Dungeons And Dragons Creatures U To V / Characters

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

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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U

Udaak

Origin: Critical Role
Classification: Fiend (5E)
Challenge Rating: 16 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Gargantuan fiendish brutes that lurk on the fringes of civilization, scavenging and killing to survive.

Beast of Battle: The warmasters of the Kryn Dynasty have developed arcane collars that can keep an udaak under control, and they have begun using these dread creatures in the war against the Dwendalian Empire.
Knock Back: They can make a charge attack that deals extra damage and can send a victim flying up to 20 feet, landing prone.
Mix-and-Match Critters: Udaaks resemble an immense, demonic cross between ox and gorilla.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: They have four arms in addition to their legs, though they can only make two slam attacks in a given round of combat.
Stranded Invader: In their home setting, they were originally summoned from the Abyss, but the Divergence severed their connection to their home plane, leaving them wandering Exandria. So while they're still Fiends, udaaks aren't considered proper demons anymore.
Swallowed Whole: They can swallow Large or smaller victims of their bite attack, subjecting them to ongoing acid damage until the victim either dies or deals enough damage to the udaak's stomach to make it vomit.

Udoroot

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Carnivorous plants that use their sunflower-like stalks to manifest psionic powers.

Cognizant Limbs: Each of its stalks functions like an independent Squishy Wizard, and destroying them does not harm its main body (which is also difficult to attack without digging it up from the ground). However, its main body is simply a normal plant with no abilities of it own, meaning that destroying the stalks leaves it completely helpless until they grow back.
Extra Turn: In 3.0 it effectively gets six turns, with each of its "crowns" that remains intact being able to attack independently; 3.5 capped this to two actions per round.
Foul Flower: Udoroots' stalks resemble sunflowers with white petals and red seeds, and look innocuous, but allow the plants to manifest multiple powers per round. They can be targeted and severed in combat, but this does no damage to the udoroot itself — only digging up and hacking apart its massive root will kill the plant, otherwise it'll just regrow its flower-stalks in about a month.
Monster Organ Trafficking: The seeds from an udoroot's flowers are tough but nutritious, and can be ground into bread.
Nerf: The transition from 3.0 to 3.5 psionics hit udoroots hard - limiting their at-will astral constructs to 3/day, capping their number of attacks to two per round, and allowing Area of Effect spells to destroy multiple crowns at once. It does gain the ability to heal its crowns, though their squishiness makes this of limited use.
Psychic Powers: The plants can manifest an array of psionic abilities, using false sensory input to lure in victims, astral construct to summon helpers, and telekinetic force to drag its victim's corpse into position to fertilize the plant.
Shock and Awe: Has access to the biocurrent power in 3.0, or the electric variant of energy stun in 3.5.
Tulpa: Capable of manifesting astral constructs to defend itself.
Underground Monkey: An Underdark variant of the udoroot grows "upside-down" from cave ceilings.

Uldra

^1e

Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Playable: 1E, 3E
Alignment: Lawful Good (1E), Chaotic Neutral (3E)

Small, blue-skinned fey who live in harmony with the arctic wilderness, finding natural shelters for their tribes to dwell in as they roam their territory.

Animal Wrongs Group: Uldra view themselves as the protectors of wildlife in particular, and they take joy in helping or simply watching wild animals, while growing depressed or even enraged at the thought of domesticated animals. They'll thus launch midnight raids on frontier villages to "rescue" livestock or pets for reintroduction to the wilderness, regardless of what this means for the people who relied upon them. This mindset contributes to uldra's distrust and dislike for civilization and those who are a part of it.
Art Evolution: In 1E they're rather gnomish, tall, pointy hats and all, and are described with "colorless" yellow-white skin and drab clothing. 3E uldra look more like small, blue-skinned elves who have no need for clothes.
Exposed to the Elements: Due to their cold resistance, uldra are comfortable wearing rustic clothing with exposed legs and arms, and some eschew clothing entirely... with the exception of hats, particularly pointed ones. It's more common to find an uldra wearing nothing but a hat than one going bareheaded but otherwise fully clothed.
Have You Seen My God?:
- In 1st Edition, the uldric pantheon has been reduced to the greater god Aslak, the lesser gods Salturen and Talminen, and the demigod Maitak, because an evil god in their pantheon, one with several ranks of Assassin, went on a divine killing spree. While this nameless deity was eventually slain in fair combat by the Top God Aslak, this is why there aren't any uldric goddesses left or any other greater deities.
- In 3rd Edition, the uldras were once devout followers of Hleid, patron of the frostfell's animals and guardian of cold magic, but then she was attacked and nearly slain by her half-brother Iborighu, who stole Hleid's magical secrets to aid his campaign to plunge the world into an endless ice age. Without her guidance the uldras became more chaotic and xenophobic, and today most worship nature itself, while the cult of Iborighu is the most widespread organized faith among them (contributing to outsiders' negative view of the uldra). That said, clerics of Hleid are beginning to reappear in the frostfell, so it is possible that the goddess is recovering.
An Ice Person: Uldra are naturally cold, can imbue their unarmed and melee weapon strikes with a bit of additional cold damage, and can innately cast ray of frost. However, they lack the full cold subtype and thus have resistance, but not full immunity, to cold damage; on the upside, this means they aren't innately Weak to Fire.
Mood-Swinger: Like many fey, uldras are extremely emotional, switching from laughter to screaming rage to calm serenity at a moment's notice, which can lead other races to consider them insane.
No-Sell: As fey, they're immune to spells like hold person or charm person that specifically target humanoids. And unlike most fey, uldra aren't particularly weak to Cold Iron, though they are uncomfortable handling it, finding the experience similar to "the sensation of holding a rotting fish in your hand."
Retcon: Uldra actually date back to 1st Edition, which presented them as cousins to both dwarves and gnomes who lived in the arctic and were fond of animals. 3rd Edition brought them back as fey beings with icy abilities and more quirks to them, hence why most tropes in the folder are about that incarnation of them.
Technicolor Eyes: Uldras' eyes are typically combinations of two to three hues such as green, gold and red. They also glow softly in the dark.

Ulgurstasta

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

Gargantuan, maggot-like monsters originally created by the evil demigod Kyuss as minion factories, but have since gone on to pursue their own agendas.

Gone Horribly Right: Kyuss created the ulgurstastas to mass-produce skeletal minions, but the problem was that the things also grew smarter as they ate and digested victims. By the time Kyuss vanished, his ulgurstastas were as smart as ghouls, and the few that survived to the present day possess nearly genius-level intellects.
Mook Maker: Anything Swallowed Whole by an ulgurstasta is converted into an animated skeleton, which it can then regurgitate as a minion.
Razor Floss: A ulgurstasta's body is covered in weeping pores, containing coiled 40-foot-long, hair-thin tendrils. When the thing is agitated it can whip these tendrils in a frenzy, rendering it immune to nonmagical missile weapons and dealing slashing damage to anything within 40 feet.
Super Spit: They have a once-per-day "breath weapon" attack that amounts to vomiting necromantic acid in a 60-foot cone, which deals Constitution drain and converts any slain victims into skeletons under the ulgurstasta's control - the catch is that this means that anything subsequently swallowed by the ulgurstasta won't take damage from its necromantic acid until it's had time to recover. The same attack also regurgitates any reanimated skeletons in the monster's guts.

Umber Hulk

Classification: Aberration (3E), Natural Magical Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 12 (4E), 5 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil, Unaligned (4E)

Bipedal insect-like creatures native to the Underdark, umber hulks are ambush predators who incapacitate victims with a magical gaze before devouring them.

Big Creepy-Crawlies: An umber hulk is an eight-foot-tall insect-like creature.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin: They're umber-coloured, and they tower over most humanoids with their hulking stature.
Expy: Of an unspecified kaiju which Gygax came across in figurine form, widely speculated to be Antlar.
Food Chain of Evil: Umber hulks hunt the likes of ankhegs and immature purple worms, but "Their favorite prey, however, is humankind."
Hypnotic Eyes: An umber hulk's four-eyed gaze puts its victims into a state of confusion, forcing them to act randomly and leaving them easy prey.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: Many survivors of an umber hulk attack forget about the incident, because their memory is scrambled by the umber hulk's confusing gaze.
Slave Race: The neogi make extensive use of umber hulk slaves, leading to generations of the brutes being raised in captivity, to the point that they accept their servitude as part of the natural order. This means the neogi don't need to use their supernatural ability to control umber hulks, who will obey a neogi's orders without question, even meekly submitting to corporeal punishment from masters they could easily crush in their hands.

Umbral Blot

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_blackball_2e.png

Origin: Mystara
Classification: Construct (3E)
Challenge Rating: 32 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Also called "blackballs" or "deadly spheres," these roaming 5-foot globes of utter darkness disintegrate everything they touch.

