Dungeons And Dragons Creatures B / Characters

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, assume that the other alignment holds true for all other game editions. Finally, the "Always Neutral" alignment listed in previous editions for nonsapient creatures has been equated with the "Unaligned" alignment of recent editions.

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B

Baazrag

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Animal (3E), Natural Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E); 1 (gnawer), 3 (swarm), 5 (breeder) (4E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Small, armored, desert-dwelling reptiles that are timid when encountered singly, but dangerous in packs.

Attack Animal: Downplayed; baazrags can be domesticated as guard beasts, but they're more commonly used to get rid of household pests, or in teams to pull wagons.
Personal Space Invader: Their 4E rules let basic baazrags latch onto victims they hit with their bite attack, getting dragged along by their opponent as the beast gnaws on them in subsequent rounds.
Poisonous Person: In 4th Edition, their gnawing deals poisonous Damage Over Time, while in 2nd Edition, a baazrag's saliva contains a toxin that slows natural healing to 20% of its normal rate. Their AD&D rules explain that this same toxicity also applies to the sack of fluid beneath their armored shell, so that it will sicken those who harvest it from a slaughtered baazrag.
Psychic Powers: The baazrag breeders statted in 4th Edition have the psionic power to lure prey closer to them, and also psychic sensitivity in general — if one takes psychic damage from an enemy, it immediately charges at the offending creature.
Sex Shifter: Their 4E entry explains that all baazrags are born female, but if one grows into a larger potential breeder, several members of the pack will turn male to produce eggs.
The Swarm: As mentioned, an individual baazrag isn't too dangerous, and would rather flee than engage in combat, but if pressed, the rest of the pack will turn up to help deal with the threat. 4th Edition even has stats for a group of baazrags that use the swarm rules, letting them pull down and mob opponents.

Bacchae

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Humanoids infused with the spirit of Bacchanalian revelry, forming riotous bands that constantly roam about in a state of frenzied debauchery.

Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Bacchae often dare each other to attempt ridiculous stunts, such as picking fights with the petitioners of Ysgard — "they die young, and die happy."
The Berserker: In combat, bacchae can fly into a drunken frenzy, attacking in "a flurry of eye-gouging, biting, scratching, clubbing, and kicking" that acts like a barbarian's rage ability in 3rd Edition.
Charm Person: They can cast the spell three times per day in 3rd Edition, to help invite other beings to join their parties.
The Hedonist: They exist solely to experience the delights of dancing, drinking and carousing, and sweep up other beings in their revelry. Bacchae usually wander through the wilderness, partying with travelers, fey, and wood elves, but they sometimes descend upon a civilized settlement, to the delight of commoners and the dismay of authority figures.
Mood-Swinger: Bacchae may suddenly turn violent if other beings resist their invitations, try to break up their party, or refuse to hand over alcohol. But a bacchae mob can also end a brawl as abruptly as one starts — sometimes this is a ruse to let the bacchae recover for a moment before renewing their assault, but other times these are honest attempts to make amends and recognition of their opponent's skill (or lack thereof).
Shadow Walker: Bacchae mobs move in a figurative and literal blur in 2nd Edition, where they can use shadow walk twice per day to quickly descend upon a location, or escape before authorities arrive.
The Virus: Anyone swept up in a bacchae mob's debauchery has to save at the next sunrise to recover their senses and leave, otherwise they become a bacchae themself, abandoning their previous life (and stats) to join the mob. Only a heal, limited wish or miracle spell can return them to normal at that point.

Backward Man

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_backwards_man_3e.png

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Freakishly contorted humanoids who engage in campaigns of paranoia and mayhem before finally killing their victims.

Combat Tentacles: They attack with a ten-foot-long, purplish tentacle that they can extend from their mouths, and also use it to grapple and constrict opponents. Worse, hitting a backward man's body with slashing or piercing weapon causes more tentacles to sprout from the wounds, which it can attack with its next turn. Even killing one causes it to explode into a mass of barbed tentacles, which thankfully doesn't deal any damage but can horrify onlookers.
Exorcist Head: They scuttle about crabwise on their hands and feet, belly-up and their heads twisted around so they can see where they're going.
Gaslighting: Backward men prefer to play with victims before attacking. They start by using invisibility to steal small items and rearrange furniture, and make eerie noises from hiding, maybe allowing their victim to get a brief glimpse of the backward man before it vanishes. Then the aberration grows more violent, attacking livestock and pets, and destroying crops and food stores, before finally closing in for the kill.
Humanoid Abomination: They look like twisted humans, and have the Aberration type.
Monster Misogyny: For whatever reason, backward men hate women in particular, and favor them over any other target.
Wall Crawl: They can scuttle up sheer surfaces as per the spider climb spell.
Was Once a Man: One theory about them is that backward men are either "a transmuter's experiment gone wrong," or children abandoned by their mothers and transformed by their hatred into monsters.

Bainligor

Alignment: Neutral Evil

Flightless humanoid bats who roam the upper levels of the Underdark, scavenging what they can to survive.

Bat People: Leaning more towards "bat" than people — bainligors are considered hideous even by the most charitable observer.
Dodge the Bullet: Their reflexes are fast enough that if they're aren't distracted by a melee, they get an improved Armor Class against missile attacks.
The Necrocracy: Bainligor tribes are led by the oldest members, who go through a number of magical transformations as they age, growing in size each time. Eventually the eldest bainligors feel a calling to seek out a dry, empty cavern where they transition into an undead creature. These Revered Ones act as warlords and high priests for their swarms, and may lead for generations. Bainligor legend has it that the Deep Tribes from the harshest depths of the Underdark have starved until being reduced to nothing but Revered Ones, who continue to attack other creatures for the joy of it.
Starfish Language: Zig-zagged; most of bainligors' speech is too high-frequency for humanoids to hear (though dogs and cats can), but the bat folk can pitch their voices low enough to speak with normal races (though even then, they sound high-pitched and squeaky). But since bainligors have nothing of value to trade, they rarely bother to communicate with other creatures.
Super-Scream: Once per hour, a bainligor can emit a burst of ultrasound that deals damage and may stun their victim, or even leave them permanently deafened.
Super-Senses: They can ignore darkness thanks to their echolocation, though this gets shut down if they're deafened by an effect like silence.
Too Desperate to Be Picky: Bainligors will eat anything, from rothé to insects to fungi to rotting flesh. This is actually a point of pride for bainligors, evidence that they can survive anywhere, and they'll boast about eating noxious foods.

Bajang

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Malicious nature spirits resembling squat, taloned, sneering humanoids, bound to a specific corrupted jungle tree.

Can't Live Without You: Much like the more benign dryads, bajangs' lives are tied to a specific tree in their home forest, and they'll die if it is destroyed. But see below.
Combat Pragmatist: Bajangs prefer weak or helpless prey, attacking from ambush or while their victims are sleeping.
Jedi Mind Trick: They know the spell transfix, and use it to order their victims to stand still indefinitely, while the monster attacks at its leisure.
Poisonous Person: Their claws carry a Strength-damaging poison.
Resurrective Immortality: Their AD&D rules explain that should a bajang be slain, its spirit goes dormant, waiting to be reborn in a jungle tainted by a bloody battle, dark ritual, or the burital site of an evil spellcaster. When a suitable tree reaches maturity, the next full moon, the bajang's dormant essence is absorbed by the tree, appearing as a tumor-like growth in its roots that gradually moves up its trunk. When the swelling reaches the highest limb, it bursts and the bajang is reborn, ready to cause new misery.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Bajangs can polymorph themselves into orange-eyed wildcats, and also into humans in their 2nd Edition rules.

Bakemono

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Small, misshapen humanoids that launch haphazard raids on everyone around them.

Barbarian Tribe: Everything they own, from weapons to patchwork armor, is stolen from their victims, and bakemono never bother to maintain their gear. They don't farm or build, they raid supplies from civilized people and squat in abandoned structures, or drive out a hamlet's inhabitants to convert the settlement into a crude fort.
Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Downplayed; like goblins, bakemono dislike sunlight, but unlike (2nd Edition) goblins they don't take any penalties from being in it. On the flipside, bakemono don't have darkvision to help them see in caves.
Gratuitous Japanese: Their name is simply Japanese for monster.
Our Goblins Are Different: They're given the goblinoid subtype in 3rd Edition, and are repeatedly compared to standard goblins as a type of small, savage humanoid often bossed around by stronger beings (in this case oni). But they're notably dumber than proper goblins, have no affinity for living underground, and their bodies are much more variable: bakemono skin tones can range from fiery red to blue to green, some have hoofed feet or stunted wings, some have scales and others fur, some have huge noses or drooping ears, and so on.
Took a Level in Dumbass: In 2nd Edition, bakemono are still noted to be dumber than goblins, but are at least smart enough to use weapons and armor. Their 3rd Edition incarnation, in contrast, is only about as intelligent as guard dogs, and typically fight with their claws or by latching onto victims with their jaws — only exceptional individuals are smart enough to speak.

Bakunawa

Classification: Dragon (5E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Serpentine creatures equally at home in the sea and sky, crackling with the power of the storm.

Giant Animal Worship: Bakunawa are revered as "avatars of storm and tide" in their home archipelagos, viewed as sacred protectors and keepers of ancient knowledge.
A Kind of One: The Bakunawa of Philippine Mythology was a singular creature, though as usual, D&D uses it as the inspiration for an entire species.
Sea Serpents: Bakunawa are distinctly serpentine, though they can also fly.
Shock and Awe: Their bites deal additional electricity damage, their slam attacks also blast foes with sonic energy, and they can cause lightning to arc at enemies as a legendary action.
Swallowed Whole: Bakunawa are known for being merciless in battle, swallowing any challengers, who take regular lightning damage while they're trapped in the dragon's gullet.

Balhannoth

Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E), Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E), 13 (4E), 11 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (3E), Chaotic Evil (4E, 5E)

Tentacled horrors that use their magic to help ambush their victims.

Anti-Magic: 3rd Edition balhannoths suppress the magic of anything grappled in their tentacles, preventing spellcasting and temporarily nullifying magic items.
Attack Animal: In 5th Edition, some drow make expeditions into the Shadowfell to capture balhannoths, then install them as guardians along key passages.
Chameleon Camouflage: In 3rd Edition, balhannoths can change the color of their skin to blend in with their surroundings. The 4th and 5th Edition balhannoths just turn invisible instead.
Hope Spot: A 5th Edition balhannoth can sense the desires of other creatures, then reshape its environment so that it looks like the place its prey seeks. The imitation is good enough to fool desperate creatures into stumbling into the balhannoth's clutches.
Mordenkainen: There are no virtues in the Shadowfell. Thanks to the balhannoth, even hope is punished with death.
Magic Eater: Similarly to beholders, 3rd Edition balhannoths feed on both flesh and the magical auras of enchanted items they collect. This "feeding" does not damage the magic item in any way, but a balhannoth will eventually grow bored of its "taste," and seek out new magic.
Master of Illusion: The Shadowfell-native balhannoths can warp reality around their lairs, creating an imitation of what their would-be victim is seeking. But there's always an imperfection that reveals the illusion: gold items that are obviously counterfeit on close inspection, shelves of Blank Books, and so forth.
No Warping Zone: 3rd Edition balhannoths can create a dimensional lock effect emanating from them.
Retcon: Balhannoths' abilities and habitat vary greatly by edition. Their 3rd Edition incarnation lairs in the Underdark and is feared for its anti-magic abilities, in 4th Edition they instead teleport to ambush prey, while 5th Edition balhannoths are native to the Shadowfell and are potent illusionists.
Supernatural Sensitivity: 3rd Edition balhannoths have "dweomersight," allowing them to sense the presence and strength of magical auras. They cannot, however, distinguish between a magic item and an ongoing spell effect.
Teleportation: 4th Edition balhannoths can make a "reality shift" to appear next to prey.
Tentacle Rope: They can make two to four tentacle attacks reach round, and grapple and restrain victims with them.

Banderhobb

Classification: Shadow Magical Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 16 (4E), 5 (5E)
Alignment: Evil (4E), Neutral Evil (5E)

Big, frog-headed brutes that abduct victims for their masters.

Frog Men: They are supernatural entities which look like oversized bipedal frogs — the first of many, many such froglike creatures that you'll find on this list, in fact.
Shadow Walker: A banderhobb can teleport over short distances, always materializing within a dark or dimly lit spot.
Swallowed Whole: A banderhobb can stuff one Medium or smaller creature into its gaping mouth, storing its victim there until the banderhobb dies or regurgitates them.
Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: 4th Edition mentions that parents scare children by saying banderhobbs will come to take them away if they misbehave.
Undying Loyalty: During its brief existence, a banderhobb only seeks to carry out the bidding of the one who birthed it, with no concern for the harm it suffers or creates.
You Will Not Evade Me: Like any good frog monster, the banderhobb can use its tongue to ensnare distant enemies and drag them into biting distance.

Bane Wraith

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Usually Chaotic, always Evil

These undead died violently after losing everything they ever loved, and now wish for others to suffer the same loss they did.

Intangibility: They're naturally incorporeal.
Lie to the Beholder: A bane wraith's true form is "a vaguely humanoid mass of sickly gray mists and energies," but it can use disguise self at will, and even has special rules aiding its efforts to appear as a living creature. It takes a high Spot check to notice that a bane wraith is slightly translucent and not quite touching the ground.
Non-Health Damage: Their touch attacks can drain Strength or Wisdom, and the latter is so subtle that a victim has to succeed a Wisdom check (using their reduced ability score) to notice that anything happened after that stranger brushed past them in a crowd.
Revenge by Proxy: They have a fearsome penchant for this. Should someone anger a bane wraith ("and the temperament of these creatures makes them all too easily angered"), it never gets revenge directly, instead it spends months or even years hunting down the offender's friends and loved ones. Bane wraiths even have an "empathic sense" that lets them instinctively know the names and appearances of a nearby sentients' associates, and a general sense of where a target thinks them to be.
The Virus: Anyone slain via Stat Death by a bane wraith almost immediately rises as an ordinary wraith, one resembling their former self, but under their killer's control.

