Dungeons And Dragons Creatures N To O / Characters

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/DungeonsAndDragonsCreaturesNToO

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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N

Naga

Spirit naga (5e)

Classification: Aberration (3E), Immortal Magical Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (dark, iridescent) to 18 (nagahydra) (3E); 12 (guardian) to 25 (primordial) (4E); 4 (bone), 8 (dark, spirit), 10 (guardian) (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Good (guardian), Chaotic Good (iridescent), True Neutral (nagahydra), Lawful Evil (bone, dark), Chaotic Evil (spirit)

Serpentine creatures with human faces, as well as great wisdom and magical power. They tend to become the unquestioned rulers of their territories, though whether they are benevolent or tyrannical depends on the naga.

Arch-Enemy: Nagas don't get along with the yuan-ti, the other race of serpent people that happen to share the nagas' preferred territory and consider themselves the epitome of snakedom. In rare cases the two will cooperate, but the yuan-ti always chafe under a naga's authority.
Forced Sleep: A dark naga's bite forces its victims to lapse into a nightmare-haunted sleep.
Healing Factor: Nagahydras steadily regenerate health in general, and will grow back severed heads within a few rounds.
Language Equals Thought: Nagas are supremely arrogant beings, and each views themself as incarnate perfection, other members of its specific breed as nearly so, other nagas as further flawed, and non-nagas as increasingly imperfect. Consequently, they have no concept of equal rank, and their language has no word for "peer".
Non-Human Undead: Bone nagas are skeletal undead servitors transformed by a necromantic ritual for the purpose of halting their resurrection. In 3rd edition, they are transformed by other dark nagas, while in 5th edition, this ritual was devised by the yuan-ti.
Our Hydras Are Different: Nagahydras are a large variant of naga whose bodies fork into multiple necks and heads, each of a different color, which will grow back if severed unless the stump is seared with fire.
Poisonous Person: All nagas have a venomous bite.
Resurrective Immortality: 5th edition nagas come back to life within days of being killed. Only powerful magic, such as a yuan-ti necromancy ritual or the wish spell, can prevent a slain naga's resurrection.
Royal "We": Nagas tend to believe themselves, personally, the pinnacle of creation, and usually refer to themselves in the plural. Most go further and specifically call themselves Ssa'Naja, "We the Ideal".
Servant Race: In Forgotten Realms, the nagas were created by the sarrukh to serve as explorers, scouts, and magical researchers.
Snake People: Nagas are at the far snake end of this, usually resembling giant snakes with human heads or faces.
Super Spit: Guardian nagas can spit their venom at up to thirty feet away from themselves.
Telepathy: Dark nagas can constantly detect the thoughts of nearby creatures.
Walking the Earth: Iridescent nagas spend their lives wandering the world, searching for new discoveries and beauty.

Ha-Naga

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 22 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These immense naga lords are often worshipped by spirit nagas as living gods, and prefer to lair within the ruined palaces or temples of civilizations they have personally destroyed.

Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Most nagas are fairly large compared to humans, but the ha-naga is massive: the thing is a hundred feet long.
Chameleon Camouflage: A ha-naga adapts the hues and shades of its scales to match its environment, in a manner compared to a chameleon's camouflage.
Charm Person: They gaze replicates a mass charm effect.
Collector of the Strange: A ha-naga colelcts the art, fine jewellery, and the recorded history of a civilisation it destroyed together as a tribute to its own prowess.
Flight: Ha-nagas can fly through the air in a way compared to a snake swimming through the water.
Large and in Charge: Ha-nagas are immense, towering above the lesser nagas that serve them and worship them as gods.

Nagatha

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

The creation of evil spirit nagas, these blind, wormlike monsters vent their suffering from their existence upon their opponents.

Snake People: Nagathas have serpentine heads but wormlike lower bodies.
Super-Speed: Their base speed is only 10 feet of normal or burrowing movement, but whenever they devote a turn to taking two move actions, they gain a burst of speed that lets them move 100 feet per round, or 200 feet if they "run."
Super-Senses: Nagathas are blind, but their hearing gives them blindsight out to 60 feet.
Undying Loyalty: Part of the nagatha creation process involves the casting of charm person, making the creature permanently loyal to their spirit naga "parent." Nagathas will fly into a rage at the suggestion that their master is in any way responsible for their miserable existence.
Was Once a Man: They're usually created from humanoids who survive failed attacks on a spirit naga's lair, magically corrupted using raw material from snakes into creatures that bear no resemblance to their previous forms. The most sadistic part is that during the process, the subject's memories are wiped and their mental faculties dulled, but the spirit naga deliberately leaves the new nagatha with the knowledge that something important has been taken away from them, leaving them in a constant state of loss and misery.

Nagpa

Origin: Mystara
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Elemental Humanoid (4E), Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (3E), 9 (4E), 17 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (3E), Evil (4E), Neutral Evil (5E)

Former humanoids cursed with hideous avian forms.

Bird People: Nagpas resemble hunched, wingless humanoid vultures.
Black Speech: In 2E, the nagpa language Nag (pronounced "nawg") consists of "squawks, caws, and shrieks, and is definitely not a language suited for whispering or polite conversation."
The Chessmaster: From the shadows, nagpas manipulate events to bring about ruin. Extremely patient, they have several plots working simultaneously, so if one plan goes awry, they can shift their focus to another.
Creative Sterility: In 5th Edition, nagpas were a cabal of wizards who betrayed the elf mage who would become the Raven Queen, who cursed them to be unable to gather, expand or create new knowledge of their own or to learn it from the living, forcing them to scavenge tidbits of lore from the ruins of fallen civilizations.
Expy: In every edition, they have a remarkable resemblance to the Skeksis. Their state as beings who were cursed after a failed ritual can be seen as a loose allegory to the splitting of the urSkeks into urRu and Skeksis, too.
Forced Transformation: In most iterations of their lore, the nagpas were once humanoid beings who were cursed into twisted birdlike forms after offending divine powers, though the specifics vary with edition.
Loners Are Freaks: In AD&D, certain gods inflict the nagpa curse upon "especially selfish mages who disdain the company of others," making them twisted creatures compelled to kill any who learn of their shameful existence.
Speak of the Devil: In 2nd Edition, nagpas can sense when other creatures are talking about them, to a range of 100 miles, and will seek out and murder those creatures before departing "consumed with feelings of guilt, remorse, relief, and joy."
Turncoat: In 4th Edition, the nagpas were originally beautiful and cunning creations of the primordials, but as the Dawn War turned against their masters, the opportunistic nagpa secretly defected to aid the deities. But their treachery was discovered by the primordials, who cursed the nagpas with their current forms.

Nat

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_nat_3e.jpg

Clockwise from top: lu nat, einsaung nat, and hkum yeng nat (3e)

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (einsaung nat), 3 (hkum yeng nat), 4 (lu nat) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good (einsaung nat), True Neutral (hkum yeng nat), Chaotic Evil (lu nat)

Nature spirits who take up residence in warm forest settlements, imparting their blessings in exchange for offerings.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Nats come in a variety of brightly-colored skin tones, usually red, yellow or blue.
Elemental Powers: Hkum yeng nats wield a variety of at-will elemental powers, such as create spring, fireball and hail of stone.
Friend to All Children: Einsaung nats adore children, who are the only people they'll interact with in their true forms.
House Fey: Nats in general serve this role, though the particulars vary by subtype.
- Einsaung nats are shy creatures who take up residence inside humanoid houses (specifically the southernmost cornerpost), usually remaining out of sight, but leaving advice and information on scraps of paper for residents to find.
- Hkum yeng nats make their homes in the center of villages belonging to "fierce hill people," protecting their settlement unless the locals neglect their offerings, at which point the nats will inflict misfortune and death.
- Lu nats are purely malicious spirits that haunt graveyards, attacking victims with their claws and spells unless appeased by offerings of food.
Intangibility: Einsaung and hkum yeng nats usually reside on the Ethereal Plane/Spirit World, only returning to the Material Plane to defend their homes.
Invisibility: All nats can use the spell at will.
Poisonous Person: Lu nats are surrounded by a 5-foot aura that can infect other creatures with a rotting affliction that deals Constitution damage until it's either cured with remove disease, or the victim reaches 0 Constitution and dies.
Status Buff: Anyone inside a home protected by an einsaung nat enjoy the benefits of a bless spell.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Hkum yeng nat constantly radiate a 10-foot radius of fear.
White Mage: Most of an einsaung nat's spells are curative in nature, such as slow poison, remove disease or dispel evil.

Neanderthal

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

Primitive kin to humans who live as simple hunter-gatherers on the fringe of civilization, typically dwelling within caves or other races' ruins.

Clash of Evolutionary Levels: They're presented as the losing side of such, having been continuously pushed out of their homelands by the expansion of more settled races, and their race entry notes that "the history of neanderthals and civilization is a long, bloody tale of warfare and slaughter."
Contemporary Caveman: Comparatively speaking; neanderthals are club-wielding, illiterate savages coexisting in a Standard Fantasy Setting with medieval knights and wizards.
Dumb Muscle: They get racial boosts to Strength and Constitution, at the cost of penalties to Dexterity and Intelligence.
Human Subspecies: They have the (Human) subtype, and will be affected by anything that affects full-blooded humans. Interestingly, their racial write-up describes neanderthals as creations of "the crude and violent deities of the winterlands to dwell in their frozen domains," suggesting that they aren't so much directly related to humans as they were created in imitation of them.
Never Learned to Read: Neanderthals are by default illiterate regardless of character class, and have to spend skill points to know how to read and write the languages they speak.
Won't Get Fooled Again: The reason for neanderthals' suspicion toward other peoples, even those who seem sympathetic to them — "the neanderthals have been tricked and deluded far too many times for them to openly accept offers of friendship and trade."

Necrichor

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Undead (5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (5E)

Living blood animated by cruel souls, formed from the ichor of evil gods or the sludge left behind by failed liches.

Blob Monster: Necrichors are essentially oozes made of blood, and as such have pseudopod attacks and can move along walls and ceilings.
Bloody Murder: They are blood, and both malevolent and powerful.
People Puppets: They can attach themselves to living beings and control them like puppets.
Resurrective Immortality: Necrichors will return from dead within the week, unless their remains are splashed with holy water or put under a hallow spell. Unfortunately, neither is common in the Domains of Dread, so more often necrichors there end up sealed away by the likes of the Order of the Guardians, until those prisons pass from knowlege and their wards weaken.

Necronaut

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

The creation of demonic necromancers, these malevolent mountains of corpses are sent to the Material Plane to kill at will, growing larger with each corpse they absorb.

Achilles' Heel: Necronauts' nature makes them uniquely vulnerable to spells like animate dead or create undead, which deal damage to them.
Body of Bodies: They're a haphazard example, appearing as piles of corpses.
The Juggernaut: As per their name, necronauts can just move over opponents, dealing heavy trample damage.
No Body Left Behind: They can assimilate corpses into their bodies, which heals the necronaut and prevents the victim from being raised from the dead.
Undead Abomination: A necronaut is a Gargantuan pile of bones and rotting flesh about 20 feet tall and just as wide, dragging itself forward with four enormous, spidery limbs.

Necrophidius

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

Stealthy, skeletal, serpentine constructs usually employed as guardians or assassins.

Back Stab: They deal sneak attack damage against flanked or flat-footed foes.
Mistaken for Undead: A necrophidius looks like a skeletal serpent with a fanged humanoid head, but they're constructs, not undead creatures, and their bones are warm to the touch.
Noiseless Walker: A necrophidius makes no noise even when slithering across a hard surface, translating to a bonus on Move Silently checks.
The Paralyzer: Anything bitten by a necrophidius has to save or be paralyzed and unconscious for 10 minutes.
Snake Charmer: Inverted; a necrophidius can perform a macabre "dance of death" as it moves, holding eye contact with a victim and swaying in a hypnotic manner. Observers who fail their saves can take no actions but to defend themselves when the necrophidius inevitably attacks.

Necroplasm

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

Blobs of bone and ectoplasm that suck the fluids from their victims, then convert the husks into more of their kind.

Blob Monster: Necroplasms are basically a skull and enough bones to form a pair of hands, sliding around on a column of ectoplasm. They're considered Undead rather than Oozes, but can slither up sheer surfaces like the latter.
Vampiric Draining: They drain the fluids from those they grapple, dealing one or two points of permanent Constitution drain each round. This has the side effect of turning a necroplasm's ectoplasmic core the same color of its victim's blood.
The Virus: After killing a victim, a necroplasm spends its next turn vomiting ectoplasm over the corpse, so that a minute later it rises as a new, independent necroplasm. Spells like consecrate and delay poison delay this effect, while heal or remove disease negates it.

Necropolitan

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: Same as base creature (3E)
Alignment: Any

These humanoids have voluntarily undergone the Ritual of Crucimigration, becoming intelligent, free-willed undead.