Blow You Away: Umbral blots naturally insulate themselves against the surrounding air, otherwise they'd be constantly surrounded by a vacuum. But if a particularly speedy foe manages to evade them, they can suppress that effect, creating a 30-foot vortex that draws in all nearby creatures, with the saving throw against the effect being much higher for airborne foes.
Dimensional Traveler: 3E umbral blots can use etheral jaunt or plane shift as a standard action.
Dungeon Bypass: They're fully capable of boring their way through terrain, and can surprise adventurers by coming up through the floor or dropping from the ceiling.
Mistaken Identity: It's mentioned that some spellcasters who encounter these creatures confuse them for a sphere of annihilation and attempt to command them with a talisman of the sphere. The umbral blots might choose to play along for a time, only to betray their "master" for their presumption.
One-Hit Kill: Anything an umbral blot makes contact with has to save or die, disintegrating so completely that not even dust remains.
Power of the Void: They're essentially free-roaming black holes, and incredibly dangerous entities.
Super-Senses: 3E umbral blots have blindsense out to 200 feet.
Supernatural Sensitivity: 2E blackballs can instead sense any intelligent creatures within 60 feet of them.
Teleportation: As if their flight speed wasn't enough, 3rd Edition umbral blots can use dimension door or teleport without error at will.
Took a Level in Badass: With a movement of only 3, 2nd Edition blackballs move at a quarter the speed of a baseline human, giving other creatures a chance to escape and elude them. The umbral blot of the 3E Epic Level Handbook, on the other hand, flies at a rate of 90 feet per round, more than fast enough to run down someone mounted on a horse.
Turned Against Their Masters: Umbral blots are believed by some sages to be created by "the Old Ones" as messengers or assassins, until they rebelled and destroyed them, so perhaps now the umbral blots are roving the cosmos, looking for any Old Ones they missed.

Umpleby

Alignment: True Neutral

Eight-foot-tall lummoxes covered in hair, which generates a dangerous amount of static electricity.

Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: About the only thing capable of holding an umpleby's attention is a pile of shiny coins or gems. Though intelligent enough to at least speak Common in a halting fashion, their short attention spans render umplebys incapable of forming communities — their families only happen when two umplebys meet by chance, and last until their offspring wanders off one day and doesn't come back, leading the parents to disperse as well.
Inescapable Net: Umplebys will weave nets out of their own hair, which are tougher to cut and burn than the result of a web spell and can fetch 100 gp from merchants.
The Load: Umplebys tend the shamble along with any adventurers they meet, refusing to be left behind. Unfortunately they don't do anything to help, tend to get in the way, and are incapable of stealth. Offers of food will "ensure instant and total loyalty to its benefactor," but lead to the umpleby constantly complaining about being hungry and thirsty. Even if they do manage to offer help or advice, the creature will demand a share of any shiny treasure the adventurers come across.
No-Sell: They are unsurprisingly immune to electricity.
Shock and Awe: Their melee attacks with their arms deal paltry damage, but more dangerous is the static electricity an umpleby can deliver with a touch (an attack especially effective against foes in metal armor). An umpleby can deliver a total of 50 points of electricity damage each day, divided how it wishes, leading to the possibility of it delivering all of that damage in one go. However, as soon as it's delivered its 50th point of damage, an umpleby immediately goes to sleep so it can recharge.

Unbodied

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: As base creature +4 (3E)
Alignment: Any

A race of humanoids who have shed their physical forms, existing as beings of pure mind.

Anti-True Sight: Unbodied can hide their minds, so that divination magic or clairsentience powers don't detect them as psionic.
The Disembodied: They left their bodies intending to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, but many unbodied instead cling to the physical world, acting as their alignments dictate.
Intangibility: As beings of pure thought, unbodied are incorporeal, and use telekinesis to interact with the physical world.
Lie to the Beholder: Unbodied can assume the likeness of any creature between Small and Large size. Some take up the guise of noble humans with a dramatic fashion sense, others as various creatures (or nightmarish mash-ups of creatures), while still others present themselves as floating, disembodied brains.
Psychic Powers: They're natural psionicists, manifesting powers as a 4th-level psion.

Underfolk

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

Humans adapted to life in the "shallow" portion of the Underdark, dwelling in caverns less than a mile beneath the surface.

Chameleon Camouflage: Underfolk have developed the ability to change their skin pigmentation to blend in with their surroundings, giving them a racial bonus to Hide checks that is even more effective in rocky surroundings. This ability can even foil darkvision, though not truesight.
Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: They have the Light Sensitivity rule.
Human Subspecies: They're human for all intents and purposes.
I Gave My Word: Underfolk take oaths very seriously (if not quite to the dwarves' level of holding grudges), and consequently will immediately sever ties with anyone who lies or deceives them.
Innate Night Vision: They've developed darkvision after generations spent underground.
The Morlocks: Subverted; underfolk may be primitive and rustic in terms of technology, and have physically adapted to life underground, so that their eyes and ears are slightly larger and their body hair thicker than surface humans', and their short and slight builds are closer to those of elves. But they're by no means degenerate, and generally keep to themselves, only going to war with the likes of drow and orcs when they have no other choice. Underfolk who live close enough to the surface will even leave their caves to trade with surface-dwelling races.
Noble Savage: Underfolk are insular, suspicious of strangers, and can be mildly xenophobic, but they're devoted to their tribe's well-being, intensely loyal to their allies, and hold a deep love for the caves they call home. They've developed a rich oral tradition that peppers their speech with allegories and hyperbolic statements, tell poetic and dreamlike stories, and love to sing.

Undying

Undying councilor (5e)

Origin: Eberron
Classification: Deathless (3E), Undead (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (soldier), 9 (councilor) (3E); 2 (soldier), 10 (councilor) (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

On Eberron, the elves of Aerenal are ruled by the Undying Court, the revered ancestors of living elves, animated by the faith of their descendants.

Can't Argue with Elves: Played with. Undying are the center of one of Eberron's most benevolent religions, but they are still flawed and have a rather dismissive view of non-elves.
Dark Is Not Evil: Unlike regular undead, the undying are animated by the faith and prayers of their followers (religion in Eberron operates heavily on the concept of faith rather than actual divine entities), instead of negative energies.
Holy Hand Grenade: Undying soldiers have the power to Smite Evil in 3rd edition, while in 5th edition their spears inflict extra damage against fiends and the undead.
Light 'em Up: All undying give off light in 5th edition. Undying councilors can intensify this light to blinding levels as a legendary action, and their very touch can sear creatures with radiant energy.
Light Is Good: Unlike most undead, the Undying give off light, and most of them are of good alignment. Of course, this being Eberron, there are exceptions.
The Necrocracy: In their home setting, the island nation of Aerenal is ruled by a pair of Sibling Kings, but those monarchs are selected by the Undying Court and expected to heed the undying's counsel.
Non-Human Undead: The elves of Aerenal preserve their greatest citizens as undying. Outside of Aerenal, undying can appear anywhere, though this is exceedingly rare.

Unholy Scion

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: As base creature +1 to +3, depending on Hit Dice (3E)
Alignment: Any evil

Humanoids or animals who were corrupted in their mother's womb, leaving them fiends in mortal flesh.

Absurdly Sharp Claws: An unholy scion gains a claw attack if their base creature didn't already possess one.
Black Magic: They learn a variety of nasty spells as they age, from desecrate and protection from good to baleful polymorph and animate dead.
Charm Person: An unholy scion's mother is under a "familial charm," a charm person effect that has No Saving Throw. Worse, the scion's mother is fully aware that the actions she is forced to commit are wrong, and that her child is evil, but she cannot break her devotion to the fiend. The unholy scion also learns charm animal or charm person as they age, before moving on to full dominate person.
Demonic Possession: Some unholy scions are formed when a fiend possess an unborn child, merging completely with the developing mind and soul so that the two are hopelessly intermingled — it is thus impossible to exorcise an unholy scion, or for the fiend to revert to its original form until its mortal shell is slain. However, other unholy scions avert this trope and form spontaneously when a woman is impregnated by a fiend in an area of high taint.
Fetus Terrible: An unholy scion is fully intelligent and irredeemably evil even while inside its mother's womb, and already capable of seeing through its mother's senses and compelling her to commit evil acts. After being born, they graduate to Enfant Terrible.
Uncanny Valley: These tainted beings look like normal members of their mother's species, but still manage to subtly disturb onlookers. "Their features might be ever so slightly off, their eyes possessed of an evil gleam, or they might simply make everyone around them nervous for no obvious cause."
Unholy Nuke: An unholy scion's melee attacks are considered evil-aligned for the purpose of overcoming Damage Reduction, and deal extra damage to good opponents.

Unicorn

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Fey Magical Beast (4E), Celestial (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 9 (4E), 5 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good (1E-3E), Unaligned (4E), Lawful Good (5E)

One-horned, equine beings who live in the forest. They're generally benevolent if skittish, and are often hunted for their horns.

