arcanians despise beautiful beings, and believe that "beauty masks the twisted horror that lurks within all living things," which can be exposed with doses of their acid. As such, they collect finely-crafted objects specifically to destroy them, and single out beautiful people to victimize, embracing them with limbs that drip with acid and licking them with what remains of their tongue.
An Ice Person: Blue arcanians are ice-covered, constantly-shivering cryomancers who hate warmth, especially that of living creatures.
Personality Powers: The type of elemental powers arcanians wield seems tied to their emotions at their moment of death — passionate and wrathful mages reanimate as red arcanians, blue arcanians seek to perfectly preserve the world using their ice magic, green arcanians are caustic and bitter acid-flingers, and so forth.
Phlebotinum Overload: These mages were killed trying to harness magical power beyond their control, the essence of which reanimated their bodies and warped their minds so that they follow their dying impulses.
Playing with Fire: Red arcanians are flame-flinging Pyromaniacs who want to see the world burn.
Wreathed in Flames: Red arcanians appear as the charred husks of robed figures, constantly burning without ever being reduced to ash.

Archon

Lantern, hound and trumpet archons (3e)

Classification: Outsider (3E), Celestial (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Good

Beings native to the Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia, and the champions of benevolent order across the multiverse. Archons never attack without provocation, and will avoid harming innocents whenever possible, but when properly roused, an archon's wrath is terrifying.

For the creatures called archons in 4th Edition, see "Elemental Myrmidons" in the "Elemental" folder.

Celestial Paragons and Archangels: The archons are led by the Celestial Hebdomad, seven celestial paragons of immense power.
Chrome Champion: The tome archons which make up the Celestial Hebdomad have shining metallic skin. For example, Zaphkiel — the leader of the Hebdomad — has gold skin and platinum wings.
Metamorphosis: Like the baatezu, archons are given new forms as they climb their race's hierarchy, though unlike the devils, these promotions are rewards for an archon's virtuous behavior, not something earned by claiming souls or scheming against their superiors.
No-Sell: All archons are immune to lightning damage and petrification.
Omniglot: Archons all enjoy the benefits of a permanent tongues spell.
Our Angels Are Different: Archons are one of the types of celestials which inhabit the Upper Planes of the D&D multiverse. They are living embodiments of the Lawful Good alignment, much like how devils embody Lawful Evil and demons embody Chaotic Evil. They come in a wide variety of forms, including classical Winged Humanoid angels, wingless people with metallic or stonelike skin, Beast Men, giant animals, and balls of light.
Retcon: In 2nd Edition, the archons' rulers are the seven tome archons, hawk-headed celestials who each rule a layer of Mount Celestia. 3rd Edition expanded on this idea and, rather than having the tome archons be a seven-member subrace, made the Celestial Hebdomad distinct individuals serving in a hierarchy beneath their oldest and most powerful member, Good Counterparts to Hell's archdukes.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: When angered or in combat, archons project an aura of menace which unsettles and demoralizes their foes.

Hammer Archon

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)

Nine-foot-tall, bulky beings of living celestial stone, who seek to crush creatures like the drow and mind flayers who pollute the underground with their presence.

Carry a Big Stick: They're named for the great warhammers they wield in combat.
Dishing Out Dirt: Hammer archons can cast stone shape and wall of stone each three times per day, and can glide through solid rock as easily as a fish moves through water. But their signature ability is to create and hurl great spears of celestial stone at their foes, which deal extra holy damage to Evil creatures.
Geo Effects: Their "Earth Mastery" ability gives them a minor attack and damage bonus against foes if both they and the archon are touching the ground, while imposing penalties if the hammer archon tries to attack an enemy in the air or water.
Rock Monster: Their skin resembles a rocky carapace faceted like a crystal.

Hound Archon

Challenge Rating: 4 (3E, 5E)
Playable: 3E

Bipedal canids who are able combatants, fighting to defend the weak and innocent against evil.

Animorphism: A hound archon can take on the form of any canine, so long as the canine is not too large or too small.
Beast Man: Hound archons look like very muscular humans with canine heads.
BFS: They prefer to attack with their natural bite and slam attacks, but will employ greatswords when necessary.
Eating Optional: While they can eat just about anything, hound archons never hunt or forage, and subsist solely on gifts of food from other creatures — the time hound archons can go between such meals suggests they have some other way of sustaining themselves.
Psychic Link: Their AD&D write-up explains that each hound archon has a telepathic link with a hundred lantern archons, which they can use to raise alarms and summon reinforcements.

Justice Archon

Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)

Champions of Celestia's justice, these archons are zealous enemies of chaos and evil.

Arch-Enemy: As celestials, justice archons hate all fiends on principle, but they particularly detest yugoloths as the embodiment of "beings that do not cleave to a philosophy but exist only to cause as much misery as possible." As such, if a planar ally spell is calling a justice archon to battle yugoloths, they'll agree to the summons without asking for any additional payment.
Counter-Attack: Justice archons' signature ability is their "Justice Strike," an attack whose damage is resolved as if their target made a primary melee attack against itself.
Fallen Angel: It's noted that justice archons' decisive and self-righteous nature can lead them to fly into a rage at the sight of evil (or suspected evil) and lash out at any who oppose them, which can result in a change in alignment.
Teleport Spam: They can teleport at will, which they use to gain advantages in combat or make a Tactical Withdrawal to gather reinforcements.

Lantern Archon

Challenge Rating: 2 (3E, 5E)

Flying spheres of glowing light that are friendly and eager to help others, though their nature means they can only provide limited physical assistance.

Armor-Piercing Attack: In 3E their attacks don't deal much damage, but are notedly Non-Elemental and ignore Damage Reduction of any type.
Art Evolution: 5th Edition gives them a metal lattice around their core of glowing light, with the note that said lattice is insubstantial.
Light 'em Up: Lantern archons attack exclusively by zapping their foes with rays of harmful light.
Teleport Spam: In 5E, lantern archons can use a multiattack option to fire a light ray and teleport up to 120 feet in the same round of combat, ensuring that they remain out of reach of foes.
Will-o'-Wisp: A lantern archon resembles a floating ball of light. They’re more benevolent than the typical example of this trope, as they use their powers to help people rather than to lead them astray.

Owl Archon

Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)

8-foot-tall, owl-like celestials that patrol the skies of the Upper Planes, serving as scouts and messengers for the Celestial Hebdomad.

Friend to All Living Things: When they aren't watching out for evil, owl archons also protect celestial animals, and anything who harms one will earn their wrath. They can also use spells like calm animal and speak with animals at will.
The Owl-Knowing One: They're more of less the intelligence service of Celestia, spying on threats and alerting their superiors to dangerous developments.
The Sleepless: Owl archons don't require sleep or rest, and can spend most of their lives on the wing.
Taken for Granite: They can fire silvery beams of light from their eyes that petrify targets. Since they're celestials, owl archons also can use stone to flesh at will to reverse the effect.

Sibyllic Guardian

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)

These archons possess both divine magic and psionic ability, which they wield to fight evil or protect Good mortal psions.

BFS: Sibyllic guardians favor enchanted greatswords in combat, which they can further enhance with their Greater Psionic Weapon feat.
Combat Precognition: When pressed, they'll use the second chance power to give themselves a reroll on an attack, skill check or saving throw each round.
Psychic Powers: They know an assortment of powers such as ego whip, mindlink and psionic teleport.
Status Infliction Attack: Sibyllic guardians usually open combat by using powers like brain lock and ectoplasmic cocoon to incapacitate enemy casters or psions, before wading into melee.
Vagueness Is Coming: These archons insist that a "final war is on the horizon," something only they and other powerful psionic prognosticators can sense. Unfortunately, no other diviners have been able to corroborate these claims.

Sword Archon

Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)

These 10-foot archons serve as Celestia's enforcers, dispatched to punish those who have transgressed against its laws, or the worst enemies of Lawful Good deities.

Art Evolution: Their 2E art and description portrays them as celestial humanoids with wings, not swords, for arms — despite their name, they fight by biting foes.
Blade Below the Shoulder: Sword archons can morph their forearms into Flaming Swords when they enter combat, or get angry.
One-Hit Kill: They can make a "Discorporating Dive" attack, in which the sword archon literally flies through a target's body, armblade-first. If the victim fails a saving throw, their body is instantly annihilated, while their soul is sent to a dungeon on Celestia to await judgment by a throne archon.
Overt Operative: When they're tracking their targets, sword archons will at most try and throw a cloak over their massive wings, but most don't bother trying to diguise themselves, since that sort of subterfuge would compromise the justice of their missions.
Tracking Spell: They can use spells like divination and locate creature at will, to help them apprehend law-breakers.

