Dungeons And Dragons Creatures E / 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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E

Earth Glider

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Large predators from the Elemental Plane of Earth who can "swim" through solid stone, and enjoy hunting creatures of both flesh and stone.

Dungeon Bypass: These creatures get their name from their ability to glide through earth and stone (but not metal) as easily as a fish moves through water, leaving no trace of their passage
Horn Attack: Earth gliders' primary attack is goring opponents with their vicious horns, which hit harder than greatswords.
Poisonous Person: Their bite carries a Charisma-damaging poison that, if it reduces a victim's Charisma to 0, petrifies them as well.
Sinister Stingrays: Earth gliders look like horned manta rays with pebbly, stonelike hides.

Earth Whisperer

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

These malicious beings from the Elemental Plane of Earth seek to lure miners to their doom.

Dishing Out Dirt: They can use stone shape at will and spike stones and wall of stone three times per day.
Gaia's Vengeance: Earth whisperers view themselves as "the earth's rightful vengeance against those who plunder its treasures," particularly singling out miners.
Gold Fever: Invoked with their avarice ability, which causes those who succumb to attack the nearest creature carrying valuable metal or mineral wealth.
Intangibility: They're naturally incorporeal, which they use to great effect when stalking and ambushing prey.
Mook Commander: Earth whisperers can take control of earth elementals in the same way an evil cleric can rebuke or command undead.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Their cavern fear ability is a specialized variant, in that it fills victims with an "irrational fear of being pushed out of the earth," leading them to flee in a panic deeper underground, even if this means attempting to climb down into a pit or chasm.
Taken for Granite: Earth whisperers' incorporeal touch attacks deal Dexterity damage, ultimately petrifying those whose Dex scores hit 0.

Eblis

Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Eight-foot-tall, intelligent, and evil avians that delight in robbing and killing other beings.

Feathered Fiend: They're stork- or crane-like birds known for their cruelty, and 5th Edition states that "They live to destroy creatures that offend them and delight in luring humanoids to an unexpected death." Though some scholars blame the influence of eblis spellcasters on the rest of their kind more than an innate tendency for evil.
It Can Think: Eblis have human-level intelligence and the ability to speak Common in addition to their own language of "chirps, whistles, and deep-throated hoots." They're also smart enough to build huts to dwell in, forming crude settlements.
Reincarnation: According to 5E, some Chultans believe that thieves and kidnappers are reincarnated into the form of eblis as a divine punishment.
Sorcerous Overlord: 2nd Edition states that eblis villages are ruled by one of their number who has learned spells like change self, spook and/or wall of fog. Though in 5th Edition, every eblis knows how to cast blur, hypnotic pattern and minor illusion.
Thieving Magpie: Eblis like shiny objects like gems, coins, as well as less valuable bits of glass and metals, and are willing to attack humanoids to get them. Afterward, the loot is woven into the elbis' nests, which can require some effort to extract.

Ectoplasmic Swarm

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

Tiny, spider-like creatures native to the Astral Plane, where they spin vast webs of ectoplasm to ensnare their prey.

All Webbed Up: They swarm over prey to encase them in a cocoon of Ectoplasm, at which point their victim is Eaten Alive.
Series Continuity Error: An ectoplasms swarm is said to be driven by its goals to eat and reproduce, and if they go too long without prey, the spidery creatures will go dormant until something disturbs their webs. The problem is, the Astral Plane is specifically timeless in regards to aging and hunger, so it's unclear how any of this would work.
Spider Swarm: They're unusually social, spider-like Crystalline Creatures that can be found in swarms numbering in the thousands, though in some cases an unusually large specimen the size of a fully-grown dragon might be found in the center of a swarm's web, tending to it.
Summon Magic: In a rarity for psionics, there's a dedicated power to summon an ectoplasmic swarm from the Astral Plane, a power which can be augmented so that the spiders appear in a target's space.

Ectoplasmic Vermin

Origin: Ghostwalk
Classification: Vermin (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/3 (Tiny), 1/2 (Small), 1 (Medium) (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Also known as "ghost bugs," these translucent subterranean insectoids prey upon both the living and the manifested dead. They're unrelated to the Astral ectoplasmic creatures above.

Ectoplasm: Their bodies are made up of "living" ectoplasm, so that their organs can be seen through their transparent carapaces. Unlike Ghostwalk's ghosts, ectoplasmic vermin are living creatures with discernable anatomies, rather than Outsiders.
Explosive Breeder: Several churches in their home setting sponsor seasonal purges of ectoplasmic vermin, but this only temporarily reduces their numbers, and the creatures' population can swell to the point that they begin venturing onto the surface to hunt.
Poisonous Person: Their bites carry a poison that deals Dexterity damage, and can affect both living creatures and ghosts.
Weakened by the Light: Bright sunlight or a daylight spell imposes an attack roll penalty on ghost bugs, and it also shuts down their Healing Factor until they flee to darkness — "It is thought that the light causes the vermin some discomfort or damages their internal organs."

Effigy

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 17 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These fiery undead envy the living so much that they take over their bodies, only for the effigy's burning hatred to consume their unwilling host from within.

Grand Theft Me: Anyone hit by an effigy's touch has to save or have their body taken over as per the magic jar spell. The victim can expel the effigy with a successful Wisdom save, but they'd better do it fast.
Intangibility: In their natural forms, effigies are intangible creatures of fire.
Level Drain: An effigy's incorporeal touch attack can impose two negative levels on victims, which heals the effigy.
Possession Burnout: Quite literally! Any victim infused with an effigy will burst into flame, taking automatic fire damage and energy drain each round, until it is reduced to a flaming corpse.
Wreathed in Flames: In their natural forms, effigies look like figures made from multicolored fire, and anyone they possess will burst into flame as well.

Egarus

Origin: Planescape
Alignment: Unaligned

An all-consuming fungus that destroys anything that ventures onto the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Vacuum.

Achilles' Heel: Egarus is immune to most spells, but patches of the fungus are instantly destroyed by cure disease, disintegrate, finger of death, lightning bolt, shocking grasp, and slay living. On the non-magical front, any application of acid, alcohol or electricity also does the job, as does at least 60 gallons of water.
Alien Kudzu: The story goes that some hapless planar traveler encountered egarus on a layer of the Abyss, and inadvertently brought some back with him to his homeworld on the Prime Material Plane. The fungus proceeded to start spreading everywhere, to the point that the world's wizards couldn't destroy the stuff faster than it spread. It took literal Divine Intervention to save that world, by gating egarus to the Quasiplane of Vacuum in an effort to destroy it, but...
Beyond the Impossible: Against all reason, egarus not only survived being transplanted to a plane of nothingness, it adapted to its new environment by being able to sustain itself on the absence of matter and energy. The good news is that egarus can no longer survive anywhere else, and will starve to death after fruitlessly converting a little bit of the other plane to a void.
Meaningful Name: "Egarus" is evidently a curse on the world the fungus nearly overran.
Psychic Radar: Egarus can detect any intruder on the Quasiplane of Vacuum, at a range of thousands of miles.
Reduced to Dust: Since egarus feeds on "nonexistence," it reflexively tries to destroy anything it encounters, to a range of 25 feet or so. First it extinguishes flames and dispels active spell effects, then it starts disintegrating inorganic matter, before finally targeting living beings.
Teleportation: The fungus can use a teleport without error ability to go after offending sources of matter and energy on their home plane.

Egg Hunter

Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (hatchling), 5 (adult) (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Salamander-like parasites that specialize in consuming and mimicking dragon eggs.

Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Egg hunters feed on dragon eggs and lay their own eggs inside the now-empty shells.
Hidden in Plain Sight: An egg hunter can inflate its bulbous tail to take on the shape and texture of a dragon egg.
Life Drain: An adult egg hunter's barbed proboscis deals both piercing and necrotic damage, healing the creature in the process.
Poisonous Person: An adult egg hunter can release a cloud of torpor-inducing spores that poison other creatures and interfere with their ability to act, which helps the egg hunter make an escape.
Super-Toughness: Egg hunter adults can magically harden their hides, reducing the damage of an incoming attack.

Eidolon

Classification: Undead (eidolon), Construct (sacred statue) (5E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (5E)
Alignment: Any

Devout spirits tasked by a higher power with guarding a sacred site, by animating a chosen vessel to repel intruders.

For the eidolons of Theros, see the Crossover Creatures page.

Harmless Enemy: Played with; eidolons by themselves don't have an attack on their profile, and can only spook mortals. But see below...
Living Statue: Eidolons can bring a sacred statue to a semblance of life by possessing it the way a normal ghost would possess a person. It can then use the statue's heavy stone limbs to beat intruders to death, or hurl boulders at them.
Mythology Gag: The animated idol in the eidolon's creature art is the same one depicted on the cover of the 1st Edition Players Handbook [sic], none too pleased that some adventurers have pried out one of its gemstone eyes.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Creatures within 60 feet of an eidolon that can see it can feel a divine dread that forces them to flee from the eidolon until it wears out.

