Dungeons And Dragons Creatures F / 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 (in which Good encompasses Neutral Good and Chaotic Good, Unaligned encompasses the morally neutral alignments, and Evil encompasses Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil from other game editions), assume that the other alignment holds true for all other editions. Finally, the "Always Neutral" alignment listed in the first three editions for nonsapient creatures has been equated with the "Unaligned" alignment of 5th Edition.

See also the Beholderkin, Demons, Devils, Dragons, Giants, Mind Flayers, Undead, and Yugoloths subpages for information about those respective creatures.

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F

Famine Spirit

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 19 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Appearing as obscenely obese ghouls, these ravenous undead can consume a hundred people a day and still fail to sate their endless hunger.

Agony Beam: Famine spirits radiate an aura of pain similar in effect to the symbol of pain spell.
Big Eater: Their entry notes that a famine spirit can clear out the food stock of Mordenkainen's magnficient mansion in only five hours, and still feel hungry.
Fat Bastard: Literally morbidly obese.
Horror Hunger: Famine spirits seek to consume in death what they were denied in life, but can never feel satisfied.
Intangibility: They can use ethereal jaunt three times per day, usually to attack ethereal creatures or to get into food storehouses.
Off with His Head!: Their vorpal bite attacks inflict a One-Hit Kill should they score a Critical Hit.
See the Invisible: Famine spirits are constantly under the effects of a see invisibility spell.
The Virus: The bodies of humanoids slain by a famine spirit may rise as more of the creatures several days after death. This is a rare occurence, however, as famine spirits aren't known for leaving meals unfinished.

Feeder

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Also known as "knifewyrms," these odd, tiny dragons pass themselves off as weaponry.

Bizarre Alien Reproduction: If a feeder is able to drain blood every day for a year, it reproduces asexually, and after gestating its young for a day is ready to latch onto a dead victim and inject its wyrmlings into the corpse. At that point the parent feeder dies, while the wyrmlings feed on the corpse for a few days before bursting free and taking to the air, in search of wielders.
Equippable Ally: Feeders masquerade as daggers, and pass from host to host, serving as a weapon. Most feeders rely on their hosts to wield them in battle, allowing them to drain blood, and if said host is slain will position themselves to be acquired by a new wielder. They're so good at disguising themselves as ornate weapons that they can fool even skilled weaponsmiths.
Vampiric Draining: When used as a weapon, feeders can latch onto a victim and drain their blood, dealing up to 4 points of Constitution damage, after which it will be sated for the day. If a feeder is unable to feed on blood, it will go into a torpor for potentailly centuries.

Fell Taint

Classification: Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1-4 (4E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Partially-real predators from the Far Realm that slip through planar boundaries to hunt on the Material Plane.

Brown Note: Their attacks deal psychic damage, and they seem to feed on the thoughts and emotions of those they drive to madness.
Food Chain of Evil: Fell taints are described as their home dimension's equivalent of foxes, relatively weak predators. Unlike foxes, however, fell taints act as beacons that attract larger, more dangerous Far Realm entities, and their very presence weakens the border between reality and that realm of madness.
Intangibility: They're naturally insubstantial, but must solidify and land to feed.
It Can Think: Downplayed; their Intelligence scores range from 4 to 6, and they cannot speak. While fell taints have been observed cooperating with one another, other aberrations, or undead, they don't communicate or coordinate their actions.
Life Drain: If they can make a Coup de Grâce action against a helpless foe, a fell taint recovers all its hit points.
Swap Teleportation: Warp wenders can make a "Psychic Transposition" attack to deal damage and swap places with a target.
Tentacled Terror: Fell taint lashers are described as hovering masses of tentacles, and every other variety of fell taint has a tendril attack.

Felldrake

A crested, horned and spitting felldrake, (3e)

Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (crested), 2 (spitting), 3 (horned), 4 (spiked) (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Good (3E)

Drakes created by Bahamut to serve as guards and allies for the elves.

Horn Attack: Horned felldrakes possess two pairs of sharp, forward-pointing horns that they use to impale their foes.
Horse of a Different Color: Spiked felldrakes are sometimes ridden as mounts by high-level paladins and knights.
It Can Think: Their Intelligence scores range from "as smart as ogres" to "near-human," but all felldrakes are smart enough to converse in Draconic and Sylvan.
Semi-Divine: They don't have the Outsider creature type, but felldrakes are considered to have the Platinum Dragon's blood in their veins, making them "fierce, loyal, and good at heart."
Spike Shooter: Spiked felldrakes can shoot volleys of their tail spikes at enemies.
Super Spit: Spitting felldrakes can spit globs of acid.

Fenhound

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Great glowing mastiffs that haunt the moonlit moors of the Domains of Dread, relentlessly hunting evildoers. Not to be confused with bog hounds.

Hellhound: Subverted; fenhounds look spooky thanks to the pale yellow glow surrounding them, and they exist to kill specific humanoids, but those targets are explicitly evildoers. That said, "Because the mists of Ravenloft both punish and reward those who do evil, it is impossible to guess at their ultimate purpose in creating fenhounds."
No-Nonsense Nemesis: When they catch their quarry, fenhounds immediately attack, trying to kill their target as "quickly and cleanly" as possible. They'll prioritize that target over any other threat, but fenhounds will attack anything that tries to defend their quarry or impede their hunt. 3rd Edition also lets them fight dirty by making trip attacks.
No-Sell: Beyond their Spell Resistance, fenhounds are totally immune to any magic of the Sun Domain, and similarly can't be damaged by the magic of divine spellcasters who worship a deity associated with the moon, moors or revenge.
Super-Persistent Predator: When fenhounds appear on a moonlit night, they unerringly begin to hunt down a specific evildoer, someone who has committed an act that called for a powers check while in a moor or swamp. Even if slain on a given evening, the pack will keep reappearing each full moon to continue the hunt, until either their quarry is killed or they undergo atonement for their sins. Anyone who deals the killing blow to a fenhound is similarly marked for death.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: They announce their arrival with an eerie howl, which most creatures find unsettling, but forces the fenhounds' target to save against fear.
Weakened by the Light: Fenhounds appear on the night of the full moon, but fade away in the light of dawn.

Fensir

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Giant (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (fensir), 8 (rakka) (3E); 6 (fensir), 8 (devourer) (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

A breed of giant native to the Heroic Domains of Ysgard, known for their aversion to sunlight. While most fensir are unassuming and reclusive, some may grow into dimwitted, ravenous brutes.

All Trolls Are Different: Fensirs are commonly called trolls on Ysgard, even though they bear little resemblance to them. Their 5th Edition lore is that fensir were trolls transplanted to Ysgard by some frost giants, but generations spent on a plane infused with positive energy, combined with the trolls' innate Healing Factor, changed them into something new.
Bigby: Bringing trolls to a plane where nothing ever truly dies seems like a transparently bad idea. What were those giants thinking?
Diancastra: And yet, can we fairly say that the existence of fensirs is "transparently bad?" Some might argue they are a significant improvement over trolls. At the very least, the diversity of life in the multiverse increased, and new wonders were revealed. That's only bad if you think a small universe that fits within your narrow understanding is good.
Art Evolution: When fensir were introduced in 2nd Edition, their appearance was described as ranging from "hideously ugly, huge, and hulking to nearly human in size and appearance," but their 3E write-up and art emphasized the former, giving them oversized heads, enormous noses, warty skin and deep, misaligned eyes. 5th Edition went the other way, portraying fensir as smaller frost or stone giants, just with prominent noses and greenish skin indicating their troll ancestry.
Death-Activated Superpower: Just before a rakka is killed, she places a dying curse on those responsible, usually forcing them to pay back or serve her family.
Dishing Out Dirt: 5th Edition lets fensir lob magical globes of mud at foes, dealing damage and restraining them as the mud hardens around them — if they fail a save the next turn, affected creatures are petrified for the next 24 hours.
Half-Identical Twins: The majority of fensir are born as pairs of fraternal twins.
Hungry Menace: Some fensir undergo a transformation into huge, hungry brutes at some point in their lives. In their older lore, this might happen shortly after a female gives birth, forcing her family to dedicate themselves to keep this rakka fed. In 5th Edition, this change can happen to any fensir who lives a thousand years on Ysgard.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge: A fensir will do everything possible to avenge the death of their twin, even crossing into the Material Plane to seek vengeance.
Taken for Granite: Fensirs turn to stone the moment their body is fully exposed to natural sunlight.
Twin Telepathy: Fensir twins enjoy a near-psychic connection allowing them to sense the location and status of their sibling, no matter the distance between them.
Tracking Spell: If a fensir died through malicious intent, their surviving twin can track those individuals responsible, with no range limit.

