Dungeons And Dragons Creatures G / 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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G

Gadabout

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Plant (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/8 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Winged plants that can be donned to provide their wearer with an air supply and flight capacity, making them useful in boarding actions and emergencies in Wildspace.

Organic Technology: They're more or less organic spacesuits, cultivated by elves from the starfly plant (like most starfaring elven technology). No other race has worked out how to produce them, making gadabouts rare and prized commodities that mercane and dohwar merchants might trade for 2,500 gp apiece.
The Symbiote: A benign, mutualist example. The gadabout provides oxygen, a flight speed, and even a sustaining syrup for its wearer, who in return gives the plant the carbon dioxide it needs to survive.
Weak to Fire: Like most plant creatures, gadabouts are vulnerable to fire damage.

Gaj

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_gaj_4e.jpg

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E), Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (3E), 8 (4E), 4 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil (4E)

Insectoid horrors that use their psionic power to tear into their victims' minds before consuming their bodies.

Big Creepy-Crawlies: They have Large, roughly beetle-like bodies with scaly shells, though their heads are oddly spongy globes.
It Can Think: Despite their monstrous appearance, gaj are very intelligent, capable of psionic communication, and as per their 4th Edition lore, may link their individual burrows to form small communities (with the caveat that, during a food shortage, gaj will turn even on their mates).
Made a Slave: According to their 4th Edition lore, gaj occasionally make slaves of their victims, using them as guards, walking larders, or even bait for better meals. Such slaves aren't held in line by Mind Control, but are instead broken by constant psionic torment.
Mind Rape: When a gaj has a victim held in its mandibles, it wraps its feathery antennae around the victim's head and invades their mind. Unlike most mind probes, this is a painful, destructive process that inflicts Intelligence or Wisdom drain (in 2nd Edition) or psychic damage (in 4th and 5th), as the gaj tears information out of its victim's mind. Their 2E entry also explains that this is how gaj gain the mental energy to power their psionic abilities.
The Paralyzer: Gaj use their psionics to paralyze prey before moving in for the kill.
Psychic Radar: 2nd Edition gaj use their life detection power to scan the horizon for intelligent prey.

Gaki

A jiki-ketsu-gaki and shinen-gaki (3e)

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (jiki-niku-gaki), 4 (shikki-gaki, shinen-gaki), 6 (jiki-ketsu-gaki) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

The spirits of evil mortals whose sins have trapped them in the world of the living. They come in several forms, from ghoulish to fiery.

Invisibility: All gaki can turn invisible at will.
Magic Music: Jiki-ketsu-gaki can play the biwa to replicate a hypnotism effect, potentially causing all within 30 feet to stop and do nothing but listen to the song.
Mushroom Man: Shikki-gaki appear similar to ghouls at night, but must spend the daylight hours in the form of a foot-tall mushroom — they are helpless and vulnerable in mushroom form, and can be instantly slain by a dipper of hot soup or salt water. In life, some shikki-gaki were irresponsible healers or neglectful servants, but others were nature spirits who inhabited mushrooms but succumbed to evil and began preying upon butterflies and bluebirds.
Our Ghouls Are Different: Jiki-niku-gaki are ghoulish monsters with flaking, pallid skin who feed upon the flesh of humanoids (though they lack proper ghouls' paralyzing attacks). In life, they were greedy merchants or miserly moneylenders.
Our Vampires Are Different: Jiki-ketsu-gaki are fanged, bloodsucking undead who drain Constitution from their victims after latching onto their body (and once attached, won't let go until either they or their victim dies). They're also the most intelligent of the gaki, and the only ones capable of speech. In life, they were heretical shamans, monks or other holy men.
Playing with Fire: Shinen-gaki's tendrils attacks can cause victims to catch fire, and those who strike it with natural weapons or unarmed attacks are in danger of igniting as well.
Poisonous Person: Shikki-gaki's claws carry gaki fever, which unlike a normal disease will keep dealing Constitution damage until the victim is cured by remove disease, or else they perish.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Gaki can assume the form of an insect at will.
Will-o'-the-Wisp: Shinen-gaki appear as hovering balls of bright red, white, yellow or blue flame, and use their light to lure travelers on lonely roads to their deaths. In life, shinen-gaki were treacherous or cowardly soldiers.

Galeb Duhr

^3e

Classification: Elemental (3E, 5E), Elemental Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E), 8 (4E), 6 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Rock-like creatures of elemental earth.

Armless Biped: They have no arms in 1st and 2nd edition.
Art Evolution: Their degree of anthropomorphism varies between editions. In 1st and 2nd Edition, galeb duhr are rough boulders with faces and a pair of stumpy legs. In 3rd, they become stout-limbed but otherwise normal humanoids with rock-like skin. In 4th and 5th, they have an intermediate appearance as neckless, stumpy-limbed beings more visible made of rough stone.
Dishing Out Dirt: Galeb duhr have considerable natural power over rock, which they can shape, control and turn into mud.
Enemy Summoner: Once per day, a galeb duhr can magically animate a pair of nearby boulders to assist it, for up to one minute.
Magic Music: Groups of galeb duhr are known for their low, rumbling singing that some sages believe can either cause or prevent earthquakes. Though other scholars argue that these songs are merely warnings galeb duhr give to each other when intruders approach their territory, allowing the stony creatures to make themselves scarce.
Our Dwarves Are All the Same: 4th Edition casts galeb duhr as former dwarves who failed to escape their giant masters and developed an elemental form, similarly as the azers in that edition.
Rock Monster: The galeb duhr is a boulder-like creature with stumpy appendages that act as limbs. They are always composed of an igneous or metamorphic rock of a type common in their area; granite is particularly common. No sedimentary galeb duhr exist.
Rolling Attack: A galeb duhr does bonus damage on a charge as they roll towards their opponent like a loose boulder.

Gallows Speaker

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Undead (5E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (5E)

Composite spirits that arise from scenes of mass death or regular executions.

Intangibility: They're incorporeal undead.
Mind Hive: They're conglomerates of multiple lingering souls.
Mind Rape: They can make a "Suffering Echoes" attack that forces a target to relive the painful memories of the undead's many deaths for a burst of psychic damage, which can also "chain" to up to three nearby creatures as well.
Talkative Loon: Gallows speakers constantly mutter to themselves, voicing their composite spirits' final thoughts, dying curses, pleas, regrets and apologies.
Winds of Destiny, Change!: Their "foretelling touch" deals damage and imposes a minor penalty on the target's next attack roll or saving throw.

Gambado

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Monsters also known as "springing skulls of doom" for their ambush methods.

Bizarre Alien Locomotion: Gambados' torsos are normal enough, but their lower bodies have only a single leg, a three-foot cylinder of cartilage and bone that can be compressed like a spring and used to make sudden, dramatic leaps.
Crafted from Animals: The elastic hide of a gambado's leg can be used to make a flexible connector for pipes and other contructions.
He Was Right There All Along: These creatures hunt by digging a 6-foot pit in the ground to hide their narrow body, until their head is level with the floor and able to be mistaken for an errant skull. Once prey draws near, they spring to the attack.
Obsessively Organized: Gambados ignore most treasure, or rather leave it around as bait, save for coins, gemstones and small pieces of jewelry. These the gambado will compulsively sort by type or color, admire for a time, put in its stash at the bottom of its pit, then break out for re-sorting a few days later.
Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Gambados wear other creatures' skulls as helmets, using muscles to secure them to their heads and even manipulate the skull's jaw.

Gambol

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

Nine-foot-tall primates known for their aggression, speed and acrobatics.

In a Single Bound: They're phenomenal jumpers, gaining a +25 racial bonus on Jump checks, with no maximum distance restriction.
Killer Gorilla: Gambols resemble Large baboons with elongated, canine muzzles, purple skin, and blue hair. Their troops are also fiercely territorial, "obsessively" patrolling their stretch of jungle and attacking anything that trespasses in a frenzy of tumbling, clawing and biting.
Super-Reflexes: They not only have a rogue's "Evasion" ability, they can also use a free action to try to dodge a weapon or spell attack each round.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: A gambol's howl can panic every other creature within 100 feet.

Garbler

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

40-pound blobs of flesh covered in mouths that constantly babble words of truespeech.

Enslaved Tongue: Garblers can use an immediate action to reverse any utterances from the Lexicon of the Evolving Mind they hear spoken wihin 60 feet, so for example an attempt to use word of nurturing to heal an ally would instead be reversed to harm them. The monsters can instinctively tell what an utterance's intent is and won't try to reverse something that might be beneficial to them, so there's no use using breath of recovery on one and expecting it to reverse the utterance and paralyze itself.
Too Many Mouths: Their bodies are covered with mouths, which they use to make four bite attacks per round of combat, and to move about by biting into things and dragging their body forward. This trait leads to speculation that garblers are perhaps gibbering mouthers that were warped by truename magic before reaching maturity.
The Unintelligible: Garblers are too insane to speak anything other than random bits of truespeech, and attempts at telepathic communication fail to produce anything meaningful.
Words Can Break My Bones: Their garbled muttering of truespeech produces a random harmful utterance each round to affect a random target.

Gargantua

Origin: Kara-tur
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Truly colossal reptiles, humanoids or insects that can stand up to 200 feet tall, and are capable of singlehandedly devastating entire kingdoms.

For the creatures born to giant parents also known as gargantua, see the giants subpage.

Bad Vibrations: It's impossible for gargantua to sneak up on anyone, their earth-shaking footfalls forewarm anyone who can't see them coming or hear their roars.
Behemoth Battle: Humanoid gargantua in particular are known for competing violently with their fellow gargantua, often to the death.
Big Creepy-Crawlies: Insectoid gargantua look like enormous fuzzy moths with bodies 60 feet long.
Blow You Away: Insectoid gargantua can create fierce windstorms by flapping their wings, sending anything flying that isn't anchored by something heavy.
The Empath: Reptilian and humanoid gargantua can sense the emotions and desires of other creatures, and will direct their attacks against those that wish them ill-will.
Expy: The reptilian and insect gargantua are transparent ones of Godzilla and Mothra. The humanoid gargantua aren't quite stand-ins for King Kong, as they're described as more like ape-ish humans than giant gorillas (which makes them sound unnervingly like Titans).
Isle of Giant Horrors: In Kara-tur, many reptilian gargantua live on the aptly-named Island of Gargantua.
Kaiju: They're ginormous monsters that, when riled up, cause destruction for destruction's sake.
Lightning Can Do Anything: Fierce lightning storms accompany the birth of a new reptilian gargantua, and any dead creature struck by lightning during such a storm acts as though they've received a resurrection spell.
Monster in the Ice: There's at least one account of a juvenile reptilian gargantua that was found frozen in the arctic of Kara-tur, dug out by explorers and towed towards civilization on a giant sled, only for the beast to thaw, wake up, and go on a rampage.
Monster Is a Mommy: Reptilian gargantua have the uncanny ability to sense when their offspring are harmed from any distance, and respond accordingly.
Monster Organ Trafficking: The silk from larval insectoid gargantua can be woven into cloth to make enchanted robes.
Non-Malicious Monster: Gargantua generally just want to be left alone, and try to avoid other creatures unless hungry. But provoke one by disturbing its lair, harming it, or going after its young, and the irate gargantua will cross oceans to seek its revenge.
Our Giants Are Bigger: Humanoid gargantua stand 80 to 100 feet tall, albeit with stooped postures and "anthropoid" facial features. Some have long, greasy hair, others are bald, and some have black, brown or golden fur covering their bodies.
Projectile Webbing: Larval insectoid gargantua can fire silk at threats to entangle them.
Trampled Underfoot: They can inflict potentially 100 points of damage just by walking over other creatures.

Gargoyle

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Elemental Humanoid (4E), Elemental (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 9 (4E), 2 (5E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Chaotic Evil, Evil (4E)

Malicious creatures that use their resemblance to fearsomely-carved statues to ambush victims who lack sufficient paranoia regarding fearsomely-carved statues.

Aquatic Mook: Kapoacinths are amphibious gargoyles that can swim but cannot fly and which are only found in aquatic environments.
Arch-Enemy: Like their creator, gargoyles hate creatures affiliated with elemental air, especially the aarakocra.
Copycat Mockery: In one telling, gargoyles are the creations of Ogremoch, the evil Prince of Elemental Earth, created in mocking imitation of the creatures of air that he despises — hence why these creatures of stone are somehow capable of flight.
Elite Mooks: 2nd Edition margoyles aren't any bigger than normal gargoyles, but they look noticeably stonier, and their attacks deal twice as much damage.
Eye of Newt: 2nd Edition notes that gargoyle horns are common ingredients in potions of invulnerability and potions of flying.
The Needless: Depending on edition, gargoyles may have no need to eat, drink or sleep, and can go indefinitely without any food, water or air. But they'll kill and consume other creatures anyway, because they just like doing it.
Our Gargoyles Rock: Gargoyles are wicked ambush predators resembling winged, horned and generally demonic-looking stone statues. They hunt by lying perfectly still, passing for stone statues until unwary prey draws near. Their origins have varied from edition to edition, usually describing them as either earth elementals, animated statues, or simply natural monsters.
Oxymoronic Being: The 5E Monster Manual notes that gargoyles are considered a mockery of the elemental air, since they are native to the plane of earth and their bodies are made of heavy stone, yet they are also capable of flight.

Wingwyrd

Origin: Eberron
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Good

A subrace of gargoyles aligned with the Church of the Silver Flame, protecting its holy sites and serving as messengers.

Defeat Equals Explosion: When slain, a wingwyrd's body explodes into a burst of silvery flame that harms adjacent evil creatures. This reduces the wingwyrd's body to powdered stone, but doesn't damage any possessions it was carrying.
Holy Hand Grenade: Their natural attacks deal extra damage to fiends.
Pious Monster: They're descended from gargoyles who were touched by the Silver Flame, and now follow its goodly doctrine. Wingwyrds are social creatures but put duty above their own desires, and can pass time "waxing philosophic and reflecting on the Silver Flame."
Resistant to Magic: Wingwyrds exchange some of a normal gargoyle's physical Damage Reduction for Spell Resistance.

Garngrath

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 20 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Fifty-ton behemoths that rampage through the Windswept Depths of Pandemonium, though thanks to their ability to plane shift they can potentially be found anywhere.

Deflector Shields: They're surrounded by a roiling field of extraplanar energy, improving the monster's Armor Class and giving incoming attacks a 1-in-5 chance of missing.
Dimensional Traveler: Once per day, gargraths can channel the extraplanar energy around them to plane shift. They usually do so to flee a losing battle, but garngraths captured and trained as war beasts can be taught to use this ability to invade other planes.
Extreme Omnivore: Garngraths can eat and digest any matter that doesn't kill them first. Their 60-foot burrowing speed isn't so much a matter of digging as it is the creatures eating their way through solid rock.
It Amused Me: They were created by Erythnul, god of slaughter, who purposefully released some into the wilds of Pandemonium and leaked the knowledge of how to craft and graft on the creatures' crystal horns, all so he could be entertained by the resulting carnage.
Monstrous Cannibalism: Garngraths are more likely to kill and consume a potential mate than reproduce, and even if one does ultimately give birth, her young have to quickly burrow to safety before they're eaten by their mother.
Necessary Drawback: Their hyperactive metabolism allows them to consume anything, almost constantly, but this ages them rapidly, so they rarely live to see 30.
No-Sell: They're immune to electricity, fire and sonic damage, as well as illusions, insanity effects and ability damage.
Organ Drops: Should a garngrath be slain, its crystalline horn drops off its skull, and if some other creature retrieves it, the horn fixes itself to their head, resizes itself to match its wearer, and functions as a helm of brilliance until its last "jewel" is expended, after which the horn crumbles to powder.
Our Monsters Are Weird: A gargrath looks something like a 70-foot-long, 20-foot-tall reptile covered in shaggy fur that naturally forms dreadlocked tendrils, with an enormous crystalline horn on its head and six sets of limbs with quartz-like claws.
Random Effect Spell: Their crystalline horn can fire a prismatic ray as a swift action, potentially dealing a random type of damage to a target, turning them to stone, sending them to a random plane, or driving them insane.
Super-Scream: As a full-round action, garngraths can loose a devastating roar that deals a massive amount of sonic damage to everything in a 60-foot radius, leveling structures and terrain to leave behind fields of light rubble.
Swallowed Whole: Garngraths can not only try to swallow something they've caught in their jaws, they can make a special "swallowing charge" attack, potentially scooping up anything — even Gargantuan-sized creatures or structures — in a line 80 feet long and 30 feet wide.

Gaspar

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Enormous herd animals that roam the Wilderness of the Beastlands.

Dire Beast: They're basically dire, dire stags, Huge cervidae with enormous antlers on their heads and additional sets on their shoulders and hips.
Horse of a Different Color: These creatures are highly valued as mounts, as they can be trained to plane shift themselves and their riders, so long as the destination plane is one the gaspar has been to before.
Weaponized Teleportation: Gaspars can make their foes go away. When reduced to half their hit points, gaspars can cause anything else within 10 feet of them to be plane shifted to a random destination, up to four times per day.

Gathra

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_gathre_3e.jpg

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

Tusked, horned brutes whose herds can be found roaming Avernus, first layer of the Nine Hells of Baator.

Glowing Eyes of Doom: A gathra's eyes constantly glow with a dim red light, which brightens when the creature is angry.
Horse of a Different Color: Some evil beings capture and train gathras as mounts, though they're "stubborn and unpredictable creatures that require constant discipline and domination to keep in line."
Mix-and-Match Critters: They look like brutal blends of bulls and boars. Despite being "made" from an herbivore and omnivore, gathras are strictly carnivorous and actively predatory.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Three times per day, they can let loose a bellow that affects all within 30 feet as per a fear spell.
Trampled Underfoot: They're big and heavy enough to overrun and damage smaller creatures.

Gearkeeper Construct

Origin: Critical Role
Classification: Construct (5E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Spherical automatons which defend their masters' possessions with dozens of bladed arms.

Be the Ball: These constructs' transit form is "a rolling ball of shield-like plates," but when they detect intruders, those plates shift to reveal bladed appendages they use to move and attack with. They can transition between these two forms so rapidly that the constructs are hard to hit with attacks of opportunity.
Blade Below the Shoulder: Their limbs end in scimitar-like blades which they use to carve up intruders.
Clockwork Creature: Gearkeeper constructs are clockwork automatons designed by tinkerers and mage engineers to guard deep vaults.
Flechette Storm: Every so often they can let loose a conical spray of jagged metal for heavy piercing damage.
No-Sell: Like golems, a gearkeeper construct is immune to most status conditions and is unaffected by any magic that would alter its form.
Spike Shooter: In addition to mangling people with their bladed arms, they can shoot spears at people with enough force to knock the target flat on its ass.

Gem Scarab

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

Beetles whose metallic carapaces are studded with gemstones, which they use to power spells.