Eladrin (Celestial)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_eladrins_3e.jpg

A ghaele and bralani eladrin (3e)

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Celestial (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Free-spirited and passionate celestials from the Olympian Glades of Arborea. They are perhaps the most easily-provoked and unpredictable of their kind, especially when they witness injustice or oppression, but all eladrins remain committed to spreading good and opposing evil.

Celestial Paragons and Archangels: The eladrins are ruled by the Court of Stars, headed by Queen Morwel and her consorts Faerinaal and Gwynharwyf.
Dual Mode Unit: All eladrins can switch between an elf-like humanoid and a flying, insubstantial alternate form at will, the details of which vary by eladrin, but is frequently a Ball of Light Transformation. Neither is their "true" form - a true seeing effect will reveal both forms at the same time, and if killed in one form an eladrin doesn't revert to another.
No-Sell: All eladrins are immune to electricity and petrification effects.
Omniglot: Eladrins know all languages and can communicate with any creature that has a language.
Our Angels Are Different: They're something like a heavenly version of The Fair Folk, graceful, vivacious, unpredictable, pointy-eared beings that are solidly on the side of good. Also, Cold Iron can reliably overcome their Damage Reduction.
Retcon: Their entire celestial race seems to have been put on the shelf ever since 4th Edition, which radically changed how angels and the like worked and gave the "eladrin" name to a Feywild-linked elven subrace. While devas at least have made a reappearance in 5th Edition as an example of celestials, the eladrins remain fey elves rather than celestial fey.
Status Buff: Many of the stronger eladrins are surrounded by a protective aura that combines the effects of a magic circle against evil and lesser globe of invulnerability for them and their allies.

Bralani

Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)

The wildest of their kind, bralanis live from moment to moment in pursuit of their glorious passions. Their alternate form is that of a swirling whirlwind.

Blow You Away: In their whirlwind forms, they can unleash lines of scouring wind to damage foes.
Bow and Sword in Accord: Their preferred loadout is a scimitar and bow, similar to the desert nomads they resemble.
Magic Knight: Bralanis are capable in direct combat, and also can use spells like gust of wind, mirror image and lightning bolt.
Wandering Culture: On Arborea, bralani spend their time wandering the deserts of the layer of Mithardir in whirlwind form, covering hundreds of miles each day and only stopping to prank travelers or attack evildoers.

Coure

Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)

The smallest of the eladrins usually serve as scouts or messengers, when they aren't dancing through life or pranking other creatures. Their alternate form is that of a ball of light.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Coures can appear in a variety of improbable colors, enhanced by bright apparel "of questionable taste."
Our Fairies Are Different: They're more or less celestial sprites.
Intangibility: Their ball of light form is incorporeal, allowing them to pass through obstacles short of force effects.
Know When to Fold 'Em: Coures are playful, not stupid, and know that at two feet tall they aren't meant for direct combat. Their response to danger is thus to engage in Hit-and-Run Tactics, with some coures harrassing the threat while others go find a more powerful celestial to bring in as reinforcements. The exception is if the coures are faced with similarly-tiny imps and quasits, who they fight on equal footing.
The Prankster: A Chaotic Good example, so their jokes aren't too malicious or dangerous.
Spark Fairy: Their alternate form is essentially this, with the note that the coure can hide their glow as needed.
Winged Humanoid: Making them one of two eladrins that can fly in their humanoid form.

Firre

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)

The protectors of artistry and beauty, and the most widely-traveled of the eladrins, as they're willing to journey far to experience spectacular natural wonders or listen to a famous bard. Their alternate form is that of a crackling pillar of fire.

BFS: They carry enchanted greatswords for close combat.
Deadly Gaze: They can look at an enemy and cause it to burst into flames and go permanently blind.
Javelin Thrower: Each firre also carries four +5 javelins on them.
Magic Knight: On top of their spell-like abilities, firres are also functionally 12th-level clerics.
Magic Music: They can use their captivating voices to replicate the effects of a bard's magic music, just without any daily limits.
Playing with Fire: As per their alternate form, firres can drop spells like fireball and wall of fire at will.

Ghaele

Challenge Rating: 13 (3E)

These eladrins are more subtle than others of their kind, quietly working behind the scenes to muster resistance against tyranny and guide good-hearted people to stand against oppression. Their alternate form is that of a globe of otherworldly colors.

BFS: They favor holy greatswords for hand-to-hand combat.
Deadly Gaze: Their stare can instantly kill evil creatures with less than 5 HD, and serves as a Supernatural Fear Inducer against stronger foes.
Intangibility: Their globe form is incorporeal, allowing them to pass through obstacles short of force effects.
Knight Errant: Ghaeles are described as such, roaming the multiverse in search of tyranny and helping good creatures overthrow it. They're the most serious of the eladrins, and even on their home plane, their thoughts are of how things are going back on the last Material Plane world they helped liberate.
Light 'em Up: In globe form, ghaeles fire rays of light that ignore any kind of Damage Reduction.
Support Party Member: Besides their innate celestial spell-like abilities, ghaeles are also effectively 14-level clerics. Their magical repertoire consists of spells like cure wounds, dispel magic, remove curse, etc. Though they can still drop a flame strike or chain lightning as needed.

Noviere

The most straightforward and approchable of the eladrins are for the most part content to remain in the waters of Aquallor, though some will leave Arborea to explore the coasts of other planes. Their alternate form is that of a dolphin comprised of golden water.

Apparently Human Merfolk: Novieres look something like stockier aquatic elves, with green, blue or golden skin, hair ranging from blue-green to blond, and a distinct lack of gills or webbed fingers and toes.
Making a Splash: They can hurl a damaging water bolt once per day, and when submerged can use the surrounding water to protect themselves, improving their Armor Class.
Swallowed Whole: A variant; a noviere in dolphin form can simply engulf another creature to hold them in place.

Shiere

The shining hosts of Arborea, these fey knights defend the eladrin courts and ride out beneath the stars to hunt down evildoers. Their alternate form is a globe of faerie-light, but they prefer to stay in their demihuman shape.

Dual Mode Unit: Downplayed; unlike other eladrins, shieres can only transition between their two forms once per hour, and thus will only assume their ball of light form in emergencies, such as to make an escape.
An Ice Person: In addition to other spells, they can cast cone of cold, ice storm or wall of ice at will.
Knight in Shining Armor: They're a Chaotic Good example, being honorable fey celestials who prefer fighting from horseback with lances, while wearing enchanted armor of glass and crystal. Shieres are known for their courage and honor, and celebrate such traits in other beings, while being icy cold towards those who can't meet their standards of behavior.
Muscles Are Meaningless: Shieres look like 7-foot-tall and lanky high elves, but despite their slender frames they're all as strong as the greatest of mortal warriors.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Any evil creatures who meet a shiere's gaze have to save against fear.

Shiradi

Challenge Rating: 14 (3E)

Eladrins that journey the planes, seeking out places where beings cannot think or act freely, and fighting so that everyone is free to act as they please so long as doing so doesn't impinge upon others' freedom. Their alternate form is that of swirling cloud of golden, triangular shards of light.

Chain Pain: Shiradis wield holy spiked chains in close combat.
Flechette Storm: While in their alternate form, shiradis can fire a barrage of light shards that deal damage, can hit incorporeal creatures, and carries a greater dispel magic effect.
Living Lie Detector: They're under a constant discern lies effect.
Supernatural Sensitivity: Shiradis can detect the presence of any enchantment effect on creatures within 20 feet, which synergizes with their ability to cast break enchantment three times per day.
Winged Humanoid: Making them one of two eladrins that can fly in their humanoid form.

Tulani

Challenge Rating: 18 (3E)

The most powerful and beautiful of the eladrins prefer peace and solitude, but when moved to fight for others' freedom, they can singlehandedly destroy entire armies of evil. Their alternate form is that of a scintillating sphere of rainbow-colored light.

Deadly Gaze: Tulanis' mere gaze can kill evil creatures of 5 Hit Dice or fewer.
Faerie Court: The tulani are fey lords of Arborea, holding ever-roaming courts and ruling over a host of lesser eladrin. They themselves answer only to Queen Morwel, but the tulani are compassionate and distant overlords who let their subjects do as they please.
Forced Sleep: In their sphere forms, tulanis can fire "dream rays" that deal Charisma damage, and any creature whose Charisma hits 0 falls into a dream-filled coma. Unless they're evil creatures, in which case they're trapped within nightmares and take increasing damage for every hour they're unconscious, until they're slain.
Intangibility: Their globe form is incorporeal, allowing the tulauni to pass through objects short of a force effect.
Magic Music: They have the bardic music ability of 18th-level bards, except they don't need instruments thanks to their unearthly voices, and can maintain their musical effects as a free action.
Shock and Awe: Among their dangerous repertoire of spell-like abilities, tulanis can cast chain lightning at will and treat the spell as Empowered by metamagic.
Spontaneous Weapon Creation: As a free action, tulanis can create a powerful brilliant energy holy longsword, which disappears should the tulani die or lose their hold on the weapon.