Hybrid Monster: A web supplement for 3rd edition Ghostwalk introduces Valicorns, the product of unicorns breeding with mundane equines. They possess the same immunities as a unicorn, weaker versions of its magical abilities, and a hard plate on their head with similar properties to a unicorn horn.
An Ice Person: Palomino unicorns or criocorns, described in Dragon Magazine #190, live in arctic environments and can create blizzards, chill metal and shoot freezing rays.
Immortal Procreation Clause: The Ecology of the Unicorn states that unicorns are so long-lived that they seem to be nearly immortal, but remain rare because they almost never breed.
Immune to Mind Control: 3E unicorns are immune to charm and compulsion effects... twice, both as a nonmagical innate trait and as part of the magic circle against evil spell that radiates from their bodies (which suppresses all such effects within 10ft).
The Medic: Unicorns can heal wounds and poisoning with a touch of their horns.
Mix-and-Match Critters: While it's not often brought up, and not mentioned at all in 5th edition, unicorns are this. They have the bodies of horses, obviously, but also the tail of a lion or boar, the beard of a goat, cloven hooves, and trots like a deer rather than gallop.
The Paralyzer: Black unicorns, describes in Dragon Magazine #190, can paralyze other beings with a touch of their horns. If this paralysis isn't cured within three days, the victim dies of heart failure.
Playing with Fire: Bay unicorns or pyrocorns, described in Dragon Magazine #190, live in spent volcanic caverns and can naturally cast spells that allow them to wreathe their horns in fire, create flames or throw fireballs.
Underground Monkey: 2nd edition D&D introduces a great variety of unicorn breeds — depending on which sources one uses, up to fifteen kinds.
- The base game has three; the Chaotic Good, conventional or "sylvan" unicorn, the demon-blooded, Chaotic Evil and meat-eating black unicorn of the Forgotten Realms, and the Neutral Evil shadow unicorn — evil hybrids of unicorns and nightmares — from Ravenloft.
- Dragon Magazine #190 introduces the alicorn (gnarly-horned unicorns that can cast Charm Person), pyrocorn (Neutral Evil bay-colored unicorns who can cast a number of fire spells), black unicorn (different for the Faerunian kind in that their powers focus on magically manipulating darkness), roanicorn (desert-dwelling brown unicorns with telepathy and ESP), cunnequine (Lawful Good counterparts to the traditionally Chaotic Good unicorn), faerie unicorn (small, green-tinted chameleonic unicorns), graycorn (True Neutral gray colored unicorns that reflect damage back at their attackers), criocorn (palomino-colored Lawful Evil unicorns with ice-related magic), chromacorn (pinto-colored Neutral Good unicorns that can cast illusions and Prismatic Sprays), sea unicorn (aquatic unicorns that can shapeshift into narwhals), unisus (a Winged Unicorn born from crossbreeding a unicorn and a pegasus), and zebracorn (zebra-striped unicorns with Voluntary Shapeshifting powers).
- Basic/Expert/etc D&D has actual unicorns with healing powers, and also attributes similar powers to narwhals, making them the unicorn's marine counterpart rather than just a funny-looking whale.
Unicorn: Intelligent white horses with spiraling horns, goatlike beards, lion-like tails, cloven hooves and magical powers (including the trademark ability to teleport once per day anywhere within their forest home), and the males have a goat-like beard and a very long mane; some material describes them as being more deer-like than equine. They're often sought out by paladins and other goodly beings as allies, steeds and companions and by more evil or amoral sorts for their horns, which can be used in various healing potions. Celestial chargers are unicorns from the Celestial Realms that have the power of clerics.
Unicorns Prefer Virgins: Unicorns sometimes allow themselves to be ridden, but only accept human or elven maidens of pure heart and good alignment.
- Dragon Magazine #190 describes a number of unicorn variants, several with their own spins on this theme: alicorns and cunnequines have the same requirements as common sylvan unicorns, the Neutral Evil pyrocorns accept evil female riders with affinities for fire magic, the Chaotic Evil black unicorns accept evil fighters or thieves of either sex, fairy unicorns accept any halfling, gnome, elf or fairy of good heart, gray unicorns accept only female druids of strictly neutral alignment, the Lawful Evil criocorns bear only exceptionally evil women with a talent for icy magic or who worship an evil god of cold or winter, pinto unicorns accept any rider of pure heart, narwhals bear only sea elven women of pure heart, and unisi may be ridden by any humanoid maiden with a good heart.
- The "Beloved of Valerian" Prestige Class in the Book of Exalted Deeds supplement (which grants a unicorn as a companion) can only be entered by characters who are both female and have the Vow of Chastity feat.
Winged Unicorn: Unisi, described in Dragon Magazine #190, are winged and horned equines created from the crossbreeding of unicorns and pegasi. They have the same habitat preferences and societies as pegasi, but share the unicorns' horn attack and preference for female riders of pure heart. Their horns can be used to brew potions that allow their drinkers to fly.

Unraveler

Unraveler (3e)

^{Menglis (2e)}

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral (2E), Lawful Neutral (3E)

Also known as menglis, these elemental spirits dwell in the Inner Planes' borderlands, and are feared for their ability to separate creatures and objects into their constituent elements.

Art Evolution: 2nd Edition's menglis are depicted as vague, human-shaped spirits, while their 3rd Edition illustration depicts them as a patchwork of different elements.
Intangibility: They're naturally incorporeal and, in 2nd Edition, invisibile as well.
No-Sell: They're immune to the natural conditions of the Elemental Planes of Air, Earth, Fire and Water.
Transformation Horror: An unraveler's claw attack, or a menglis' mere presence, can cause other creatures to separate into their basic elements, taking damage over the next few rounds until they're nothing but a few pounds of minerals and a pool of liquid. During this painful process, the victim is unable to cast spells, and can only attack blindly, unable to distinguish friend from foe. A victim who passes a Charisma check can stabilize themselves for the next 24 hours, but only powerful magic like restoration or heal can end the disjoining effect.

Unspeakable Horror

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (5E)

Nameless things spawned from the Mists surrounding the Domains of Dread, the remnants of dissolved domains or the half-formed ideas of the Dark Powers given shape.

Can't Live Without You: Fortunately for everything else, unspeakable horrors born from the Mists can't survive long outside them, and will lose cohesion and collapse into vapor in at most four rounds.
Eldritch Abomination: They're nightmarish creatures with no obligation to obey the laws of nature, to the extent that their entry includes a note that DMs should feel free to improvise a description of what the horror looks like — "The more discordant and unexpected a horror's parts, the more unsettling it might be."
Gameplay Randomization: Unspeakable horrors come with several tables to randomize their body type, the nature of their magic attacks, and even what sort of limbs they have. They might have amorphous bodies that let them squeeze through narrow gaps or exposed organs that deal acid damage to anything that attacks them; a "hex blast" that deals necrotic, psychic, or acid damage, or even petrifies victims; limbs studded with poisoned spines or tentacles that can grapple victims, and so on.
I Know What You Fear: Mist horrors are drawn from the fears of nearby creatures, which can result in chimeric forms when confronted by a group, "like a wolf with snakes for eyes or a drowned giant that resembles an estranged parent."

Ur'Epona

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Intelligent horses whose herds can travel from plane to plane.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Nic'Epona can change their coat's coloration at will, from any color of the rainbow to vivid patterns mixing multiple hues.
Dimensional Traveler: Ur'Epona can plane shift once per day, while nic'Epona can do it at will.
Divine Parentage: They're known as "Epona's grandchildren," descended from what is variably described as a horse-goddess or the Primal Horse.
Living Mood Ring: An ur'Epona has no predetermined color, rather their coat changes with their mood, ranging from pure glistening white to a deep sable.
No-Sell: Nic'Epona are immune to charm effects, and can sense when someone is using such magic to try to win their trust. They like to feign falling under such a spell, letting their new "master" climb onto their back, and then plane shifting to a hostile realm to dump the dope on.
Retcon: Planeshifting horses were known as nic'Epona in 2nd Edition, and beyond being much smarter than 3E ur'Epona, they had a wider array of supernatural powers, were a lot tougher, and were exclusively female, "Epona's daughters" (they mate with magical equines such as pegasi, with any females from such unions being more nic'Epona).
Sapient Steed: Ur'Epona are a little smarter than ogres, and can understand any language, though they cannot themselves speak. Nic'Epona are smarter than most humans, but still speechless.
Trampled Underfoot: A nic'Epona herd can stampede over enemies, dealing heavy damage for several rounds based on how many divine horses are in the herd.
Walk on Water/Wall Crawl: Once per hour, a nic'Epona can trigger its "Fleeting Causeway" ability, during which their hooves flame bright blue and they can run across the surface of water or quicksand, across open gaps, or even up sheer surfaces, for a round.

Urkhan Worm

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Vermin (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (juvenile), 6 (adult) (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Oversized earthworms that can grow up to 30 feet long, domesticated by dwarves for various purposes.