Cruel and Unusual Death: Said Ritual of Crucimigration involves the aspiring necropolitan being nailed to a standing pole and slowly dying of heart failure and asphyxiation over the course of 24 hours, while a few zombie servitors keep up a chant initiated by the ritual's leader. When the aspirant gasps their last breath, the ritual leader invokes dark powers to forge a link with the Negative Energy Plane and then impales the applicant, who dies but is transformed into a necropolitan. "As petitioners feel death's chill enter their bodies, many have second thoughts, but it is far too late to go back — the cursed nails and the chanting of the ritual ensures that the Crucimigration is completed."
Dark Is Not Evil: They're pallid and withered, and were reborn through a dark ritual, but necropolitans are not necessarily evil, they just chose to embrace undeath rather than let their lives end naturally.
Healing Factor: Necropolitans have the "Unnatural Resilience" rule, allowing them to naturally recover hit points at the same rate as living creature. They're still harmed by positive energy and cured by negative energy, however, so Revive Kills Zombie still applies.
Monster Town: Most necropolitans live in the obscure, predominantly-undead city of Nocturnus, since if their true nature is ever uncovered elsewhere, they're usually attacked as monsters.
Necessary Drawback: The necropolitan template can be picked up by a character without any sort of level adjustment, because the benefits of gaining the Undead creature type are counterbalanced by the fact that the character had to die and lose a level.

Necrosis Carnex

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

Horrible bundles of undead flesh held together by dark iron bands.

Body of Bodies: Well, body of body parts. No two necrosis carnexes look alike, so some are awkwardly moving about on four hands, while others have no limbs at all. They've been likened to purely undead Flesh Golems.
Brown Note: Living creatures take a minor penalty on attack rolls and saves just from drawing close to a necrosis carnex's malign aura.
Defeat Equals Explosion: When destroyed, a necrosis carnex detonates in a 30-foot-radius burst of negative energy.
Make Them Rot: Their touch attacks and death explosions deal negative energy damage.
Mook Medic: While necrosis carnexes can fight in combat, they're more dangerous when grouped with other undead, who they can heal with their necrotic touch.

Needle Spawn

^3e

^2e

Origin: Greyhawk
Classification: Plant (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E); 1/2 (needle spawn), 3 (needle lord) (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral (2E, 3E), Chaotic Evil (5E)

Also known as needlefolk or needlemen, these humanoid plants bristle with dangerous spines.

Art Evolution: 2E needlemen look like spiny zombies, while needlefolk's 3E description describes leaves and bark, but their art presents them as bug-like humanoids made out of cacti. 5th Edition's illustration better matches their 3E description.
Berserk Button: In most editions, these creatures hate elves. 3E needlefolk can sense elves' presence to a range of 1500 feet, at which point the needlefolk will move in to attack. If the elves outnumber them, needlefolk will silently shadow a party of elves until enough other needlefolk are drawn to the elves to make an attack successful.
He Was Right There All Along: When dormant, a needlefolk resembles a tree with two branches and a face-like outline in its bark near the top of its trunk. They also gain a hefty bonus to Hide checks in their home forests.
Large and in Charge: A 5E needle lord is the size of an ogre, compared to its human-sized minions.
Mistaken for Undead: 2E needlemen, and the needle spawn created by a 5E needle lord, look and shamble about much like zombies, but are plants.
Plant People: A spindly, spiny example. Needlefolk meet their dietary needs by absorbing sunlight and eating dirt, dead leaves, and a bit of carrion (or elf flesh), though they have no roots and thus need to drink through their mouths. They're deciduous, so their leaves turn red and brown in the autumn — the same time of year they drop their thorny seeds — and needlefolk hibernate through the winter.
Retcon: 5E turns needlefolk from an elf-hating group of plant creatures to invaders from "fey domains wracked by wanton violence," who seek to conquer Material Plane forests.
Spike Shooter: Their signature attack is launching a volley of needles from their bodies, which they can do each round.
The Spiny: Needle lords automatically damage anyone who attacks them in melee, unless they do so with disadvantage.
Villain Team-Up: A needle lord might work with the likes of hobgoblins and kobolds, but "it sees any alliance that casts it as a lesser partner as only a temporary measure," and will betray its partner as soon as it's feasible, since there can be only one ruler of a forest.
The Virus: 5E needle spawn are created when a needle lord sticks seed pods into humanoid corpses, converting them into its minions.
Was Once a Man: Their 2E write-up relates a theory that the needlemen were once a band of forest-dwelling humans who clashed with some wood elves or grugach, sought supernatural aid against their foe, and were transformed into plant monsters by some trickster entity.
Weak to Magic: 2E needlemen take triple damage from spells, enchanted weapons triple their damage bonus against them, spells like charm plants are triply effective against them, etc.

Neh-thalggu

^3e

Origin: Mystara
Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 26 (3E), 4 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (2E, 5E), Chaotic Evil, or Neutral Evil (3E)

Monsters from a nightmare realm whose activities on the Material Plane have led to their nickname, "Brain Collectors."

Admiring the Abomination: Brain collectors may attract a retinue of mind flayers who wish to study its ability to extract brains at long range, and who also get to eat the brains the neh-thalggu disdains to add to its collection.
Art Evolution: They're fairly cartoony in their 2nd and 3rd Edition art, but neh-thalggu's 5th Edition depiction is as a more realistic and grotesque horror.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: Their AD&D write-up insists that neh-thalggu are more Neutral than Evil, despite their habit of stealing brains — "The Neh-thalggu do not have hostile intentions as such; rather, they do not seem to regard humans or or other humanoids as people." Instead, brain collectors see Material Plane races as things to be studied and exploited, something like cattle.
Brain Theft: In 2nd and 5th Edition, neh-thalggu use surgical tools or their pincers to remove their victims' brains and swallow them for storage within a bulge upon their heads. In 3rd Edition they are even more dangerous, and every few rounds can attempt to use psionics to make a victim's brain phase through their skull to be sucked up by the brain collector (thankfully, a dimensional anchor effect will block this ability). Neh-thalggu can store up to 13 stolen brains within their bodies, and can draw upon the captured brains' cumulative ranks in Knowledge skills (in 3rd Edition), learn languages the brains' owners knew, or even cast wizard spells from them (in 2nd and 5th Edition).
Cephalothorax: Neh-thalggu are essentially Huge, bloated, tentacled heads atop a collection of spiderlike legs.
Intangibility: 3rd Edition bcollectors are always partly within another dimension, and are thus naturally incorporeal.
No-Sell: In 3rd Edition, the neh-thalggu's alien, amorphous physiology makes them immune to critical hits, sneak attacks, death from massive damage, or coup de grace attempts.
Non-Health Damage: Apart from its poison, a neh-thalggu's tentacles desiccate and dehydrate its opponents in 3rd Edition, dealing both normal damage and permanently draining their Strength, Dexterity and Constitution as they wither away.
Percent Damage Attack: A 3E brain collector's bite carries a poison that damages half of a victim's Constitution as an initial effect on a failed saving throw, and if they fail a second save a minute later, they lose the other half.
Teleportation: In 3rd Edition, they can use a quickened dimension door every round, and cast teleport without error or plane shift at will.
Touch the Intangible: 3E neh-thalggu are often incorporeal, but they can manifest their mouths physically to bite creatures on the Material Plane.
Your Soul Is Mine!: In 3rd Edition, anyone whose brain is in the body of a neh-thalggu cannot be raised from the dead, as the creatures use their victims' souls when drawing upon the brains' stored knowledge. Some neh-thalggu have been known to barter for the return of a specific brain, but only in exchange for a more desirable specimen.

Neogi

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E), Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 10 (4E), 3 (5E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Creatures with spider-like bodies but eel-like heads and necks, the neogi are slavers and traders who wander through and between the worlds of the Material Plane, hated by all they meet but always able to find customers.

Aliens Are Bastards: They are explicitly from another planet, and are almost always evil. Their society has no redeeming values, it would be "generous" to call neogi amoral, and the only people they won't try to enslave are races the neogi find "irritating," like halflings, gnomes and kender — these instead are tortured to death and eaten. The only race willing to regularly interact with neogi are the mind flayers, who benefit from the neogi slave trade and have formidable mental defenses, but "this alliance is tenuous at best." The fact that there are places in the cosmos where the neogi are not attacked on sight "is a testament to greed everywhere."
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Neogi are asexual beings who generate eggs via parthenogenesis, but don't lay them normally. Instead, they inject a fellow neogi with a special poison that causes it to swell up grotesquely and lose its mind, turning it into a voracious savage derisively dubbed a "great old master." The other neogi lay their eggs inside the great old master, and the resulting spawn gestate within its body, eating it from the inside out before chewing their way to freedom. The one thing that makes this any less horrific is that neogi only use old, senile neogi as hosts for their young — why waste a useful one? This reproductive process leaves the neogi without any conception of love, much less gender (they tend to treat males and females of any species as separate races).
Blue-and-Orange Morality: They cannot comprehend any social bond aside from master and slave, and think nothing of stealing from other races or enslaving them with the neogi's innate powers. "In the neogi's view of the universe, all things are, were, or will be eventually owned by the neogi."
Creation Myth: The neogi hold that the deity Ka'jik'zxi made first the cosmos, then five lesser deities who promptly began squabbling over their divine portfolios. After those deities were punished for their bickering, they banded together to make a sinister poison containing the "foulest ingredients" — friendship, mercy, compassion, etc. When they subjected Ka'jik'zxi to it, their creator swelled up and finally exploded, spewing its entrails across creation, which became the other deities. Ka'jik'zxi's brain landed in a particular crystal sphere, the world of Ka'jk'z, and formed the neogi. The surviving neogi deities taught the neogi about the multiverse and their destiny to conquer it, so that eventually the neogi left their homeworld, never to return.
Ethnic God: The neogi have five, representing their racial values: Thrig'ki the "love" deity (actually jealousy/hatred, since love and jealousy are the same thing to neogi), P'kk the deity of tyranny, T'zen'kil the deity of torture and pain, Kr'tx the deity of brutality and destruction, and Kil'lix the deity of death and murder. The neogi don't actually pray to or even really worship these deities, instead their priests demand favors from them without offering anything in return. Despite this relationship, anyone who pronounces a neogi deity's name wrong is subject to a slow and excruciating death, so non-neogi are advised not to try.
Made a Slave: Neogi are enthusiastic slavers, and measure their place in society by how many other sapients they have forced into their service — they can even psychically dominate other beings to aid this endeavor. This makes dealing with them extremely dangerous, as even neogi who present a reasonable and mercantile facade will attempt to enslave their trading partners if they think they can succeed. Neogi who are enslaved are not forbidden from owning property, including slaves of their own, so the entire neogi culture is one giant chain of masters and slaves. This results in the strange honorifics the neogi use: standard neogi are "kinsmen-slavers," ship masters are "captain-owners," umber hulk servitors are "lord-servants," and everyone else is a "servant-slave" or just "meat."
Mind Control: Adult neogi can attempt to mentally enslave another creature a few times per day, mimicking a dominate monster (in 3E) or charm effect (in 5E).
Mix-and-Match Critters: Neogi resemble eels sprouting from the bodies of giant spiders.
Monstrous Cannibalism: Beyond inevitably eating any non-umber hulk slave they don't sell to someone else, neogi have no compunction about feasting on each other — any weak or injured neogi who aren't old enough to convert into great old masters are killed and eaten.
Names To Run Away From Very Fast: When it comes to naming their nightspider starships, "Most involve the words 'slave,' 'blood,' 'death,' or 'pain.'"
Poisonous Person: They have a venomous bite, and some develop the ability to spit that venom as a ranged attack.
Proud Merchant Race: The neogi like to think of themselves as this, and "The fact that they sometimes steal the goods rather than buy them, or that the goods themselves are sometimes sentient beings who would rather not be bought and sold, is of no concern to the neogi." They do deal in mundane goods, and are experts at bringing commodities from one world to another market to be sold at high price, but their most common trading partners are fellow slave societies. And if a neogi is doing business with someone, it's only because the neogi doesn't like their odds of taking what they want by force.
Starfish Language: The neogi tongue is D'azz'jak'n, which sounds "reminiscent of snakes hissing and the whirring of thri-kreen" and is known for its complicated grammar (which neogi don't bother with when speaking Common).
Weaponized Offspring: When attacked, great old masters can release clutches of aggressive, vicious spawn as a defense mechanism.

Neraph

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Any Chaotic

Related to but distinct from the slaadi, neraphim live as nomads amid the Ever-Changing Chaos of Limbo, hunting the local chaos beasts for their meat, bones and hide.

Confusion Fu: The neraphim have mastered a form of motion camouflage that tricks prey into thinking an incoming threat is motionless or moving slower than it actually is. This lets them, once per combat encounter, make a charge or ranged attack against a foe that is treated as flat-footed.
Deadly Disc: Their signature weapon is the annulat, a hurled hoop of razor-sharp metal.
The Exile: The most severe punishment among the neraphim is exile, and many neraph adventurers were banished from their home plane. Some of these exiles manage to complete a quest that gives them the right to return.
Frog Men: They have the toad-like builds of the slaadi, and are natural jumpers, though neraphim have no affinity for water. They also sport un-frog-like chitinous encrustations for some natural armor.
Matriarchy: What society the neraphim have is divided into households, each led by a matriarch with absolute authority.