Eladrin (Fey)

Autumn eladrin (5e)

Classification: Fey Humanoid (4E), Fey (5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (4E), 10 (5E)
Playable: 4E-5E
Alignment: Any (4E), Chaotic Neutral (5E)

Elves from the Feywild, who have absorbed that plane's intensity and fickleness. The emotions of eladrin can change their physical form, aligning with one of the four seasons to grant them different abilities. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Elan

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

Former humans who have used a psionic ritual to become ageless beings.

The Ageless: Elans are theoretically immortal, able to use their mental powers to rebuild and reenergize their bodies. They're wary of how other races might react if they learned this, however, and thus the elans keep their true nature secret, blending in with normal populations as best they can.
Eating Optional: They can spend a power point each day to meet their need for food and water.
Humanoid Abomination: The ritual to become a elan leaves them something other than human, giving them the Aberration type and a corresponding immunity to spells like charm person (though not darkvision, which is normally standard for Aberrations).
Mage Species: All elans are naturally psionic, giving them a few power points to fuel their racial abilities.
Mana Shield: Elans can burn power points to reduce incoming damage or give themselves a bonus on saving throws.
Super-Empowering: Elans are made, not born, with aspirants carefully screened by hidden elan enclaves before being granted access to the psionic ritual that empowers and reinvents them as a new elan. This means elans of a given "generation" share characteristics based on the preferences of older elan — currently, pale skin, red hair and a youthful quality seem to be in vogue.
Uncanny Valley: Even though elans look nigh-identical to humans, and work to blend in with ordinary beings, others can tell there is something odd about them, resulting in a racial penalty to Charisma.

Elder Eidolon

An elder eidolon resembling a kraken (3e)

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

Magical constructs built in imitation of living creatures, using techniques that predate the rise of humanoid civilization.

Alien Geometries: Their forms "incorporate what should be impossible geometrics" in their construction, translating to a deflection bonus to their Armor Class.
Brown Note Being: The elemental forces powering elder eidolons "warp time and space and cause horrible hallucinations in those nearby," forcing them to save or suffer a confusion effect.
Healing Factor: Unlike most constructs, elder eidolons constantly regenerate hit points each round, which combined with Damage Reduction that can only be overcome by adamantine weapons makes them exceptionally tough.
Living Statue: Elder eidolons are carved from ancient igneous stone like basalt, obsidian or porphyry, covered in runes and glyphs from a long-dead language, and made to resemble a life form (natural, magical or aberrant) from the Material Plane.
No-Sell: Like more familiar golems, elder eidolons are immune to most magic, with some specific exceptions. Transmute rock to mud hits them with a slow effect, while stone to flesh negates their Damage Reduction and magic immunity for a round. Dimensional anchor dazes them for a round, and dimensional lock shuts down their "otherworldly geometry" and "insanity aura" abilities. On the flipside, etherealness repairs some damage, while transmute mud to rock heals them completely.
Ragnarök Proofing: Thanks to their ability to repair themselves, elder eidolons remain fully functional despite their forms appearing somewhat eroded or timeworn. It's not uncommon to find them patrolling areas where any relevant sites of interest have long since crumbled into dust.

Elemental

Earth elemental (5e)

Classification: Elemental (3E, 5E), Elemental Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1-11 (3E), 1-22 (4E), 5 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral, Unaligned (4E)

Roughly human-shaped embodiments of the fundamental elements that make up the physical universe. The most common and well-known are elementals made up of the four classical elements, but they are many variations.

For information about the Elemental creature type in general, see the relevant page.

Animate Inanimate Matter: Elementals are often portrayed this way, with the four main kinds especially being depicted as living, only roughly humanoid masses of air, earth, fire, and water.
Asteroids Monster: Omnimentals, elementals composed of all four classical elements, will split into four smaller elementals, one for each element, when killed.
Crystalline Creature: Dragon #174 describes several types of unusual natives of the Quasielemental Plane of Mineral (a plane formed by the mixing of the Planes of Earth and Positive Energy), including glomus (floating clusters of quartz-like crystals), shards (living, flying double-ended crystals that move in swarms), and trilling crysmals (which resemble bacteriophage viruses made of out of gems).
Cumulonemesis: Storm elementals are crudely humanoid masses of electrically-charged clouds, and in battle fight using electric shocks, full-sized lightning bolts and peals of thunder. When summoned away from the Elemental Plane of Air, they prefer to spend their time amidst raging thunderstorms.
Defeat Equals Explosion: When a chillfire destroyer is brought down to zero health, it remains immobile for a round and then violently explodes.
Elemental Embodiment: Elementals are incarnations of the elements that make up the universe.
- Most commonly these are pure embodiments of the traditional four elements of fire, water, air and earth, but "paraelementals" embody combinations of two of said elements: ice (air and water), magma (earth and fire), ooze (earth and water), and smoke (air and fire).
- There are also "quasielementals," one of the traditional four elements combined with positive or negative energy. The former yields lightning (positive air), mineral (positive earth), radiance (positive fire), and steam (positive water) quasielementals, the latter vacuum (negative air), dust (negative earth), ash (negative fire), and salt (negative water). And then there are rumors of "para-quasi-elementals," to make things even more complicated.
- There have been elementals representing stranger things or concepts: shadow, ectoplasm, blood, taint, and more.
Evil Counterpart: While most elementals are True Neutral beings, Ravenloft has Neutral Evil variants of the standard elementals given a macabre twist by the Domains of Dread. Mist elementals are drawn from the sinister fog that surrounds each domain, grave elementals are comprised of grave dirt and often feature bones and coffins jutting from their forms, pyre elementals are drawn from funeral pyres, and blood elementals are summoned from vast quantities of blood or the water drawn from the lungs of drowned men. It's possible to summon such "dread elementals" on purpose, but there's also a 1-in-5 chance that an attempt to summon a standard elemental creates one of these sinister versions instead, to the Dark Powers' delight.
Fragile Speedster: Air elementals are faster and frailer than the other three types.
Home Field Advantage: Elementals are far smarter in their native planes than they are on the Prime or other planes. Also, while they can be conjured, they are not automatically under the summoner's control like they would be on other planes, requiring the summoner to cast an enchantment to bind them.
Immune to Fire: As a rule, fire elementals are immune to fire damage.
King Mook: The archomentals, the Inner Planes' equivalent of Demon Lords and Archdevils and Celestial Paragons and Archangels, tend to appear as bigger, more impressive elementals, with the exceptions of Zaaman Rul, a red-skinned humanoid who is lord of the good fire elementals, and Cryonax the Para-Archomental of Ice, who looks like a fur-covered humanoid.
Logical Weakness: Fire elementals, as you might imagine, do not like to get wet. Depending on the edition, fire elementals might be incapable of entering a body of liquid or directly harmed by contact with water. Similarly, 5E water elementals will freeze and become less mobile if they take cold damage.
Mighty Glacier: Earth elementals, being the only elementals made of a solid substance, are generally slower but stronger and tougher than the other three kinds.
Oxymoronic Being: Elementals from the Elemental Chaos can be composed of mutually-opposing elements or forces, and tend to be fairly unstable as a result. Chillfire destroyers, for example, consist of fire held within a a shell of ice and are prone to exploding upon death.
The Swarm: Elementites are tiny, barely sentient elementals that are only dangerous en masse, flowing over enemies like a tide of animate cinders, pebbles, etc.

Elder Elementals

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

Elder tempest (5e)

Challenge Rating: 20 (Leviathan, 5E), 16 (Phoenix, 5E), 23 (Elder Tempest, 5E), 22 (Zaratan, 5E)

Elementals of legendary power, but no more self-awareness than their smaller kin.