Fantastic Livestock: The dwarves of Thorbardin use urkhan worms in a variety of roles, depending on what stage they are in their life cycle. Young worms are put in lanterns as a Fantastic Light Source, since their bodies emit a green glow, while adult worms are put to work tunneling, pulling wagons, or tilling earth. Near the end of their two-year lifespan, urkhan worms are retired to a farm where they mainly produce fertilizer. Outsiders thus sometimes refer to the creatures as "tractor worms," which the dwarves dislike.
Fast Tunneling: Their 3rd Edition rules give urkhan worms a 20-foot burrowing speed, though additional material explains that dwarven tunnel teams strike walls with metal batons, encouraging the worms to spit a substance that causes stone to crack and crumble.
Sand Worm: Greaty downplayed compared to the likes of the purple worm; urkhan worms can grow to Huge size and burrow their way through the ground, but they eat rock and only use their lackluster bite attack against creatures that attack them.

Urskan

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

Intelligent, tool-using, talking polar bears sometimes known as "armored bears" for the inch-thick suits of armor they wear into battle.

Bears Are Bad News: Urskans aren't malevolent, but they are apex arctic predators even before they put on their armor and take up weapons, and are more than capable of defending their territory.
Expy: They are quite transparently the panserbjørn from His Dark Materials.
No-Sell: As creatures with the cold subtype, they're immune to cold damage (though Weak to Fire), and urskans are also so surefooted that they ignore movement penalties assiciated with snow on the ground.
The Nose Knows: They can detect the presence of other creatures by scent out to 30 feet.
Running on All Fours: They're equally comfortable moving about on two legs or all four.
Wolverine Claws: When they aren't wielding simple melee weapons, urskans attach steel tips to their already-lethal claws.

Ursoi

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Sapient, bipedal, arctic bearfolk, who live in nomadic groups bound together by their beliefs in the importance of nature and loyalty to their clan.

Beast Man: They're D&D's original polar bear folk, boasting huge racial bonuses to Strength and Constitution, resistance to cold, natural claw and bite attacks, and a Killer Bear Hug if they hit with a claw.
The Berserker: Explicitly averted; ursoi are ferocious in a fight, but never enter one lightly, and carefully pick their battles.
I Owe You My Life: Ursoi greatly value personal loyalty and justice, so it's not unheard for them to serve as bodyguards to non-ursoi who saved their lives.
I'm a Humanitarian: Ursoi do not hold the dead sacred, and will consume their fallen and the bodies of other sentient beings out of both pragmatism and respect. This has only intensified their conflict with the thanoi, who are disgusted by the practice.
Invading Refugees: On Krynn, the ursoi migrated from Chorane during the War of the Lance and eventually arrived in Icereach, bringing them into conflict with the local thanoi.
Starfish Language: Ursoi is a "very difficult language of growls and humming sounds," and Ursoi can't physically speak other tongues even if they understand them.
Uplifted Animal: One theory about the ursoi is that they were ordinary polar bears affected by the Graygem's flight across Krynn, though the other is that they were created during the Age of Dreams by Chislev, whom they revere as the Great White Mother.

Ushemoi

A lashemoi and arkanoi (3e)

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (lashemoi), 4 (arkamoi), 5 (hadrimoi), 8 (turlemoi)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

A race of humanoids with odd skin, who gain additional abilities when exposed to certain stimuli.

Boulder Bludgeon: Turlemoi are large enough to fling boulders like giants.
Dirty Coward: Lashemoi are cowards who will only commit to a fight if they have superior numbers and a clear escape route, and additionally take a penalty on saves against fear effects.
Flaying Alive: Turlemoi seem to lack skin, and their bodies are covered in glistening, exposed muscle and sinew, though this hardens into a smooth red hide as they take damage and grow stronger.
Hive Caste System: In theory, the various ushemoi subraces form specialized castes in a common society, with lashemoi as laborers and disposable warriors, turlemoi as shock troops and enforcers, hadrimoi as schemers and merchants, and arkamoi as the leader caste. In practice, the Neutral Evil usehmoi are all self-serving villains constantly jockeying for power, willing to sell each other out to outsiders, and lacking any concept of the ushemoi as a unified race.
Increasingly Lethal Enemy: Arkamoi's "strength from magic" ability means that as they cast spells, the magical feedback gives them cumulative bonuses to their Armor Class, as well as the save DCs and damage of their spells.
Mook Lieutenant: Though physically the weakest of the ushemoi, arkamoi are recognized by the others as natural leaders, and in combat can grant them bonuses on attacks or skill checks.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Hadrimoi's arms split into two limbs below the elbow, and they're capable of attacking with four light weapons each round without penalty. And when their "speed from pain" ability is ramped up, they can make a full attack action even when moving.
Paper Tiger: Turlemoi zig-zag this trope. Though they're the largest and most threatening-looking of the ushemoi, they're normally meek and fearful, allowing the other ushemoi to treat them as slaves (especially the vicious hadrimoi). But once it takes enough damage to build its "strength from pain" bonuses to a certain point, a turlemoi becomes more confident, and will fight to the death.
Sore Loser: Hadrimoi obsess over every defeat, and rather than moving on to easier targets, will endlessly plot revenge and attempt to retaliate against anyone who beat them. If that proves too hard, the hadrimoi will go after their opponent's loved ones.
Turns Red:
- Hadrimoi have the "speed from pain" ability, gaining stacking bonuses to their movement speed, Armor Class, Reflex saves and attack rolls as they take damage.
- Lashemoi and turlemoi have "strength from pain" (though to a lesser extent for the former), gaining stacking bonuses to attacks and their Armor Class as they take damage. Turlemoi additionally have the "rising courage" trait, and like lashemoi have an initial penalty on saves against fear, but once their "strength from pain" bonus gets high enough, they become immune to fear.

Uthraki

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

Murderous shapeshifters who hunt at night, taking on an innocuous form to lure in victims before rending them to pieces with their claws.

Absolute Xenophobe: 2nd Edition describes uthraki as "Lone, spiteful creatures that hate all other living things, even their own kind."
Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: In their rarely-seen natural forms, uthraki look like apes with gray-white hair, twisted limbs, and faces that seem oddly small for their heads. Savage appearance aside, they're as intelligent as humans and capable of speech, but are wholly malevolent. In their home setting, the Rashemi consider uthraki a type of evil forest spirit, and their witches hunt the monsters down whenever they can.
Extra Eyes: They have a dozen eyes placed all around their head, making it impossible to surprise (in 2E) or flank (3E) an uthraki.
Healing Factor: Uthraki constantly regenerate health, but only at night.
Humanshifting: They can assume any the form of any Small or Medium-sized humanoid or monstrous humanoid.
A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Uthraki abuse their shapeshifting to appear as comforting or harmless figures — "a lost child, friendly minstrel, jolly merchant, merry elf travelers, gruff but friendly dwarf warriors, cute halflings, gnome acrobats, and the like." Their nails are amazingly hard no matter what shape they're in, letting uthraki attack and use their Improved Grab and Rend attacks to full effect.

Uvuudaum

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 27 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Aberrant horrors from the Far Realm, who delight in spreading madness to more structured realities.

Brown Note Being: Just coming close to an uvuudaum can cause creatures to succumb to a confusion effect.
Humanoid Abomination: Uvuudaums are clearly based upon, or were originally, humanoids, but they've been assembled wrong — they have three sets of spidery limbs or humanoid arms in place of legs, and a mostly-normal torso with a tail-like spiked appendage in place of a head and neck.
Magic Knight: They're extremely dangerous in direct combat, and also capable of using spells like confusion and polymorph self at will, more dangerous magic like chain lightning or disintegrate a few times per day, and they can even cast epic spells like nailed to the sky, time duplicate and contingent resurrection.
Mind Rape: Their head-spike attack both deals terrible physical damage and blasts victims with incomprehensible images from the Far Realm, inflicting Wisdom drain.
Super-Senses: Despite their lack of recognizable sensory organs, uvuudaums have blindsight out to 500 feet.
Telepathy: Uvuudaum can communcate telepathically with any creature that speaks a language.
Use Your Head/Beware My Stinger Tail: Instead of a normal neck, an uvuudaum has something like a 15-foot tail with an iron-hard spike.

V

Vaath

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Sadistic horrors from the jungles of Carceri, these cruel and cunning predators are feared across the planes for their feeding habits.