Nereid

Nereid with water weird (2e)

Classification: Fey (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Any Chaotic (2E), Chaotic Neutral (3E), Any Chaotic (5E)

Capricious fey from the Elemental Plane of Water who sometimes explore Material Plane waters, leading to stories of them luring sailors to their dooms.

The Beastmaster: Nereids can speak with animals at will, and in 2nd Edition are often accompanied by "pets" like a dolphin, giant octopus or stingray, who assist them in battle.
Enemy Summoner: 3rd Edition nereids can summon one or more water elementals once per day.
Making a Splash: They can control the waters of their homes, either to amuse themselves by sculpting waves into shapes, or to impede attackers with rough surf.
One-Gender Race: Nereids are all female; their AD&D rules let them assume male guises when interacting with females, but most of the time other women can tell there's something off about them, and won't lower their guard.
Our Nymphs Are Different: They're extraplanar fey who are sustained by clean water, and want nothing more than to splash and cavort in the waves. Since they can be found in both salt- and freshwater, they're effectively fusions of the Greek nereids and naiads. Nereids usually live alone or in small groups, and might be related to tritons, though the nereids have not moved permanently to the Material Plane.
Our Sirens Are Different: Nereids have lovely singing voices, and have been known to tempt amorous sailors to their watery deaths, but they don't have any actual supernatural singing ability — that trait belongs to sirines, a distinctly different kind of fey. Most nereids are in fact shy and would prefer to hide from a potential threat rather than draw someone into a fight.
Soul Jar: Nereids always carry or wear a delicate shawl of seaform white, and will quickly die, dissolving into water within an hour, should that shawl ever be destroyed. Some evil individuals thus steal a nereid's shawl and use it to enslave the fey.
Super Spit: 2nd and 5th Edition nereids can spit a blinding venom at opponents.
Supernatural Suffocation: A nereid's kiss (i.e. touch attack) can fill an enemy's lungs with water, forcing them to save or drown. Though 2nd Edition notes that should someone succeed his saving throw from being kissed by a nereid, "he finds total ecstasy."
Voluntary Shapeshifting: In their natural forms, nereids are nearly impossible to distinguish from water, but upon exposure to air will assume a comely humanoid shape.
Would Not Hit a Girl: Enforced in 2nd Edition, in which "All males that look at a nereid find themselves incapable of harming the creature (no saving throw), and it seems to be a shy and flirtatious girl playing by the shore."

Nerra

A varoot (bottom-left), kalareem (upper-middle) and sillit (right) (3e)

Classification: Outsider (3E), Immortal Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (varoot), 3 (kalareem), 6 (sillit) (3E); 16 (varoot) to 20 (teltarym) (4E)
Alignment: True Neutral (3E), Unaligned (4E)

Enigmatic, reflective-skinned humanoids from the Plane of Mirrors, who observe the Material Plane and kidnap key individuals, presumably in preparation of an invasion. The varoots are the most common of the nerra, acting as their primary infiltrators, while kalareems are their soldiers and guardians of the Plane of Mirrors, and both defer to the leadership of the sillits.

Absurdly Sharp Blade: The nerra's signature weapons are shard swords and daggers made out of the mirror-like substance of the Plane of Mirrors. They're enchanted weapons that inflict terrible bleeding wounds for a Damage Over Time effect.
Achilles' Heel: Nerra take additional damage from sonic attacks.
Attack Reflector: Any spell that a nerra saves against instead affects the caster, and they're similarly immune to gaze effects, which affect the source creature instead.
Doppelgänger Spin: Appropriately enough, all nerra can cast mirror image once per day, or at will in the case of the sillits.
Dual Wielding: The kalareems usually wield two shard swords at once.
Dumb Muscle: Kalareems, the biggest and strongest nerra, have an averge Intelligence score compared to the varoot and especially the brilliant sillits, and lack most of the other nerra's spell-like abilities.
Flechette Storm: A few times each day, kalareems and sillits can spray a cone of mirror-like shards from their hands, which both deals damage and inflicts a bleed effect similar to their signatue weapons.
In the Hood: Sillits distinguish themselves from varoots with their fine black silk robes.
The Infiltration: The varoots are the nerra most commonly encountered on other planes, where they masquerade as native creatures and infiltrate a variety of organizations. The nerra's use of captives' mirror-selves only adds to this.
Lie to the Beholder: Varoots and sillits can cast change self at will to aid their infiltrations.
Mirror Monster: They're reflective humanoids with sinister intentions who lurk on the other side of mirrors.
Mirror Self: They actively create these, by abducting Material Plane creatures and bringing them to the Plane of Mirrors. This spawns a mirror replica of the nerra's victim, which kills and replaces the original creature, then follows the nerra's orders regardless of alignment.
No Body Left Behind: When a nerra is slain, their bodies shatter into a thousand mirror-like shards, which ten minutes later melt into pools of quicksilver before evaporating.
Reflective Teleportation: Nerra can magically jump between mirrors (or potentially highly reflective surfaces like still pools of water, or shiny metal) in a variant of the shadow walk spell, emerging up to a mile away.
Retcon: 4th Edition presents the nerra as the descendents of a group called the Sect of Severity, which planned to use their astral domain of the Constellation of Eyes to watch over the mortal realm. Unfortunately they were infiltrated by cultists of Asmodeus, and the resulting conflict turned the nerra into mirror-skinned creatures with an uncertain agenda, using dedicated combat forms such as the meerak and delphar. 4E also changed the nerra's appearance, going from smooth, mirror-skinned humanoids to blocky humanoid hulks (represented by the 3E art for the susurrus◊).
Sinister Surveillance: Any mirror, anywhere, might have a nerra spying from the other side of it.

Nethersight Mastiff

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

Great magical wolfhounds uniquely suited to hunting ethereal prey.

Intellectual Animal: With an Intelligence score of 6 they're a little smarter than the average ogre, and nethersight mastiffs are fully capable of speaking Common.
The Nose Knows: For more mundane prey, nethersight mastiffs are capable of tracking creatures by scent.
See the Invisible: As per their name, they have a natural true seeing effect that allows them to see ethereal creatures.
Touch the Intangible: Their glowing teeth act like ghost touch weapons, and can affect ethereal creatures without difficulty. More than that, nethersight mastiffs have learned how to latch onto ethereal foes and wrench them across the planar boundary, potentially stranding them on the Material Plane.
Trademark Favorite Food: Nethersight mastiffs love the flesh of ethereal creatures, and will often pass over easy prey on the Material Plane in favor of hunting something on the Ethereal Plane.

Nifern

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

Reptilian pack hunters native to the Underdark, though they can also be commonly found on the surface.

Attack Animal: Niferns are explicitly described as "the scaly equivalents to hunting dogs," and can be tamed as hunting beasts, trackers, guard animals, or simply as pets. Scalykind races like lizardfolk, troglodytes, dragonkin, etc. favor them over mundane canines, but Underdark inhabitants like the drow or even mind flayers make use of them as well.
The Paralyzer: Their tail stingers deliver a paralytic poison that can leave victims helpless for up to 10 rounds, and deals Strength damage as a secondary effect.
Super-Senses: Niferns are blind, but have such keen noses and other senses that they enjoy blindsight out to 60 feet.

Night Twist

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (standard), 20 (ancient) (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Black, leafless trees that lure prey in with their hauntingly horrible songs, then feed upon their victims' decaying flesh.

Blow You Away: Night twists can generate a gale-force wind at will, affecting all within 120 feet, usually in order to extinguish flames.
Compelling Voice: After sunset, a night twist emits a "despair song" that affects all creatures with an Intelligence of 6 or greater within a miles-wide radius. This song sounds different to each listener — some hear a woman weeping, others a cold wind blowing over a cemetery, but the point is that it's the most sorrowful sound imaginable. Those who fail their saving throws are hit by a crushing despair effect and are compelled to move toward the source of the song, neglecting food or sleep, and even take damage if they're restrained from seeking out the night twist. Those who reach the plant are promptly attacked by its spells or slam attacks.
Dying Curse: Whoever deals the death blow to a night twist has to save or become cursed by a nightmare effect, suffering hideous dreams each night that prevent rest and deal damage. This curse can only be removed by a limited wish or more powerful magic, and should a victim succumb to it, one month after their burial, a night twist sapling will sprout on their grave.
Imaginary Enemy: Night twists can use phantasmal killer to create illusions that may cause victims to die of fright.
One-Hit Kill: Ancient night twists can alternatively use circle of death to snuff out the lives of their victims.
When Trees Attack: They're evil, carnivorous trees that aren't very mobile (their speed is only 10 feet per round), but are adept at luring prey to them.

Nightmare

Classification: Outsider (3E), Shadow Magical Beast (4E), Fiend (5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 3 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (1E-3E, 5E), Evil (4E)

Monstrous horses from the Lower Planes marked by jet-black coats and flaming manes and fetlocks, nightmares are favored as steeds by fiends and certain exceptionally evil mortals.

Being Tortured Makes You Evil: The 5th Edition Monster Manual states that nightmares aren't a naturally occurring species, but an evil creature can create one by subjecting a pegasus to a humiliating ritual in which its wings are amputated and its mind corrupted by evil.
Flaming Hair: The equine version of this trope — their manes, tails and fetlocks are depicted as being made of blazing flames.
Flight: Nightmares are wingless, but can nonetheless fly at great speed.
Hellish Horse: A horse-like monster with a black coat and a burning mane and fetlocks, often found serving evil beings as steeds.
Pun-Based Creature: Nightmares are evil supernatural horses named after bad dreams, as a riff on the last half of "nightmare" sounding like the word for a female horse.
Summon a Ride: Nightmares can be bound using a magic item called infernal tack, after which they must answer the summons of the tack's owner and serve them as a steed.

Nightmare Beast

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Shadow Magical Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 15 (3E), 25 (4E), 16 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Fanged, tusked behemoths that terrorize prey in their dreams before tearing them apart in the flesh.

Disintegrator Ray: Their 5th Edition incarnation has a Deadly Gaze to this effect.
Goomba Stomp: In 3rd Edition, they have a variant of a trample attack that involves a running start and pouncing on a victim up to 35 feet away.
Monster Mouth: They have a formidable array of foot-long teeth, as well as a pair of tusks the length of cavalry lances, all of which are employed in combat.
Mutants: A sidebar in their 4th Edition entry explains that nightmare beasts aren't a natural species, but are mundane Athasian predators mutated by consuming prey tainted by the Gray or defiling magic, causing them to grow into these horrors. The sidebar also asks some pertinent questions, such as why these creatures mutate into a set form, and whether there are similar mutated monsters elsewhere in the wastes.
Nightmare Weaver: These beasts' signature ability is to torment the dreams of intelligent prey, causing those who fail their saving throws to suffer horribly vivid nightmares of being stalked and devoured. This prevents the victims from properly resting, leaving them fatigued (and potentially even dealing damage), and interferes with mages' efforts to recover their daily spells.
No Body Left Behind: Their 2nd Edition write-up notes that nightmare beasts aren't suitable as a food source because their bodies decay unnaturally quickly once the magic sustaining their lives has faded.
Psychic Powers: The nightmare beast debuted in Dark Sun, and thus its original incarnation sports a formidable repertoire of powers from the psychokinesis, psychometabolism, psychoportation and telepathy disciplines. Later editions replace these with spell-like abilities such as disintegrate, chain lightning, dimension door and wall of fire.
Walking Wasteland: Their 4th Edition write-up likens nightmare beasts to "a cancer on the world," permanently tainting the land and poisoning the water around them.

Nightseed

Classification: Ooze (3E)
Challenge Rating: 14 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Huge, roving blots of hungry darkness spawned by the Far Realm, which haunt the darkest depths of the earth or the surface on moonless nights.

Acid Attack: A nightseed secretes a digestive acid that dissolves organic material except clothing.
Blob Monster: A nightseed is a vast sack of pulsing hunger.
Hungry Menace: Nightseeds are driven by hunger and always move toward food, except when deterred by sunlight.
Swallowed Whole: Rather than battering foes with acidic slam attacks, a nightseed can simply engulf something smaller than it. This deals a massive amount of damage, gives the nightseed temporary hit points, and if its victims are spellcasters or psions, lets the nightseed use their spells or powers.
Weakened by the Light: Natural sunlight slows down nightseeds and eventually causes them to evaporate entirely.

Nightshade (Mystaran)

Origin: Mystara
Classification: Undead (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Enormous creatures of darkness and negative energy, who come in various forms, only occasionally humanoid. Not to be confused with the Torilian nature spirits also known as nightshades.