Almighty Idiot: Compared to their lesser kin, 5th edition elder elementals are apocalyptically powerful but also incredibly stupid. Each one has an Intelligence score of 2, making an elder elemental as smart as a wild animal.
Cannibalism Superpower: Elder elementals were once no different from regular elementals. They became as powerful as they are by devouring others of their kind.
Earthy Tortoise: The zaratan, the elder elemental of earth, resemble a giant tortoise made out of rock and soil.
Feathered Serpent: An elder tempest resembles a gigantic snake made of storm clouds, with seven pairs of feathery wings.
Giant Wall of Watery Doom: The leviathan can summon a tidal wave that is 250 feet tall and long.
Kraken and Leviathan: A leviathan resembles a gargantuan sea serpent made out of water.
The Phoenix: Phoenixes are elder fire elementals in the shape of immense firebirds, which are reborn as eggs formed from their own ashes when they die.
Resurrective Immortality: If a phoenix dies, it explodes, and the ashes reform into an indestructible egg-shaped cinder which hatches into a new phoenix within a week.
Shock and Awe: Elder tempests, being essentially living thunderstorms, can call down lightning strikes around themselves, either a single one against a target or as a devastating lightning storm.
Sturdy and Steady Turtles: Zaratans are extremely well-defended beings, and when they take more damage than they're comfortable with can retreat indefinitely within their impermeable rocky shells. A zaratan in this state is impervious to all damage and slowly regenerates health, allowing it to wait out whatever danger threatened it before eventually emerging again.
Turtle Island: The zaratan is a terrestrial version of this trope. It resembles a giant turtle with a shell consisting of a large chunk of the landscape from where it was summoned.
Weather Manipulation: An elder tempest is a living storm. Its very presence brings torrential rain or driving snow, and it can call down lightning bolts or summon hurricane-force winds at will.

Elemental Grue

Chaggrin and harginn (3e)

Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Hateful creatures spawned when the Elemental Planes are tainted by evil.

Anti-Magic: The mere presence of an elemental grue interferes with spells manipulating their associated element, so that mages within 40 feet of one have to succeed on a caster check to work such magic, while any ongoing magical effects around a grue are automatically subjected to a dispel magic attempt.
Evil Counterpart: The elemental grues are corrupted variants of normal elementals. Chaggrins are mole-like creatures that dig and burrow purely to destroy earth, harginn are Evil Living Flames who delight in causing pain, ildriss are perpetually-angry Invisible Monsters that spitefully throw around any objects they can, and vardiggs are foul masses of Murder Water that attack anything near the pools they claim.
Fusion Dance: A triad of vardiggs can stack on top of each other, snowman style, to act as a singular entity with mild improvements to its combat capacity.
Heel–Face Turn: While most ildriss serve Yan-C-Bin, the evil archomental of air, there are rumors that some Good air elemental grues have abandoned the faith. Such ildriss are reclusive by necessity, but might be drawn to paladins and priests of exceptional virtue.
Made a Slave: Chaggrin are often enslaved by the likes of crysmals and dao to serve as diggers and guard beasts, though "Most other races consider them too hateful to be efficient workers or reliable guards." Harginn similarly are most often found serving the efreet, though some free harginn families live as pirates on the Elemental Plane of Fire, selling their captives in the City of Brass.
Metal Muncher: Chaggrin have a habit of consuming valuable minerals, making other natives of the Plane of Elemental Earth consider them annoying vermin.
Power Copying: Each elemental grue contains within its body a fist-sized, pearl-like object inscribed with arcane etchings. If the grue is slain, a wizard can then use that pearl to copy a new spell into their spellbook — an ildriss might leave behind a spell object containing invisibility or more rarely fly, for example.

Elemental Myrmidon

Fire elemental myrmidon (5e)

Challenge Rating: 7 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (4E), Unaligned (5E)

Myrmidons are elementals which have been magically bound to suits of specially prepared armor, rendering them docile, obedient, and more dangerous than their unbound kin.

Dual Wielding: A fire elemental myrmidon wields a pair of scimitars as its weapons of choice.
Epic Flail: An air elemental myrmidon wields a spiked flail as its weapon of choice.
Prongs of Poseidon: A water elemental myrmidon wields a trident as its weapon of choice.
Retcon: They resemble the elemental archons of 4th edition, but with a completely different backstory and nature. In 4E, archons were the soldiers of the Primordials who created the world and existed only to fight, conquer, and destroy. Myrmidons, by contrast, are just normal elementals that have been bound into the service of mages and given magical weapons and armor.
Spell Blade: The myrmidons can temporarily imbue their weapons with various forms of elemental energy to increase their destructive power.
Sudden Name Change: These creatures were introduced in 4th Edition under the name archon, before 5th Edition renamed them to myrmidons.

Nature Elemental

Alignment: True Neutral

Titanic beings comprised of all four elements, summoned to reduce an area to a primal state.

Element No. 5: They're said to be comprised of air, earth, fire, water, and "the force that some sages call the fifth element, spirit, or life."
Gaia's Vengeance: Nature elementals exist to erase any signs of civilization from a one-mile radius, down to the simplest grass hut. This includes any humanoids apart from the caster(s) of the elemental's Summoning Ritual. What's more, the text in its entry suggests that the elemental is actually an avatar of the living world itself, meaning that, for all practical purposes, it is Gaia.
Genius Loci: They have the motif down, appearing as roughly-humanoid shapes comprised of the natural materials of their surroundings — their earthen forms are covered in foliage and small animals, with rivulets of water running across their bodies in defiance of gravity.
Healing Factor: Nature elementals are absurdly hard to defeat, since unless their hit points are completely depleted in a round of combat, they'll heal back to full health at the start of their next turn. The only way to stop this is to somehow separate the nature elemental from its surroundings, such as by magically putting it in a vacuum or shunting it to wildspace.
World-Healing Wave: In the aftermath of a nature elemental's rampage, new plants grow to maturity overnight, the local water sources are purified, and animals are attracted to immediately inhabit the new stretch of wilderness.

Elemental Steward

Geodite and emberling (3e)

Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Small, intelligent and psionic elemental beings, who eagerly serve psions who call them to the Material Plane.

Elemental Powers: Each elemental steward can fire an energy ray aligned with their energy type (fire for emberlings, cold for arctines, electricity for tempestans, and sonic for the geodites), as well as wield support powers like skate or matter agitation, with the note that these are all psi-like abilities rather than conventional magic.
Familiar: While these elementals can be temporarily called to the Material Plane via a psionic power, what they really look forward to is being permanently summoned by a character with the Elemental Envoy feet, taking the place of a psicrystal "familiar."
Happiness in Slavery: Elemental stewards "devote themselves to lives of servitude," and even compete with one another for the chance to work for a psion. Some sages even speculate that these elementals are "merely the product of psionic intent."

Elemental Weird

Air and water elemental weirds (3e)

Challenge Rating: 12 (air, earth, fire and water), 15 (ice and snow) (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

These female-looking elemental oracles have powers of foresight defined by the element they embody. They dwell in remote areas surrounded by their associated element, and are willing to deliver cryptic but accurate prophesies for visitors, if those supplicants bring a suitable offering or agree to undertake a quest on behalf of the weird.

Elemental Rivalry: Utterly averted. Elemental weirds share a fundamental connection that transcends their elemental subtypes, and if one cannot answer a supplicant's questions, they direct them to a sibling who can. For this reason, elemental weirds usually place their pools close to one another, in order to broaden the range of divinations available within a region. Weirds can also take command of other elementals of any element, even those summoned by attackers.
Enemy Summoner: When threatened, weirds can summon powerful elementals to protect them.
Fog Feet: An elemental weird's upper body is always humanoid, while their lower bodies can have legs, or just trail off into a serpentine column of their elemental force. Which means yes, the air elemental weirds have foggy feet.
Portal Pool: Elemental weirds are physically connected to pools filled with their element, and can move at most 10 feet away from them. Said pools are also portals to their associated Elemental Plane, which the weird can travel through or use to summon reinforcements, but any other creatures trying to use it without the weird's permission have to save to avoid being turned into an elemental themselves.
Seers: Each type of elemental weird can freely use spells like clairvoyance, find the path or legend lore to provide a different kind of guidance:
- Air weirds can help those traveling into the unknown by pointing out alternate paths, or describe what will be needed to safely complete the journey.
- Earth weirds can foresee both death and fortune, allowing them to warn of a coming apocalypse or reveal whether a pursuit of wealth will succeed or fail.
- Fire weirds are hope-bringers who can shed light on forgotten lore and guide others to peace and prosperity.
- Ice weirds have a keen awareness of the eternal battle between Chaos and Law, and can foretell which force will dominate future events.
- Snow weirds see the fluidity of events and can predict coming boons and safety, or woe and doom.
- Water weirds bring words of solace, revealing how to heal long-suffering lands or how to achieve victory when defeat seems certain.
The Weird Sisters: Elemental weirds have inexplicably feminine appearances and come in sets, the number is just different.

Avatar of Elemental Evil

Black rock triskelion (3e)

Challenge Rating: 15 (cyclonic rager, holocaust disciple, waterveiled assassin), 18 (black rock triskelion) (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Creations of the Princes of Elemental Evil, these mighty elementals serve as guardians or engines of war for the cult of the Elder Elemental Eye.