Feral Gargun

Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Any Chaotic

A savage offshoot of the goliath race whose tribes roam the cold plains and tundra.

Arch-Enemy: Feral garguns hate giants, who are larger and better-equipped than them, and prone to capturing and enslaving them.
Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Since they settle disputes with (nonlethal) tests of strength, feral garguns tend to assume that the strongest individual in a given group is its leader.
Barbarian Tribe: They're confused and intimidated by civilization, even moreso than their goliath kin, and prefer a simple, nomadic lifestyle, even if it means they have to struggle to survive and compete with rival races. Feral garguns are pretty primitive, and haven't yet warmed to the idea of a written language, but they greatly value metal weapons and armor traded by their goliath cousins.
Bears Are Bad News: Feral garguns are covered in smooth fur, ranging in color from white to dark brown, their facial features are somewhat ursine, and they have natural claw attacks. They're not necessarily evil, but they aren't to be trifled with either.
Big Guy, Little Guy: On a racial level, feral gargun tribes tend to feel this way about halflings, valuing the little folk's success at maintaining a nomadic lifestyle and even viewing them as mentor figures, "a role that most halflings find both amusing and appealing."

Feral Spirit

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

Undead rat swarms with human-level intelligence, and carrying a supernatural plague.

It Can Think: Unlike "mundane" undead rat swarms, feral spirit swarms have human-level intelligence and fight accordingly, trying to Shoot the Mage First, for example.
Mystical Plague: Feral spirit swarms can infect victims with a "spiritual corruption," a magical disease that deals Wisdom damage and, unlike normal illnesses, can bring a victim's ability score to 0, after which the victim rises as a zombie in a few hours. Cure disease can remove this illness, or a cleric can exorcise it as if the patient was possessed.
Was Once a Man: Legend has it that feral spirit swarms are the spirits of warriors who fought for Lord Tarkanan in the War of the Mark, bound to rat swarms by the Lady of the Plague's death curse.

Feral Yowler

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

Withered predatory felines about seven feet long, named for their terrifying wails.

Bioweapon Beast: They're suspected to be the result of "extreme experiments in necromantic magic gone awry," descended from displacer beasts or mundane panthers, or perhaps created from something else.
Hitbox Dissonance: They have a downplayed version of displacer beasts' light-blending glamer, giving attacks against them a 20% miss chance.
It Can Think: Feral yowlers have near-human intelligence, enough to understand some words of Goblin and form alliances with other creatures (though they themselves cannot speak). Unfortunately, feral yowlers are also intelligent enough to hunt for fun and exult in the thrill of the kill, giving them an evil alignment.
Mortality Grey Area: Their skull-like faces, and emacied bodies covered in patchy fur and open sores, make it easy to mistake them for an undead big cat, and like undead, they're completely immune to fear, negative energy or energy drain effects. But despite all this, feral yowlers are still technically living creatures.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Their feral yowling can leave those who fail their saving throws shaken.

Fetch

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Fiends that lurk in mirrors, spying on the world of mortals, waiting to assume the appearance of a potential victim and leap out to attack them.

Invisible Monsters: Fetches cannot be seen except by their target, and then only in reflective surfaces, so that even if the fiend's target intuits its location, attacks against it carry a 50-50 miss chance. Alternatively, true seeing reveals the creature, though not detect invisibility.
Level Drain: Each attack by a fetch inflicts two negative levels.
Mirror Match: Subverted; a fetch appears to be armed with whatever weapon its victim is carrying, but in gameplay terms it's effectively making unarmed touch attacks, and has the same statline no matter who or what it's mimicking.
Mirror Monster: Fetches dwell on the fringe of the Abyss, peering onto the Material Plane through reflective surfaces like mirrors or still pools of water. Once someone looks into that mirror, the fetch assumes their appearance, or rather a pale, haggard, icy-cold, dull-eyed version of them. As soon as a victim meets the fetch's gaze, the fiend breaks into an Evil Grin and steps through the mirror to attack. This all comes with some limitations, however — fetches have to be able to physically fit through a reflective surface to enter the Material Plane, so if one takes the form of an overweight humanoid, it might have trouble passing through a tall, slim mirror. And if its entry mirror is broken, a fetch has to find a new reflective surface to return to the Abyss, as it takes Constitution damage each day it spends on the Material Plane.
Our Demons Are Different: They're evil outsiders from the Abyss, though since they're from the Abyss of Krynn's cosmology rather than the Infinite Layers of the Abyss, fetches are distinct from "mainstream" demons.
The Speechless: Fetches are intelligent but never speak, though their 2E entry mentions that they can communicate telepathically in a limited fashion with evil clerics of sufficient level.
The Virus: After killing a victim by draining their levels, a fetch tries to carry their corpse through a mirror back to the Abyss, turning them into a new fetch.

Fetid Fungus

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

Mobile, predatory fungi that bubble with stinking gases, held sacred by cultists of Zuggtymoy, Demon Queen of Fungi.

Acid Attack: They're covered with a decomposing slime, giving them an acid-based melee attack and damaging those in bodily contact with them.
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: As they consume organic matter, fetid fungi grow until they're the size of an oxen (but only weigh 20 pounds, since they're mostly gas), and finally reach a point where they break apart into several keg-sized colonies.
Blob Monster: Fetid fungi are carnivorous lichen colonies with clumpy, bubbling masses, allowing them to move into foe's spaces and engulf them.
Calling Card: These fungi's territory is marked by partially-digested, rubbery, foul-smelling bones.
Defeat Equals Explosion: When slain, they pop, dealing a bit of acid damage in a 10-foot radius.
Weaponized Stench: The fumes from the decomposing matter that fuels them gives fetid fungi a putrid stench, so that anything within 30 feet of them has to save or become sickened.

Feyr

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_fihyr_3e.jpg

^2e

Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (standard), 15 (great fihyr) (3E); 5 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Also spelled "fihyrs," these horrors are spawned by nightmares and devote their existences to spreading further terror.

Art Evolution: 2E feyrs are much more colorful and symmetrical than their misshapen, discolored 3E successors, while 5E feyrs combine the original's symmetry with 3rd Edition's coloration
Brain Monster: Fihyrs have vaguely brain-like shapes, appearing as a blob of pulsating gray matter covered with a partial layer of skin, atop tentacles used for locomotion.
Emotion Bomb: Great fihyrs can use emotion at will, specifically the despair, fear or hate results, and can use this power even while invisible.
Emotion Eater: Fihyrs seem to feed upon the fear and despair of humanoids rather than any corporeal diet — their 5E incarnation even has a "Nightmare Fuel" attack that deals psychic damage to an unconscious victim while granting the feyr an equivalent amount of temporary HP.
Fusion Dance: Great fihyrs are created when numerous lesser fihyrs fuse together.
The Heartless: Fihyrs are the corporeal forms of people's collective fears, usually spawned in high-magic areas like a settlement with a large number of spellcasters. Mere random bad dreams aren't enough to generate fihyrs, instead it takes the energy of a great many people under emotional duress, such as a city threatened by a siege, famine, monster attack, civil war, etc.
Invisibility: Great fihyrs can become invisible at will, and as such are usually only seen immediately after attacking.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Those who witness a fihyr attack must save to avoid being panicked, and fihyrs in fact try to hunt in front of as many bystanders as possible, to maximize the terror their attacks generate.
Weakened by the Light: 2E and 3E fihyrs die instantly in natural or magical sunlight, dissolving into acrid smoke. They aren't smart enough to realize this, hence why most fihyrs don't live past the night they were spawned. Great fihyrs and 5E feyrs, on the other hand, despise but are unharmed by sunlight, allowing them to wander hundreds of miles from one troubled area to another, lurking in caves or abandoned buildings during the daylight hours.