Dark Is Evil: Creatures of living darkness, and thoroughly malevolent.
Enemy Summoner: In 3rd edition, each variety of nightshade has the power to summon lesser undead to serve them for the duration of the night.
Evil Is Deathly Cold: Their AD&D entry describes how nightshades chill the air up to 60 feet around them, which can be felt even through solid stone walls. "The chill of a nightshade is something no adventurer forgets," so anyone who has encountered one will have an easier time detecting the creature if it tries to sneak up on them.
It Can Think: They look monstrous, but nightshades are veritable geniuses who can communicate telepathically. It's just that, as 2nd Edition explains, nightshades see no reason to converse with their victims, and "Any creature that is not a nightshade or a summoner is considered a victim."
One-Hit Kill: 2E nightshades are so toxic that anything struck by one has to save or die on the spot.
Retcon: Their origin varies by edition — in 2E they're from the Negative Energy Plane, in 3E they're from the Plane of Shadow, in 4E they're from the Shadowfell, while in 5E they're from the Negative Energy Plane via the Shadowfell.
Stomach of Holding: 2nd Edition explains that nightshades are intelligent enough to keep treasure (typically gems, jewelry, art objects and magic items), they just swallow their loot to carry it with them.
Walking Wasteland: They project a desecrating aura which bolsters the undead or harms the living, depending on the edition. In 2E this additionally spoils all consumable items around them, including holy water, potions, magical oils and ointments, etc.
Weakened by the Light: Nightshades loathe the light, and in natural daylight take a penalty on attack rolls, skill checks and saving throws.

Nightcrawler

Challenge Rating: 18 (3E)

A 100-foot worm covered in utterly black plates of chitinous armor.

Beware My Stinger Tail: Their stinger can eject a poison that deals a hefty amount of Strength damage.
Level Drain: Anything in a nightcrawler's gizzard gains negative levels, while the monster heals.
Swallowed Whole: Capable of gulping down even Huge-sized creatures.

Nighthaunt

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)

Man-sized, winged creatures of shadow and malice, who are drawn to desecrated temples or gravesites.

The Blank: A nighthaunt's face is featureless save for "the pale, lifeless orbs of its eyes."
Level Drain: They can drain life energy by pressing their face against a grappled victim's, bestowing two negative levels each round.
Our Gargoyles Rock: Nighthaunts have the body plan of such, and are humanoid figures with wings, horns and tails, but they're sculpted from "purest night" rather than stone.

Nightwalker

^3e

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

Towering undead bipeds made of corporeal darkness.

Deader than Dead: When a 5th edition nightwalker kills someone, that poor sap is dead as a doornail and cannot be revived by anything less than the wish spell.
Mooks Ate My Equipment: 3rd edition nightwalkers can attempt to snatch a player's magic items out of their hands. If the nightwalker succeeds, it can then destroy the item by crushing it.
Omnicidal Maniac: Nightwalkers exist to make life extinct, and devour all life they encounter.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: 3rd and 5th edition nightwalkers can literally paralyze their opponents with fear. In the former they do so by means of a terrifying gaze, while in the latter the fear is a by-product of zapping the victim with a bolt of necrotic energy.
Undead Abomination: In 3rd edition, nightwalkers are towering undead giants born from the souls of exceptionally strong-willed and evil people. In 5th edition they are instead beings of pure anti-life from the Negative Plane. In either case, these things are so unfathomably wrong and evil that their very presence destroys life, and they can kill something just by pointing at it or looking at it.

Nightwing

Challenge Rating: 14 (3E)

A mass of utter darkness, in the shape of a bat with a 40-foot wingspan.

Bat Out of Hell: A huge, extraplanar shadow bat.
Giant Flyer: Classified as Huge, which is literally giant-sized.
Mooks Ate My Equipment: Nightwings' touch attacks inflict Mana Drain on magic items, reducing their potency by one degree until they become mere masterwork equipment.

Nightshade (Torilian)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_nightshade_2e.jpg

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Also known as "wood woses," these malicious elemental spirits embody poisonous plants such as belladonna, foxglove, hemlock and mistletoe, and lurk in dark forests or dank caverns. Not to be confused with the giant undead creatures also known as nightshades.

God Save Us from the Queen!: Nightshade society is led by their High Queen Ainecotte, the oldest and most intelligent of their kind who "rules through terror and blackmail." The lesser nightshades sacrifice prisoners to her.
Green Thumb: They can use magic like speak with plants, entangle and plant door, and seven or more nightshades can conduct a ritual to summon a shambling mound once per month, though it requires them to drink blood beforehand.
No-Sell: Nightshades are completely immune to damage from wooden weapons, even enchanted shillelaghs.
Plant Person: Nightshades look like dwarves wearing clothes of leaves, with vines growing in their thick, tangled hair. Despite their nature, they hide from the sun during daytime and hunt at night, though they also go into hibernation over the winter. They're also Weak to Fire.
Poisonous Person: Their sap, which they use to coat their bronze weapons, is a Dexterity-damaging poison, paralyzing victims if their Dexterity falls below 3, and killing them if it reaches 0. Nightshades also trade their poisons to quicklings in exchange for weapons.
The Spiny: Striking a nightshade with a melee weapon deals damage from their stinging poison, while those grappled by one take Dexterity damage as well.
The Virus: Anyone slain by a nightshade's poison sprouts a new nightshade at the next full moon.

Nilshai

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Also known as ethereal theurges, these bizarre beings live in alien cities on the Ethereal Plane, but visit the Material Plane to spy on the locals, secure magic items, or capture intelligent slaves.

Arch-Enemy: In the Realms, the nilshai have an obsession with the star elves' demiplane of Sildëyuir, and have constructed several portals allowing access to it from the Ethereal Plane. The aberrations have launched several invasions of the demiplane, each worse than the last, and have established enough footholds there that some star elves have proposd abandoning Sildëyuir for the Material Plane.
The Beastmaster: The nilshai are often found with other ethereal creatures — they use ethereal marauders as pets, ethereal filchers as servants, have tamed ethereal slayers, and will sometimes use even stranger creatures as guards or soldiers.
Eldritch Abomination: Their bodies are trilaterally-symmetrical trunks with three wings, three tentacle-arms, and three eyestalks on a bulbous head. Between this and their alien minds, nilshais are so adept at multitasking that they're able to take an additional partial action each round, such as to cast a second spell, use a magic item, or ready dispel magic to counterspell an enemy mage.
Intangibility: They can use ethereal jaunt at will, materializing from the Ethereal Plane as a free action or returning to the Ethereal Plane as a move action.
Mage Species: They're natural arcanists, casting spells as an 8th-level sorcerer.
No-Sell: Nilshais are under a constant mind blank effect, rendering them immune to divination magic or mental influences.

Nimblewright

Classification: Construct (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 4 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (3E), Unaligned (5E)

Human-sized constructs that use their speed, spells and swordsmanship to serve their creators as bodyguards or assassins. Unlike most constructs, they are intelligent, creative, and have distinct personalities.

Achilles' Heel: Cold damage slows a nimblewright for several rounds, while fire damage stuns them for a round.
Dual Wielding: Nimblewrights can fight with both rapier-hands at once without penalty.
Glamour: They can use alter self at will to disguise their construct nature, or to aid in an infiltration.
Golem: They're similar to standard golems in that nimblewrights are constructs animated by a bound elemental spirit, but theirs is from the Elemental Plane of Water rather than Earth. They also never go berserk during combat, but lack a normal golem's resistance/immunity to most magic.
Magic Knight: Nimblewrights can use buff and utility spells like haste, entropic shield, cat's grace and featherfall at will.
Master Swordsman: In 3rd Edition, nimblewrights have feats like Improved Disarm and Expertise, their Augmented Critial ability gives them a 45% chance to score a Critical Hit with their rapiers, and they can make trip attacks with them as well.
Retractable Weapon: A nimblewright's rapiers are actually parts of their body, able to fold up into their forearms until needed.

Nishruu

Hakeashar (3e)

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Extraplanar creatures resembling 12-foot-wide, glowing, misty red spheres, which seek out and consume magical energy.

Achilles' Heel: A rod of absorption or ring of spell turning has a 1-in-20 chance of destroying a nishruu outright, with no harm done to the item.
Composite Character: In 2nd Edition, nishruu and hakeashars are distinct but related creatures, and while each has its own Monstrous Manual entry, they are functionally identical, differing only slightly in appearance. 3rd Edition decided hakeshars are just a subspecies of nishruu characterized by having a bunch of grasping claws, gnashing mouths and staring eyes visible within their misty forms.
Feed It with Fire: Any spells cast on nishruu simply cause it to gain hit points, with the exception of magical fire and cold attacks (though the latter energy type does reduced damage).
Magic Eater: Nishruu feed on magic, though none have been observed starving for lack of magic, or suffering any effects from overfeeding. Any magic items they come in contact with lose charges every round, or have their power negated until a few rounds after the nishruu moves on — the latter applies even to artifacts. This is in fact the nishruu's only way of interacting with the material world, as they have no offensive attacks or other abilities. But as a consequence of this, should a nishruu be destroyed, any magic items in contact with its body as it dissipates are empowered by the energy released, so that those that use charges gain some, and any magic weapons temporarily gain the spell storing trait for a few days.
Mana Burn: Any spellcasters who come into contact with a nishruu lose a random spell each round, and worse, have to save to avoid a feeblemind effect.
No-Sell: Nishruu are immune to any mental effects, and are quite difficult to harm with nonenchanted weapons (and enchanted weapons won't be functional for long if they're close enough to hit a nishruu).
Salt Solution: While nishruu mostly ignore attempts to damage them with physical objects, salt is highly poisonous to them, and a thrown handful of the stuff can deal more damage than a blow from a greatsword.
Starfish Language: Nishruu are intelligent and presumably have their own language, but all attempts to communicate with them have failed.

Norker

Origin: Greyhawk
Classification: Humanoid (3E, 5E), Elemental Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E, 5E), 12 (4E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Savage subterranean goblinoids known for their tough hides.

Barbarian Tribe: Norkers are this compared to ordinary goblins. Their weapons are primitive, they can't cooperate enough to build anything more complicated than a rough wall or stockade, and they're too lazy to hunt, leading norkers to steal supplies from other humanoids to survive. They're also incredibly fractious and prone to infighting, resulting in smaller tribes than other goblinoids.
Battle Trophy: When two norker tribes clash, the results are usually short of a total slaughter, with the winners taking the fangs of the losers to show their dominance.
Our Goblins Are Different: They're clearly related to the likes of goblins and hobgoblins, sometimes described as resembling the latter on the scale of the former. Hobgoblins will conscript norker tribes into their warhosts for use as expendable laborers, lower in the hierarchy than even goblins.
Retcon: 4th Edition casts norkers as goblins who found their way into the Elemental Chaos, taking on the strength of elemental earth to survive there. As such, their hides are literally rock-hard, and they're often minions of the archomental Ogremach or the cult of the Elder Elemental Eye.
Super-Toughness: Norkers' thick hides offer them a hefty natural armor bonus, the equivalent to breastplates in 3rd Edition, leading them to charge into battle wearing nothing more than a loincloth.

Nothic

Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E), Aberrant Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 15 (4E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Any Evil (3E), Unaligned (4E), Neutral Evil (5E)

Wretched, cyclopean creatures created when wizards delve too deeply into knowledge they shouldn't seek and powers they cannot control.

Cyclops: A nothic's face is dominated by a single, immense, staring eye.
Deadly Gaze: A nothic's gaze is its strongest weapon, as it's able to inflict necrosis on any creature it can fix its sight on.
Make Them Rot: A nothic's gaze causes necrotic damage in beings caught in its line of sight, rotting away their flesh as they live.
Seeing Through Another's Eyes: Nothics have a strong psychic connection to Vecna that allows him to see through their eyes, and the god often uses them to keep tabs on his cults in this manner.
Seers: A nothic can magically divine information about any creature it can see, becoming privy to a single secret or insight about them.
Was Once a Man: Nothics are creeping, tormented monsters transformed by Vecna's curse from wizards who devote their lives to unearthing arcane secrets. Nothics retain no awareness of their former selves, beyond a vague sense of having once been something greater.

Nuckalavee

Origin: Mystara
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Grotesque amphibious monsters, similar in shape to centaurs, who despise living creatures and try to exterminate them whenever possible.

An Ice Person: Their Breath Weapon is a cone of cold in 2nd Edition, and a cone of frigid water in 3rd Edition.
Cannot Cross Running Water: 2nd Edition nuckalavees cannot cross flowing fresh water, while 3rd Edition expands this to a phobia for all fresh water. Nuckalavees aren't harmed by freshwater or anything, they just will never willingly enter it.
Evil Smells Bad: They reek of decay, like a corpse left to rot in the water, a strench "so strong and oppressive that it can be felt and tasted."
Make Them Rot: Nuckalavees are surrounded by a minor death aura, so that any Tiny animals who come within 120 feet of them quickly perish, taking a few points of damage each round until they succumb. This may be part of the reason that undead never attack a nuckalavee unless magically compelled to do so.
No-Sell: They're immune to poison attacks, and highly resistant to fire damage.
Nuckelavee: Besides the different spelling, these nuckalavees deviate from their mythological source by being centaur-like creatures whose humanoid torsos replace the horse's neck at the front of their equine bodies, rather than sitting atop the spine like a rider. Their breath weapon is also a blast of cold damage rather than a breath of sickness and decay, though the latter aspect is represented by their "Death Aura" ability.
Our Centaurs Are Different: A minority of sages suggest that nuckalavees are the descendents of evil centaurs who fled into the ocean and evolved into horrible, aquatic forms. Centaurs hotly contest this, and insist that nuckalavees are some evil power's Copycat Mockery of proper centaurs.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Nuckalavees are surrounded by a fear aura.
Unreliable Illustrator: While nuckalavees in both editions are described as having transparent flesh, revealing their ropy white muscles, pulsing organs, and black blood, their 3rd Edition Dragon magazine illustration gives them opaque blue flesh.