Big Creepy-Crawlies: Gem scarabs are oversized, carnivorous beetles about two feet long, with barbed legs and mandibles strong enough to chew up minerals.
Dig Attack: They have a slow burrowing speed, and frequently ambush foes by bursting from the soil below.
Eat Dirt, Cheap: Gem scrabs are carnivores, but also need to consume minerals to grow their carapaces and magical gemstones, making them hated by desert peoples for robbing the soil of nutrients. More dangerously, gem scarabs have learned to attack caravans and wandering merchants as sources of both meat and minerals.
Organ Drops: While gem scarabs eat rather than hoard treasure, any unused gemstones on their backs can be worth 100 gp apiece (though only if harvested from a dead scarab, trying to cut one off a living beetle causes the creature to shift magic away from it, making the gem crumble to dust). Similarly, the scarabs' metallic carapaces can be used to make jewelry, cosmetics and dyes, and some desert peoples know how to spin the carapace into thread, so the monsters' husks can be worth up to another 100 gp.
Power Crystal: Gem scarabs' backs can have up to six gemstones, containing magical energy they use to cast cantrips such as flare, acid splash or ray of frost, depending on the type of gems in question. Each time a gemstone is used like this, it crumbles and is shed by the scarab.

Gem Stalker

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

Former horrors of the Far Realm given new purpose by a gem dragon.

Gemstone Assault: Gem stalkers can fire crystals imbued with various magical effects.
Gem Tissue: A gem stalker's skin is studded with bright crystals that pulse with psychic energy.
Our Centaurs Are Different: Whatever type of aberration they were before their transformation, gem stalkers turn out as something like gem-studded dracotaurs.
Power Crystal: The crystals growing from a gem stalker's skin are charged with psychic energy and allow it to communicate telepathically, or fire crystals with various magical effects.
Reforged into a Minion: When a gem dragon kills an aberration, it can reshape the corpse into a gem stalker, a loyal minion equally adept at patrolling the Underdark for other horrors or defending their creator's lair.
Taking the Bullet: They can use their reaction to take damage meant for another creature.
Wall Crawl: Gem stalkers are under a constant spider climb effect.

Genie

Classification: Outsider (3E), Elemental Humanoid (4E), Elemental (5E)

The rulers of the four Elemental Planes, famous for granting wishes to mortals who bind them into service.

Elemental Weapon: In 5th edition, the scimitars wielded by djinn and efreet inflict lightning and fire damage, respectively.
Fantastic Racism: Each type of genie despises at least one of the other three. Djinn loathe dao, efreet and marids hate each other, and the dao cannot stand djinn or marids. Even the types that they don't despise are generally treated as inferior.
Made a Slave: In 5th edition, all genies — even the good-aligned ones — believe that it is their right to take other beings as slaves, and derive status from having servants. How they treat their slaves, and how enthusiastically they go about slaving in the first place, varies from one type of genie to the next.
Make a Wish: The strikingly rare genie nobles sometimes have the power to grant Three Wishes to other beings. If the genie is coerced into doing this, they'll probably try to twist the wishes to their captor's detriment, while a genie who is freed from servitude may reward their benefactor with a good-heartd wish.
No Body Left Behind: Dead genies swiftly break down into their associated elemental substance, leaving only their clothes and equipment behind.
Our Genies Are Different: They come in a number of flavors, from the four classical elements to a combination of those elements to shadow or ice genies.
Summon Magic: 5th edition genies can summon an elemental once per day. The elemental needs to be of the same element as the genie: an efreeti can only summon a fire elemental, for example.

Dao

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_genie_dao_transparent_5e.png

Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 22 (4E), 11 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

The greedy earth genies, who focus on gaining material wealth and cannot be happy unless they're the envy of others of their kind.

Beneath the Earth: On the Elemental Plane of Earth, most Dao dwell within the Great Dismal Delve, a cavern of such staggering size that a Material Plane continent could fit within it. Unfortunately, it's wracked by regular earthquakes, requiring an army of slaves to repair the damage.
Dishing Out Dirt: Dao are the genies of elemental earth, hailing from its associated elemental plane and having the innate ability to use spells like move earth and stone shape.
Dungeon Bypass: They can glide through earth and stone as easily as a fish moves through water, allowing them to outmaneuver enemies.
Good Old Fisticuffs: 5th Edition dao will gladly lay into enemies with their rocky fists, which inflict as much damage on average as a djinni's scimitar.

Djinni

Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 20 (4E), 11 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good, Unaligned (4E)

Genies of air that hate evil and are the most likely to aid good mortals, but remain dangerously fickle.

Blow You Away: Djinn are the genies of elemental air, hailing from its associated elemental plane and wielding innate magic tied to the element, such as the ability to turn themselves into living wind.
Elemental Shapeshifting: Djinn can take on gaseous form for one hour every day, and in battle can turn themselves into raging whirlwinds for several minutes.
Floating Continent: On the Elemental Plane of Air, the djinn live on floating islands that can be several miles across, supporting splendid manors, gardens and courtyards.
Three Wishes: Noble djinn are bound to grant three wishes to any mortal who can capture them. They grant no other services, and leave once the third wish is granted.

Efreeti

Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 22 (4E), 11 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

The ruthless and imperialistic fire genies, who are probably the most powerful wish-granters, but highly resent being forced into servitude for this power.

Big Red Devil: Between their bright red skin, horns and cruel and tyrannical natures, efreet embody this trope much more closely than many of the setting's actual fiends.
Horned Humanoid: They have small horns growing from their foreheads.
Noble Demon: They're merciless and certifiably evil, but efreet remain honorable, and prefer indentured servitude to capital punishment.
Playing with Fire: Efreet are the genies of elemental fire, hailing from its associated elemental plane and being innately able to create and control fire and heat.
Pragmatic Villainy: They're the most likely genies to treat their slaves harshly, but never to the point that those slaves are unable to function. Similarly, they're likely candidates for an Enemy Mine situation
Proud Merchant Race: They use their capital on the Elemental Plane of Fire, the infamous City of Brass, as the seat of a cross-planar mercantile empire.

Janni

Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: True Neutral

The weakest of genies, jann are made of all the classical elements, and thus must spend most of their time on the Material Plane. They usually live as nomads and can be easily confused for humans, until danger threatens.

All Your Powers Combined: Subverted; Jann are formed out of all four elements, but are actually the weakest of the genies.
Invisibility: A janni can use invisibility three times per day.
Master of None: They draw power from all four of the classical elements, but are notably weaker than any of the "pure" elemental genies.
Sizeshifter: They can use enlarge/reduce person on themselves twice per day

Khayal

Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

The khayal are thought to have formed from spirits that materialized outside the traditional four elements, leaving them to bond instead with those elements' shadow. These genies hold themselves aloof from their kin, dwelling within the great City of Onyx on the Plane of Shadow.

Arch-Enemy: They're particularly hostile towards the jann, and the two genie subraces have fought a hidden and sporadic war for eons.
Back Stab: Khayal can deal sneak attack damage like a rogue.
Can't Live Without You: The khayal are bound to the Plane of Shadow, and suffer Constitution drain for every 24 hours they spend away from it.
Casting a Shadow: They naturally know several shadowmancer mysteries such as pass into shadow, dusk and dawn, and umbral body.
Consummate Liar: Khayal consider deception a fine art, and delight in lying to and tricking other races. However, if someone can offer irrefutable proof that a khayal has lied to them, tradition demands the genie perform a service as penace.
Fantastic Racism: They look down on other races and think nothing of deceiving them, and even if a khayal allies with their "lessers," they'll naturally assume a leadership role and won't understand why others wouldn't accept the khayal's superiority.
Merchant City: Though the khayal's bond to the Plane of Shadow prevents them from traveling much, their City of Onyx has bustling markets filled with merchants using the Plane of Shadow as a byway between other planes, though the city center remains off-limits to non-khayal.
Will Not Tell a Lie: Khayal's deception does not extend to their own race, and they never lie to each other.

Marid

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E), 27 (4E), 11 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

The egotistical, hedonistic and unpredictable water genies are perhaps the strongest of geniekind. Marids are fond of stories, especially ones that make them look good, and all claim some sort of noble title.

A Lighter Shade of Black: Marids are slave-takers, but they don't work their slaves like the dao or the efreeti do, and will combat efreet on sight — which, given their elemental advantage (and, depending on the edition, their outright superior overall power) are fights they tend to win. They also keep the peace on the Elemental Plane of Water, which is very much a good thing considering the prevalence of aboleths in the plane.
Art Evolution: Up until 4th edition, marids looked like any other genies, humanoids with skin colored like their element. The 5th edition marid instead looks like a giant, humanoid toad-fish. They are shapeshifters, though, so they can easily be both.
Ear Fins: The 5th Edition design gives marids a pair of rayed fins where ears would otherwise be.
Making a Splash: They draw their power from the Elemental Plane of Water and have innate magical abilities associated with their connection to water.
Fish People: In 5th Edition, marids resemble squat humanoid fish.

Qorrashi

Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

These relatives of the djinn represent elemental cold and ice, which surrounds them no matter the climate. They enjoy physical combat more than other genies, but won't hesitate to flee from a losing fight.

The Good Chancellor: In the Forgotten Realms, the qorrash served as advisors to the rulers of Jhothûn, an ancient empire of frost giants. They were evidently well-respected, known as "princes," and seem to have played no part in the empire's fall (due to a rebellion among the satraps, followed by white dragon attacks). A single qorrashi is the only being who remains in the ruins of the capital, the "Prince of Jhothûn" who dreams of restoring its glory.
An Ice Person: Qorrash's blue-skinned bodies are laced with frost, they radiate cold to the extent that their physical attacks deal extra cold damage and force opponents to save against frostbite, and they have an array of spell-like abilities such as cone of cold and ice storm.
Wall Crawl: They're under a variant of a spider climb effect that only applies to icy surfaces.

Genius Loci

Classification: Ooze (3E)
Challenge Rating: 30 (3E)
Alignment: Usually any Evil

Undisturbed landscapes may spontaneously coalesce as a singular entity, so that a mountain, lake, isolated valley, small moon, or even demiplane can be considered a distinct creature.

Blob Monster: They're considered Colossal oozes that are difficult to distinguish from a natural landscape, until a part of such terrain abruptly animates to slam, grapple and crush intruders.
Genius Loci: A usually malign example, though a rare few become benign havens for wildlife and sylvan beings.
Made a Slave: They can use the epic-level enslave spell at will until they successfully dominate a thrall, who will then live with the genius loci, serving until slain or freed from the enchantment.
Mouth of Sauron: Genius loci never communicate directly, but will speak through their thrall.
The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: A genius loci isn't sentient in itself, but after instinctively enslaving something, it emulates that creature's intelligence, and the purposes the genius loci strives toward might be influenced by its slave.

Geonid

Origin: Mystara
Classification: Elemental (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (2E), True Neutral (5E)

Also known as rocklings or rock hermits, these small bipeds are well-protected by their stonelike shells.

Defensive Feint Trap: When they feel like their lair is in danger of discovery, a geonid hunting party will try to lead the intruders into a place they can trigger a rockslide, or under a nest of piercers that might deal with their enemies (and afterward, the geonids can eat the fallen piercers).
He Was Right There All Along: When hiding beneath their shells, geonids are quite hard to tell apart from mundane boulders.
Heavily Armored Mook: In AD&D, geonids aren't too dangerous on offense, but have a better Armor Class than someone in full plate armor and a shield (AC of -2 compared to AC 0). Some dwarves and orcs thus fashion the strong but flexible shells of juvenile geonids into superior helmets.
Psychometry: 5E gives geonids a "stone tell" ability, letting them touch a stone surface or object and learn what number and type of creatures have passed within 10 feet of it over the past 24 hours.
Rock Monster: Played with; geonids are classified as Elementals in 5E, and are rumored to be related to galeb duhr in 2E, but their shells, while greatly resembling rocks, are not explicitly said to be made of stone. They're also fleshy creatures beneath those shells, surviving on cultivated moss and fresh meat, usually rats, lizards and slugs.
Starfish Language: Geonids communicate with one another using "a series of clicks and shell gestures incomprehensible to outsiders." About one in ten learns Common, allowing them to, for example, barter with certain clans of mountain dwarves, who hire geonids' services finding ore veins in exchange for horseflesh and interestingly-shaped boulders.

Geriviar

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

Nomadic, four-armed giants with a pathological hatred for structures.

Anti-Structure: They ignore half of an object's hardness when attacking it.
Berserk Button: Geriviars seem to view any sort of permanent structure as a personal insult. This also influences their nomadism, as their paranoia that someone might be building something in their territory keeps them constantly on patrol.
Bioweapon Beast: Their tenacious determination to tear down any structure they see, combined with their other abilities, suggests that geriviars were created as living siege engines by some past warlord. Sure enough, geriviars have served (willingly or not) in smaller races' campaigns as siege experts, and relish the role, though it takes an iron-willed commander to get them to abandon an attack in progress.
Boulder Bludgeon: They can hurl boulders for a ranged attack much like true giants.
Healing Factor: Much like trolls, they constantly heal damage and can regrow lost limbs in minutes, or reattach them instantly. Acid and cold damage bypass this effect.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: They have four long arms, with two elbow joints each, which they can use to make a flurry of slam attacks in melee.
Running on All Fours: When they sprint, geriviars run on all six of their limbs, at six times their normal movement rate.
Throw Down the Bomblet: A strange Organic Technology example. Geriviars' bodies are covered in spiky nodules one or two feet wide, which consist of the same armored plating that covers the giant's body, as well as some volatile liquid secreted from its skin. A geriviar can tear off two of these nodules each round and hurl them as grenades, which explode for ten dice's worth of piercing and fire damage in a 10-foot radius. A given geriviar can have up to twelve of these nodules on their skin at a time, and they regrow in a matter of minutes, though if their regeneration is somehow disabled it will take days instead.

Ghaunadan

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Shapechanger (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Intelligent slime creatures who serve Ghaunadaur, the Underdark god of oozes.

Blob Monster: Their natural form is similar to that of a green slime or ochre jelly, and can squeeze through narrow gaps or ooze up walls and across ceilings.
Charm Person: Those who meet a ghaunadan's gaze have to save or treat the creature's (already high) Charisma score as if it were several points higher, similar to the friends spell.
Human Shifting: They can take a full-round action to assume a humanoid form unique to each ghaunadan, either a handsome human male or beautiful drow female. They can only remain in this form for up to 15 hours at a time, however.
Melee Disarming: In blob form, a ghaunadan can mold itself around an opponent's weapon and attempt to yank it out of their hand.
The Paralyzer: Those struck by their pseudopods have to save or be paralyzed for up to two hours.

Gholor

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 13 or 15 (anhkolox) (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Undead beasts also known as "feasters," which lurk in funnel-like pits and lure prey close before striking.

Antlion Monster: Gholors lurk in 20-foot-wide, funnel-like pits in deserts, other desolate lands, or even on the sea floor. Creatures who come close enough to the funnel have to make Balance checks or fall into the waiting arms of the gholor.
Elite Zombie: Some of these undead beasts are known as anhkoloxes, and have enchanted bones that glow green and are hot enough to damage anything that touches them, as well as a Breath Weapon of cold green flames. In 3rd Edition this condition is even contagious, and any corporeal undead affected by these special attacks may turn into an anhkolox itself.
Luring in Prey: They can use magic similar to a sympathy spell that can compel all intelligent beings within a mile of the gholor to move towards the undead.
Who Needs Their Whole Body?: Gholors have dragon-like heads, 20-foot-long hooked arms, but no lower bodies, just spinal cords hanging from their torsos.

Ghost

Classification: Undead (3E-5E), Outsider (Ghostwalk variant, 3E)
Challenge Rating: Base creature's +2 (3E), 4 (4E, 5E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Any

Disembodied souls bound to the earth by some unfulfilled purpose, ghosts range from the benign to the malevolent. The sight of an angry ghost can literally take a few years off your life.

Deadly Gaze: Some 3rd edition ghosts can harm you just by making direct eye-contact.
Demonic Possession: Ghosts have the power to possess living creatures, though they can be forced out of a host through abjuration magic (or by knocking the host unconscious).
Ghostly Animals: Traditionally, ghosts can only form from a creature with a certain amount of Charisma, preventing most animals and the like from becoming one, but later 3rd Edition supplements added variants such as "ghost brutes" with looser restrictions.
Ghostly Goals: Though the incorporeal form of a ghost can be dispersed, they always reform after a few days until whatever turned them into a ghost is resolved.
Our Ghosts Are Different: The Ghostwalk 3E supplement introduced a unique spin on ghosts — they're still the spirits of dead humanoids, who can endure outside a living body for an indefinite time, but unlike standard D&D ghosts, they are not tied to one site, have no fantastic powers, and most importantly are considered Outsiders rather than Undead. Player characters who become ghosts can continue to acquire experience points like living characters, but can only gain levels in the eidolon or eidoloncer classes.
Puzzle Boss: The 1e ghost has incredibly dangerous abilities, which can be countered in multiple logical ways but allow it to easily Total Party Kill groups who rush into combat without scouting ahead to figure out what they're facing.
Rapid Aging: In 1e, anyone looking at a Ghost ages by 10 to 40 years per round, with the effect becoming permanent unless they receive magical relief within 24 hours. This can explicitly cause observers to die of old age, rendering them Deader than Dead.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: The sight of an angry ghost strikes fear into an onlooker's heart. In some editions, the sound of a ghost's moaning can incite panic.

Ghost Legionnaire

Challenge Rating: 13 (4E)

These undead spirits fight as a single entity, waging battle for long-lost causes or out of their loyalty to each other.

Achilles' Heel: As they take damage, ghost legionnaires display not the effects of their current attackers, but the wounds of the battle that originally killed them. This can be exploited by knowledgable characters, and a passed History check will allow them to deal extra damage to the ghosts.
Psychic Glimpse of Death: When a ghost legionnaire possesses a living being, their victim suffers psychic damage as they're forced to relive the ghost's last moments on the battlefield. On the upside, this gives that victim a bonus on the History check to learn the ghost's vulnerabilities.
Shared Life-Meter: Ghost legionnaires have a soul link with one another, pooling their hit points — once that total reaches 0, all the ghost legionnaires are destroyed simultaneously.
Warrior Undead: Unlike standard ghosts, these undead legionnaires can deal direct damage with their weapons, while still having the ability to possess the living.

Ghoul

Classification: Undead (3E-5E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (ghoul), 3 (ghast) (3E); 5 (4E); 1 (ghoul), 2 (ghast) (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Ghouls are bloodthirsty corporeal undead who can paralyze their prey with a touch.