Fhorge

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Animal (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Large porcine creatures with oversized, tusked jaws, whose herds roam the Outlands and planes as inhospitable as Acheron and the Nine Hells.

The Berserker: Fhorges fly into a bloodthirsty rage in combat, which 3rd Edition treats similarly to the barbarian class ability.
Dash Attack: Their 2nd Edition rules let charging fhorges deal extra damage, as well as knock over and trample opponents.
Extreme Omnivore: Fhorges are voracious eaters that can digest about anything, and primarily feed on roots, tubers and insects, but they'll also eat carrion, and most impressively are one of the few known species that can eat razorvine.
Full-Boar Action: They're extraplanar boars that stand five feet tall at the shoulder, and are vicious and tough enough to survive beyond the Material Plane without any supernatural abilities. Like standard D&D boars, fhorges can continue fighting at full capacity after falling beneath 0 hit points, only dropping dead at -10 hp. Some humanoids hunt fhorges for sport, which is even more dangerous than standard boar hunts, and their Planescape entry contains a recipe for "Roast Fhorgling with Garlic and Pepper."
Monster Mouth: 3rd Edition compares a fhorge's jaws to a crocodile's, full of razor-sharp teeth and large enough to engulf a human. In that edition, their signature attack is to grab and violently shake a victim in their jaws.

Fiendish Auger

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

Haunted Technology: A fiendish auger is created when an excavation drill is possessed by an evil spirit.
Hellfire: A fiendish auger's corkscrew bore glows with hellfire.
This Is a Drill: A fiendish auger is a possessed excavation drill that indiscriminately bores through both soil and other creatures.

Fiendwurm

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 28 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

40-foot-long serpentine monsters infused with Abyssal magic, making them writhe in constant agony and attack anything they encounter.

Defeat Equals Explosion: A fiendwurm's death destabilizes the Abyssal portal within the creature, causing it to implode. This sucks up the monster's body and potentially other creatures nearby, who will find themselves stranded in the Abyss.
Enemy Summoner: An unconventional example; the two-way portal to the Abyss within each fiendwurm allows the creatures to literally belch up demonic reinforcements a few times each day.
From Nobody to Nightmare: It's hard to believe, but these Gargantuan monsters are the result of demonic magic inflicted upon ordinary earthworms.
Sand Worm: They're enormous worm-like monsters, they can swallow victims whole, they sense nearby prey by vibrations through the ground, and they have a 60-foot burrowing speed.
The Spiny: Fiendwurms' hides are covered in caustic mucus that deals acid damage to anything that touches it, with increasing damage if said creature or object is metallic, and even more if it's made of stone.
Swallowed Whole: Like other enormous creatures, fiendwurms can swallow grappled opponents whole, which not only deals bludgeoning and acid damage each round, but leaves the victim in danger of being drawn through the Abyssal portal in the fiendwurm's gizzard.
Tortured Monster: Having an active demonic portal inside them leaves fiendwurms in excruciating pain, and only eating gives them a brief respite.

Firbolg

Classification: Giant (3E), Fey Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E), 11 (4E)
Playable: 2E, 5E
Alignment: True Neutral

Reclusive giant-kin who keep to themselves, living in clans far from civilization. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Fire Bat

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Elemental (3E), Elemental Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 5 (4E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (3E), Unaligned (4E)

Blazing bats from the Elemental Plane of Fire that feed upon living flesh.

Bat Out of Hell: They're evil extraplanar bats that combine this trope with Incendiary Exponent.
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Fire bats reproduce by fission, and a sated fire bat has a 25% chance of splitting into two hungry fire bats within 24 hours of feeding.
Elemental Embodiment: Subverted; fire bats look like they're made of pure fire, but they have solid bodies visible when they're slain, or if they're doused in water.
Food Chain of Evil: Salamanders, efreet, and other non-elemental creatures of fire prey upon fire bats, which is a necessary check on their rapid population growth.
Personal Space Invader: If a fire bat hits an enemy with its bite attack, it latches on, dealing additional fire damage and potentially igniting its victim, all while the fire bat continues to bite and consume its victim's flesh. After dealing enough damage, the fire bat is sated and flies off to digest its meal.
The Spiny: Anything that attacks a fire bat with a natural weapon or unarmed attack risks catching fire.

Fire Toad

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

Oversized, brilliantly-colored, fire-belching amphibians.

Amphibian at Large: They're large compared to mundane toads, but small compared to other magical toads, being only four feet long. They're also inoffensive for monstrous animals, only attacking the likes of humanoids if the toads feel threatened, or to defend their lairs.
Playing with Fire: Fire toads' trademark ability is exhaling small fireballs with a five-foot blast radius, out to a range of 30 feet. This is in fact their only attack, as fire toads don't use their tongues in combat.
Weaksauce Weakness: AD&D states that throwing any sort of liquid, even mundane water, at a fire toad will lead it to retreat — though first it will retaliate by sending two fireballs at the person who splashed it.

Firenewt

"'Tis always a fight to the death for them, so 'tis also one for ye." —Elminster

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E), 1/2 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Sometimes called "salamen," these humanoid salamanders worship the evil fire archomental Imix and live in hot, humid locations like hot springs or volcanoes.

Breath Weapon: Firenewts can breathe fire. In early editions they need ten or so minutes between uses to recharge, while 5th requires them to make a longer rest before being able to do so again.
Fiery Salamander: Humanoid salamanders that inhabit volcanic areas, need constant humid heat to remain active, and can breathe fire.
Leave No Survivors: Firenewts take no prisoners of war. In battle, they seek nothing less than the annihilation of their foes.
Lizard Folk: Their older depictions mostly resemble red-scaled, humanoid lizards, and they're believed to be descended from true lizardfolk.
Playing with Fire: They aren't called firenewts for nothing. Ordinary firenewts can spit fireballs, and the warlocks of Imix can cast plenty of fire-based spells.
Religion of Evil: They worship Imix, a primordial fire elemental whose titles include such lovely things as the Lord of Hellfire and the Prince of Elemental Evil.
The Theocracy: Firenewt society is dominated by the worship of Imix, and their tribes are ruled by his clerics and warlocks.
Volcanic Veins: 5th edition artwork gives them visible yellow veins as a consequence of their translucent red skin.

Giant Strider

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E, 5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Bird-like, scaled creatures which often serve firenewts as mounts.

Armless Biped: Giant striders have no limbs save for a single pair of powerful legs.
Breath Weapon: They can breathe fire.
Feed It with Fire: When a giant strider is subjected to an attack or hazard that would deal fire damage, it gains an amount of health equal to the damage that would otherwise be caused.
Horse of a Different Color: Giant striders voluntarily serve as mounts for elite firenewt soldiers.

Fireshadow

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

30-foot horrors that can take different forms, from wraithlike dragons to giant skeletons to towering humans, but are always surrounded by green flames.

Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Every 200 years, a fireshadow splits in half to form an identical copy of itself.
Our Demons Are Different: They hail from the Abyss of Krynn's cosmology (not to be confused with the Infinite Layers of the Abyss from the Great Wheel cosmology), and 2nd Edition doesn't treat them as undead, though fireshadows are still vulnerable to disruption weapons. 3rd Edition instead classifies them as extraplanar undead.
Reduced to Dust: Every few rounds, they can project an invisible ray of oblivion that acts much like the disintegrate spell, dealing heavy damage and reducing those it slays to dust.
The Speechless: They can't speak, but communicate telepathically with their summoner.
Technicolor Fire: Fireshadows are wreathed in green flames, which adds additional damage to their melee strikes and damages all within 10 feet. Worse, victims damaged by these flames keep burning, taking Constitution damage every round until the green fire is doused by holy water, or put out by the application of healing magic or exposure to sunlight. Those who succumb to the flames become a new fireshadow a few rounds later.
Weakened by the Light: Natural daylight slows a fireshadow and deals damage each round the creature remains in it.

Flail Snail

Origin: Greyhawk
Classification: Fey Beast (4E), Elemental (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (4E), 3 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Large snails with spiny, flail-like tentacles and iridescent, magic-resistant shells.

