Dungeons And Dragons Creatures H / Characters

Monsters from the myriad worlds of Dungeons & Dragons.

Notes on the Entries

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

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H

Hadozee

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

Sometimes disparagingly called "deck apes," these simian humanoids are natural sailors and explorers, whether in uncharted waters or the void of Wildspace. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Hag

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Fey Humanoid (4E), Fey (5E)

Want to know a dark secret? Ask a hag. The trick lies in getting the truth out of her.

— Volo

Malevolent crones that resemble elderly humanoid women, hags are cunning and ancient creatures that use their intellect and magical power to sow misery and destruction.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Hags come in a wide variety of colors. Annis hags are bluish-purple, bheur hags are pale blue, night hags are dark purple, sea hags have green or blue scales, and green hags are... well, green.
Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: In Fifth Edition, hags "perceive ugliness as beauty, and vice versa". They revel in having a hideous appearance and sometimes go out of their way "improve" upon it by picking at sores, wearing skins and bones as decoration, and rubbing refuse and dirt into their hair and clothing.
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Past editions state that hags reproduce by mating with human males, either "through charm or coercion," but in 5th Edition, hags propagate by snatching and devouring human infants. After stealing a baby from its cradle or its mother's womb, the hag consumes the child. A week later, the hag gives birth to a daughter who looks human until her thirteenth birthday, whereupon the child transforms into the spitting image of her hag mother.
Changeling Tale: A hag's child, conceived after stealing and eating a human infant, looks like a normal humanoid until she transforms into a hag on adulthood. Hag mothers often take advantage of this by "returning" the infants to the families from which they stole the original baby, watching from the shadows to enjoy the family's shock and dismay as their child grows into a wicked monster.
The Corrupter: There are few things a hag loves more than to see the righteous fall from grace, and will often use both magical and mundane manipulation to turn others against each other or force good people to compromise their principles.
Deal with the Devil: Over their long lives, hags accumulate much knowledge of local lore, dark creatures, and magic, which they are pleased to sell. The terms of such bargains typically involve demands to compromise principles or give up something dear, especially if the thing lost diminishes or negates the knowledge gained through the bargain. Unlike devils, who make bargains to corrupt the other person so that the devil will get their soul, hags mostly just do this to make people miserable.
Eats Babies: They have a taste for the flesh of infants, and in Fifth Edition eating a baby is actually part of their reproductive cycle.
The Fair Folk: Older editions had hags as a type of Monstrous Humanoid, but fourth edition reimagined them as a kind of fae that embodies nature's capacity for cruelty and ugliness.
Handshake of Doom: The lore for hags in Volo's Guide to Monsters suggests they enjoy sealing deals by shaking hands, which drops whatever illusion they have up (even if the character can't see through it, they can feel the clawlike hand itself). Hags almost always make deals with the aim of twisting them to make the unfortunate soul in question (or someone else) as miserable as possible (be it through their price or twisting the service they provide).
Master of Illusion: Green hags and sea hags have the innate ability to disguise themselves with an illusory appearance. This illusion won't hold up to physical inspection but is otherwise very convincing, more so in the former's case than in the latter's.
Metamorphosis: Under somewhat unclear circumstances, hags can transform from one type of their kind into another — a bheur into a green hag, for instance, or a sea into an annis hag. Some make a point of spending at least a portion of their lives as each kind of hag.
One-Gender Race: Hags are exclusively female, though see "hagspawn" below.
Time Abyss: Hags are effectively immortal unless killed, and their oldest "grandmothers" are incredibly ancient beings who have seen mortal empires rise and fall.
The Weird Sisters: Hags may form covens, which can consist of any combination of hag types, granting them the power to cast more spells and craft magic items. These are considered alliances of equals, and always consist of three hags so that any argument between two coven members can be settled by the third — groups of more than three hags always fall apart.
Wicked Witch: Hags are largely based on the monstrous, cackling witch of folklore and fairytales. They appear as hideously ugly old women who use their dark magical skills to cause suffering amongst mortals for kicks, and also like to eat children.
Wolverine Claws: Many types of hags attack with their claws, and annis hags in particular have long iron talons growing out of their fingers, which are used alongside their iron fangs to tear their enemies apart.

Annis Hag

Challenge Rating: 6 (3E, 5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Annis hags are the largest and strongest of their species, as well as the most monstrous in appearance. They tend to associate the most with giant-kin, such as ogres and trolls, often ruling over them with a combination of brute strength, verbal abuse, and superstition. They are less magically adept than other types of hag, but they're hard to kill and well-suited for rending victims limb from limb.

Corruption of a Minor: An annis hag may present itself to a lonely child as a kind old woman and give the child a magical token through which they can speak to each other. The hag will then encourage the child to do bad things which start out relatively harmless but get progressively more wicked and dangerous.
Genuine Human Hide: They enjoy making leather out of the skins of children.
Killer Bear Hug: An annis hag can kill someone by pulling them into a bear hug and crushing the life out of them. They can even kill trolls and ogres this way.
Monster Lord: It's not uncommon for annises to use their strength, magic and reputation to take control of tribes of ogres, trolls and other powerful, stupid humanoids.
Wolverine Claws: An annis hag's claws and teeth are made of iron and incredibly sharp.
Would Hurt a Child: All hags eat infants as part of their twisted reproductive cycle, but annis hags prefer to hunt children over adults. Not only do annis hags like the taste of children, but they find that the skin of children makes such supple leather.

Bheur Hag

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E), 7 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Bheur hags live in wintry lands, favoring snow-covered mountains. They become more active during winter, using their ice and weather magic to make life miserable for nearby settlements.

Color-Coded Elements: A bheur hag has blue skin and white hair, matching her affinity for ice magic.
An Ice Person: Bheur hags have multiple cold-related spells, which allow them to do things like shoot rays of freezing energy or whip up storms of ice and snow. They also love to conjure blizzards over isolated villages, hoping that the villagers will be driven to evil acts out of desperation.
I'm a Humanitarian: If a bheur hag kills someone in combat, she may stop attacking for a moment as she rips the victim's corpse apart and devours the remains. This gruesome display is so horrific that it can drive nearby creatures who witness the act temporarily insane.
Magic Staff: Bheur Hags carry a "greystaff", a length of wood that they can ride on to fly around and which allows them to cast additional spells.

Bog Hag

Challenge Rating: 2 (3E), 10 (4E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (3E), Evil (4E)

Swamp-dwelling crones who disguise themselves by wearing the skins of their previous victims.

Genuine Human Hide: Bog hags tear off and wear the skins of their victims, which heals the hag and allows them to magically assume that person's shape as per the alter self spell. The downside is that without the application of a gentle repose spell (which the hags don't innately know), a stolen skin will rot and become useless in a week.
Poisonous Person: Their claws carry the disease known as "bog rot," which damages victims' Constitution.
Sinister Suffocation: Bog hags prefer to either creep up on a lone victim, grab them in their claws, and then swim underwater to drown them.
Weak to Fire: They take double damage from fire, and tend to flee if enemies brandish flames at them.

Bruja

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good (2E), True Neutral (3E)

Melancholy hags who have turned away from evil, and despite their hideous appearance are kind and helpful. Bruja typically live alone in forest cottages, but may walk in disguise among others to gather information, assist those in need, and work quietly and subtly to oppose dark forces.

Friend to All Living Things: They can speak with animals at will and tend to have a good number of domesticated or Woodland Creatures around their homes, companions they also use to spy on their territory.
Good Is Not Nice: Bruja aren't evil anymore, but are still hags. They tend to be arrogant and egotistical, especially since they're used to the obedience of their animal friends, and those who wrong them are likely to end up as the bruja's dinner.
Heel–Face Turn: For whatever reason, bruja are hags who have forsaken their evil ways. One story is that these hags discovered a maternal side that led them to rear their daughters with full awareness of what would happen to them when they came of age, instead of leaving them to make their way through the trauma of their transformation into hags on their own. Another tale is that the bruja were crused with a vision of the time and place of their deaths, haunting them so badly that they decided to atone for their past misdeeds.
Prefers Raw Meat: Due to their past, bruja have a gluttonous appetite for raw meat, though they now supplement it with nuts and berries from their forest homes.
Prophet Eyes: Bruja's eyes are milky and dull, making them appear blind, though their senses are so keen that they can see in the dark and it's impossible to surprise them.
White Mage: Rather than hexes, bruja cast spells such as bless, remove curse, and magic circle against evil.

Dune Hag

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

Wasteland cousins of the annis, these hags use their magical disguises and enchanting kiss to lure victims away to be murdered and eaten.

Glamour: They can use disguise self three times per day, usually to approach an unsuspecting victim for a kiss.
Magic Kiss: Anyone kissed by a dune hag has to save or become enthralled by her, believing that she is a beautiful desert princess, and the hag form seen by others is an illusion. It's more or less a charm person effect, though the victim can make a new save if they ever see the hag in her true form, or is presented with undeniable evidence that she means them harm.
Sand Blaster: Dune hags can cast haboob three times per day, creating a damaging sandstorm that also obscures vision.
The Vamp: Once the victim is enthralled by a kiss from a disguise dune hag, she usually suggests they go somewhere for a "tryst."

Dusk Hag

Origin: Eberron
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 6 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Sometimes born to night hags, these crones see visions of the future in their dreams, knowledge they may be willing to share as part of a bargain. But like all of their kind, dusk hags delight in causing misfortune, and though their prophecies are correct, they more often than not lead to suffering.

Brown Note: The touch of a dusk hag ravages the mind, inflicting psychic damage in 5th Edition.
Curse: Dusk hags can lay a terrible curse upon sleeping creatures just by touching them. While the curse persists, the victim slowly wastes away, suffering cumulative Maximum HP Reduction every time they take a long rest.
Dream Weaver: Dusk hags can influence the dreams of others, sending messages or inflicting nightmares with a touch.
Forced Sleep: They can innately cast the sleep spell in 5th Edition, all the better to subject you to their dream-based powers.
Horned Humanoid: 5th Edition dusk hags have curling horns like those of a night hag.
Life Drain: In 5th Edition, a dusk hag can force a creature which has just woken up to make a saving throw. On a failure, the creature takes psychic damage as the hag eats its dreams, and the hag regains an equal amount of health.

Fate Hag

Challenge Rating: 4 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Hags sensitive to the strands of fate and destiny, giving them a compulsion to share what they see with others. They dwell in the Feywild or Shadowfell, depending on whether the hag is more inclined towards portents of hope or doom.