Creepy Souvenir: Vaaths like to collect trophies from victims, either bits of equipment, or leftover body parts like hands, eyeballs or heads.
Eaten Alive: Once a victim has been paralyzed, a vaath burrows its feeder tendril into its victim to consume a vital organ. As the vaath's prey expires over the next few minutes, the creature delights in tearing out and eating its helpless victim's innards right in front of it.
Forced to Watch: As if the above wasn't bad enough, vaaths are also telepathic, and will "broadcast" what they feel as they feed to every creature within 20 feet (with a save to resist). Not only do witnesses experience the taste and texture of the vaath's meal, they also feel the pleasure it derives from feeding. This experience is enough to deal a bit of Wisdom drain to most witnesses, unless they regularly feed on what the vaath is devouring... but the vaath's current victim is also subjected to the same telepathic sensory conduit, and takes even more Wisdom drain from it, because "no creature, not even another vaath, is immune to the horror of experiencing what its own entrails taste like."
Happiness in Slavery: Their 2nd Edition entry points out that vaaths are one of the few fiends that enjoy being summoned, as they get to sample a greater selection of victims. They'll also happily work as guards and torturers for more powerful fiends, so long as the vaaths are given regular victims.
Mix-and-Match Critters: They're some unholy blend of insect and reptile, with both scales and a thorny carapace.
Monster Mouth: Vaaths have a normal set of teeth and jaws on their faces, but also a second mouth on a tendril coming out of their heads.
The Paralyzer
- In 2e, vaaths use their mouthed tentacle to stab into the base of a creature's skull and sever it from their spine in a Neck Snap that, while fatal in short order, doesn't immediately kill the victim, giving the vaath time to torture it.
- In 3e, a vaath's bite attack carries a paralytic poison, leaving its prey helpless.
Sadist: Vaaths were once assumed to need to feed upon the pain and suffering of others, but this was overly optimistic — they simply relish causing mental anguish.

Valenar Animal

Valenar hound (5e)

Origin: Eberron
Classification: Animal (3E), Fey (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E, 5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Animals such as hawks, horses or hounds that have been touched by an elven ancestral spirit, granting them sapience and magical abilities.

Bond Creatures: Valenar animals can forge a mystical bond with another creature, allowing the animal and its bond partner to communicate telepathically with one another.
Cool Horse: The Valenar riding horse, their 3.5e incarnation before being expanded to other animals.
Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Part of their backstory in Eberron. When the ancient elves went to war against the giants of Xen'drik, the giants cursed the elven druids, trapping them in animal form. The spirits of those ancient druids empower the Valenar animals of today.
Touched by Vorlons: Each Valenar animal is given an ancestral gift by the spirit that awakened them, which can range from supernatural speed or agility, the ability to teleport or leave no tracks, or even the power to grant good fortune to their bondmate or discern the lies of other creatures.
Uplifted Animal: Being awakened by a Valenar ancestral spirit grants these beasts human-level intelligence and the capacity to understand languages, but not speak them.

Valkyrie

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Natives of the Heroic Domains of Ysgard, these fierce warrior-women live only for battle, and seek out worthy foes to test their skills against.

Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Depends on the plane. In most settings, valkyries' sense of shared sisterhood makes them rarely fight each other, preferring instead to work together to find opponents to fight or great warriors to serve. But on Ysgard, where those slain in battle are automatically revived the next morning, they'll happily kill each other.
Blood Knight: They "rarely have room in their hearts for more than battle fury," are solely concerned with testing themselves against skilled warriors, and see no reason to show mercy to those they defeat. This can naturally cause problems for societies in harsh lands, as the valkyries' duels with their best fighters can leave communities without their most valuable combatants.
Death from Above: They typically start combat with a pouncing charge maneuver from the air, unleashing a flurry of short sword strikes followed by a wing buffet thunderclap.
Fertile Blood: When a god sheds blood on the battlefields of Ysgard and survives the conflict, the next morning, the blood-soaked ground sprouts glowing red flowers known as glory blossoms. These flowers are prized as a material component for magic items like potions of heroism, but should they be undisturbed, the flowers' glow intensifies into a blinding flash as a new valkyrie appears, then seeks out a deity to serve.
Make Some Noise: As a swift action, a valkyrie can clap her wings to create a thunderclap, dealing sonic damage to all within 30 feet.
No-Sell: They're immune to fear effects, as well as cold, lightning and sonic damage. Valkyries are sometimes called "storm angels" for their habit of flying unharmed through fierce storms on their way to the next battlefield.
One-Gender Race: All valkyries are female, and in the rare event they reproduce, the result is a celestial or half-celestial, not another valkyrie.
Shock and Awe: Any weapon a valkyrie wields is wreathed in damaging electricity, and those who meet their gaze are struck by strokes of lightning. The latter isn't even an active attack, just a passive effect while the valkyrie focuses on fighting with her swords.
Supernatural Martial Arts: They know martial maneuvers from the Setting Sun, Stone Dragon and Tiger Claw disciplines.
Valkyries:
- They're a spin on the concept; rather than Psychopomps, these valkyries are simply interested in a good fight — if they take someone from a battlefield, it's not to usher a soul to the afterlife, the valkyrie is instead "rescuing" a warrior whose skills have intrigued her and taking them somewhere safe to recover, so the valkyrie can fight them herself. Valkyries do serve as messengers and enforcers for gods like Kord or Olidammara, but never for more than a century, since their chaotic natures make valkyries prone to disobedience and seeking independence. Finally, and they're depicted with hoofed feet and horned brows to make them less angelic.
- Note that "traditional" valkyries have appeared in D&D material covering the Norse pantheon, but those were simply all-female, 20th-level paladins with quasi-deity status and no other special rules. As such, this entry concerns the valkyrie in the 3rd Edition Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords supplement.
Worthy Opponent: They exist to find and fight these in glorious single combat, and a valkyrie will praise her opponent's skill even while rejecting their attempts to surrender or call a truce. If a valkyrie ends up outmatched, she might offer her service in exchange for her life and a chance to learn from her opponent, or she may fight to the death "just to experience the honor of fighting such a formidable enemy." But if a valkyrie is losing to a spellcaster or other non-martial opponent, they usually flee to either gather reinforcements or find a more worthy enemy to fight.

Vampire

Classification: Undead (3E-5E)
Challenge Rating: As base creature +2 (vampire), 4 (vampire spawn) (3E); 5 (vampire spawn), 11 (vampire lord) (4E); 5 (vampire spawn), 13 (vampire) (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Shapeshifting bloodsuckers with a slew of distinctive strengths and weaknesses.

Attack Animal: A vampire can summon a pack of wolves to attack its enemies.
Dismembering the Body: One way to permanently destroy a vampire involved cutting off its head.
Feral Vampires: A vampire might only be as civilized as the society it came from — a gnoll vampire, for example, is a savage and indiscriminate feeder that preys on both the flesh and blood of its victims, including other gnolls.
Hypnotic Gaze: Vampires possess a magical gaze which can bend other creatures to their will.
I'm Melting!: For a vampire, getting dipped in running water is like getting submerged in acid. Hold a vampire underwater for long enough and it will dissolve, leaving nothing behind.
Last Chance Hit Point: When a vampire is reduced to 0 hit points (and isn't within direct sunlight or running water), it does not die. Instead, it turns into a cloud of mist and has two hours to get back to its coffin. If it fails to do so, then it dies.
Life Drain: As you might expect, a vampire recovers hit points whenever it sucks someone's blood.
Must Be Invited: A vampire can't enter a residence without an invitation from one of the occupants. Unfortunately, getting an invitation with its Hypnotic Gaze counts, and vampiric feudal lords like Strahd Von Zarovich own every house in their domain and can thus invite themselves.
Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires in D&D hew pretty closely to tradition, though they vary in temperament from savage brutes to dignified killers◊ depending on the individual.
- The horror-themed Ravenloft setting introduced numerous variants, such as the elven vampire, which can only survive in the day and is killed by exposure to moonlight!
- "Nosferatu" have been around for ages as a variant of vampire, though they've been very different in each edition they've appeared in. In the 2nd Edition Red Steel setting, nosferatu are essentially daywalking vampires that don't inflict Level Drain and aren't always evil. In the 3rd Edition Ravenloft bestiary, they're weakened by daylight, though not outright harmed by it, and regenerate in moonlight. And in the 5th Edition Ravenloft sourcebook, nosferatu are feral bloodsuckers that live in animalistic savagery and can vomit a cone of blood to deal necrotic damage to foes.
Pest Controller: Vampires can summon swarms of bats and rats to do their bidding.
Promoted to Playable: An odd case; vampires were technically playable in 3rd Edition, but their Level Adjustment meant that a 1st-level vampire was equal to a 9th-level character, making them hard to fit with an average adventuring party. 4th Edition instead treats "vampire" as a character class that any base race can progress in, gaining increasing vampiric power.
Super Smoke: While the specifics vary by edition, vampires can usually take on a gaseous form which is difficult to harm.
Vampire Procreation Limit: In 3E at least, a vampire's "Create Spawn" ability is dependent on the victim's hit dice and whether they were killed by draining blood or levels. A humanoid with five or more hit dice killed by blood drain rises as a full vampire, otherwise they become a less powerful "vampire spawn" that has no create spawn ability.
Vampires Sleep in Coffins: In early versions of Advanced D&D, vampires are required to rest in coffins (or similar containers) during daylight hours unless they are deep underground.
Weakened by the Light: When in direct sunlight, vampires have disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks and can't use their Healing Factor. In 5th edition, direct exposure to sunlight damages a vampire in addition to weakening it.

Blood Fiend

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

Extraplanar undead created from demons, these ogre-sized, scaly, fanged monsters are essentially fiendish vampires, and share many abilities with them.