Aquatic Mook: Lacedons are aquatic ghouls who lurk around reefs and treacherous coats to prey on wrecked and stranded ships.
Elite Mook: Ghasts, stronger and more cunning ghouls who can paralyze elves, who are normally immune to ghoul-induced paralysis.
Horror Hunger: Their craving for flesh greatly outstrips their need to consume it — being undead, ghouls have no need to eat whatsoever, but are still wracked by a constant hunger for flesh that is only abated when they are actively eating meat.
Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Ghouls are undead cannibals who reproduce through their infectious bite. They are additionally speculated to other ways, such as being human cannibals who rose in a monstrous form after death or especially debauched and wicked mortals who were transformed into a baser form of life by their practices.
The Paralyzer: Ghouls can paralyze living beings with a touch. Elves alone are immune to this effect, although the stronger ghasts can paralyze them as well.
Sneaky Spy Species: Shadowghasts are an Exandrian variant of ghast described as "undead assassins," able to blend in with shadows as they stalk prey.

Abyssal Ghoul

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E), 16 (4E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These extraplanar undead have developed fiendish qualities from their association with the Abyss. They sometimes serve as minions for Kiaransalee, the drow goddess of undeath and vengeance, or Doresain, the "King of Ghouls."

Back Stab: They can deal sneak attack damage like a high-level rogue.
Deceased and Diseased: Rather than a paralyzing touch, abyssal ghouls' claw attacks transmit demon fever, a disease that can damage or drain a victim's Constitution.
Non-Health Damage: After grabbing a victim, abyssal ghouls can use their vaporous tongues to drain a victim's Wisdom until they slip into a coma.
Overly-Long Tongue: Abyssal ghouls have foot-long tongues that trail off into incorporeality near their tips.
Stat-O-Vision: Abyssal ghouls are constantly under the effect of the deathwatch spell, allowing them to know how close to death nearby creatures are and target the weakest foes.
Super-Reflexes: They share a rogue's "Uncanny Dodge" ability.
Super-Senses: Abyssal ghouls are blind, but use scent and vibration to track creatures within 90 feet.

Giant

Fire, storm and frost giants, with human for scale (3e)

Classification: Giant (3E, 5E), Humanoid (4E)

Towering figures of great physical might, who can be divided into a number of subraces, based on their physical characteristics, preferred homelands, and distinct abilities. See the giants subpage for the various beings dubbed giants, or the Creature Types page for general tropes about creatures with the Giant type.

Gibbering Beast

Gibbering mouther (5e)

Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E), Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (mouther) (3E); 10 (mouther), 18 (abomination) (4E); 2 (mouther) (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Protean blobs of flesh with far too many eyes and jabbering mouths.

The Assimilator: Any living organism it devours, their mouths and eyes join the amorphous cacophony.
Blob Monster: They're seething, constantly shifting blobs studded with toothy maws and staring eyeballs.
Brown Note: The constant babbling of a gibbering beast does weird things to the mind. People who hear the creature's gibbering might run away in terror, lash out randomly at anything within reach, or stand transfixed as the horror creeps forward to devour them.
Combat Tentacles: The undersides of gibbering abominations are covered in writhing tentacles, which serve as their primary melee weapons.
Elite Mook: 4th Edition added the gibbering abomination as an intermediate threat between basic gibbering mouthers and gibbering orbs.
Expy: Of the shoggoths from At the Mountains of Madness.
Extra Eyes: A gibbering beast is covered in eyes. In some editions, mouthers in particular gain more every time they devour a victim.
Life Drain: In 3rd Edition, a gibbering mouther's toothy pseudopods can latch on and drain blood from victims, dealing Constitution damage until the mouth is wrestled or ripped off, or the victim expires.
Sticky Situation: Gibbering mouthers can cause the ground around them to become a morass similar to quicksand, creating difficult terrain in 3rd and 4th Edition or potentially keeping creatures from moving in 5th Edition.
Super Spit: A gibbering mouther's spittle explodes like a flashbang upon striking a solid surface, blinding any creature caught in the blast.
Swallowed Whole: 5th Edition gibbering mouthers do this automatically to anything they kill, while in 3rd Edition they can do this to still-living creatures grabbed by three or more of their mouths. While engulfed this way, a creature is attacked by twelve mouths at once until they escape or are slain.
Too Many Mouths: Countless mouths constantly form and disappear all over a gibbering beast's body.

Gibbering Orb

Challenge Rating: 27 (3E and 4E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (3E), Unaligned (4E)

Huge, floating masses of eyes and toothy maws that wander the planes and the places between them, attacking everything they encounter.

Eye Beams: Gibbering orbs can produce beams that, in a similar manner to beholders, emulate the effect of a high-level spell. Because they have hundreds of eyes, these beams aren't mapped to a specific eye; rather, the orb can essentially pick and choose which beams it wants to use from a set list of two dozen effects in 3E or six in 4E, with the only limitation being that it can only fire off one of each kind per round.
Floating Limbs: A 3E gibbering orb is surrounded by a cloud of hundreds of floating eyes and mouths, which constantly orbit around the central body like planets around a star.
Make Them Rot: In 4E, gibbering orbs can fire flesheating rays that cause their targets to suffer necrotic damage.
Mind Hive: Gibbering orbs seem to absorb knowledge from those they consume, and effectively have several creatures' worth of intellectual capabilities within a single body.
Monster Progenitor: Some sages speculate that gibbering orbs are the common ancestors of both lesser gibbering beasts and beholderkin.
Obfuscating Stupidity: While mouthers and abominations are as mad as they appear, gibbering orbs are very intelligent and use their seeming insanity to mask their keenly calculated malice.
Omniglot: The many mouths of 3E gibbering orbs speak all languages. Constantly. Simultaneously.
Power Copying: If a 3E gibbering orb swallows a spellcaster, it absorbs its victim's known spells, prepared spells and spell-like abilities, and can use any two of them each round as a free action for the next 24 hours.
Swallowed Whole: 3rd Edition gibbering orbs can swallow any creature that they successfully grapple. Beings swallowed this way are subjected to constant constriction and acid damage.

Gibberling

Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/3 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Small, furred, hunched, monstrous humanoids that occasionally erupt from the underground to rampage across the surface, killing and consuming everything they come across.

Kill It with Fire: They have a phobia of fire, and while an individual bearing a torch won't dissuade them, bonfires or magical flames can keep them at bay or deflect a horde's path.
The Morlocks: Savage humanoids that dwell underground. If they can't make it back to their caves before sunrise, sometimes they'll burrow deep enough to make a concealed sleeping spot, then burst out of the ground when it's night again.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Their namesake gibbering can frighten low-level opponents and impair Concentration checks, with the tradeoff that it's impossible for gibberlings to surprise opponents.
The Swarm: It's rare to encounter a single gibberling, they're usually found in hordes numbering in the hundreds. They even have special rules in 3rd Edition allowing up to three gibberlings to occupy the same space on a battle map.
The Usual Adversaries: Gibberlings have no society, only communicate by gibbering, and all they do is attack whatever's in their path. As their AD&D write-up concludes, "gibberlings serve no purpose and no known master, save random death in the night."
Weakened by the Light: Natural or magical daylight cripples gibberlings, inflicting a slow effect with No Saving Throw.
Zerg Rush: Individually, gibberlings are pretty puny, but that's little solace when literally hundreds of them are attacking at once.

Giff

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Hippo-headed humanoids with a love for gunpowder, who serve as interplanar mercenaries. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Gigant

Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 20 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Gargantuan insects that prey upon giants, who view them as a plague.

Big Creepy-Crawlies: The gigant is an enormous beetle, strong enough to carry off a fully-grown giant.
Make Some Noise: The mere droning of their wings is loud enough to damage and incapacitate nearby creatures.
Poisonous Person: They can beat their wings to release a magical dust in a wide area, which deals hefty poison damage and might prevent victims from recovering hit points for the next hour.
Resistant to Magic: Their carapaces resist hostile magic and make them hard to target with ranged spells.

Girallon

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E), 12 (4E), 4 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Four-armed, white-furred great apes with a taste for human flesh.

Attack Animal: Due to their affinity for human structures and obvious unnatural nature, sages speculate that girallons were magically created by some ancient empire, and spread across the world after that culture collapsed. They can be bribed with food or trained from childhood to serve as guards, but girallons should never be considered tamed.
Killer Gorilla: Girallons are particularly savage cousins of the gorilla, and attack everything that enters their territory.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Among other things, a girallon's four arms set it apart from a normal ape, and can allow it to make rend attacks against enemies they hit with several claw attacks in a round.
Vertical Kidnapping: One of their hunting methods is to wait hidden on an overlooking branch or ruin, climb down low enough to grab a choice victim with one set of limbs, and use the rest to climb up out of reach of their target's comrades.
Wall Crawl: Their four arms make them excellent climbers, though girallons have an easier time getting around in overgrown ruins than in the jungle proper, since only the oldest, strongest trees can support their weight.

Gith

Githyanki (left) and githzerai (right), (3e)

Classification: Humanoid (3E, 5E), Natural Humanoid
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E), 11 (4E), 3 (5E)
Playable: 2E-5E
Alignment: Lawful Evil (githyanki), Lawful Neutral (githzerai)

A race of humanoids who developed psionic powers during their enslavement by the mind flayers, overthrew their captors, but then fell into a bitter civil war that split them into two subraces.

See the Playable Races subpage for more information about the githyanki and githzerai.

Athasian Gith

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_gith_4e.png

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Humanoid (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E), 4 (4E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Neutral Evil

The gith of Athas are stooped and twisted beings, savage and barbarous, though they retain their psionic potential.

Barbarian Tribe: They've been reduced to such, wandering the tablelands of Athas in search of food, which can be other sentient beings.
In a Single Bound: Gith are excellent jumpers, using their psionics to aid in their leaps.
Primal Stance: They're gaunt and lanky but bent in a permanent slouch, so that they'd be seven feet tall if they could ever straighten up, but usually stand no more than five feet tall.
Psychic Powers: Gith remain natural psions, starting out with extra power points and learning new psychic abilities as they age.
Stranded Invader: The story goes that the gith of Athas are the descendents of a githyanki invasion force, except something went wrong — depending on the telling, either their githzerai rivals hit them with a psionic superweapon that scourged their bodies and minds, or the githyanki's transport was wrecked by the Gray, a planar phenomenon that isolates Athas from the Outer Planes. At any rate, that invasion force became trapped on Athas and devolved into hunched and gaunt creatures simply known as gith, just another band of desert nomads with psychic powers. According to their 4th Edition lore, some Athasian gith still remember their origins and are trying to rebuild their transport so they can get the hell off the planet.

Duthka'gith

Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

A mutant offshoot of the githyanki race created at the order of the lich-queen Vlaakith CLVII, duthka'gith bear the essence of the fiendish red dragon Ephelomon in their veins, adding draconic and fiendish might to the power of the githyanki.

Amazing Technicolor Population: In 3rd edition, they essentially look like red-orange githyanki.
Breath Weapon: Like any creature with red dragon blood, duthka'gith can spew flames at people.
Extra Parent Conception: The ritual for creating duthka'gith artificially involves taking a fertilized githyanki egg and magically fusing the unhatched embryo with the "seed" of Ephelomon, imbuing them with the fiendish red dragon's fundamental nature.
Gone Horribly Right: Vlaakith CLVII intended for the duthka'gith to embody the best of githyanki, red dragons and fiends. She got that... but she also got the worst of all three races as well. Duthka'gith are inherently chaotic, amazingly arrogant, disdainful of the restrictions of normal githyanki society, impulsive, boorish and savage.
Horned Humanoid: Their 4E artwork depicts them as more visibly hybridized between githyanki and dragons, part of which takes the form of massive horns.
Large and in Charge: Duthka'gith are significantly larger than their githyanki ancestors, averaging 7 feet tall and 210 pounds.
Man Bites Man: They have a powerful bite attack inherited from their draconic ancestry.
Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: Half-githyanki and half-red dragon, with traces of fiend to go with it.
Playing with Fire: Needless to say, duthka'gith like fire attacks a lot, especially because they're immune to it. They're particularly drawn to the Holocaust Warrior prestige class, a Gish specialized in fiery spells and attacks.
Super-Soldier: They were created to serve as military elite leaders for the githyanki armies, and as part of that, they are much more powerful than their ordinary githyanki relatives.
Super-Strength: Duthka'gith are immensely strong, with a whopping +8 racial bonus to their Strength in 3E, on par with ogres and trolls.

Glaistig

Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

These nature spirits take the form of beautiful women, whose beguiling songs lure victims into their watery lairs, where the fey can drain their blood.

Berserk Button: These fey are sensitive about their inhuman legs, and will fly into a rage and attack should anyone catch a glimpse of them.
Compelling Voice: Glaistigs can target a single creature with their singing, who must save or be charmed by her, compelled to move closer by the most direct route possible. Most glaistigs hunt by luring their prey deeper into the water, and should the victim fail a second saving throw, they'll follow her beneath the surface to drown.
Departure Means Death: A glaistig who is taken more than 300 yards away from her home pond, lake or stream is in immediate danger of suffocating, and can't breathe normally until immersed in her home waters.
Fantastic Racism: They don't get along with other fey, and will try and drive out any who enter their territory, but glaistigs have a particular dislike for dryads.
Glamour Failure: Glaistigs are incredibly attractive, with snow white hair and eyes that shimmer like water... but their mouths contain cruel-looking fangs, leading them to try to smile without parting their lips, and they have the white-furred legs of goats, which they try to hide beneath long dresses and robes.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: These predatory fey prefer to go after lone victims, but if reinforcements arrive or a hunt goes wrong, they'll use spell-like abilities such as hypnotism or fog cloud to cover their escape beneath the water's surface.
Super Not-Drowning Skills: Glaistigs can cast water breathing once per day, usually if they desire a "companion" rather than an immediate meal.
Vampiric Draining: These fey can drain the blood from those they grapple, dealing Constitution drain each round. That said, while they're literally bloodthirsty, glaistigs don't need to feed constantly, and if they've sated their appetite within the past month, they're just as likely to help someone as they are to attack. But when it's time to feed again, they have no compunction about preying upon someone they might have had a friendly encounter with previously.

Glasspane Horror

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Crystalline shapeshifters who offer their services as guards for wizards or wealthy patrons.

Blinded by the Light: Glasspane horrors can emit a flash of light each round that can potentially blind everyone within 30 feet for up to four minutes.
Eat Dirt, Cheap: They subsist upon gemstones, so horrors are typically paid in the form of high-quality diamonds or emeralds.
He Was Right There All Along: In their inert, glasspane form, horrors are very easy to mistake for a sheet of normal glass — "Only the keenest eyes can note the tiny, telling signs of the horror's presence." They can remain in that form for years at a time, and typically insist that a potential master give them a window-like position from which to ambush any intruders.
Know When to Fold 'Em: Glasspane horrors are faithful servants, but are never bound to give their lives for their patrons. If badly wounded, a horror will retreat to warn their master of the threat, and if that master is slain, the creature is freed from its contract. Even if bound by an agreement to hunt down their master's killers, a horror won't fight to the death while making an attempt.
No-Sell: Beyond an immunity to electricity, their "Spectrum Immunity" trait makes them unaffected by light-based magic like hypnotic pattern or color spray.
Sand Blaster: In their "glittering cloud" form, a glasspane horror is effectively "a whirlwind of fine, metallic sand." This gives nonmagical weapons even odds of failing to affect them, and also lets the horrors damage anything whose squares they move through.
Telepathy: Their means of communication.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: These scintilating creatures can switch between three forms as a standard action: a crystalline humanoid, a cloud of glittering, swirling gem fragments, or a sheet of clear glass 10 feet wide, 10 feet tall, and one inch thick.

Glimmerskin

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Beings from the Positive Energy Plane that seek to experience the thrill of battle by bonding with Material Plane creatures.

Blood Knight: They revel in combat, and journey to the Material Plane solely to engage in it.
Dimensional Traveler: Glimmerskins can plane shift at will to seek out hosts, or flee when badly wounded.
Healing Hands: A glimmerskin's positively-charged touch heals damage, or if a creature is at full health, "overheals" it to provide temporary hit points. However, the latter effect has the downside of causing a creature that accumulates too many extra hit points to literally burst with radiant energy in a 20-foot radius, taking damage equal to its temporary hit point total, and then some. Glimmerskins often fail to mention that potential side effect when offering their services to a prospective host.
Intangibility: They're naturally incorporeal, allowing them to fully envelop their hosts.
The Symbiote: Glimmerskins can form a heroic bond with another creature, granting bonuses to attack rolls and Armor Class as well as access to the glimmerskin's feats and healing touch, while in return, the host splits half of any experience points earned with the glimmerskin. While the glimmerskin has no direct control over their host, said host is wise to listen to its telepathic requests, or else the creature might abandon a host mid-battle in favor of a more accomodating one. Some enterprising planar travelers act as go-betweens for the creatures, offering to arrange bondings between glimmerskins and warriors for a "finder's fee."
Voluntary Shapeshifting: In their natural forms, glimmerskins appears as vaguely-humanoid beings of Pure Energy, but when bonded with a host will take on the appearance of a radiant suit of armor or glowing hooded cape.

Gloom

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 25 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Grinning, eyeless humanoids that use their magical abilities to ply their trade as assassins.

Back Stab: They can deal sneak attack damage like a 25th-level rogue.
Eyeless Face: A gloom has no eyes, but seems to have no trouble seeing.
More Teeth than the Osmond Family: A gloom's distended, exaggerated mouth is full of jagged black teeth.
Professional Killer: Their choice vocation.
Psycho Knife Nut: Their signature weapon is a +10 keen dagger of human dread.
Shadow Walker: A gloom can reach its prey by moving from shadow to shadow — literally.
Stealth Expert: Glooms naturally generate a silence effect that affects only themselves, enjoy the spell-like ability to move from shadow to shadow at will, and have an epic-level rogue's worth of ranks in Hide and Move Silently. At most a victim might think they saw something in their peripheral vision, presumably only because the gloom wants to be seen.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Anyone who meets a gloom's eyeless gaze has to save against fear.
Unusable Enemy Equipment: Played with in that a gloom's dagger can be looted, but it only operates as a +5 keen dagger in the hands of anyone else.
Widow's Weeds: Glooms usually dress in dark, somber clothing, or whatever's appropriate for their operating area's funerary customs. The twist is that the gloom's presence precedes the funeral...

Gloomstalker

Origin: Critical Role
Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Draconic denizens of the Shadowfell, gloomstalkers are ruthless predators who soar after their prey on shadowy wings. No relation to the glooms above.

Brown Note: Gloomstalkers can let out a piercing shriek which paralyzes anyone who hears it.
Horse of a Different Color: In their home setting, gloomstalkers were employed by arcanists and the followers of the Betrayer Gods as mounts in the ancient battles of the Calamity.
Living Shadow: They are basically wyverns made of corporeal darkness, with all that entails.
Make Them Rot: A gloomstalker's melee attacks all inflict necrotic damage.
Shadow Walker: Their Shadowstep ability lets them teleport over short distances on a regular basis.
Weakened by the Light: Direct exposure to sunlight weakens a gloomstalker in various ways. On top of this, they are vulnerable to radiant damage.

Gloura

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral (2E), often Neutral Good (3E)

Elusive fey of the Underdark, known for their shimmering mothlike wings and beautiful songs.