Banedead

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

Undead created from the fanatical worshipers of an evil god such as Bane or Xvim, who have one of their hands twisted into an oversized claw.

Berserk Button: As they were zealots in life, banedead single out clerics and paladins of rival faiths, and in the Realms prioritize priests of Cyric over any other target.
The Paralyzer: Those struck by a banedead's claw take Dexterity damage, potentially becoming paralyzed if their Dex score hits 0.
Right Hand of Doom: One of a banedead's hands becomes a twisted claw that in their AD&D rules hits as hard as a greatsword.
Zombify the Living: The ritual to create banedead requires twelve willing worshipers who are transformed directly into banedead, falling under the control of the cleric who presided over the ritual.

Baneguard

Baneguard and direguard (3e)

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Undead (3E-4E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E), 8 (direguard, 4E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Intelligent, magic-wielding skeletal servitors originally created by clerics of Bane, though the ritual to raise them has since proliferated among other faiths.

Dem Bones: Standard baneguards look much like ordinary skeletons, but unlike those lesser undead, baneguards are fully intelligent and capable of reason, if wholly malevolent.
Elite Mooks: Direguards are improved baneguards clad in shadowy, semitransparent black armor that confers a minor deflection bonus to their Armor Class, and they can see invisible creatures and objects.
Magic Missile Storm: They can fire off a pair of magic missiles every three rounds for a bit of always-accurate, Non-Elemental damage.
The Speechless: Baneguards cannot speak.
Teleport Spam: They can cast blink every ten minutes to evade attacks.

Banelar

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Immortal Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 18 (4E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil, Evil (4E)

Huge, human-headed serpents with "beards" of dextrous tentacles, named for their alliances with the priesthood of Bane.

Beast with a Human Face: This trait makes them quite similar to nagas, enough so that they're occasionally referred to as "banelar nagas."
Beware My Stinger Tail: Their tail attacks carry a poison that causes both Constitution damage and unconsciousness for several hours, with the side effect of turning the victim's skin blue.
Hermaphrodite: According to their AD&D entry, banelars mate whenever two of them encounter each other, and each then goes their separate ways to give birth to a single offspring in the winter, which they raise until the new banelar can fend for itself.
No-Sell: They're immune to acid and poison, the latter of which allows banelars to dine upon venomous serpents.
The Paranoiac: Though banelars are willing to form alliances with other creatures, they're always concerned about betrayal and sneak attacks, and obsessed with shoring up their defenses and overcoming personal weaknesses. To this end they'll hoard magical items for use or barter, try to twist agreements to their advantage by following the letter of a deal while ignoring its intent, and will think nothing of ordering their minions to break their bargains.
The Red Mage: Banelars have the spellcasting abilities of both mid-level wizards and clerics with the Evil, Magic and Water domains.
Tentacle Hair: They have "beards" of thin tentacles around their mouths, which aren't strong enough to wield weapons, but can handle food, wear enchanted rings, or wield magic wands.

Banshee

Classification: Undead (3E-5E)
Challenge Rating: 17 (3E), 12 (4E) 4 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil, Unaligned (4E)

Banshees are vicious spirits whose screams bring death to the living.

Non-Human Undead: In later editions, all banshees are formed from the spirits of female elves.
Our Banshees Are Louder: Banshees are the spirits of strong-willed, selfish people — in later editions, specifically of strong-willed, selfish female elves — who resemble translucent versions of their living selves, and endure only to spread death with their supernatural wails.
Super-Scream: A banshee's most dangerous weapon is her wail, which ravages the mind and can bring those who hear it to the brink of death.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: The sight of a banshee's visage can strike fear into nearby creatures.

Banshrae

Classification: Fey (3E), Fey Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 11 (4E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (3E), Unaligned (4E)

Spiteful and cruel fey who use their supernatural music to torment other creatures, despite their lack of mouths with which to play their flutes.

Curse: Banshraes can curse a victim once per day, causing them to inspire irrational anger in other creatures, which translates into a penalty on social interaction rolls and Armor Class.
Eating Optional: Banshraes don't eat in a conventional sense, they absorb nutriants from the earth and nearby plants when they rest. But they'll try to ruin any food or drink they come across, to ensure that other creatures can't enjoy it either.
Flechette Storm: Once per day, a banshrae can use its blowgun-flute to fire a whole cone of darts for extra damage.
Instrument of Murder: Their flutes also double as blowguns.
Magic Music: They can conjure up a masterwork flute at will, and use it to frighten creatures with a dreadful dirge, start a sing-along that forces listeners to babble along, or play a tune that compels creatures to move at least 20 feet during their turn.
The Noseless: Banshares breathe through holes in the sides of their heads, hidden by their hair.
Retcon: 4th Edition turned banshraes from sinister fey musicians into sometimes-sadistic, sometimes-trickster blowgun warriors who are explicitly incapable of playing music, but might be calmed by a performance on a wind instrument.
Sadist: Even among the evil fey, banshraes are notoriously cruel to their weaker underlings, and in combat they'll quickly dispose of powerful foes so they can take their time toying with weaker opponents.
Spawn Broodling: Banshraes can also, once each day, fire a special dart that causes a swarm of locusts to erupt from the victim's body, sickening them and dealing damage. The swarm then hangs around for a few rounds, following the banshrae's commands.
Wipe That Smile Off Your Face: In ages past, a treacherous banshrae elder made the mistake of betraying a fey queen, who retaliated by cursing all banshraes, stealing their mouths. While a verdant prince was later able to restore the banshraes' musical ability, their faces remain blank save for their insectile eyes.

Barghest

Classification: Outsider (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E), Fiend (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E-5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil, Evil (4E)

Lupine fiends that can assume the forms of ordinary goblins, and are feared for consuming the very souls of their victims.

Asskicking Leads to Leadership: They often use the power of their fiendish forms to conquer goblin tribes. For their part, the goblins suck up to them in hopes of convincing the barghest they're of better use as slaves, or at least too pathetic to make a good meal.
Retcon: In past editions, barghests were fiends native to Gehenna that sent their whelps to hunt on the Material Plane, consuming souls and growing in power until they were able to plane shift home. 5th Edition instead has barghests be spontaneously grown to goblin parents as part of a yugoloth revenge plot.
Revenge by Proxy: According to Volo's Guide to Monsters, barghests were created by the General of Gehenna to get revenge on the goblin god Maglubiyet for stiffing him on payment for services rendered. They do this by devouring the souls of goblinoids, preventing them from joining Maglubiyet's armies in the afterlife.
Soul Eating: Barghests devour their victims whole, body and soul. It takes a barghest an entire day to digest a devoured soul, and killing it before then will free the soul, but once it's fully consumed, there's even odds that the soul is gone forever, beyond the reach of mortal magic.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can change between their natural form, some sort of horrible goblin-wolf hybrid, into one indistinguishable from an ordinary goblin, and in previous editions could take the form of normal wolves as well.
You Have Failed Me: Barghests inherently fear being banished to their home plane of Gehenna before they fulfil their purpose, as a stronger yugoloth is likely to slay or enslave them for their failure.

Bariaur

Classification: Outsider (3E), Celestial (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E), 3 (5E)
Playable: 2E-3E
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Natives of the Heroic Domains of Ysgard, these tauric beings possess the upper bodies of humanoids and the lower bodies of mountain sheep or goats

All There in the Manual: Very little information was provided about the bariaur in the original Planescape run; instead, their creator went on to write two sourcebooks all about them and made them freely available online, fleshing out their culture and their spirituality.
Animal Gender-Bender: A small minority of females are born with horns like a ram, whilst an even smaller minority of males are born hornless.
Gender-Restricted Ability: Cultural more than physical, but in bariaur society, only ewes (or hornless rams) practice magic, whilst rams (and horned ewes) practice martial combat.
I Resemble That Remark!: Literally! Bariaur hate to be compared to centaurs, and regard it as quite insulting, but they share the exact same body structure, the same herbivorous appetite, and even many cultural traits.
No Guy Wants an Amazon: Horned ewes are considered very unlucky and unappealing in bariaur culture, which actually drives many of them to study martial combat; they're outcasts anyway, so they may as well gain the strength to force others to respect them.
Our Centaurs Are Different: They're extraplanar beings who resemble mountain sheep or goats with the torso of a humanoid being growing from where the head should be.
Spirited Competitor: Bariaur flocks often meet on Ysgard's plains to engage in singing or tale-telling contests, or play a game much like polo. "Human observers often mistake the rivalry for pride or pettiness, and are often completely flabbergasted when, at the end of a festival, the bariaur depart on the friendliest terms." It's not unknown for two questing bariaur who happen to meet to abandon their mission for a few hours (or days) to have a good-natured race or other contest.
Use Your Head: It goes without saying that horned bariaur can deliver killer headbutts, especially if they can build up ramming speed first.
Wandering Culture: Bariaurs' natural wanderlust keeps them from establishing permanent settlements (with the exception of the town of Steadfast), and most don't bother constructing houses for themselves.

Basilisk

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

Hulking, eight-legged reptiles with deadly gazes.

Basilisk and Cockatrice: Large, many-legged lizards whose gaze turns people to stone.
Dragon Ancestry: Dracolisks are Hybrid Monsters thought to be descended from a black dragon. They have six legs and a pair of wings that are only capable of short bursts of flight, and on top of their petrifying glares can use an acidic Breath Weapon a few times per day.
Eat Dirt, Cheap: Basilisks are robust omnivores, and can feed upon the statues of creatures killed by their gaze.
Poisonous Person: AD&D's greater basilisks not only retain the petrifying stare of their lesser cousins, their foul breaths are so poisonous that adjacent creatures have to save or die.
Taken for Granite: Meeting a basilisk's supernatural gaze can be enough to rapidly transform a victim into porous stone, and their lairs are often strewn with the petrified remnants of other creatures.
Underground Monkey:
- Venom-eye basilisks inflict poisoning with their gaze rather than causing petrification.
- Greater basilisks kill victims outright with their gaze.
- Abyssal greater basilisks are a fiendish version of regular greater basilisks, are found in the Abyss and can smite good once per day.
Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: They typically have eight legs despite looking like lizards.

Swavain Basilisk

Origin: Critical Role
Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Distant oceanic cousins of the terrestrial basilisk.

Sea Serpents: Whereas terrestrial basilisks are eight-legged reptiles, the oceanic Swavain basilisks are limbless, serpentine creatures resembling giant eels. They are in fact amphibious, and capable of slithering to slowly move across land.
Sewer Gator: These basilisk are known to explore inland waterways in search of food, and might end up in a community's underground sewage system.
Taken for Granite: Like their land-dwelling cousins, Swavain basilisks can turn enemies to stone, albeit by secreting a thick oil.

Battlebriar

Classification: Plant (3E), Natural Animate (4E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (lesser), 15 (standard) (3E); 14 (4E)
Alignment: True Neutral (3E), Unaligned (4E)

Plant creatures created for war, and named for the deadly thorns covering their bodies.

Bioweapon Beast: The original battlebriars were intended to be living siege engines, and while the Large-sized, "lesser" battlebriars are often found serving other creatures, most Huge battlebriars have gone rogue. A single full-sized battlebriar is more than capable of wiping out a village by itself.
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Hence the nickname "warbound impaler." Battlebriars can attempt to impale a grappled opponent upon the thorns covering their bodies, allowing them to carry on fighting while their foe is pinned.
It Can Think: Downplayed; battlebriars only possess a rudimentary intelligence, and can't speak. Druids and other spellcasters who use magical means to communicate with them have found battlebriars to be intractable and uncaring. They're just smart enough to use their combat abilities to the fullest advantage, by trampling masses of small enemies, firing thorns at fleeing opponents, wading into melee to expose as many creatures as possible to their spines, etc.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Battlebriars have six limbs, and typically rear up onto their hind legs in combat so they can attack with both pairs of forelimbs.
Spike Shooter: Against distant opponents, battlebriars can rear up and snap their bodies forward, launching a volley of thorns that hits everything in a 10-foot radius around the impact site.
The Spiny: The long thorns that cover these creatures give them additional attacks of opportunity each round, and make it harder for opponents to Tumble through their threatened area.
Trampled Underfoot: Battlebriars are large enough to deal trample damage to anything they move over.

Beguiler

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Intelligent, magical creatures resembling dog-sized rodents, much sought by mages and poachers alike. Not to be confused with the 3rd Edition mindbending character class.

Chameleon Camouflage: Beguilers can freely alter the coloration of their fur (so long as it's dry), allowing them to blend in with their surroundings or create colorful patterns, even turning plaid if they wish. It's rumored that a beguiler pelt retains or can recover this trait with the proper treatment, leading alchemists to pay good sums for them.
Eye of Newt: Their eyes, as well as the frontal lobes of a beguiler's brain, can be used as material components to cast true sight, detect invisibility, locate object and vision.
Familiar: Wizards prize them as such for their magical abilities, though beguilers are often captured and raised as "ordinary" pets as well, despite their sapience.
It Can Think: They're highly-intelligent and capable of speaking Common and their own language.
Prehensile Tail: Their two-foot-long, hairless tails are strong and dexterous enough to use items, or even wield weapons.
True Sight: Beguilers benefit from a constant true seeing effect, allowing them to pierce illusions and detect invisible foes. It's thought that this, along with their camouflage ability, is a defense against their natural predator, the ethereal marauder.