Throne Archon

Challenge Rating: 15 (3E)

The most powerful and imposing of the rank-and-file archons, who spend most of their time serving as Celestia's judges.

Deadly Gaze: Non-Lawful Good creatures who meet a throne archon's glowing blue gaze have to save or fall under its influence, becoming filled with remorse over straying from the ideals it represents. The effects vary based on how far a creature is from the archons on the alignment spectrum: creatures of a Chaotic bent may become fatigued or exhausted, while fully Evil creatures will break into painful rashes and explosive skin abrasions, taking damage.
Gold-Colored Superiority: Throne archons' skin and armor are both golden, and they're the most powerful archons outside the Celestial Hebdomad.
Off with His Head!: When throne archons do enter combat, they wield vorpal greatswords, which can decapitate victims on a Critical Hit for a One-Hit Kill.
Stern Old Judge: It's noted that while throne archons still embody human ideals of beauty, their regal features have a degree of stern coldness that reflects the difficult decisions they have to make.
Willing Channeler: Throne archons may allow sufficiently skilled and virtuous mortal spellcasters to channel their power.
Winged Humanoid: They're a notable aversion in that instead of wings, the throne archons' belief in their causes gives them the natural ability to levitate through the air.

Trumpet Archon

Challenge Rating: 14 (3E)

Celestial messengers and heralds, who also possess formidable martial skills should they be forced into combat.

Amazing Technicolor Population: In 3E, they are depicted as green-skinned, winged elves.
BFS: They can transform their six-foot-long trumpets into equally long magical swords.
Combat Pragmatist: It's noted that trumpet archons disdain physical combat, and if threatened prefer to obliterate foes with a barrage of their strongest spell-like abilities so the archons can quickly return to their duties.
Magic Music: Trumpet archons can paralyze creatures just by sounding their eponymous instruments, producing music of such utter clarity and piercing beauty that others can only stand and listen.
Psychopomp: A variant; according to their AD&D entry, trumpet archons, beyond serving as heavenly heralds and messengers, also accompany virtuous mortal souls back to their bodies if they are restored to life by magic.
Unusable Enemy Equipment: Anyone who steals a trumpet archon's instrument/sword will find the item changed into a useless hunk of metal (and themselves the target of irate celestials).

Warden Archon

Challenge Rating: 8 (3E, 5E)

The solemn, ursine gate guardians of Celestia, who have the secondary duty of observing the Material Plane through magical scrying pools.

Beary Friendly: They're big, bipedal bear people, and are generally peaceful and gentle. This has led some to assume that warden archons are lazy and harmless, which can be a fatal mistake.
Detect Evil: In 3rd Edition, warden archons have the "Unerrying Assay" ability, letting them know other creatures' alignments no matter how they try to hide them with spells like misdirection or nondetection.
Fallen Angel: While warden archons' near-constant observation of the Material Plane makes them the archons with the best understanding of the mortal world, it also makes them the most prone to falling prey to the temptations they've observed.
Killer Bear Hug: Appropriately enough, warden archons eschew weapons, and if they must enter combat, prefer to grab and crush foes in their grasp, or rend enemies with their razor-sharp claws.
Obfuscating Stupidity: They're willing to play dumb to lure enemies closer, such as by pretending to be a big, stupid brute, or that they haven't detected someone trying to sneak by.
The Sleepless: Like owl archons, warden archons never sleep, allowing them to stand constant vigil or monitor the world of mortals.
Super-Reflexes: In 3E they have the "Uncanny Dodge" ability of a mid-level rogue.
Tracking Spell: In 5E, if a warden archon bites an opponent, for the next 24 hours, the celestial knows the distance and direction to that foe, so long as they're on the same plane of existence.

Word Archon

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)

These archons wield the power of truename magic, and are charged with defending the very concepts of words like "charity," "goodness" and "virtue."

Berserk Button: They're enraged by creatures that pervert the sanctity of truespeech, like devilish logokrons and aberrant garblers.
Carry a Big Stick: When combat gets physical, they prefer to use enchanted holy warhammers.
Language of Magic: Word archons are masters of truename magic, and make use of utterances such as shockwave or a reversed archer's eye to give them advantages in combat.
Winged Humanoid: Rather than conventional feathered pinions, word archons feature clouds of rune-covered parchment in the shape of wings, which grant them the same effect.

Argos

Origin: Spelljammer
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Huge blobs covered in eyes and mouths, often found roaming about in search of food, though some ally with beholders.

Batman Can Breathe in Space: Argos can constantly replenish their own air envelopes, allowing them to wander Wildspace without the benefit of a ship.
Big Eater: These creatures are driven by their ravenous hunger, and can consume just about anything that moves and is digestible. If argos go a week without a meal, they'll start to shrink until they're 10 feet wide, at which point their outer shell becomes a chrysalis and they enter hibernation for up to a year, until prey become available.
Blob Monster: Argos look like amoebas 10 to 20 feet wide, covered in a hundred eyes and many mouths. They can extend maw-tipped pseudopods to use as limbs capable of grasping objects, and store items in temporary cavities within their bodies (though the argos' digestive juices will ruin them after a few weeks).
Eye Beams: An argos has a central eye with a tripartite pupil, which can cast the spells alter self, color spray and ray of enfeeblement. The rest of its eyes can use one of twenty other spells, from blindness to heat metal to flesh to stone, though it can only bring up to ten of them to bear on a single target.
Flight: They can levitate themselves to fly, albeit very slowly.
A Kind of One: The Argus Panoptes from Classical Mythology was a many-eyed giant who ended up preserved in the peacock's tail feathers, but here they're an entire species of eye-studded creatures.
Signature Scent: Oddly enough, argos smell like a bouquet of flowers.
Swallowed Whole: An argos can simply engulf smaller creatures on a Critical Hit, dealing constant acid damage to the victim from the argos' digestive juices. Fortunately, it only takes a little bit of slashing damage for an engulfed victim to cut themselves free.
Wall Crawl: They can slither up walls and across ceilings without incident.

Armadillephant

Alignment: Unaligned

Armored pachyderms that are prized as war mounts.

Crafted from Animals: Their armored skin is actually too inflexible to be used as armor for most races, though the likes of hill giants can wear armadillephant hide armor. Alternatively, an armadillephant hide can be crafted into barding for an ordinary war elephant.
Mix-and-Match Critters: As might be guessed, they're elephants with an armadillo's armored hide, as well as clawed forelegs and longer tail. Armadillephants are capable of interbreeding with regular elephants, and such pregnancies have a 10% chance to produce another armadillephant rather than an elephant.
Mundane Utility: Outside of battle, armadillephants' foreclaws let them quickly and easily dig trenches, latrines and pit traps around their handlers' camps.
War Elephants: These creatures excel in such a role, thanks to their natural armor, which offers them as much protection as full plate. Most armadillephants are created for combat, usually gifted by the gods of savage demihuman tribes of orcs, goblins or gnolls, who might treat their warbeast as more valuable than the members of the tribe. Other races' mages can try to use magic to a similar result, "but such an act is likely to incur the wrath of various humanoid deities, who consider the creation of such a beast to be their own purview."
Weird World, Weird Food: Armadillephants are too rare and valuable to waste as livestock, but their flesh is apparently quite tasty, so should one fall in battle, their tribe is likely to consume it, after honoring the beast for its sacrifice. "It is believed that eating an armadillephant's heart causes fearlessness in battle; this vital organ is usually reserved for the chieftain."

Armand

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Sturdy, desert-dwelling humanoids who live nomadic existences as they search for new experiences.

Bare-Fisted Monk: Their favored class is monk, and their "wardens" have several ranks in it.
Commune: Armands don't believe in private ownership of a community's resources, have little use for money, and arrive at decisions through group consensus (though their wardens' opinons tend to carry the most weight).
Made of Iron: Armands have thick, plated skin and can take a defensive stance, rendering them immobile but even more durable.
Stand Your Ground: Individual armands get attack and defensive benefits from holding their ground, and as a people, their tribes will converge on defensible terrain and make a stand against a common threat.
Worthless Yellow Rocks: Armand society scorns wealth for its transitory nature, and instead esteems those who have traveled, had new experiences, and returned home with tales of their adventures.

Arrowhawk

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (juvenile), 5 (adult), 8 (elder) (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Predatory avians from the Elemental Plane of Air that spend their entire lives on the wing.