Nycter

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

Small, bat-like humanoids who build communities in caves, avoiding conflict whenever possible.

Bat People: They're a smaller example than the desmodus, though unlike them, the nycters can actually fly.
Fantastic Racism: Nycters view their desmodu cousins as barbaric savages, much like how humans view ogres (ironic, given that desmodus are actually much smarter than nycters, with an Intelligence of 15 to the average nycter's 10). The desmodus in turn deride nycters as lesser bat-folk, lacking brains and ambition.
Super-Scream: A nycter can emit a hunting cry at will, dealing sonic damage in a cone and potentially paralyzing targets — though should anything successfully save against those effects, they become immune to that nycter's hunting cry for the next 24 hours.
Super-Senses: As expected, these bat-folk can use echolocation to detect creatures in the dark, out to 60 feet.

Nymph

Classification: Fey (3E), Fey Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 5 (4E)
Alignment: True Neutral (2E), Chaotic Good (3E), Unaligned (4E)

Fey embodying the beauty of nature, and who can be quite literally drop-dead gorgeous.

Brown Note Being: In 2nd Edition and early 3rd Edition, looking at a nymph can permanently blind you, or even kill you if she's nude at the time. Thankfully, nymphs can suppress or resume this ability at will, and the effect is restricted to blindness in 3.5E.
Deadly Gaze: When they aren't inverting the trope with their blinding beauty, an angry nymph can stun a creature with a look.
The Fair Folk: 4th Edition plays up nymphs' fey nature, portraying them as whimsical and self-centered beings who are amused by how easily they can manipulate mortals with their looks and words. And "If the toys sometimes broke, what of it? The nymphs learned that breaking their toys could be fun — either turning mortals into broken-hearted husks of their former selves or simply shattering their feeble bodies when their capacity to amuse their mistresses ended."
Friend to All Living Things: Wild animals flock to a nymph's sanctum to enjoy her company and receive healing, and will ignore any natural hostility towards each other when around her.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: Their old lore holds that a nymph's kiss will cause a man to forget all their painful and troubling memories for the rest of the day, which can be problematic depending on the situation.
Magic Hair: A lock of a nymph's hair can be used to brew a sleeping potion, or be enchanted and woven into a cloak that enhances the wearer's Charisma.
Our Nymphs Are Different: Nymphs are nature spirits with some resemblance to elven women, known for being incredibly beautiful. They dwell in and protect places of unspoiled natural beauty such as groves, pools or mountain peaks, and may in fact spontaneously form in such places to reflect their splendor. They can be kind and graceful to mortals they regard as allies of nature, particularly elves and druids, but nymphs are also wild and mercurial as nature itself.
Retcon: 4th Edition adds an array of seasonal nymph variants, all with different combat options. Spring nymphs delight in both love and passionate struggle, and use their intoxicating scent to turn mortals against each other (while making sure to spare the comeliest or most entertaining combatant). Summer nymphs are the oldest, wisest, and most powerful of their kind (CR 25 on a 1-30 scale!), serving as generals and master strategists in nature's campaigns. Autumn nymphs collect secrets and trade them with mortals, but the dark revelations of their whispers can be devastating. And winter nymphs are wild, whooping warriors, riding with The Wild Hunt in search of worthy quarry.
Swiss-Army Tears: A nymph's tears can be used as an ingredient in a philter of love.
Synchronization: In some tellings, a nymph will sicken and perish if her natural sanctums are despoiled, and in turn her home will decay if she is injured.
Transflormation: 4th Edition posits that some melancholy nymphs who tire of their games with mortals (or lose their heart to one) bind themselves to a tree, becoming a wood nymph that will eventually transition into a dryad, which in that edition are more "tree folk" than "fey women."

Grain Nymph

Origin: Dragonlance
Alignment: True Neutral

A variant of nymph bound to cultivated fields, protecting them and ensuring an ample harvest.

Animals Hate Him: Anyone marked as an enemy of a grain nymph will find that no farm animal, including horses, will ever be friendly towards them again. This effect is permanent until removed by powerful magic like wish.
Fantastic Racism: They don't get along with their wild cousins — conventional nymphs think grain nymphs are snobbish, while grain nymphs consider themselves sophisiticated and "cultivated."
Friend to All Living Things: Farm animals adore grain nymphs, and will rush to one's aid if she's attacked, sacrificing themselves if necessary.
Green Thumb: So long as a grain nymph is healthy, her fields will yield double the normal harvest and survive both droughts and flooding. But a grain nymph can only remain in the same farmland for three years before leaving for a new location within 50 miles of the last one. If she can't find a new home, she'll perish, and she can only return to one of her previous fields if nine years have passed since she last protected them.
Intoxication Ensues: Grain nymphs have a literally intoxicating beauty. Those who pursue one into her field have to save or fall under her influence, swaying and stumbling and slurring their speech. If they fail another save a few rounds later, they collapse into a drunken stupor, and will eventually awake with a splitting hangover.
Pest Controller: They can summon or repel insects as needed.
Summoning Ritual: During planting or harvest festivals, farmers make sacrifices and promises to look after the earth in exchange for a grain nymph's presence at the gathering. If successful, the nymph appears, to the mild intoxication of the farmers (though without a hangover afterward).

Unseelie Nymph

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

These fey are nearly as beautiful as other nymphs, but are in every other way their exact opposites, seeking to corrupt all that is good and beautiful in nature.

Charm Person: Anyone who sees an unseelie nymph, regardless of gender or orientation, has to save or fall in love with her, viewing the fey as the center of their universe. Those who succumb to this effect will not willingly leave their mistress' side, and fight to the death to defend her. AD&D notes that this effect is so powerful that it can overcome elves' normal resistance to charms.
Dirty Coward: Unseelie nymphs avoid fighting whenever possible, as they usually have minions to do that for them, and "they prize their own beauty too highly to risk it in combat." When things turn against them, they'll use dimension door to slip away.
Evil Counterpart: They're such to normal nymphs. It's noted that unseelie nymphs are almost as lovely as their kin, but their beauty is marred by fleeting sardonic glints in their eyes, or brief, calculating smiles.
The Vamp: In contrast to their kin, unseelie nymphs are this, using their beauty to manipulate and corrupt other creatures.
Vampiric Draining: Enthralled creatures who linger around an unseelie nymph have their Charisma and Constitution drained away by her — males in particular have a penalty on the save to resist this effect, as "they would willingly give the unseelie nymph anything it requests."
Walking Wasteland: An unseelie nymph's presence gradually deforms and kills plants, and fouls water so that nothing can live in it, resulting in a twisted, lifeless landscape. The affected area spreads only 150 feet a week, but can eventually encompass several miles before the evil nymph moves on to befoul another site, and the effects are permanent unless countered with powerful magic like wish, or a powerful druid takes charge of the area to heal it.

Nyth

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

Glowing globes of light that hunt prey with magic missiles.

Attack Reflector: Anyone targeting a nyth with a magic missile of their own will have the spell reflected right back at them.
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Once a nyth absorbs enough extra hit points, it splits into two nyths in an explosion of light that also bombards a 30-foot radius with magic missiles.
Feed It with Fire: Nyths absorb electricity and fire, gaining rather than losing hit points from such effects.
Invisibility: They can damp their glows for up to eight rounds at a time, effectively becoming invisible, though they pulse with light whenever they fire their magic missile.
Magic Missile Storm: They can fire a basic magic missle every other round.
No-Sell: Nyths' strange minds make them immune to mental effects like charms, phantasms or morale effects.
Protect This House: Their AD&D entry notes that nyths can make for good guardians, should some dungeon keeper designate an area their "home" and supply them with food (both conventional as well as flames or electricity they can feed on). Afterward, a nyth will take pride in cunningly defeating those who trespass in its corner of the dungeon, and will only retreat if faced with certain death.
Telepathy: 2nd Edition nyths communicate this way, while in 3rd Edition they can speak Common.
Will-o'-the-Wisp: They're related to such creatures, and can communicate with them via pulses of light, but nyths differ from will-o-wisps by operating in daylight (and often attacking prey with the sun behind them), and rather than absorbing a dying creature's life essence, nyths hunt and physically eat small game like rodents, birds and insects.

O

Oblex

Elder oblex (5e)

Classification: Ooze (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (spawn), 5 (adult), 10 (elder) (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Intelligent oozes that hunger for other creatures' memories, and can manifest copies of their victims.

Bizarre Alien Reproduction: As an oblex devours memories, it grows larger and becomes able to mimic multiple distinct personalities. Eventually it reaches the point where it has to shed a personality or go insane, which spawns a new oblex.
Blob Monster: Their amorphous bodies can squeeze through an inch-wide gap without difficulty, even the Huge elder oblexes.
Charm Person: Adult oblexes can cast the spell three times per day, while elder oblexes can use it at will.
Glamour Failure: An oblex's simulacra are near-perfect copies of its victims, looking, sounding, and even feeling exactly like them. However, they do not smell like whoever they're impersonating: these duplicates always carry a faint whiff of sulfur.
Ingesting Knowledge: Oblexes feed on thoughts and memories, leaving their prey befuddled and confused. The sharper the mind, the better the meal, so oblexes hunt obviously intelligent targets.
Kill It with Fire: Oblexes have an aversion to fire, and will have disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks after taking fire damage.
Replicant Snatching: They can create a simulacrum of a creature whose memories they've absorbed (and thus usually, but not always, someone they've killed), which is indistinguishable from the original save for a slimy tendril extending up to 120 feet to the oblex's main body. The oozes use these simulacra to infiltrate settlements and lure in additional victims.
Stupidity-Inducing Attack: An oblex can eat an adjacent creature's memories, dealing psychic damage and also imposing penalties on their attack rolls and ability checks as they forget how to fight. Each time a victim suffers this effect, the penalties get worse until they ultimately lose consciousness after five attacks. Fortunately, a rest or magic like greater restoration or heal will set them right.
Unwitting Pawn: Though the oblexes don't seem aware of it, they are the result of illithid experimentation on Underdark oozes, and Mordenkainen suspects that the mind flayers' elder brains are psychically monitoring the oblexes' progress, co-opting whatever they learn through their predations.

Obliviax

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_oblivion_moss_4e.jpg

Mosslings (4e)

Classification: Plant (3E), Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E), 12 (4E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil, Unaligned (4E)

Also known as "oblivion moss" or "memory moss," this magical black moss can steal memories from intelligent beings, and defend itself by spawning crude copies of its victims.

Achilles' Heel: While enough fire damage will destroy a patch of obliviax, any amount of cold damage instantly kills it
Eat Brain for Memories: A vegetarian variant; if someone eats a patch of oblivion moss, they can regain the lost memories — including any stolen spells — of the obliviax's most recent victim, though if they fail a saving throw they'll instead become poisoned. 4th Edition expands upon this, by noting that those who consume obliviax might gain hazy memories from the plant's older victims, such as the important message relayed by a courier, or the location of traps within a treasure vault, though such memories need to be acted upon quickly before they fade away.
Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product: Memory moss can be used to brew a potion of forgetfulness, or its spores can be distilled into an elixir that can restore the memories of the senile or forgetful.
He Was Right There All Along: Obliviax looks like a patch of thick, black moss with the unappetizing odor of damp dirt, difficult to distinguish from a non-magical plant (though a hungry obliviax will quiver, as if in anticipation). Any mosslings it spawns are similarly hard to distinguish from the main mass when immobile.
It Can Think: Obliviax are sentient and intelligent enough to make the best use of their stolen spells, though they don't have a society, as each patch of moss is concerned only with stealing the best memories for themselves.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: Oblivion moss is feared for its ability to steal memories from creatures that pass near it, which in most editions translates into losing all recollection of the past 24 hours... as well as all of a spellcaster's unused spells. This disorients the victim (who takes some Wisdom damage in 3rd Edition), while the moss goes dormant for a day to "digest" its meal, spawning a mossling to defend itself if attacked. This trait means that some beings cultivate obliviax as a passive defense, especially if their lair is meant to remain hidden.
Mirror Match: While mosslings have long had the ability to use spells stolen from the minds of casters, in 4E they can also make "Simulacrum Attacks" using the at-will powers of their opponents. Their entry describes a caravan guard finding himself unable to remember his best combat moves while fighting a moss monster wielding a wooden copy of his own greatsword.
Mook Maker: Obliviax can create "mosslings," mossy mockeries of those whose memories the plant stole. In most editions these are Tiny buds on the moss' main mass that may be unable to leave it, though 4E provides a variety of Small to Large combat forms that are considerably more mobile, and dangerous.
Stationary Enemy: As a moss, obliviax cannot move unless transplanted by another creature (preferrably in a lead-lined box to block its mind-stealing powers). Beyond feeding upon the mental energy of their victims, obliviax crave knowledge of the world beyond their immediate vicinity, and wish to vicariously experience what life is like for mobile creatures. Some obliviax have been known to cooperate with the likes of the cult of Zuggtmoy after being offered more mobile forms.