Level Drain: Aside from a blood-sucking bite attack, blood fiends' slam attacks can cause victims to gain negative levels, which grants the blood fiend temporary hit points.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Blood fiends have two sets of arms.
The Virus: They can create spawn from evil outsiders that succumb to their energy drain attacks.

Vampirate

Origin: Spelljammer
Challenge Rating: 2 to 6 (captain) (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Undead corsairs who ply the void of Wildspace, preying upon the cargo and crews of rival spelljamming vessels.

Punny Name: They are indeed vampire pirates.
Scoundrel Code: Some vampirates are known to (un)live by a code of conduct, fighting with chivalry and sparing the crew of a ship they plunder, but others might leave nothing but corpses and wreckage floating in the void.
Space Pirate: An undead, fantastic equivalent.
Spawn Broodling: Any humanoid slain by their energy drain attack immediately rises as a free-willed shadow. Thus, most vampirate vessels have a number of shadows lurking aboard — since vampirates are immune to necrotic damage, they have nothing to fear from the other undead, even if they aren't under the vampirates' control.
Vampires Sleep in Coffins: While some vampirates sleep in coffins or crates packed with grave dirt, in a pinch, they can treat their spelljamming ship as one big coffin and sleep amongst their cargo.
Vampiric Draining: They consider actually draining fluids from a victim to be unsavory, and instead use a short-ranged ability to siphon away their prey's life force, dealing necrotic damage.

Vampiric Mist

Crimson death (3e)

Classification: Undead (3E-5E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (3E), 9 (4E), 3 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil, Evil (4E)

Evil bloodsucking clouds, sometimes known as crimson death mist.

Blood Is the New Black: Their "crimson death" write-up notes that the creature usually appears as a vaguely-humanoid knot of fog, but after feeding, their misty bodies are turned red.
Composite Character: In 2nd Edition, "crimson death mists" are vaporous, blood-drinking monsters thought to be former vampires, while "vampiric mists" were originally thought to be an immature form of crimson death mist, but in truth are a creation of vampiric wizards — and neither were strictly-speaking classified as undead. The two were similar enough that 5th Edition declares both names are describing the same creature, what remains of vampires who were unable to reach the safety of their coffin after their body was destroyed.
Intangibility: They're clouds of bloodsucking mist, so only magical weapons can reliably damage them.
Life Drain: As of 5th Edition, their attacks reduce their victims' hit points maximum while the mist regains health.
Our Vampires Are Different: Mobile, somewhat intelligent clouds of mist that can drain the blood from any creature they engulf. In some editions they are former vampires who were reduced to a mist-like state.
Weakened by the Light: When in direct sunlight, vampiric mists have disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks and can't use their Healing Factor.

Vanara

Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Intelligent simians known for their curiosity and reverence for nature, who dwell in deep forests and high mountains.

Beast Man: Vanaras are five-foot-tall monkeylike humanoids covered in light fur, ranging in color from white to black to brown to light blue. They're natural climbers and generally clever and inquisitive, with keen senses.
Brutal Honesty: Vanaras never hide their true feelings or delicately state a negative opinion.
Curious as a Monkey: Appropriately enough, vanaras are "curious in the extreme," prone to badgering people with (occasionally very personal) questions, picking up things to examine them, opening doors to see where they lead, and generally going places in defiance of other races' rules or sense of propriety. This can lead other races to view vanaras as childish or irritating.
Fantastic Caste System: Played with; vanara society is highly chaotic, showing little respect for social mores, though they will accept the existence of caste systems. However, while they might accept that some people might be given different divine gifts, vanaras won't value those gifts differently, and thus won't necessarily show a priestly caste the veneration they might expect, for example.
Hates Being Nicknamed: One of the few things vanaras take seriously are their names. Infant vanaras are given a name within a week after birth, once their parents observe some sign or portent that inspires them. This means it's shameful for a vanara to go by any other name, and they won't accept nicknames or honorifics.
Nature Hero: Vanaras are animists who revere the spirits of the sun, mountains, rivers and forests, and thus their favored class is shaman. They live lightly off the land as hunter-gatherers, and their villages are built to have a minimal impact on their surroundings.

Vaporighu

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

Foul humanoids from the Bleak Eternity of Gehenna who ambush anything they come across, and often lurk around planar portals or rare watering holes.

Breath Weapon: Every few rounds, a vaporighu can exhale a 15-foot cone of corrosive green vapor, which can linger for more than a minute. Anything inside the cloud takes acid damage every round they remain, and has to save against poison — the initial effect is paralysis, with a secondary effect of heavy Constitution damage.
Enemy Summoner: Vaporighu can summon a night hag once per day, but hate to do so, since they're entitled to reward the hag for her service.
Evil Smells Bad: A vaporighu "reeks of all the decay and sulphurous stench of Gehenna."
Horror Hunger: It's said that the only thing motivating them is their insatiable hunger, "a gnawing pain that tortures vaporighu throughout eternity."
Mooks Ate My Equipment: The corrosive slime that covers vaporighu's bodies can dissolve weapons used to strike them, or ruin the armor and clothing of anyone they hit with their slam attacks. In their AD&D rules it took hours for this slime to eat through chainmail, but in 3rd Edition, destruction is complete in only one round. Thankfully, spending a full-round action to wash the slime off with a pint of water or wine will save an item.
The Pig-Pen: Vaporighu's flesh is likened to "living gore," with pulsing veins of bile visible beneath their mottled skin, all covered in long hair matted with filth.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Anything that comes within 30 feet of a vaporighu has to save or become frightened.

Vargouille

Classification: Outsider (3E), Fiend (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E), 1 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (1E-3E), Chaotic Evil (5E)

Fiends resembling disembodied human heads with wings.

Bioweapon Beast: The prevailing story about the vargouilles' creation has them as the minions of Rozvankee the Strategist, a wizard and later lich who released them behind enemy lines before sending her soldiers to overrun her panicked, demoralized foes. Rozvankee took a population of vargouilles with her when she retired to the Abyss, and the monsters can now be found across the Lower Planes, or in dismal places on the Material Plane.
Flying Face: A vargouille's body consists of a severed head and bat-like wings in place of ears.
Kiss of Death: The kiss of a vargouille transmits a deadly magical disease.
The Paralyzer: A vargouille's stunning shriek can paralyze other creatures with fear.
Viral Transformation: Vargouilles reproduce by infecting people with a magical disease through a kiss. This disease makes the victim's head gradually take on a fiendish appearance and, if not cured, will ultimately make the head sprout wings and tear itself free of the body to become a new vargouille.
Elminster: Until ye've seen a king's head tear off his shoulders and flap aloft amid fountaining blood, only to turn and lap his own dying gore as his body totters and falls, ye haven't lived. And if ye want to go on living, ye might want to stop watching in favor of fleeing.

Varrangoin

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (lesser), 10 (rager), 11 (arcanist) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Sometimes known as "Abyss bats," these winged humanoids compete with the demons for territory in that plane, growing into flocks over a hundred strong.

Bat People: They have batlike hand-wings but decidedly fiendish faces and tails.
The Berserker: The aptly-named "rager" varrangoins fly into a frenzy in combat similar to a barbarian, in which they try to rend opponents with their claws.
Breath Weapon: "Lesser" varrangoin are born with one of several breath weapons, either a cone of fire or cold, or a line of acid or lightning.
Defeat Equals Explosion: When slain, lesser varrangoin detonate in a 20-foot radius burst of the same energy as their breath weapon.
Know When to Fold 'Em: Varrangoins prefer to go after weaker foes; as such, while they're rivals to the tanar'ri, varrangoin will avoid the more powerful demons and pick off a manes or rutterkin when the opportunity arises.
Might Makes Right: What society the varrangoin have is dominated by their "greater specimens," the arcanists and ragers who use their arcane or physical power to bully and belittle the lesser varrangoin.
No-Sell: Arcanist varrangoins are immune to any spells or spell-like abilities of 3rd level or lower.
Poisonous Person: All varrangoin deliver a Dexterity-damaging poison with their barbed tails.
Weakened by the Light: They're blinded for a round after exposure to bright light, and suffer a penalty on rolls as long as they remain in it.

Vasharan

Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Any Evil

A vile offshoot of humanity, vasharans are bloodthirsty, destructive, and utterly immoral beings who desire nothing less than the death of the gods who created them.