Behir

Origin: Greyhawk
Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Magical Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 14 (4E), 11 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (1E-2E, 5E), True Neutral (3E), Unaligned (4E)

40-foot-long, twelve-legged serpents who breathe lightning and hate dragons.

Arch-Enemy: Behirs loathe dragons, and will attempt to drive off any dragon that enters their territory. 5E explains this as due to behirs' origin as Bioweapon Beasts created by the giants to fight in their war against the dragons.
Crafted from Animals: Their scales are valued for their color and hardness, and can be used to make an ornate set of scale mail armor.
Eye of Newt: Their AD&D entry explains that a behir's horns, talons and heart can be rendered into ink to pen scrolls of lightning bolt, neutralize poison and protection from poison, respectively.
It Can Think: They're no geniuses, but behirs are more than intelligent enough to speak, despite their monstrous appearance.
Pet Monstrosity: In the Realms, the people of Halruaa have bred Medium-sized behirs with colorful hides — including green, coral and rose-colored scales — as exotic pets and guard beasts. They're not quite as dangerous as "wild" behirs (CR 6 compared to CR 8 in that edition), and the creatures' intelligence has suffered from this forced breeding, leaving them incapable of speech.
Shock and Awe: Behirs' Breath Weapon is a line of lightning that can incinerate most creatures.
Underground Monkey: "The Ecology of the Behir" describes two environmental variants of the species — the desert behir, with yellow-orange scales and a fiery red belly, which breathes fire, and the green-scaled, acid-spitting jungle behir.
Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: They have twelve legs.

Beholderkin

Beholderkin are strange creatures resembling floating heads with a single central eye, an additional set of eyestalks capable of projecting magical beams, and a very alien, hostile and often insane outlook on life. See the beholderkin subpage for more information.

Belgoi

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Humanoid (3E), Fey Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E), 7 (4E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil (2E, 3E), Chaotic Evil (4E)

Murderous demihumans who use bone bells to lure victims into the wastes to be devoured.

Desert Bandits: They live in the most forlorn parts of the desert wastes, raiding caravans and unprotected villages for plunder and food.
The Fair Folk: Their 4th Edition lore paints belgoi as proud but evil fey, who ended up stranded in Athas' barrens after the destruction of their homeland, which they blame on the eladrin. The belgoi have since degenerated into despoiling marauders that scour the land around them of life and prey upon intelligent beings.
For Doom the Bell Tolls: They carry bells made by shamans from their tribe's own dead. The dissonant chiming of these macabre instruments will herald either some lone victim's death, or accompany an all-out attack by a belgoi tribe.
Luring in Prey: A belgoi can use one of their bone bells to make a psionic attack, collapsing their mental defenses so the creature can use powers like domination or attraction to make the victim leave their camp and move towards the belgoi. 4th Edition simplifies things so that the bell can shift a target around on the battlefield.
To Serve Man: Belgoi are omnivores, but particularly savor the flesh of intelligent beings. 4th Edition elaborates that they don't just prefer a meal "seasoned with the terror that a sentient creature feels when it faces impending death," belgoi also believe that they gain some of the power of those whose flesh they consume.

Belker

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Elemental (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Reclusive but malicious creatures from the Paraelemental Plane of Smoke.

Achilles' Heel: As per their AD&D rules, belkers are particularly vulnerable to the gust of wind spell, which can send them flying up to a mile away, while a wind wall holds them in place.
Orifice Invasion: A belker's signature attack is to engulf opponents with their gaseous forms, so that their victim inhales part of the belker. It then solidifies a claw within their victim's lungs and rips them apart from the inside, dealing damage until said victim succeeds in coughing out the semivaporous claw.
Sadist: If a belker is hungry, its prey dies quickly. Otherwise, the belker might play with its food and see just how loud it can make something scream in pain.
Super Smoke: Belkers are mostly-solid monsters that can temporarily transform into smoke. Incidentally, their nature means that they can attack creatures with a similar ability that might normally be immune to damage, such as a vampire trying to flee in mist form.

Berbalang

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Immortal Humanoid (4E), Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (4E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (2E), Evil (4E), Neutral Evil (5E)

Winged humanoids that dwell upon the petrified carcasses of deities that drift across the Astral Plane. They're obsessed with gathering secrets from the living and dead.

Astral Projection: They can create a "spectral duplicate" to explore other planes and spy on other creatures, though the berbalang's body is unconscious and vulnerable while it's perceiving the multiverse through its spectral form.
Creepy Souvenir: They collect the bones of the creatures whose spirits they call up, and record what they've learned on them.
Dead Person Conversation: Berbalangs prefer talking to the dead over the living, and can freely use speak with dead to converse with spirits.
Knowledge Broker: They're willing to share some of what they've learned, but will only exchange knowledge for other knowledge... or the bones of interesting creatures.

Bhuka

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

Goblinoids who are much more benign and peaceful than their kin, and have several adaptations to help them thrive in arid lands.

Body Paint: They use this to signify social position, ranging from simple stripes on a young bhuka's neck frill to elaborate patterns covering a matriarch's upper body.
Hidden Elf Village: Bhukas are not a violent people, and have learned to avoid conflict by simply not being seen by potential threats. They prefer to watch strangers from hiding while gauging their intent, and even if a bhuka does make contact, they'll never reveal anything about their kin and their settlement.
Matriarchy: Bhuka settlements are led by a Grandmother, who serves as a link between them and their mother deity Kikanuti.
My Species Doth Protest Too Much: They're the only goblinoids who aren't on board with murder, thuggery or conquest, and have nothing to do with their distant kin.
Nature Hero: The bhuka have several adaptations to help them thrive in the desert — broad feet to help them balance on sand, dark skin around their eyes to fight the glare of the sun, frills on their necks to dissipate heat — as well as a racial bonus on Knowledge (Nature) checks, and the extraordinary ability to locate drinkable water within 100 feet.
Underground City: Distinctly averted; bhuka culture holds that their ancestors emerged from underground, a Lower World that is also considered the Second Womb. As such, the bhuka make their dwellings in cliffs that require ladders or lifts to reach, while each village contains a single ceremonial pit decorated with depictions of the Emergence. The bhuka consider the fact that other goblinoids dwell in caves as evidence that they're not yet mature enough to live on the surface, while conversely, the sand-swimming asherati's habit of building settlements beneath the desert surface disturbs the bhuka's entire conception of reality.

Bhut

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenger Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

These malevolent undead arise when a humanoid meets a violent end in the wilderness, and now exist to murder other travelers.

Brown Note: Bhuts are so horrifying in appearance that other creatures have to save to avoid taking Strength damage upon seeing them.
Intangibility: Outside of a stolen body, Bhuts are incorporeal, but with one big caveat - they cannot abide contact with earth and stone, and take damage whenever they try to pass through it.
Non-Health Damage: In addition to their Strength-sapping appearance, their bite attacks deliver a potent Wisdom-damaging poison, which can cause victims to slip into a coma and die in a few hours unless the poison is neutralized.
One-Steve Limit: Averted; monsters known as bhuts appeared in Mystara, but were quite different creatures, seemingly-normal humans who underwent a savage transformation at night, preying on other sentients with their numbing bites. There was in-universe debate over whether to classify such bhuts as lycanthropes or undead.
Possessing a Dead Body: They can animate a dead body and try to pass themselves off as living beings, usually as part of a ploy to deceive victims. While inhabiting a corpse, a bhut can still make poisonous bite attacks, albeit with an attack penalty, since a humanoid's mouth isn't normally considered a natural weapon. If the reanimated corpse is reduced to 0 hit points, the bhut is evicted from it, unharmed.
Weaksauce Weakness: Simple stone (or earthen) weapons deal extra damage to bhuts, and can reliably hit them despite their incorporeal state.

Bi-nou

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Subterranean creatures that resemble natural stone columns, a trait they use to ambush prey.

Achilles' Heel: As rock creatures, passwall stuns them for several rounds, while rock to mud can instantly kill them. On the upside, stone shape will heal them of nearly all their hit points.
Bioweapon Beast: No one knows for sure where the bi-nou came from, though the prevailing theories are that they're the result of drow experiments, or were created by the mad mage Halaster Blackcloak to serve as guardians. At any rate, and despite their innate hostility towards warm-blooded life, bi-nou have been known to ally with drow, guarding the borders of their settlements from intruders.
Crafted from Animals: Bi-nou eggs look like gemstones and are valued as such, leading other races to snatch and chill the things so they never hatch. Some dwarves also hunt the largest rockworms, the so-called "rocklords," to convert their stony hides into naturally-enchanted maces.
Dishing Out Dirt: They can cast dig, stone shape and wall of stone each once per day.
He Was Right There All Along: Bi-nou are all but indistinguishable from a natural rock formation when at rest, and intelligent enough to take advantage of this fact.
Killer Bear Hug: They hunt by grabbing victims and crushing them against the bi-nou's stony bodies until they suffocate, then the creatures move over the corpses to absorb their flesh.
Rock Monster: Bi-nou look like columns of rock with a pair of craggy arms.
Snake People: Comparatively-speaking; "rockworms" are creatures closely related to bi-nou but aren't capable of an upright stance, leaving them to crawl on cave floors on their bellies and arms. Rockworms don't bother with ambushes and simply move to attack any prey they see.
Super-Senses: Bi-nou are blind (their creature art notwithstanding), but can perceive their surroundings through a mixture of echolocation and infravision, foiling both magical darkness and invisibility spells.

Bisan

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Female nature spirits bound to a camphor, teak or mahogany tree, known for preferring the shape of wasps.

Can't Live Without You: Much like bajangs and dryads, bisan will die if their tree is destroyed.
Green Thumb: They can cast animate wood, plant growth and wood shape at will.
Morphic Resonance: A bisan's natural, human form looks as old as their tree, they often wear flowers from their tree in their hair, and sometimes their skin tone will reflect the coloration of their tree.
Our Nymphs Are Different: Bisan are a spin on the classic dryad, though they're appropriately more waspish than charming. They'll act as protectors for any trees of the same type as their "home" tree in an area, but bisan are willing to let humans harvest sap, fruit, leaves or branches from those trees, or even cut down trees near the end of their lifespan, so long as humans leave an appropriate offering in exchange. Anyone who touches a bisan's trees without her permission is sure to feel her wrath.
Reincarnation: If a bisan's tree dies of natural causes, and the gods are pleased with her behavior, her essence will take up residence in a newly-grown tree. In some cases, a bisan's essence will be divided four ways, each assigned to a new sapling, to create a new generation of the nature spirits.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can use polymorph self at will, typically to assume the form of a normal or giant wasp.
Words Can Break My Bones: Bisans can use castigate every turn, belittling opponents with enough supernatural force to stun and damage them based on how far their alignment is from True Neutral.

Black Willow

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 13 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Intelligent and malevolent dark-barked willow trees, which relish killing helpless creatures.

Combat Tentacles: They can make a whopping twelve attacks each round with their tendrils, which they also use to grapple prey.
Forced Sleep: Before attacking with its lashing tendrils, a black willow generates an aura of drowsiness that replicates a sleep spell — and in their 2nd Edition rules, anyone who was already in the process of taking a nap beneath the tree automatically fails their saving throw.
Man-Eating Plant: Black willows get only a portion of their nourishment from soil, water and photosynthesis, the rest comes from eating live prey, particularly humans, elves and gnomes.
Swallowed Whole: Once they get their tendrils around something, a black willow stuffs their victim into a large internal cavity filled with digestive juices that both paralyze and deal acid damage to their prey. A swallowed victim who resists the paralysis effect can try to cut their way out with a small, sharp weapon.
When Trees Attack: They're slow but mobile trees out to stuff other creatures into their gullets for digestion. Naturally, black willows are easy to mistake for a normal plant, and can even disguise themselves as ordinary willow trees.

Blackroot Marauder

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

Dark, thorny saplings the size and shape of humanoids, created by evil clerics or druids as sentinels and hunters.

He Was Right There All Along: They are expectedly good at blending into wooded surroundings, and cunning and patient enough to make the most of their natural camouflage. "A swarm of marauders might slowly creep up on an encampment or castle, shifting into position so slowly that their prey fails to notice the gradual rise in the number of trees and the density of the underbrush in the area."
Poisonous Person: Their claws and thorns carry a damaging poison.
Spike Shooter: They can fire volleys of thorns from their bodies as a ranged attack, which does more damage than their claws.
Supernatural Sensitivity: Beyond tremorsense, blackroot marauders can detect good at will, helping them spot and stalk any do-gooders who might trouble their creators.
When Trees Attack: Blackroot marauders are made in a fairly simple ritual in which a wild sapling no more than seven feet tall is kept out of direct sunlight for a month, over which time it's watered with the blood of an intelligent creature at sunrise and sunset. At the end of the month, the spells animate plants, command plants, detect good and poison are cast on the sapling, and 5,000 gp of crushed rubies are scattered around it, turning it into an intelligent, ambulatory guardian. The catch is that this procss creates a woody, thorny construct, not a plant monster, though blackroot marauders retain enough vitality to be able to slowly recover hit points if they rest in loamy soil.

Blackstone Gigant

Classification: Construct (3E)
Challenge Rating: 18 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Gargantuan statues of fearsome, eight-armed women usually created to guard a sacred site.