Improbable Piloting Skills: An organic example; between their multiple wings and sinuous bodies, arrowhawks are amazingly manueverable in flight, capable of turns that other flyers can't match. This translates into them boasting a "perfect" flight speed, allowing them to move freely through the air without sacrificing movement during turns and the like.
It Can Think: They look like animals, but arrowhawks have human-level intelligence, and can speak Auran. They just aren't much for conversation, and are aggressively territorial.
Our Monsters Are Weird: Take a predatory bird and mirror it widthwise so that it has four eyes, four wings, no legs, and a beak consisting of two upper mandibles. Then give it the ability to shoot bolts of lightning. You now have an arrowhawk.
Shock and Awe: The arrowhawk's primary mode of attack is a lightning bolt fired from its tail.

Asabi

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (standard), 3 (stingtail) (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Properly called laerti, these desert-dwelling reptilian humanoids often serve as mercenaries or slaves for more powerful creatures.

Barbarian Tribe: Left to themselves, laerti tribes prey upon anyone who enters their territory, though they'll ally with other evil creatures for mutual gain, even adopting creatures like dark nagas into their tribes.
Dig Attack: They have a slow burrow speed, and often ambush foes by rising from the sand.
Dumb Muscle: Stingtails are Large compared to standard, Medium-sized asabi, but are only half as intelligent, and are content to follow the orders of their smaller brethren.
Lizard Folk: They're much more lizard-like than standard D&D lizardfolk — their limbs emerge at right angles to their torsos, giving them quick, jerky movements, they're capable of Running on All Fours with their long tails out for balance, and they frequently taste the air with their tongues.
Picky People Eater: Laerti only eat the soft parts of their prey, whether beast or humanoid, consuming the internal organs and leaving the rest for the vultures.
Poisonous Person: Asabai stingtails don't actually have stingers, instead they spray poison on victims they slap with their tails. Said poison deals normal and Constitution damage (in 3rd Edition), and additionally can cause victims to become confused for the next two rounds.
Slave Race: In their home setting, the asabi are another reptilian servitor race created by the ancient sarrukh.

Asag

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Exiles from the Elemental Plane of Earth, who wander the planes seeking to vent their fury on the humanoids they hate.

Dimensional Traveler: They can plane shift at will between the Material, Astral, and Elemental Planes, with the notable exception of the Elemental Plane of Earth.
Dishing Out Dirt: Asags know magic like stone shape and passwall, and more significantly can use major creation once per day to create permanent mineral matter.
Enemy Summoner: They can summon one or more xorns three times per day, and frequently use this to distract victims before launching their own attack.
The Exile: Sages believe that the asags were once the rulers of the Elemental Plane of Earth, but were banished from it by powerful sorcerers, leaving the creatures with a seething hatred of humanoids, particularly dwarves and gnomes.
Extra Eyes: Asags' bodies are covered in "alien"-looking eyes, which helps them spot foes and prevents them from being flanked.
King Mook: They look something like Huge xorns, being trilaterally-symmetrical rock creatures, and can command normal xorns in battle. However, they lack true xorns' "earth glide" ability, though asags can still burrow through the earth as quickly as they walk atop it.
Poisonous Person: Those struck by an asag risk contracting "dry death," a disease that on top of Constitution damage leaves victims fatigued and dehydrated no matter how much water they drink.
Rock Monster: They resemble such, being huge creatures with stony skin, and elder asags may even grow lichen and moss on their hides. However, they're classified as Outsiders, not true Elementals.
That's No Moon: Asags can blend in with surrounding rock and earth, and commonly ambush victims by pretending to be a hillock or boulder until victims come within snatching range.

Ascomoid

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (2E), Unaligned (3E)

Spherical fungoids up to 10 feet wide, which roll about, slamming into and spraying spores onto potential prey.

Acid Attack: 3rd Edition ascomoids can spray foes with a jet of highly acidic spores.
Attack Animal: Goblinoids often lure ascomoids into tunnels or galleries on the edge of their settlements, letting them attack any intruders and raise a ruckus to alert the defenders. Though mindless, ascomoids can be tamed to an extent, and will eventually learn to ignore those who feed them fresh or rotten meat.
Necessary Drawback: Their spherical bodies make these rolling fungi immune to trip attacks or the prone condition, but vulnerable to being shoved around.
Poisonous Person: In their AD&D rules, ascomoids' spores are highly poisonous, killing anything that fails their saving throw in at most four rounds, and leaving survivors blinded and choking on the floor for a time.
Rolling Attack: They're giant puffballs that primarily attack by rolling their large, 500-pound bodies into or over victims.
Trampled Underfoot: Ascomoids weigh about 500 pounds, letting them knock over and crush opponents they collide with.

Ash Rat

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Superheated magical rodents that can easily cause fires as they seek out large sources of flame.

Feed It with Fire: Ash rats gain nourishment from heat, and are healed by fire.
Non-Malicious Monster: They're not aggressive, and have only an animal's intelligence, but ash rats can cause catastrophic fires in both settlements and wilderness as they wander around in search of heat.
Playing with Fire: Ash rats can spit fire at those who threaten them, and constantly exude smoke around them.
Smoke Out: They only fight when cornered, and use the smoky haze they generate to avoid melee attacks and help them hide.

Ashenwight

Classification: Undead (5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (feral), 9 (psionic) (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (feral), True Neutral (psionic)

Undead that arise when hateful creatures die in an area tainted by the Far Realm.

Ax-Crazy: Feral ashenwights spawn without their memories and a near-animal Intelligence score, and have no desire beyond killing living creatures.
Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: The eyes of ashenwights often glow with otherworldly power.
Make Them Rot: Ashenwights attack with "necrotic shards" in melee or at range.
Psychic Powers: Non-feral ashenwights develop psionic abilities, letting them use mage hand at will for some minor telekinesis, communicate with telepathy (since they can't speak normally), charm other creatures with a "psionic crown," and calm emotions. Some of these psionic ashenwights go on to try and "enlighten" their feral brethern by helping them develop these abilities.
Quest for Identity: Should a feral ashenwight arise or linger in an area charged with dark power, it has a chance of developing psionic abilities and regaining its full sentience — however, "the resulting consciousness is a new creation separate from who the ashenwight was in life." Some psionic ashenwights dedicate themselves to learning all they can about their previous life.

Asherati

Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: True Neutral

Lithe, hairless, desert-dwelling humanoids with the extraordinary ability to swim through sand, navigating via light shed by their bodies.

Desert Bandits: The asherati can play this role with aplomb. By day, their traders sell exquisite sand sculptures with passing caravans, while at night, asherati rogues silently rise from the sand to engage in a bit of larceny.
Kill It with Water: Asheratis' bodies are so dry that they absorb water rapidly. A soaking wet asherati takes a minor penalty on attack rolls and checks, but an asherati immersed in water can't hold their breath and is in immediate danger of drowning.
Phosphor-Essence: At will, an asherati can make their skin glow, providing bright light out to 60 feet and letting the asherati see their surroundings even while moving through sand (other creatures only see the sand take on a warm, orange glow). Once per day, an asherati can amp up this radiance enough to dazzle nearby creatures for a minute.
Prophet Eyes: Their eyes are solidly the color of ivory.
Sand Is Water: They play it absolutely straight, using their signature "sandswim" ability to deftly move through lose sand as easily as a fish through water. This does require that the asherati only be wearing light armor and carrying a light load, and leads them to favor skintight clothing.
Underground City: The asherati have built their towns, and even full-fledged cities, beneath the sands of their home deserts.

Ashworm

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

These 10-foot-long relatives of the infamous purple worm are also known as "thunderherders" for the sound their groups make as they pass through the desert sands.

Beware My Stinger Tail: An ashworm has a dangerous venomous stinger on its tail that deals Strength damage, and is usually clipped off by its trainer.
Horse of a Different Color: Ashworms are sometimes caught and trained as mounts, and there's a whole "ashworm dragoon" Prestige Class based around riding them.
Sand Worm: They dwell in deserts and can burrow through the sand as quickly as they move across the surface. Ashworms are even capable of evading attacks by diving beneath the sand, though only the most skilled riders can go along with their mount if it dives like this.
Wall Crawl: An ashworm can secrete a sticky substance that allows it and a strapped-down rider to climb vertical surfaces, albeit slowly (5 feet per round).

Asperi

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Intelligent, telepathic horses which live in the mountains. They're sometimes known as "wind steeds" due to their ability to gallop across the sky by riding the wind.