Always Chaotic Evil: No-one knows how it happened — perhaps the gods were just bad at creating sapient beings at first — but vasharans are as evil as they come, utterly incapable of positive emotion.
Child by Rape: As vasharans are incapable of feeling love and have no taboo on rape, all are born of non-consensual relationships.
Even Evil Has Standards: As part of their hatred of the gods, vasharans hate tyranny. Their home plateau of Vashar is actually a sophisticated democracy led by a council of elders, because a vasharan would rather die than be led by a single all-powerful individual. "Somehow, this system of government works — mostly because of the hatred that binds the Vasharans together and their utter incomprehension that life could be any other way."
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Concepts of love and kindness are so alien to vasharans that most wouldn't think to take a hostage, as they can't understand why anyone would care about the survival of another being.
Evil Counterpart: Vasharans are to humans what drow and duergar are to elves and dwarves — dark reflections of humanity, tainted by the Lower Planes.
Hidden Elf Village: Very dark example with Vashar, the plateau all vasharans stem from. It's impossibly tall, inaccessible even by flight, and the only way to get there is through tunnels that literally radiate evil.
Human Subspecies: Technically subverted, since vasharans are humans in all but name. Their actions and thoughts, however, reflect only the darkest cruelty of humans, with no potential for humanity's kindness or valor.
Psycho Prototype: The legend of the vasharan — one rarely told, even by heretics and demon worshippers — says that when the gods created the first human, the man immediately hunted down and killed an animal with his bare hands, ate its meat raw, and then tore into the corpse and fashioned its bones and sinew into a crude weapon. The watching deities were surprised but continued to watch in morbid fascination, until the first man turned and charged at them, screaming his first words, death threats and curses. The gods obliterated him with little effort, but were so disgusted with their creation that it would be eons before they made another attempt at creating humanity. But some fiend restored that first man and gave him the ability to procreate — some sources say it was Graz'zt, others blame an unnamed ultroloth, and yet others claim it was a succubus who proceeded to bear the man's children. At any rate, the result was the vasharans, the twisted mirror of humanity dedicated to nothing but vileness, evil and cruelty.
Rage Against the Heavens: The uniting goal of all vasharans is deicide. As such, they have no clerics, instead "ur-priests" that steal their spells from the gods.
They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: While other Evil Counterpart Races tend to have some physical trait to differintiate them from the Good race, the vasharan pointedly look indistinguishable from normal humans.
Too Dumb to Live: Literally in the case of the first vasharan, who decided to attack his divine creators with nothing but a sharpened bone. The gods pragmatically solved the issue by smiting him to pieces where he stood.

Vasuthant

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (standard), 17 (horrific) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Clouds of hungering darkness that absorb light, feed on the energy of the living, and can even warp reality and time. A standard vasuthant is only two feet in diameter, while horrific vasuthants are much more dangerous and fully 15 feet wide.

Casting a Shadow: Vasuthants are constantly surrounded by shadow, granting them and other creatures concealment and diminishing nearby light sources.
Combat Tentacles: Anything hit by a vasuthant's slam attack can end up wrapped in a shadowy tendril and grappled, though they can only grapple so many creatures based on their relative sizes.
Life Drain: Their "Enervating Crush" attack deals Strength damage to grappled victims, which heals the vasuthant.
No-Sell: Beyond being immune or resistant to most types of energy, vasuthants completely ignore spells such as daylight, and unlike many other indead aren't Weakened by the Light of the sun.
Time Master: Horrific vasuthants can, three times per day, produce a rift in time that allows them to effectively redo a turn, returning to their original position and status.
Winds of Destiny, Change!: Vasuthants can use a free action to reroll an unfavorable dice roll, or force an opponent to reroll a success, once per round. Standard vasuthants can do this three times per day, while horrific vasuthants can use this ability each round.

Vegepygmy

Classification: Plant (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (vegepygmy), 1 (vegepygmy chief), 2 (thorny) (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Should a creature succumb to a russet mold's poisonous spores, its corpse will sprout fungoid monsters — beasts will give rise to thorn-covered quadrupeds called thornies, while humanoids or giants will spawn bipedal creatures alternatively known as vegepygmies, moldmen or moldies. The moldmen have enough intelligence to form a simple tribal society, and get along well with other fungus or plant creatures, but vegepygmies exist solely to perpetuate themselves by infecting others with their spores.

Attack Animal: Thornies serve this role in vegepygmy society.
He Was Right There All Along: Both vegepygmies and thornies are adept at blending in with foliage, especially since their coloration tends to match their surroundings.
Healing Factor: Both vegepygmies and thornies will regenerate some health each turn unless they take cold, fire or necrotic damage.
Mushroom Man: Vegepygmies are a decidedly non-cute example, being fungus creatures that arise from the remains of a humanoid or a giant killed by russet mold. It's noted that myconids consider vegepygmies to be something like rustic cousins.
Poisonous Person: Vegepygmy "chiefs" are simply old enough to produce spores, which they can release in a burst once per day to infect nearby creatures. Those that succumb will give rise to new moldmen.
The Spiny: Thornies are... thorny, and deal a bit of piercing damage to anything that grapples them.
Starfish Language: Moldies can only hiss instead of speaking verbally, but communicate with each other through gestures and rhythmically tapping their bodies.

Velroc

Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Dragons changed from generations spent in areas of wild magic, making them vicious and temperamental creatures that warp magic around them.

Anti-Magic: They can create an anti-magic field once per day.
Attack Reflector: If an incoming spell fails to overcome a velroc's spell resistance, it can "hijack" the effect and cast it on its next turn, triggering the spell as if the original caster was casting it.
Know When to Fold 'Em: Velrocs are intensely arrogant, lay claim to all they see, and view other sentient creatures as little better than beasts, but they will not under any circumstances challenge a true dragon for territory, and instead avoid any nearby in order to prevent conflict.
Our Wyverns Are Different: They share the wyvern's body plan, though with more bird-like features like a beak and a mane of feather-like spines. They're also much smarter than wyverns (smarter than the average human, in fact), and fully capable of speech.
Pretender Diss: True dragons don't think much of velrocs.
Ayunken-kocoi, Gold Dragon: The only thing more irritating than humans attacking our homes is a half-mad spawn that thinks it's a real dragon.
Til Murder Do Us Part: Velroc mating is an ugly affair, and after a female lays her eggs, the parents will immediately fight each other, potentially to the death, over the right to be the sole parent of the clutch.
Wild Magic: Velrocs are surrounded by a magic distoration aura that disrupts spellcasting, which can lead to spells veering off to hit creatures other than their target.

Venom Dog

Alignment: Unaligned

Magical crossbreeds blending canines with scorpions or poisonous serpents.

Attack Animal: Venom dogs of either variety are as easy to train as mundane mastiffs, though the scorpion variety lack a canine pack mentality, and will attack others of their kind except during mating season. They make for good animal companions for rangers, though said rangers will probably have to buy the creatures from the wizards who breed them (to the order of up to 3,000 gp), since it is very rare for a venom dog to abandon its handler and escape into the wild.
Mix-and-Match Critters: There are two types of venom dogs, depending on whether the base mastiff is mixed with a scorpion or viper. Scorpion-based venom dogs have canine bodies with stinger tails, while viper-based venom hounds have scaly skin (which they shed periodically as they grow) and pronounced fangs, which prevent them from barking (they hiss like reptiles instead).
Poisonous Person: Whether delivered by a bite or a tail stinger, a venom dog's poison attack deals just a bit of damage but also requires a saving throw, or else the victim dies the next round. Note that they aren't immune to the poison of other venom dogs, or even their own poison.

Verbeeg

Classification: Giant (1E-3E, 5E) Fey (4E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (4E), 4 (marauder), 5 (longstrider) (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (marauder), True Neutral (longstrider), Evil (4E)

Also called "human behemoths," these gangly giant-kin often end up using their superior intellects to boss around ogres and hill giants.

Bastard Bastard: Verbeegs (along with firbolgs, fomorians and voadkyn) are the bastard children of the demigod Ulutiu and Othea, wife of Annam the All-Father, Top God of the giant pantheon. They were initially welcomed in the ancient giant kingdom of Ostoria, but when Annam discovered their true parentage, they were made outcasts and despised as maug by the rest of giantkind. While the verbeegs intended to start their own great kingdom, the other giants didn't give them any space to do so, and gradually the verbeegs descended into barbarism and banditry.
The Beastmaster: Verbeegs tend to get along with animals, taking on wolves, worgs or bears as companions and letting them lair with them in caves.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: It's mentioned the verbeegs have no notion of ownership, believing that everything is owned by everybody, and thus take whatever they want without pausing to think about it.
Gonk: Downplayed compared to the likes of fomorians, but verbeegs tend to have minor but notable deformities such as a club foot, hare lip, uneven eyes, and so forth.
I Gave My Word: 4th Edition's Feywild verbeegs live by the adages "Never give a sucker an even break" and "Always keep your word." As such, they'll prey upon other creatures' sense of justice and honor, but will always uphold a promise... with the caveat that they'll phrase their pledges in a way that gives them an out.
Klingon Promotion: The fastest way for a verbeeg to advance in their social hierarchy is to discredit or defeat a superior, by violence or other underhanded means.
The Napoleon: They're shorter than any true giant, which probably contributes to the chip on their shoulders regarding their kin.
The Neidermeyer: In combat, verbeegs drive their underlings into the fray first, "accompanied by many curses, oaths, and highly descriptive accounts of the giants' and ogres' parentage."
Our Giants Are Different: They're technically Giants, but are Large creatures at most ten feet tall, and aren't considered part of the Ordning.
Punny Name: They are indeed very big compared to humans, especially if you have a French-Canadian accent. Gary Gygax has admitted verbeegs are an homage to or parody of Paul Bunyan.
Retcon: 4th Edition portrayed verbeegs as green-skinned giants native to the Feywild, more greedy, manipulative tricksters than bossy browbeaters.
Shorter Means Smarter: They're smaller but more driven and intelligent than the likes of hill giants, allowing verbeegs to employ those larger true giants as minions. Unfortunately, hill giants' stupidity means they're prone to botching the verbeegs' strategies, leading to the sight of an irate verbeeg hopping from foot to foot, screaming insults at the befuddled hill giants towering over them.
To Serve Man: Verbeeg marauders rob people they come across in the wild, and eat them if food is scarce.