Creepy Souvenir: Blackstone gigants often take trophies from their victims, wearing belts of petrified arms or necklaces of petrified heads.
Flight: Despite their size and weight, they have a perfect 40-foot flight speed.
Living Statue: Not only is the blackstone gigant one, it can animate any victims of its petrification attacks, which serve as its minions for 20 rounds, after which point they can't be animated again. The blackstone gigant usually takes the time to smash any useless statues, to prevent any applications of stone to flesh mid-fight.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: They have eight limbs, and thus fearlessly wade into combat, flailing about with their arms to try and petrify as many foes as possible.
Snake People: Some blackstone gigants are carved with serpentine lower torsos, specifically in imitation of demonic mariliths.
Taken for Granite: Anything hit by a blackstone gigant's slam attack has to save or be turned to stone.
Trampled Underfoot: They're large and heavy enough to deal trample damage to creatures they move over.

Blackwing

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Giant undead avians that tend to guard tombs in the mountains.

Feathered Fiend: They are huge birds that happen to be much taller than an animal and are definitely hostile.
Raising the Steaks: They were created by an orc tribe that was fighting nearby wood elves and their giant eagle allies. After years of hunting and tormenting the eagles for sport, the orcs' spellcasters figured out how to raise them as potent undead minions.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: When blackwings make a diving attack from the sky, or when two or more of them scream while within 30 feet of each other, other creatures have to save to avoid becoming shaken.
Thieving Magpie: Blackwings collect shiny items from those they kill, and preen themselves before their treasure pile in parodies of their former lives.

Blackskate

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Ray-like amalgamations of bone and cartilage that arise from the deepest ocean trenches.

Body of Bodies: Blackskates are made from the cast-off bits of flesh, bone, scale and cartilage that fall to the sea floor, mixed together and animated by blackwater currents in the lightless depths.
Damage Reduction: The best way to physically damage a blackskate is to hack it apart with a slashing weapon, which is unfortunate, since in 3rd Edition, such attacks have attack roll and damage penalties underwater.
Logical Weakness: Blackskates are only restricted to water, which is rather fortunate for those living on land.
Poisonous Person: Their stingers deliver a necrotic poison that causes victims' flesh to slough off, dealing Constitution damage.
Sinister Stingrays: They're bloodthirsty undead creatures shaped like stingrays.
Super-Persistent Predator: If a blackskate "tastes" someone's blood, it can unerringly track them, no matter the distance, so long as that creature remains in the same body of water as the undead.
Turns Red: Blackskates go into a frenzy once there's blood in the water, gaining bonuses to attack and damage rolls, as well as their Armor Class. This is despite the fact that they don't actually feed on blood like vampires do.

Bladeling

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Outsider (3E), Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E), 6 (4E)
Playable: 4E
Alignment: Lawful Evil or Lawful Neutral (3E), Any (4E)

Spiny, metal-skinned humanoids who have settled on Ocanthus, fourth layer of the Infinite Battlefield of Acheron.

Absolute Xenophobe: Downplayed; bladelings encountered on other planes or outside their home city of Zoronor can be courteous and amiable among strangers. But they're superstitious and xenophobic beings at heart, and anyone who intrudes upon their city is swiftly slain.
Velassi Shade's Doom: I suppose you might call us a little "prickly" on some matters.
Achilles' Heel: Though bladelings normally resist fire damage, the heat metal spell deals double damage to them.
Alien Blood: Theirs is the color and consistency of oil.
Art Evolution: Bladelings have gotten less spiky across the editions, from being nothing but spikes in AD&D to being majority smooth-skinned in 4E. They were also noted to be made of wood, ice and steel in 2E, before becoming metallic in subsequent editions.
Chrome Champion: Bladelings' skin has a dull metallic color and is studded with patches of metal spines.
Enemy Mine: Bladeling society is characterized by infighting and politicking, but this ends immediately in the face of an external danger.
Flechette Storm: Once per day they can fire a short, conical blast of shrapnel from their skin, though this reduces their natural armor bonus for the next 24 hours.
No-Sell: They resist cold and fire damage, as well as slashing and piercing damage from non-magical weapons, and they're fully immune to acid damage and rusting effects. The latter is the result of magical experimentation, as shortly after the bladelings' arrival on Acheron, they were nearly wiped out by the native rust dragons.
The Theocracy: What little is known about bladeling society is that it's ruled by a priest-king who directs the worship of their unknown gods.

Blaspheme

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

These tall, lean undead resonate with evil power, and are most notable for their fearsome bite.

Lost Technology: These undead are the product of extinct civilizations that valued magic more than morality or life, and the secret to their creation is presumably somewhere in the crumbling ruins they still inhabit.
Man Bites Man: A blaspheme's signature attack is a chomp that, in addition to dealing regular damage, will daze non-Evil creatures and deal Strength damage, with No Saving Throw.
Mix-and-Match Man: They're usually assembled from pieces of multiple corpses, and their teeth were specifically harvested from victims sacrificed to dark powers.
Scary Teeth: A blaspheme's teeth are compared to glittering, steaming shards of black ice, and are more or less Made of Evil.
Zombie Gait: An aversion — blasphemes are faster than most Medium-sized bipeds, and have a special "Erratic Charge" rule that lets them make a 90-degree turn while charging at a foe.

Blazewyrm

Classification: Elemental (3E), Elemental Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 4 (4E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (3E), Unaligned (4E)

Dragon-shaped fire elementals that delight in immolating everything they come across.

Achilles' Heel: Like anything with the fire subtype, they take extra damage from cold attacks.
Dance Battler: A variant; a blazewyrms' signature "Tumbling Flame" attack has them whirling and crackling through an opponent's square on the battle map, dealing heavy fire damage. They do have a bite attack they can fall back on, but it's not nearly as effective.
Evil Living Flames: Blazewyrms are creatures of living fire in the shape of dragons, and spend their time seeking out things and creatures to burn to ashes for no other reason than that they like doing it.
For the Evulz: Blazewyrms don't require any sort of sustenance, but they still enjoy attacking other creatures.
Horse of a Different Color: Blazewyrms have been likened to the Elemental Plane of Fire's version of wyverns, and as such, some more intelligent beings of fire like salamanders sometimes tame blazewyrms as mounts.

Bleakborn

Origin: Greyhawk
Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Sometimes referred to as Moil zombies, these flash-frozen undead feed on the warmth of the living.

Evil Is Deathly Cold: Bleakborns have a heat-draining aura that deals cold damage to anything that comes within 30 feet of them.
Feed It with Fire: Fire attacks actually heal bleakborns, restoring 1 health for every 3 points of damage that would have been dealt.
An Ice Person: A bleakborn's mere touch deals cold damage, and their bodies are covered in frost. However, they do not actually have any resistance to cold damage, making it a reliable way to combat them.
Life Drain: Bleakborns have Fast Healing 10, but can only recover health if a living creature is within their heat-draining aura. This also makes them hard to destroy, as even if a bleakborn is reduced to negative hit points, the instant something warm gets close enough to its corpse to take cold damage, the undead starts regaining health.
The Virus: Those slain by a bleakborn become zombies most of the time, but occasionally a victim arises as another bleakborn, according to the whims of the dark gods (i.e. the DM).

Blight

Vine, needle and twig blights (5e)

Classification: Plant (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/8 (twig blight), 1/4 (needle blight), 1/2 (vine blight) (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Blights are malevolent humanoid plants which spring up in forests tainted by evil. They carry out the whims of whatever dark force spawned them, spreading their corruption throughout the land.

Botanical Abomination: The first blights came into being when a particularly evil vampire named Gulthias was staked through the heart. His foul blood seeped into the stake, and in time it grew into a sapling called the Gulthias tree. The seeds of this tree became the first blights. Any sufficiently evil force can contaminate an ordinary tree and turn it into a new Gulthias tree, from which new blights emerge.
Combat Tentacles: Vine blights, as you might imagine, attack by constricting enemies with their vines.
The Corruption: A Gulthias tree taints its surroundings with its evil presence. Nearby trees which are not killed by this corruption are transformed into blights, which spread the corruption further throughout the forest.
Green Thumb: Vine blights can make roots and vines erupt from the ground in their immediate vicinity. They use this power to ensnare and slow down their enemies.
Kill It with Fire: Twig blights are vulnerable to fire damage on account of how dry and brittle they are. Needle and vine blights do not share this vulnerability.
Monster Progenitor: The Gulthias trees which spawn blights are named after Gulthias, the vampire whose blood gave rise to the first such tree.
Mouth of Sauron: Vine blights have a direct connection to their Gulthias tree and speak on its behalf, using the voice of whatever evil entity gave rise to the tree.
Plant Person: They resemble humanoids made of twigs, needles, or vines.
Spike Shooter: Needle blights can launch their needles at distant enemies like crossbow bolts. They pack quite a punch.
That's No Moon: Twig and vine blights look like ordinary plants while they aren’t moving. Twig blights exploit this fact to conceal themselves near places frequented by travelers and ambush unwary victims.

Blightspawned

Blightspawned treant (3e)

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: As base creature +1 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Creatures or plants corrupted by a magical disease that eventually reduces them to undead horrors. They're unrelated to the various blights above.

Body Horror: As the plague runs its course, a blightspawned creature's flesh or wood blackens, their hair or leaves clot and fall out, and their blood or sap turns black and oily, running from open sores.
Glowing Eyes of Doom: An infected creature's eyes, assuming they had any, become sunken "black pits, lit by an evil green light."
Poisonous Person: Blightspawned's natural attacks spread a supernatural disease that deals both Constitution and Charisma damage, and unlike other plagues that deal Non-Health Damage, this "blight touch" can reduce a victim's Constitution score to 0, killing them. Alternatively, if a victim's Charisma hits 0 before their Constitution does, they transform into a new blightspawned creature.
Terminal Transformation: Every month, a blightspawned creature has to make an increasingly difficult saving throw or immediately die, turning into a juju zombie.
Transflormation: Any animals or beasts that succumb to the blight touch are considered plant creatures, at least until they become undead monsters.

Blindheim

Origin: Greyhawk
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (2E-3E), Chaotic Neutral (5E)

Froglike creatures that lurk in watery subterranean areas, blinding prey with their luminous eyes.

Adaptational Intelligence: While in most editions blindheims are only slightly more intelligent than animals, 5E bumps their Intelligence up to a near-baseline 8. and gives them a racial legend about how their ancestors lived on the surface
Blinded by the Light: Blindheims' eyes shine like searchlights when their two sets of eyelids are fully opened, potentially blinding other creatures for a minute or so. Creatures with infravision or sensitivity to bright light, such as goblins or drow, are particularly susceptible to this attack.
Eye Beams: "Advanced" blindheims have eyes with additional or alternate effects than normal. Amber- and blue-eyed blindheims can't blind foes with their eye beams, but can replicate a hypnotic pattern or faerie fire effect, respectively. White-eyed blindheims can use a sunburst every few rounds in addition to blinding foes.
Fire Stolen from the Gods: 5th Edition gives its blindheims a racial backstory in which they stole a piece of the sun, after which they fled into the Underdark and ate the stolen sunlight, explaining their eye beams. Now blindheims live in fear of the sun's vengeance, and will subject explorers to "endless questions about the sun's actions, its anger, and its attitudes." Those who fail to take the blindheims' concerns seriously will incur their wrath.
Frog Men: A barely-sapient example in 2E and 3E, in which most blindheims are primitive even compared to bullywugs, with an animal intelligence that leaves them unable to use even simple tools. "Advanced" blindheims are those who live in crude villages, croak a rudimentary language, and throw darts in combat; such tribes are known to worship slaadi.
The Horde: Blindheims usually dwell in small groups, but every so often will gather into ravening hordes that can number in the hundreds, overrunning and consuming everything in their path before suddenly dispersing.
Playing with Fire: Gold-eyed blindheims can spit small fireballs every few rounds.
Swallowed Whole: Their bite attacks can snap up Tiny creatures such as jermlaine, which at least keeps the little gremlins' numbers down.

Blink Dog

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Fey (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E), 1/4 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Good

Intelligent canines named for their ability to teleport short distances.

Animal Jingoism: Blink dogs harbor a long-standing hatred for displacer beasts and attack them on sight — the classic cat/dog rivalry, it seems, extends even to magical canine and feline beasts.
Hit-and-Run Tactics: 5th Edition lets blink dogs make bite attacks before or after a teleport.
Horse of a Different Color: Blink dogs have been known to serve as mounts for halfling or gnome paladins, who they treat as the leaders of the "pack" of adventurers they've joined. With a ring of blinking a rider can take advantage of the creature's blink ability, though no known item lets a blink dog take its rider along when it uses dimension door.
Language Barrier: Blink dogs have human-level intelligence and their own language of barks, yips and growls, but while they can understand Sylvan, they can't speak it.
Mama Bear/Papa Wolf: Blink dogs are normally playful, but very protective of their pups, due to other creatures sometimes trying to steal them to train as guard animals.
Teleport Spam: In 3rd Edition they can use the blink spell at will to give them a chance to evade attacks, or dimension door once per round as a free action. 5th Edition instead gives them a straighforward teleport action they can combine with a bite attack.

Blood Amniote

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Huge, animate clots of half-congealed blood that exist only to add to their sanguineous mass.

Blob Monster: Enough so that a blood amniote, while classified as Undead, shares many traits with the game's Oozes.
Bloody Murder: A blood amniote that absorbs enough Constitution from victims will split into two normal-sized monsters.
Mind Hive: Downplayed; these undead are mindless, but "vestiges of past victims remain imprinted on them," so observers may briefly see those victims' faces form on a blood amniote's surface before melting away again.
Vampiric Draining: Blood amniotes have an inescapable craving for fresh blood, and whenever one slams into a victim, the attack makes blood flow from the victim's pores and into the blood amniote, dealing Constitution damage.

Blood Ape

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Red-furred apes that can grow in size in response to danger.