Attack Reflector: A flail snail's anti-magical shell has a one-in-three chance of reflecting any single-target spell cast on the snail back at its caster.
Blinded by the Light: Flail snails can release a disorientating flash of light from their shells.
Combat Tentacles: The spiny tentacles which give the flail snail its name can be used to bludgeon potential enemies.
Crafted from Animals: Their shells can be worked into shields that retain the creature's spell-reflecting trait for a month before becoming spellguard shields, or ground into a powder incorporated into a robe of scintillating colors
Eat Dirt, Cheap: Flail snails consume everything on the surface, including rocks, sand and soil, and especially relish mineral deposits.
Non-Malicious Monster: Flail snails will attack if they feel threatened, but are otherwise not hostile.

Flame Snake

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (minor), 7 (lesser), 16 (greater) (3E)
Alignment: Any Evil

Smoldering serpents who lair in geothermally-active areas when they aren't serving as guardians for wealthy patrons. They range in size from the four-foot-long "minor" subspecies, to the seven-foot-long "lesser" flame snake, to the 30-foot-long "greater" variety.

Not to be confused with fire snakes, the immature forms of salamanders.

Beware My Stinger Tail: Unlike ordinary serpents, flame snakes have spikes on their tails that they use in combat.
The Chain of Harm: Lesser flame snakes are particularly cruel and vicious from the abuse they suffer from their greater kin, which they take out on minor flame snakes or any other creature they come across. This means they're the variety least likely to be used as a guardian beast, since "Most would-be employers shy away from a creature almost as likely to bite its master as any intruders."
Defeat Equals Explosion: Greater flame snakes explode in a 50-foot-radius blast when slain.
The Great Serpent: Greater flame snakes are certifiably Huge and capable of swallowing smaller creatures whole.
It Can Think: All flame snakes have around human-level intelligence and can understand Ignan, though only greater flame snakes can speak.
MacGuffin Guardian: As mentioned, some nobles use flame snakes to guard their homes and treasures, though even the most reliable of them, the greater flame snakes, have been known to turn on their employers. "In some cases, entire households have gone missing overnight when a greater flame snake decided it would like its lord's trinkets for itself."
Make Them Rot: Greater flame snakes are not just burning hot, they're suffused with negative energy, so that most of their attacks, from their Breath Weapon of black flames to the additional damage of their constriction attack, deal a mixture of fire and negative energy damage.
Mark of the Supernatural: They have black scales along their backs that form a repeating pattern of ankhs, and are associated with the Egyptian deities Set and Apep.
Our Demons Are Different: The greater flame snakes have a story, shared only among themselves, that they were originally powerful fiends who were banished from the Nine Hells for a now-forgotten offense, inspiring them to regain their lost power.
Playing with Fire: Each variety of flame snake is so hot that mere bodily contact is enough to cause fire damage, minor flame snakes can cast burning hands once per day, and lesser flame snakes can spit globs of magma at foes. Meanwhile, greater flame snakes are so hot that anything adjacent to them takes fire damage, they can blast enemies with a cone of black fire, and they can work magic like fireball, firestorm and flame strike.
Poisonous Person: All flame snakes' bites carry an agonizing, literally fiery poison, which deals both Strength damage and recurring fire damage as it remains in the victim's bloodstream.

Flameskull

Classification: Undead (3E-5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E, 5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil (2E-3E), Unaligned (4E), Chaotic Evil (5E)

Flying, fire-shooting skulls made from the skulls of deceased spellcasters.

Flaming Skulls: It is a skull, and it constantly is on fire. Green fire, to be precise.
Flying Face: It is a skull which can fly around under its own magical power.
Playing with Fire: Why yes, a flameskull does try to torch its enemies with various forms of fire magic. However did you guess?
Resurrective Immortality: You can smash a flameskull to bits, but it will just put itself back together within the hour unless you sprinkle holy water on its remains.

Flesh Meld

Classification: Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Huge, ravening masses of gory flesh and bone.

Big Eater: A flesh meld quivers with insatiable hunger.
Blob Monster: They're a disturbingly visceral variant, and despite their size, still amorphous enough to squeeze through inch-wide spaces or crawl up walls and across ceilings.
Make Them Rot: They're surrounded by an "aura of death" that can deal necrotic damage and poison adjacent creatures.
Mind Hive: Downplayed; flesh melds have a collective consciousness of sorts, but all it boils down to is a "discordant chorus of thoughts to kill and consume." The creatures they consume join this consciousness, and a resilient mind can try to fight against assimilation, but only for a time.
Swallowed Whole: They can swallow a Large or smaller creature they've grabbed in a jawed pseudopod, dealing ongoing necrotic damage until the creature either fights its way free, or succumbs, their body instantly consumed by the flesh meld.
Too Many Mouths: Each of a flesh meld's appendages ends in a gnashing mouth.

Floating Mantle

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E), 13 (4E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Also known simply as "floaters," these inoffensive beings dwell in colonies along the mudflats bordering the Sea of Silt, only engaging in combat when startled or threatened.

Flying Seafood Special: They're more or less flying jellyfish the size of humans.
It Can Think: Floating mantles are a bit smarter than ogres, and even share a Hive Mind with others in their colony that allows them to communicate simple ideas and concepts, though not with other creatures.
Life Drain: Floaters know the life draining power in 2E, and in 4E can make a "life leech" attack.
Living Gasbag: They fly thanks to hydrogen gas bladders, making floaters Weak to Fire (and lightning damage in 4E) and prone to violently exploding when slain. Some Athasian researchers have tried to make use of the floaters' gas-producing glands, to no success.
The Paralyzer: Their tentacle attacks carry a paralytic poison in 2nd Edition, though 4th Edition downplays its effects to slowing foes.
Psychic Powers: 2nd Edition gives them an array of psionic abilities such as psionic blast, mind crush and chameleon power, which might be enhanced by floaters' occasional diet of esperweed. 4E simplifies things to a "psychic scream" attack.
Weaponized Offspring: While floaters give birth to single young in 2nd Edition, 4th Edition states that mature "bluestings" are so full of tiny polyps that the stress of combat can cause them to give birth prematurely to short-lived minions that will aid their parent in battle.

Flumph

^2E

Classification: Natural Magical Beast (4E), Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (4E), 1/8 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Good, Unaligned (4E)

Bizarre but benign jellyfish-like beings who inhabit the Underdark, passively feeding on the mental energies of other psychic creatures.

Acid Attack: A flumph's tentacles secrete acidic slime, which serves as the creature's main means of physical combat.
Art Evolution: 5th Edition gives the flumphs a number of design tweaks, most notably removing their ventral spikes and the orifices around their rims while adding short spines to the tips of their tentacles.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Common flumphs are albinos, while the rarer, spellcasting monastic flumphs are yellow.
Combat Tentacles: Downplayed. When forced into melee, flumphs prefer to fight with their acid-coated tentacles. However, these tentacles are fairly weak and only do limited damage, so flumphs only use them as a last resort.
Creepy Good: Flumphs are aberrations, feed parasitically on mental energies, and resemble floating jellyfish monsters with acid-producing tentacles and the ability to vent jets of nauseatingly smelly gas. They're also wise, moral and benevolent beings, and some of the very few friendly faces adventurers can meet in the Underdark. Their diets force them into contact with entities such as mind flayers, aboleths and worse, but flumphs welcome meeting adventurers who might be able to destroy these bastions of evil, even though it will force the flumphs to find new food sources.
Elite Mook: Monastic flumphs are a rare variation characterized by greater intelligence and the ability to cast cleric spells.
Eye on a Stalk: Flumph eyes are mounted on a pair of long, flexible stalks, allowing them to peer over their bodies' rims to see what's going underneath them when flying. These stalks can be retracted into the body, and flumphs usually do so when sleeping.
Flipping Helpless: Flumphs are saucer-shaped and not terribly strong, and if knocked prone have a chance to land upside-down and remain helpless and incapacitated until they're able to rock themselves rightside-up again.
Living Mood Ring: A flumph's body glows faintly, and the color of the glow changes with its emotional state. Soft pink indicates amusement, deep blue represents sadness, green expresses curiosity, and crimson red shows anger.
A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Flumphs suffer from this trope, as they're sensitive and pure creatures whose unique diet brings them into mental contact with evil beings, which sickens them. Thus the flumphs share the dark secrets they've gleaned from their neighbors with adventurers, out of the hope that those heroes will defeat such evil.
Our Monsters Are Weird: Intelligent, innately good, psychic, floating, subterranean jellyfish-creatures.
Telepathy: Flumphs are gifted telepaths by nature: they use it as their primary means of communication, and can perceive the contents of any telepathic message sent or received within sixty feet of themselves.
Truly Single Parent: Flumphs reproduce entirely asexually — every couple years, an adult flumph will simply bud off an infant.