Ocean Strider

Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 18 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Giant fey resembling humanoid orcas, who protect stretches of ocean from exploitation and pollution.

Beast Man: They're Huge humanoids with the rubbery skin, black-and-white markings, and stubby tail of an orca.
Gaia's Vengeance: Ocean striders take it upon themselves to defend the seas from plunderers, viewing anything not native to the area's water or skies as an intruder. They are, however, willing to negotiate, and will let ships through if their captains promise not to kill more marine life than they can eat, or dump their trash overboard. Such captains would be wise to fulfil their end of the bargain, as ocean striders are known to shadow ships for miles if they have doubts about the crew's trustworthiness.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: They have a frightful presence that affects creatures up to 100 feet away.
Use Your Head: Ocean striders can make ram attacks, either dealing damage to a single creature, or potentially hulling a ship so that it sinks in a matter of minutes. Even if the fey fails their Strength check to break a ship's hull, those aboard must make their own saves to either take damage from being thrown about, or ending up overboard on a failure.
Walk on Water: They get their name from their ability to walk atop the waves as easily as they stride along the sea floor.
Weather Manipulation: Ocean striders can use spell-like abilities such as control water, ice storm, or obscuring mist several times each day.

Octopus Tree

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Predatory sea plants that can root themselves near the shore or drift along the currents on the ocean's surface, forming forests of rubbery, black-barked, tentacled trees.

Derelict Graveyard: Larger groves of octopus trees tend to have the wreckage of ships lodged in their "roots," which only serves to lure in would-be explorers.
Eerily Out-of-Place Object: Sailors sometimes tell stories about strange forests growing in the middle of the ocean, and thanks to octopus trees, such tales don't just come from the bottom of a mug of grog.
Green Thumb: Their spell-like abilities include entangle, plant growth, wall of thorns and warp wood, the latter of which is particularly dangerous to sailing vessels.
Man-Eating Plant: Octopus trees can gain some sustenance from photosynthesis, but to grow larger they need to consume flesh. They thus lurk along shipping lanes and use their roots to swim to intercept prey, using their magic as necessary.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Any nearby creatures have to save or become shaken.
Tentacle Rope: They attack by striking and grabbing prey with their tentacles, then passing them to the plant's maw, hidden just beneath the water's surface.

Ocularon

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

Floating, tentacled beings that can steal and animate other creatures' eyeballs.

Eye Scream: An ocularon can try to steal the eyes of a victim its grappled for a round, impaling their eyeballs on the ends of the ocularon's barbed tentacles.
Eye Spy: An ocularon can fill a stolen eyeball with the same gas that supports its body, allowing the creature to animate the eyeball as a flying sentry as per the prying eyes spell, or send the eyeball after a target as an explosive missile with a ranged touch attack.
Living Gasbag: Ocularons are jellyfish-like creatures held aloft by toxic lighter-than-air gases, and explode when killed.
The Paranoiac: Ocularons are prone to claiming a slice of a dungeon as their own territory, driving out all other creatures, and then animating some stolen eyeballs to monitor its territory for intruders.
Poisonous Person: The gas that fills an ocularon and its purloined eyeballs deals Strength and Constitution damage.

Odopi

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 14 (standard), 18 (elder) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Huge, many-handed nightmares from the Tarterian Depths of Carceri, who sometimes tumble out of planar rifts to destroy anything they encounter.

Bizarre Alien Locomotion: They roll around like gigantic tumbleweeds on their countless hands.
Boulder Bludgeon: Odopis can sling up to four 20-pound stones per round, but can't concentrate fire on a single target.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: They're in fact mostly clawed arms, with eyes in the center of each palm. Unlike the adominable hecatoncheires, this doesn't give odopis many melee attacks, instead they prefer to grab a single foe each round and then subsequently trample them.
Starfish Language: The odopis have their own language, expressed by gurgling and hand-clapping.
Swallowed Whole: Odopis do have a toothless mouth in the center of all those arms, and anything they grab in their hands is at risk of being passed to that maw and swallowed.
Trampled Underfoot: Well, underhand — odopis deal damage to anything they move over, including foes they've grabbed and held onto in previous rounds.

Ogre

^3e

^2e

Classification: Giant (3E, 5E), Natural Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 8 (4E), 2 (5E)
Playable: 2E-3E
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Hulking, dimwitted brutes with a taste for humanoid flesh.

Art Evolution: 1E and 2E ogres are essentially just big humans. 3E ogres have a much more monstrous, bestial appearance, with pronounced muzzles, thick manes, large ears, and arms dragging almost to the ground. 4E and 5E ogres take a middle road, being less animalistic than the 3E design but retaining thickly muscled bodies, hunched heads, and thick jaws filled with large fangs.
Barbarian Tribe: They make other "barbarous" races look downright sophisticated. Ogres are primitive brutes, few of whom are capable of crafting anything more sophisticated than a club, and any gear they scavenge or loot is likely to end up lost or broken from poor maintenance. They rarely construct shelters, preferring to squat in caves, ruins or under the open sky, and any dwelling they try to build in imitation of other races is likely to collapse within a year. Ogres forage instead of planting crops, and rather than properly hunt, they mostly wander around their territory at night in small groups that kill anything they encounter. This "feast or famine" approach to food means that many ogres are left hungry and irritated, explaining their hostile interactions with other beings, and tribes often resort to raiding to get through a Winter of Starvation. It also helps explain why only one in three ogre children survive to adulthood.
Dumb Muscle: It's mentioned that the majority of ogres can't count to ten even with their fingers in front of them. Their 5th Edition stats put them at Intelligence 5, meaning that ogres are exactly as smart as shambling mounds, which for the record are non-sapient, predatory piles of compost.
Elite Mooks: "Skullcrusher" ogres are the result of a Super Breeding Program to produce better ogre soldiers, and combine a normal ogre's brute strength with human-level intelligence, discipline and planning. They live in militarized warbands that constantly drill for combat, though they're just as ill-tempered as ordinary ogres, making them Neutral Evil rather than Chaotic Evil.
Horse of a Different Color: Goblins are known to use ogres as mounts, either by strapping themselves (or being strapped) to an ogre's back and wielding a crossbow as a tail gunner, or constructing a howdah on the ogre's shoulders that can hold up to four goblins at once.
Large and in Charge: Zig-zagged; sometimes, ogres are able to use their size and strength to seize control of a tribe of orcs or goblinoids, but in other cases, the ogres might end up bullied into serving as bruisers and warbeasts.
Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: In older materials, "ogrillons" are half-ogre variants produced from the union of a male ogre and female orc, and are always sterile, while "orogs" are born from male orcs and female ogres. Nowadays, "ogrillon" is just another name for "half-ogre," and can be born from ogres of either sex mating with humans, Medium-sized goblinoids, or orcs, while orogs are orcs seemingly blessed by the goddess Luthic with enhanced strength and intelligence.
Our Giants Are Bigger: Fearsome as they may seem to humans, ogres are some of the smallest and least of the giant-kin, and occupy the absolute lowest rung of the Ordning — lower even that the likes of hill giants and trolls — and consequently are often found serving greater giants.
Our Ogres Are Different: Simple-minded, short-tempered, and always hungry. Ogre magi also exist, based on the oni; see below.
Primal Stance: Ogres are typically depicted standing in a bow-legged, stoop-shouldered posture, with their heads jutting forward and rarely above shoulder level and with their arms dragging low at their sides.
Primitive Clubs: Typically, when ogres are shown using any weapons at all, these tend to be giant clubs made from tree limbs or entire trees, sometimes enhanced with metal spikes and similar touches, which make good use of their wielder's immense strength without being held back by their general lack of intelligence. That said, some work out how to use more interesting weapons on the battlefield: battering rams, huge iron chains, or a ballista carried with the ease of a crossbow.
Smash Mook: Big, strong, dim and with a marked tendency to fight smaller enemies with gigantic clubs, maces and similar blunt weapons, ogres are usually very straightforward bruisers with little tactical acumen or fancy tricks.
Who Even Needs a Brain?: The 3.5th Edition Monster Manual IV mentions an ogre variant dubbed a guard thrall. Ogres are in fact so stupid that the illithids discovered that an ogre can actually survive having most of its brain bitten out and eaten. While this leaves a basic ogre comatose, through breeding experiments the illithids were able to produce mindless ogre bodyguards that, with the help of a psionic crystal implanted in their mostly-empty skulls, will follow a nearby mind flayer's psychic commands. Even more dangerously, that crystal in the ogre thrall's skull will "echo" an illithid's mind blast attack (which the thrall is immune to, being mindless) if the thrall is in the area of effect, potentially stunning anything that shrugged off the initial psionic assault.

Oni

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_oni_5e.png

^{"Ogre mage" (3e)}

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Giant (3E, 5E), Natural Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E, 4E), 7 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Large humanoids that combine an ogre's strength with a terrible cunning and fearsome magical powers.

Eats Babies: The 5th edition Monster Manual notes that they find human babies delicious.
Flight: They have the power to fly.
Healing Factor: Oni often have regenerative powers. In older editions this regeneration could be halted by acid or fire, while in 5th edition they just keep regaining hit points on each of their turns as long as they're above 0 hp.
Magic Knight: Oni have the strength and combat prowess you'd expect of a hulking ogre, and also have potent magical abilities. A lone oni can obliterate an entire party of low-level adventurers in one turn if it decides to cast cone of cold. They also covet magical items, and are willing to work for a wizard who supplies them with some.
Non-Indicative Name: Oni are sometimes called ogre mages because of their resemblance to ogres, even though they are only distantly related to true ogres.
Oni: They have a giant's strength but are also intelligent and possess dangerous magic, and appropriately enough spent several editions classified as "ogres." 4e decided there was no point hiding the truth and created an openly "oni" monster category. While there are several types, such as the night haunter and the spirit master, they are all explicitly described as evil creatures with a vaguely ogre-like appearance and invariably some form of shapeshifting or illusion type power they used to deceive humanoids.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Oni can take on the form of humanoids of Small to Medium size or of any Large-sized giant, an ability they use to case a settlement in preparation of an attack.

Elemental Mage

From left to right, a ken-li, ken-sun, and ken-kuni (3e)

Classification: Giant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (ken-kuni), 10 (ken-li), 13 (ken-sun) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (ken-li), Lawful Evil (ken-sun), Neutral Evil (ken-kuni)

This family of ogre mage variants have distinct elemental powers, but are most dangerous when working in concert.

Blow You Away: Ken-sun can surround themselves with fierce winds, making missile attacks impossible and potentially knocking down adjacent Medium-sized creatures (and blowing away Small ones).
Combination Attack: Elemental magi are most dangerous when working together, using their abilities to disrupt opponents and control the battlefield. They even have a "Shared Strength" ability that means whenever two or more elemental magi are within 60 feet of each other and have to make a saving throw, they can use the highest bonus available to the group.
Dishing Out Dirt: Ken-kuni can make earthshock attacks every few rounds to try and knock foes off their feet, affecting either everything adjacent to them, or those in a 30-foot line.
Evil Overlord: Ken-sun are megalomaniacs who exist to rule. They use their might and magic to gather warbands, if not entire armies, to carve out domains and extract tribute. The ken-kuni and ken-li, who are naturally subservient to the stronger ken-sun, will serve in the latter's forces as siegebreakers and trusted retainers.
Friendly Fireproof: Elemental magi are immune to each other's special abilities, allowing them to be used with impunity during mixed melees.
Horned Humanoid: Ken-kuni have three horns, ken-li have two, and ken-sun have a single huge horn two to three feet long.
One-Gender Race: There are no female elemental magi, and while the all-male race is capable of breeding with ogres and ogre mages, there's no guarantee their offspring will be another elemental mage.
Our Ogres Are Different: Elemental magi are thought to be a variant of ogre mage (aka oni) that is born at random to other types of ogres.
Playing with Fire: Ken-li can exhale a 30-foot line of fire as a Breath Weapon, and can wreathe themselves in flames, dealing a bit of damage to those who attack it in melee.
Pyromaniac: The fiery ken-li want nothing more than to wander where they will, torching any forests, herds of cattle, and villages they come across. It takes the ken-sun to give them purpose and discipline as soldiers.
The Slacker: Ken-kuni lack ambition, and are usually content to claim an area and shake down anyone passing through it, unless a stronger elemental mage presses them into service.

Ooze

Black pudding (5e)

Classification: Ooze (3E, 5E), Natural Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (gray ooze), 2 (ochre jelly, gelatinous cube), 4 (black pudding) (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Whether they're labeled oozes, jellies, puddings or slimes, there is a dangerous assortment of mindless blobs to threaten adventurers in dungeons.