Seers: Unsurprisingly, they know magic like guidance, divination and scrying.
Shear Menace: Fate hags fight with the same shears they use to snip threads of fate, which are so sharp that they deal force damage rather than mundane weapon damage. "These shears are frightful weapons, severing a foe's destiny as well as its flesh."
Threads of Fate: They're associated with such, and can use their "Trace the Threads" ability to replicate a legend lore spell once per day. Less benignly, they can entangle foes in spectral silver threads to immobilize them, or inflict a "Destiny Curse" to impose disadvantage on rolls and deal Damage Over Time.

Green Hag

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

Green hags are the most "stereotypical" of the hags, with the general focus on spellcasting and shapeshifting. Their abilities often tend towards either the obvious enchanter route or towards evil druidism, and they have a particular focus on using their powers of shapechanging and illusions to make lives miserable.

Enchanted Forest: Green hags prefer to lair with dark and dismal woods, and as they grow in power they can make them increasingly angled, malignant and dangerous to traverse.
Invisible Monsters: 5th edition green hags have a unique form of personal invisibility which lasts indefinitely and prevents the hag from leaving footprints or any other trace of her presence.
Voice Changeling: They can mimic both humanoid voices and the sounds of animals, which they normally use to lure victims to them or to scare off unwanted visitors.

Marzanna

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

Stooped hags who personify death and winter, and often cooperate with ogres, frost giants or frost folk to acquire human flesh to devour. Peasants believe that if one can trick a marzanna, they can avoid death itself, but it is more common for them to leave offerings in an attempt to bribe these hags to spare them.

Deadly Gaze: A marzanna's dreadful gaze can cause a creature to become panicked for 10 rounds, or on an additional failed saving throw, die of fright.
An Ice Person: They have the cold subtype, and know a repertoire of winter magic such as obscuring snow, ray of frost, wall of ice and ice storm.
Wolverine Claws: Marzannas use their talon-like hands in combat, and can make a special rend attack if both their claw attacks hit.

Night Hag

Classification: Outsider (3E), Fey Humanoid (4E), Fiend (5E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E), 14 (4E), 5 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil, Evil (4E)

Night Hags are a fiendish branch of the hag family tree, and can be found all over the Lower Planes, most commonly Hades and Gehenna. They specialize in trading corrupted souls, both ones that found their way to the Lower Planes on their own, and souls the hag collects herself.

Horned Humanoid: Night hags are distinguished by the pair of curved horns growing from their temples.
Intangibility: A night hag can enter or leave the Ethereal Plane with an action, so long as she has her heartstone.
Mind over Matter: In her lair, a powerful night hag can telekinetically fling other creatures up to 30 feet, dealing damage.
Panacea: A night hag's heartstone is a black gem that she uses to become ethereal, but a touch from it also cures any disease.
Poisonous Person: In 3rd Edition, their claw attacks could infect creatures with demon fever, dealing Constitution damage or even drain.
Prison Dimension: The most powerful night hags may be able to banish intruders from their lairs to a prison demiplane, until they force themselves out with an opposed Charisma check.
Psychological Torment Zone: Those who approach a night hag's lair may find themselves briefly transported to a demiplane of shadows, corpses and cackling, or encounter hallucinations of dead loved ones, or even of themselves.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Unlike other hags who disguise themselves with an illusion, night hags can polymorph into a Medium or Small female humanoid.
Your Soul Is Mine!: While a humanoid sleeps, a night hag can straddle the person ethereally and intrude upon its dreams. The ethereal hag fills her victim's head with doubts and fears, in the hope of influencing it to perform evil acts in the waking world. The hag continues her nightly visitations until the victim finally expires in its sleep, and if the hag has tipped her victim's alignment to evil, she traps its corrupted soul in her soul bag to be bartered with in infernal markets.

Sea Hag

Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Sea hags are by said to be the ugliest of all hags, with slimy scales covering their pallid skin, hair like seaweed, fish-like faces, and emaciated bodies. Sea hags live in dismal and polluted underwater lairs, surrounded by merrow and other aquatic monsters.

Deadly Gaze: A sea hag's Death Glare can instantly drop a creature to 0 hit points. It only works on creatures who are frightened of her, and the target can make a saving throw to resist the effect.
Fish People: They have scales and very fish-like faces.
Gonk: Sea hags are said to be the ugliest of all hags. Even if they use illusion magic to hide their true appearance, their illusory appearance will still be relatively ugly.
Plant Hair: Their 5th Edition art depicts them with hair literally made out of strands of dripping seaweed.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: The mere sight of a sea hag's true form is horrific enough to frighten nearby creatures, making those creatures easy prey for her Death Glare.

Sea Fury

Origin: Critical Role
Challenge Rating: 12 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Hags may form covens to combat a greater threat, but once that threat is defeated, those covens can collapse into infighting. A sea hag who slays her sisters and takes their power for her own becomes a dangerous sea fury, but is driven mad by her stolen power and the loneliness accompanying it.

Deadly Gaze: They can literally kill with a stare — fixing their gaze on a frightened creature is a "save or die" attack.
Elemental Shapeshifter: A sea fury can transform herself into a watery wave as a legendary action.
Hates Being Alone: To combat their loneliness, sea furies try to lure others to their lair by spreading rumors, hoarding treasure, and so forth. This is a temporary solution, as a sea fury will kill her guests as soon as she tires of them.
King Mook: A sea fury is a sea hag on steroids. Compared to her normal counterparts, a sea fury has twice as many hit points, deadlier attacks, resistances and immunities to multiple damage types, and more effective ways of frightening people to set them up for her glare.
Make My Monster Grow: Crabs and octopodes within a mile of a sea fury's lair grow in size to serve it as spies and guards.
Necromancy: Sea furies can conjure specters of their victims, whether shipwrecked sailors or their murdered sisters, to fight on their behalf.
Summon Magic: They can conjure swarms of snakes as a legendary action.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Their origin involved betraying and murdering their sisters once a threat they banded together to fight was dealt with, and sea furies similarly dispose of those they lure to their lairs as soon as their loneliness is appeased.

Shrieking Hag

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Spiteful hags who resemble tall, regal crones wearing tattered robes, carrying walking sticks they don't actually need. They dwell in desolate lands, preying on travelers and spreading suffering, but shrieking hags particularly enjoy tricking the strong and virtuous.

Blow You Away: Most of their spell repertoire falls under this, such as gust of wind, control winds and whirlwind.
Flight: They're one of the few hags innately capable of magical flight.
Sore Loser: They fly into a rage should a target resist their trickery, a state in which a shrieking hag is capable of destroying entire villages.
Super-Scream: Their signature ability is a maddening shriek, which deals damage to all within 20 feet and can also leave them confused.

Hagspawn

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

While the female children of hags grow into hags themselves, male offspring inherit none of their mother's magic, but reflect her monstrous appearance, brutish strength, and often her evil temperament. They tend to be abandoned as children, growing into bandits or wandering sellswords.

Fantastic Racism: Humans tend to fear and hate hagspawn, viewing them as "ill-tempered monsters" just as bad as their mothers, though other civilized humanoids like dwarves or elves can be more willing to judge hagspawn based on their individual merits. This experience gives hagspawn sympathy for the likes of half-orcs and tieflings.
Gonk: Hagspawn are tall but hunched, with exaggerated arms, long, lank black hair, red eyes, coarse facial features, and a skin tone that reflects their hag mother's background.
Hair-Trigger Temper: They take offense easily, and can receive "even the most innocent remark as a hidden slight."
One-Gender Race: As mentioned, hagspawn are exclusively male.
Then Let Me Be Evil: Like tieflings, hagspawn have so many people assuming the worst about them that they often embrace their heritage, taking their mother's name or calling themselves "Hagson." But others stoically endure distrust and focus on combating evil until they've proven themselves virtuous and loyal.

Hagunemnon

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 29 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Also known as proteans, these creatures were infused with chaos during their race's creation, and as such are constantly in flux, only rarely able to hold a given shape for more than a minute.

Fantastic Racism: They're homicidally bigoted towards all non-shapeshifters, and treat non-hagunemnon shapeshifters with a great deal of condescension and snobbery.
Omniglot: When they aren't speaking their own incomprehensible tongue, proteans can speak and understand every other creature's language.
Perpetually Protean: Like their inspiration, they are constantly taking on new shapes, mutating at a moment's notice beyond recognition. More worryingly, they are known to travel extensively in search of new shapes to copy — and they prefer to kill their targets once they've finished acquiring their forms...
Shapeshifter Weapon: Proteans can make up to five attacks per round, using either their own slam attacks or adopting the bite, claw, tail, etc. attacks of one or more other creatures. They can also take advantage of the extraordinary abilities of up to four creatures at once, though not spell-like or supernatural abilities.
Shout-Out: A reference to the Haggunenons of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978).
Starfish Language: Like their speakers, the proteans' language is constantly changing, so that only other hagunemnons can understand it.
Transformation Horror: Their slam attacks destabilize their opponent's form, causing heavy hit point and Constitution damage as their victim's body seethes and boils. Any creature whose Constitution is reduced to 0 by these attacks is reduced to a puddle of clear fluid.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: On the one hand, a protean can freely assume the form of any non-divine being no smaller than a flea and no bigger than 200 feet in its largest dimension, or mix-and-match body parts from several different creatures. On the other hand, they have to take a move-equivalent action each round to keep holding the same shape they were in the previous round.

Half-Dragon

Classification: Dragon (3E), same as non-draconic parent (5E)
Challenge Rating: Same as non-draconic parent +2 (3E, 5E)

The hybrid offspring of dragons and other beings.

Child of Two Worlds: Half-dragons often find themselves uncomfortably placed between their parent species' society. Dragons rarely respect half-dragons and never consider them peers, while humanoids view them with fear and suspicion and often cast them out as monsters. As such, most half-dragons find themselves forced on the fringes of the world, unable to fit into either humanoid or draconic society and too few to form their own.
Draconic Humanoid: Half-dragons with humanoid parents are humanoid themselves, but with additional traits such as claws, scales, tails, draconic heads, and sometimes functional or vestigial wings.
Foreign Cuss Word: Half-dragons have a tendency to curse in Draconic, or in pidgins of Draconic and their other primary language.
Genetic Memory: Half-dragons all know Draconic, even if they weren't raised by their draconic parent, as the language was magically inherited.
Half-Human Hybrid: Half-dragons are most commonly the children of a humanoid and a dragon.
Hybrid Monster: While the default assumption is that the other half of a half-dragons is humanoid, dragons can breed with more or less everything, including bestial monsters and more exotic sapients such as centaurs, djinni or yuan-ti.
Long-Lived: Half-dragons usually have twice the lifespan of their non-draconic parent.