Dodge the Bullet: They (and their riders) gain a bonus to their Armor Class against ranged attacks after moving.
Flight: An asperi's baseline flight speed is only half its land speed, but they can take advantage of something similar to a wind walk effect and gain a speed boost from winds over 20 miles per hour.
Horse of a Different Color: If raised from youth and treated with respect, asperis can be trained as steeds.
No-Sell: Asperis are never negatively affected by wind, whether mundane or magical. They also have the cold subtype, and are immune to such damage (but take double damage from fire).
Only the Chosen May Ride: An asperi mount is more than just an animal, it is an intelligent creature that will never tolerate a rider who is chaotic or evil. A paladin might convince an adult asperi to serve as a permanent mount, but they usually agree to bear riders only temporarily, since they value their independence.
Sapient Steed: Anyone who rides an asperi should remember that their mount's Intelligence and Wisdom are higher than the average human's.
Telepathy: They can communicate mentally with any nearby intelligent creature.

Aspis

Origin: Greyhawk
Alignment: True Neutral

Human-sized, intelligent, weevil-like insectoids who dwell in underground nests.

Acid Attack: A passive example; aspis cows exude a white acidic gunk that coats the surfaces of their chambers, and can eat through metal or wood in a single round, while dealing damage to non-aspis until it's washed off. The stuff is prized by alchemists, however, and can be used to prepare magical inks and potions relating to acid and corrosion.
The Beastmaster: Aspis are able to create scents and chemical cues that let them domesticate unintelligent giant insects, most commonly giant ants.
Bee People: D&D's Ur-Example, debuting in the 1986 AD&D Module A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity. Most aspis encountered are adult male drones, who despite their intelligence have no distinct personalities or even names, and are "nothing more than cogs in the machine that is the hive itself." They're wholly subservient to the (less intelligent) aspis cow at the heart of the hive, a 15-foot-long, grub-like creature who spends her time directing the drones and producing larvae.
Insectoid Aliens: Again, they're human-sized weevils, with gray or off-white chitinous bodies, six limbs, and a short proboscis. They tend to keep to themselves, but will ferociously defend their tunnels.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: In combat, aspis will rear up on their hindmost legs, letting them use their other four limbs to Dual Wield and Dual-Shield.
No-Sell: They're immune to cold or electricity damage, and only take half damage from fire.
Pheromones: Aspis are exceptional crafters of scents and perfumes, which they not only use to domesticate giant insects, but manipulate other creatures. For example, a town that antagonizes an aspid nest might find locations splashed with a sticky yellow liquid that not only attracts giant rats, but drives them into a killing frenzy.
Starfish Language: Aspis communicate with each other via scents that humans can't even detect, and have no spoken or written language. Only one in twenty aspis can manage a rough form of spoken Common.

Asrai

Alignment: Chaotic Good

Small, shy female fey with shimmering golden hair, found in waters across the Material Plane and beyond. They're known as water sprites in the Beastlands and sjöra in Ysgard.

Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Asrai live for exactly nine years, at which point they dissolve into water that spontaneously reforms into two to five new asrai identical to their "mother."
Expressive Hair: Their Planescape entry mentions that their hair twists and twins around asrai in response to their emotions.
Godiva Hair: Asrai rarely wear clothes, as their long hair is enough to preserve their modesty.
Good Counterpart: There's a rumor that the asrai were at one point a counterpart to the marraenoloths, guiding creatures along the River Oceanus like those fiends serve as boatmen on the River Styx, but if true, the asrai have long since abandoned that duty (probably due to be hunted by beings out to eat them).
Hypnotic Creature: A school of asrai moving in unison can do a sparkling water dance that replicates a hypnotic pattern spell, which can cause mesmerized onlookers to fall into the water and drown. For this reason, marine predators might follow a group of asrai hoping for easy prey.
One-Gender Race: There are no known male asrai.
Our Nymphs Are Different: Though referred to as fairies, asrai are thematically closer to nereids or undine than the likes of sprites and pixies. That said, their Planescape write-up mentions some Fair Folk-ish tendencies like trying to seduce sailors on night watch into abandoning their posts and causing a shipwreck (despite the asrai's Chaotic Good alignment).
Speaks Fluent Animal: Asrai speak the language of other undersea races like nixies, sirines, etc., but can also communicate with ordinary fish, as well as understand the songs of the balaena.
Superhuman Trafficking: The likes of hydroloths, slaadi, and marraenoloths consider asrai a delicacy, and will pay up to 300 gold for one caught in a net and sealed in a container of water protected by a darkness spell.
Took a Level in Badass: In their debut in Dragon 191, asrai are nearly defenseless beyond their hypnotic ability, and not only die to sunlight, but can't survive out of water either. Their Planescape entry ascribes their "dies outside of water" trait to certain deep-dwelling asrai in the River Oceanus, and mentions how the fey will fiercely defend their waters on Arborea with willow bows firing projectiles smeared with poisonous fish guts.
Virtuous Vegetarianism: Asrai eat algae and freshwater plants, and never consume meat. This is part of a pact with nature, so that no aquatic predator will attack an asrai, even under magical compulsion.
Weakened by the Light: Asrai are nocturnal, and actually "melt away like ice" when exposed to natural sunlight, taking unavoidable damage each round.

Assassin Bug

Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Human-sized insectoids that resemble giant bluebottle flies, feared for implanting their maggots in living prey.

Better to Die than Be Killed: It's noted that one sign of an assassin bug infestation is wild animals running into wildfires, "as they immolate themselves in an instinctive effort to rid themselves of this scourge."
Bioweapon Beast: 5th Edition conjectures that some circle of druids had a hand in the assassin bugs' creation, perhaps because these worshipers of Talos or Malar wished to kill encroaching humanoids. Alternatively, the insects might have been an effort to naturally decompose monster corpses Gone Horribly Wrong.
Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Female assassin bugs can implant their eggs in a victim via an ovipositor attack. In 2nd Edition it takes up to a day for the eggs to hatch, but in 5E this happens immediately so that, at the start of the victim's next turn, they take Damage Over Time as they're Eaten Alive by the maggots burrowing towards their heart. Up to two weeks later, juvenile assassin bugs will emerge from the victim's corpse.
Heal It With Fire: 5E notes that, if fire is applied to the wound in the round after a victim is implanted with assassin bug eggs, the victim will take a point of fire damage but the maggots are destroyed. In the rounds after that, however, the maggots are burrowing into the victim, and only cure disease or similar magic will remove the infestation.
The Paralyzer: Their bites carry a paralytic poison, to render prey helpless for implantation with eggs.
Was Once a Man: 5th Edition notes assassin bugs' appearance, above-animal Intelligence and ability to understand (but not speak) Druidic, theorizing that the druids who created them engaged in "self-sacrifice" to do so.

Assassin Vine

Classification: Plant (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Murderous plants which strangle any creature unlucky enough to come within their reach.

Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: Their vines produce grape-like fruit in the late summer, which are hearty but bitter in flavor, and can be made into a heady wine.
Green Thumb: Assassin vines can magically animate nearby plants to entangle victims.
He Was Right There All Along: Unless someone spots their tell-tale hand-shaped leaves, assassin vines are easy to mistake for normal plants.
Man-Eating Plant: Assassin vines collect their own fertiliser by killing prey and depositing the carcasses near its roots.
Underground Monkey: A subterranean variant of assassin vine grows around geothermal vents, and are camouflaged to resemble mineral deposits. The amount of "fertilizer" they generate can support small ecosystems of fungi, which help conceal the plant.

Astral Construct

Classification: Construct (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 - 10 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Ectoplasmic constructs created and shaped by a psionicist into a temporary ally.

Ectoplasm: Astral constructs are created by the eponymous Psychic Power of the metacreativity discipline, in which raw ectoplasm is drawn from the Astral Plane and shaped into a mindless servitor that follows its creator's commands.
Elite Mooks: The Complete Psionic splatbook provides the Ectopic Form feat, which allows a psionicist to create preset astral constructs with unusual and specialized abilities. An "anathemic carapace" form, for example, explodes when destroyed or on command, while an "emerald gyre" has three arms that help it grapple, trip or pounce on opponents.
Minions Customized at Creation: Unlike conventional Summon Magic, which calls in specific creatures with set stats and abilities, an astral construct is created on the fly by a psionicist. This lets a manifester choose from several menus of special abilities or qualities to give their creation, such as increased speed, a Healing Factor, an Elemental Punch, Invisibility, and more. The manifester can also shape their astral construct's physical appearance with a Craft (sculpting) check, though this has no effect on its statistics, and it "can't hide the otherworldly material from which it is formed."