Gentle Giant: Blood apes are generally peaceful foragers, but when pressed they can be very nasty in combat.
King Kong Copy: They start out Large and can grow to Huge size, putting them in the same size category as giants.
Make My Monster Grow: Blood ape alpha males have the ability to use the animal growth spell on themselves and others in their group, enhancing their combat capacity.

Blood Hawk

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Beast (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E), 1/8 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Red-eyed birds of prey with 7-foot wingspans and a taste for fresh blood.

The Berserker: Blood hawks not only kill for pleasure, once they give into their bloodlust, they won't break off an attack until either they or their prey is dead.
Damage Over Time: In 3rd Edition, their attacks cause ongoing bleeding damage that can only be stopped with a Heal check or curative magic. This effect is cumulative, and since blood hawks hunt in murders of up to 15 birds, the result can easily be a Death by a Thousand Cuts.
Feathered Fiend: They look like fairly ordinary gray-feathered hawks, apart from their eyes, which are the color of fresh blood. But blood hawks are literally bloodthirsty, the creatures will kill for pleasure even if they've recently fed, their murders are bold and strong enough to attack humanoids, and in fact they prefer the taste of human flesh and blood.
Thieving Magpie: Male blood hawks will attack humanoids not just for food, but for gems they can use to attract mates.

Bloodhulk

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenger Rating: 4 (fighter), 6 (giant), 8 (crusher) (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

These sloshing undead are bloated with the blood of sacrificial victims, giving them livid bodies covered with distended veins, as well as unholy resilience. They come in a variety of sizes, from human to ogre to giant-sized.

Achilles' Heel: Slashing or piercing weapons deal extra damage to bloodhulks.
Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: They have several bodies' worth of blood injected into their undead forms, and presumably make quite a mess during combat.
Super-Toughness: Bloodhulks were designed to be damage sponges, and their "Blood Bloated" trait gives them an absurd amount of hit points for their Challenge Rating. This allows their creators to drop Area of Effect attacks on a mixed combat with the confidence that the bloodhulk can take the hit better than those pesky adventurers can.
Victory by Endurance: They can only make a single, simple slam attack during each round of combat, but their hit point total lets them prevail by simply outlasting foes.

Bloodrot

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Eight-foot-wide pools of blood and necrotic fluids that render their prey into similar puddles.

Asteroids Monster: Piercing or slashing attacks that would overcome a bloodrot's 5/— Damage Reduction instead deal no damage and cause it to divide in two, splitting the monster's hp between the oozes. This lasts until a given ooze reaches 10 or less hp, at which point it stops splitting.
Blob Monster: Bloodrots were initially thought to be undead oozes, but they're actually ooze-like undead, the animated remains of a creature that was liquefied by acid or a similar effect. Like oozes, they attack with pseudopods (with surprising reach) and can creep up sheer surfaces, but while bloodrots are mindless, they're also cunning enough to retreat from a losing battle and let the infection they spread do its work before tracking down their victims.
Mystical Plague: These necrotic blobs spread a supernatural disease called blood fever through physical contact with other creatures. Unlike a mundane disease, blood fever can keep dealing Constitution and Charisma damage until the victim dies (and dissolves into a puddle the ooze can then absorb), and magic like cure disease and heal are useless, instead it takes break enchantment or remove curse to end the effect.
Personal Space Invader: A bloodrot in dire straits can try to invade the body of someone it's infected with blood fever, disappearing into the victim's bloodstream for up to 24 hours, at which point it gushes out of the victim's orifices. The victim is nauseated as long as the undead is polluting its blood, but the monster can be expelled with remove disease or heal.

Bloodthorn

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

Briar-like, blood-drinking plants found in arid parts of the Lower Planes and the Outlands, though rarely a specimen will survive being transplanted to Material Plane wastelands.

Combat Tentacles: Bloodthorns attack and feed by lashing out with their tendrils, trying to grapple opponents to drain blood.
Death Trap: A bloodthorn produces succulet, bright red berries year-round, whose appealing fragrance lures in prey for the plant to attack. Any who survive the plant's attacks will be disappointed to find that the fruits are bitter and provide no sustenance.
Eerily Out-of-Place Object: Since bloodthorns sustain themselves on blood rather than water or sunlight, one big clue about their nature is that they're flourishing where a normal plant should not survive.
Vampiric Draining: Anyone grappled by a bloodthorn takes Constitution damage as its three-inch-long, hollow thorns pierce their flesh and drain their blood. Even if the victim tears themselves free with an opposed Strength check, one of the thorny tendrils comes lose from the bloodthorn, resulting in a bleeding wound that deals 1 point of Damage Over Time until healed.

Bodak

^3e

^2e

^1e

Classification: Undead (3E-5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 16 (4E), 6 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil, Evil (4E)

Horrors touched by absolute evil, letting them kill with a stare.

Art Evolution: Their original design from the S4 module back in 1st edition had them as odly muscular, shadowy undead wielding weapons. 2nd edition turned them into a Gollum-like emaciated undead with large, glowing eyes. 3rd and 4th are perhaps the strangest, taking the muscularity of 1st edition and giving them heads that make them resemble The Greys. 5th edition made them look more like twisted, once-human undead who's humanity is clearly long gone.
Deader than Dead: The soul of a creature that becomes a bodak is so damaged that it is unfit for most forms of magical resurrection. Only a wish spell or similar magic can return a bodak to life.
Deadly Gaze: Meeting a bodak's gaze is generally bad news: looking it in the eye subjects you to a saving throw to avoid taking psychic damage, and if you're really unlucky, it can drop you to the brink of death outright. Bodaks can also channel their vision against a creature they can see to induce Make Them Rot, regardless of if they look back or not.
Enemy to All Living Things: They unnerve living creatures to such an extent that untrained animals instinctively flee from them.
Oxymoronic Being: There are no undead in the Outer Planes; there can't be, since if a dead soul is there then it's in the right place. Bodaks are undead native to an Outer Plane. Got it?
Retcon: In 1st and 2nd Edition, bodaks are mortals who traveled into the darkest parts of the Abyss and were transformed into monsters with a killing stare, and weren't classified as undead. 3rd Edition made them "undead remnants of humanoids who have been destroyed by the touch of absolute evil," while 4th Edition added strong ties to the Shadowfell, rather than the Abyss. As of 5th Edition, bodaks are undead native to the Abyss, specifically former followers of the demon prince Orcus.
Undead Abomination: A minor example, as they can still be fought by individual adventurers. Bodaks have had their souls so twisted that there is nothing left that is perceivably human (or elf or dwarf or whatever the base stock was). They are so consumed by undead magics that their mere touch can be lethal, and only reality warping magic can conceivably bring them back from the dead.
Walking Wasteland: Bodaks have power over an aura that deals constant, ongoing necrotic damage to non-undead creatures within a short distance of it. As bodaks are spawn of Orcus, fiends are also exempt.
Weakened by the Light: Sunlight burns away a bodak's tainted flesh, causing radiant damage to it and hindering its attack rolls and ability checks on contact. Given the plethora of other necrotic abilities a bodak can bring to bear, however, a bodak in sunlight is still a deadly threat.

Bodytaker Plant

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_doppelganger_plant_2e.jpg

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Plant (5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (bodytaker plant), 1/2 (podling) (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (2E)

Also known as "doppelganger plants," these strange plants abduct innocents and replace them with "podlings" that help them take over whole societies.

Assimilation Plot: Bodytaker plants usually set up near communities and systematically go about replacing every denizen. "To their minds, a world would be healthier and more efficient were they in control. Anyone who disagrees either lacks perspective or is fit only to serve as fertilizer."
Eye of Newt: Their sap or pods' flesh can be used to craft mind-affecting potions and magic items, such as a superior potion of human control.
Genre Refugee: They seem out of place in Gothic Horror-rich Ravenloft, until you remember that the setting dabbles in all kinds of horror, even something as "sci-fi" as alien abductions.
Kill and Replace: 5E bodytaker plants work by grappling a victim with a lashing vine and pulling them into its pod. After a few hours soaking in enzymes, the helpless victim dies and is immediately transformed into a loyal podling; before this process is complete, a victim can be torn out of the pod with a Strength check, while killing the bodytaker plant enables an easier escape.
No Body Left Behind: Dead podlings quickly melt into a "slurry" when they or their host plant dies.
Not Quite Dead: These malevolent plants are quite difficult to kill, since if any of its roots or pods is left intact after its main "body" is seemingly destroyed, the plant will simply regrow in a matter of months. Salting the earth or soaking the ground with poison can do the job.
Plant Aliens: They're implied to be as such, often turning up after an "inauspicious comet or meteor shower" is sighted in the night sky.
Possession Burnout: In 2nd Edition, a doppelganger plant needs only to target a sleeping or unconscious creature with its mind bondage power to take them over, no conversion in a central pod needed. While under the plant's mental control, the new podling is fed upon by its host, losing 1d4 hit points each day as its life force is transferred into one of the plant's pods. The podling will gradually lose weight, and those who fight it with melee weapons might notice that their opponent is partially hollowed-out. By the time it's fully consumed by the doppelganger plant, a podling is little more than "a hollow shell of flesh with some muscle tissue and subcutaneous fat."
Shout-Out: They're obviously inspired by the antagonists of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
They Look Like Us Now: Podlings are nearly indistinguishable from the originals, though they may forget certain things, and in 5E ping as plants under spells that detect creature types.

Bog Hound

Origin: Ravenloft
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Murderous canines spawned from a moor, the result of a fel curse or evil conjuring.

The Battle Didn't Count: A moor hound can't be slain in normal circumstances — even if reduced to 0 hit points, it won't collapse but will instead try to flee combat, leaving behind a trail of blood that disappears into a bog or pool of quicksand, and the monster will fully regenerate in time for the next night's hunt.
Glowing Eyes of Doom: Moor hounds are coal-black creatures with flaming red eyes.
Keystone Army: Should their moor hound be slain, the rest of a bog hound pack instantly crumbles, howling as they follow their pack leader into oblivion.
Large and in Charge: The moor hound that leads a bog hound pack is a Large creature compared to its Medium-sized packmates.
Resurrective Immortality: Standard bog hounds can be slain, at which point their bodies will crumble to inanimate matter as their breaths escape like wisps of marsh mist, but the creatures will continue to spawn from the bog each night, so long as their pack leader survives.
Swamp Monster: The standard bog hounds are empty-eyed beasts made from the mud and straw of their home marsh, while the moor hound that leads them is comprised from the vapors of the bog, which incidentally means that only magic weapons can hit them.
Swamps Are Evil: In some cases, bog hounds are spawned "naturally" from swamps that have powerful curses laid upon them.
Weakened by the Light: Bog hounds' bane is natural sunlight. When exposed to it, ordinary bog hounds will instantly go inert, becoming mere sculptures of mud and straw trapped in the pose the sun caught them in, statues that crumble apart at the slightest touch. In the case of the moor hound, sunlight causes any damage it sustained that evening to properly apply to it, potentially killing it outright. At any rate, a moor hound in sunlight can be slain by even mundane weapons, and will let out one last ghostly howl before fading into nothingness.

Bog Imp

Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

These murderous little fey delight in drowning other creatures who enter their swamps, unless doing so would conflict with the imps' strange code of honor. Despite their names, they have no relation to fiendish imps.

Blue-and-Orange Morality: These fey are unusually lawful, and bound by customs and a system of honor that they are psychologically incapable of breaking. While the specifics vary between clutches of bog imps, they provide ways for would-be victims to spare themselves, such as having someone defeat the bog imp in a race through the marsh or game of wits, or successfully guessing the bog imp's family name. Bog imps who were formerly elves may also spare any elves from their former communities.
Fast Tunneling: As amphibious creatures, bog imps have a swim speed, but their burrowing speed is twice as fast — the catch is that it can only be used while moving through viscous, not-quite-liquid material like swamp muck.
Poisonous Person: A bog imp's claw attacks force victims to save or be sickened for several rounds.
Supernatural Suffocation: Bog imps can simply glance at a victim and cause a phantom force to drag them beneath the water or mud. This process can take as little as one round, though creatures with Strength bonuses can resist for correspondingly longer, but unless someone pulls the victim out, drags them to solid ground, or kills the bog imp, said victim will begin drowning.
The Virus: If an elf succumbs to a bog imp's signature attack, they don't die but instead enter a form of stasis, shriveling and "pickling" over 13 days before being reborn as a bog imp with an instinctive understanding of the local clutch's code of conduct.
Walking Wasteland: Any nonmagical liquid, from water to wine to milk, becomes stagnant as soon as it comes within 60 feet of a bog imp, and will cause hours of nausea if drank. Fortunately, potions are immune to this effect.

Boggle

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Fey Humanoid (4E), Fey (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E, 4E), 1/8 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral, Evil (4E)

Small humanoids that behave much like obnoxious monkeys, stealing trinkets and making nuisances of themselves.

Mischief-Making Monkey: Their behavior fits the trope, and 4th Edition directly compares boggles' relationship to banderhobbs and goblins to that between apes and humans.
The Prankster: Boggles engage in petty pranks to amuse themselves. Although a boggle's antics might cause distress and unintentional harm, its intent is usually mischief, not mayhem.
Rubber Man: Boggles are noted for their rubbery skin and stretchy limbs, giving them a much longer reach than their 3-foot stature would suggest.
Slippery Skid: They can secrete a nonflammable oil from their skin that replicates a grease effect.
Sticky Situation: Alternatively, 5th Edition boggles can create a glue-like puddle to restrain other creatures.
Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: 4th Edition casts boggles as "bogeymen" that lurk in the corner of children's vision before disappearing. "Parents dismiss such stories as phantoms of an overactive imagination — until the boggle snatches the child away."
Thinking Up Portals: Boggles can use existing doorways and spaces to create short-ranged dimensional rifts, allowing them to reach (or attack) something within 30 feet of it.
Tulpa: 5th Edition casts boggles as fey born from feelings of loneliness, such as that felt by a friendless child, old widow, or hermit. Unfortunately, the boggles' attempts to amuse themselves always come at their "host"'s expense.