Adaptational Heroism: 2nd Edition glouras are self-interested, Neutral beings who wander the Underdark with an entourage of charmed minions, occasionally travel to the surface on nights of the new moon to frolic with Unseelie fey, and attack any "creatures of daylight" they meet in a berserk fury. 3rd Edition instead describes glouras as "sweet-natured and nurturing," prone to using healing magic on any injured creatures or humanoids they meet in their travels, so that most Underdark races build little shrines to and leave tokens of appreciation for glouras, or even leave their sick and dying at those shrines in hope that the fey will take pity on them. Their 3E write-up does acknowledge that some evil glouras exploit their resemblance to benign glouras for their own gain, but these fey are the minority of their kind.
Flunky Boss: 2nd Edition glouras are pretty pathetic in combat, and rely on their charmed "court" of followers. The fey are known to praise and berate their minions during combat, and seem to have trouble telling which creatures are sentient and which aren't, leading glouras to address derro and giant spiders as equal servants, or insist that a sapient being apologize to a non-sapient creature.
Hypnotic Creature: Their 2E entry explains that glouras' wings create a "constant droning song, described by some adventurers as more beautiful even than the songs of sirens," which can charm other creatures and compel them to follow a gloura anywhere — even over a cliff, or into an underground river. 3rd Edition simplifies things by giving glouras a charm person spell.
Magic Music: 3E glouras have the spellcasting ability of 7th-level bards, and are known to play beautiful melodies on their harps that echo through the tunnels of the Underdark.
Winged Humanoid: 2nd Edition notes that glouras' wings are highly valued as decorations, and a pair can be worth 400 gp to Underdark traders.

Gnoll

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

Bipedal hyenas with a demonic heritage, a thirst for destruction, and an insatiable hunger for the flesh of other humanoids.

Always Chaotic Evil: Zigzagged; the demon-worshippers get almost all of the press, but in most editions gnolls don't have to be evil, and they've been a playable race since 2nd Edition. Mystara's kingdom of Graakhalia is home to a unified culture of gnolls and elves who live in peace together, 3rd Edition describes non-evil gnoll tribes who have to struggle against their race's sinister reputation, Eberron's default gnolls are non-evil Droaamite mercenary clans of the Znir Pact, and 4th Edition in particular went through the trouble of pointing out the various ways that gnolls can turn their backs on their demonic linage and be a (comparatively) peaceful race.
Animalistic Abomination: In 4th Edition's Nentir Vale setting, they're given a creation myth of having been hyenas that either spontaneously evolved into humanoid forms after eating corpses left in the wake of one of Yeenoghu's rampages and thus absorbing his fiendish taint, or which were forcefed demons by Yeenoghu and transformed into a merging of demon and hyena. 5th Edition doubles down on this aspect, portraying gnolls as little more than living avatars for Yeenoghu's endless hunger.
Animal Stereotypes: The portrayal of gnolls owes a lot to the many negative stereotypes associated with the spotted hyena, such as being lazy, shiftless, cruel, gluttonous and malicious.
Ax-Crazy: Thanks to their ravenous hunger, gnolls are incredibly vicious.
Barbarian Tribe: They are, on average, even less civilized than orcs, and that's saying something.
Beast Folk: Gnolls resemble humanoid hyenas, generally with more emphasis on "hyena" than "humanoid."
Big Eater: Gnolls are voracious eaters, although just how much so depends on the edition. 5th Edition gnolls are literally hunger incarnate.
Early-Installment Weirdness: Gnolls actually started out as a hybrid of gnomes and trolls in the very earliest editions of D&D, but by the time of Basic had become the less-silly hyena-folk they've since been defined as.
Good Is Not Nice: Even gnolls who forsake evil aren't conventionally nice. A combination of psychology and cultural traits makes them bluntly spoken and assertive; for example, gnolls never ask for things, but demand them, as part of their posturing for the social hierarchy.
Heinous Hyena: They're monstrous, humanoid hyenas with close ties to the demon lord Yeenoghu, though how straight the trope is played depends on the edition and setting.
The Horde: Even worse than the orcs in this regard. Rampaging hordes of bloodthirsty savages are the only "societies" most gnolls have.
Horror Hunger: Their 5E lore suggests that their hunger is both incredibly painful and supernatural in origin. Their motivation for following Yeenoghu is that they believe if they follow his plans, they will never have to feel hunger again.
Cultist of Yeenoghu: We will kill and He will eat, and we shall be He and He shall be we, never alone, never afraid, never hungry.
Lazy Bum: A long-standing characteristic of gnolls is a hatred for physical labor and preferring to enslave others to do the work for them. This trait has become less pronounced since 4th Edition, so that by 5th Edition, gnolls only loaf after gorging themselves, and spend the rest of the time on the hunt for more food.
Loves the Sound of Screaming: Volo's Guide to Monsters attributes this trope to them, and claims it as part of the reason they sometime ally with leucrottas: since leucrottas are excellent mimics, their ability to mimic the sound of other creatures screaming in pain can provide gnolls with relief from their bloodlust during peacetime.
Made a Slave: In most editions, evil gnolls' culture is heavily slave-based, though this is not the case with 5th Edition's gnolls — they're so ravenous and demon-tainted that they can't help but eat anyone they catch.
Matriarchy: Gnoll tribes are ruled by an alpha female who holds her position for as long as she can defend it. This female can choose any male she wishes as her mate, though Yeenoghu represents the ideal mate for evil gnolls, and a tribes' religious rites are attempts by its leader to attract his attention. In rare cases the demon prince will make a personal appearance, but most of the time the best a matriarch can hope for is Yeenoghu sending a lesser demon to sire some half-fiends in his stead.
Monstrous Cannibalism: Flinds in particular are feared by common gnolls for their willingness to devour their kin, though Volo's Guide to Monsters claims that regular gnolls will happily kill and eat one another if they get hungry enough during peacetime.
No Holds Barred Beat Down: Played with in what they consider a fun way to pass the time. The AD&D Dungeon magazine adventure "To bite the moon" introduces a game gnolls play where the gnolls make one of their own wear a blindfold, and proceed to beat the shit out of them via slapping and kicking while "barking furiously". Anyone unlucky enough to get wrestled to the ground by the blindfolded gnoll has to swap places with them.
Non-Human Undead: Witherlings are dead gnolls that have been reanimated as skeletal undead horrors. They behave much as they did in life, though they cannot speak and do not eat their victims.
Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Though they normally skip the rape part and go straight to devouring their victims.
Religious Bruiser: Gnolls have a very pronounced tendency to worship deities, perhaps as part of their pack instinct. In 4th Edition, even those clans that have forsaken Yeenoghu still tend to wind up as devout worshippers of the Primal Spirits: Kord, the Raven Queen and Melora.
Took a Level in Jerkass: 5th Edition is the first edition where they've been completely and utterly evil without exception.
To Serve Man: Gnolls will eat any meat, including the flesh of other sapient creatures. Goodly gnolls won't actively hunt other sapients for food, but may still eat those they kill in self-defense, whilst malevolent gnolls actively seek out meat that talks. It's not unknown for evil gnolls to dig into graveyards for fresh corpses. In fact, when gnolls attack villages not only will there be no survivors, but often no corpses, buried or otherwise.

Gnome

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

Small humanoids with a love for knowledge and a natural curiosity, whether regarding magic, the natural world, or technology. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Goatfolk

Origin: Red Steel
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: True Neutral

Properly named ibixians, these rambunctious goat-headed humanoids live in semi-nomadic clans that often compete with one another for land and resources.

Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Ibixians choose their leaders through combat, so only the strongest and most successful goatfolk (of either sex) rise to power, and must be ready to defend their position from challengers.
Back Stab: 2nd Edition goatfolk are surprisingly sneaky, attacking from stealth and benefiting from a thief's backstab ability.
Barbarian Tribe: Downplayed; goatfolk try to farm, but aren't very good at it and tend to deplete the soil around their villages, and likewise are prone to overhunting. Thus, their communities must often pack up and move when game becomes scarce, or if a stronger rival tribe tries to muscle in on their territory. In extreme situations, goatfolk will band together and resort to raiding other races' settlements to survive.
Beast Folk: They are essentially a species humanoid goats.
Blood Knight: Ibixians in 3rd Edition love to fight against or alongside others of their kind, and thus have the "pack fervor" ability, granting them a bonus on attack and damage rolls, as well as saves against fear, when other ibixians are nearby.
Crafted from Animals: Goatfolk have to endure hunts by mages and alchemists, who seek to use their arm and leg muscles to make bracers of dexterity, tongues for philters of glibness, and more.
Dreadful Musician: Their AD&D entry notes that goatfolk love to sing and dance, and have developed several simple musical instruments, but their music is "very enthusiastic if not exactly beautiful."
Use Your Head: As goat-headed humanoids, ibixians can make a natural head-butt attack. In 2nd Edition, this attack is capable of knocking victims off their feet and sending them flying a short distance, which is particularly dangerous around cliffs.
Vestigial Empire: The "goatmen" of Mystara's Savage Coast region tell a legend of the ancient, wealthy mountain city of Bielagul, which was supposedly the ibixians' homeland before it collapsed and they scattered across the Black Mountains. Some adventurers claim to have visited the ruins of Bielagul, while the goatmen's current warleader has promised to return his people to it.

Goblin

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

Small, craven and cruel, individually weak but dangerous in numbers, goblins are the least of the goblinoid races. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about common goblins.

Blue

Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Playable: 3E

A goblin subrace born with psionic powers.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Blues are born with blue-tinged skin and hair, immediately setting them apart from the rest of their kin.
Fantastic Racism: While savvy goblin tribes will take advantage of their blues' power, those tribes' leaders will never trust them, and ordinary goblins rail against them (out of earshot). Some blues end up killed by their kin, and the ones who survive become Properly Paranoid, living apart from the rest of the tribe, though not far enough to be outside its protection.
Mage Species: They're a little smaller than normal goblins, but blues have a racial bonus to Intelligence, are natural psionicists who start with a power point, and favor the psion class.
The Man Behind the Man: In some goblin tribes, a "blue council" works together to manipulate their Puppet King behind the scenes. Owing to the blues' intelligence, such tribes are much more dangerous than an ordinary band of goblins.

Cave Lord

Origin: Dragonlance
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Oversized, obese goblins who arrived on Krynn shortly after the Chaos War, quickly taking over various goblinoid tribes.

Charm Person: They have a "Goblin Charm" ability, allowing them to use a mass suggestion effect on up to 30 goblinoids three times per day.
Fat Bastard: They can weigh up to 700 pounds and prefer a "life of gluttony and sloth," loafing in their lairs and eating what the rest of the tribe brings back from hunts. But cave lords are capable combatants, and can be "deviously quick" when necessary.
Hyperactive Metabolism: Cave lords can quickly consume a dead creature to recover hit points, devouring the flesh of a Small corpse in a minute or a Medium corpse in three. They recover significantly more hit points when consuming a fellow goblinoid in this manner.
Large and in Charge: They're Large humanoids compared to Small ordinary goblins, though cave lords find the moniker "goblin giant" to be derogatory.
Monster Lord: Cave lords are the evil tyrants of goblin society, using their superior intellects to direct them in battle and boss them around in their lairs.
Obfuscating Stupidity: They're cunning enough to feign stupidity and encourage outsiders to underestimate them, while subtly directing their minions to make a sneak attack.

Dekanter Goblin

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Goblins mutated into oversized, horned brutes.

Healing Factor: They have Fast Healing 3, giving them impressive durability for CR 1 creatures.
Henchmen Race: These goblins are the creations and minions of an alhoon known only as the "Beast Lord," who lurks in the magical laboratories in the depths of the ancient Dekanter mines west of Anauroch. While the illithilich's goals are unknown, its Dekanter goblins are becoming more common in the surrounding mountains.
Rhino Rampage: They look like rhino-goblin hybirds, giving them hulking builds and a gore attack.

Forestkith Goblin

Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Arboreal, savage goblins who hunt at night and pass the day in the shape of plants.

Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: They have the "Light Sensitivity" rule, hence their nocturnal habits.
Eats Babies: If conventional game is scarce, forestkith goblins will launch sophisticated snatch-and-run raids on humanoid villages, specifically targeting their young.
Maniac Monkeys: They only have a -2 racial modifier to Intelligence, but these simian goblins lack a sophisticated culture or society, live as nomadic hunters roaming their forests in packs, and in combat go into a discordant frenzy, leaping around and screaming in a way that can leave weak creatures shaken.
Pint-Sized Powerhouse: They are "formidable despite their small size," lack any racial penalties to their physical stats, and their best warriors advance as barbarians, packing as much punch as any half-orc.
Running on All Fours: While forestkith goblins can walk upright, their elongated arms mean they commonly move about on all fours like primates.
Transflormation: Forestkith goblins can cast tree shape, taking the form of a tree branch, shrub or other small plant, which they can use at will but cannot dismiss until the sun sets or the goblin takes damage. They typically use this ability as soon as the sun rises, going to sleep in tree form wherever they were standing.

Gurik Cha'ahl

Origin: Dragonlance
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

"Ghost people" in Goblin, these deformed outcasts typically live solitary, bitter existences.

Abandon the Disabled: Tradition has it that gurik cha'ahl's deformities are the result of a deceased ancestor trying to reenter the world by possessing an infant, struggling for domination of the body with the young soul, though there's been a spike in gurik cha'ahl births since the start of the Age of Mortals, possibly caused by the Dragon Purge or the chaotic energies of Malfesus. At any rate, it's considered back luck to kill a gurik cha'ahl, so they're instead cast out soon after their deformities manifest.
Body Horror: They're quite misshapen creatures, with mismatched eyes, uneven facial features, twisted limbs, and so forth.
Boomerang Bigot: Due to being cast out by their parents, gurik cha'ahl hate goblins with a passion are will inflict as much harm on them as possible. They often consider other gurik cha'ahl to be little better.
Outcast Refuge: Most gurik cha'ahl are forced to survive on their own, though the Sikk'et Hul goblins are progressive enough to give their ghost people their own settlement, Gurik P'lresse ("Ghost Village").
Stealth Expert: Gurik cha'ahl's survival is due to their stealth skills, not their brute strength. 3rd Edition gives them racial bonuses to Hide and Move Silently checks, as well as a Back Stab ability, while 2E only gives them a 25% chance to be spotted by casual observation.

Nilbog

Challenge Rating: 1 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

A goblin possessed by a nameless trickster deity that grants them strange powers, allowing them to sow chaos amongst their hobgoblin abusers and oppressors.

Charm Person: Anything that attempts to attack a nilbog has to save or become charmed by it, forcing them to praise the creature instead.
Court Jester: The nilbog's very existence has led to the practice of hobgoblins appointing one lucky gobbo to be an official jester, allowed to do or say as they please and cause a moderate amount of disruption that is preferable to the chaos caused by a nilbog.
Demonic Possession: A nilbog is an invisible spirit, the splintered form of a goblin trickster god, that possesses only goblins.
Healing Shiv: Enforced with their "Reversal of Fortune" reaction, which allows the nilbog to reduce an incoming attack's damage to zero and instead heal from it. This is in fact the only way a nilbog can recover health.
Karmic Trickster: Nilbogs exist to wreak havoc among the brutally disciplined hobgoblin legions, as a direct response to their abuses against their goblin conscripts. They're difficult to even attack, much less harm, and can use obnoxious spells like mage hand, Tasha's hideous laughter or vicious mockery at will.
Sdrawkcab Name: It's "goblin" backwards.
Speak of the Devil: The goblins never speak the name of the trickster god that empowers nilbogs, lest it allow the hobgoblin deity Maglubiyet to finally defeat him.

Snow Goblin

Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Goblins adapted to arctic lands with shaggy fur and booming voices.

More Deadly Than the Male: Snow goblin females are larger and more aggressive than males, and "much crueler in the tortures they inflict upon captives."
No Indoor Voice: Snow goblins have throat sacs they use to enhance their shouts, allowing them to signal each other from miles apart. While this isn't enough to let them deal sonic damage, it does give snow goblins a racial bonus on Intimidate checks.
Underground Monkey: They're goblins found in specific terrain, with a design tweak and special ability to help them stand out from standard goblins. Interestingly, despite their fur, snow goblins don't get "Cold Tolerance" or any other ability to help them survive low temperatures.

Vril

Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Goblins warped by the drow into subservient warriors.

Achilles' Heel: Vril were deliberately bred to be vulnerable to drow sleep poison and the venom of spider monsters, and take a penalty on their saving throws against such effects. Those who take the "Vril Drow Slayer" feat, however, overcome this penalty, on top of gaining a morale bonus on attacks against drow and related creatures.
Bat People: They look something like bat-goblin hybrids, with bat-like features and a sonic attack, though they lack wings and have darkvision instead of echolocation-based blindsight.
Battle Thralls: Vril are former goblins who were subjected to arcane experimentation to make them better fighters, and serve the drow as shock troopers and garrison forces. They're the only slaves the drow allow to properly train for battle, and are given their own separate barracks, though not better conditions — the drow still consider vril little better than animals. Their upbringing makes vril braver than lesser goblins, but they still instinctively fear and obey their drow masters, save for rare bands of free vril who have escaped into the Underdark. Their race now breeds true, but attempts to crossbreed with other goblinoids result in stillbirths, which is probably intentional on the drow's part.
Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: As a subterranean race, vril have the "Light Blindness" rule.
Defend Command: Vril can "skinshift," granting themselves temporary Damage Reduction against a chosen type of physical damage.
Super-Scream: Once per day, they can loose a shriek that deals sonic damage to all in a 30-foot cone.

Goblyn

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Small, hideous, and throughly evil creatures compelled to serve their master.

Happiness in Slavery: 2E puts it bluntly that "Goblyns are totally controlled by their master's desires." They have no wants or motivations of their own, and only wish to follow their master's orders, regardless of whether said master was the one responsible for their transformation.
Henchmen Race: They're perfectly loyal evil minions, enough so that they'd attack each other without hesitation, if commanded to do so. They won't even instigate combat on their own without an express order, though they relish the chance to shed blood.
The Needless: They have no need for sleep, can go for extended periods without food or drink (or rather, blood and fresh, raw meat), and never grow bored while waiting for orders.
Our Goblins Are Different: Goblyns are distinguished from "normal" D&D goblins by being a created race, and for being even more vicious than the standard goblinoid Cannon Fodder. They're also slavishly obedient and utterly fearless, while goblins have to be bullied into submission by the likes of hobgoblins. Finally, goblyns look different from goblins, thanks to their red Glowing Eyes of Doom — and their 3E art gives them green skin, bringing goblyns in line with other media's depictions of goblins.
Personal Space Invader: Goblyns' preferred combat tactic is what they call "feasting," in which they latch onto a victim's throat, strangling them with their clawed hands even as the goblyn bites their face and neck. This is so disturbing to behold that onlookers have to make a horror check in 2E, while the wounds and scars left by the vicious attack impose a minor penalty on Diplomacy and Gather Information checks in 3E until healed by magic.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Their Slasher Smiles are so ghastly that onlookers have to save or cower in fear.
Telepathy: Goblyns have a telepathic link with their master and any other goblyns serving them, with a range of 10 miles.
Was Once a Man: They're former humanoids turned into little monsters by a curse, magical item, or evil spell. Such unfortunates forget their past lives and become Always Chaotic Evil minions.