Flying Monkey

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Beast (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/3 (3E), 0 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral (3E), Unaligned (5E)

Simians with wings and enhanced intelligence, magnifying the trouble they can cause other creatures.

Familiar 5th Edition lets them serve as such, pending DM approval.
It Can Think: At Intelligence 5, flying monkeys are as smart as 5E ogres, and 3rd Edition even gives them "a rudimentary language of cries and growls."
Mischief-Making Monkey: Wild flying monkeys avoid combat unless they're defending themselves or their territory, but they can be "a plague and a pest" to farmers due to their ability to easily steal and gorge themselves on crops of fruit, sweets, beer, etc.
Silly Simian: Some flying monkeys are domesticated and taught to obey simple commands, or even dressed up in little vests and fezzes.
Vertical Kidnapping: 3rd Edition lets flying monkeys mob up on, grapple and carry off larger creatures, with four monkeys needed to snatch a Small creature, or eight needed to carry a Medium-sized creature. A victim of such kidnapping can choose to fight free with an opposed grappled check, though that does mean they'll be in freefall.

Flying Snake

A flying snake and deathfang (3e)

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Undead (deathfang, 3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E), 3 (deathfang, 3E)
Alignment: Unaligned, Neutral Evil (deathfang)

Sometimes known as "flying fangs," these small but aggressive winged serpents that are so dangerous that all intelligent races exterminate them whenever possible.

Acid Attack: Flying snakes can spit acid each round for low damage, and typically aim at victims' faces to try and blind them. In 3E, their bites additionally deal a point of acid damage.
Attack Animal: There are stories of lizardfolk and yuan-ti who have tamed flying snakes as hunting animals.
Attack! Attack! Attack!: They're unafraid of most creatures and attack anything they think they can kill. Flying snakes are thus "often responsible for many deaths in remote villages near their territory."
Big Eater: A flying snake eats five times its body weight each day, if possible, and their swarms are known to kill humanoids by the dozen or more for later meals, if they judge the corpses won't be stolen by other predators.
Familiar: Both living flying snakes and deathfangs can be taken as such with the Improved Familiar feat.
Raising the Steaks: A deathfang is the product of a raise undead spell cast on a flying snake's corpse, and exchanges its acid attack for a chilling bite that inflicts Level Drain.
The Swarm: While individually weak, flying snakes prefer to attack in flights of up to a dozen of the creatures, creating a cloud of swooping, darting serpents that surrounds and overwhelms victims.

Folugub

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Six-foot-long beetles that can liquify and drink crystals.

Eat Dirt, Cheap: As mentioned, they feed upon crystals, which they can smell from up to 90 feet away, and reduce to a slimy goo with one touch of their tongue.
Mooks Ate My Equipment: Since psionic items typically are made from Power Crystals, their diet makes folugubs as dangerous to psionic characters as disenchanters are to anyone else. Additionally, just striking a folugub with a crystalline weapon will destroy the item.
Overly-Long Tongue: Theirs is three feet long.

Fomorian

^{Fomorian nobles (5e)}

Classification: Giant (3E, 5E), Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (3E), 17 (4E), 8 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (2E-3E), Evil (4E), Chaotic Evil (5E)

A race of misshapen and degenerate giants who dwell in the dark places of the world.

Beauty to Beast: According to their 5th Edition lore, fomorians were once beautiful beings with mighty magic, and allies of the fey eladrin. But the giants became consumed by their lust for greater power, and attempted to conquer the Feywild, only to be defeated, cursed with hideous forms, and driven into the Underdark. The only fomorians to maintain their original bodies were those who left for the Inner Planes before their kin led their ill-fated invasion.
Curse: In 4th and 5th Edition, the "evil eye" of a formorian can curse victims with magical deformities for several days, during which time their speed, ability checks, saving throws and attacks are all impaired.
Dead Guy on Display: Fomorians typically mark the borders of their territories with the mangled corpses of their victims.
Evil Counterpart: 4th Edition speculates that fomorians are "perverse reflections of the mighty titans" that arose in the Feywild.
Our Giants Are Different: Some sources consider fomorians to be giant-kin, another result of Othea's affair with Ulutiu, and thus maug creatures only tolerated by the evilest of true giants. Others hold that the fomorians were once accepted in the ordning, but Karontor's unsanctioned assault on the Feywild led them to be made outcasts.
Gonk: All fomorians are grotesquely deformed: some have facial features randomly distributed around their misshapen, warty heads; others have limbs of grossly different sizes and shapes, or emit terrible howls from misshapen mouths.
Made a Slave: Fomorians routinely abduct slaves to cultivate food in their underground lairs, and if a slave grows incapable of work, they provide food in a more direct sense.
Might Makes Right: Fomorian society is "ruled by depravity and wickedness," in which acts of violence are common and the strong physically dominate the weak.
Primitive Clubs: Their standard weapons are giant-sized greatclubs.

Foo Creature

Foo lion (3e)

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (foo dog), 7 (foo lion) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Intelligent and benign animals from the Upper Planes, who may assist good beings on the Material Plane for a time.

The Ageless: Foo creatures are ageless, but only so long as they regularly perform good deeds. An old-looking foo creature has been slacking, and will be ostracized by its fellows for it.
Asian Lion Dogs: Foo dogs and foo lions are distinct creatures, but both are celestial beasts and stalwart opponents of evil and tyranny. They're magical creatures whose attacks deal extra damage to fiends, they can turn invisible or ethereal at will, and can travel via astral projection. However, they rarely stay on the Material Plane for more than a few weeks, and won't commit to permanent guardianship of a temple or shrine.
Demoted to Extra: While foo creatures are mentioned in the 3rd Edition Oriental Adventures sourcebook, they're not given bestiary entries, rather the book suggests representing them by applying the "celestial creature" template to dire wolves and lions.
Eat Dirt, Cheap/Metal Muncher: Foo creatures consume inorganic matter on the Material Plane, particularly gemstones and precious metals such as silver and platinum. If a foo creature remains on the Material Plane for an extend period to assist a mortal, they will expect to be given some gem snacks as compensation.
Enemy Summoner: Their thunderous barking or roaring can summon other foo creatures, if the original foo creature can keep it up for seven consecutive rounds.

Fordorran

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Large, armored omnivores known for their unpredictability, aggression and hideous stench.

A.I. Roulette: Fordorrans are dangerous, but lash out at random and use their psionics out of instinct rather than any sort of strategy. Their AD&D rules give fordorrans a 25% chance of changing which enemy they're targeting each round. If it tries to switch to an opponent who is out of attack range, the creature will abruptly give up on the battle and try to wander off.
Chameleon Camouflage: 2nd Edition mentions that fordorrans can change their coloration to try and blend in with their surroundings, but it's largely a wasted effort because their stink gives them away.
Psychic Powers: Their repertoire includes domination, detonate and mind thrust.
Weaponized Stench: The stink of a fordorran digesting its varied diet can sicken other creatures within 10 feet, including other fordorrans. This may be why they're never encountered in groups — "Perhaps even they can't stand the stench of their own kind" — raising questions of how the beasts reproduce.
Weird World, Weird Food: Fordorran flesh is edible, but tastes about as good as it smells. Rumor has it that some elven tribes know the trick of preparing fordorran meat to make it palatable.

Forestmaster

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Celestial (5E)
Challenge Rating: As base creature +3 (3E), 8 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral (3E), Neutral Good (5E)

Creatures appointed by a deity of nature to protect a stretch of wilderness.