Bogun

Classification: Construct (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Tiny clumps of ambulatory compost created by druids as helpers.

Artificial Insolence: Since they're self-aware and sometimes willful, boguns have a 1-in-20 chance to ignore a given order. If their creator cannot pass a Diplomacy check to convince the bogun to behave, it may defiantly do the opposite of the prior order, or refuse to do anything at all for the rest of the day.
Our Homunculi Are Different: Boguns are small nature servants, created by druids as an extension of themselves.
Poisonous Person: They aren't intended for combat, but boguns are covered in nettles that can inject a Dexterity-damaging poison.
Synchronization: Part of the ritual to create a bogun involves the caster putting a part of themselves - a clump of hair, a few drops of blood — into the construct to create a bond. Thus, a bogun's destruction inflicts damage to its creator, while if its creator dies, the bogun does as well.
Telepathy: Boguns can't speak, but have a telepathic link with their creators.

Bone Whelk

Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Large scavenging gastropods found on Avernus, top layer of the Nine Hells of Baator.

Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Bone whelks get their name from their habit of using the bones of other creatures in lieu of a conventional snail shell.
Sticky Situation: Smaller creatures that touch their sticky bodies have to save or end up stuck (grappled).
Taking You with Me: When killed, a bone whelk lets out a death scream audible from over 100 feet away, which causes organic material within 10 feet of the monster to rot, and deals necrotic damage to creatures.
Wall Crawl: Like less monstrous snails, bone whelks can climb up sheer surfaces or even upside-down across ceilings.

Boneclaw

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ca668ffe430492885c4457ad9756510d.png

Classification: Undead (3E-5E)
Challenge Rating: 5(3E), 14 (4E), 12 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil, Evil (4E)

Boneclaws are sadistic undead which use their freakishly long arms and oversized talons to eviscerate their foes.

Creepily Long Arms: Their defining characteristic. Their arms are usually depicted as long enough to reach their ankles.
Creepy Long Fingers: Their fingers are the length of swords. Combine that with their Creepily Long Arms, and you get a monster whose melee attacks have incredibly long reach.
Gone Horribly Wrong: In 5E, they are the result of a botched ritual of Lichhood.
Our Liches Are Different: If a would-be lich is too physically or magically weak to compel the soul into a phylactery, the soul instead seeks out an evil humanoid as a new master. The soul bonds itself to the foul essence it finds in that person, becoming a boneclaw enslaved to their whims.
Retcon: When introduced in 3rd Edition, boneclaws were thought to be the work of an ingenious necromancer or an "evolved" form of lesser undead. 4th edition depicted them as Frankensteinian monsters built by evil necromancers to serve as assassins and bodyguards. In 5th edition, boneclaws are described as a failed form of lich.
Shadow Walker: 5th edition boneclaws can teleport from one dark spot to another, inflicting necrotic damage to nearby creatures when they do so.
Wolverine Claws: They primarily attack by skewering people with their oversized fingernails.

Bonedrinker

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (lesser), 6 (standard) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These ghoulish goblinoids indeed possess a toxic bite that allows them to drink the liquified bones of their victims.

Combat Tentacles: They have pale tentacles extending from their ribcages just below their armpits, which they use to help grapple victims.
Non-Human Undead: The first bonedrinkers were made from goblins and bugbears by hobgoblin wizards looking for new undead minions. Theoretically it would be possible to adapt the bonedrinker creation ritual for other races, but at this point it's become tradition.
Vampiric Draining: Bonedrinkers hunger for bones, and can bite and drain a pinned foe to deal Constitution damage each round. Anyone whose Constitution hits 0 as a result collapses in a pile of boneless flesh.

Boneleaf

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

Creatures that use illusions to lure prey into reach of their tendrils and razor-sharp leaves.

Hive Mind: Subverted; each individual boneleaf in an area is just one part of a much larger organism, and their nerves run underground for miles between the "trees" above the surface. Practically speaking, the difference is trivial, and anything that "one" boneleaf experiences becomes known to the "rest."
Man-Eating Plant: Subverted; while boneleaves are often mistaken for plants, a DC 15 Spot check will pick up on their off-white, green-tinted coloration, and their vines' tendency to move without a breeze. Dissecting one reveals that its vines and leaves have blood vessels and cartilage, while its roots are in fact a nervous system. They feed on the blood shed by their victims more than their flesh, supplemented by nutrients from the soil.
Master of Illusion: Boneleaves hunt with an illusory lure, a variant of major image that only lasts a few rounds at a time, and which typically takes the form of someone crying for aid, or a glimpse of something valuable in or next to the "tree."
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: If sorely pressed in combat, a boneleaf will use its modest burrow speed to vanish beneath the earth and soil, leading to the bizarre sight of a "tree" disappearing as if yanked down by something below.
Tentacle Rope: Boneleaves attack with tendrils that can grab and constrict prey, all while their razor-sharp leaves deal a bit of additional damage.

Boneless

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Undead (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 1 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral (2E), Neutral Evil (3E)

Undead created from corpses stripped of bone, leaving them flopping and shriveled horrors.

Exactly What It Says on the Tin: They're undead with no bones, moving about by muscles only.
Mounted Mook: A macabre variant; some efficient necromancers create a boneless and animate skeleton from the same corpse, than have the former ride upon the latter until they enter combat. "The sight of a boneless peeling itself from its independently undead frame haunts the nightmares of many seasoned monster hunters."
Rubber Man: Downplayed; boneless don't have a longer reach than Medium creatures, but are remarkably flexible and strong, allowing them to squeeze through inch-wide gaps or wrap around their victims, smothering, blinding and crushing them all at once.
Running on All Fours: They can abandon a lurching bipedal gait to go about on all fours, which lets them double their speed in certain editions.

Bonesinger

Origin: Ghostwalk
Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: As base creature
Alignment: Chaotic Evil or Neutral Evil

Reanimated musicians who bolster other undead with their eerie music.

Bizarre Instrument: Their body is one — as part of the process of creating a bonesinger, the creature's skeleton is sculpted with channels and grooves that let the bones serve as a macabre wind instrument, producing a "faint, haunting keening" as air moves over the bonesinger. This gives bonesingers a bonus on Perform checks but a big penalty on Move Silently checks, unless they're put under a silence effect.
Blow You Away: Bonesingers are constantly surrounded by a "subtle swirling breeze," and once per day can intensify it to replicate a gust of wind spell, with the added effect of a charnel Weaponized Stench that can nauseate victims.
Evil Counterpart: They're undead, evil bards who retain all their Magic Music abilities, only their curative magic is corrupted into inflict wounds spells. Bonesingers are even dressed the part, wearing tattered bard outfits with a death motif.
Seers: Legend has it that bonesingers sometimes receive prophetic visions from the demon prince Orcus.

Bonespear

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Vermin (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Giant insects native to Acheron, though they've since spread to other planes, where their ability to harpoon prey makes them deadly hunters.

Anchored Attack Stance: A bonespear can anchor itself to the ground with all six legs, giving it a huge bonus to opposed Strength checks and attempts to be moved against its will.
Big Creepy-Crawlies: They're insectoid predators some eight feet long.
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: A bonespear hunts by using a powerful blast of compressed air from specialized bladders in its head to launch its two horns at a victim. If this attack hits, the victim is impaled and takes a minor penalty on rolls as well as damage each round until the horn is removed, though pulling the barbed horn free will deal additional damage (which can be lessened with a successful Heal check).
Poisonous Person: Each of their horns carries a different poison, one dealing Dexterity damage, the other Strength damage.
You Shall Not Evade Me: Bonespears' signature weapons are tethered by long lengths of sinew, allowing them to reel in an impaled victim at a rate of 10 feet per round with an opposed Strength check.

Bonespitter

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Horrible undead conglomerations of multiple creatures, plants and inorganic matter, animated by the same planar energies that created them.

Ballistic Bone: They get their name from their ability to crunch one of their free-moving bones into fragments in one of their many jaws, then spit a barrage of razor-sharp bone shards at a nearby foe.
Body Horror: No two bonespitters look alike, but each is "a terrible stew of arms, legs, torsos, and heads" mixed with stone and metal, with their bones visibly swimming through the mass like fish, complete with occasionally leaping out of the body to be reabsorbed with a wet slap.
Counterspell: Their chaos-infused bodies let bonespitters attempt to counter one spell each round as a free action.
Deceased and Diseased: Any living creature wounded by a bonespitter might contract a supernatural disease known as dripping decay, which damages their Strength, Dexterity and Constitution each day they're afflicted. Those who succumb dissolve into a steaming stain on the ground surrounded by Empty Piles of Clothing... and then their remains reanimate as a new bonespitter. A creature transformed into a bonespitter in this manner can't be raised from the dead until it is destroyed.
Hitbox Dissonance: Similar to displacer beasts, bonespitters are surrounded by a light-bending glamer, making it hard to discern their exact position, resulting in attacks against them having a 50% miss chance unless the effect is negated by something like true seeing.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: They have a frightful presence that might cause nearby creatures to become shaken.
Teleporter Accident: They're created when a "planar flux" allows two planes to briefly mix together in a magical maelstrom, causing any creatures caught in the area - as well as nearby plants, stone and metal - to fuse into a single undead monster. Fortunately, planar fluxes are extremely rare, though more common in areas where mages experiment with planar travel or meddle with the energies of the Ever-Changing Chaos of Limbo.

Bonespur

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

These skeletal creatures usually appear as a macabre, 12-foot column of bones, but can burst into motion by suddenly taking the form of a charging warbeast.

Body of Bodies: It is comprised of multiple skeletal remains.
Dual Mode Unit: Once per day, the bonespur can transform from its column form into a skeletal shape resembling a rhino, which it uses to charge into foes to deal extra damage. It can then use another ability to explode into a blast of bone shards (dealing more damage), before coalescing into its column form at the start of its next turn.
Dumb Muscle: They're smart enough to try and bull rush opponents over ledges, but they have no sense of self-preservation and are likely to follow opponents over those cliffs in their zeal to topple them.
Sinister Scythe: In its column form, a bonespur sports a single limb with a scything blade of bone. In its rhino form, that scything blade serves as its horn.

Bonetree

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

Horrible swamp-dwelling carnivorous trees, which subsist upon their prey's bones. They're unrelated to the boneleaves above.

Blinded by the Light: A bonetree's trunk is charged with energy, which is released in a flash of light whenever it takes damage, forcing all nearby to save or be blinded for a round.
Botanical Abomination: They look something like a bulbous mangrove tree with exposed roots and leafless branches, covered in hundreds of knots and jagged holes that hide its stinging vines.
Combat Tentacles: As soon as a bonetree senses prey, a mass of tentacles erupt from the holes in its trunk, attacking everything within 30 feet of it.
Increasingly Lethal Enemy: After a bonetree has drained 3 points of Constitution from one or more victims, it can "sweat" a mixture of enzymes and liquified bone that instantly hardens into interlocking armored plates that double its natural armor bonus. After draining 6 points of Constitution, it can similarly add bony spurs to its vines, tripling their damage. The spurs drop off after 10 minutes (and are picked up and re-eaten by the tree), while its improved natural armor decays over the next three hours before similarly being re-absorbed.
Man-Eating Plant: Downplayed in that while they prey upon animals, bonetrees are specifically after bone, not meat. Also, unlike most D&D plant monsters, bonetrees are completely immobile.
Non-Health Damage: Their vines can attach filaments to a paralyzed victim that excrete an enzyme that dissolves bone without harming the surrounding tissues. In gameplay terms, this means a point of Constitution drain each round (with No Saving Throw) until the victim is torn free by an opposed Strength check.
The Paralyzer: A bonetree's stinging vines carry a poison that deals Dexterity damage, with a secondary effect of paralyzing victims.
Roar Before Beating: A variant; when a bonetree senses prey, its tentacle-branches rattle in anticipation, producing a sound similar to a nest of rattlesnakes.
Weak to Fire: Averted; unlike most plant enemies, bonetrees are resistant to fire damage.

Boneyard

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tumblr_inline_oev5oe3scn1rkapbx_400.jpg

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 14 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

A sentient swarm of bones which can take on various forms, a boneyard attacks other creatures to add their bones to itself.

Body of Bodies: A boneyard is a single creature made from a vast number of bones. It most often takes the form of a gigantic serpent, but being a swarm of bones it can reassemble itself into whatever form it wants.
Dem Bones: It's a monster made from the bones of countless dead creatures. It can even shed some of these bones to create instant skeletons which fight on its behalf.
Non-Human Undead: The bones which make up a boneyard are not restricted to being from humans or even from humanoid creatures. The artwork for the creature depicts its head as the skull of some large animal with horns and tusks, and the skeletons it can deploy from itself are either trolls or dragons.
One-Hit Kill: Anyone who gets pulled into the churning mass of a boneyard will die instantly as the monster rips their entire skeleton out of their body. There aren't any damage rolls or saving throws, the victim just dies outright.
Stripped to the Bone: Inverted. Anyone who gets pulled into a boneyard’s churning mass will have their bones ripped right out of their body, and the boneyard’s bite makes the victim’s bones start melting within the victim’s still-living flesh.

Bookworm

Alignment: Unaligned

Remarkably speedy inch-long worms whose hunger for paper, leather and wood makes them the bane of librarians everywhere.