Goliath

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E), Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E), 7 (4E)
Playable: 3E-5E
Alignment: Chaotic Good (3E), Unaligned (4E), Lawful Neutral (5E)

Large, powerfully-built tribal humanoids who favor rugged mountains, known for their physical might, almost foolhardy daring, and competitive nature. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Golem

Classification: Construct (3E, 5E), Natural Animate (4E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Animated humanoid figures created by spellcasters as servants. They're tireless workers and obedient when carefully supervised, but the elemental spirits that give them a semblance of life can go berserk in the heat of combat, or when their orders become difficult to fulfil. The iconic four varieties are the clay, flesh, steel and stone golems, but there are nearly as many types of golems as there are materials from which to build them.

Animate Inanimate Matter: Golems are often created out a single base substance, which can greatly affect their abilities, immunities and danger level. Clay, stone and iron golems for a traditional base triad of increasing strength and danger level; clay golems are healed by acid damage, which is simply absorbed within their bodies, while iron golems are healed by fire damage, which softens and reforges their metal shells. More exotic types include snow golems, which are easily melted away, and golems made from Fantasy Metals, which are often the most dangerous kinds around.
Anti-Magic: Golems are generally highly resistant, if not outright immune to, most spells and magical effects. Some forms of offensive magic will even heal them instead of harming them.
The Berserker: Under certain conditions, usually if the golem has taken heavy damage or a combat has dragged on for a while, golems enter a berserk state, attacking anything nearby heedless of their creator's orders.
Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: 3rd Edition has a "half-golem" template that can be applied to beings given a golem arm or leg as an Artificial Limb, which grants them additional power and abilities based on the type of golem, but each golem limb added requires the base creature to make a(n increasingly high) Will save to avoid shifting alignment to Neutral Evil and becoming a functional construct themself. The entire process is pure Body Horror as well, as the materials of the creature's new golem limb spread across the rest of its body like creeping vines, and its voice becomes harsh and strangled.
Golem: The Trope Codifier for modern fantasy.
No-Sell: Beyond being resistant to magic, 5th Edition golems are explicitly immune to any attempts to alter their forms.
Non-Indicative Name: Besides being constructs usually built to serve as workers or guardians, they are not otherwise particularly similar to the Jewish Golem.

Adamantine Golem

Challenge Rating: 25 (3E)

These gigantic golems are constructed of one of the hardest substances known, and each ponderous step they take makes the ground shake for a hundred feet in all directions.

Nigh-Invulnerable: Adamantine golems have the highest Damage Reduction of their kind.
No-Sell: Adamantine golems are immune to any magic spells or supernatural effects, no exceptions, no special interactions with certain spells.
Trampled Underfoot: They can trample smaller opponents for heavy bludgeoning damage.

Alchemical Golem

Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)

A construct of toxic chemicals held within a transparent, man-shaped membrane.

Achilles' Heel: Neutralize poison will slow an alchemical golem, while conversely, a poison spell will completely heal it.
Acid Attack: An alchemical golem's outer membrace is covered in acid, dealing extra damage to anything it strikes or gets into a grapple with it.
Bloody Murder: Any attack that deals at least 10 points of damage to an alchemical golem briefly ruptures its skin, spraying acid in the direction of the attack.
Breath Weapon: They can spray a cone of acid every few rounds.
Defeat Equals Explosion: When an alchemical golem hits 0 hit points, its membrane collapses and it drenches a 15-foot radius in acid.
Healing Potion: The only way an alchemical golem can recover health is by consuming a barrel's worth of a special alchemical mixture. Most of these golems' creators are smart enough to leave a barrel or two of the stuff around for the golem to use as needed.

Black Ice Golem

Challenge Rating: 14 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

A stronger variant of the Ice Golem constructed from large amounts of black ice and frozen blood infused with nagative energy. It is a blocky, vaguely humanoid form that gives off a constant aura of bitter cold.

Achilles' Heel: Like the Ice Golem, it's weak to fire to the point that fire magic bypasses its magic immunity.
Blood Magic: Its construction requires huge blocks of frozen blood. While said blood must be taken from at least twenty hit dice worth of sacrificed creatures, though there's no requirement that it come from something specific. As a result of this composition, it tends to leave massive bloody footprints in its wake.
Feed It with Fire: The Black Ice Golem is healed by cold damage.
Flechette Storm: It can periodically fire bursts of ice shards for ten feet in all directions, dealing both piercing and cold damage.
An Ice Person: In addition to being made of ice, it generates an aura of harmful cold around itself and can fire shards of ice from its body.
Level Drain: Due to being infused with negative energy, the Black Ice Golem's slam attack inflicts negative levels while healing it.
Wall Crawl: It can climb ice as though under the effects of spider climb.

Blood Golem of Hextor

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_blood_golem_3e.jpg

Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Created by the church of the God of Tyranny, these constructs are made from the congealed blood of sacrificial victims. Recently, Hextor's followers have begun equipping these golems with enchanted suits of armor with reservoirs for extra blood.

Achilles' Heel: Their armor makes them vulnerable to spells like rusting grasp or a rust monster's attacks, while their biological core means gentle repose will slow them, and horrid wilting will halve their hit points.
Bloody Murder: In their "natural" form, blood golems look like vaguely-humanoid shapes of thickened red and black blood, swarmed by flies. Since their bloody forms gradually dry out and decay, blood golems take damage each day even if they're standing motionless on guard duty (especially if they're not encased in armor). They're thus only stationed in places with a steady supply of "donors" to maintain the golems.
Epic Flail: They have a masterwork heavy flail built into each arm.
Life Drain: Blood golems can drain blood from helpless creatures, dealing Constitution damage and healing the golem. Armored blood golems can also draw blood from the twin reservoirs on their backs to heal themselves mid-battle.
Spin Attack: By rotating its upper body at high speed, a blood golem of Hextor can strike at all adjacent foes as if using the Whirlwind Attack feat, though in the next round it will only be able to take a single action.
Unusable Enemy Equipment: Unlike most suits of magic armor, the blood golem's +1 full plate doesn't resize to fit other wearers, though it can be repurposed by another blood golem.

Brass Golem

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)

These golems are usually crafted in the image of a minotaur, and are built for a single purpose rather than as a general servitor.

Achilles' Heel: Electricty effects slow them for several rounds, without a saving throw.
Feed It with Fire: Fire attacks heal brass golems.
Living Statue: They are all but indistinguishable from one at rest, then they activate to fulfil their purpose. Once that mission is complete - such as if the temple they were made to defend no longer exists - the brass golem loses its enchantment and becomes a lifeless statue again.
Our Minotaurs Are Different: Brass golems share traits with the minotaurs they resemble, and can make headbutt attacks, are Scarily Competent Trackers, and can use the maze spell once per day.

Cadaver Golem

Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Usually Chaotic Evil or Neutral Evil

Rogue golems who are intelligent, free-willed, and capable of gaining other creatures' abilities by stealing their body parts.

Flesh Golem: The first cadaver golem is speculated to have been an attempt to create a flesh golem that went horribly wrong.
It Can Think: Cadaver golems are a little smarter than the average human, and unlike other golems have their own agendas, either ambitions of wealth or power, or simply being left alone.
Organ Theft: A cadaver golem's signature ability is being able to, as a full-round action, replace one of its body parts with a limb or organ from a living or recently-deceased humanoid, healing damage and gaining access to their victim's abilities in the process. Stolen eyes grant ranks in the Search and Spot skills as well as potentially darkvision, stolen hands give ranks in Climb or Open Lock, and potentially class abilities such as "favored enemy," "sneak attack," or "flurry of blows," a stolen brain gives the golem new ranks in Knowledge skills, a heart torn from a barbarian might let the golem rage, and so on.
Revive Kills Zombie: The only magic that affects these golems are spells like cure or regenerate, which slow the construct or deal damage, while negative energy like inflict wounds or harm dispels any slow effect.

Chain Golem

Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 22 (4E)

Created by the kytons of the Nine Hells of Baator, these clinking constructions appear as a vaguely humanoid mass of razor-sharp lengths of chain studded with wicked hooks and barbs.

Achilles' Heel: Electricity effects slow chain golems.
Chain Pain: They attack by lashing foes with sharpened, spiked chains.
Damage Over Time: Each attack by a chain golem deals cumulative bleeding damage that persists until the victim is healed.
Feed It with Fire: Like steel golems, they are healed by fire attacks.
Spin Attack: Chain golems can have their component chains whirl and lash at everything that comes close, dealing heavy damage similar to the blade barrier spell.

Clay Golem

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E), 15 (4E), 9 (5E)

Crude, mis-proportioned humanoid figures made from clay, which is noted to be a weak vessel for life force, explaining why these golems are more erratic than others.

Achilles' Heel: In 3rd Edition, they're distinctly susceptible to the move earth, disintegrate and earthquake spells, which damage the golem and disrupt its movement.
Extra Turn: They can use haste on themselves for extra actions and other bonuses during their turns.
Feed It with Fire: Clay golems are healed by acid damage.
Wound That Will Not Heal: In past editions, clay golems' slam attacks caused bleeding damage, while in 5th Edition they reduce the target's maximum hit points until the condition is healed by greater restoration.

Coal Golem

Burning man (2e)

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)

Human-shaped constructs comprised of ever-burning coals, sometimes called burning men.

Achilles' Heel: Unsurprisingly, coal golems are vulnerable to cold attacks, and spells like cone of cold and Otiluke's freezing sphere deal damage and hit them with a slow effect, or stop them from moving entirely.
Art Evolution: 2nd Edition burning men are described as freestanding masses of ever-burning coals in a human shape, while coal golems' 3rd Edition description mentions an open metal framework holding those coals in place.
The Berserker: These golems are inherently unstable, likely due to being animated by both earth and fire elemental spirits. In 3rd Edition they have a cumulative 2% chance to go berserk per round of combat, compared to the cumulative 1% chance for other golems.
Exact Words: Burning men are noted to obey only the letter of their creator's commands, twisting the spirit of their orders.
Feed It with Fire: Fire effects heal any slow status on a coal golem and restores some of its hit points.
Healing Factor: Burning men constantly recover a hit point each round, and even if reduced to 0 hit points, their bodies will collapse to ash but very slowly regenerate. If left on their own, the golems will fully repair themselves over the course of a month, but they can be permanently destroyed if their ash pile is mixed with holy water and scattered.
Mundane Utility: Some fire giants who build coal golems are noted to use them as nothing more than mobile decorations.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: A burning man can produce a terrible keening once per day, replicating a fear spell.
Wreathed in Flames: A coal golem is always shedding flames, and deals additional fire damage to anything they touch (in 3rd Edition), or creates a cinder shower with every attack that can cause Damage Over Time and stat penalties a la symbol of pain (in 2nd Edition).

Coral Golem

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)

Beautiful constructs often found guarding undersea lairs and sunken treasure troves.

Armor-Piercing Attack: Their limbs are treated as simultaneously bludgeoning, piercing and slashing weapons for the purpose of overcoming Damage Reduction.
Flechette Storm: For a ranged attack, coral golems fling "coral stars," star-shaped coral fragments that can deal as much damage as a greatsword. Due to these golems' Healing Factor, they constantly regrow the lost coral, giving them unlimited ammunition.
Giant Spider: They have a vaguely spider-like shape, being 20-foot-tall constructs with four legs and four arms.
No-Sell: Averted; unlike most golems of their generation, coral golems have no immunity to magic.
Organ Drops: In a way, coral golems are their own treasure, as the coral that makes up their bodies can be salvaged and sold, to the order of 500 gp per Hit Die of the golem (so 8,000 gp for the average coral golem). However, the coral from a destroyed coral golem cannot be recycled to make a new coral golem.
Status Infliction Attack: Their slams and coral stars can stun victims for a round.

Crystal Golem

Challenge Rating: 12 (3E), 10 (5E)

Beautiful but dangerous golems constructed from massive blocks of quartz.

Crippling Overspecialization: Some crystal golems are specifically constructed to be "psion-killers," and boast a dispel psionics ability and immunity to Psychic Powers. Unfortunately, they have no special abilities to combat or defend against magic, and given the comparative rarity of psionics in most settings, this means the average adventuring party won't have much trouble with this type of golem.
Crystalline Creature: As they were literally carved from crystal, yes.
Gemstone Assault: Some crystal golems can fire crystal darts from their bodies, and when destroyed, explode into a cloud of damaging shards.
The Spiny: Crystal golems may splinter when hit in melee, releasing shards that damage their attackers.

Dragonbone Golem

Challenge Rating: 12 (3E), 11 (5E)

Though easily confused for an undead creature, these wired-together draconic skeletons are in fact constructs.

Breath Weapon: 5th Edition dragonbone golems can exhale a cone of petrifying gas.
Dracolich: Given their appearance, they can easily be mistaken for dracoliches at first glance, but are generally less threatening.
Reforged into a Minion: Their 5th Edition write-up notes that most dragonbone dragons are actually created by other dragons from their defeated rivals, which makes them simultaneously servants and a walking Battle Trophy.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: They have a frightful presense just like true dragons.
Wings Do Nothing: Like actual skeletal dragons, dragonbone golems' wings are useless for flight, but can at least be used to attack in close combat.

Dragonflesh Golem

Challenge Rating: 13 (3E)

Sometimes called "drolems," these are grotesque patchworks of mismatched dragon parts crudely stitched together.

Achilles' Heel: Fire and cold damage slows drolems.
Berserk Button: Their existence is one to dragons, who absolutely despise drolems and destroy them whenever possible, then hunt down the things' creators.
Feed It with Fire: Like standard flesh golems, dragonflesh golems are healed by electricity.
Flesh Golem: A non-human example.
Literal-Minded: It's noted that drolems are capable of remembering more complex commands than normal golems, but will obey commands to the letter instead of fulfilling the intent of the order. This has led some drolems to kill their creators due to overly-complex or badly-worded commands.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: They have a frightful presense just like true dragons.

Drakestone Golem

Challenge Rating: 15 (3E)

These constructs appear to be beautifully-crafted statues of dragons, up until the moment they animate and attack.

Achilles' Heel: Transmute rock to mud will slow them with No Saving Throw, though on the flipside, transmute mud to rock will heal them.
Breath Weapon: They can breathe a cone of petrifying gas.
Living Statue: A draconic variant.

Equine Golem

Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)

These horse-shaped constructs are crafted out of thick hardwood, and are animated by a bound air elemental rather than the usual earth elemental.

Achilles' Heel: Equine golems are slowed by spells such as warp wood and wood shape.
Automaton Horses: A justified example, due to their magical nature. Equine golems don't need food and never tire, potentially crossing 180 miles in a day at a constant gallop. Their riders, however, may find themselves exhausted if they try to ride one for more than eight hours a day, since the golem horses don't flex with their riders like normal steeds.
Mechanical Horse: A magical example.
No-Sell: Despite their wooden construction, equine golems ignore the effects of fire and electricity spells, apart from some light charring.
Super-Scream: Three times per day, an equine golem can let out an ear-splitting whinny that replicates a shatter spell.

Fang Golem

Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)

A literal ton of teeth, tusks and claws shaped into a bestial form, constructed by amoral fey creatures and evil druids as guardians and warriors.

Achilles' Heel: They're suceptible to shout spells, as well as orb of sound.
Defeat Equals Explosion: When destroyed, fang golems detonate into a cloud of flying teeth, dealing heavy damage to everything within a 20-foot radius.
Feed It with Fire: Cold damage instead heals fang golems.
More Teeth than the Osmond Family: They are literally nothing but teeth and claws. This means creating a fang golem involves harvesting a huge amount of fangs and tusks from animals, which is why non-evil druids find the very idea of fang golems to be abhorrent.
Spike Shooter: Five times per day, they can fire a volley of spikes at targets within a 30-foot area.
Status Infliction Attack: Fang golems' "Verdant Surge" ability means anything damaged by them takes a penalty on saving throws against the magic of fey creatures or druidic magic.

Flesh Golem

Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 12 (4E), 5 (5E)

A collection of humanoid corpses stitched into a lurching whole.

Feed It with Fire: Flesh golems are healed by lightning damage.
Flesh Golem: They're cobbled together from humanoid body parts stitched into a single form.
Kill It with Fire: Flesh golems have a strong aversion to fire, and will have disadvantage on attack rolls and checks if they take fire damage. In past editions, fire attacks even hit them with a slow effect.

Force Golem

Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)

Constructs whose metal forms appear bent and warped by the forces at their command.

Achilles' Heel: Despite their mastery of force effects, force golems are not only wholly vulnerable to such magic, they take extra damage from force attacks.
It Can Think: Force golems are unusually smart for golems, and are clever enough to use their abilities to knock foes into hazards. Appropriately, they debuted in the same Monster Manual as magmacore golems, which can create such hazards.
Mind over Matter: They can release 30-foot-radius bursts of force that deal damage and knock enemies off their feet, or use targeted pulses of force to shove targets 10 feet into new positions, potentially dealing damage if this makes them hit an obstacle.
Non-Elemental: All those force effects deal nonspecific damage that ignores most forms of Damage Reduction and can affect incorporeal creatures.

Fungus Golem

Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)

Humanoid masses of many different types of fungus fused together by druids to act as guardians.

Achilles' Heel: Their magic immunity doesn't help them against the antiplant shell spell. Remove disease disables its infectious touch while neutralize poison shuts down its Breath Weapon.
Breath Weapon: It can use a poisonous breath attack once every few rounds that also deals constitution damage if an affected character fails the save.
Fungi Are Plants: The antiplant shell spell treats it as a plant despite it containing no actual plant matter.
Non-Health Damage: Its Breath Weapon also deals constitution damage if a target fails their save against it.

Glasswork Golem

Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 2 (5E)

Beautiful and deadly, these human-sized stained glass figures flash and flicker as they move through light, make a tinkling sound like wind chimes, and are capable of slicing threats to ribbons with their razor-sharp limbs and swords.

Achilles' Heel: 3rd Edition stained glass golems' immunity to magic does not protect them from the shatter spell, or sonic attacks.
Blinded by the Light: Glasswork golems can blast opponents with a cone of blinding, multicolored light.
Healing Factor: Glasswork golems constantly regenerate, unless they've taken blugeoning or thunder damage that turn.
He Was Right There All Along: These golems are usually crafted to blend in with a site's stained glass artwork, but step out of their frames to confront intruders.
Paper People: As flat as a sheet of glass.

Gloom Golem

Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Constructs from the Gray Wastes of Hades, gloom golems are misshapen brutes with gaping holes where their faces should be, and tormented visages pressing against the inside of their bodies. Unlike most golems, their alignment matches that of their fiendish creators.