Astral Dreadnought

^3e

Classification: Outsider (3E), Immortal Magical Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 17 (3E), 24 (4E), 21 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Titanic horrors which prowl the astral plane, astral dreadnoughts are the bane of any soul who dares to try astral projection.

Anti-Magic: Its eye projects a constant antimagic cone.
Bigger on the Inside: The demiplanar donjon that serves as an astral dreadnought's "stomach" has a ceiling 100 feet high and is a thousand feet in diameter, far larger than the creature's external dimensions should allow.
Dying Race: They cannot reproduce, so despite their immense power they are slowly becoming rarer as they are killed off.
Eldritch Abomination: They are gargantuan horrors with an anti-magical gaze, a tail that is infinitely long, and can devour the astral forms of other creatures. They also exist solely within the astral plane and cannot leave or be banished from it by any means. In 5th edition, an astral dreadnought's "stomach" is actually a pocket dimension with air and gravity, and it can teleport people into this dimension without needing to eat them first.
Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: Or Monster, in this case. The astral dreadnought (as an "ethereal dreadnought") appeared on the cover of the 1981 Manual of the Planes, but had no description or rules in the book itself. It wasn't until the 1995 Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II that the astral dreadnought became playable.
One-Hit Kill: An astral dreadnought's teeth and claws can sever the silver cord which links a creature's astral form to its physical body on a critical hit, instantly killing that creature.
Our Titans Are Different: 5th edition classifies astral dreadnoughts as titans, stating that they were created by Tharizdun to prevent ambitious mortals from reaching the Outer Planes and discovering the secrets of attaining godhood.

Astral Elf

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (5E)
Playable: 5E
Alignment: Any

An offshoot of elvenkind who left the Feywild for the Astral Sea, in order to be closer to their gods. See the Playable Races subpage for details.

Astral Kraken

Classification: Vermin (3E)
Challenge Rating: 16 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Gargantuan, tentacled creatures that lurk on the Astral Plane, ambushing travelers passing through its color pools.

All Webbed Up: If an astral kraken grapples a victim that entered the plane via Astral Projection, it can begin secreting an astral adhesive, cocooning its prey within magical resin. The victim can try to break free by succeeding an increasingly high Strength check over the next three three rounds, but after that, the astral kraken tucks the cocooned victim away in a fold of its body and moves on to find new prey. Each day someone spends cocooned like this, they take Level Drain as their life force is consumed by the astral kraken, and if this ends up killing the victim, they can only be resurrected by a limited wish or miracle.
Combat Tentacles: Astral krakens can make four tentacle attacks per round, though opponents can attempt to target and sunder them — if the beasts loses three or more tentacles, it tries to withdraw. Any opponents struck by one are in danger of being grappled as well.
Mix-and-Match Critters: They have the body and head of an eyeless octopus, but their tentacles are segmented like an insect's, and their habit of cocooning prey is very spider-like.

Astral Searcher

Alignment: Any

Mindless shells born from violence on the Astral Plane, instinctively searching for material bodies to take over.

Death of Personality: Anyone possessed by an astral searcher is essentially gone, and can only be restored by the likes of a wish spell. Even exorcising an astral searcher just results in a comatose body that other entities might be tempted to possess.
Demonic Possession: Astral searchers desperately want a physical body, and attack by wearing away at a humanoid's psyche until they fall comatose, allowing the astral searcher to take over. Fortunately, astral travelers are protected by their silver cords and are immune to an astral searcher's attacks; unfortunately, astral searchers know to lurk around color pools or "rips" formed by plane-shifting magic, then follow travelers back to the Material Plane where they're vulnerable.
Our Ghosts Are Different: Like the 5th Edition starlight apparitions, astral searchers have several ghost-like traits — they look like nebulous humanoids, they're intangible and ignore non-magical weapons, and they try to possess mortals. However, while they can be exorcised, they're explicitly not undead.
Tulpa: Astral searchers are created by the intense emotions of Prime Material travelers on the Astral Plane who were subject to violence, trauma, or death. When they're newly "born," astral searchers are little more than masses of the same raw emotion that spawned them, and consider such emotion the natural state of the universe, leading them to try to create more of it. But once an astral searcher acquires a body, within a few hours it will start benefiting from the memories of the brain it's inhabiting, and will remember languages and non-weapon proficiencies, allowing it to live a somewhat normal life as a supposed amnesic. There are stories of astral travelers coming home confused and spending the rest of their lives as mental invalids cared for by their families, until some sage determines what precisely happened to them.
Your Mind Makes It Real: An astral searcher's claws hit like a "searing lash of psychic energy," ignoring their victim's physical defenses to create sensations of pain and injury without actually harming their body — "Nevertheless, the offense is real." This means that any damage dealt by the monster will heal at a rate of 1d8 points per round, but if an astral searcher lands the "killing" blow on a victim and reduces them to 0 HP, they fall comatose anyway.

Astral Stalker

Classification: Outsider (3E), Immortal Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E), 22 (4E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Hunched, muscular humanoids who roam the multiverse in search of worthy prey.

Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: One of the astral stalkers' Rules of the Hunt is to never hunt another of their own kind.
Back Stab: They can deal Sneak Attack damage like a rogue.
Graceful Loser: Another Rule of the Hunt is that an astral stalker will never again attempt to hunt a creature that manages to elude it during its first attempt.
Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Astral stalkers find pleasure in hunting intelligent creatures for sport, and derive status from the number and power of creatures they've slain. They also find it more interesting if their quarry knows it's being hunted, and will try to warn their prey in some manner before beginning.
The Paralyzer: They can shoot a throat dart coated with a paralytic poison.
Retcon: 4th Edition presents astral stalkers as rogue "instruments of the gods for their war against the primordials," and thus classifies them as abominations like the atropal and tarrasque.
Scarily Competent Tracker: They have extensive bonuses to spotting and tracking quarry, and can even do so while moving at a normal speed, at only half the normal penalty.
Super-Reflexes: Astral stalkers can completely avoid certain attacks as per a rogue's "Evasion" ability.

Asura

Origin: Al-Qadim
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good

These celestials can be found across the Upper Planes in warhosts or as free agents, serving as divine heralds and messengers, or agents on missions of righteous punishment and death.

Armed Legs: They're infamous for their ruby-taloned feet, which deal more base damage than any weapons the asura carries. Asuras thus like diving on enemies from the air or hovering above opponents in melee.
Blood Knight: Asuras take great pride in their ability to intimidate and "correct" wayward mortals.
Fallen Angel: An asura who leaves their host to go on their own might travel the planes doing good, but some become so focused on the desired outcomes that they lose perspective regarding right and wrong — the asura might steal someone's fortune to give to a street beggar, or attack someone to save the rabbit they were about to have for supper. Thankfully, asuras usually see reason if someone can talk them down.
Flaming Sword: They typically carry scimitars with the flaming enchantment.
Harping on About Harpies: They might be considered a Good Counterpart to the classical harpy, being winged, bird-footed celestial humanoids. Asuras aren't exclusively female, however.
Hot Wings: Asuras sport wings of fire in their natural forms, which they can beat to generate a burning wind that deals fire damage to all with 15 feet.
Humanshifting: They can polymorph themselves once per day into a humanoid form.
Interservice Rivalry: Asuras don't get along with other celestials, who look down upon them as impertinent and needlessly violent, while asuras in turn distrust angels (particularly Lawful aasimon) and view them as rivals for the gods' attention. Since all those involved are literal embodiments of Good, this doesn't result in violence or underhanded scheming, they're all just open about their mutual contempt for one another.
No-Sell: Asuras are imune to fire, petrification effects, and charms and compulsions. They can also use true seeing and discern lies at will, so they're effectively immune to any attempts at deception.
Our Angels Are Different: They're a somewhat wilder take on the classic winged humanoid angel, with a name from Hindu Mythology.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Each asura carries a trumpet of doom, whose sound can cause all evil creatures within 100 feet to become shaken.

Athach

Origin: Mystara
Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Hideous, giant-sized brutes with a third arm growing from their chests.

Boulder Bludgeon: Like true giants, they can hurl boulders for a ranged attack.
Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: Athachs love jewelry set with gems and crystals, and wear as much as they can get their hands on, jamming bracelets around their fingers and necklaces around their wrists, which clash horribly with their filthy and brutish appearances. They'll also happily spend hours in their lairs admiring and polishing their gem collections.
I Lied: An athach might let smaller creatures go if they pay a tribute of precious gems, but are likely to wait a few minutes only to attack anyway. Merchants speculate that the only time an athach honors its word is when it gets distracted by a particularly shiny gem.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: A third arm sprouts from an athach's chest.
Poisonous Person: Their bites deliver a Strength-damaging poison.
The Pig-Pen: Athachs rarely bathe, and smell particularly foul.
Retcon: In 2nd Edition athachs were recognized as true giants, albeit ones on bad terms with other giant breeds (not that they got along with other athachs). 3rd Edition instead casts them as aberrations.
Smash Mook: Most athachs' approach to combat is to charge at any enemy within reach, or throw rocks at enemies outside it. Some try a degree of strategy by overrunning armored enemies to go after spellcasters and the like in the rear, but even these brighter athachs tend to start flailing away indiscriminately after a few rounds of combat.