Acid Attack: Nearly every variety of ooze uses acid to dissolve and digest their victims.
Aquatic Mook: Crystal oozes are an offshoot of gray ooze which live in lakes and seas, and which are translucent to make themselves more difficult to spot underwater.
Asteroids Monster: Some oozes, such as the ochre jelly, split into multiple enemies when subjected to certain attacks, distributing their hit points between them. Other oozes like the mustard jelly can split and reform themselves at will as they hunt their prey.
Blob Monster: A wide variety of amorphous creatures with the shape and consistency of overcooked puddings. Most are mobile enough to pursue prey, but never quickly.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: One of the most characteristic traits of the ooze and jelly family is that its branches come in numerous color-coded variants, each with very specific traits, strengths and weaknesses. During a dungeon delve, being able to quickly recognize the sometimes very specific shade of the slimy mess that's bubbling up through the floor and which list of traits it's associated with is often a matter of life or death — if it's black, it will dissolve everything that's not stone; if it's brown, it will dissolve anything organic but leave metal alone; if it's gray, it's the other way around; if it's green, it will turn you into more of itself but cold and fire will kill it; if it's olive, it will turn you into a zombie first; if it's mustard, It Can Think; and so on and so forth.
Death from Above: Green slime is otherwise immobile, save for its practice of dropping down from ceilings or high walls on victims passing beneath it.
Enemy Summoner: As can be guessed, this is the trait of the summoning ooze, which has the power to cast spells from the summon monster line mutliple times per day.
He Was Right There All Along: Several kinds of oozes use their natural coloration to blend in with their environments and ambush unsuspecting prey.
- In dimly-lit passages, a black pudding looks much like a dark patch of shadow.
- Crystal and flotsam oozes are nearly transparent, making them very difficult to see in the water where they live.
- Gelatinous cubes are for the most part transparent, leading some inobservant creatures to simply walk right into them to be engulfed.
- Gray ooze at rest is indistinguishable from a wet rock or oily pool.
- Mustard jelly is nearly translucent, and can be easier to detect by its signature mustard-like odor than by sight.
- Snowflake oozes and white puddings look like ordinary snowbanks.
- Stunjellies are perhaps the most insidious, as these offshoots of gelatinous cubes were altered by a mage to look like a ten-foot stretch of stone wall, and only a close light source will reveal their slightly translucent nature.
Intangibility: Ethereal oozes are flesh-colored, cube-shaped oozes that lurk on the Ethereal Plane, manifest on the Material Plane to engulf prey, and then "etherealize" their victim, bringing it back to the Ethereal Plane with them — and potentially stranding the creature there if it manages to fight free of the ooze.
It Can Think: Mustard jellies stand out for being predatory oozes with a human-level intelligence, enough to recognize the value of treasure as bait to lure in more victims. They are thought to have come about when a young wizard attempted to polymorph herself into an ochre jelly.
Living Lava: Lava oozes are living masses of molten rock, mostly found lurking in volcanic caverns.
Living Shadow: Shadow jellies, nonsentient masses of semisolid darkness found on the Plane of Shadow. Like undead shadows, they're capable of dealing Strength damage to those they touch.
Mooks Ate My Equipment: Black pudding and gray ooze both corrode metal, and will damage weapons used to strike at them.
Murder Water: Brine oozes resemble large patches of animated briny water with a taste for blood.
The Paralyzer: Stunjellies live up to their name by paralyzing those in contact with them.
Poisonous Person: Venom oozes, in some settings, are former ochre jellies subjected to poison spells and other experiments, leaving them so toxic they can poison creatures on contact and contaminate water they're immersed in. They're also noted to be unusually mobile and predatory for oozes.
Puppeteer Parasite: Olive slime is a variant of green slime that drops down onto a passing creature, uses a numbing poison to avoid detection, then extends parasitic tendrils into the host and tries to fuse with their spinal column. If successful, the host is complelled to protect the slime, until a few days later the host is transformed into a mindless, plant-like creature, before ultimately collapsing and expiring, creating a new patch of olive slime.
Underground Monkey: The more common oozes often have variants adapted to live in specific environments, usually with colors tweaked to match. Crystal oozes are an offshoot of grey oozes that live in the sea, dun puddings are black pudding relatives that live in sandy deserts, and white puddings are another black pudding variant found in snowy wildernesses.
Vampiric Draining: Bloodbloaters are transparent oozes that latch onto other creatures and drain them of blood, turning red as they do so.

Arcane Ooze

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)

Fluid masses of green protoplasm with a strange affinity for arcane magic.

Feed It with Fire: They're healed by any magic that deals acid damage, while lightning damage will grant them a haste effect.
Magic Eater: These oozes have the strange ability to siphon arcane spells. Any arcane spellcaster within 60 feet of an arcane ooze has to make a saving throw each round or lose one of their highest-level spells as the creature absorbs its magical energy, gaining temporary hit points from the effect.
No-Sell: Arcane oozes are unaffected by most arcane magic.

Bloodfire Ooze

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

Masses of superheated blood, which can fling fire themselves and empower the pyromancy of other creatures.

Amplifier Artifact: Any fire spell cast within 60 feet of a bloodfire ooze is boosted as per the Empowered Spell feat.
Bloody Murder: Bloodfire oozes are created from blood harvested from a hundred non-evil humanoids, mixed with the ichor of a demon. "Blighted" bloodfire oozes add the blood of even more alien and horrific beings, giving the monster the entropic and pseudonatural templates.
Make Them Rot: Blighted bloodfire oozes are surrounded by an aura of negative energy that deals a point of hit point damage to any living creatures within 10 feet of them, an effect they can strengthen to also deal Strength damage.
Playing with Fire: Bloodfire oozes can create 10-foot radius blasts of fire each round.
The Spiny: Anything that strikes them in melee takes fire damage from the ooze's burning blood.

Bone Ooze

Challenge Rating: 21 (3E)

Also called "rolling graveyards," these 30-foot-wide globs of pallid goo have dozens of partially-digested bones within their masses.

Damage Over Time: Their bodies are studded with bone shards, and so their slam or engulf attacks cause cumulative bleeding damage, until the victim receives natural or magical healing.
Logical Weakness: All those absorbed bones give them a lot more structure than most oozes, so while bone oozes can still squeeze through a gap as small as five by five feet square, it takes a full round for them to do so.
Non-Health Damage: These oozes absorb part of their victims' bone structure with each slam attack, dealing Strength, Dexterity and Constitution damage.
One-Hit Kill: Their most fearsome attack is to attempt to absorb the entire skeleton of an engulfed creature, and should said creature fail their saving throw, they're instantly slain. A few rounds later, the ooze expels the victim's fleshy parts and equipment.
Swallowed Whole/Trampled Underfoot: Bone oozes can engulf victims they move over, trapping them inside their bodies, where they'll take automatic slam damage each round, and be subject to their "bone meld" attack.

Cesspit Ooze

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Revolting monsters born when a sentient creature dies in filth tainted by arcane pollution and surrounded by misery.

Asteroids Monster: Each attack by a slashing or piercing weapon merely causes the cesspit ooze to split in two, dividing its hit points.
Defeat Equals Explosion: Cesspit oozes burst when slain, resulting in a 30-foot splash of enraging acid.
It Can Think: Due to the circumstances of their creation, cesspit oozes "inherit" a glimmer of intelligence from the decaying body that spawns them, enough to prefer prey that's sentient, frightened and in pain.
Muck Monster: They're living, predatory piles of sewage mixed with trash and animal carcasses.
Revive Kills Zombie: Even though they're not undead, cesspit oozes are empowered by the pain of their victims, and thus take damage from positive energy.
Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Any creature damaged by the ooze's acidic muck also has to save or fly into a berserk rage within 20 rounds, attacking the nearest living thing until they successfully save to shake off the effect.
The Virus: Oddly enough averted; even though a cesspit ooze's victims die in pretty much the same circumstances the original spawned in, this never results in new oozes, presumably because the existing ooze absorbs the emotions that would generate a new one.
Weaponized Stench: Unsurprisingly, these sewage monsters smell foul enough to sicken creatures that come near them.

Conflagration Ooze

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

Sentient and malevolent masses of liquid flame, which cause their victims to erupt with fire from within.

It Can Think: Conflagration oozes are smart enough to use their spell-like abilities tactically, speak Ignan, and some even conduct magical research in their spare time.
Logical Weakness: They have to spend most of their time hunting, to fuel the infernos within them.
Playing with Fire: True to their name, conflagration oozes are constantly burning, and deal extra fire damage with their slam attacks, but much more dangerous is their "fire in the blood" ability. Anything they grapple or pin has to save or contract a fiery toxin that causes additional damage and can cause their blood (or other vital fluids) to become liquid flame, dealing Constitution damage as rivulets of flame burn through their skin.
Status Effects: They can use spells like confusion, deep slumber and hold monster each once per day, to immobilize or disogranize opponents before moving into melee.

Dragonblood Ooze

Challenge Rating: 5 (5E)

The result of unwise alchemical experiments, these animate masses of congealed dragon blood struggle to form a coherent shape, lash out with caustic psuedopods, and instinctively attempt to use breath weapons they do not possess.

Bloody Murder: Dragons don't normally spawn enemies when their blood is shed, but some alchemist has done the next best thing.
Breath Weapon: Dragonblood oozes try to manifest a dragon's breath weapon, but only manage to expel a spray of their own gelatinous mass.
Wall Crawl: They can freely scale sheer surfaces or move upside-down across ceilings.

Flesh Jelly

Challenge Rating: 19 (3E)

Gargantuan mounds of stinking skin and hair, bulging with loose bones.

One-Hit Kill: Anything engulfed by a flesh jelly has to save or die instantly as they're absorbed into its mass. While their belongings get spat out a few rounds later, only a wish or miracle can bring the victim back to life after absorption.
Poisonous Person: These oozes' slam attacks carry filth fever, which can cause Dexterity and Constitution damage.
Swallowed Whole/Trampled Underfoot: Flesh jellies can engulf victims they move over, trapping them inside their bodies, where they'll take automatic slam damage and have to save against disease each round, and become subject to the ooze's "absorb" attack.
Weaponized Stench: Anything coming within 50 feet of a flesh jelly has to save or become nauseated for several rounds, able only to stagger around and take a single move action.

Graveyard Sludge

Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)

Large blobs filled with both necromantic energy and humanoid remains, which spontenously arise in areas defiled by negative energy.

Mortality Grey Area: These oozes have the "between worlds" trait, so they're healed by both cure and inflict wounds spells.
Spawn Broodling: When an eligible creature dies within 20 feet of a graveyard sludge, that creature arises as a zombie a few rounds later, but coated with some of the ooze's slime to impart extra acid damage to its attacks.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: They can release some of the latent spiritual energy trapped inside their forms to hit adjacent foes with a fear effect.
Support Party Member: While graveyard sludges are dangerous on their own, when they sense an intelligent undead creature, they instinctively follow them around, spending full-round actions to use the ooze's "vigor of the dead" ability to give the undead creature several Status Buffs.

Void Ooze

Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)

Flying, vaguely slug-shaped masses of congealed darkness usually found on the Negative Energy Plane.

Bizarre Alien Reproduction: These oozes reproduce by fission, after absorbing enough hit points from victims of their energy drain attack.
Casting a Shadow: Void oozes are surrounded by a mass of shadows that acts as a darkness spell. This shadow shield is also infused with negative energy, and will damage any creature that strikes the void ooze with a melee weapon.
Level Drain: Their slam attacks inflict living creatures with negative levels.
Mook Medic: Some intelligent undead cultivate a void ooze to take advantage of its negative energy touch, which heals undead creatures.
Swallowed Whole: Void oozes can try and engulf smaller creatures, trapping them within their masses and inflicting energy drain each round.

Ophidian

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

Snake-like humanoids with stunted arms and legs, usually found in the service of more intelligent creatures.

Chameleon Camouflage: They can change the color of their scales to blend in with their surroundings.
Happiness in Slavery: While they weren't deliberately created as a Servant Race, ophidians are naturally servile, and are thus almost always encountered serving yuan-ti, nagas, dragons, or even giant serpents. In some cases they'll worship their patron, providing offerings of food and treasure.
Snake People: They have a strong serpentine appearance, though their bodies are thicker and shorter than true snakes', and of course they have arms and legs.
The Virus: Ophidians bear a serpentine curse, so that any humanoid they bite has to save or transform over the next two to five days — their skin grows scaly, their tongue becomes forked, their legs fuse together, and their memories fade as they're compelled to return to the place they were bitten. Once the transformation is complete, the new ophidian is adopted by any ophidian clan in the area. Magic like heal or regeneration can reverse this transformation while it's progressing, but once it finishes, only a wish or miracle can restore the victim.
Was Once a Man: In the Realms, the first ophidians were a human tribe who devoted themselves to a snake cult, found a powerful artifact in some yuan-ti ruins, and were trasnformed into serpent people themselves.