Chain Pain: If a gloom golem isn't using its claw attacks, it's wielding a spiked chain.
Emotion Bomb: A gloom golem constantly howls in pain and misery, filling those nearby with despair that manifests as penalties on various rolls.
Ghostly Gape: Their heads are little more than the rims of their gaping, howling mouths.
Non-Health Damage: Their melee attacks deal Charisma drain as victims grow more withdrawn and miserable with every blow, until they collapse into a nightmarish coma when their Charisma hits 0.

Grave Dirt Golem

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)

Roughly-humanoid masses of muddy earth studded with skulls and other bones.

Achilles' Heel: They're unsurprisingly vulnerable to move earth, which pushes back and damages grave dirt golems. Disintegrate deals damage in addition to slowing them, while earthquake damages and immobilizes them for a turn.
Feed It with Fire: These earthen golems are healed by electricity damage, oddly enough.
Make Them Rot: Grave dirt golems' attacks deal negative energy damage due to the supernaturally soiled wounds they cause.

Ice Golem

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)

Golems often crafted by clerics and druids devoted to deities of winter.

Achilles' Heel: Ice golems have the Cold subtype, so not only do they take extra damage from fire attacks, fire magic bypasses their normal immunity to magic.
An Ice Person: They're carved from a 2000-pound block of glacial ice, inscribed with runes infused with a mixture of powdered sapphire and snowflake lichen. Though due to their magical nature, they don't have any rules about melting in warmer climates.
Feed It with Fire: Cold damage heals ice damage instead of harming them.
Flechette Storm: As a free action every few rounds, ice golems can spray ice shards from theirs bodies to hit everyone within 10 feet, damaging and potentially temporarily blinding them.
Wall Crawl: They have the "icewalking" ability, which replicates a spider climb spell on icy surfaces.

Incarnum Golem

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)

Golems made from magically-hardened and reinforced glass that contains pure incarnum, soul energy that makes the construct an adaptable and durable opponent.

Achilles' Heel: Spells like dispel evil/good/chaos/law, dismissal and banishment interact with the incarnum inside these golems, resetting any adaptive attack bonus, suppressing their fast healing, and dazing them for one or more rounds.
Healing Factor: The incarnum bound within these golems repairs any damage they take, giving them Fast Healing.
Increasingly Lethal Enemy: An incarnum golem can detect and exploit weaknesses in its enemies. Every time it successfully hits a foe, it gains a cumulative insight bonus to its attack and damage rolls, to a maximum of +5. This bonus don't fade if the golem misses, but should it strike a different target, the original bonus is lost and it begins building a new one against its new enemy.

Iron Golem

Challenge Rating: 13 (3E), 20 (4E), 16 (5E)

These mighty constructs are usually crafted to resemble enormous armored figures, and are equipped for combat

Achilles' Heel: Their iron bodies make them distinctly vulnerable to spells and effects that cause magical rusting, and in 3rd Edition, any amount of lightning damage would slow them.
BFS: They usually carry enormous swords into combat.
Breath Weapon: Iron golems can breathe a cloud of toxic gas.
Feed It with Fire: Fire attacks instead heal iron golems, and in past editions removed any slow effects on them.

Ironwyrm Golem

Challenge Rating: 17 (3E)

A variant of iron golem that is essentially a walking, dragon-shaped furnace.

Achilles' Heel: Any spells that create cold effects slow ironwyrm golems.
Breath Weapon: They can blast foes with a cone of flame as dangerous as the breath attack of an ancient red dragon.
Feed It with Fire: Any fire attacks instead heal the ironwyrm golem and lift any slow effect on it from cold magic. This includes its own breath weapon, which it's smart enough to use on itself as needed.

Magmacore Golem

Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)

Constructs whose armored forms ripple with heat, encasing a figure of molten rock.

Achilles' Heel: Cold magic, as might be predicted, gets through these golems' magic immunity to deal full damage.
Defeat Equals Explosion: When destroyed, a magmacore golem detonates and uses its "Molten Step" ability one last time on the terrain beneath and around it.
Geo Effects: Their signature "Molten Step" can be used every three rounds to cause two adjacent battle map squares to burst into flame, becoming difficult terrain that damages anything passing through them. This effect lasts for two minutes, or until the affected squares are subjected to at least 10 points of cold damage.
Living Lava: Their forms beneath their armor.
Turns Red: When its health falls below 50%, a magmacore golem's armor shatters to reveal its molten core. This decreases its Armor Class and removes its Damage Reduction, but the golem gains a blur effect that can cause attacks to miss, and anything that touches or makes a melee attack against the golem takes a bit of fire damage.

Mithral Golem

Challenge Rating: 21 (3E)

These giant-sized constructs are sleek and surprisingly graceful and agile.

Achilles' Heel: The slow spell temporarily nullifies a mithral golem's alacrity ability, negating their extra partial action. A haste spell will restore that ability, or heal the golem if it isn't slowed.
Lightning Bruiser: They don't just have twice the movement speed as most golems, mithral golems can also take an extra partial action during their turns.

Mud Golem

Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)

Among the crudest of constructs, masses of slippery mud that stand twice the height of a man.

Achilles' Heel: The transmute mud to rock spell slows a mud golem for up to 12 rounds, with no save, and stone to flesh temporarily shuts down its Damage Reduction. On the flipside, transmute rock to mud completely heals a mud golem.
Breath Weapon: Mud golems can spray a short-ranged cone of mud that does no damage, but can blind victims for a few rounds.
Swallowed Whole: A variant; a mud golem can simply engulf a grappled opponent smaller than it. This renders the victim unable to breathe, and any damage the mud golem receives while someone's trapped within it is split between the golem and its victim.

Prismatic Golem

Challenge Rating: 18 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Constructs from the Blessed Fields of Elysium, these hovering ten-foot spheres of scintilating colors are crafted from gems containing the glorious light of the plane of pure Good. Unlike most golems, their alignment matches that of their celestial creators.

Blinded by the Light: Any creatures with less than 8 Hit Die that come within 20 feet of a prismatic golem are blinded, with no saving throw.
Feed It with Fire: They're healed by prismatic spray spells, and can top off their health and cancel a prismatic sphere or prismatic wall by moving into its effect.
Intangibility: As constructs of pure light, prismatic golems are incorporeal.
Randomized Damage Attack: Prismatic golems can lash out with incorporeal tendrils that deal a random type of damage, similar to spells like prismatic spray. The "green" result deals twice as much damage as the other colors and hits similar to the disintegrate spell.
Three Laws-Compliant: A fantastic variant; prismatic golems are imprinted with the Neutral Good moral code of their creators, and will refuse to obey any orders that conflict with that, even if their creator's ethics change.

Puzzle Golem

Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)

Large stone constructs made from eight smaller pieces, these golems resemble humanoid puzzle pieces. Unlike other golems, a Puzzle Golem can split into two golems of the next smaller size category until they reach tiny size at which point they can't divide any further. These smaller golems are known as Pieces.

Achilles' Heel: The 'transmute Rock to mud spell slows it for up to twelve rounds while stone to flesh'' nullifies its damage reduction for a round. Downplayed in that these effects are nullified if an unaffected piece of the same size rejoins with an affected one.
Asteroids Monster: Their main mechanic is the ability to split into smaller "pieces." The pieces can continue splitting until they reach tiny size. Each of the pieces has lower attack power and half the HP of the original they split from. They can also rejoin to create larger golems and will try to do so if damaged badly enough. Each piece acts, splits, and rejoins independently of the others, so it's possible to wind up fighting pieces of multiple different sizes.
Living Statue: Due to being a more specialized version of the stone golem, though this one can split into smaller statues.
Wolfpack Boss: Puzzle golems can split repeatedly, leading to an encounter with up to eight enemies at once. While it's fully assembled by default, there's nothing stopping it from splitting before the battle starts and having the smaller pieces lie in wait.

Relief Golem

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)

A living relief that can meld into walls to ambush intruders.

Achilles' Heel: The stone to flesh spell prevents it from using its spell-like abilities to move through solid objects while soften earth and stone slows it, bypassing its magic immunity.
Inside a Wall: Its description notes that its ability to move through walls means that its patrol routes aren't confined to the floor plan of whatever dungeon it guards. This allows it to get the drop on unsuspecting intruders very easily.
Intangibility: Relief golems have meld with stone and phase door as spell-like abilities, which allows them to enter and move through most solid objects. Adventurers who track one through a dungeon might expect to find a hidden door where the footprints end, only to be surprised when the golem steps out of the wall to attack.
Living Statue: A variation. It becomes a living bas-relief when it melds into stonework, displacing carvings and other ornamentation around it as it moves. This also gives it a massive bonus to hide checks leading up to an ambush.

Rope Golem

Hangman Golem (3e)

Challenge Rating: 12 (Rope), 13 (Hangman) (3E)

Human-shaped masses of twisted ropes. They originally debuted as Rope Golems in Dragon Magazine with the more-durable Hangman Golem appearing later in the third-edition Monster Manual. Aside from differences in hit points, they are nearly identical.

Achilles' Heel: Both variants are vulnerable to fire, including fire magic. The rope trick spell paralyzes a hangman golem, with no saving throw. On the flipside, animate rope grants it a haste effect. By contrast, the rope golem is damaged by the animate rope spell, healed by the mending spell, and unaffected by rope trick.
Knows the Ropes: Whether its using its long-reach slam attack or flailing in a ropey whirlwind, a rope golem is whacking targets with ropes. The hangman golem deals slightly more damage this way in exhange for a slightly weaker slam attack.
One to Million to One: Once per day, a rope golem can collapse into a tangle of ropes, rendering it unable to move or attack, but granting it Fast Healing 10 until it decides to reform itself.
Sinister Suffocation: Anything grappled by a hangman golem ends up strangled by it, and on a successful opposed check the golem also forces the air from its victim's lungs, dazing them.
Spin Attack: Once every few rounds, a rope golem can extend multiple ropes from its body and whirl around, making slam attacks against everything within 10 feet.

Sand Golem

Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)

Five thousand pounds of magically-mutable sand, created by members of the Dusty Conclave to protect the desert, whether above or below its surface.

A Handful for an Eye: They're constantly surrounded by a brownout effect, imposing a penalty on Dexterity- and vision-based checks on all creatures within 10 feet.
The Kid with the Remote Control: Upon creation, sand golems are keyed to a set of magic amulets (usually shaped like scarabs or scorpions), and will only obey the orders of someone wearing one. The amulets can also be used to call the sand golem from any distance, though it has to cross that distance on foot.
No-Sell: Sand golems are mostly immune to magic, though earthquake deals damage and halts them for a turn, vitrify negates their damage reduction and magic immunity for a turn, blast of sand and flaywind heal them, and fuse sand brings them back to full health.
Orifice Invasion: When striking a living creature, these golems can force some of their shapesand into their foe's mouth and nose, suffocating them unless they can cough out the sand.

Shadesteel Golem

Challenge Rating: 11 (standard) 14 (greater) (3E)

Constructed from metal mined and forged on the Plane of Shadow, these dark and sinister golems are easy to mistake for an undead creature.

Feed It with Fire: Any light-based spells do no damage to a shadesteel golem, but grant it a haste effect for a few rounds. The same thing happens if a shadesteel golem is subjected to positive energy, such as the Turn Undead attempt of a cleric who mistook it for an undead creature.
Make Them Rot: Every few rounds, a shadesteel golem can generate a 40-foot pulse of negative energy that deals heavy damage to living creatures, and heals undead by an equal amount. This makes shadesteel golems extremely dangerous when their creators deploy them with undead minions.
Power Floats: Shadesteel golems have a perfect flying speed, allowing them to hover and drift about at will.
SkeleBot 9000: A fantastic example; shadesteel golems have skeletal frames and skull-shaped heads.
Stealth Expert: Shadesteel golems move in total silence while levitating, they have an impressive bonus to their Hide checks, and they have the supernatural ability to blend into shadows to gain concealment. These all apply even to the Large-sized greater shadesteel golems.

Snow Golem

Challenge Rating: 3 (5E)

Simple humanoid figures shaped from snow and animated by magic.

Achilles' Heel: Being made of snow, snow golems are very vulnerable to heat.
Feed It with Fire: They are predictably healed by ice magic.
Snowlems: Golems, made of snow.

Stone Golem

Challenge Rating: 11 (3E), 17 (4E), 10 (5E)

These walking statues are as impressive as they are durable.

Achilles' Heel: Stone golems are traditionally vulnerable to spells like transmute rock to mud, which slows them, and stone to flesh, which doesn't actually turn the creature into a fleshy figure, but removes the stone golem's damage reduction and immunity to magic for a round.
Defeat Equals Explosion: In 4E they explode in a burst of jagged stone when destroyed, dealing damage to adjacent creatures and leaving behind a pile of rough terrain.
Elite Mooks: A variant of this creature, introduced in the Libris Mortis supplement, is the tombstone golem, which is Challenge Rating 13 and has the ability to use slay living every 2 rounds.
Living Statue: It's mentioned that contemporary stone golems are usually carved to resemble statues of humanoids, while those left over from ancient civilizations are sometimes made in the shape of animals.
Status Effects: They can use slow on opponents.

Web Golem

Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 13 (4E)

Creations of the drow, these golems resemble oversized humanoids wrapped in webbing, with heads featuring the mutliple eyes and fangs of a spider.

Achilles' Heel: The grease spell slows a web golem for up to twelve rounds.
All Webbed Up: Web golems are basically this, just without the person wrapped inside.
Non-Health Damage: Their poisonous bite attacks can deal Strength damage.
Projectile Webbing: They can use the web spell three times per day to entrap foes at a distance.
Wall Crawl: They're also under a continuous spider climb effect.
You Have to Burn the Web: Web golems take extra damage from fire.

Goon Balloon

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/8 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Spherical, eye-studded creatures whose odd appearance belies their mean-spirited natures.

Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: They look odd and act harmless, even playful, but goon balloons "like to observe the suffering of other creatures and orchestrate that suffering, given half a chance."
Deadly Gaze: Goon balloons can cause scintillating, kaleidoscopic light to emanate from their eyes, forcing a victim who can see the display to save or take some psychic damage.
Expy: They're pretty much the "beach ball alien" from Dark Star.
Living Gasbag: Their bodies are filled with a noxious but buoyant gas that allows goon balloons to rise vertically and hover in the air. When one is killed, this same gas escapes and may poison nearby creatures.
Our Monsters Are Weird: It's specifically compared to a "beach ball with clawed feet," covered in eyes.

Gorgon

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Elemental Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 11 (4E), 5 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Armor-plated bulls that can gore or trample foes, or turn them to stone with a blast of their noxious breath.

Brutish Bulls: They're extremely bad-tempered, attacking other creatures on sight and attempting to gore, trample or petrify them, and are noted to be utterly impossible to tame or domesticate.
Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff": The classical Greek "gorgon" is the name for the creature type of which Medusa is the most infamous example, with no reference to bulls. The only thing D&D's gorgons have in common with their namesake is the ability to petrify victims, and it works entirely differently from a proper medusa's gaze. Overall, they bear a greater similarity to the classical catoblepas than to mythical gorgons, though D&D treats the catoblepas as a seperate monster.
Crafted from Animals: It takes a talented smith with access to magical enchantments, but a gorgon's hide can be crafted into a suit of fine scale male that grants bonuses on saving throws against petrification effects.
Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: 2nd Edition notes that while gorgons habitually go about on all fours, they can walk on two hooves when necessary, another way of emphasizing they're not natural beasts.
Organ Drops: Gorgon blood can be harvested and mixed with mortar, resulting in structures that block ethereal entities from phasing through them, while their powdered scales can be crafted into ink perfect to write a scroll of protection from petrification.
Super-Persistent Predator: Their AD&D entry notes that once a gorgon has sighted prey, it's willing to pursue it for days without tiring, "until the prey either drops from exhaustion or is caught in the gorgon's deadly breath."
Taken for Granite: Gorgons' Breath Weapon is a cloud of green vapor that petrifies those it touches. When hungry, a gorgon smashes a petrified victim to rubble for consumption, though "Whether their flat iron teeth break up and pulverize the stone or their saliva returns the victim to flesh while they eat is a matter for conjecture."
Trampled Underfoot: They're big and heavy enough to trample smaller enemies they move over. Similarly, gorgons have no trouble moving through forests, as they simply crush shrubs and reduce smaller trees to splinters, leaving very obvious trails.

Gorynych

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Huge, three-headed, dragon-like creatures who make their lairs in winding caverns beneath desolate lands.

Food Chain of Evil: They're usually the most powerful monster in the area, but gorynyches are often attacked by true dragons and beholders, who seem to view them as competition.
It Can Think: Monstrous appearance aside, gorynyches have human-level intelligence, are capable of speech, and possess enough cunning to use feigned retreats to lure victims into their lair, or make sure to leave a survivor when they attack that they can then shadow back to their home settlement.
Multiple Head Case: Subverted; a gorynych has one personality despite its three brains, each of which is capable of controlling the body should the other two heads get lopped off.
Our Monsters Are Weird: Gorynyches have draconic bodies, three wolfen heads on long serpentine necks, and a tangle of up to a dozen whip-like tails.
Prehensile Tail: Their tails don't deal much (or any, in 2E) damage, but are more dangerous for being able to enwrap a target the gorynych can then carry off. Fortunately, these tails can be targeted by Sunder attempts, though they'll regrow within a month.
Tear-Apart Tug-of-War: Gorynyches can make a "wishboning" attack if two of their heads bite into the same victim, dealing additional damage as they pull in different directions to tear their prey apart.

Grandfather Plaque

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_grandfater_plaque_edit_3e.png

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

Specialized constructs made to resemble sagacious old men, who protect a single door, screening visitors and protecting the portal from intruders.

Gate Guardian: Their primary function. A grandfather plaque is highly intelligent and an Excellent Judge of Character, and questions those who come up to their door in order to judge whether or not they should be allowed entry. They prefer to use their high Diplomacy skill to dissuade would-be intruders from forcing their way in, but if necessary, a grandfather plaque can magically lock their door, repair any damage to it, ward it with necromantic energy that saps the Strength of those who touch it, or use offensive magic.
Hates Being Alone: Should a grandfather plaque's home fall into ruin, they come to hunger for gossip, interesting conversation, and news of the wider world. If encountered by adventurers, such a grandfather plaque will ask to be broken free from its doorway and carried to civilization, so it may find a purpose again. Other times, a grandfather plaque might end up worshiped by primitive humanoids who mistake it for a deity, and so order its minions to abduct a sage or wizard, simply to have intelligent conversation again.
Magic Missile Storm: They can fire magic missiles from their eyes if necessary.
Our Gargoyles Rock: Their AD&D write-up classifies grandfather plaques as a specialized gargoyle subtype, though their 3E entry instead casts them as bronze plaques.
Psychic Link: They have a telepathic link with a single person, designated at the time of the construct's creation, that has no maximum range, but cannot cross planes. A grandfather plaque uses this to seek guidance if it feels any uncertainty about visitors who come before it.
Stationary Enemy: As they're built into doorways, grandfather plaques can't move.
Super-Scream: They can shout as per the spell at will, which both damages intruders and makes enough noise to raise an alarm.