Chameleon Camouflage: Their bodies are normally gray, but bookworms can change their hue to blend in with their surroundings.
Lamprey Mouth: It's just for feeding, though, they don't actually have an attack that can deal damage to a living creature.
Literal Bookworm: They are tiny worms that, while harmless to people, can prove to be the undoing of anyone dependent on books and scrolls, such as magic users.
Non-Malicious Monster: They just simply feed on any printed material and are relatively harmless.
Organ Drops: The bookworms' own bane is ink, which they can't digest and which builds up in their bodies until it poisons them. On the plus side, the ink stored inside their corpses is a potent ingredient for Anti-Magic.

Brachyurus

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 23 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Extraordinarily large and vicious wolves, who roam lost extraplanar wilderlands or walk among their lesser kin as living myths.

Canis Major: They're Large wolves with bristling manes and overlarge, but perfectly functional, teeth and claws.
The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: A brachyurus pelt is a tempting prize for esoteric hunters, but more often than not such would-be hunters end up in the creatures' bellies.
Kick Them While They're Down: Brachyuruses can make a special "savage" attack against any enemy that goes prone in their threatened area, dealing potentially over 100 points of damage as the beast latches onto their victim's body and tears their flesh. This combos nastily with the creature's Improved Trip feat.
Lightning Bruiser: They have a blistering 80-foot movement speed, and thanks to their Blinding Speed epic feat, they can haste themselves for a total of 10 rounds per day.
Monster Progenitor: They're said to be "the primordial stock from which all lesser wolves and canines devolved," and their descendants include the mythical Fenris Wolf.
Savage Wolves: They are a different species of wolves and can attack any enemy in sight.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: A brachyurus' frightful howl can make even the most hardened warriors quake in their boots, an ability the beast uses to break up opponents.

Brain in a Jar

Classification: Undead (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 3 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (3E), Any (5E)

A sentient, undead brain in a jar, which affects the world with its psychic powers.

Brain in a Jar: An eldritch ritual combining alchemy, necromancy and surgical precision encases the brain of a mortal inside a glass jar filled with preserving fluid and liquefied flesh. The brain becomes immortal and imbued with psionic powers in the process.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin: It's a brain. In a jar.
Mind over Matter: Some editions give the brain telekinetic powers to make up for its lack of a body.
No-Sell: The 5th edition brain is immune to multiple damage types and status conditions, and its passive ability to sense the presence of nearby intelligent creatures makes sneaking up on it nearly impossible.
Psychic Powers: A brain in a jar possesses a small arsenal of psionic abilities. While its specific powers vary by edition, it can often control—or attack—other people's minds.

Brain Mole

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Burrowing mammals all but indistinguishable from their mundane cousins, but which feed upon psychic energy.

Anti-True Sight: Brain moles can hide their minds from clairsentience powers or divination magic.
Attack Animal: Non-psions have been known to keep brain moles as protection against psionic attackers.
Mana Drain: They can use power leech as an at-will psi-like ability, which they use to feed upon other psionic creatures' power points.
Poisonous Person: Their bite attacks at most deal 2 points of damage on a critical hit, but can infect other creatures with cascade flu, a malady that can cause them to inadvertantly manifest an increasing number of psionic powers until their power point reserve is completely spent.
Psychic Powers: Besides power leech, brain moles use detect psionics to find prey, and when pressed will use aversion or mind thrust to defend themselves.

Branta

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

Hardy herbivores adapted to life in the frostfell.

Fantastic Livestock/Horse of a Different Color: Averted; nobody's managed to domesticate brantas yet. However, some orc tribes or dragons will block off mountain valleys to trap a herd in the area, to take advantage of their tight, light-hued, nourishing meat.
Horn Attack: Brantas prefer to flee rather than fight, but when cornered will lower their heads and charge at a threat to make gore attacks, and potentially toss enemies around with their horns.
The Nose Knows: Downplayed; brantas' sense of smell is developed enough for them to detect the presence of other creatures within 30 feet, but they have to get right on top of them to pinpoint an unseen creature's location.

Braxat

^3e

^2e

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Humanoid (4E), Giant (5E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E), 14 (4E), 9 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil, Evil (4E)

15-foot-tall psionic humanoids who relish hunting intelligent prey by moonlight.

Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Zig-zagged. Young braxats commonly fight one another as they compete for treasure, mates, lairs, etc. But once a braxat has joined a hunting warband, conflict within that group is strictly forbidden, and killing a bandmate is punished by executing both the offender and their family.
Art Evolution: Their 2nd Edition art mixes rhino and reptilian features, giving them leathery grey hides beneath scaly armor plates, and has them standing fully upright. Their 3rd Edition art instead depicts them hunched over, with colorful, insectoid carapaces. 4th Edition reverts to their original design, then 5th Edition depicts them as something like a Huge, bipedal mix of a ceratopian and ankylosaur.
Breath Weapon: They can breathe a cone of acid (or cold in 3E), but only use this attack in emergencies, since it tends to leave prey unfit for consumption.
Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Braxats can eat just about anything, but only properly hunt other intelligent beings, and in fact their entire society is structured around raiding and stalking their neighbors. Sometimes other creatures try and turn this around and attempt to harvest braxats' shells or horns, but in most cases the braxats are more than a match for such would-be hunters of hunters.
Mix-and-Match Critters: They're towering bipeds with rhino-like bodies but beetle-like shells.
Psychic Powers: Like most life from the world of Athas, braxats are naturally psionic. Beyond powers such as blink, dimension door or fear (the specific powers varying by edition), they can also use a mind blast to stun prey in 3rd Edition, while 4th and 5th Edition let braxats throw up a telekinetic barrier to block an incoming attack.
Sadist: Braxats try and maximize their victims' fear as they close in, and never kill quickly.
Telepathy: In 2nd and 3rd Edition, they can communicate psychically out to a range of a mile, and often use this power to create false hope for their victims, or describe the grisly fate in store for their prey.

Breath Drinker

^3e

Classification: Elemental (3E), Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 14 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Cruel vaporous creatures that steal the very air from their victims' lungs.

Art Evolution: They go from pale and misty in 3rd Edition to dark and smoky in 5E.
Axe-Crazy: In 3rd Edition, breathdrinkers are sometimes summoned to the Material Plane to assassinate a certain target, but may decide to linger after their original assignment simply because they enjoy causing death and destruction.
Feed It with Fire: A 5E breath drinker is actually healed by radiant damage, despite its void-like nature. However, because of that void-like nature, necrotic damage serves as its Achilles' Heel, amplifying the void within its core until the monster consumes itself.
Invisible Monsters: The breathdrinker is normally invisible until it attacks, at which point it mimics the form of its current target.
Razor Wind: In 3E, they can make "wind scythe" attacks, blasts of air from their own body that are so powerful that they deal as much damage as a metal scythe.
Retcon: 3E breathdrinkers are elemental creatures from the Elemental Plane of Air sometimes summoned by spellcasters, while 5E breath drinkers are Far Realm entities sometimes aligned with Elder Evils, and were originally spawned by the Void card from the Deck of Many Things.
Super-Persistent Predator: Their 3rd Edition entry mentions that breathdrinkers are single-minded once they select a victim. Not only will one not rest until the monster feeds upon its prey's breath, it'll forgo using its signature attack on all but its chosen target, defending itself from other threats with its wind scythe instead.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: A 3E breathdrinker's glowing red eyes can strike fear into its prey, rendering them helpless as it steals their breath.
Supernatural Suffocation: They feed on air extracted from the lungs of living creatures, causing them to eventually suffocate.

Briarvex

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Sometimes called "vine ogres," these hulking ambulatory plants seek only to fill the woodlands with their spawn, and view all other creatures as threats to their existence.

Absolute Xenophobe: Briarvexes only rarely seek peaceful relations with neighboring creatures such as gnolls, and even then consider such lesser beings to be nuisances, no better than fertiliser. In most cases, the only time briarvexes don't try to kill or drive out other creatures is because said creatures are strong enough that the briarvexes are waiting to build up overwhelming numbers. They're so nasty that some sages think briarvexes originated in the Nine Hells before being transplanted to the Material Plane.
Arch-Enemy: Briarvexes and treants hate each other and fight on sight, seeing each other as their most powerful competitor for control of the forest.
Explosive Breeder: There have been instances, in lush terrain, where briarvexes have planted nearly a thousand of their kind in the space of a year, and since a briarvex takes only two years to mature, the result is a mighty horde of plant monsters that overruns settlements near their forests.
Green Thumb: A briarvex can control the plants around it, causing them to grapple and hold its foes as per the entangle spell.
No-Sell: They can move through the thorniest of undergrowth without being slowed or taking damage, and are similarly immune to magical attempts to impede them with plants. This means groups of briarvexes can use their entangle ability without fear of hampering each other.
Power Fist: An organic example; briarvexes' fists are studded with thorny spikes, which break off when they punch foes and embed themselves in their victims' flesh, at which point the briarvex can take a swift action to make the thorns twist and burrow deeper for additional damage. A victim can use an action to dislodge the thorns, thankfully.
Weak to Fire: Like most plant monsters, briarvexes are vulnerable to fire damage, and as such take care to appraise threats before leaping into combat, in case any are carrying sources of fire.

Brigganock

Classification: Fey (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/8 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Tiny, mouse-like denizens of the Feywild, who make their living mining for rare gems.

Big Eater: Brigganocks never turn down a good meal and eat a lot for a creature of their size.
Hitodama Light: These fey's souls exist outside their bodies, appearing as bulbs of pale light. They use them to help see in the dark, and can take a bonus action to send their soul-lights up to thirty feet to illuminate an area before returning.
Make a Wish: Mortal wishes take physical form in the Feywild, becoming lodged in "wish stones." The brigganocks seek these out, collecting and polishing those containing good wishes into proper gems, and leaving behind malicious wishes. The resulting polished wish stones are then traded to other fey for use as scrying stones, or to power charms or animated objects.
Our Kobolds Are Different: They're arguably closer to the source material than D&D's draconic kobolds, as brigganocks are explicitly fey creatures that work in mines, though they're more benign than most folkloric kobolds. Their rodent-like appearance also makes brigganocks look quite similar to Warcraft's take on kobolds.
Time Master: A brigganock can accelerate time around itself, allowing it to finish an hour's work in mere seconds, so long as said work takes place within a single room-sized area.

Brixashulty

Classification: Animal (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Brixas for short, these goatlike creatures have long been domesticated by halflings, who boast that the beasts are "as surefooted as a mule, as loyal as a dog, as calm as a milk cow, and as tough as a badger."

Attack Animal: Their does are often trained for guard duty in addition to work, and are valid animal companions for classes like druids and rangers.
Fantastic Livestock: Brixas are quite useful livestock, providing wool, milk, and meat that's somewhat tough and stringy, but well-flavored (though some find the taste overpowering).
Horn Attack: They attack by goring with their horns, which can also inflict Knock Back.
Horse of a Different Color: Small humanoids can easily ride brixashulties, whose bucks are often trained as combat mounts.
Sweet Sheep: They're mostly even-tempered, but brixashulties are always alert and sensitive to strange sights, sounds or smells, tend to charge and gore offenders when annoyed, and a herd of agitated brixas can fend off even packs of wolves by concentrating their attacks and covering each other's flanks. Of course, these are all positive qualities for livestock in a halfling caravan traveling through potentially dangerous lands.

B'rohg

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Natural Humanoid (4E), Giant (5E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (4E), 6 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral (2E), Unaligned (4E), Any (5E)

Primitive four-armed giants who are often captured for use in gladiatorial combat.

Because You Were Nice to Me: B'rohgs' primitism and lack of intelligence makes it difficult for them to bond with other creatures, but 5th Edition mentions that if a stranger helps a b'rohg, the giant will be at first puzzled, then wary, but may eventually come to trust the smaller being, tagging along for a time and repaying their kindness by carrying heavy loads or helping their friend cross dangerous terrain, before leaving to seek out other b'rohgs.
Dumb Muscle: They're big, strong, and very stupid — despite having the same Intelligence stat as an ogre, b'rohgs have no language beyond grunts and gestures, don't seem to grasp the concept of death (they ignore anything showing no sign of life, but will give a downed opponent a thump to keep them from getting back up), and in their home setting, haven't even discovered fire (though they at least have no irrational fear of it).
Gladiator Games: As mentioned, b'rohgs' strength and the spectacle of their four-armed combat style make them popular in gladiatorial arenas, especially on Athas, where they tend to be treated as exotic animals rather than giant humanoids and are never given the chance to earn their freedom. B'rohgs who escape captivity do so with a new appreciation for weapons and armor, but they can never go back to their home societies, both due to the shame of being captured, and out of shame for their people's primitive lifestyle.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: They can make four attacks per round with their fists, weapons or hurled rocks. In 5th Edition, a b'rohg can also make a special attack to grapple a foe with a "Hideous Rend," dealing damage each turn until their victim is torn into four pieces.
The Speechless: The b'rohg language consists of grunts and hand signals, and their limited intellects make them incapable of learning spoken or written languages (and hamstrings attempts at telepathic communication).

Broken One

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

Sometimes called "animal men," these twisted beings are the survivors of magical mishaps or scientific experiments that have left them horrid combinations of beast and humanoid.

Barbarian Tribe: Broken ones usually dwell within small communities of their own kind, occasionally raiding caravans or nearby settlements for supplies, in self-defense, or out of vengeance for real or imagined wrongs. Though given the opportunity, they'll try to hunt down and kill the person responsible for their condition.
Beast Man: A particularly haphazard example, with asymmetrical mixes of beast and man for a generallly grotesque appearance. On the upside, broken ones enjoy Super-Toughness, a Healing Factor, and often additional powers based on the animal they've been mingled with.
Came Back Wrong: Rumor has it that some broken ones are the result of resurrection or reincarnation spells gone awry.
Humanoid Abomination: While other, "natural" bestial humanoids might be labeled Humanoids or Monstrous Humanoids, broken ones are classified as Aberrations in 3rd Edition.
Speaks Fluent Animal: One in ten broken ones can communicate with the type of creature they resemble.