Athasian Drake

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Elemental Beast (4E)
Alignment: True Neutral

The world of Athas infamously has only one Dragon, instead its reptilian apex predators are bestial drakes wielding both elemental and psionic powers.

Arch-Enemy: The paraelemental "lesser" drakes are fierce rivals with specific breeds of elemental drakes, gaining attack bonuses against them — magma drakes hunt earth drakes, rain drakes loathe water drakes, while sun drakes are known to battle both air and fire drakes. The "lesser" drakes' superior intelligence and physical attacks help compensate for the elemental drakes' superior psionics, but even so, "These titanic struggles can cause immense damage to the area in which they occur. Adventurers and others are well advised to avoid these contests, they are unlikely to survive to tell of it."
Crafted from Animals: Their hide and claws make for excellent weapons and armor, drake blood is useful in alchemy, while their digestive juices have applications in metallurgy, and any part of a drake is rumored to bring a bearer good luck. Some drake hides even confer additional benefits as well, so that armor made from a fire drake helps its wearer resist flames and dehydration, while a silt drake's hide protects against dust storms and other forms of choking or suffocation. This means that drake parts are both extremely valuable and dangerous to own, as they're so rare that it's easy for a templar to decide that someone must have stolen them from a sorcerer-king and have the "thief" put to death. Some sorcerer-kings even forbid the sale of drake parts and order their minions to confiscate any they find.
Dimensional Traveler: None of Athas' drakes are native to the world, instead they traveled there from the Elemental and Paramental Planes, so many generations ago that the lesser drakes have lost all memories of their homes and can't return.
Dragon Hoard: Though not true dragons, many drakes of Athas have a dragon-like tendency to hoard treasure, but they tend to be more concerned with their collection's appearance than true worth.
Fantastic Racism: They're subject to this by elemental creatures, who view the drakes as "deserters or creatures who abandoned the pure elements for this lesser plane."
It Can Think: The elemental drakes are semi-intelligent, with Intelligence scores between 2 and 4, while the paraelemental drakes' range from a low of 5 to as high as 13 in the sun drake's case, and are capable of communicating with other creatures using mind link.
Psychic Powers: All drakes have latent psionic powers, and what separates the elemental (air, earth, fire and water) and "lesser" (magma, rain, silt and sun) drakes is the degree of their psionic might.
Shrouded in Myth: Few people have seen an elemental drake, and fewer still have survived an encounter with one, so that most Athasians don't believe they exist. Some who do see a drake misidentify it as the Dragon of Tyr, leading to hysterical rumors of multiple dragons flying about. The lesser drakes are a bit more common, enough that hunting silt drakes has become a ritual in Athasian aarakocra society.
Swallowed Whole: The lesser drakes are all capable of swallowing foes if they roll well enough for their bite attacks.
Tail Slap: A drake's most damaging physical attack is often a tail sweep, which in 2E affects any foes in an area and can stun them.

Air Drake

^2e

Challenge Rating: 22 (4E)

Flighty and unpredictable creatures that spend most of their time on the wing, moving between safe perches. They tend to grab whatever objects please them and put them in a hard-to-reach location to occasionally visit and admire.

Art Evolution: Their 2E art depicts them as long and lean gliding lizards, while 4th Edition reimagines them as wyvern-like creatures.
Blow You Away: In 2nd Edition they can gate in a short-lived 100-yard diameter bubble of tornado-force wind from the Elemental Plane of Air, which deals minor damage but disrupts flying and can kick up a vicious sandstorm. 4th Edition instead lets them blast foes with bursts of elemental air, damaging and knocking them about.
Death Flight: Air drakes prefer to "tenderize" their prey by dropping it onto rocks, and even use this against other flyers by taking their victim into a terminal dive, then releasing them with just enough time for the drake to pull up, but not its prey.
Invisibility: 2E air drakes use their psionic invisibility power to get the drop on prey. Downplayed in 4th Edition, which gives its air drakes a "wind veil" ability that grants them concealment instead.

Earth Drake

Challenge Rating: 24 (4E)

The physically strongest of the drakes, who prefer to trap prey in their lairs to eat at their leisure. They resent the encroachment of civilization, and will travel miles just to destroy a man-made settlement.

Blood Knight: Earth drakes like battling their food — "The more fight a creature puts up, the better the drake will enjoy eating it." They're also so confident in their power that they're the only drakes who fight to the death.
Dishing Out Dirt: In 2nd Edition they can gate in a great cube of solid matter from the Elemental Plane of Earth, not to drop on targets, but to entrap and suffocate them. In 4th Edition they instead blast foes with orbs of elemental earth that deal damage and create difficult terrain.
Sizeshifter: In 2nd Edition they know expansion and reduction, and in 4E can psionically grow to Gargantuan size.
That's No Moon: When motionless, earth drakes' stone-like scales make them easy to mistake for a rocky outcropping.

Fire Drake

Challenge Rating: 20 (4E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Malicious creatures that enjoy tormenting their prey. They prefer to lair in active volcanoes, or at the very least places where they can bask in sunlight all day before burying themselves in warm sand for the night.

Not to be confused with a similarly-named species of dragonet found on other worlds.

Evil Laugh: While in combat, fire drakes make snorting or rumbling sounds that are easy to mistake for laughter.
Playing with Fire: In 2nd Edition, they can use pryokinesis to create and control fire, or gate in a 50-foot-wide flaming sphere from the Elemental Plane of Fire hot enough to melt non-magical metal. 4th Edition simplifies this with an orb of elemental fire that creates a persistent burning area the fire drake can then move around.
Sadist: Fire drakes "enjoy inflicting pain for the pleasure of watching their victims writhe in agony," and unfortunately possess psychic abilities to cause and enhance other creatures' pain. They're also known to grab foes in their mouths and then use them as Human Shields against other attackers, not so much because it's an effective tactic, but because it amuses the drake.

Water Drake

Challenge Rating: 18 (4E)

Elusive creatures that lurk in Athas' few water sources, avoiding intruders but killing any who trespass in their lairs. They prefer food that has been washed or soaked in water, but won't hesitate to eat a freshly-killed humanoid.

Doppelgänger Attack: Water drakes can create psionic clones of themselves to scout, or in 4th Edition, aid them in combat.
Gaia's Vengeance: They hate humanity for what it has done to Athas, and have absolutely no regard for humanoid life.
Making a Splash: They can gate in (in 2E) or fire (in 4E) an orb of elemental water, which can be a damaging rush of fresh water, an orb of solid ice that deals cold damage and might freeze victims, or a blast of boiling water that burns victims.

Lesser Drakes

Magma Drake

Gargantuan, wormlike creatures capable of swimming through lava. They're attracted to red items as treasure, particularly cloth, though the drakes are frustrated by its inability to survive in their volcano lairs.

Lava Pit: They prefer to fight from them, splashing foes with magma for additional damage, and ducking beneath the lava's surface to avoid attacks.
Mind Control: Magma drakes know mass domination, and won't hesitate to use it to "recruit" help against an earth drake. Though if they win, magma drakes will at least show gratitude towards any creature that helped them.
Sand Worm: They fit the design, being 60-foot-long worm monsters, though they're faster moving overland or swimming through lava than they are burrowing through sand.

Rain Drake

The rarest of the drakes, these creatures live in water-filled grottos, beneath waterfalls when possible, and don't last long outside the water. They prefer raindrop-shaped treasure, whether a diamond or cheap glass bead.

Belly Flop Crushing: Outside of the water, rain drakes can rear up and come crashing down on victims, dealing extra damage but making the drake vulnerable to set spears.
Not Quite Flight: Rain drakes don't have a flight speed, instead they can "swim" through even a light rain.
Weakened by the Light: They're so Weak to Fire and other dehydration effects that even ordinary sunlight deals damage to them.

Silt Drake

Terrors of the Sea of Silt, only silt horrors and foolhardy humanoids dare to hunt silt drakes. They keep no treasure, but some uncut gems might be recovered from their stomach.