Gravecrawler

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

These creatures, also called ancestor worms, are pale, three-foot-long slugs with eyeless human faces. They prefer to lair in cemeteries and necropolises, where they will gradually convert the bodies buried around them into stone.

Beast with a Human Face: And an eyeless one at that.
Dead Person Conversation: Gravecrawlers can use speak with dead once per week, but only with a non-calcified corpse. This can make them repositories for local lore, and sought out as advisors.
Life Drain: Their bite attacks deal Constitution damage, which heals the gravecrawler.
Non-Malicious Monster: Just being close to a gravecrawler is dangerous, but many societies view them as beneficial creatures, or even venerate them for their wisdom.
Taken for Granite: Gravecrawlers are surrounded by a calcifying aura, which quickly converts any creature around them, living or dead, into brittle stone. On the upside, bodies coverted this way can't be reanimated with raise dead or similar magic, so most settlements would rather have a gravecrawler in the cemetery than a necromancer.

Gravorg

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

10-foot-long subterranean predators that use their control over gravity to subdue prey.

Gravity Master: Gravorgs' signature ability is being able to reverse gravity at will, affecting five 10-foot cubes at a range out to 200 feet. They use this to launch other creatures into the air to fall back to the ground when they dismiss the effect, or to bounce victims between a cave ceiling and floor until they're unconscious or dead — "The sound of armor and flesh repeatedly striking stone often means that a gravorg has found another victim."
He Was Right There All Along: Their coloration gives gravorgs a bonus to Hide checks in rocky areas, and makes it easy to mistake one for a lump of stone when motionless. They typically use their gravity-reversal ability from hiding, and only emerge to feed when they think their prey is unconscious or dead.
Unreliable Illustrator: Gravorgs' entry describes their fur as mixing white, gray and black hairs in a way that lets them blend in with stone, through their illustration gives them a striped pattern that's much less stealthy.

Gray Glutton

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

Giant predators bred to eradicate psionic creatures.

Anti-Magic: As a Breath Weapon, they can exhale a 10-foot cube of translucent blue gas that acts like a psionics-nullifying poison, damaging the victims' power points.
Bioweapon Beast: Gray gluttons were bred by mages as weapons against psionic foes, giving them an instinctive hatred of psionicists.
Brain Food: Their name comes not from their gray hides, but their hunger for psionicists' brain matter.
A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: They have the Hostile Mind feat, which deals damage to anyone attempting to use powers from the telepathy discipline against them.
Primal Stance: Gray gluttons would stand 18 feet tall, but commonly move in a bestial crouch, walking with their hands.
Was Once a Man: The original gray gluttons were individuals who had been victimized by psionicists, but the mages' experiments on them not only twisted their bodies, they destroyed the subjects' sapience, leaving nothing but their hatred for psionics.

Gray Jester

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

Cruel fey who wear the livery of jesters, but exist to drain the joy from their victims.

Achilles' Heel: On top of their fey vulnerability to Cold Iron, gray jesters are actually at their weakest just after feeding, and for a few rounds afterward their Damage Reduction and Spell Resistance are diminished.
Emotion Eater: Gray jesters drain joyous emotions from humanoids, whether natural happiness or the result of magic like Tasha's hideous laughter. Those who fail their saves against the effect will take Charisma drain, and any whose Charisma reaches zero will at best lose their ability to laugh or feel joy. Creatures with fewer Hit Dice than the gray jester instead become "bleak ones" whose sense of self is so eroded that they can take no action unless ordered by the fey, who uses them as soldiers and minions.
Helpless with Laughter: Anyone they touch with their sceptors is subject to Tasha's hideous laughter, which the fey use to assist with their feeding or disable enemies in combat.
Monster Clown: Gray jesters dress like conventional jesters (or mimes), but with a gray-hued costume. Their cold, empty eyes and smiles of white but broken teeth complement the effect.
Would Hurt a Child: Children are their favored victims.

Gray Render

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 19 (4E), 12 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral (3E), Chaotic Evil (4E), Chaotic Neutral (5E)

Bestial, hulking humanoids that may rend apart other creatures with their fearsome claws, or inexplicably decide to "adopt" them as things to be protected and cared for.

All Animals Are Dogs: 5th Edition provides a table of quirks for a gray render ally that are distinctly dog-like behaviors: compulsive digging, chasing after and attacking carts and wagons, burying treasure, whining piteously in the dark, etc.
Extra Eyes: Three pairs, one of the most common features for the creatures who seem to get a redesign each edition.
The Berserker: When injured, a gray render may Counter-Attack by lashing out blindly against a random creature within its reach - but never its "master."
Protectorate: Gray renders often bond with, protect and provide for other creatures. Whether accepted or not, gray renders always remain close, watch over their charge(s), and never harm them.
Truly Single Parent: Gray renders reproduce by forming nodules on their bodies that break off as young gray renders.

Gray Shiver

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Any Evil

These unlikely creatures are born when a spider takes up residence inside the skull of a destroyed lich. The lingering magic, and the lich's residual malevolence and echoing final thoughts, transform the spider into a megalomaniacal spellcaster that tries to dominate enough creatures to form an evil cult or cabal.

Anti-True Sight: When hiding in the lich's skull, a gray shiver can't be detected by divination magic, and gets a substantial bonus to Hide checks.
Boisterous Weakling: Gray shivers aren't exactly pushovers, but their entry notes that they "tend to inherit more of the bombast than the skill of the lich, so they think of themselves as evil geniuses when, in reality, they are only malicious vermin.
From Nobody to Nightmare: Again, these are ordinary spiders transformed by a lich skull that wasn't properly smashed to powder.
Mind Control: The bite of a gray shiver carries a poison that replicates a dominate monster effect, lasting from a minute to potentially a full week.
Monster Knight: They're basically evil, Diminutive spiders that are 9th-level sorcerers.
Mortality Grey Area: Gray shivers are healed by negative energy like an undead creature, but are also healed by positive energy, and cannot be turned despite registering as undead to detection magic.
Psychic Link: Gray shivers possess a "minion web" that allows them to mentally communicate with creatures they've dominated, as well as perceive the world through their senses.
Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Gray shivers often wear their home skulls for their defensive benefits, though they may also leave them hidden among other skulls if necessary.
Soul Jar: Should its lich skull be destroyed, the gray shiver reverts to an ordinary spider in an hour.

Green Warder

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Seven-foot-tall plant creatures resembling elves made from leaves, wood and thorns, used to deter intruders from elven lands.

Actual Pacifist: Green warders prefer to use their spell-like abilities over their thorny claws, and will try and run from persistent threats, only resorting to melee attacks if cornerered. They also ignore enemies who succumb to their sleep or confusion spells, even if given a direct order to finish them off.
Plant People: They're somewhere between this and Golem, as they're described following "programming" and have only limited personalities. Green warders are usually pruned to resemble specific elven personages, or to give them the appearance of wearing elaborate headdresses, but though they'll never admit it, the plants actually prefer it when they grow bushy and scraggly.
Support Party Member: Green warders aren't intended for direct combat, instead they know spells like sleep, confusion and alarm to neutralize enemies without violence.

Greenvise

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

Huge, carnivorous plants that aren't content to wait for prey to fall into their thorny jaws.

Acid Attack: Twice per day, and usually only when a greenvise is seriously damaged, it can use a modified version of acid fog, creating a thick cloud that obscures vision, hampers movement, and deals acid damage to anything else within the area.
He Was Right There All Along: With their maws closed, greenvises resemble ordinary leafy bushes, a disguise they use to waylay unsuspecting prey.
Man-Eating Plant: They're giant-sized venus flytraps that can snatch prey in their leafy tendrils to stuff into their maws, and slowly crawl around on root-like tendrils.
Supernatural Sensitivity: Greenvises have "woodsense," and can automatically detect anything within 60 feet of them, so long as said creatures are in contact with a form of vegetation.
Swallowed Whole: They can swallow anything Large size or smaller, subjecting them to acid and bludgeoning damage until they cut their way out of the greenvise.

Grell

Classification: Aberration (3.5-5E), Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 7 (4E), 3 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Bizarre monsters that resemble floating, beaked brains with spiny tentacles hanging beneath.

Bizarre Alien Senses: Though blind, grell have keen hearing and can also sense the faint electrical energy produced by living beings, giving grell the benefit of blindsight out to 60 feet. This also makes "blinding" them difficult, requiring both a spell or attack to disable a grell's hearing as well as a heavy shock of electricity to temporarily shut down their electro-sense for a few rounds.
Brain Monster: Subverted. Grell visually resemble floating brains and are often described as such in-universe, but in truth simply happen to have globular bodies with pink-gray and wrinkled skin that outwardly resemble brains — they have a fairly straightforward internal anatomy otherwise, only lacking bones and eyes.
Dimensional Traveler: The Lords of Madness supplement explains that grell hail from an alternate Material Plane, and have crossed over relatively recently via the Plane of Shadow in search of new hunting grounds.
Might Makes Right: The core of grell philosophy is very simple — if something is powerful enough to eat something else, then it is its right and privilege to do exactly that, and if something cannot prevent itself from being eaten then its natural place is in the greater being's belly.
Nay-Theist: Grell are not particularly religious beings — they acknowledge the gods' existence, but simply perceive them as beings of great personal power to be treated with respect and caution instead of something truly divine and to be revered.
No-Sell: They're immune to the damaging effects of electrical attacks, though a big enough shock may temporarily shut down their electro-sense.
The Paralyzer: The prick of a grell's venomous tentacles induces paralysis, allowing the grell to drag its helpless victims away and devour them.
Starfish Language: The grell language makes minimal use of vocal components, instead consisting chiefly of delicate manipulations of the speaker's bioelectric field — non-electrosensitive creatures are fundamentally incapable of "speaking" or understanding it.
Tentacle Rope: A grell wraps its tentacles around its prey and floats away to its lair with the paralysed creature in its clutches.

Gremishka

^3e

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/3 (3E), 1/8 (single) or 2 (swarm) (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Tiny, vicious creatures that delight in suffering, lurking in the walls or basements of homes between acts of cruel mischief.

Art Evolution: In 2nd and 3rd Edition, gremishka are cat-sized creatures that look like some blend of cat, monkey and rat, but 5th Edition heavily emphasizes the feline aspect.
Griping About Gremlins: Gremishka are considered wingless cousins to gremlins in most editions, though "twice as bad and twice as deadly," playing violent and often lethal "jokes" on their victims.
Mage-Hunting Monster: 5E gremishka bear a grudge against the inept mages who accidentally created them, and have an "unstable relationship with magic" that makes them more dangerous to spellcasters. A single gremishka has a "magic allergy" that can react with incoming spells, potentially releasing a pulse of force damage in response, healing the gremishka, or making it explode into chunks that quickly reform into a swarm of clones. A full swarm of gremishka is outright immune to spells of 3rd-level or lower, and can reflect spells that miss it against their caster.
Retcon: 5th Edition drastically changes their role from particularly vicious gremlins to anti-magical animals.
The Swarm: One constant has been gremishka's tendency to swarm over victims, clawing and biting them en masse.

Gremlin

Classification: Fey Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (deceiver), 7 (skulker), 17 (conniver, prankster) (4E)
Playable: 2E (fremlin)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Small, impish humanoids who enjoy spreading strife and misery.

Griping About Gremlins: A pre-industrial example, so these gremlins aren't sabotaging machinery, but performing acts of petty theft, painful pranks, and other misery-causing mischief. 4th Edition gremlins are focused more on social sabotage, such as forging inflammatory messages or stealing sensitive items, and were created by the fomorian king Thrumbolg to sow dissent among the eladrin, breaking up alliances against him.
The Jinx: In their Basic/Expert/etc. version of D&D, gremlins radiate an aura of "Murphy's Law," causing all manner of minor mishaps to occur around them.
Our Goblins Are Different: AD&D treats gremlins as a type of goblinoid, capable of interbreeding with other goblinoids to produce a variety of subraces. In 4th Edition, gremlins were goblins transformed and corrupted by fomorians into agents of chaos, though they wreaked havoc among the fomorians as well, leading the gremlins to escape to infest the Feywild and Feydark.
Stealth Expert: Gremlins take care not to be seen, so places they've infested may develop a reputation for being haunted.
Sticky Fingers: Snyads love snatching treasure from larger humanoids, and will often cooperate with mites, who swarm victims while the snyads grab specific items, often right out of the victims' hands.
Token Good Teammate: Well, not quite Good, but fremlins are plump, Chaotic Neutral gremlins that, though whiny and lazy, are mostly harmless, and can be tolerable companions if kept well-fed and entertained. Though they're useless in combat, and may give away the location of sneaking characters.
Vampiric Draining: Galltrits are six-inch-tall gremlins that live in filth, and feed by latching onto victims to drain their blood. Since galltrit saliva carries an anesthetic, their victims may not realize they've been bitten until they faint from blood loss.

Grick

Classification: Aberration (3E), Aberrant Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E); 7 (4E); 2 (grick), 7 (grick alpha) (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Serpentine, tentacled ambush predators that infest caverns, dungeons or dark forests.

Combat Tentacles: A grick attacks with its four barbed tentacles in addition to its snapping beak.
He Was Right There All Along: Their coloration allows them to blend in with rocky terrain.
Large and in Charge: The largest, most well-fed member of a pack becomes the other gricks' alpha.
Wall Crawl: Gricks are perfectly capable of scaling sheer walls and clinging to ceilings.

Griffon

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 7 (4E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Griffons are powerful aerial hunters with the forequarters of eagles, heads topped by tufted ears, and the hindquarters of lions. Griffons roost in high crags and mountains with access to wide plains where they can hunt.

Berserk Button: Ecology of the Griffon describes how, while griffons are otherwise immune to the effects of a harpy's song, hearing it will drive them into a homicidal rage towards its source, something that generally ends very poorly for the harpies.
Food Chain of Evil: Griffons often hunt and eat hippogriffs as a result of their obsession with horse meat, and also readily prey on harpies.
Horse of a Different Color: Griffons can be trained to bear a rider, and are prized as mounts capable of flight and of being fearsome combatants in their own right. However, there are a few complications to keeping griffons as steeds, besides their rarity. Griffons aren't domesticated and need to be tamed individually and, even when tamed, dislike the company of large crowds or other animals (unlike horses, which have been bred to tolerate them). They also bob up and down a lot when flying, unlike the steadier gait of pegasi, which can make for rather uncomfortable rides. They also refuse to bear tack, bridles and branding, and require special saddles to fit their wider frames and not to impede their wings.
Our Gryphons Are Different: Griffons are intelligent creatures capable of either speaking human languages or at least understanding them. They sometimes consent to be used as mounts, but only if their rider accepts them as equals rather than mere steeds. Griffons prey on horses, often resulting in enmity between them and intelligent horse-like creatures such as asperi, and in some settings this includes a sense of animosity towards hippogriffs as well.
Trademark Favorite Food: They have a voracious appetite for horses, which they favor above all other prey — it's not unknown for them to unhorse riders to eat their steeds — and extend this rapaciousness to horselike and part-equine beings such as pegasi, hippogriffs and centaurs.

Rimefire Griffon

Classification: Elemental Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 20 (4E)

Griffons native to the Elemental Chaos, which often ally with the elementals that share their home.

Breath Weapon: Rimefire griffons can breathe fire.
Energy Absorption: A rimefire griffon's bite siphons heat from its target's body; in game terms, this resolves as it dealing cold damage.
Oxymoronic Being: Rimefire griffons combine within themselves the essences of elemental heat and cold.
Technicolor Fire: When a rimefire griffon sucks heat from a victim, its nasal horn burns with blue flame.

Grimalkin

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

Intelligent shapeshifting creatures usually found as pets or guard animals.

The Empath: They can sense surface emotions — needs and desires, but not coherent thoughts — to a range of 50 feet, though other creatures can save to become temporarily immune to the effect.
Motor Mouth: They're chatty creatures that never know when to shut up.
Perpetually Protean: In combat, a grimalkin changes its shape each round, ensuring that its foe can't adopt a strategy against it.
Sapient Pet: A grimalkin is nearly as smart as a baseline human, and fully capable of speech, but so many have been domesticated that it's rare to find one in the wild.
Undying Loyalty: A grimalkin bonds with a single master over its life, and will fight to the death to defend them. Their malleable personalities also tend to change to reflect their master.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can polymorph themselves as a free action, so long as their new form is that of a Medium-sized Animal, Beast or Vermin, and with the caveat that the grimalkin doesn't recover hit points from the process. In most cases a grimalkin uses this power to amuse its master, but it's also quite useful in combat.

Grimlock

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E), Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E), 14 (4E), 1/4 (5E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Dumb, blind creatures who were once humans twisted by the illithids. What culture they have still revolves around illithid reverence, and illithids usually tolerate grimlock colonies as a combination defense and food source.

Dumb Muscle: They often serve as this for various Underdark nasties, since they're none too bright and easy to coax along with promises of violence.
Eyeless Face: Grimlocks' eyes withered away and eyelids sealed, leaving only covered eye sockets behind.
The Morlocks: Grimlocks are descended from subterranean humans who worshipped illithids and eventually evolved into blind, monstrous, degenerate cannibals.

Grimweird

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

Weak and withered undead humanoids who are nevertheless adept summoners, able to blackmail, bluff, cajole or threaten extraplanar beings into doing their bidding.

Dirty Coward: They are miserable in direct combat, and know it, so grimweirds rely on their summoned minions to do their fighting for them while they do everything possible to stay away from opponents.
Enemy Summoner: Grimweirds are never encountered alone, thanks to their ability to use spells like lesser planar binding and summon monster every five rounds. This actually makes grimweirds despised on the Outer Planes where such monsters are summoned from.
Level Drain: While their melee attacks do next to no damage, they do impose negative levels upon victims.

Grinning Cat

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

Large, intelligent fey felines that amuse themselves by irritating others.

Cats Are Mean: At best grinning cats will trade "riddles and witticisms" with other creatures, while at their worst they delight in "pestering and misleading travelers."
Bigby: My one and only interaction with a grinning cat made me want to wipe that smirk off that thing's face with a great big clenched fist, if you get my meaning.
Diancastra: Trust me when I tell you that the cat was every bit as annoyed as you were, my friend.
Expy: Of the Cheshire Cat, natch.
Invisibility: They can gradually fade away over a few seconds, either disappearing all at once, or imitating their inspiration by leaving their head or grinning mouth visible.
Teleportation: They can make a "grinning step" to teleport 60 feet as a bonus action, and anyone who is given a grinning cat's whisker (or who harvests them from one's corpse) can use it to cast misty step once themselves.

Grippli

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

A simple and usually peaceful race of small, humanoid tree frogs.