Half-Giant

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Giant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Playable: 2E-3E
Alignment: Variable (2E), Neutral Good (3E)

Hulking crossbreeds between humans and giants, who used their psionic power to escape slavery in a harsh desert land.

Canon Immigrant: They debuted in the 2nd Edition Dark Sun setting before becoming a general psionic race in 3rd Edition, which explained that they had "recently settled in the deepest part of the hot deserts to the south," having escaped servitude beneath "cruel sorcerer-kings" in a land of which they speak little.
Luke Nounverber: Half-giant have childhood names, as well as given names bestowed by friends or their community, which run along the lines of Dunewalker, Raincaller, Sunharrow, etc.
Mood-Swinger: As per their AD&D rules, half-giants routinely change their alignments in response to what situation has influenced them lately, resulting in dice rolls to determine which part of their alignment is fixed, which is variable, and what that variable part is today.
Nay-Theist: Half-giants have little use for religion, and sometimes even go out of their way to disparage deities. This isn't because they don't believe in gods, but because half-giants don't think deities always have their worshipers' best interest at heart.
Psychic Powers: As expected for an Athasian race, half-giants are latent psionicists, and in 3rd Edition can use stomp once per day.
Retcon: 2nd Edition half-giants are certifiably Huge, twice the size of humans, but 3rd Edition scales them down to Medium-sized, yet with the "Powerful Build" trait that lets them count as Large creatures in certain circumstances.

Halfling

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

Short but nimble humanoids known for their love of simple pleasures, natural good luck, and surprising courage in the face of evil. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Hammerclaw

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

Lobster-like monsters the size of horses, which subdue prey with the help of sonic attacks fired from their claws.

Giant Enemy Crab: Large predatory crustaceans known to attack even when not hungry, simply for the pleasure of harming others.
It Can Think: Downplayed; hammerclaws can manage a few words of Aquan, and have enough vicious cunning to be successful hunters, but their Intelligence is only 4, making them dumber than ogres.
Make Some Noise: Hammerclaws can snap their oversized claws to create a cone of sonic energy that deals damage and can stun those caught in its effect.
Power Pincers: Their claws deal damage, and can grab and constrict foes they hit.

Hannya

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These fallen women have made unholy pacts to attain serpentine forms.

Charm Person: They can project a suggestion into the mind of an unwary target, which works regardless of language barrier, but only if the target is unaware of the hannya's true nature.
Personal Space Invader: Hannya can wrap around and constrict prey like boas.
Revenge: Hannya were formerly human females, evil wu jen, shugenja, or other mages who were cast out of their homes for their crimes. This led them to pledge their loyalty to dark powers in exchange for their new forms and abilities, which they use to prey upon their old communities.
Snake People: Their lower bodies are that of a thick serpent's, and when excited or agitated, they tend to speak in sputtering hisses interspaced with cackling.
To Serve Man: Like hags, hannya's favorite food is human flesh.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can use polymorph self at will, usually to assume the form of a harmless old lady, traveling priest, or lost child, to lull victims into a false sense of security.
Weaksauce Weakness: Violets. A hannya will not voluntarily enter a building surrounded by violets, nor can she bring herself to touch someone carrying the flowers — in fact, she can't even affect such a person with her spells. At best, a disguised hannya can politely ask for the person to put the violets away by claiming she's allergic to them, or for the person to put the flowers in a vase so she can admire them.
Wicked Witch: Their entries usually describe hannya as an oriental variant of hag.

Harengon

Classification: Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/8 (5E)
Playable: 5E
Alignment: Any

An exuberant and energetic race of leoprine humanoids, quick to react and blessed with natural good fortune. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Harpy

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Fey Humanoid (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 6 (4E), 1 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil, Evil (4E)

Wicked winged women with a supernaturally alluring song, but evil natures.

Compelling Voice: No matter their physical form, harpies have long had the ability to lure victims closer with an enthralling song, overlapping these harpies with mythological sirens. Their 1st Edition Monster Manaul simply states that sirens are harpies that happen to live along coasts and prey upon sailors.
Fan Disservice: Their 3rd Edition Monster Manual art depicts them topless, but with the sagging bosom of an old woman.
Harping on About Harpies: D&D has had harpies throughout its history as evil Monstrous Humanoids with hypnotic singing voices, though their appearance has varied considerably.
- 2e harpies are ugly, resembling nasty-looking crone-like women who have the lower bodies and wings of vultures, but with beautiful, enrapturing singing voices (in contrast to their shrieking, cackling language).
- 3e harpies are, similarly, ugly creatures who combined the worst aspects of crones and vultures, only with draconic legs and wings.
- 4e harpies take a swing into the Gorgeous Gorgon territory, with bird wings and claws but otherwise regular humanoid appearances. In the default Nentir Vale setting, they’re given an origin as the descendants of an evil elf queen whose family misused magic to assume the form of birds in order to spy upon their tyrannized subjects. When their people revolted, the magic went haywire and trapped them as half-elf, half-bird beings.
- In 5th edition, harpies keep the Cute Monster Girl looks, with human-like bodies but monstrous claws. They're also given a new origin story as an elven maiden who learned a beautiful song to woo the god Fenmarel Mestarine. When her trick didn't work, she got mad and used magic to turn herself into the first harpy, corrupting her love into a predatory hunger for the flesh of others.
One-Gender Race: This too fluctuates by edition, with early works depicting harpies as all-female and depending on parthenogenesis and/or humanoid males to perpetuate themselves, while 4th Edition explicitly states that there are male harpies, but they live in gender-segregated flocks and rarely stick around after producing hatchlings with a female.
Winged Humanoid: Harpies largely resemble monstrous women with functional wings — these are usually avian, but in 3rd Edition they're draconic instead.

Harssaf

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Desert-dwelling humanoids who can command the forces of heat and sand.

Apocalypse Cult: Harssafs don't worship any particular deity, but the desert itself. They believe themselves to be the chosen children of the desert, spawned from its very sands, and only they will survive when great sandstorms expand the desert to cover the rest of the world.
Bare-Fisted Monk: Harssafs' favored class is monk, and rumors persist of ancient harssaf monasteries hidden deep in the desert, which record the race's history and pass down fighting techniques.
Desert Bandits: These humanoids live nomadic lives in the great deserts of the world, sometimes skirmishing with other harssaf clans, but preferring to raid their "soft outlander" neighbors. They don't take any particular pride in killing others, but harssafs view it as a necessary survival skill.
Elemental Shapeshifting: Harssafs can freely assume a sand form, allowing them to evade attacks, slither along the ground, and slip through narrow gaps and crevices.
Playing with Fire: At will, harssafs can surround themselves with a fiery aura that damages anything around them, or anything they strike with metal weapons.
Sand Blaster: Once per day, a harssaf can generate a pulse of sand in a 30-foot radius, dealing damage and potentially blinding victims.

Hatori

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Also known as "sandwyrms," "desert dragons" or "the crocodiles of the sands," these fearsome desert predators ambush prey from beneath the sand.

Elephant Graveyard: Legend has it that somewhere in the desert is a hidden burial ground where hatori go to die... and since gems and magical wargear tend to accumulate in hatori's stomachs over their long lives, said burial ground would be full of such treasure.
It Can Think: They're somewhere between ogres and humans in intelligence, though while hatori can speak Draconic, "they rarely care to engage in discussion with any creature that isn't obviously more powerful than it, such as a true dragon."
Mating Season Mayhem: Every ten years, hatori migrate to the heart of the desert, where males fight vicious battles over breeding rights, leading desert nomads to speak of a "time of thunder when mountains die."
Never Smile at a Crocodile: The hatori is a territorial predator that looks like a monstrous alligator.
Rent-a-Zilla: Like crocodiles, hatori never stop growing. Tales speak of 200-foot-long hatori that possess scales the size of boulders and jaws large enough to swallow entire caravans whole.
Sand Is Water: Hatori can "swim" through sand as fast as a horse can gallop, and can even take the run or charge actions while burrowing, provided they do so in a straight line. But when forced onto solid ground, hatori can only awkwardly flop and drag themselves forward 10 feet per round.
Swallowed Whole: A "lesser" hatori can swallow a kender in a single bite, while "greater" hatori of Huge or larger size can do the same to a grown man.
That's No Moon: Hatori are smart enough to take advantage of their stony-looking hide, burying themselves with only their nostrils and the tops of their bodies exposed, so that they look like rocky outcroppings.

Haunt

Classification: Undead (3E)

These undead can be thought of as more specialized ghosts, either tied to specific locations in the case of bridge and forest haunts, or defined by their behavior, like the taunting haunt.

Intangibility: Like ghosts, they are incorporeal undead.
Unfinished Business: Haunts will keep coming back even if "slain" until they're put to rest by resolving what led to them dying. For example, a bridge haunt may pass on if his body is recovered from beneath his bridge and buried, a forest haunt may find rest if the evildoer that slew its dryad is defeated, and a taunting haunt may be appeased if the tyrant who executed her is overthrown.

Bridge Haunt

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

These haunts met their ends while attempting to cross a bridge, and are now bound to it, driven to murder anyone who tries to use it.

Master of Illusion: Bridge haunts are gifted illusionists, adept at making themselves appear corporeal and alive, or at disguising the dangers of an old, decaying bridge.
Railing Kill: Their incorporeal touch attacks cause Knock Back, which they use to send victims over the sides of their bridges.
Take It to the Bridge: A necessity, given their nature.

Forest Haunt

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

When a dryad is slain, she may use her dying breath to curse her killers, enraging the spirit of her bound oak tree so that it stalks the forest until she is avenged, or even after.

Dying Curse: The result of one.
Green Thumb: Forest haunts can partially animate trees and undergrowth, making them strike at its foes and try to immobilize them.
When Trees Attack: Ghostly trees, at that.

Taunting Haunt

Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

The angry spirit of a bard or jester, who spends its unlife causing chaos and misery with its cruel pranks, vicious commentary, and mocking performances.