Dig Attack: Silt drakes like to ambush prey by exploding out of the Silt Sea at high speed, and if coming up from the depths are capable of attacking creatures fully 30 feet off the ground.
Monstrous Cannibalism: Silt drake eggs are abandoned in the depths of the Silt Sea by their mother, and their young have to fend for themselves when they hatch and look for food. "Often, the most available food is the rest of the clutch."
Sand Worm: They're 70-foot-long serpentine monsters that can burrow through silt and sand as fast as a medium warhorse can gallop.

Sun Drake

The most intelligent of the drakes and the most powerful of the "lesser" drakes, sun drakes soar on thermals during the day and retreat to their mountain peak lairs at night. They collect treasure that matches the colors of their scales, and might trade out items as they age and their hide shifts from red to orange to yellow.

Hot Wings: Downplayed; rather than full-on fire, sun drakes' wing flaps emit a shimmering, ruddy glow "reminiscent of a fiery sunset."
Immune to Fire: They're immune to all heat attacks and effects, including the harsh Athasian sun.
Mindlink Mates: Sun drakes mate for life but are solitary, only seeing their partner once a year. However, the two maintain a constant psionic link, allowing them to call for their mate's aid.

Aurumvorax

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Also known as "golden gorgers" for their diets, these eight-legged, badger-like creatures are notable for their golden pelts and copper teeth and claws.

Crafted from Animals: Assuming an aurumvorax can be killed with care, its pelt can be converted into a luxurious fur coat, cape or fur blanket, while its teeth can be strung on silver thread to make a tiara, and its claws serve well as a necklace or even ornamental daggers. Some dwarf grooms thus gather their friends to hunt an aurumvorax in preparation for their wedding, and if successful, their lucky brides might find themselves weighed down by over forty pounds of gorger-derived precious metals.
Metal Muncher: Aurumvoraxes supplement their diets with precious metals, particularly gold, hence their distinct pelts and claws. This makes them serious pests for the dwarves who typically share their territories.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: They get multiple claw attacks each round, and if successful can potentially make a special rend attack (in 3rd Edition) or grapple their opponent (in 5th).

Autognome

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Construct (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (5E)
Playable: 5E
Alignment: Neutral Good (2E), Any (5E)

Clanking contraptions created by mechanically-minded gnomes for tasks such as work in hazardous environments, though many have malfunctioned and gone rogue. See the Playable Races subpage for details.

Automaton

Classification: Construct (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Similar to golems, these constructs were built to be laborers or warriors, but are animated by shadow magic rather than a bound elemental.

Blade Below the Shoulder: An automaton's limbs are formidable weapons in themselves.
Carry a Big Stick: The hammerer variant has a huge sledgehammer for a weapon-arm.
Clockwork Creature: Automatons are clockwork constructs animated by means of shadow magic.
Dumb Muscle: Automatons are inhumanly strong, the problem is that the shadow consciousness driving them is only quasi-real, and has difficulty reacting to rapidly-changing situations. This translates to 50-50 odds that an automaton will simply not act during a round of combat.
Make Some Noise: As a mining construct, the pulverizer variant can emit a shrieking cone of sonic energy once per round. It was intended to loosen up and weaken rock for drilling, but is just as effective on fleshy targets.
Retcon: The hammerer and pulverizer (renamed "screamer") reappear in 5th Edition, but as constructions used by the duergar as punishment devices — instead of being animated by shadow magic, they're powered by the pain of the victim strapped inside them.
This Is a Drill: The pulverizer model has a pair of drills for hands.

Trobriand's Automatons

Origin: Forgotten Realms

Trobriand the Metal Mage, former student of the infamous Halaster Blackcloak of Undermountain, devised a variety of constructs that he subsequently discarded as failures. Though abandoned by their creator, many of these automatons continue to function and attempt to pursue their original missions.

A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The minor automatons follow their orders the best they can, but their bodies often break down from the rigors of their labor, which can lead the constructs to go berserk when they're unable to fulfil their directives. In such instances, the thanatars simply destroy the rogue machine for the ferragans to break down into spare parts or raw materials.
Flawed Prototype: All of these automatons were consigned to a dumping ground after Trobriand encountered some flaw in their magical programming that he couldn't be bothered to fix. The thanatars were a failed attempt to improve on the scaladars' design. The ferragans have a habit of using valuable magic items like iron bands of Bilaro as scrap metal. And the silversann preferred to keep magic items they found rather than return them to Trobriand, and could occasionally ignore commands even from Trobriand's Master Ring.
Forced Sleep: Thanatars have a nozzle in their heads that can deliver a sleep gas to a victim held in their Power Pincers.
Go for the Eye: Silversanns are noncombatants, and their manipulator-tentacles do pathetic damage if used to whip an opponent, though the constructs are smart enough to aim for the eyes of an attacker, potentially blinding them.
Hive Caste System: Trobriand's discarded constructs have formed a simple, hive-like society.
- The minor automatons, shaped like any number of arthropods, are simple drudge workers, hauling scrap and digging for resources.
- The crab-shaped ferragans are mechanics that repair other constructs.
- The scorpion-like thanatars are Huge war machines that defend other automatons and attack creatures carrying useful materials.
- The silversann, two-foot-long, robotic, matte-black silverfish, are normally solitary creatures that spend their time searching for magic items, but they also repair other automatons they come across, and can give them commands.
It Can Think: The minor automatons, despite their low intelligence, regularly communicate with one another as they go about their tasks, and form real societies given time. Meanwhile, the silversann are both intelligent and curious, enough to grow increasingly frustrated if confined to a single area and unable to seek out new magic items, and hope to develop some way to wield magic that would let them explore a wider area. In benign cases, this may lead them to question adventurers about how they manipulate magic, though some silversann have also resorted to dissecting magic items — and mages — to try and learn how to replicate their function.
Mix-and-Match Critters: The minor automatons were often barely functional before being discovered and repaired by the ferragans, using whatever parts were available. This gives them eclectic appearances, so one might look like a scorpion with an extra claw for a tail, while another might have tentacles for legs.
Organ Drops: Silversann are able to control other automatons with a device in their heads that functions like a ring of Trobriand, which a sufficiently-Intelligent characater might be able to salvage from one's wreckage.
Playing with Fire: Ferragans have a welding torch-like flame jet that also serves as a Breath Weapon, though it only has a limited number of uses per day, and the range is short enough that it can only be used against a grappled opponent.
Poisonous Person: An unintentional example; ferragans emit so much smoke and welding fumes that anyone engaging in strenuous activity around them has to make Constitution checks or take a penalty on attack rolls and proficiency checks until they've had a few rounds of fresh air.

Scaladar

Classification: Construct (3E, 5E), Natural Animate (4E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 6 (4E), 8 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

These huge metallic scorpions are Trobriand's most successful creations, fearsome war machines that unfailingly follow the orders of whoever bears one of the rings of Trobriand.

Feed It with Fire: Magic missile attacks only heal scaladars, while electricity attacks supercharge their shocking stinger.
Grievous Harm with a Body: After grappling and constricting a foe in its Power Pincers, a scaladar can use them as a bludgeon to hit other foes, which deals additional damage to the grappled schmuck.
I Just Want to Be Free: Squch is a special enhanced scaladar who is sentient, quite intelligent, and evil. It simultaneously desires to control other constructs and find a way to be free of Trobriand's Master Ring, by acquiring sufficient magic for itself.
Kill It with Water: Scaladars can walk across the bottoms of bodies of water without difficulty, but such immersion will cause them to quickly rust, losing all mobility within 2 to 40 days.
Lost Technology: One theory is that the scaladars are reproductions of construct designs found in Myth Drannor, Netheril, or another fallen magical civilization, though the presence of a duplicate copper horror in Trobriand's laboratory suggests that he might have derived the design from the clockwork horrors of wildspace.
No-Sell: Beyond their construct immunities, scaladars are immune to any attempts to magically control them short of a wish spell, and of course the rings of Trobriand.
Restraining Bolt: The rings of Trobriand allow their bearers to mentally command any scaladars within 100 feet, and a scaladar that somehow attacks someone with one of those rings will shut off for a few rounds. However, Trobriand crafted a Master Ring of Trobriand that can override the commands of the lesser rings, and used it to remove rivals and ex-apprentices with their own scaladar forces.
Scary Scorpions: They're built to resemble as such, as per the preferences of their creator.
Shock and Awe: A scaladar's stinger also zaps a victim with electricity. This attack is usable underwater, in which case it operates like a fireball spell centered on the automaton.

Avalancher

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Large, crab-like, mountain-dwelling creatures named for their chief hunting tactic.