Combat Pragmatist: Grippli have simple technology and limited access to metal, so they prefer to use their natural camouflage to launch ambushes against threats, ideally trapping foes in snares or nets while the grippli hurl darts from the trees.
Frog Men: They're more frog-like than the bullywugs, though grippli still have humanoid hands.
Happiness in Slavery: Occasionally, a strong forest-dweller like a green dragon enslaves a grippli tribe, but unless their overlord is particularly cruel, the grippli usually go along with the situation, valuing the protection of their master.
Immortal Procreation Clause: Grippli have been described as the frog folk's elves, as they can live to be 700, but remain rare due to their low birthrate — a single grippli might birth only six young over her lifetime.
Luke Nounverber: Grippli have names, but mostly identify each other (and other beings) by sight, and don't use surnames. Those who travel with other races pick up nicknames based on the grippli's perceived resemblance to non-sapient frogs, resulting in monikers like Brillup Deepcroak, Ruue Tonguesticker, or Willup Buldgeeye.
Matriarchy: Their villages are led by a tribe mother, who is also the largest and strongest grippli in it, and viewed as the voice of the grippli's nameless frog-goddess. While in theory she holds direct power over the tribe, in practice the most experienced hunters issue a lot of the day-to-day guidance, and grippli families tend to make their own decisions.
Never Learned to Read: Nearly every grippli is illiterate, since their language has no written form and writing is considered taboo — only the tribe mother is allowed to create a record, using Undercommon.
Starfish Language: Downpayed; the Grippli tongue is a throaty, guttural "range of croaks and rumbling words, all of which sound roughly the same to other humanoids." Outsiders can learn to understand it, but non-grippli require magic to speak it.
Weaponized Stench: Once per day, a grippli tribe mother can emit a cloud of musk that functions like a stinking cloud.
Worthless Yellow Rocks: Inverted; traders sometimes try to take advantage of the grippli, exchanging cheap baubles like brightly-dyed cloth, colored glass, or polished quartz for rare herbs and ungents from the deep jungle. The grippli, however, value such ornaments as home decorations, and consider it a fair trade.

Grisgol

Classification: Construct (3E), Natural Animate (4E)
Challenge Rating: 15 (3E, 4E)
Alignment: Unaligned

8-foot-tall constructs made from magical debris such as spent spell scrolls, mostly-empty potion vials, and drained magic wands, all animated by the stolen phylactery of a lich.

Driven to Madness: Should a grisgol be destroyed, anyone who examines the strips of parchment and pages from tomes that made up its body has to save or become cursed, convinced that the thousands of scraps of paper contain some great arcane secret, if they could only be assembled in the proper order. The victim will then spend every waking moment toward that endeavor, barely eating or resting, filling their study with charts and diagrams explaining how it all fits together, convinced that they're always on the verge of a great revelation... all while they take Intelligence drain every week they're afflicted. Unless the victim is healed by powerful magic like limited wish, they'll die when their Intelligence score reaches zero.
Hybrid Monster: They're more or less lich-golems, having the construct traits and magic immunity of the latter, and the necrotic and magical power of the former.
Make Them Rot: A grisgol's touch deals negative energy damage to other creatuers.
Mummy: Grisgols appear in 4th Edition as "scroll mummies," since they're easily confused for Large mummies due to their parchment "wrappings" and stiff gait, though they're distinguished by the sounds they make — the rustling of paper, squeak of leather, tinkling of glass — as well as the thin tendrils of black smoke escaping from cracks in their forms.
No-Sell: Like golems, grisgols are immune to magic, with the exception of the erase spell, which deals damage if delivered as a touch attack, and secret page, which renders them invisible.
The Paralyzer: Like a lich, a grisgol can try to paralyze another creature with a touch, and anyone affected will appear dead unless observers succeed at a high Spot or Heal check.
Powers as Programs: A grisgol can be constructed knowing up to 10 spell-like abilities, one for each spell level (and a cantrip), and each usable once per day, so long as the material components or spell foci are incorporated into the grisgol's body.
Soul-Powered Engine: Again, the heart of a grisgol is the phylactery of a lich that has had its body destroyed. This places the lich in limbo for as long as the grisgol survives, but should the construct be destroyed, the lich is free to regenerate its undead form as normal... and its first act is going to be getting payback on the people who now have its phylactery, followed by whoever put it in the grisgol.
The Spiny: Attacking a grisgol with a bludgeoning or slashing weapon releases clouds of dust and mold that force everyone within 10 feet of the thing to save against Constitution damage and contracting the slimy doom disease.

Grommam

Origin: Spelljammer
Playable: 2E
Alignment: Lawful Good

Ape-like, forest-dwelling humanoids who live in close-knit clans, though some sail through Wildspace.

Exotic Extended Marriage: Their family units are based on gorillas', with a single adult male, two-to-four females, and any children.
God-Emperor: The grommam's deities (technically demigods) actually live among them as rulers and advisors; as such, grommams are devoutly religious.
Killer Space Monkey: Subverted; grommams look something like kimono-wearing gorillas with rust-red fur, and their builds and nine-foot armspans can make them intimidating, but they're generally good people.
Starfish Language: Grommish combines "a variety of vocal hoots, screams, grunts, and calls" with body posture, facial expressions and finger-signs. Thankfully, they're capable of speaking the likes of Common and Elvish.
Walking Techbane: Grommams can cast (clerical) spells just fine, and can use spelljammer helms without mishap, but they have a lot of trouble handling other magic items, to the tune of a 40% failure rate each time they try to trigger a magic wand, potion, etc.

Groundling

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Magical hybrids of dwarves and giant badgers, created by evil wizards to serve as assassins.

Artificial Hybrid: Groundlings can be easily mistaken for dwarves at a distance, but have the snouts and claws of giant badgers. They are creations of Zhentarim wizards, and though they resent their enslavement, groundlings are loyal to their masters, hoping to serve so well that their condition is reversed (there are no records of this happening). It's unknown whether or not they're a True-Breeding Hybrid race or if they can only be created by magic.
Dig Attack: They often ambush foes by bursting from the earth and trying to drag victims into their tunnels.
Fast Tunneling: Their burrow speed is actually faster than their walking speed, though their 2nd Edition entry specifies that they can only dig through loose earth, not solid rock.
Professional Killer: Fitting their Lawful natures, groundlings follow strictly-structured guild rules while pursuing their targets, always bringing back a victim alive if requested, and ignoring anyone who does not interfere with their operations.
Weakened by the Light: As per their AD&D rules, groundlings are dazzled by bright light, suffering a minor attack roll penalty.

Grung

Origin: Greyhawk
Classification: Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (5E)
Playable: 5E
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Evil frog people patterned after poison dart frogs. They're all brightly colored, and each color of grung has a different type of poison. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Guard Drake

Classification: Natural Beast (4E), Dragon (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (4E-5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Quadrupedal draconic beasts originally created by the cult of Tiamat, though the secret of their creation has since spread among scholars of draconic lore.

Bioweapon Beast: Guard drakes aren't a natural dragon breed, and are incapable of reproduction. Instead they're created from a ritual involving several pounds of scales donated by a true dragon, a lot of fresh meat, and a cauldron, which produces an egg that hatches in a matter of hours.
Foil: To felldrakes. Felldrakes are self-perpetuating breeds of lesser dragons created by Bahamut, while guard drakes are artificial creatures first made by followers of Tiamat. Felldrakes are sapient and noble enough to serve the elves willingly, while guard drakes are only semi-intelligent and instinctively follow whoever feeds them.
Immune to Fire: Downplayed; chromatic guard drakes have energy resistances appropriate to their progenitor, so a black guard drake would resist acid damage, a red would resist fire, etc.
Imprinting: A newly hatched guard drake imprints upon the first creature that feeds it, establishing an aggressive but trusting bond with that individual.

Guardgoyle

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

Small guardian constructs first created by the Zhentarim wizards, and can now be found across Faerûn, protecting the treasures of the wealthy.

Achilles' Heel: According to 2nd Edition, earthquake, stone to flesh and transmute rock to mud are instant-kill attacks against guardgoyles, with No Saving Throw.
Elite Mook: Downplayed; most guardgoyles are two or three feet tall, but greater guardgoyles are human-sized. They only deal slightly more damage with their attacks, though, and unlike their smaller variants cannot fly or disguise themselves as a stautette or paperweight.
MacGuffin Guardian: A guardgoyle's only purpose is to defend an item designated by its master, and it will tirelessly stand guard over this charge. Should an approved individual move this item, the guardgoyle will follow, while if someone else tampers with it, this triggers an alarm effect for its master (so long as they're no more than a mile away) and incites the guardgoyle to attack. Should the guardgoyle lose track of the item it's guarding, like if someone picks it up and teleports away, it will go inert until its owner gives it something else to guard.
Our Gargoyles Rock: They're clearly designed in imitation of such monsters, and 2nd Edition classifies guardgoyles as a type of gargoyle, but they're actually constructs with no direct relation to those creatures. As such, they can be healed with stone shape and repair damage spells.
Poisonous Person: Downplayed; a guardgoyle can inflict a Constitution-damaging poison with its bites, but it only has enough venom for two such attacks before needing a refill. This does however mean that its owner can choose a different poison for it to use.
Super-Scream: A guardgoyle can shriek in combat, dealing sonic damage in a 30-foot cone and potentially deafening victims for one or two rounds. This racket can be heard up to half a mile away, and serves as a secondary alarm system.
The Voiceless: While smart enough to understand instructions, a guardgoyle cannot speak.

Guardinal

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_avoral_leonal_3e.jpg

An avoral and leonal (3e)

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Outsider (3E), Celestial (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Celestials that combine the features of handsome humans and noble animals, native to the Blessed Fields of Elysium, the realm of pure Good. On their home plane they are peaceful, quick to laugh and slow to anger, but the guardinals can be just as fierce as any archon or eladrin when battling evil, and often roam the planes on righteous crusades.

Beast Man: They resemble humans with prominent animal traits.
Celestial Paragons and Archangels: The guardinals are led by Talisid and the Five Companions, six immensely powerful and benevolent beings who protect Elysium from evil. They're often compared to an epic-level, divine adventuring party.
Healing Hands: As per a paladin's "Lay on Hands" class feature, most guardinals can heal other creatures a certain number of hit points each day.
No-Sell: They are immune to lightning damage and cannot be petrified by any means.
Omniglot: Like other celestials, guardinals know all languages and can communicate with any creature that has a language.
Our Angels Are Different: Guardinals are perhaps the least conventional-looking of the celestials, resembling various types of mammalian and avian beastfolk. They can almost be considered divine lycanthropes, as they have an affinity for animals, hybrid forms blending human and beast, and are vulnerable to silvered weapons.
Speaks Fluent Animal: Guardinals can communicate telepathically with animals.

Avoral

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E, 5E)

The far-sighted flyers of Elysium, serving as the guardinals' scouts and sentinels as they soar through the skies of Eronia and Belierin.

Bird People: They have feathery hair, wings instead of arms, and clawed feet.
Shock and Awe: They can use lightning bolt three times per day.
Super-Senses: Avorals, being essentially angelic anthropomorphic eagles, have incredibly sharp eyesight and can make out fine details on an object from miles away. They have innate magical powers which further enhance their eyesight, such as see invisibility and true seeing.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Avorals can project an aura of magical fear once per day.
Walking the Earth: Avorals have a deep sense of wanderlust, and some leave Elysium and never return, flying across hundreds of worlds just to see what lies over the next rise or across the sea.

Cervidal

A cervidal (right) and lupinal (left). (3e)

Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)

Among the most numerous of the guardinals, the horned and hoofed cervidals usually defend the layer of Amoria from invaders, but will serve as footsoldiers in the celestial hosts when necessary.

Fauns and Satyrs: The cervidal is a satyr-like creature with short, dark red fur, a pair of long, curved horns atop its head, and hooves instead of feet.
Healing Hands: Instead of a "Lay on Hands" ability, a cervidal can deliver several effects with a touch of their horns: neutralize poison, remove disease, dispel magic, or even dismissal.
In a Single Bound: They have powerful legs, resulting in a bonus on Jump checks.
Use Your Head: Cervidals prefer to open a fight by charging in with their horned heads for extra damage, and continue to headbutt foes in melee.

Equinal

Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)

Strong, rowdy but good-natured, equinals are eight-foot-tall humanoids with horse-like features.

Boisterous Bruiser: Equinals embrace any opportunity to beat down evil creatures, and never back down from a fight, even when obviously outmatched.
Feather Fingers: They have true hooves for feet, but equinals' hands end in thick, iron-hard fingers that can be used for manipulation or set into a hoof-like fist.
Good Old Fisticuffs: Equinals disdain weapons, preferring to fight with their fists.
Super-Scream: They can let loose an ear-splitting whinny that can deafen or stun any nearby creatures.

Leonal

Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)

The most powerful of the guardinals, the lion-headed leonals are regal in peace and terrible in battle.

Cat Folk: Humanoids with feline faces and claws.
Combat Medic: Leonals possess powerful innate healing magic like cure critical wounds, remove disease, and heal. They are also superhumanly strong lion men who can rip their enemies to shreds with tooth and claw, and they can sling the fireball spell at will.
Deadly Lunge: Like lions, leonals can make pounce attacks on a charge, raking foes with their claws.
King of Beasts: The lionlike leonals are the mightiest type of guardinal much like how a solar is the mightiest type of angel. In turn the leonals are led by Talisid the Celestial Lion, the mightiest of all guardinals.
Status Buff: They're surrounded by a protective aura that replicates the effects of magic circle against evil and a lesser globe of invulnerability.
Super-Scream: A leonal's roar is loud enough to deal sonic damage.
Words Can Break My Bones: In addition to doing sonic damage, a leonal's roar replicates a holy word spell, which can deafen, blind, paralyze or even kill nongood creatures, depending on how much weaker they are than the leonal.

Lupinal

Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)

The wolflike lupinals are constantly on the prowl for incursions of evil, whether into Elysium or parts of the Material Plane they have decided to protect.

Noble Wolf: Lupinals are half-wolf creatures that oppose evil, and are among the most likely guardinals to assist other beings against dark forces. They're also noted to have Lawful tendencies due to their pack mentality and preference for cooperation and harmony.
Super-Reflexes: They can dodge incoming missile fire similarly to how the Deflect Arrows feat works.
Super-Senses: Like mundane wolves, lupinals can detect other creatures by scent, or track with their sense of smell.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: A lupinal's howl can cause any non-celestial creature that hears it to panic in fear.
Wolf Man: They can easily be mistaken for werewolves, until the observer notes the lupinal's intelligence and regal poise.

Musteval

^3e

Challenge Rating: 2 (3E, 5E)

The smallest and weakest of the guardinals, the mustevals serve Elysium as spies and messengers, and often aid mortal heroes by delivering crucial information about powerful evil threats.

Art Evolution: While they're named for, and illustrated as, ferret folk in 3E, 5th Edition describes and depicts them as distinctly mousy.
A Form You Are Comfortable With: Mustevals use their disguise self ability to hide their animalistic features when dealing with other creatures.
Frisky Ferret: Mustevals are noted to be agile and seldom sit still for very long.
Hit-and-Run Tactics: In 3rd Edition, mustevals have the non-standard ability to take actions at any point during their movement, while 5th Edition lets them use a reaction to retreat from a foe who closes with them, without provoking attacks of opportunity.
Invisibility: They can use it as a spell-like ability once per day.
The Resenter: Mustevals resent how they are not represented among the Five Companions of Talisid, and believe that this oversight must be corrected soon.

Ursinal

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E, 5E)

The big, burly scholars and philosophers of Elysium, who serve as the guardinals' record-keepers and as advisors to the leonals.

Beary Friendly: They're bear-like humanoids from the plane of pure Good, about as friendly as can be... towards other good beings. Evil creatures will find that ursinals are essentially intelligent, bipedal dire bears that know magic.
The Good Chancellor: One of their roles in guardinal society.
Insufferable Genius: Ursinals are very knowledgeable, love to share that knowledge, and will go on endless digressions while doing so.
Magic Knight: Ursinals are both 12th-level wizards and pretty capable in close combat.
Martial Pacifist: Ursinals dislike combat and try hard to avoid physical confrontations, but are as fierce as any bear when forced to fight.
Super-Reflexes: On Elysium, ursinals can react to danger faster than their senses should allow them to, granting them the benefits of the "Uncanny Dodge" class ability.

Gulgar

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

Crystal-studded humanoids who were driven from the Elemental Plane of Earth generations ago.

Eat Dirt, Cheap: Gulgars consume crystals, which strengthen their bones. This naturally leads to bitter conflicts with subterranean races like dwarves who mine for the same gems.
Gem Tissue: Gulgars' bodies are covered in several outcroppings of their crystalline bones, which add bonus damage to their slam attacks, let them gore enemies with their chin-horns, and count as adamantine weapons for the purposes of bypassing damage reduction and hardness. These crystals yellow with age, turning cloudy and opaque, and if broken off from the gulgar will become as brittle as quartz.
Invading Refugees: The gulgars' ancestors fled the Elemental Plane of Earth after an incursion of geniekind, and have dwelt upon the Material Plane for long enough to be considered natives.
Made a Slave: Gulgars have found yrthaks to be tractable mounts, since the gulgars are immune to the yrthaks' sonic attacks, while the flyers are vulnerable to the gulgars' sonic pulses. While some yrthaks serve the gulgars in exchange for food and protection, most are effectively slaves serving out of fear.
Make Some Noise: Every few rounds, a gulgar can emit a damaging 30-foot cone of sonic energy that may also deafen foes (which is especially devastating to the aforementioned yrthaks, who lack eyes and rely upon their hearing for their blindsight).
Starfish Language: Gulgars' subsonic speech is inaudible to most creatures, and only those with tremorsense, or a form of blindsight keyed to sensitive hearing, can hear them speaking. Alternatively, a lip-reader who knows Terran can understand them with a high Spot check.

Characters / Dungeons And Dragons Creatures G

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G

Wingwyrd

Dao

Djinni

Efreeti

Janni

Khayal

Marid

Qorrashi

Ghost

Ghost Legionnaire

Ghoul

Abyssal Ghoul

Gibbering Orb

Athasian Gith

Duthka'gith

Blue

Cave Lord

Dekanter Goblin

Forestkith Goblin

Gurik Cha'ahl

Nilbog

Snow Goblin

Vril

Adamantine Golem

Alchemical Golem

Black Ice Golem

Blood Golem of Hextor

Brass Golem

Cadaver Golem

Chain Golem

Clay Golem

Coal Golem

Coral Golem

Crystal Golem

Dragonbone Golem

Dragonflesh Golem

Drakestone Golem

Equine Golem

Fang Golem

Flesh Golem

Force Golem

Fungus Golem

Glasswork Golem

Gloom Golem

Grave Dirt Golem

Ice Golem

Incarnum Golem

Iron Golem

Ironwyrm Golem

Magmacore Golem

Mithral Golem

Mud Golem

Prismatic Golem

Puzzle Golem

Relief Golem

Rope Golem

Sand Golem

Shadesteel Golem

Snow Golem

Stone Golem

Web Golem

Rimefire Griffon

Avoral

Cervidal

Equinal

Leonal

Lupinal

Musteval

Ursinal

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