Battle of Wits: Aside from putting their spirits to rest, the only way to defeat a taunting haunt is by anteing up some treasure and challenging it in a "first-to-three" competition involving jokes and riddles (represented by opposed Knowledge and Perform skill checks). If beaten in this way, the taunting haunt agrees to leave its opponent alone.
Cruel Mercy: Taunting haunts are noted for taking care not to kill anyone, even helping rescue people at times, but only because corpses are no fun to torment with verbal jabs and barbed comments.
Enslaved Tongue: Their "Tripping Tongue" ability lets them distort what their victims intend to say, so that a compliment comes out an insult or a call for peace becomes a challenge to a fight.
I Shall Taunt You: Even though they pose little physical threat, taunting haunts are dreaded for their biting sense of humor and relentless mockery, which allows them to taunt an opponent and force them to save or take a penalty on rolls for the next round.

Trap Haunt

Challenge Rating: As base creature +2 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Should a charismatic but overconfident rogue fall victim to a dungeon trap, their spirit may become bound to the device, seeking to lure the living in to be killed by the same mechanism.

Animate Dead: A trap haunt can turn a corpse into a zombie or skeleton, but only if the original creature was killed by the same trap as it.
Back Stab: As undead rogues, trap haunts can deal sneak attack damage... though as incorporeal undead, they also can't use normal equipment.
Invisible Monsters: Unless manifesting to use their "chill aura" ability, trap haunts are naturally invisible. Using magic to discern one will reveal a writhing, vaporous mass featuring dozens of images of the trap haunt's face, all twisted with rage and hate.
Level Drain: Their incorporeal touch attacks both deal cold damage and inflict negative levels.
Milking the Monster: Rumor has it that some unscrupulous Thieves Guilds "harvest" trap haunts by dismantling their bonded traps to be installed elsewhere by evil warlords or mages. It's also possible to create a trap haunt on purpose by hiring a rogue to "test" some lethal traps, usually encouraging them to lower their guard with some easy traps before springing the killing blow.
Mind over Matter: A trap haunt can animate the trap that killed it, triggering or resetting it at will.
Soul Jar: A trap haunt can only be permanently destroyed if the trap that killed it is too. Otherwise, if a trap haunt is brought to 0 hit points, it simply fades away for up to a minute before returning at full power.

Hebi-No-Onna

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 15 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Beautiful and vain women with snakes for arms, who use their magic and charisma to build cults devoted to themselves.

The Beastmaster: Hebi-no-onna can command ordinary snakes (i.e. those with the Animal type).
Charm Person: Their gaze can replicate a hypnosis spell, causing other creatures to stop and stare in fascination, and making them receptive to requests. While a hebi-no-onna uses this ability, her eyes turn yellow, with a snake's slitted pupils.
Cult: They try to establish these, using their hypnotic gaze and spellcasting to brainwash people into believing the hebi-no-onna is a living goddess, so that they're willing to die for her.
It's All About Me: Hebi-no-onna are totally self-interested, and the entire aim of the cults they form is to surround themselves with beautiful luxuries and provide them with doting servants to help them bathe, get dressed, arrange their hair, etc. But "they are more in love with themselves than any of their plans or goals," and won't hesitate to sacrifice their prized minions if it helps them escape a losing battle.
No-Sell: They're immune to poison, as well as the gaze attacks of any reptilian creature, and a dark naga's detect thoughts ability.
Poisonous Person: They can make two bite attacks with their arm-snakes each round, which deliver a Constitution-damaging poison in 3rd Edition, or one of eight different poisons in 2nd Edition, depending on which species of snake is up their sleeves. In addition, a hebi-no-onna can bite with her human mouth to deliver a poison that causes nightmarish hallucinations, leaving victims cowering helplessly for several rounds.
Snake People: They appear as beautiful and well-dressed women, who wear robes with voluminous sleeves to hide the serpents they have for arms.
Stalker with a Test Tube: Hebi-no-onna are exclusively female, and desire only healthy, handsome, and strong-willed mates to pass those traits on to their daughters. They'll thus seek out such exceptional males and kidnap them — though in some cases, a hebi-no-onna will try and lure adventurers to her lair to more easily capture a desirable mate. The father's spirit will then be broken down over weeks of conditioning until he's willing to cooperate, but once his work is done, he'll be ritualistically sacrificed in a grand ceremony attended by the rest of the hebi-no-onna's cult.
Unreliable Illustrator: Their 3rd Edition art depicts hebi-no-onna with a pair of human arms surrounded by smaller serpents, while their AD&D picture has a single, larger snake in each sleeve, with no sign of human arms.
Villain Team-Up: Hebi-no-onna sometimes cooperate with dark or spirit nagas, and while such alliances usually end in a power struggle that leaves one party dead or driven off, until that point the naga and hebi-no-onna use their combined power to dominate entire villages.

Hej-kin

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Aberrant Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (4E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

A race of small but nasty humanoids who dwell in unworked tunnels and caverns, due to their worship of the earth.

Adaptational Villainy: In 2nd Edition, hej-kin are evil and despise most other races, but keep to themselves for the most part. 4th Edition instead describes hejkin as gibbering lunatics "deformed in both body and mind" who worship eldritch entities like Far Realm creatures, see the world outside their caves as "a heaving, squirming space filled with nightmares," and launch night raids onto the surface to engage in murder and plunder.
Dungeon Bypass: Hejkin don't have to dig to get around underground, since they can phase through solid rock like a xorn.
Gaia's Vengeance: Hej-kin hate the way other races abuse and destroy the earth and misuse arcane magic, which on Athas means they have plenty of enemies.
Monstrous Cannibalism: 4th Edition hejkin don't just cook and eat their victims, they'll also feed on each other.
Psychic Powers: 2nd Edition gives its hej-kin an array of low-level psionic attacks and defensive modes.
Shock and Awe: 4th Edition in contrast gives hejkin various electrical attacks.

Hell Hound

Classification: Outsider (3E), Elemental Beast (4E), Fiend (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E, 5E), 9 (Nessian warhound) (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil (1E-3E, 5E), Unaligned (4E)

Fiendish dogs from the Lower Planes, often found in the service of other evil beings.

Breath Weapon: They can breathe a cone of fire.
Elite Mook: Nessian warhounds, a particularly nasty breed of hell hounds the size of draft horses, are bred in the depths of Nessus at Asmodeus' command.
Hellhound: They're monstrous, fire-breathing canines native to Acheron but found across the Lower Planes, including the Nine Hells.
It Can Think: Though incapable of speech, hell hounds are smarter than the average ogre, and understand Infernal.
No Body Left Behind: When a hell hound dies, its body erupts in smoke and cinders until there's nothing left but some burnt fur.

Hellbred

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

Nearly-damned souls granted one last chance to redeem themselves, by crusading against evil with desperate zeal.

The Atoner: Played with; hellbred seek to redeem themselves, but as part of their transformation, their mind and soul are purged to free them from the burden of guilt and the influence of their past evil associates. Hellbred retain vague memories of their past lives, and might feel unease upon seeing a former ally or enemy, but are otherwise free to follow their new path. But they do fully understand that their time is short, and unless they accomplish some incredible deed to prove their newfound virtue, only torment awaits them after death.
Bargain with Heaven: The powers of good and justice are willing to give hellbred a respite from damnation and a chance to redeem themselves, as well as additional powers to fight evil, but the road to salvation is still going to be difficult.
Dark Age of Supernames: After their transformation, hellbred tend to keep their first names while adopting a new second name along the lines of "Covenant," "Devilbrood," "Doomdriven," "Heavenrent," "Hellbound," "Martyr" or "Soullost."
Dark Is Not Evil: While hellbred all have Good alignments, the battle between good and evil that brought them back to the mortal world, a transformation known as the Scourging, leaves them marked by the powers of Hell, with dark red flesh or smooth green scales, glowing red eyes, and vestigial or full horns on their heads. On the upside, this infernal mien gives hellbred a bonus on Intimidation checks, as well as supernatural toughness or senses. Most significantly, hellbred are able to wield evil spells or magic items without jeapordizing their alignment (so long as they're used for good), and can take devil-touched feats as they level, allowing hellbred to turn the weapons of their enemy against them.
Heel–Face Turn: Hellbred underwent one at literally the last possible moment. Their actions in their previous lives damned them to the Nine Hells, and if they'd repented before death they'd have ascended to the Upper Planes, while if they'd waited any longer they'd have wound up as one of the dismal specters haunting Dis. Instead, hellbred repented too late to find salvation, but right before their full condemnation to Hell. This is enough for the gods of good to give hellbred one final chance for redemption, but the condemned soul has to prove that they aren't merely seeking escape from their rightful punishment.
Redemption Quest: Hellbred's existence is built around one, and despite their best efforts, most are truly damned — only the most epic of good deeds, such as single-handedly saving a city from an invading army, destroying an evil artifact, or slaying an archfiend, are enough to earn a hellbred's place in heaven. Hellbred thus undertake seemingly impossible quests, while being very patient and careful when engaging their enemies, as they know exactly what is waiting for them if they die before redeeming themselves.
Super-Senses: Hellbred who develop the mental aspect of the Scourging start with darkvision that improves as they level up, and eventually become able to see in magical darkness just like the devils they resemble.
Your Soul Is Mine!: As a consequence of their actions in their past lives, hellbreds' souls are already claimed by a devil, and thus they can only be restored to life by a resurrection spell or greater magic.

Hellwasp Swarm

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (hellwasp swarm) (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Fiendish insects from the Bleak Eternity of Gehenna, able to inhabit their victims' bodies.

For the larger Baatorian hellwasps, see the Devils subpage.

The Paralyzer: Gehennan hellwasp attacks deliver a Dexterity-damaging poison that can leave victims immobile and helpless.
Puppeteer Parasite: They're capable of entering a dead or helpless creature via its mouth and other orifices and taking it over, animating it similarly to a zombie. An unfortunate creature inhabited this way is easy to spot due to how their skin crawls from the insects beneath it, leading the swarm to adopt loose clothing or cloaks to disguise itself. A living creature with a hellwasp swarm inside it will take Constitution damage each hour as they're Eaten Alive.
The Swarm: Individual Gehennan hellwasps are thumb-sized insects with red-striped black carapaces, but are truly dangerous in groups, as they form an intelligent Hive Mind in sufficient numbers.
Wicked Wasps: They're literally wasps from the Lower Planes, so yes.

Helmed Horror

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Construct (3E, 5E), Elemental Animate (4E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E), 13 (4E), 4 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral, Unaligned (4E)

Warrior constructs with uncommon intelligence and magical power.