Buried Alive: Avalanchers cause avalanches to bury their prey, to be eaten at their leisure.
Eye on a Stalk: When they aren't curled up and disguised as a rock, avalanchers examine their surroundings by extending their eye-stalk. It also gives them excellent all-around vision, making them immune to being flanked.
Railing Kill: While their main hunting tactic is waiting above mountain paths and causing avalanches, they're also willing and able to ram other creatures over the sides of cliffs.
Rock Monster: Subverted; they have boulder-like exteriors they use as camouflage, but are magical beasts with the (earth) subtype rather than true elementals.
Weird World, Weird Food: Avalancher meat is actually a prized food among some mountain-dwelling races. This is despite the fact that avalanchers are intelligent and capable of conversing in rudimentary Terran.

Aventi

Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Good

An amphibious offshoot of humanity, blessed with bodies adapted to the ocean after their ancient kingdom sank beneath the waves.

Apparently Human Merfolk: Aventi can easily pass as normal humans, as the only signs of their amphibious nature are swimming fins on their forearms and calves that can fold flat against their limbs, and pale skin that has a slight bluish tinge. They'll often visit coastal settlements to acquire information or supplies and leave with the locals none the wiser of their true nature.
Atlantis: In ancient times, the island nation of Aventus was a dominant maritime power, but a cataclysm — either the action of a rival sea goddess, or the consequence of mages' experiments — made the island sink. While he couldn't save the island, the sea god Aventernus gave his people the ability to breathe water, so the Aventi could continue to flourish under the sea.
Human Subspecies: They have the human subtype, so any effect that applies to a human applies to Aventi.
Making a Splash: Thanks to their bond with the sea god Aventernus, the Aventi cast spells with the water descriptor at a higher caster level.
The Order: The Knights of the Pearl are paladins of Aventernus sworn to protect the Aventi people, and defend their enclaves.
Stripperiffic: Aventi dress plainly and sparsely, wearing just enough to preserve their modesty, "and some wear less than that."
Underwater City: Aventus was one after it sank, though the Aventi no longer dwell there — some accounts say the Aventi had to abandon it due to a disease outbreak, others say the sahuagin armies of a kraken lord drove them from it. Today the Aventi live in petty kingdoms of about a thousand inhabitants, though these kings are bound together by treaties and alliances.

Avolakia

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Subterranean horrors whose wormlike bodies bristle with chitinous limbs and rubbery tentacles. They have an innate mastery of necromantic magic.

Compelling Voice: When in humanoid form, avolakias can speak in a melodious, hypnotic voice to replicate a suggestion spell a few times each day.
Eyes Do Not Belong There: An avolakia's eyes are not on its head, but on the tips of the six octopus tentacles which it uses to walk around.
Necromancer: They can cast spells such as animate dead and create undead each three times per day, and can thus quickly amass a horde of undead to serve as guardians/food.
Picky People Eater: Avolakias can digest living or dead flesh, but find both disgusting — they much prefer undead flesh, sometimes "fresh" off a zombie's flank.
Poisonous Person: Their bite attacks deliver a potent Wisdom-damaging poison, which can quickly render victims comatose.
Religion of Evil: They worship the quasi-divine Kyuss, and frequently infiltrate humanoid settlements to set up cults dedicated to the Elder Evil.
Villain Team-Up: They sometimes form alliances with their fellow Underdark aberrations, the mind flayers, to go after other intelligent beings — the illithids eat their victims' brains, and the avolakias reanimate the corpses. However, such alliances eventually fall apart either because the mind flayers take too long "processing" their captives for the avolakias' tastes or the illithids take issue with the avolakias killing and reanimating some of their own into powerful undead minions.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can polymorph into humanoid form, and infiltrate humanoid societies to corrupt them or to procure fresh corpses for reanimation.

Azer

Classification: Outsider (3E), Elemental Humanoid (4E), Elemental (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E, 5E), 17 (4E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Dwarflike entities of metal and heat from the Elemental Plane of Fire.

Achilles' Heel: As Fire Elementals, they are extremely vulnerable to cold and water. Early editions even stated directly that Azers die if they spend more than an hour in areas with lower temperature than 200 degrees fahrenheit.
Chrome Champion: Their bodies are made of literal bronze. They are quite tough and difficult to injure as a result.
Greed: Azer generally do not display emotion, with the exception of greed. They love precious minerals and metals.
Lack of Empathy: An Azer has no compassion, not even for their kinsmen.
Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Played with. Azers have similar appearances and behaviour to typical D&D dwarves, but you can easily tell an azer from a dwarf at a glance: after all, one of them has metal skin, glowing eyes, and hair made of fire, and the other does not. 4th edition posits that they are dwarves, specifically descendants of those dwarves who were enslaved by the fire giants in ancient times.
Flaming Hair: An azer is a being of fire, which outwardly manifests in its fiery hair and beard.
Immune to Fire: As a rule, due to being elemental beings of flame, azers are immune to fire damage.
Playing with Fire: An azer's metal body is extremely hot, to the point that any metal weapon they pick up becomes incandescent. Touching one is not a good idea.

Azmyth

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Intelligent batlike creatures that sometimes bond with humanoids.

Beware My Stinger Tail: Downplayed; unlike mundane bats, azmyths have long tails with stingers, but in combat they do at most two points of damage.
Intellectual Animal: Azmyths are commonly smarter than the average human, and know spell-like abilities such as know alignment, invisibility and create silence.
Intergenerational Friendship: Their lifespan is unknown, but azmyths are thought to live at least a century. They can also form partnerships with humanoids that deepen into friendships, so that azmyths may continue to accompany the offspring of their original companions.
Shock and Awe: Twice per day they can replicate a shocking grasp attack.
Telepathy: They rely on this to communicate, since they are The Speechless, able only to "emit shrill squeaks of alarm or rage, and endearing, liquid chuckles of delight or amusement."

Azurin

Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Any non-Neutral

Humans whose souls are infused with pure incarnum, giving them passionate spirits and additional power, though shorter lifespans.

Human Subspecies: Azurins are mechanically human, and in rare events are born to normal human parents when their child's pre-incarnate soul passes through an incarnum-rich part of the planes on the way to their body, or emerged in a place steeped with incarnum. However, while two azurins are more likely to produce another azurin than normal humans, this isn't always the case. As such, purely azurin settlements are rare and tend to be small colonies near human cities.
Leeroy Jenkins: Azurins are "passionate, even a little brazen and foolhardy," prone to acting before thinking. For younger azurins, this is due to inexperience, while older azurins are much the same, "since their early successes merely reinforce their behavior."
Mage Species: They start with a point of essentia they can invest into their soulmelds, or use to power other incarnum-related abilities. Azurins are naturally drawn to the soulborn class, becoming martial meldshapers who crusade on behalf of their alignment.
Mark of the Supernatural: Azurins look human save for their eyes, the scelera of which have the sky-blue sheen of incarnum. In intolerant settlements, azurin might hide their eyes behind veils or goggles (even if this makes them look even more conspicuous), and consider it a sign of respect to meet and hold another's gaze.
Power Degeneration: Azurins are blessed with extraordinarily pure and potent souls, but that same intensity causes them to mature quickly, and their lifespans are shorter than standard humans'.
Principles Zealot: They're passionate beings who embrace extremes of the alignment spectrum, and strive to embody the ideals they adopt. Azurins are in fact too extreme to ever rule over the lands they reside in, and are instead drawn to the likes of monastic orders or even death cults that match their ethos. When given the chance, azurins will give long soliloquies on the virtues of their alignment, or spontaneously give such speeches in the middle of a boring task.
Your Days Are Numbered: They're aware of it, hence why azurins have little patience for a mundane life when they could instead be out advancing their alignment. They thus hate inaction, and tend to pace when told to wait, and even toss and turn in their sleep.

Characters / Dungeons & Dragons: Creatures A

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A

Shaboath

Skum

Anaxim

Atropal

Chichimec

Dream Larva

Hecatoncheires

Infernal

Phaethon

Phane

Xixecal

Agathinon

Astral Deva

Light

Monadic Deva

Movanic Deva

Planetar

Solar

Hammer Archon

Hound Archon

Justice Archon

Lantern Archon

Owl Archon

Sibyllic Guardian

Sword Archon

Throne Archon

Trumpet Archon

Warden Archon

Word Archon

Air Drake

Earth Drake

Fire Drake

Water Drake

Lesser Drakes

Magma Drake

Rain Drake

Silt Drake

Sun Drake

Trobriand's Automatons

Scaladar

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