Bronze Serpent

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

Twenty-foot-long constructs originally built to guard the temples of snake-worshipping jungle cultures, until the secret of their creation spread to other lands.

Animal Mecha: Bronze serpents are magical metal constructs consisting of bronze rings assembled in the shape of giant snakes.
Feed It with Fire: Due to their affinity for it, bronze serpents are healed by electricity-based attacks.
Glowing Eyes: A bronze serpent's eyes glow with blue-white electricity.
Shock and Awe: The jaws of a bronze serpent drip electrical sparks, dealing extra damage to victims of its bite. It also gets an attack bonus against targets wearing metal armor.

Brood Keeper

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 16 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

30-foot-long insectoid monsters that unleash swarms of their voracious offspring in battle.

Attack Animal: While brood keepers' belligerance makes them ill-suited as guard creatures, some have used them as walking vaults by sneaking a valuable item beneath their chitin plating.
Big Creepy-Crawlies: They are Huge creatures resembling wingless beetles with six cat-like eyes.
Food Chain of Evil: They're strong and fearless enough to go after giants and dragons.
It Can Think: Brood keepers have the Intelligence score necessary to learn a language if taught, but do not speak, and view other creatures as nothing more than food.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Any creature who sees a brood keeper rend a foe in combat, or unleash its swarm of offspring, has to save against fear.
The Swarm: Brood keeper larva fight in clouds of foot-long, winged grubs.
Weaponized Offspring: Brood keepers carry their many young within their carapaces, and can take a full-round action to lift the plates of chitin on their backs (reducing the brood keeper's Armor Class) to release a flying swarm of larva, typically so their young can feed, or to send after distant foes. Brood keepers are willing to risk their offspring in combat, since the larva don't grow while sheltering on their parent, and if the single swarm they support is destroyed, the monsters can asexually create a new one within a month.

Brownie

Classification: Fey Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (4E)
Alignment: Lawful Good (brownie), Neutral Good (dobie), True Neutral (buckawn)

Two-foot-tall, friendly humanoids who live in rural areas, coexisting with larger folk.

Arch-Enemy: 4th Edition states that brownies despise goblins and boggles in particular, and will slice off the fingers of any boggle reaching into a brownie's home. This means goblins or boggles will hesitate to enter a home under a brownie's protection.
Familiar: While most brownies prefer to work without any recognition, some brownies who have moved into the home of a good wizard are known to offer their services as familiars, helping organize arcane components, copy spells from one tome to another, and keep the wizard's robes tidy.
Friend to All Living Things: Watchdogs and other domestic animals know that brownies are friendly, and never bark at or attack them.
Our Gnomes Are Different: A type of brownie known as buckawns better fits the "forest gnome" mold than the "house fey" archtype. Buckawns dwell in forests, their clans living in single homes carved into the bowels of a great tree. They're reclusive and distrustful of outsiders, even other buckawn clans, and known for employing both illusions and potent, fast-acting poisons against threats.
Hobbits: Brownies are possibly related to halflings, and when they aren't inhabiting abandoned structures will dwell within burrows in pastoral areas.
House Fey: They usually live in or close to farms, quietly doing chores in exchange for taking a minor portion of milk and grain. "House" brownies are those who have moved into the homes of families who meet their moral standards, offering them further assistance in exchange for a bit of fruit or bread. But their etiquette demands that their hosts take no notice of them, and brownies will leave a home if its owners boast of having assistants.
Master of Illusion: They can use magic like ventriloquism, dancing lights and mirror image each once per day.
Stealth Expert: Brownies don't have the magical ability to hide themselves, they're just so good at blending in with their surroundings that they're practically invisible. And when they do need to escape in an emergency, they know dimension door.
Unwanted Assistance: This is the gimmick of dobies, more rustic brownies (i.e. they're depicted in denim overalls) who typically work on farms. Like normal brownies, they try to do services for the big folk, but always botch the job in some way — if they milk the cows, they forget to close the barn door, and if they bring the cows back, they trample a garden in the process. They're also amazingly oblivious to criticism, instead redoubling their efforts in an attempt to make amends, and are next to impossible to drive away. About the only good thing about them is that they'll interrupt burglars and wild animals' attacks on their farm, albeit in a way that causes a lot of chaos and minor property damage.

Bugbear

Classification: Humanoid (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E), 1 (5E)
Playable: 2E-5E
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

The biggest of the goblinoids, and suprisingly sneaky for their size and strength. See the Playable Races subpage for details.

Bulette

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 9 (4E), 5 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Armored, shark-like predators that burrow through sand and soil.

Crafted from Animals: Their armored head-plates can at least be fashioned into shields, enchanted ones if a dwarven smith works with them.
The Dreaded: As their AD&D entry explains, "Ogres, trolls, and even some giants all move off in search of greener and safer pastures when a bulette appears. A bulette can turn a peaceful farming community into a wasteland in a few short weeks, for no sane human or demihuman will remain in a region where a bulette has been sighted."
Expy: Based on a knockoff Ultraman kaiju figure found by Gary Gygax, presumably Gabora in its "burrowing form" with its head petals closed.
Extreme Omnivore: Bulettes are indiscriminate predators that will attack whatever they can hear moving on the surface. They will eagerly devour any other living thing (except elves and dwarves, whose taste they dislike), and their powerful stomach acids will allow them to digest even the clothing, armor and weapons of their prey — hungry bulettes aren't above eating whatever gear and belongings their victims left scattered around.
Land Shark: Bulettes are armored, shark-shaped monsters that burrow through earth and sand, often with just their dorsal fins poking through, attacking anything they can find.
Moby Schtick: The Ecology of the Bulette article in Dragon #74 focuses chiefly on a hunter named A'ahb retelling his hunt of a legendary albino bulette named Mobh Idich.
Sand Worm: Their sharklike shape aside, bulettes are classic examples of this trope. They're subterranean, burrowing predators that spend most of their time belowground, using their sensitivity to tremors in the earth to detect the presence of creatures above them. As soon as a bulette feels something walking around on the ground above, it surfaces, attacks and tries to devour it.

Gohlbrorn

Alignment: Lawful Evil

An Underdark offshoot of the bulette with enhanced intelligence and other dangerous abilities.

Blinded by the Light: Averted; gohlbrorn have nictitating inner eyelids that filter any light brighter than a candle, preventing them from being blinded by a daylight spell, and allowing them to hunt on the surface if necessary.
Boulder Bludgeon: As they burrow through the earth, gohlbrorn store large rocks in their gullets, which they can fire at foes in combat.
Food Chain of Evil: Gohlbrorn eat anything they can catch, and are able to prey upon subterranean races like grimlocks, quaggoths, and particularly seek out drow. But they find the illusion-casting svirfneblin more trouble than they're worth, and fear the illithids.
He Was Right There All Along: Their scales and armored plating blend in with their surroundings, making gohlbrorn undetectable 45% of the time.
Retcon: While they were a distinct subspecies of bulette back in 2nd Edition, 5th Edition sources instead state that gohlbrorn is merely the Dwarven word for "bulette."
Shorter Means Smarter: Gohlbrorn are Medium-sized creatures compared to the Large surface bulettes, and at most are seven feet long. To make up for this, they're about as smart as the average human, enough to have their own rumbling language and hunt in packs (called "schools"). Unlike mere predators, gohlbrorn won't abandon older family members, instead younger hunters will bring food to less capable school members.

Bullywug

Classification: Humanoid (3E, 5E), Natural Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E, 4E), 1/4 (5E)
Playable: 2E, 4E
Alignment: Chaotic Evil, Neutral Evil (5E)

Brutish and malicious batrachians who live in swamps, raiding nearby civilizations for both useful goods and shiny trinkets to use as status symbols.

Ax-Crazy: 4th edition describes them as being "Among the pettiest and most mindlessly destructive of all humanoid societies."
Enemy Summoner: Their 3rd edition write-up notes that bullywug spellcasters have a dangerous enthusiasm for summon monster spells, one that outstrips their ability to control what they call up. This means there's a chance for a bullywug cleric to summon more monsters than normal with a spell, as well as a chance for said monsters to be outside the cleric's control. Which leads to some bullywug spellcasters spending more time fighting their own summoned reinforcements than the enemy.
Frog Men: They resemble humanoid frogs, and live in wet, swampy habitats. Naturally, they're amphibious, adept at hiding in marshy terrain, and are powerful jumpers.
Horse of a Different Color: Some bullywugs, particularly their nobility, ride into battle on giant toads.
Inferiority Superiority Complex: Their main defining trait as of 5e is that they will always try to show off to visitors, and get very angry if insulted. On the upside, this means that captives who grovel and flatter their bullywug captors will usually be set free after providing suitable tribute to the mighty frog-monarch who captured them.
Speaks Fluent Animal: Bullywugs can communicate simple concepts with frogs and toads when speaking Bullywug.

Buomman

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

Humanoids known as the "moaning monks," who dwell in shrines and temples on the Astral Plane, amidst the remains of forgotten deities.

Bare-Fisted Monk: Their lifestyle is monastic to begin with, so most buomman characters progress as monks.
Barrier Maiden: Neutral or Evil buommans tend to believe that the petrified deities on the Astral Plane are dead and must not be revived, and thus go through their rituals to prevent that from happening. Good buommans, on the other hand, invert this trope and sing their songs in the hope that the sleeping deities will awaken someday.
Creepy Long Fingers: Their fingers and toes are noticably elongated, adding to their otherworldly air.
Elective Mute: Buommans take a vow agianst speech at an early age, though not a vow of silence — their monks get their nickname for conversing in low, throaty singing, and their proper name from the first note each learns to vocalize before learning to walk, "buomm." They're not constantly singing, but buommans sing during daily rituals, and have songs for occasions such as waking, sleeping or eating, as well as for less concrete concepts. A buomman who breaks their vow against speech takes Wisdom damage and a penalty on rolls for the next 24 hours, cumulative for each offense. For this reason, buomman spellcasters rely on metamagic feats like Silent Spell, or use the Nonverbal Spell feat to cast spells using other sounds besides speech.
Human Subspecies: The first buommans were human visitors to the Astral Plane, but thousands of years later they're considered natives, humanoids with the extraplanar subtype rather than the human subtype.
Only Known by Their Nickname: Buommans' names for themselves are short melodies in specific keys, so for the convenience of other races, adventuring buommans accept nicknames from their companions, as long as they aren't too harsh. "Jak" would be uncomfortable, while "Moony" is acceptable.

Burbur

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Alignment: Unaligned

Strange little creatures that feed upon dangerous slimes and molds.

Big Eater: Burburs won't stop feeding until they've dealt thrice as much damage to an ooze as they had starting hit points. After feeding, the burbur will be bloated and sluggish, and retreat to its nest to rest.
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Once each year in the spring, a burbur develops a bulge on its tail that grows into a second head, then sprouts arms, until finally a second, entirely new creature splits off the end of the first.
Helpful Mook: They're unintelligent monsters, but their ability to consume dangerous dungeon oozes make them prized by adventurers and valuable as exotic pets (though not to plasmoids, for obvious reasons).
No-Sell: They can not only safely eat the likes of green slime and russet mold, they're also immune to the effects of dangerous plants or fungi like yellow musk creepers or violet fungi, and will frequently make their nests behind such hazards.
Our Monsters Are Weird: Burburs have foot-long, worm-like bodies, mosquito-like heads complete with a straw-like proboscis they use to slurp up prey, and pair of dextrous arms.

Burrow Root

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Carnivorous plants over 12 feet long, which burst from the soil, attack prey with their thorny maws, then retreat underground to feed on the blood seeping into the earth.

Asteroids Monster: Once per day, when a burrow root is reduced to half its full hit points, it splits into two creatures, each of which receives half the original's remaining hit points (the "newborn" then has to wait another day before it has a chance to split). This is in fact how burrow roots reproduce, so they'll remain in combat until they either win or split, at which point both burrow roots typically flee beneath the surface.
Damage Over Time: Their attacks cause persistent bleeding damage.
Fast Tunnelling: Their base burrow speed is only 20 feet per round, but three times per day they can use an immediate action to burrow an extra 20 feet, moving fast enough to avoid attacks of opportunity.
Sand Worm: They hit most of the beats of the trope, they're just plant monsters rather than animals.

Buso

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Tigbanua buso are ghoulish, one-eyed creatures whose filthy claws curse others to transform at night into similar monsters called tagamaling buso.

Cyclops: Buso's distinguishing characteristic is their single eye, a lurid red and yellow color.
Our Ghouls Are Different: Tigbanua buso are often compared to ghouls, being filthy, feral humanoids that ambush their victims in the night, but they're not actually undead.
Our Werebeasts Are Different: A tigbanua buso's claws carry the tagamaling curse, causing those who fail their saving throws to have a cumulative 1% chance each night of transforming into a tagamaling buso — their eyes fuse together, their hands twist into claws, their Intelligence score falls to 2, and they attack everything they see. When dawn arrives, the victim returns to their natural form and has no memory of what they did the previous night, but is considered fatigued all day. While this condition can be cured by remove disease or remove curse, if 99 days pass and the victim reaches a 100% chance of transforming, from that point on their nightly transformations can only be stopped by a wish or miracle.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Tigbanua buso are surrounded by a 10-foot aura that can cause other creatures to cower in fear.

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