A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Their 3rd Edition write-up notes that helmed horrors frequently outlive their masters and continue following their final orders, but keep interpreting those orders more and more broadly as their creators' binding magics fade.
Animated Armor: A helmed horror is an intelligent construct resembling a suit of plate armor, the gaps of which reveal occasional flares of Pure Energy.
Exact Words: Averted according to the 5E Monster Manual, which states that a helmed horror is intelligent enough to understand the difference between an order's intent and its exact wording, seeking to fulfill the former instead of slavishly following the latter like most other constructs.
Flight: They enjoy the benefit of a permanent air walk spell.
Lost Technology: In the Realms, helmed horrors are relics of the fallen kingdoms of Imaskar and Netheril, and the secrets of their construction have been lost. A sufficiently powerful wizard might have the resources to rediscover the method, but it is said that only the evilest of souls would be willing to pay the price for it.
No-Sell: They're resistant to magic in general, and furthermore, a helmed horror's creator can make the construct fully immune to three specific spells while building it.
Spell Blade: In 3rd Edition, helmed horrors can use a free action to imbue their swords with a set combat enchantment: flaming burst, keen, speed, etc.
Super-Senses: 3rd Edition helmed horrors are under a constant see invisibility effect. 5th Edition instead gives them blindsight out to 60 feet, with the caveat that they're blind beyond this radius.

Hengeyokai

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Humanoid (3E), Fey Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E), 4 (4E)
Playable: 1E, 3E, 4E
Alignment: Chaotic Good or Chaotic Evil, Unaligned (4E)

Not so much one race as many, the hengeyokai are a collection of magical animals that can assume partially or wholely humanoid form.

Asian Fox Spirit: The "fox" subrace for hengeyokai, who have appeared in every single edition.
The Fair Folk: In 4th Edition, they're considered a Fey type creature; the Nentir Vale version is even stated to have originated in the Feywild alongside the gnomes and elves.
Humanity Ensues: Hengeyokai are animals who have attained sapience and the ability to transform into humanoid forms.
Loads and Loads of Races: The hengeyokai "race" has consisted of myriad subraces, depending on the edition:
- In 1st Edition, the hengeyokai consisted of carp, cat, crab, crane, dog, drake, fox, hare, monkey, raccoon dog, rat and sparrow.
- In 2nd Edition, all of the aforementioned races returned, but Dragon #266 added the badger, dolphin, falcon, frog, lizard, lynx, octopus, owl, panda, turtle and weasel.
- In 3rd Edition, the subraces were listed as badger, carp, cat, crab, crane, dog, fox, hare, monkey, raccoon dog, rat, sparrow and weasel.
- In 4th Edition, the subraces were changed again to badger, carp, cat, crab, crane, dog, fox, hare, monkey, raccoon dog, rat and sparrow.
Morphic Resonance: When they shapechange into human form, they always have a distinctive feature from their animal form, such as a sparrow hengeyokai with a long nose like a bird's beak.
Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie: Due to the way racial types are handled in 4th Edition, hengeyokai there are considered to be "Humanoids", "Magical Beasts", "Shapechangers" and "Fey" all at the same time.
Our Werebeasts Are Different: They're vaguely fey-ish animals who have the ability to assume partially or wholly humanoid form. In 3rd and 4th Edition, they even have the Shapechanger racial type, which is shared with werebeasts.
Partial Transformation: The hengeyokai's "hybrid" form, which is visibly animal-based, but walks upright and can wield weapons.
Super-Speed: Downplayed, but hare hengeyokai tend to be much faster than normal humans are. In 4th Edition, all hengeyokai are quicker than humans, but hare hengeyokai are even faster still.
Tanuki: Appears in every edition as the "raccoon dog" subrace. Strangely, in AD&D, they had a mandated alignment of "Any Evil", which stands quite contrasted to the more common depiction of tanuki as friendly, affable tricksters and lovable oafs.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Their iconic — and only major — racial ability is to shift their bodies on command, such as for Partial Transformation.
War Refugees: In the Nentir Vale, hengeyokai were originally slaves to the Fomorians and used as spies and saboteurs against the elves. Although the hengeyokai ultimately escaped their masters, the elves never trusted them, and began a pogrom of extermination. Most hengeyokai today fled to the mortal world to avoid being killed just for their race.
What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: A common complaint about the race is that, as a whole, the hengeyokai are extremely "one trick pony"; their characteristics and traits are defined exclusively by their ability to assume a specific animal form, with at most marginal traits outside of that form. As the forms they assume are almost universally small and innocuous, at best their animal form makes them a little more adept at sneaking around. Third Edition attempted to make the hybrid forms more useful than just being cosmetic reskins of the human form, but the bonuses attached to each subrace were extremely marginal and often situational — rat hengeyokai getting a +4 bonus on checks made to hide, for example. It hasn't gone unnoticed that the Pathfinder kitsune is more mechanically interesting and powerful than the D&D fox hengeyokai.
Youkai: Gygax and Zeb Cook not only based the race off of crudely conglomerating various shapeshifting animals from Japanese and Chinese mythology, but literally named them by just sticking "henge" ("shapeshifter") and "yōkai" together.

Heucuva

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_huecuva_3e.png

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (2E), Neutral Evil (3E)

Former divine spellcasters cursed with undeath after dying without seeking atonement for their transgressions, or for failing their order's vows.

Deceased and Diseased: Their slam attacks can infect victims with a disease simply known as heucuva blight, which slowly damages their Strength and Constitution until the victim expires.
Dem Bones: Hard to distinguish from robed or armored skeletons, at least until the heucuva begins casting divine spells.
Evil Counterpart: To the divine spellcasters they were lin life. A former cleric-turned-heucuva exchanges their original patron deity's domains for the Death and Evil domains, while a paladin-turned-heucuva behaves like they became a blackguard. Heucuva also despise good clerics and the like, and will try to focus on them in combat.
Ghost Amnesia: They don't remember much about their past lives, but they do gravitate toward ruined temples and shrines, and instinctively loathe living divine spellcasters.
Room Full of Crazy: Heucuva sometimes decorate their lairs as perverse mockeries of holy sites, complete with using victims' corpses to stand in for worshipers, and setting up a false altar to surround with treasure as "offerings."

Heway

Origin: Al-Qadim
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

12-foot-long white snakes hated for their tactic of poisoning oases and wells.

Hated by All: Everyone despises heway, from humanoids to even dumb beasts. Herd animals will try to trample the serpents if they're caught in the open during daylight, while predators may attempt a kill if they can do so with their claws, rather than risk biting the poisonous snakes.
Hypnotic Eyes: Those who meet a heway's gaze and fail their saving throw are hypnotized, and will follow the serpent back to its lair to be devoured.
Poisonous Person: Their bites are weak and non-venomous, instead it's the heway's body that's coated in poison, though one that's only dangerous when ingested. Those who do take a hit of damage and might be paralyzed for up to six hours.
Snakes Are Sinister: Heway aren't just intelligent enough to target water sources with their poison, they take enjoyment in doing so, resulting in their evil alignment. They also look much more malicious than normal snakes, as their scales are slimy with poison and are shed constantly.
Water Source Tampering: Heway can smell water from up to 20 miles away, and after arriving at an oasis or spring will swim around in it for several hours, ensuring it's thoroughly contaminated by the heway's poison. Even creatures who survive the poison's effects are likely doomed, as they must then find a clean source of water in their weakened state. Once a heway moves on, the water source becomes usable again in at most two weeks, depending on how quickly the water is renewed. Some unscrupulous humanoid tribes hunt heway to use their corpses on a rival's well, though a dead heway's poison isn't as dangerous.

Hippocampus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_hippocamp_5e.jpeg

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E), 1/2 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good (3E), Neutral Good (5E)

Intelligent aquatic horses prized as underwater mounts, and who gladly serve good causes.

Horse of a Different Color: Hippocampi feature in countless tales as guides and mounts for ocean-faring heroes.
Our Hippocamps Are Different: Hippocampi are aquatic equines that travel in herds and can breath both air and water, and hold valued places in triton society.
Sapient Steed: They have human-level intelligence and can speak Aquan, but they're fairly simple creatures that want little more than to speed through the open water.
Spirited Competitor: Hippcampi like to make challenges out of everyday events, and among themselves pass the time with marathon relay races or long-distance scavenger hunts. Winning is secondary to the joy of striving, for these creatures.

Hippogriff

^3e

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

Flying creatures that combine the features of horses and giant eagles.

Art Evolution: 3rd edition gave them a more physically unified look, with hooves that are modified bird claws and manes and tails of feathers, but later editions go back to the traditional "eagle in front and horse behind" version.
Horse of a Different Color: Hippogriffs can be trained to bear a rider, and are prized as mounts capable of flight and of being fearsome combatants in their own right. Their physical prowess and relatively even disposition and lower intelligence compared to a griffon or pegasus makes them particularly attractive for this role, and they're the most common flying mounts seen among civilized races.
Our Gryphons Are Different: The classic creature with an eagle's claws, head and wings and a horse's hindquarters. Unlike the sapient griffons, hippogriffs are animals, and griffons sometimes prey on them. They're also popular flying mounts.

Hoard Scarab

Classification: Vermin (3E), Natural Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (individual), 5 (swarm) (3E); 2, 7 (4E); 1/8, 2 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Beetle-like creatures with a strong resemblance to coins when dormant, and who have a symbiotic relationship with dragons.

He Was Right There All Along: With their legs tucked in against their carapaces, hoard scarabs can be mistaken for gold coins, and thus camouflage themselves amongst a dragon's other treasures.
Orifice Invasion: 3rd Edition hoard scarabs can burrow into an opponent's flesh, dealing Constitution damage each round (more if it's a swarm making the attack). Unless the stricken victim is given a remove disease or heal spell, death is inevitable.
See the Invisible: Creatures outlined by a hoard scarab's magical glittering dust constantly shed blue light and cannot become invisible.
The Swarm: These tiny creatures are most dangerous as swarms of crawling, biting insects.
The Symbiote: Hoard scrabs have a mutually beneficial relationship with dragons. The scarabs clean the dragon's scales as they eat other vermin on the larger creature's hide (which doesn't hurt the dragon, due to their natural armor), and share the dragon's lair, acting as an additional layer of defense.
Tracking Spell: Hoard scarabs in 5th Edition produce a magical dust that sticks to intruders and allows dragons to sense their location.