Defeat Equals Explosion: It's said that when a forestmaster dies, "the very land around it feels the wound," translating to a 30-foot-radius burst of divine energy that damages other creatures with No Saving Throw and causes normal plant life to wither and die.
Forest Ranger: Their role is to watch over a specific natural landscape, and while they aren't explicitly tied to it, forestmasters care about little but the well-being of their homes.
Friend to All Living Things: They have a druid's Wild Empathy class feature, and radiate a calming aura that protects other animals from fear effects and gives them a bonus on saving throws against hostile magic. Forestmasters are frequently described as being surrounded by other creatures, from harmless sparrows to hulking bears, that seem to set aside any predator-prey animosity to bow in deference to it.
Super-Empowering: The best-known forestmaster was a unicorn who impressed the Krynnish nature goddess Chislev by sustaining mortal wounds while driving off poachers, leading the goddess to heal her injuries and empower her to guard over her home forest. 3rd Edition treats "forestmaster" as a template that can applied to any magical beast or awakened animal with high enough Intelligence and Wisdom scores.
Underground Monkey: While the most famous of these creatures indeed protect forests, nature deities like Chislev consider other natural environments worth preserving as well, giving rise to tundramasters, desertmasters, etc.
White Mage: They can cast spells like bless, sleep and sheild of faith at will, and heal a few times each day.

Forgewraith

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

Incorporeal undead of superheated smoke and cinders, which arise when humanoids die from the extreme heat.

Merger of Souls: Some forgewraiths are formed from multiple weak spirits rather than a single powerful soul.
Non-Health Damage: Their touch sends such fiery pain through a victim's body that they take Dexterity drain from the attack, while heals the forgewraith.
Playing with Fire: A forgewraith can attack foes from a distance with a ray of black and red fire, and knows magic like wall of fire and fireball.
Pyromaniac: Forgewraiths hate the living and seek to consume them in a fiery inferno.
The Virus: Any humanoid slain by a forgewraith becomes a forgewraith as well. Its body dissolves into ash, while its spirit is torn from its corpse and transformed.

Forlarren

Classification: Fey (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (1E), Chaotic Neutral (5E)

Fey tainted by the power of Hell, leaving them dangerously unstable creatures torn between their dual, warring natures.

Jekyll & Hyde: Forlarren are described as "two entities trapped in a single form." One might act like a friendly guide through dangerous terrain, only for its fiendish nature to assert itself and cause it to betray those it's helping. Another forlarren might viciously attack strangers, only to be stricken with remorse upon killing someone, leading it to offer the survivors its services as penance... for a few days, until it is once again overcome by its evil side. And still another forlarren might act much like a satyr, enjoying wine, women and song, while also trying to set itself up as a petty tyrant ruling over those around it.
Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: Their original 1E background presents forlarren as the descendents of a good nymph who was enslaved by a greater devil.
Fauns and Satyrs: In 5th Edition, forlarren are descended from satyrs corrupted by the Archduchess Fierna, who had been trying to court their fey lord. While she was unable to claim any fey souls, Fierna considered the tainted satyrs "adequate compensation for her failure."
The Red Mage: Their fey, devilish natures give forlarren an eclectic array of spell-like abilities in 5E, and they can cast the likes of heat metal, false life and Tasha's hideous laughter, as well as more benign spells like aid and heal.
Tragic Hero: The Feywild's inhabitants have several ballads celebrating heroic forlarren, who achieve some great victory before their diabolic nature compels them to betray their comrades at the worst possible moment.
Use Your Head: Like satyrs, 5E forlarren can gore foes with their horns.

Forlorn Husk

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

Withered, deranged undead creatures that died of dehydration in the desert, and now quench their unholy thirst with the blood of the living.

Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: If presented with a source of visible water, a forlorn husk has to make a Will save or abandon whatever else it was doing in favor of trying to drink that water. It's even possible to trick the monster into drinking holy water this way, though a forlorn husk is entitled to another save to notice the danger.
Vampiric Draining: After wounding a creature, a forlorn husk will attempt to grapple it and drain moisture from the open wound, dealing additional dessication damage and dehydrating its victim.
The Virus: Humanoids who succumb to a forlorn husk's dessicating claw attacks will rise as one in a day or two.

Formian

A myrmarch in the foreground, and a warrior in the background (3e).

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (worker), 3 (warrior), 6 (winged warrior), 7 (taskmaster), 8 (armadon) 10 (myrmarch), 11 (observer), 17 (queen) (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Ant-people from the plane of Mechanus, who live in rigidly ordered societies and would see the whole multiverse brought into their hives' hierarchies. Not to be confused with the Fomorians, above.

Acid Attack: Armadons can spray gouts of acid from their tails.
Airborne Mook: Winged warriors are a warrior subtype capable of aerial movement, and specialize in skirmishing against landbound foes using their agility and ability to attack at range from the air.
Bee People: Ant people, technically, but formians are otherwise a classic case of insectoid sapients who live in rigidly ordered, hive-like societies divided into a large number of biological castes.
Hive Caste System: Like the ants they're based on, formians are divided into a number of distinct biological castes with specialized roles in the hive's society:
- Workers, which are around the size of a large dog, perform the myriad day-to-day tasks of maintenance, construction and drudgery that the hive needs done. They do not fight except as a last resort when the hive is breached and cannot speak, communicating either with crude hand gestures or, more eloquently, though the species' hive mind.
- Warriors are about the size of a pony, and live only to fight for the hive's expansion and defense. They speak only telepathically, and then only to give reports or acknowledge orders; they do not come up with plans or initiatives of their own. Their hands are modified into a set of pincer-like claws, and they have venomous stingers.
- Winged warriors are a soldier variant used as scouts and vanguard forces, and attack from above by launching spikes from their tails.
- Armadons are Large, heavily-armored, clawed shock troops unleashed upon the most dangerous battlefields, where their great strength, acid spray and poisonous stings can crush the heaviest resistance.
- Observers have oversized heads and antennae, as well as extra eyes, while their bodies are weak and spindly. They lead the warrior castes from the rear, telepathically directing other formians in combat.
- Taskmasters exist outside of the hive's central hierarchy, and are tasked with controlling and overseeing the hive's slaves. They are telepaths, and use their psychic abilities to dominate unwilling laborers — they prefer to use other methods to convince nonformians to work for the hive, but feel very little remorse about having to resort to psychic control. They resemble warriors in all but lacking mouths — they sustain themselves off of their subjects' mental energies.
- Myrmarchs are the elites of formian society, reporting directly to the queen or high-ranking myrmarchs, and serving as overseers in day-to-day hive life and as commanders and generals in times of war. They possess much more mental flexibility and originality than other formians do, and are larger as well, being about seven feet long and as tall as a human.
- Queens are immense, immobile and bloated beings, with atrophied legs useless for walking. They remain in their highly protected chambers all their lives, guarded by elite myrmarchs. They're the rulers of formian hives, using their telepathy to direct their subjects despite being unable to move from their spots, and are the only formians to breed.
Hive Mind: All formians within fifty miles of their hive's queen are in constant mental contact with one another, and share thoughts, sense impressions and information. This makes it impossible to outflank or surprise a formian in such a state unless all connected formians can be outflanked or surprised simultaneously.
Hive Queen: Formian queens are classic fictional insect queens, serving as the undisputed, authoritarian rulers of their slavishly devoted minions and the cruxes of their Hive Mind — in addition to also birthing each new formian generation, the only thing their real-life inspirations actually do.
Increasingly Lethal Enemy: Formian observers' gimmick is that they evaluate enemies in combat, granting their allies attack bonuses against those foes that increase with every round the combat continues.
Insectoid Aliens: Formians are the most insectoid end of this trope, resembling giant ants with upright torsos, varying from dog- to human-sized depending on their caste, and with forelimbs useable as hands.
Large and in Charge: In the highly stratified formian civilization, each caste is distinctly larger than the ones in outranks — workers are the size of a dog, soliders and taskmasters are the size of ponies, myrmarchs are the size of centaurs, and the queens are bloated behemoths ten feet from end to end. Armadons subvert this by being big and bulky, but still subservient like the other warrior castes.
Made a Slave: The typical fate for those attacked by formians on the warpath is to be forcefully conscripted into the hive's workforce and put to work on maintaining and expanding it and on contributing to the formian war efforts. Escapees refer to formian settlements as "work pits," and note that while the ant-people aren't malicious taskmasters, they don't have any pity for those who fail to meet their standards of efficiency and output.
Spike Shooter: The tails of winged warriors bristle with spikes that they can launch at a distance of ninety feet with quick tail snap. They prefer to use this to harass ground-bound foes while they remain safe in the air.