All Your Powers Combined: A black rock triskelion's arm attacks count as simultaneously adamantine, cold iron, and silver for the purpose of overcoming a target's Damage Reduction.
Battle Trophy: Waterveiled assassins are known to collect trophies from their victims, which they show off suspended within their watery bodies while in lairs of the Elder Elemental Eye.
Blow You Away: Cyclonic ragers are living whirlwinds, capable of rending victims with concentrated gusts of wind, deflecting incoming attacks (even spell rays!), or creating a 100-foot-radius surge of wind capable of selectively knocking other creatures up to 30 feet each round.
Dumb Muscle: The black rock triskelion, the dimmest avatar of Elemental Evil, is a simple brute.
Enemy Civil War: Thankfully for the rest of creation, the various cults of the Elder Elemental Eye are constantly competing with one another, so the various avatars of elemental evil are just as likely to attack each other as cooperate.
Horse of a Different Color: Sometimes, an earth cleric rides a black rock triskelion as a mount, clinging to an adamantine chain hammered into its upper body.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: A black rock triskelion smashes its enemies with three powerful pick-like arms.
Murder Water: Waterveiled assassins have malleable, liquid forms that let them flow through cracks, or become effectively invisible in deep enough water. They can also surround and churn victims with concentrated currents within their bodies, dealing damage.
Playing with Fire: Holocaust disciples can fling bolts of fire, generate waves of flame that wash over all within 60 feet, and are so hot that just approaching one can cause exhaustion from heatstroke.
Pyromaniac: Holocaust disciples relish spreading destruction and misery with searing flames.
Shoot the Mage First: Waterveiled assassins are cunning enough to focus on opponents with dangerous abilities, like spellcasters.
Sinister Suffocation: Waterveiled assassins can simply engulf Medium-sized or smaller victims, grappling and potentially drowning them.
Support Party Member: While cyclonic ragers can deal moderate damage with their "Smite of Seven Winds" attack, they're most dangerous supporting other followers of the Elder Elemental Eye, using their buffeting winds to control the battlefield, hurling enemy spellcasters into melee range while keeping the enemy's combatants scattered.
Tripod Terror: A downplayed example, as black rock triskelions are only Large, but they remain the most dangerous of the avatars of Elemental Evil.
Wicked Cultured: Holocaust disciples have a creative bent, and are known to melt down and reshape coinage into alien pieces of artwork that can fetch a good price from eccentric collectors.

Elemental Drake

Clockwise from left: magma, ooze, smoke and water elemental drakes (3e)

Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (air), 7 (ice), 8 (water), 9 (smoke), 10 (fire), 11 (earth), 12 (ooze), 13 (magma) (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral (earth), True Neutral (water), Chaotic Neutral (air), Lawful Evil (magma, ooze), Neutral Evil (fire), Chaotic Evil (ice, smoke) (3E)

A family of dragons distantly related to wyverns, but possessing powers derived from the Elemental Planes.

Acid Attack: Ooze drakes are constantly dripping with caustic slime, which deals acid damage to any creature or weapon that comes into physical contact with them.
Ass in a Lion Skin: Fire drakes are fully aware that other creatures sometimes mistake them for young red dragons, and take advantage of such situations to bully or extort others. This also gives fire drakes added incentive to avoid red dragons.
Breath Weapon: Elemental drakes notably lack a draconic breath weapon, with the exception of smoke drakes, which can exhale a haze to provide concealment, or once per day exhale an incendiary variant with white-hot cinders inside it to deal some fire damage.
Color-Coded Elements: Each drake species' coloration matches its associated element — fire drakes have bright red scales, air drakes are blue, earth drakes are greyish-brown (or green in the art), ice drakes are ivory white with pale blue highlights, magma drakes are black and red, ooze drakes are slimy green, smoke drakes are black, and water drakes are blue.
Dirty Coward: Air drakes eagerly lord over weaker creatures, but are quick to turn tail and run when confronted by more powerful beings.
Elemental Powers: Each elemental drake species is tied to an element or paralement, and possesses a set of powers tied to it. This even extends to what elemental languages they know besides Draconic, as well as how they talk (smoke drakes speak in a hissing whisper, ooze drakes slur their speech like their mouths are full of water, etc.).
Elemental Shapeshifting: Air drakes can turn into gaseous clouds and back.
Glowing Eyes: The eyes of magma and smoke drakes glow like burning embers.
The Magic Touch: Ice drakes can spread shocking cold at a touch, while a water drake's touch can put out any fire.
Playing with Fire: Downplayed with the fire and magma drakes, which can't spit or breathe fire, but have superheated bodies that deal additional fire damage or can potentially ignite, respectively, foes they strike or grapple in melee.
Scarily Competent Tracker: Smoke drakes are skilled trackers able to follow prey over great distances, and worse, are the most territorial of the elemental drakes, and known for holding grudges against those who offend it.
Shockwave Stomp: Earth drakes can stomp the ground once per day, potentially knocking everyone around them off their feet.

Elf

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_elf_3e.jpg

Classification: Humanoid (3E, 5E), Fey Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E), 2 (4E)
Playable: 1E-5E
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Graceful but aloof humanoids with a connection to both nature and magic. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Elsewhale

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Intelligent whales who swim the oceans of the Great Wheel, following crossplanar currents.

Dimensional Traveler: Besides finding natural planar portals to get around, elsewhales can use plane shift once per day.
Horse of a Different Color: Some elsewhales have been domesticated to serve as mounts, though their "riders" are instead carried in the whale's mouth.
Pun-Based Creature: They are indeed whales that can take you elsewhere.
Sapient Cetaceans: They aren't quite at human-level intelligence, but elsewhales are sapient and have their own language, a variation of whalesong.
Weaponized Teleportation: When threatened, elsewhales sometimes grab their attacker in their jaws, plane shift to another ocean, and then drop their opponent before swimming off, letting the unfamiliar environment deal with the enemy.

Elysian Thrush

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Songbirds from the Blessed Fields of Elysium, whose music is revitalizing though also enrapturing.

Hypnotic Creature: The singing of an Elysian thrush is "melodic, soothing, and extremely hypnotic," and much like Elysium itself, those who experience it may find themselves unwilling to leave. Those who hear an Elysian thrush's singing for 12 hours and fail a Will save will lose all interest in doing anything but staying and listening to the songbird, to the point of dying of thirst. They can be snapped out of it if someone physically removes them from the bird's presence, uses a spell that evokes strong emotions like fear or crushing despair, or just kills the bird.
Magic Music: On a more positive note, those who listen to the soothing song of an Elysian thrush while they rest will recover at twice their natural healing rate.
Summon Magic: Elysian thrushes have a specific summoning spell tied to them, with the important note that its duration is eight hours, four hours short of the threshold before their music becomes potentially addictive.

Ember Guard

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 15 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Creations of Imix, the evil archomental of fire, awarded to his most faithful servants.

Defeat Equals Explosion: When slain, an ember guard detonates in a 60-foot-radius explosion that deals both fire and bludgeoning damage.
Dumb Muscle: Their entry notes that ember guards are "flawlessly obedient," but "dense in mind as they are in body," and as such have a paltry Intelligence score of 3.
Playing with Fire: Ember guards' superheated fists deal additional fire damage, and they have a Breath Weapon, a cone of fire that also slows victims.
Rock Monster: They normally look like an earth elemental with flecks of brassy deposits in its stony form and flames flickering in its eyes and mouth, but when they take enough damage to expose their fiery cores, they transition into Living Lava instead.
Turns Red: After losing half its hit points, an ember guard begins emitting a fiery aura that damages other creatures within 30 feet of it

Empyrean

Empyrean (5e)

^{Titan (3e)}

Classification: Outsider (3E), Celestial (5E)
Challenge Rating: 21 (standard), 30 (elder) (3E); 23 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good (75%), Neutral Evil (25%)

Also known as titans, these gigantic and powerful demigods are usually good, though some have become corrupted by the Lower Planes.

The Ageless: Empyreans don't age, and only die when killed.
Angelic Beauty: Empyreans are the celestial children of the gods of the Upper Planes, and are universally beautiful and statuesque.
Carry a Big Stick: They usually wield massive warhammers called mauls of the titans. Non-titans can use them as potent weapons especially good at smashing objects, though the mauls require an exceptional Strength score to wield properly.
Contemplate Our Navels: Elder titans, the primeval forefathers of lesser empyreans, spend most of their time lost in thought, magically combing the planes for knowledge or thoroughly settled into the depths of their own minds This can make it difficult for other creatures to get an elder titan's attention, and they likely won't be pleased at the interruption.
Energy Ball: At range, empyreans can hurl bolts of energy at foes, and the empyrean can choose whether the attack deals fire, cold, acid, lightning, thunder, force or radiant damage.
Our Titans Are Different: In 5e, they have the Titan tag, and were known as Titans in previous editions. They are wild, chaotic, statuesque beings who revel in existence due to their closeness to the wellspring of life. More emotional than mortals, they can experience godlike fits of rage. Many titans serve good, but in ages past many others turned to evil when rebelling against the gods.
Resurrective Immortality: When an empyrean dies, its spirit returns to its home plane, to be resurrected by one of its parents, unless he or she has a good reason not to.
Shockwave Stomp: An empyrean can trigger a small earthquake by striking the ground with its maul. The resulting tremor inflicts no damage, but it can knock down anyone within a sizeable radius.