Hoary Hunter

Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (hoary steed), 25 (hoary hunter) (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Fey hunters who appear on moonlit winter nights to ride down humanoid prey, taking captives for the Unseelie Court.

Hellish Horse: These fey's hoary steeds are magnficient but malevolent creatures whose coats are white as snow, and whose blue eyes glow coldly in the darkness. They're capable of shifting to the Astral or Ethereal Planes, and gallop through the skies under a permanent air walk effect.
Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Hoary hunters pursue travelers for sport, but have a sense of honor about it — should a victim elude the hunter for an hour, or defeat them in combat, the hunter will relent for the night, and after five failed attempts to take a prisoner, a hoary hunter will never trouble them again.
Made a Slave: Hoary hunters never kill their prey if they can help it, instead their swords carry a binding enchantment that, upon a Critical Hit or what would be a fatal blow, traps their victims within a diamond at the end of the sword's hilt. The prisoner can then be brought to the Unseelie Court for enslavement.
Smoke Out: The foggy breath of a hoary hunter's steed replicates an obscuring mist effect.
Super-Persistent Predator: Once a hoary hunter has marked someone as their prey, not even death will make them relent — if slain, the hunter and their steed will be revived in the fey realm, ready to continue the hunt the next night the conditions are right. Hoary hunters are willing to wait years for another chance to hunt a victim, and can cross planar boundaries to do so, appearing wherever moonlight falls upon frozen ground. Those pursued by hoary hunters have been known to relocate to the tropics, or take up residence in eternally-temperate demiplanes, to hide from the hunters.
The Wild Hunt: They're evil fey horsemen who appear at midnight when the moon shines upon frozen ground, heralded by a roiling fog and echoing hoofbeats. Any who fall victim to the hoary hunters are spirited away to the world of the evil fey, never to return.

Hobgoblin

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

Cunning, disciplined and warlike, hobgoblins exist to subjugate others, and frequently bully their fellow goblinoids, the lesser goblins and bugbears, into serving with their legions as they march to their next conquest. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Varag

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Also known as "blood chasers," these goblinoids have lupine traits, and are used as speedy skirmishers and harriers by their hobgoblin handlers.

Big Eater: The price of varags' incredible speed is that they require three times the daily food intake as a normal Medium-sized humanoid. Those that only get twice as much food as normal will have to spend much of the day sleeping to conserve their energy, while those fed normal rations have their speed reduced to a 30-foot baseline. For this reason, hobgoblins keep varags in sex-segregated packs and ensure that matings occur only under controlled circumstances, so the varag population doesn't outpace its food supply.
Big Guy, Little Guy: They have this relationship with normal hobgoblins, sans the "big guy" providing occasional good ideas. Hobgoblins are well aware that a varag would beat them in a one-on-one fight, and so they take care to lavish the creatures with praise for even minor accomplishments, and ensure that they're well-fed. This makes the varags instinctively and fiercely protective of hobgoblins, to the extent that they'll charge in to a hobgoblin's rescue without a second thought... though this loyalty only lasts as long as the food does. A restless and hungry varag pack will search for another hobgoblin warband, or even fall in with the likes of mere goblins or orcs.
Lightning Bruiser: Varags are stronger than ordinary hobgoblins, and can move as fast as a galloping horse, making them excel at Hit-and-Run Tactics. Unfortunately, this has come at the cost of brainpower, leaving them only slightly smarter than the average ogre.
Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: They're hobgoblins magically crossbred with dire wolves. Varags thus prefer Running on All Fours, have a canine's body language and pack society, and have been so altered in a physiological and mental sense that some are barely able to speak, and other varags communicate only through gestures and howls.
The Nose Knows: Varags not only have the Scent ability, they rely on it more than their hearing or sight.

Hollyphant

^3e

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Outsider (3E), Celestial (5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 5 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Good

Celestials from the Wilderness of the Beastlands with the unlikely appearance of two-foot-long, gold-furred, winged elephants. They can be found throughout the Upper Planes, serving as messengers and helpers for good deities, or assisting other celestial agents with their tasks.

Enemy Summoner: Once per day, a hollyphant can try to summon another hollyphant, an asura, or an avoral guardinal, with a 45% chance of success.
Good Wings, Evil Wings: Averted; hollyphants have feathered or iridescent insect wings in their Small form, and leathery wings in their Large mastodon form, but remain celestials no matter their shape.
Killer Rabbit: They look harmless or even comical, which has led to the downfall of countless evil creatures.
Mighty Roar: A hollyphant can unleash a trumpeting blast through its trunk to either deal sonic damage and stun those in a 60-foot-cone, or fill an equivalent space with sparkles of sunlight that deal heavy damage to fiends, undead and anything else vulnerable to holy water.
No-Sell: 3rd Edition hollyphants in their Small form gain a globe of invulnerability effect, rendering them immune to all spells or spell-like abilities of 4th level or lower, but they lose this benefit in their mastodon form.
Psychic Powers: 3rd Edition hollyphants have both an array of spell-like abilities and psionic powers like blessed sight, invisibility, and suggestion.
Sizeshifter: In 3rd Edition, a hollyphant can switch between two forms, a Small golden-furred elephant that weighs 60 pounds and a Large biepdal mastodon that weighs 1200 pounds.
Telepathy: Hollyphants can't speak, but can communicate telepathically with any creature that has a language.

Homunculus

Classification: Construct (3E, 5E), Natural Animate (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E), 2 (4E), 0 (5E)
Alignment: Same as creator (3E), Unaligned (4E), True Neutral (5E)

Tiny winged constructs created by mages as helpers or spies.

Forced Sleep: Their bite attack does Scratch Damage at best, but carries a poison that can render an opponent unconscious.
Our Homunculi Are Different: Homunculi are made by an expensive alchemical recipe from clay, ash, mandrake root, spring water and the wizard's own blood and are living tools linked to their makers much like a Familiar.
Psychic Link: A homunculus knows everything its creator does, and likewise its master senses everything a homunculus sees or hears, regardless of the distance between them, provided they're on the same plane of existence.
Synchronization: A homonculus will expire if its master dies, and in 3rd Edition, the destruction of a homonculus dealt damage to its creator.

Hook Horror

Classification: Aberration (3E), Natural Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E), 13 (4E), 3 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral, Unaligned (4E)

Intelligent pack hunters of the Underdark feared for their hook-like claws.

Androcles' Lion: Pointedly averted in their AD&D write-up, which notes that hook horrors don't even have a concept for "indebtness" or "gratitude." Other creatures are just meat, whatever they've done for the hook horror.
Mix-and-Match Critters: A hook horror has a head resembling a vulture's and the torso of an enormous beetle.
Mooks Ate My Equipment: In 3rd Edition, hook horrors can attempt to sunder a character's armor or shield without provoking an attack of opportunity.
Starfish Language: Hook horrors communicate with one another by clacking and scraping their claws against stone, which sounds unintelligible to other creatures, but forms a complex language that can echo for miles through their home cave systems.
Super-Senses: A hook horror has short-ranged darkvision, but their keen hearing gives them blindsight out to 60 feet.

Horax

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Vermin (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (standard), 12 (earthshaker) (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Human-sized, insectoid pack hunters that infest underground areas, but may rarely venture onto the surface if prey is scarce.

Big Creepy-Crawlies: Most horax aren't too big, as giant insects go, but rarely, freak mutation or magical experimentation produces an "earthshaker" horax of Gargantuan size, about 60 feet long.
Crafted from Animals: The armor plating on horax backs can be fashioned into lightweight and durable armor, the equal of splint or banded mail.
Creepy Centipedes: Horax are compared to twelve-legged, six-foot-long centipedes, living in communal nests of up to a hundred of the creatures. They're ferocious if mindless predators, and a headache for mountain dwarves, who uncover horax nests during their excavations or in worst-case scenarios have to defend their cities from infestation. The good news is that horax lack "normal" monstrous centipedes' poisonous bites.
Deadly Lunge: 3rd Edition lets horax pounce on foes, making two rake attacks if successful.
Personal Space Invader: Horax hunt by singling out a target, biting with their mandibles, and latching on — in 2nd Edition, this deals additional bite damage each round until the creature is dislodged, while in 3rd, a horax grapples and then rakes its foe with its bladed legs.
Wall Crawl: Horax's bladed legs let them skitter along and fight from any surface, and it's not uncommon to see a pack advancing along the floor, walls and ceiling of a tunnel all at once.

Horizonback Tortoise

Origin: Critical Role
Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Also known as kinespaji by goblins, these gargantuan tortoises are nearly 50 feet long, and willing to tolerate riders.

Defend Command: Unsurprisingly, they can retreat into their shells for an AC bonus (pinning anything that had been trying to move beneath them).
It Can Think: While not quite as smart as the average ogre, these tortoises can at least understand Goblin.
Moving Buildings: On Exandria, horizonback tortoises provide mobile homesteads to the denizens of Xhorhas, or can serve as walking siege emplacements.
Turtle Island: They're the terrestrial variant, tortoises large enough to support buildings on their shells.

Horned Beast

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

Ram-like, fire-breathing predators all but identical to the vestige Amon.

Fallen Angel: Grimoires on pact magic say that when Amon was a god of light and law, he was served by a herd of wise golden rams, but when Amon fell into obscurity over the centuries, those rams transformed into malevolent monsters that reflected his own changed appearance. As such, horned beasts are sometimes called "the flock of Amon" by binders.
A Head at Each End: They have serpents for tails, which can attack and deliver a Dexterity-damaging poison.
Mix-and-Match Critters: Horned beasts have the heads of rams, but filled with fangs, atop a wolf's body and with a venomous serpent for a tail.
Playing with Fire: They can breathe a 20-foot cone of fire every few rounds.
Sadist: Horned beasts are dimwitted, but just smart enough to enjoy the fear their attacks cause — they're known to howl in the distance before closing with and ambushing prey, stalking victims for hours, and leaving wounded survivors after an attack just to amplify the terror of their next assault.
Use Your Head: They headbutt foes in combat, and have the Powerful Charge feat to deliver extra damage with the attack while charging.

Hound of the Gloom

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

Large, tentacled quadrupeds that have emerged from deep underground in the past decade to menace Underdark races.