Orc

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_orc_2e.jpg

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

Brutish humanoids who raid and pillage those around them, or gather into howling hordes that overrun civilization. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Orcwort

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (wortling), 20 (orcwort) (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Enormous, predatory pitcher plants that sprout humanoid minions to help capture prey. They have no relation to actual orcs, beyond a vague resemblance in the shape of their wortlings.

Forced Sleep: A wortlings' claw attacks deliver a poison that induces sleep for up to 10 minutes.
Hive Mind: All wortlings within 15 miles of their parent tree are in constant communication with one another, and under the command of the orcwort.
Mook Maker: Orcworts can grow their wortlings from pods on their branches, which fall to the ground and "hatch" into lumpen, featureless humanoids utterly loyal to their parent tree. These wortlings are spawned about twenty at a time, and live for at most five days, but if commanded to root themselves before their lifespans are up, they'll go dormant and grow into a new orcwort over the course of a year.
Swallowed Whole: Orcworts' maws can accomodate even Huge creatures, and anything inside their pitchers is not only subjected to acid damage every round, they also have to save or become paralyazed by the same digestive juices, which can leave them helpless while they're digested alive.
When Trees Attack: Orcworts are Colossal, carnivorous, and intelligent trees that can lash and grab prey with their vines for transfer to their pitchers. Though quite hard to kill, they are very slow, moving only 10 feet each round — unfortunately, their wortling minions are much faster with a speed of 30 feet, and excel at mobbing and subduing prey for their parent to eat.
You Shall Not Evade Me: Orcworts can use their roots to hold any creatures within 15 feet of them in place, as per the entangling roots spell.
Zerg Rush: Wortlings are adept at swarming over each other, so that three of them can occupy the same space on a battle map, and gain a bonus when working together to grapple a foe.

Oread

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Stone-skinned fey embodying specific mountains, who use their magic to defend their homes from despoilers.

Arch-Enemy: Oreads are sworn enemies of races with a penchant for mining and tunneling, such as dwarves, gnomes, goblins and pech, as well as creatures like xorn that might eat their gemstones.
Charm Person: 3rd Edition oreads can cast charm monster three times per day, and usually employ the spell on lone miners to deliver warnings and send them on their way, or have them lead a larger party into an ambush. 2nd Edition goes a step further, as seen below.
Departure Means Death: An oread taken a mile away from her home mountain dies within a day.
Dishing Out Dirt: They can use magic like spike stones, stone shape, or earthquake to drive off intruders. Oreads can also move through solid stone as easily as a fish moves through water, without leaving a tunnel behind them.
Eat Dirt, Cheap: Oreads eat certain minerals, and particularly enjoy clear gemstones such as diamonds, emeralds, quartz, sapphires and topaz. They'll accept such gifts from visitors, or will bluntly ask for the gems if not offered them.
Fantastic Racism: Oreads don't get along with sylphs, who like the view from their mountains, but tease and harrass them for being earthbound.
Magic Music: In AD&D, oreads can sing the song of stone once per day, which sounds like "a fast mountain brook, like the rushing wind in trees, like the clatter of stones in a rockslide." Those who fail their saving throws must serve the oread for a full year, and become so devoted to their mistress that they'll lay down their lives for her — dispel magic or remove curse are useless against this ability, only the likes of limited wish or holy word can break an oread's control over her charmed subject. Thankfully, oreads generally keep a single servant at a time, and are willing to ransom them back to their families before the year is up.
Never Mess with Granny: The snowhair are ancient oreads, craggy, stooped and white-haired, who instead of protecting a single mountain act as the guardians of entire mountain ranges. They're the leaders of their kind, and responsible for taking oreads who come of age away from their mothers to be given their own mountains to protect. Snowhairs are much more powerful than ordinary oreads, and can turn enemies into boulders with a touch.
One-Gender Race: Like dryads, oreads are exclusively female. They mate with satyrs or korreds, and any females from such unions will grow into oreads themselves.
Our Nymphs Are Different: They're essentially to mountains what dryads are to oaks, and appear as women with stony skin, wearing clothing and jewelry made from the metals and gems inside their mountains.
Plant Hair: Oreads' hair looks like stringy lichen, unless their mountain is snowcapped, in which case their hair turns white.

Orglash

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

Ice spirits that roam cold places, attacking those they deem a threat to the land.

Elemental Embodiment: They look like whirls of wind and snow, and 3rd Edition treats "orglash" as a template that can be applied to any elemental with the air subtype.
Guardian Entity: In their home setting, orglash are elemental beings native to Rashemen, and seem to have the innate ability to sense foreigners. But while the orglash have helped defend their homeland against the likes of the Red Wizards of Thay for centuries, the Rashemaar view the unpredictable spirits as a mixed blessing, since orglash have been known to attack them as well.
Healing Factor: In freezing environments, orglash constantly recover hit points.
An Ice Person: Orglash have the cold subtype, attack with ice shards propelled by frigid winds, and can cast cone of cold a few times each day. They are expectedly Weak to Fire as well, and in 2nd Edition take constant damage in temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit — in areas over 100 degrees, orglash dissipate entirely, and must return to a near-freezing environment to reform their bodies.

Ormyrr

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Huge, amphibious beings that live in rivers, and are notably obsessed with acquiring magic.

Art Evolution: 2nd Edition ormyrr have legless, snake-like bodies with pale or purplish colorations, while 3rd Edition ormyrrs have grub-like bodies and are depicted a vivid shade of blue.
Call of the Wild Blue Yonder: Beyond their fascination with magic, ormyrr dream of developing the power of flight, either by acquiring enough magic items, or by developing wings. They've even been desperate enough to (unsuccessfully) attempt to mate with wyverns and other aerial creatures to breed wings into their race.
Mage Species: Pointedly inverted; ormyrr have no aptitude for magic at all, but remain fascinated by it. They do whatever they can to acquire magical items, and hope to someday develop a unique form of ormyrr magic.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Ormyrr have two sets of arms, which are dexterous enough to fight with mutliple weapons without penalty, and strong enough to grab and crush opponents.
Our Monsters Are Weird: Ormyrr have elongated bodies up to 25 feet long, toadlike heads full of teeth, and two sets of humanoid arms. There's speculation that they're from another plane in 2nd Edition, though 3rd Edition treats them as Monstrous Humanoids rather than Outsiders.
Out-of-Character Moment: The normally-reasonable ormyrr have been known to lie, steal, or launch an unprovoked attack to acquire magical items. That said, their Lawful natures mean that should someone appeal to the ormyrr's sense of right and wrong, the creatures might give a stolen magic item back.

Osquip

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

Oversized, hairless rodents with more legs than normal and incisors capable of gnawing through solid rock.

Eat Dirt, Cheap: Downplayed; osquips' formidable teeth grow constantly, and they wear them down by chewing on rock. Their digestive systems aren't quite capable of fully dissolving said rock, which results in droppings not dissimilar to wet cement. Jermlaine, who sometimes ally with osquips, use these droppings as mortar or to fashion "stone" tools.
Eye of Newt: Their incisors can be used as a material component for a dig spell, while their dung can substitute for clay in a stone shape spell.
Familiar: A few eccentric spellcasters have been known to take on osquip familiars.
The Nose Knows: Osquips have poor eyesight, but keen senses of smell, giving them the Scent ability.
Rodents of Unusual Size: They're about two feet high at the shoulder, have a nasty bite for their size, and attack intruders in their territory without fear. Unlike mundane rodents, osquips are unafraid of fire.
Super Drowning Skills: Also unlike mundane rodents, osquips are terrible swimmers, as their extra limbs make it awkward, and the rocks in their gullets make them sink.
Tunnel Network: Since osquips are constantly gnawing on rocks, their warrens grow into elaborate tunnel complexes, with multiple ambush and escape points. Some wizards have attempted to tame osquips as sappers, but to limited success; the resulting tunnels are rarely large enough for humanoids to use, and don't always go in the desired direction.
Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: Osquips have six, eight or twelve legs, giving them an insect-like gait — the variability in the number of legs (as well as tail length) is likely a byproduct of chromosomal damage due to inbreeding. One monster scholar has suggested that the osquip is a throwback to an era when creatures had a more varied number of limbs, explaining the prevalence of this trope among other D&D monsters, and speculates that at some point the osquips will stabilize into a set number of limbs.

Otyugh

Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E), Natural Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 7 (4E); 5 (otyugh), 7 (neo-otyugh) (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral, Unaligned (4E)

Sometimes called gulguthra, these carrion-eaters are often used as living garbage disposals in dungeons.

Big Eater: Otyughs require plenty of waste, carrion and meat. Would-be otyugh masters can easily underestimate the quantity of food necessary to keep an otyugh from wandering off.
Combat Tentacles: Otyughs shove food into their maw with two rubbery tentacles that end in spiky, leaf-like appendages.
Elite Mooks: "Neo-otyughs" are a smarter breed of otyugh distinguished by larger bodies but smaller mouths. In 5E they also boast Psychic Powers, namely command and hold person.
Extreme Omnivore: Otyughs can eat almost all kinds of refuse, making them a vital if unappreciated part of dungeon ecology.
Eye of Newt: Averted; 2nd Edition notes that no wizards or alchemists have found any use for otyugh body parts, solely because the creatures are so disgusting that no one wants to handle their corpses.
He Was Right There All Along: They often hide by covering themselves in refuse, using their eye-stalk to spy on their surroundings until prey comes by.
Human Shield: 2nd Edition notes that neo-otyughs are smart enough to do this with victims they're grappling, giving the monsters an Armor Class bonus and letting them attempt to intercept incoming attacks with their grabbed victims.
It Can Think: They look monstrous, but otyughs are intelligent enough to communicate either telepathically or through Common, depending on edition. They can even form symbiotic relationships with creatures that give them food and leave them in their refuse. If trained, otyughs are capable of following complex instructions about who to attack and ignore, and thus make surprisingly good guard animals to prevent thieves from accessing garbage chutes or sewers.
Starfish Language: Otyughs have their own language, which incorporates non-verbal components such as "movements of eye stalk and tentacles, or emission of certain smells" that other creatures can't replicate.
Telepathy: Something 5E brought back from older editions was otyughs having limited telepathic abilities, letting them communicate simple messages or images to nearby beings.

Owlbear

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

Infamously vicious carnivores with the front half of a flightless owl and the hindquarters of a bear.

Attack Animal: It's theoretically possible to train an owlbear, but they don't need instructions on how to maul something, and it's not productive to try to teach them anything else. Most of the time, an owlbear's keeper just dumps it in a place they want protected and lets nature take its course — "it has been said that an owlbear is a less subtle version of a 'keep out' sign." That said, owlbears raised from chicks will at least bond with their trainers, but they're sullen when performing most tricks, and it takes special effort to make them not attack something.
Bears Are Bad News: Much like full bears, owlbears are known and feared for their ferocity, aggressiveness and foul tempers.
Horse of a Different Color: Some brave/foolish individuals attempt to train owlbears as mounts, but this is a difficult process that requires either regular, vicious beatings or magical coercion, and in the latter case the owlbear will forget its training and revert to its savage nature the instant the spell wears off. Even if conventionally trained, owlbears are hateful mounts with a tendency to throw and attack their riders if they ever sense weakness, i.e. if their rider takes a moderate amount of damage.
Mix-and-Match Critters: They have an owl's head, wings and claws and a bear's torso and legs. This hybrid physiology lets them rotate their forelimbs to give prey a Killer Bear Hug, as well as swivel their heads 270 degrees to track prey. Some sources claim this also gives owlbears an odd sleep cycle — they wake at noon, hunt through nightfall, and go to sleep at midnight.
Underground Monkey: Arctic owlbears are combinations of snowy owls and polar bears, and are more dangerous than their temperate kin thanks to their larger size, immunity to cold, and ability to blend in with snowy surroundings.
Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: A very rare owlbear subrace has a pair of functional wings sprouting from their shoulders, which combined with their uncooperative nature means winged owlbears have never been domesticated.
A Wizard Did It: In-universe scholars generally believe owlbears to have been created as a result of experimentation or some long-forgotten project by ancient wizards. This point is disputed by the fey, however, who claim that owlbears have always existed in the Feywild. The Doylist explaination is that the creature is inspired by a cheap plastic toy Gary Gygax picked up for his Chainmail games, a "prehistoric monster" that was a knock-off Kaiju design.

Characters / Dungeons And Dragons Creatures N To O

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Ha-Naga

Nagatha

Nightcrawler

Nighthaunt

Nightwalker

Nightwing

Grain Nymph

Unseelie Nymph

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Elemental Mage

Arcane Ooze

Bloodfire Ooze

Bone Ooze

Cesspit Ooze

Conflagration Ooze

Dragonblood Ooze

Flesh Jelly

Graveyard Sludge

Void Ooze

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Characters / Dungeons And Dragons Creatures N To O

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Ha-Naga

Nagatha

Nightcrawler

Nighthaunt

Nightwalker

Nightwing

Grain Nymph

Unseelie Nymph

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Elemental Mage

Arcane Ooze

Bloodfire Ooze

Bone Ooze

Cesspit Ooze

Conflagration Ooze

Dragonblood Ooze

Flesh Jelly

Graveyard Sludge

Void Ooze

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