Energon

A xeg-yi (above) and xag-ya (below), (3e)

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Strange, tentacled globes of energy that wander the planes, seeking out concentrations of their constituent energy type.

Androcles' Lion: Energons have a tendency to wander through planar portals and end up in inhospitable locations or captured by spellcasters. If rescued, they'll follow around their benefactor for a time and render what aid they can.
Defeat Equals Explosion: An energon's destruction results in an explosion of its energy type.
Energy Weapon: At range, they can fire rays of their component energy type.
Intangibility: Energons are all naturally incorporeal.
Mutual Kill: When a xag-ya and xeg-yi see each other, they rush together as fast as they can. When they make contact, both creatures are destroyed.
Oxymoronic Being: A xeg-yi is explicitly a living creature somehow composed of "unlife" energy, something even its introductory sourcebook points out as contradictory. Its xag-ya counterpart doesn't make much sense for a different reason — a living being shouldn't be able to have that much individuality in a plane that is life incarnate.
Turn Undead: A xag-ya can suffuse an area with positive energy to make undead recoil.
Underground Monkey: There's a variety of energon for nearly every energy type: xac-yel (fire), xac-yij (acid), xag-az (psionics), xag-ya (positive), xap-yaup (electricity), xeg-yi (negative), xong-yong (sonic), and xor-yost (cold).

Entombed

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Undead who animate their icy tombs to attack the living.

Dungeon Bypass: Entombed are infamous for being able to glide through ice as easily as a xorn moves through earth, allowing the undead to silently emerge behind foes moving through a glacial tunnel, or attacking through the surface of a frozen lake.
Elemental Armor: The frozen remains of an entombed are surrounded by an icy sheath, giving them the stature of ogres.
An Ice Person: Entombed have the cold subtype, deal additional cold damage with every attack, and are so numbingly cold that foes they grapple take Dexterity damage.
Sinister Suffocation: They can make an "immure" attack, dragging a grappled creature with them as they slip beneath the ice. Such victims are in danger of drowning, and have to pass a high Strength check to break free.
The Virus: Any humanoid who succumbs after being dragged beneath the ice becomes an entombed themself in a matter of rounds.

Entomber

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

Simple-looking undead whose power to move bodies through the ground makes them a grave robber's best minion, and a taphephobe's worst nightmare.

Buried Alive: Their signature ability lets an entomber who successfully hits a foe with its slam attack immediately pound them bodily into a shallow grave. Mechanically the victim is treated as being grappled and pinned, requiring two rounds of successful grappling checks to escape, all while they're suffocating for lack of air.
Grave Robbing: Entombers also have an "Exhume" ability that lets them tap a grave to make the body within it pass through up to 10 feet of earth to surface without leaving a trace of its passage.
Mouth Stitched Shut: Hence why entombers understand Common, but can't speak it.
The Pig-Pen: Entombers are covered in filth and grave dirt, the result of both their condition and their occupation.

Entrope

Origin: Planescape
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Huge wormlike monsters with the power to consume planar barriers.

Bioweapon Beast: The Doomguard planar faction created entropes to speed up the process of entropy, and spent centuries investing resources into the monsters. The first batch of entropes escaped the Sinkers' control and are now wandering the Inner Planes, while the rest are on a tighter leash.
No-Sell: They're completely immune to the effects of their planar breaches, elemental energy in general, and even the likes of impact damage from hurled boulders. Only Non-Elemental magic attacks or sufficiently enchanted weapons can harm entropes.
Omnicidal Maniac: These hateful creatures not only attack anything they encounter (including each other), they seek the destruction of all things — "Even the very space that they occupy annoys them." The Doomguard is only able to control their remaining entropes through powerful magic.
Spacetime Eater: Entropes feed upon the boundaries between planes, and every three rounds can eat through the fabric of reality, creating a temporary planar breach that releases the energies and matter of one plane to come bursting onto another. This results in a 25-foot-radius elemental explosion, the effects of which range from heavy damage of various types depending on the plane in question, to Level Drain if the breach involves the Negative Energy Plane, or those in the radius getting sucked onto the Plane of Vacuum. Fortunately, this ability only works on the Inner Planes, as the Outer Planes of the Great Wheel don't have real borders as such.
The Speechless: "The Doomguard saw no reason to grant their creations the power of speech or communication," though entropes are smart enough to follow commands in planar Common.

Entropic Reaper

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These skeletal creatures come from the Ever-Changing Chaos of Limbo to enforce the deranged edicts of their creators, though they do not limit their victims to Lawful beings.

The Grim Reaper: They have the motif down, being hooded, scythe-wielding skeletons.
Power of the Void: Their scythes' blades aren't black metal, but scythe-shaped holes in reality.
Sinister Scythe: Entropic reapers' "Master of the Scythe" ability not only lets them make mighty cleaving attacks with their weapons, they can also proficiently use Large scythes despite being Medium-sized creatures.
Transformation Horror: Anything hit by their entropic blades has to make a Fortitude save or have their body begin to melt, flow and boil. Each round this goes on, the victim takes permanent Wisdom drain from the experience, is unable to cast spells, and can only attack blindly, unable to distinguish friend from foe. This entropic state is quite difficult to remove, as a victim who passes a Charisma check can only stabilize themselves for a minute. Without powerful magic like restoration or heal, a victim will eventually have their Wisdom score hit zero and discorporate into complete nothingness.

Ephemera

Creatures comprised of the substance of the Plane of Shadow, though they often find their way to other planes to serve as hunters, guardians or steeds.

Living Shadow: They are made from shadowstuff, granting them additional abilities that make them more dangerous than ordinary creatures, and much harder to spot in shadowy areas.

Dusk Beast

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Alignment: Usually neutral

Predators that lurk in dimly-lit areas, ambushing prey from the deepest shadows.

Beware My Stinger Tail: They can lash at foes with their barbed tails.
Malicious Monitor Lizard: They look like two-headed silhouettes of reptiles the size of a human, with limbs trailing off into nothingness.
Rubber Man: Dusk beasts can stretch their shadowstuff bodies to some extent, giving them a greater reach than their size suggests.

Ecalypse

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Usually neutral

Six-legged equines whose herds gallop across the Plane of Shadow.

Dimensional Traveler: They can use shadow walk at will to travel to other planes bordering the Plane of Shadow, and can plane shift once per day, bringing along a rider.
Hellish Horse: Ecalypses certainly look intimidating, what with their extra legs, shadow-skeleton appearance, utterly black eyes, and tendency to growl and snort instead of whinny, but they're not actually evil.
Intangibility: Their bodies look semi-solid to begin with, and they can turn ethereal as a standard action.
Nothing but Skin and Bones: Their flat gray coats are insubstantial, with their skeletons visible as darker shadows beneath.
Telepathy: These sentient shadow-horses communicate with one another (and their riders) via telepathy, but never with strangers.

Ephemeral Hangman

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Large, tree-like masses of tendrils around a central maw, sometimes speculated to be the "shadow selves" of creatures like ropers.

Child Eater: Ephemeral hangmen like prey that's too small or weak to fight back, such as humanoid children.
Rubber Man: By extending all their tentacles, a ephemeral hangman can spread itself almost flat, allowing it to squeeze into places a creature its size shouldn't fit, so long as those places aren't well-lit.
Shadow Walker: They can use the equivalent of dimension door three times per day, provided they're in an area of darkness or shadow.
Tentacle Rope: Ephemeral hangmen can grab and constrict foes they strike with their tentacles.
Weakened by the Light: Bright light shuts down their regeneration and other supernatural abilities.

Umbral Banyan

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)
Alignment: Usually evil

Dark trees that lurk in the hearts of forests, waiting to ensnare and strangle prey with their tendrils of shadow.

Dimensional Traveler: They can plane shift themselves and any grappled creatures to a forest on the Plane of Shadow (or vice versa), though five rounds later, if the umbral banyan's still alive, it and any other creatures within 20 feet will shift back to the plane they started from.
He Was Right There All Along: It takes a high Spot, Wilderness Lore, or Knowledge (plants or herbs) check to distinguish an umbral banyan from a normal tree.
Man-Eating Plant: Umbral banyans are carnivores that kill other creatures, then drag their bodies over their roots to serve as fertilizer. Fortunately, they're totally immobile.
Tentacle Rope: They grab and grapple foes they hit with their shadow-tendrils, which additionally deal Strength damage to grapple victims.
Vertical Kidnapping: They ambush prey with tendrils of slithering darkness that descend from the umbral banyan's branches, grab victims, and then yank them 20 feet off the ground.