Beast of Battle: Some evil subterranean races have taken up the practice of capturing young hounds to raise and train. If a pup is taken young enough, it accepts its new world easily, especially if it's well fed and allowed to fight.
Combat Tentacles: In addition to their bite and foreclaws, hounds of the gloom can attack with two large tentacles surrounding their heads, which have a reach of 10 feet and end in five-fingered hands with strong, sharp claws.
It Can Think: They have human-level intelligence, make cunning use of terrain in battle, and even have their own language.
The Paralyzer: Their tentacle attacks carry a Dexterity-damaging poison that can potentially leave victims paralyzed and helpless.
Wall Crawl: They can climb surfaces at half their normal speed, which they use to drop down on prey.

Howler

^3e

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Outsider (3E), Elemental Magical Beast (4E), Fiend (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 9 (4E), 8 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil, Evil (4E)

Wailing pack hunters from the Windswept Depths of Pandemonium, whose howls can drive prey mad with fear.

Beast of Battle: Howlers are often employed as hunting dogs by demons and Abyssal orcs.
Horse of a Different Color: Alternatively, howlers are large enough to serve as steeds for Medium-sized riders, though an exotic saddle is needed due to the spines on a howler's back.
Spikes of Villainy: Howlers sport quills on their backs, particularly in 3rd Edition, in which howlers could even attack with them, dealing damage and imposing penalties on victims after the quills got lodged in their flesh.
Super-Scream: Their signature howl floods the minds of their victims, making complex thought impossible. In 3rd Edition, anyone without hearing range of the creatures' howling has to save or take Wisdom damage, while in 5th Edition, a howler's keening howl is a Supernatural Fear Inducer that reduces victims' speed and incapacitates them.

Howler Wasp

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (standard), 5 (queen) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Dog-sized, wasp-like creatures with screaming simian faces.

Beware My Stinger Tail: Beyond their bite and claw attacks, howler wasps have stings that deliver a Dexterity-damaging poison. Female howler wasps can sting at will, while the rare males will die a few rounds afterward.
Bioweapon Beast: Howler wasps were created by the wizard Otiluke, who was trying to create some guard creatures in anticipation of an attack by slaadi. The howler wasps were his first attempt, which he judged a failure, but before Otiluke could properly dispose of them, the slaadi attacked and the aberrations escaped in the confusion.
Hive Mind: Surprisingly averted, unlike most insectoid monsters, hence why howler wasp patrols need to return to their nest to summon reinforcements.
Killer Gorilla/Wicked Wasps: They're giant stinging insects with baboon-like features, and just as unpleasant as that combination sounds. Howler wasps are so hateful and aggressive that they kill everything they meet, whether they need food or not. Worse, they live in nests containing over sixty howler wasps.
Large and in Charge: Normal howler wasps are only 4 feet long, but their queens are Large creatures twice that size.
Monstrous Cannibalism: Howler wasps breed much more rapidly than their nests can support, so their queens and the healthiest larva routinely devour the weaker ones.
Taking You with Me: If subjected to a Critical Hit or an attack that would reduce its hit points past 0, a howler wasp can immediately try and douse its foes with an inciting pheromone. This does no damage in itself, but will drive all other howler wasps in the area into a screaming rage, giving them bonuses on attack and damage rolls against the affected creature, and allowing the aberrations to track the doused foe like they had blindsense. The pheremone's effects last for ten minutes, or until the victim washes it off.

Hu Hsien

Origin: Kara-tur
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Relatives of hengeyokai, these shapeshifting foxes can assume the form of beautiful women to better work their mischief.

Achilles' Heel: While hu hsien are immune to fire and resistant to cold, they take double damage from electricity and are generally terrified of thunderstorms, "since the Celestial Emperor often sends the Thunder God to punish hu hsien for her wicked ways."
Asian Fox Spirit: They're a more negative portrayal of the source myth, as hu hsien "delight in their ability to manipulate and torment hapless humans" and drain the life from their paramours. There's also no mention of hu hsien beginning their lives as ordinary foxes, or gaining additional tails as they age.
Can't Hold Her Liquor: Hu hsien have a weakness for wine, and if intoxicated will revert to their fox form.
Charm Person: In their human forms, hu hsien can cast fascinate at will, causing those who succumb to regard them as someone they trust and love.
Hidden Depths: For all their love of illusion and deception, hu hsien are in fact geniuses with a keen interest in scholars (albeit sometimes as victims). If an academic befriends a hu hsien with the proper offerings of incense and treasure, they might return to their study in the morning to find that the fox spirit has left out a tome or document with the information the scholar is seeking.
Human Shifting: They can take the shape of human women, albeit with fox tails they have to hide beneath their robes.
Level Drain: They survive by draining the life force of their bewitched lovers, resulting in a lost experience level each day the victim spends with the hu hsien.
Master of Illusion: Beyond their natural shapeshifting, they can use spells like become invisible, disguise, ventriloquism, and hypnotic pattern. Hu hsien often make their lairs in abandoned houses they use their magic to disguise as luxurious mansions.
Pet the Dog: Not all hu hsien are cruel and ungrateful, and some have been known to reward humans who treat them well or show them generosity, usually in the form of good fortune, good luck on examinations, or even rescue during a moment of grave peril.

Huitzil

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

Tiny dragonblooded avians who instinctively steal and hoard shiny trinkets.

Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: They are curious, "easily distracted and insatiably nosy."
Dragon Ancestry: Huitzils are "drakken," creatures with a clear draconic ancestry, but whose dragon blood has diluted to the point that they lack their progenitor's supernatural powers. As such, they're classified as Animals (dragonblood) rather than lesser Dragons.
Familiar: Some mages make familiars out of huitzils, using them to deliver touch-ranged spells, though the partnership is not without difficulty.
Naelan, Lord of the Uttercold: Upon further research, it has become quite evident that huitzil make challenging familiars due to their tendency to hoard any spell components that reflect too much light.
Fragile Speedster: They're weak enough to most likely die in a single hit, but they're fast and evasive, resulting in a high flight speed and Armor Class.
Sticky Fingers: They have a magpie-like obsession with shiny things, exacerbated by their draconic instinct to amass a hoard. Huitzils thus try and snatch any glittering baubles they come across, and their males will use these treasures to try and attract mates.
Trademark Favorite Food: Huitzils eat mainly fruits supplemented by insects, but seem to enjoy hunting colorful butterflies in particular.
We Need a Distraction: Huitzils can take a "Distract" action in combat, squawking and flapping their wings in a creature's face, to impose a penalty on their attack rolls. They'll also use this strategy to collect treasure, with some huitzils causing a ruckus while another darts in to grab something shiny.

Huldrefolk

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Little grey fey with power over domains of the natural world. Not to be confused with the hulderfolk, a reclusive race of elves also native to Krynn.

Elemental Powers: Every huldrefolk is aligned with a natural domain, Air, Animal, Earth, Fire, Plant or Water. They can cast sorcerer spells of the associated subtype, and can access other powers, such as being able to communicate with the element of their domain, or easily traverse such terrain.
Elemental Shapeshifting: Huldrefolk can merge with the terrain associated with their elemental domain, or turn into an elemental creature themselves — though huldrefolk aligned with the Animal or Plant domains instead turn into those respective lifeforms.
The Greys: They look the part, being two-and-a-half-foot tall, hairless, big-eyed, gray-skinned humanoids from another plane.
Non-Health Damage: Huldrefolk's very touch drains Constitution from other creatures.
Resistant to Magic: They have an innate resistance to arcane magic, but not divine spells.
Shrouded in Myth: Krynnish scholars perpetuate various myths about huldrefolk — "some say they have the ability to possess those slain with a simple touch, while others claim that sunlight can kill or trap them."
Ultraterrestrials: They're the "primal fey" of Krynn, who millennia ago used circles of standing stones to migrate from that world to what they call "The Gray," a realm of spirits and magic that some scholars speculate is more properly called the Ethereal Sea. The reason why the huldrefolk left is unclear, with some scholars asserting that the huldrefolk wished to leave the world to the rising mortal races, while others believe that the fey feared that remaining too long on Krynn would dilute their extraplanar nature.
Weakened by the Light: Zig-zagged; on the one hand, huldrefolk are dazzled in bright light, taking a minor penalty on attack rolls and visual checks, but they also become fully transparent in such lighting.

Hullathoin

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 15 (3e)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

These huge undead beasts have bodies covered in weeping sores, and are almost always surrounded by a cloud of buzzing insects and a retinue of lesser undead.

Bloody Murder: A variant; hullathoins can spew pus from their sores once per day, causing everything within 30 feet of them to save or take acid and Strength damage.
Combat Tentacles: They can sprout tentacles with their shoulders to attack with, or more commonly to grab and deform victims.
Necromancer: They can't create any directly, but hullathoins can rebuke and command undead as a 20th-level evil cleric.
Non-Health Damage: Hullathoins' tentacles can twist and deform the flesh of creatures they've grabbed, dealing Charisma damage. Nothing pleases the creatures more than distorting a creature's flesh beyond recognition, and then leaving it to die and be reanimated by their undead minions.
Poisonous Person: Their bite and tentacle attacks carry a Strength-damaging poison.
The Swarm: The creatures serve as hosts for swarms of bloodfiend locusts, evil extraplanar insects that inflict Level Drain with their bite attacks, creating vampire spawn from their victims.
The Symbiote: Hullathoins have a mutually-beneficial symbiosis with the swarms of bloodfiend locusts that nest in their bodies. A hullathoin can contract the muscles around its sores to expel the locusts when it needs allies, and the vampire spawn created by those locusts automatically join the hullathoin's undead retinues. The locusts get a safe place to nest, and feed on the hullathoin's diseased bulk (which doesn't damage the creature).

Humbaba

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_humbada_3e.png

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 15 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

20-foot-tall giants made from dozens of undead bodies, who act as guardians for holy sites and places mortals are not meant to tread.

Body of Bodies: They have humanoid shapes, comprised of multiple writhing bodies that remain in place but grasp at other creatures. This lets humbabas yank weapons from opponents' hands and more easily grapple foes around them. More dangerously, they can make a "melding touch" attack against grappled enemies, dealing Constitution drain each round until the victim is killed and absorbed into the humbaba's mass. Victims absorbed in this way can't be raised from the dead until the humbaba is destroyed.
Boulder Bludgeon: They can hurl boulders as easily as giants.
Necromancer: Humbabas can wield potent necromantic magic, casting enervation at will, as well as circle of death, control undead, slay living and soul blind several times per day.
Non-Malicious Monster: Unusually for undead, humbabas only fight if someone trespasses in their territory, and prefer to convince or intimidate opponents into leaving before resorting to lethal force. It's suspected that deities of the afterlife create humbabas to guard sacred tombs or the border between the worlds of the living and dead, and they'll usually avoid engaging the clerics of said deities.
Playing Possum: If something manages to overwhelm a humbaba, it can have its constituent bodies collapse into a seemingly inert pile. In this state the humbaba takes half damage and can't be turned, but it can reform as a full-round action.