Forsaken

Classification: Natural Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 26 (4E)
Alignment: Evil

Humanoids infused with the essence of gods slain in the Dawn War, which has granted them great power while also tormenting them with memories of what it is like to be immortal.

The Berserker: The insane forsaken slaughterers are detect the presence of divine magic, and fly into a frenzy upon sensing it.
Eye Scream: A self-inflicted example, as forsaken ritually remove their eyes so they will not have to look upon the mortal world, "a constant reminder of the immortality that they had been denied." This obviously means they're immune to gaze attacks.
Immortality Seeker: The forsaken are haunted by memories of godhood, and are obsessed with attaining immortality for themselves. They jealously prey upon the likes of angels and devils, consuming their divine essences, and there are rumors of a cabal of forsaken that plan to slay a god and steal its power.
Magic Plastic Surgery: Forsaken infiltrators don't use illusions to disguise themselves, but instead undertake a ritual that (painfully) resculpts their flesh into another likeness, allowing them to insert themselves into religious organizations in order to undermine them or steal relics.
Perception Filter: Forsaken loreseekers can strike someone and erase their target's perception of any other threats, until the loreseeker is slain.
Reviving Enemy: Their "Fragments of Divinity" trait lets them return to play a turn after being slain with a fraction of their original hit points.
Sanity Slippage: They're tormented by the echoes of dead gods' consciousness within them, hence their name for themselves. Some forsaken are half-mad and scream with delight whenever their foes — or allies — die around them, while others completely snap and are treated as living weapons by their kin.
Super-Senses: Forsaken have blindsight to make up for their lack of eyes.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Fearwracks are forsaken who specialize in terror-inducing magic, and have learned how to affect even the likes of angels.
Transferable Memory: Rumor has it that anyone killed by a so-called forsaken loreseeker will have all of their knowledge passed to their slayer.

Forsaken Shell

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

The animate, empty skins of humanoids, these undead slither along like macabre serpents before wrapping around and crushing their victims.

Flaying Alive: Good news, the flaying happens after the forsaken shell kills you! Though this does mean that anyone investigating these creatures' activities will eventually uncover a stash of skinless corpses.
It Can Think: For something without an actual brain, forsaken shells can be clever about their predations, and try to drag their victims' corpses somewhere out of sight.
The Virus: Any creature killed by a forsaken shell will slough off their skins after a few rounds, creating another of the monsters.

Fossergrim

Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenger Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Fey who appear as handsome male humans, bound to specific waterfalls similarly to how dryads are bound to oak trees.

Cave Behind the Falls: They usually live in such, setting up comfortable and well-furnished lairs behind the falls.
Departure Means Death: Much like dryads and similar fey, a fossergrim will fall ill and die within hours should he stray too far from his waterfall.
Geo Effects: A fossergrim enjoys the benefits of true strike if both he and his opponent are standing in the fey's waterfall or up to 100 feet downstream of it. Similarly, a fossergrim's Healing Factor only functions in his home waters.
Human Popsicle: Subverted; if a fossergrim's waterfall freezes during winter, he falls into a deep torpor within the icy cascade. The fey is still aware of his surroundings, however, and can freely emerge to defend his domain.
One-Gender Race: Fossergrims look like ruggedly handsome human males with flowing white hair tinged with blue, and piercing eyes that shimmer like pools of water. They tend to seduce young maidens who come to bathe or wash their clothes close to the fossergrim's pool, producing sons who appear human until they reach maturity and seek out a waterfall of their own.
Walk on Water: A variant; a fossergrim can swim up his home waterfall as easily as he can walk on solid ground.

Foulspawn

Classification: Aberrant Humanoid (4E), Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (grue) to 12 (hulk) (4E); 1/4 (grue) to 16 (larva mage) (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil

Sometimes inaccurately named "star spawn," these are twisted monsters with a connection to the eldritch forces lurking beyond the boundaries of the known world.

Attack Reflector: 5E star spawn hulks act as "psychic mirrors" that reflect any attempt to inflict psychic damage to them, causing nearby creatures to take the damage instead.
Brown Note: Hulks, manglers, and seers can all inflict psychic damage with their melee attacks, while the grue's bite can confound its victim in a way that leaves them more vulnerable to attack.
Cult: A seer is most often encountered as the leader of an Elder Evil cult. Usually, no one else in the cult knows the full extent of the horror the cult is venerating.
Devoured by the Horde: The 3rd edition worm that walks can pull a nearby creature into its wormy mass, while the 5th edition larva mage can cover nearby foes with dense masses of swarming worms. In either case, the victim takes large amounts of Damage Over Time as these ravenous worms start eating them alive.
Dumb Muscle: The hulk is the largest of the known foulspawn, and appears to have little will of its own, other than to protect its master.
Evil Is Visceral: Foulspawn hulks have transparent skin which leaves their muscles fully visible.
Fixed Damage Attack: The 3rd edition worm that walks inflicts a hefty 100 points of damage to any creature engulfed by it. If the victim can't break free, they'll take an extra 100 points of damage every round.
Friendly Fireproof:
- A larva mage's worms will ignore fellow foulspawn, allowing the creature to spray its ravenous worms everywhere without fear of harming its allies.
- Seers will intentionally target hulks with their psionic attacks, taking advantage of both the star spawns' universal immunity to psychic damage and the hulk's ability to reflect and amplify psionic power to blast all foes in the hulk's vicinity, leaving the hulk — and any other foulspawn in the blast radius — unharmed.
Humanoid Abomination: A larva mage is a wholly alien being that takes the form of a humanoid, created when a powerful cultist of a wormlike entity contacts the comet-borne emissary of an Elder Evil, allowing the emissary to merge with a mortal consciousness.
Intangible Man: Foulspawn seers are out-of-phase with the rest of the universe, allowing them to move through creatures and objects like they aren't there. This incorporeal movement does unpleasant things to the mind of any creature the seer passes through.
Last Chance Hit Point: When a larva mage falls to 0 hit points, it doesn't die. Instead, it collapses into a swarm of worms with none of the larva mage's intellect or power. It's practically helpless in this state, but if the swarm can escape and go a full day without being destroyed, it will reform into the larva mage once more.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: A mangler most often has six arms, but one can have any number from four to eight.
Musical Assassin: Foulspawn warpcallers play discordant pipes in battle to open conduits to the Far Realm, which can cause other creatures to take more damage from psychic attacks and shift them around on the battlefield.
No-Sell: All star spawn are immune to psychic damage in 5th edition.
Primal Stance: Manglers appear smaller than their true size, due to their hunched posture and emaciated frame.
Psi Blast: Seers can conjure orbs of harmful psionic energy and chuck them at their foes.
Psychic Block Defense:
- 4E foulspawn berserkers have a "Mental Feedback" rule that deals psychic damage to anything trying to charm them.
- The mind of a 5E star spawn hulk is unreadable and unassailable. Any attempt to attack it psionically will result in psychic energies refracting from the hulk to damage nearby creatures, leaving the hulk itself unharmed.
Psychic Powers: A grue's constant chittering and shrieking produces discordant psychic energy that disrupts other creatures' thought patterns.
Sudden Name Change:
- Most of these creatures were introduced as "foulspawn" in the 4th Edition Monster Manual, while the "star spawn" of 4E were a completely different but equally evil group of aberrant entities. But in 5th Edition, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes used the name of the latter for what was clearly the former group of monsters; as such, these creatures are classified under their original name on this index, and the 4E "star spawn" have their own folder.
- The "larva mage" was known as the "worm that walks" in 3rd Edition, was not included amongst 4th Edition's "foulspawn" or "star spawn," only to be lumped in with the renamed foulspawn in 5th Edition.
Swap Teleportation: A 5E star spawn seer can avoid incoming attacks with its Bend Space reaction, which lets it trade places with another star spawn within 60 feet (and forces the second star spawn to take the hit in the seer's stead).
The Worm That Walks: A larva mage is a mass of worms assembled into a vaguely humanoid shape and controlled by a single intelligence. The whole swarm needs to be killed to ensure the mage's destruction, or else it will come back.

Foulwing

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Huge winged horrors that pounce on their prey from the air. No relation to the foulspawn above.