Ephemeral Swarm

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

The vengeful spirits of many unintelligent creatures that suffered a traumatic, collective death. Unrelated to the ephemera above.

Intangibility: They're incorporeal undead.
Non-Health Damage: The ephemeral swarm deals Strength damage while flowing over victims, which can kill from Stat Death.
The Swarm: They can be considered something like the Non-Human Undead variant of the casurua, the manifested "psychic agony and anguish" of a group of creatures that died traumatically. While the "default" ephemeral swarm is described as a spectral Swarm of Rats that might have been spawned when someone threw a fireball into their nest, the creature's entry explains that other forms are possible, like a bunch of ghostly cats or kittens if a city's feline population succumbed to a plague.

Equiceph

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

11-foot-tall, horse-headed humanoids who are cunning tacticians and cruel overlords.

Beast Man: They're evil humanoids with the heads (as their name suggests) and legs of horses, which makes them something of an Evil Counterpart to the equinals of the celestial guardinals.
Made a Slave: They are "merciless and relentless" slavers, prizing hobgoblins in particular for their familiarity with following orders, but equicephs will enslave anyone smaller and weaker than them. They're willing to use their slaves as Battle Thralls, but aren't above sacrficing them for a tactical advantage.
Penal Colony: The equinals' homeland used the outside world as one, exiling their worst criminals across the sea, in enough numbers to form a self-sustaining, but thoroughly villainous, society. "Whether the peaceful equiceph society still survives somewhere over the horizon or has long ago fallen is a disputed matter of legend."

Essence Reaver

Origin: Eberron
Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Intelligent but vicious killers that attack anything in sight, especially psionic and magical beings.

Anti-Regeneration: Wounds inflicted by an essence reaver don't heal naturally and resist curative magic — the would-be healer has to succeed on a caster check for the spell to work.
Draconic Abomination: They look something like wingless black dragons, "but dead white eyes and a whiplike tail give away their aberrant nature." On Eberron, there's debate whether essence reavers are a dragon-demon hybrid spawned in ancient wars between those creatures, or dragons merged with dark spirits from Dal Quor, the realm of nightmares.
Mage-Hunting Monster: Essence reavers are best known for their psionic and magical hunger, and their particular appetite for manifesters, spellcasters, and magic and psionic items.
Mana Drain: Any arcane spellcaster or psion struck by their tail attack loses their highest-level spell or a number of power points, respectively. And worse...
Power Copying: Their "absorb essence" signature ability lets these monsters replicate the effects of magic or psionics they drain. So if an essence reaver hits a mage with its tail, not only does the mage lose their highest-level spell slot, the monster can cast that spell once at any point over the next hour. This effect not only extends to magic items the essence reaver attacks, but magic weapons used to attack it — the weapon's enhancements are temporarily suppressed, while the essence reaver's claw attacks gain the weapon's enchantment bonus and applicable magic effects for a few rounds.
Super-Scream: They can loose a stunning screech a few times per day.
Supernatural Sensitivity: Essence reavers are under constant detect magic and detect psionics effects, which they rely on more than their mundane senses when in combat.

Ether Scarab

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

Tiny, flighty, beetle-like creatures that elude predators by fleeing across planar boundaries.

Damage Over Time: Their supernaturally sharp bites deal cumulative bleeding damage that won't stop without a successful Heal check or some curative magic.
Defeat Equals Explosion: When slain, an ether scarab explodes harmlessly, but creates a brief planar rip in the process.
Dimensional Cutter: Ether scarabs' pincers are sharp enough to rip two-way portals between planes, typically the Material and Ethereal Planes. These rifts linger for up to five rounds, and though they appear tiny, they can accomodate up to Large-sized creatures.

Ethereal Defiler

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 16 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

12-foot-tall, hunched reptilian bipeds that tear their way between the Ethereal and Material Planes, attacking intelligent prey with blasts of tainted energy.

Bioweapon Beast: Their entry explains that they were "built to hunt and kill" by "an ancient and rare race that comes from beyond the known realms of the Material Plane." Though intelligent enough to speak, ethereal defilers have no society, and want nothing more than to murder sentient prey.
Dimensional Cutter: Rather than using conventional magic to cross planar boundaries, ethereal defilers have a variant of ethereal jaunt called "ethereal bore" that results in an eruption of eldritch energy, dealing heavy damage to all within 20 feet of its entry point.
Monstrous Cannibalism: Ethereal defilers only interact when mating, taking turns fertilizing each other's eggs, but afterwards one is likely to slay and eat the other. Similarly, the strongest hatchlings of the resulting egg clutch tend to kill and eat their siblings.
No Warping Zone/You Shall Not Evade Me: These creatures are surrounded by an "anchoring aura" that can prevent teleportation effects within 20 feet of them, and forces creatures to succeed at a Will save to physically move out of the area.
Non-Elemental: The "tainted energy" an ethereal defiler can use to empower its melee attacks or blast foes at range deals nonspecific damage a la a 3rd Edition warlock's eldritch blast.
Sadist: They take particular pleasure in devouring sentient creatures, and are known to toy with their prey like cats to prolong their terror.

Ethereal Filcher

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

Bizarre creatures that use their magic for petty theft.

Bizarre Alien Locomotion: They only have a single, muscular leg, but can still hop along faster than most humanoids can move in a turn.
Cephalothorax: An ethereal filcher's face is located on its torso, surrounded by four arms and a single leg.
Intangibility: They can make an ethereal jaunt each round, becoming ethereal for part of their move and returning to the Material Plane at the end of it. Ethereal filchers use this during their theft attempts, and to get in and out of lairs in otherwise inaccessible places, like abandoned wells or boarded-up buildings.
The Speechless: Though they have near-human intelligence, they never speak.
Sticky Fingers: Ethereal filchers have a penchant for stealing trinkets from passers-by, and their lairs are filled with all kinds of refuse.
Supernatural Sensitivity: They operate under a constant detect magic effect and have a perference for snatching enchanted items. Clever mages can exploit this by giving a worthless, shiny bauble Nystul's magic aura or a continual flame to serve as filcher bait.

Ethereal Marauder

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 4 (4E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Dual-planar predators that stalk Material Plane foes from the Ethereal Plane, then ambush them seemingly from out of nowhere.

Adaptation Name Change: They're repackaged as dimensional marauders for 4th Edition, teleporting around in combat more than shifting to or from the Ethereal Plane.
Armless Biped: They're nothing but a huge maw, a pair of legs, and a tail.
Flower Mouth: They don't have a real head, only three Monstrous Mandibles around a tooth-lined maw that leads directly into their torso.
Hit-and-Run Tactics: Ethereal marauders hunt by shifting to the Material Plane to attack, then quickly retreating to the Ethereal Plane.
Intangibility: They can shift from the Ethereal Plane to the Material as a free action, and return to the Ethereal as a move action.
It Can Think: They're smarter than ogres, but have no society in any conventional sense, and they never speak — at most they emit an "eerie, high whine" during attacks.
Know When to Fold 'Em: If an ethereal marauder is seriously injured during an attack, they'll simply retreat to the Ethereal Plane to lick their wounds.

Ethereal Slayer

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Carnivores that lurk on the Ethereal Plane in areas of significant cross-planar traffic, so they can entrap and waylay planar travelers.

Dimensional Traveler: Ethereal slayers can plane shift, but only twice per day, so they usually utilize this ability to pursue prey that manages to elude them.
No Warping Zone: They can produce a dimensional anchor effect at will, to prevent prey from fleeing to another plane or teleporting away.
Our Monsters Are Weird: Ethereal slayers are bipedal creatures with chitinous shells, mantis-like scythe-arms, multiple eyes, and a mouth surrounded by mandibles.
Supernatural Sensitivity: They can detect magic at will, allowing them to seek out magical areas where their favored prey might gravitate.

Ethergaunt

Red ethergaunt (3e)

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (red), 13 (white), 17 (black) (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Spindly, hunchbacked humanoids from the deep Ethereal Plane, the ethergaunts (or as they call themselves, khen-zai) have spent ten millennia advancing their science and philosophy, and now view Material Plane civilizations as little better than insects to be exterminated.