Hurwaet

Origin: Spelljammer
Playable: 2E
Alignment: True Neutral (hurwaeti and swamp wiggles), Lawful Evil (salt wiggles)

Also known as "wiggles," these spacefaring reptilian humanoids have fallen on hard times, but are generally nonaggressive, if greedy.

Arch-Enemy: They despise beholders, mind flayers and neogi, gain a minor attack roll bonus against them and their minions, and will fight to the death rather than surrender to them, while the rare hurwaeti pirates operate exclusively in those enemies' space. This has led to the theory that the hurwaeti's empire collapsed after getting embroiled in a fight against all three foes at once — "If this is the case (and the hurwaeti aren't saying), they did well to survive at all."
Barbarian Tribe: The hurwaeti's colonies have degenerated into "swamp wiggles," who live a simple tribal existence unless they're playing brigand, and "salt wiggles," who have gone full sahuagin and are often mistaken for scraggs.
Consummate Professional: Hurwaeti hire themselves off as crewmen in same-sex groups all about the same age as well. They're valued for their ability to refresh a ship's atmosphere, their skill in combat, and their obedience, and even if any complaints about crew conditions go unaddressed, the hurwaeti's sense of honor prevents them from mutinying, instead the group will quit the ship at the next opportunity. Though sometimes this can cause problems if a hurwaeti group is traveling space in search of mates, in which case they'll ignore all but the worst conditions until they find another group of hurwaeti and swap some members, after which point they'll be much less accomodating, and will try to return home as soon as feasible. "There are several tales of taskmaster spelliammer captains who thought they had found the perfect crew, only to find themselves short-handed after their hurwaeti crew members had a night on the town."
Girls with Moustaches: Implied; their description never specifies that it's hurwaeti males that grow beards. Which would fit with their reptilian sexual dimorphism (or rather, lack thereof).
In a Single Bound: Their long, froggy legs make them excellent jumpers, capable of eight-foot vertical leaps or 20-foot horizontal jumps. "Leaping hurwaeti working with a squad of swooping hadozee make truly irresistible boarding parties."
Lizard Folk/Shark Man: Hurwaeti are distantly related to both lizardfolk and sahuagin, giving them glossy green scaled hides, frog-like legs, and webbed fingers and toes. They also have markedly gnomish faces with large ears, pointed noses and bearded chins, though hurwaeti are much taller than gnomes. They usually wear nothing more than loincloths, belts and packs, and jewelry.
Mr. Seahorse: Hurwaeti lay eggs like other reptiles, though shortly afterward, their males store the eggs in abdominal pouches for another eight months. "This habit usually makes it difficult for non-hurwaeti to tell the males from the females."
Only in It for the Money: They're mercenary, covetous, even outright greedy, but honest about it. "Nobody gets anything from a hurwaet for free, but the hurwaeti don't expect anything for free, either."
Smoke Out: They can replicate a fog cloud once per day, with the note that this is a natural process rather than a magical effect, so it can't be dispelled. Hurwaeti can use this to cover escapes or confuse foes during boarding actions, or more valuably, work in concert to replenish a ship's air envelope.
Starfish Language: Their tongue is described as "archaic," featuring "a difficult, convoluted syntax and includes hisses and clicks" that make it quite difficult for other humanoids to learn, much less speak (though lizardfolk can master it without any problems). Thankfully, hurwaeti can speak Common and similar humanoid tongues without issue.
Super-Toughness: Their hard, scaly hides give them as much natural protection as a suit of scale mail.
Vestigial Empire: The hurwaeti were once considered a great spacefaring power that had many colonies, "spreading art, civilization, morality, and an philosophy favoring altruism and discipline" across the crystal spheres. Unfortunately, a terrible war killed off the best of them and led their colonies to collapse into barbarism. Their remaining spacefarers are "impoverished wanderers" flying on well-maintained but decrepit-looking vessels, or more commonly, serving on other races' ships.

Hybsil

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Fey combinations of antelopes and pixies, whose tribes roam forests and grasslands, generally avoiding other races.

Badass Native: They have something like the Native American tradition of counting coup, in which young hybsil warriors (of both sexes) prove their daring by darting amongst enemies, stabbing them once, and escaping.
Forced Sleep: Like their pixie kin, hybsils can coat their weapons with a poison that causes sleep.
Horned Humanoid: Both male and female hybsils have horns, the former large forking antlers that molt in the dead of winter and grow back in the spring, the latter smaller straight or spiral antlers that remain year-round. Hybsil horns are said to have magical properties, leading some mages or alchemists to pay for shed specimens... or horns attached to a fresh hybsil scalp, ensuring their magical efficacy.
Our Centaurs Are Different: They're three-foot-tall tauric creatures with cervid lower bodies and fey humanoid torsos.
Our Pixies Are Different: Their other half; hybsils are considered cousins to pixies, and possess tricksy spell-like abilities such as dancing lights, mirror image or ventriloquism.
See the Invisible: In 3rd Edition, hybsils can see invisible creatures without difficulty.

Hydra

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4+ (3E), 12 (4E), 8 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Many-headed reptiles famous for their regenerative powers, hydras mostly live as bestial predators in swamps.

Breath Weapon: Pyrohydras breathe fire, while cryohydras breathe freezing wind.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The elemental hydra variants are easy to identify — pyrohydras are red, while cryohydras are purple.
Fire Keeps It Dead: Searing a hydra's neck stump prevents it from growing two heads to replace the severed one.
Food Chain of Evil: Dragons find hydras to be incredibly delicious, and will go to great lengths to kill and devour the lesser monsters should they become aware of their presence.
Healing Factor: In addition to growing back lost heads, hydras have very rapid healing and quickly heal over damage done to their main body.
Horror Hunger: Hydras are ruled by a constant hunger for flesh that eventually strips their surroundings bare of food, forcing the beast to find new hunting grounds. If a hydra goes for too long without prey, its hunger will become too strong for it to bear and its heads will turn upon each other as the maddened creature eats itself alive.
Hydra Problem: A hydra will grow two heads for every severed one, a process which requires one to four rounds in combat, unless the stump is seared with fire or acid. The supernumerary heads will all wither and drop off within a day or so, but in the heat of combat this doesn't do hydra-slayers much good. Mechanically, hydras exist to stymie players who rely on basic melee combat — beating a hydra requires outside-the-box tactics, such as a greater reliance on elementally-infused weapons, magic, or skills that let you sever multiple heads at a time. Notably, in early editions, most hydras could not actually regrow lost heads — this characteristic was unique to Leranean hydras, a stronger breed of the creatures.
Multiple Head Case: A typical hydra starts with five to twelve heads, and can grow up to twice as many as its original number over a battle. They put these extra heads to good use, both for the additional attacks and for the extra sensory input when needing to spot foes.
Organ Drops: Hydra body parts have a surprising number of uses. Hydra tongues hung from a pole, for instance, will change color rather dramatically depending on the approaching weather, while hydra fat mixed with corn meal makes for extremely effective rat bait and powdered hydra bone is a potent desiccant.
Our Hydras Are Different: Hydras are large, four-legged reptiles and can have anywhere from five to twelve heads, with two new ones growing in whenever one is lost. They inhabit swamps and other areas of stagnant water and are some of the most dangerous things living there short of black dragons, with whom they often compete when they coexist.
- While hydras aren't dragons, some scholars believe that they share a common ancestor — a minor scholarly tradition that believes dragons to descend from wyvern-like creatures rather than having been created by the gods holds that certain ancient skeletons of multi-headed reptiles are the remains of mutated proto-dragons who later evolved into modern hydras.
- A couple of variants exist, including cryohydras, which can breathe out clouds of icy mist, and pyrohydras, which breathe fire instead.

Dracohydra

Challenge Rating: 10 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Dracohydras are artificial creatures born from attempts to recreate Tiamat's power by combining hydra blood with the magic of chromatic dragons. They resemble dragons with the heads of multiple types of chromatic dragons and many snakelike tails. They can sometimes be found serving their creators; in the wild, they're voracious predators entirely capable of stripping countrysides of animal life.

Artificial Hybrid: The dracohydra is the result of amalgamating the magic of chromatic dragons with the blood of a hydra.
Big Eater: Dracohydrae feed relentlessly, with each head demanding a feast of its own. If left alone, they can hunt fauna almost to extinction.
Breath Weapon: A dracohydra can exhale a polychromatic mass of energy from its multiple heads that contains the essence of a chromatic dragon's elemental power, allowing it to choose which type of energy damage the attack deals.
Multiple-Tailed Beast: A dracohydra has multiple snake-like tails.

Gulguthydra

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Hydra-otyugh hybrids, these 6,000-pound eating machines roam swamps and caverns, consuming anything organic they come across, no matter how foul. Thankfully, they lack a pureblood hydra's regenerative abiliity.

Combat Tentacles: Like otyughs, they can lash and grab living prey with their tentacles.
Extreme Omnivore: They combine a hydra's multi-headed appetite with an otyugh's ability to digest almost anything organic. They'll eat living creatures, carrion, even plants and trees.
The Pig-Pen: Gulguthydras are covered in a foot-thick layer of slime and excrement, which assists their movement over the ground.
Weaponized Stench: They reek of rot and decay, and anything that comes within 80 feet of a gulguthydra has to save or become nauseated.

Characters / Dungeons And Dragons Creatures H

H

Annis Hag

Bheur Hag

Bog Hag

Bruja

Dune Hag

Dusk Hag

Fate Hag

Green Hag

Marzanna

Night Hag

Sea Hag

Sea Fury

Shrieking Hag

Hagspawn

Bridge Haunt

Forest Haunt

Taunting Haunt

Trap Haunt

Varag

Dracohydra

Gulguthydra

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Characters / Dungeons And Dragons Creatures H

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H

Annis Hag

Bheur Hag

Bog Hag

Bruja

Dune Hag

Dusk Hag

Fate Hag

Green Hag

Marzanna

Night Hag

Sea Hag

Sea Fury

Shrieking Hag

Hagspawn

Bridge Haunt

Forest Haunt

Taunting Haunt

Trap Haunt

Varag

Dracohydra

Gulguthydra

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