Arch-Enemy: Foulwings despise asperii and griffons, attacking them on sight.
Belly Flop Crushing: They like to hurl their bulk at landbound prey, dealing damage and pinning them beneath the foulwing, at which point the monster feeds.
Breath Weapon: They can exhale a cone of acidic gas similar to amonia, that while incapable of dealing damage can burn victims' eyes and skin, blinding and stunning them for a round.
Horse of a Different Color: Foulwings are sometimes tamed as steeds by evil humans, or drow venturing to the surface for night hunts.
It Can Think: Bizarre appearance aside, foulwings have near-human intelligence, though they lack conventional speech, communicating with each other using "harsh croakings, conveying identities, basic emotions, urges, and warnings."
Meaningful Name: They get their name from their meat, which is heavy, oily and disgusting, rotting soon after the creature's death. Their blood and saliva at least are mildly caustic enough to serve as armor polish.
Our Monsters Are Weird: Their bodies are vaguely toadlike, winged and covered in little wriggling growths, while their heads are horselike save for how they end in a snout with a single nostril surrounded by three mouths full of needle-like teeth.
Vampiric Draining: Their three tongues are hollow and used to drain blood from pinned victims, dealing additional damage in 2nd Edition and Constitution damage in 3rd.

Fractine

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Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Construct (5E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Bizarre, two-dimensional creatures that wander Wildspace, folding and refolding like origami while moving, but appearing like large trapezoidal mirrors in their resting state.

Asteroids Monster: They can split into smaller fragments when struck in combat, releasing any creature held within the original fractine. Their AD&D entry implies those fragments can simply reform into a whole fractine later.
Attack Reflector: Fractines can deal damage to creatures that strike them, and in their 2E rules, can also cause spells they save against to be redirected against a random target.
It Can Think: While their AD&D entry lists fractines' intelligence as "unknown," their 5th Edition entry confirms that they are highly intelligent, and allow other creatures to use them as a scrying tool so they can drain a minor, but noticeable, amount of magic from a spellcaster.
Magic Mirror: When at rest, a fractine makes for a perfectly servicable scrying mirror, though their AD&D rules warn that a failed Wisdom check can cause a fractine to stir into motion, and the creature's distorted surface might similarly distort the results of the scrying, obscuring critical information.
Phantom-Zone Picture: A fractine can fall through another creature and potentially trap the victim inside a small, personal Pocket Dimension, with the trapped creature appearing on the fractine's surfaces. Said prison demiplane keeps the captive safe from hunger, thirst or harm, but without a plane shift spell or similar magic, the captive is stuck until the fractine splits or is destroyed.
Random Effect Spell: Their AD&D rules have a whole table of potential outcomes for a fractine falling through an enemy, ranging from the aforementioned imprisonment effect, to physically distorting the victim for a few rounds or turning them temporarily ethereal, to spawning a short-lived, hostile duplicate of the victim.

Froghemoth

Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Giant bipedal amphibians with a vague resemblance to frogs, apart from their tentacles and eyestalks.

Achilles' Heel: Froghemoths are distinctly vulnerable to electricity, and will be slowed and suffer other penalties if they take shock damage.
Combat Tentacles: They attack mainly by lashing foes with their tentacles.
Giant Animal Worship: Bullywugs revere froghemoths as gods and will try to gain their favor with offerings of food and protection. The froghemoths usually get used to the situation after eating only a few bullywugs.
Monstrous Cannibalism: A froghemoth cares nothing for its egg, and might eat it or the hatchling. Young froghemoths usually survive if their parent leaves them behind in indifference.
Our Monsters Are Weird: A froghemoth resembles an elephant-sized toad which walks on its hind legs, has four tentacles in place of its front legs, and has a cluster of three eyestalks growing from the top of its head. Volo's Guide to Monsters implies that they may be aliens of some sort, citing the ancient journals of Lum the Mad which describe froghemoths emerging from metal cannisters in the ground.
Overly-Long Tongue: Like actual frogs, a froghemoth has a long sticky tongue which it uses to grab and reel in distant prey to be Swallowed Whole.
That's No Moon: Froghemoths can try to ambush prey by submerging themselves in a swamp, so that with their tentacles trailing in the shallows and their eye-stalks just visible above the water's surface, they might be mistaken for some aquatic plant.

Frost Folk

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Former humans who have pledged themselves to a cruel deity of winter, allowing them to survive the worst of the frostfell.

Absolute Xenophobe: Frost folk live in remote villages found in glacial caves, the side of cliffs, or caverns beneath the everfrost or boreal forests, and shun the other people of the frostfell. In turn, they're feared by their neighbors — human tribes tend to think of frost folk as "snow demons," and snow goblins and urskans have a superstitious fear of their ice blasts.
The Beastmaster: They're often accompanied by a winter wolf.
Deal with the Devil: They allegedly sold their souls to a god or archdevil in exchange for the power to thrive in frozen terrain.
Eye Beams: Frost folk can emit a 20-foot cone of frozen mist from their left eye every few rounds, dealing cold damage.
Icy Blue Eyes: Even when they're not shooting ice from them, frost folks' eyes are "a startlingly pale shade of blue."
No-Sell: Beyond an immunity to cold, frost folk benefit from a constant snowsight effect, allowing them to see unimpeded even during whiteout conditions.
Pelts of the Barbarian: Frost folk usually wear finely-stitched furs of arctic wildlife, capped with helmets made from bear, wolf or wolverine skulls.

Frost Worm

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E), 17 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Huge, burrowing, worm-like monsters with freezing bodies, and the terror of the arctic wastes they call home.

Arch-Enemy: Frost worms attack remorhazes on sight, resulting in terrible battles that can devastate entire areas, though the remorhazes tend to emerge victorious in such brawls.
Breath Weapon: Once per hour they can blast enemies with a 30-foot cone of freezing cold.
Defeat Equals Explosion: When a frost worm dies, it explodes in a burst of frigid energy.
Expy: The frost worm is a straight lift of a creature from the Conan the Barbarian pastiche Lair of the Ice Worm: the hypnotic trilling, the icy-cold body, the fire vulnerability, and the explosive death throes all come from that story. The only part that didn't carry over is the creature's name, the remora, which ended up inspiring the frost worm's rival, the remorhaz, instead.
An Ice Person: Frost worms are so cold that they deal extra cold damage with their attacks, or to anyone who strikes them in melee.
The Paralyzer: Frost worms can emit an eerie trilling that can cause creatures within 100 feet of them to stand motionless, stunned by the sonic effect for as long as the frost worm trills and for a few rounds afterward. Such victims don't get saving throws against the frost worm's breath weapon.
Sand Worm: Frost worms are enormous creatures that burrow through snow, ice, and even frozen earth, eagerly consuming any living creature they can wrap their jaws around.
Weak to Fire: Being creatures of the cold north, frost worms are vulnerable to fire, to their detriment when they go up against the aforementioned remorhazes.

Frostwind Virago

Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 16 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Beautiful but cold-hearted fey who lure travelers to icy deaths, or set themselves up as cruel rulers of frozen lands.

Compelling Voice: When a frostwind virago speaks and wills it to be so, all creatures that hear her and fail their save become captivated and are forced to move toward the frostwind virago, taking the most direct route available, potentially walking right into dangerous terrain.
Evil Chancellor: When one isn't reigning as a wintry monarch, a frostwind virago may ally with a tribe of frost giants, who revere her as a mighty spirit of winter and take her on as their leader's counselor.
Fantastic Racism: They hate fey from temperate or warmer climates, and will subject any they catch in their territory to a long, excruciating death.
An Ice Person: Frostwind viragos are imbued with the essence of bitter winter. Their mere touch deals cold damage, and they can produce a whirling vortex of ice shards to shred and freeze everything around them.
One-Gender Race: Frostwind viragos are all female, and mate with humanoids to reproduce.
The Paralyzer: When active, their "Mind Freeze Aura" causes increasingly debilitating mental effects based on how badly other creatures fail their saving throws, from rendering them shaken or dazed to full-on stunned.
Pretty in Mink: A frostwind virago prefers to look like a fur-clad maiden with smooth, attractive features.
White Hair, Black Heart: Frostwind viragos possess blonde to stark white hair, and embody the unforgiving, indiscriminately cruel heart of deep winter.

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