Above Good and Evil: Ethergaunts claim that their genocidal nature is driven not by malice, but objectivity.
Alien Hair: They have a mass of thin, fleshy tendrils on the back of their skulls that resemble dreadlocks.
"Ass" in Ambassador: The khen-zai's diplomatic interactions with other races boil down to a) arguing that submitting to an inevitable genocide would be quicker and easier than resisting, or b) massacring a population to send a message.
The Blank: They wear bisected face masks to this effect, symbolizing how they have (allegedly) become beings of pure logic rather than emotion. They can open and close these masks as a free action, usually to horrify opponents or make use of their mental powers.
Color-Coded Castes: Red ethergaunts are the scientists, explorers, and soldiers, whites are managers that make up the bulk of the khen-zai government, while the rare blacks are the absolute leaders of their society.
Final Solution: According to the ethergaunts' logic, they need to eliminate any threat to their carefully-developed objective philosophy, so wiping out Material Plane races is an act of self-preservation.
Flat-Earth Atheist: The khen-zai's ultra-rational philosophy has long since Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions regarding divinity. Contact with divine spellcasters hasn't changed this - rather than alter their philosophy, the ethergaunts just kill any clerics they encounter.
Humanoid Abomination: They were once an ordinary Material Plane species, but ten thousand years on the Ethereal Plane have twisted them.
Intangibility: As Ethereal beings, ethergaunts cannot normally interact with Material Plane objects, but each has the innate ability to make a "Material jaunt" onto that plane for a few minutes each day. The more powerful ethergaunts use plane shift for longer stays.
Mind Control: Each can attempt to use dominate person three times per day, which they mainly use in combat or to create a "puppet-envoy" during interactions with other races.
Nightmare Face: Khen-zai's faces are a "horrifically alien mass" of bizarre organs and orifices, and seeing them unmasked deals Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma damage.
No-Sell: Due to their long study and mastery of the arcane, each type of ethergaunt is immune to hostile spells up to a certain level, 2nd level for reds, 4th level for whites, and 6th level for blacks. This only applies to arcane magic - ironically, their atheistic philosophy leaves them wholly vulnerable to divine spellcasters of any level.
Stupidity-Inducing Attack: Their "doubt bombs" release gas that overstimulates doubt centers in victims' brains, causing Wisdom damage.
Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Ethergaunts' equipment looks like magic items, but are actually advanced technology that can function in an antimagic field.
Super-Senses: They can perceive everything up to 40 feet around them, regardless of how quiet or well-hidden something is, or whether their masks are open or closed.
Sword Beam: Their go-to weapon is the etherblade, a spear that can shoot rays of Pure Energy.
Truly Single Parent: Khen-zai reproduce asexually, and the child's future caste is decided by a council of black ethergaunts, based on the achievements of the child's ancestors.

Ettercap

Classification: Aberration (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 4 (4E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil, Unaligned (4E)

Horrible blends of humanoid and spider that share many of the latter's more dangerous qualities.

Art Evolution: Ettercaps tend to look more and more spiderlike with each subsequent edition. In 1st, they were simply hairy, trollish humanoids with venomous bites and silk glands, and in 2nd they stayed largely the same but gained elongated spidery fingers and large, pupilless eyes. 3rd edition gave them a much more arthropoid appearance, including purple skin, limbs ending in two large claws, and very spider-like eyes with chelicerae and multiple beady black eyes. 4th edition turns them into full arthropods, with six limbs and thick exoskeletons, and 5th returns to the 3E look.
Eaten Alive: They prefer to eat still-leaving flesh, and consume their victims while they're incapacitated by the ettercap's web or poison.
Poisonous Person: Their bites deal additional poison damage in 5th Edition, or Dexterity damage in 3rd Edition, which allows them to paralyze foes whose Dexterity hits 0. In 2nd Edition, their posion is at its most lethal, as a victim who fails their saving throw dies in 1 to 4 rounds as the toxin paralyzes their heart. On the upside, this makes ettercap poison highly valuable, selling for a thousand gold per ounce (which is all that can be harvested from an ettercap at a time).
Projectile Webbing: They can throw webs like nets to restrain victims.
Sinister Suffocation: Some ettercaps pick up the trick of making web garrotes to strangle victims.
Spider People: Humanoid creatures with a variety of arachnid traits, including silk glands, exoskeletons, and spider eyes and mouthparts. They can also control regular spiders.

Ettin

Classification: Giant (3E, 5E), Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E), 10 (4E), 4 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Ogre-like creatures with two heads.

Fusion Dance: Ettins are never unfused, but their names follow their trope. One head might go by Hargle, the other Vargle, and the ettin as a whole is referred to as Harglevargle.
Multiple Head Case: Ettins have two heads with distinct minds and personalities, which rarely get along unless there's some outside threat or greater purpose to unite them. The upside is that this gives an ettin effectively doubled senses, making it very hard for others to sneak up on an ettin unnoticed, and also lets an ettin while away hours on end by chatting with themselves.
The Pig-Pen: Ettins never bathe and have terrible hygiene, which stains their skin and grimy fur a dirty grey color and leaves them with powerful body odor.
Retcon: Minor example. In previous editions, ettins were true giants and part of the Ordning, bastard children of Annam the All-Father. The 5e Monster Manual suggest that they were orcs corrupted by the influence of Demogorgon, but this is explicitly stated to be an in-universe theory, making ettin's origin Schrödinger's Canon.

Eye of Fear and Flame

Classification: Undead (3E-5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 12 (4E), 9 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Sometimes known as "flameharrows," these sadistic skeletal creatures use their enchanted gemstone eyes to coerce others into evil.

Attack Reflector: Eyes of fear and flame are immune to any vision-affecting magic such as blindness, which is instead reflected upon the caster.
Eye Beams: Their signature attacks are to project a fear spell from their black gemstone eye once per round, or launch a fireball from their red gem eye every three rounds.
For the Evulz: Eyes of fear and flame have no motivation beyond ordering people at fireball-point to do something horrible.
In the Hood: They typically go about in a ragged cloak with its hood up and obscuring their faces, which lets them dramatically lift the hood back to reveal their gaze.
Organ Drops: The gemstones in their eye sockets can be retrieved after the undead's destruction, and while they don't retain any magic, they can sell for 2,000 gp apiece.
Retcon: In their original appearance in the 1E Fiend Folio, they were not listed as undead nor described as such in their entry, and an article in Dragon magazine flat-out claimed the contrary, suggesting that they were living beings with a skeletal appearance. Later appearances have them be unambiguously undead.
Sadist: These undead command other beings they encounter to perform evil acts or face destruction, for example demanding that one innocent kill another, or else the undead will kill them both. If the mortal complies, the eye of fear and flame moves on, leaving the survivor to their misery, otherwise it makes good on its threats.

Eyewing

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Sometimes called the "vermin of the Abyss" by Krynnish mages, eyewings are natural lackeys for evil spellcasters or more dangerous fiends.

Beware My Stinger Tail: Their rat-like tails ends in a dangerous stinger — although it isn't venomous, the eyewing often takes advantage of the extra caution exercised by adventurers who think otherwise.
Happiness in Slavery: Eyewings exist only to serve stronger evil beings, and actually become listless and bored without orders to follow. When summoned to the Material Plane, an eyewing usually becomes the loyal servant of the evil mage who called it, "and take great glee in whatever vile acts its master set it on."
Oculothorax: They have furry, egg-shaped bodies dominated by a large, central eye and supported by a pair of bat-like wings. Eyewings have no feet, and have never been observed to stop flying and land.
Our Demons Are Different: Though evil outsiders, eyewings are native to the Abyss of Krynn's planar cosmology, not the Infinite Layers of the Abyss in the Great Wheel cosmology (hence their Lawful alignment, something unheard of in demons).
Starfish Language: Though intelligent enough to understand speech, eyewings' own "language" consists only of shrill squeaks.
Super-Senses: Beyond darkvision, eyewings enjoy superior daylight vision, to the extent of being able to see with perfect acuity up to 25 miles away in their 2E rules.
Tears of Blood: Eyewings' signature attack is dropping a foot-wide sphere of blue liquid from their central eye — in 2nd Edition this attack deals poison damage, while in 3rd it's acidic, but can also sicken and deal Intelligence damage to those splashed. These tears harden into rubbery lumps an hour later, and can still deal minor poison damage after solidifying.

Characters / Dungeons And Dragons Creatures E

E

Bralani

Coure

Firre

Ghaele

Noviere

Shiere

Shiradi

Tulani

Elder Elementals

Elemental Grue

Elemental Myrmidon

Nature Elemental

Elemental Steward

Elemental Weird

Avatar of Elemental Evil

Dusk Beast

Ecalypse

Ephemeral Hangman

Umbral Banyan

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Characters / Dungeons And Dragons Creatures E

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E

Bralani

Coure

Firre

Ghaele

Noviere

Shiere

Shiradi

Tulani

Elder Elementals

Elemental Grue

Elemental Myrmidon

Nature Elemental

Elemental Steward

Elemental Weird

Avatar of Elemental Evil

Dusk Beast

Ecalypse

Ephemeral Hangman

Umbral Banyan

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Index

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