Verdant Prince

Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Imperious fey tyrants who delight in striking bargains with mortals that always end badly for the other party.

Deal with the Devil: Verdant princes appear before those in need and the greedy, and offer them aid in exchange for a service or gift. They take care to fulfil their end of the bargain, while asking for something that seems innocuous, but will in truth bring ruin.
Faerie Court: As per their name, verdant princes like to set themselves up as leaders among the fey, attracting evil dryads, nymphs and satyrs to lord over in sylvan courts. While cruel towards mortals, verdant princes make an effort to appear as magnanimous rulers toward their own kind.
Forced Transformation: They can cast the baleful polymorph spell once per day.
Lie to the Beholder: They can use disguise self at will in case their normal appearance would scare off a potential schmuck.
Magically-Binding Contract: When a verdant prince strikes an oath bond with a creature, it creates a magical binding that, should a party not hold up its end of the bargain, inflicts a hefty penalty to their ability scores and sickens them until the bargain is fulfilled. Only death or powerful magic like wish or miracle can end an oath bond before the bargain is fulfilled, or negate the penalties from reneging on it.
Our Nymphs Are Different: Verdant princes are born to dryads or nymphs who mate with other verdant princes, and have some plant-like features like horns of gnarled wood and a mane of leaves that may change color with the seasons, or even fall off in the winter.
Shock and Awe: They can use call lightning storm once per day.
Teleportation: They can use dimension door at will, especially if they expend all their combat spell-like abilities but are still losing a fight.
Tracking Spell: When a bargain with a verdant prince is broken, the wronged party becomes immediately aware of it and is always aware of the other party's distance and direction.

Vermin Lord

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 17 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

12-foot-tall, locust-like humanoids who view their power to command nonintelligent vermin as evidence of their divine right to rule other creatures.

The Beastmaster: They can use dominate monster on any vermin-type creatures as a standard action, and can control ten such creatures at a time.
Made a Slave: These creatures use their vermin minions to subjugate other creatures, compelling service or tribute from them. When two vermin lords meet, they won't fight directly, but instead have their slaves battle for primacy; the vermin lord whose slaves lose becomes the vassal (and sometimes mate) of the victor.
Pest Controller: Vermin lords are surrounded by a cloud of insects that damage anything adjacent to them, and can also use spells like summon swarm (a Spider Swarm, specifically) and insect plague.
Poisonous Person: Their bite and stinger attacks carry a Constitution-damaging poison.
Power Pincers: Vermin lords have scorpion-like claws, which can grab and constrict opponents.
Unreliable Illustrator: They're described as having a scorpion's tail and beetle-like wings, but their illustration makes them look like a thri-kreen.

Vermiurge

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 24 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Immense insectoid aberrations that lead lonely lives in desolate wastes, vermiurges rule over the great ranks of stinging, crawling things as silent gods.

Beware My Stinger Tail: Vermiurges have scorpion-like tails tipped with venomous stingers.
Big Creepy-Crawlies: Vermiurges resemble flying scorpions in the same size range as giants.
Mix-and-Match Critters: Vermiurges resemble four-clawed scorpions with dragonfly wings.
Pest Controller: A vermiurge is constantly surrounded by a swarming cloud of venomous insects under its control.
Punny Name: "Vermiurge" is a portmanteau pun on "vermin" and "demiurge".

Vinespawn

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Ogre-sized, animate masses of vines that hunt other creatures at night, not as food, but as hosts for their spawn.

Combat Tentacles: Their melee attacks involve lashing foes with their viney tendrils.
Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Vinespawn have a "spawning root" they shove down the throat of humanoids they've engulfed. This deals a bit of damage to the victim and prevents them from speaking or casting spells with verbal components, but the spawning root also provides nourishment and air to an unconscious victim. After one day in this state, roots extend into the victim's body, so that even if they're freed, they'll emerge sickened, and will die within days if not healed with remove disease. On the fourth day a victim spends with a spawning root in them, they perish, and a fully-grown vinespawn emerges from the body of its parent.
Hell Is That Noise: Vinespawn colonies make their homes high in the treetops, and when strong winds batter the forest, the plant monsters contort their bodies to funnel the wind, producing a cacophony that can be heard for miles and has been likened to the wails of the damned. No one knows why they do this, but it probably contributes to stories of haunted forests.
Net Gun: An organic example; a few times each day, a vinespawn can throw a piece of its body that rapidly expands into a vine net that entangles victims.
Swallowed Whole: A variant; vinespawn can simply engulf smaller creatures, potentially trapping them inside the plants' bodies. Vinespawn can deal nonlethal crushing damage to engulfed victims as a swift action, knocking (or keeping) them unconscious so that they can't resist the spawning process.

Violet Fungus

Classification: Plant (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 1/4 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Man-sized, semi-mobile mushrooms that lash at prey with their poisoned tendrils.

Fungus Humongous: They range from four to seven feet tall, and unless they're actively attacking, violet fungi are hard to tell from less dangerous oversized mushrooms.
Poisonous Person: Their tendrils excrete a flesh-rotting poison that deals Strength and Constitution damage in 3rd Edition, or necrotic damage in 5th Edition.
The Symbiote: They have a symbiotic relationship with shriekers, their fellow giant fungi. The shriekers' racket attracts creatures that the violet fungi's poison kills, then both fungi feed upon the decomposing remains.

Viper Tree

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Abyssal lifeforms that resemble trees with serpents rather than branches, most commonly found in the realm of Azzagrat.

It Can Think: They aren't brilliant, by viper trees are sapient and can speak Abyssal, which allowed a group from the Harmonium to survey viper trees about their favorite food (during which only 10% of the interviewers were overcome and eaten). Viper trees also consider themselves demons, and thus won't attack passing tanar'ri, but will pick a losing fight with a baatezu.
No-Sell: Since a viper tree's intelligence is "compartmented" among its many serpent heads, spells like charm monster, hold person or sleep don't affect them.
The Paralyzer: The venom carried by their viper heads is a potent paralytic, rendering prey helpless while the tree works to swallow it.
Planimal: Larval viper trees start life as three-headed serpents whose central head is runty and dormant. After a month or so of feeding on small prey, the middle head awakens and directs the creature to kill something larger, then puts its roots down through the carcass, trading its mobility to grow larger and sprout additional serpentine "branches." While a viper tree can survive off the soil, it also preys upon small animals that pass by, or larger ones if a grove is able to cooperate.
Weak to Fire: Their wood and sap burns quickly, so that fire attacks deal double damage to them. Viper trees are thus wary of attacking potential prey carrying torches.

Visage

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

The demon prince Orcus, during his time as the undead fiend Tenebrous, created the first visages from the essence of his fellow demons. After returning to life, Orcus dismissed the visages from his service, and they now roam the planes, sowing chaos by stealing the identities of their victims.

Back Stab: They can deal sneak attack damage as a mid-level Rogue.
Deader than Dead: Anything who is slain and has their identity stolen by a visage has their soul take damage in the process. While the visage is wearing their form, a victim can only be returned to life with true resurrection, and once the visage "uses up" a victim's identity, nothing short of a wish or miracle will bring them back.
Intangibility: Subverted; visages appear shapeless and insubstantial (save for their heads and hands), but they do have solid bodies.
Jedi Mind Trick: A visage's "Lucidity Control" ability lets them use an effect similar to major image, except only a single subject can perceive the illusion.
Kill and Replace: Their modus operandi. The round after it kills someone, a visage can instantly take on its victim's form (and gain its proficiencies and skills), which it uses to wreck as much havoc as possible over the next 24 hours, when the effect runs out.
Mind Control: They can use dominate person once per day, usually to convince a prospective victim to go someplace quiet to be murdered.
No-Sell: Visages are immune to positive energy attacks, so no Revive Kills Zombie. They're even immune to holy water, but not to Turn Undead attempts.
The Virus: Any evil outsiders slain by a visage become another such monster, under the command of their creator.
White Mask of Doom: Visages look like they're wearing white masks marked mainly by a wide, nasty grin, but it's Not a Mask.

Visilight

Visilight (3e)

^{Parai (2e)}

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

Also known as paraii, these beings of light from the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus seek to make the universe more perfect, at least according to their standards.

Arch-Enemy: Paraii don't get along with the modrons, due to their differing opinions on what perfection entails. Any modrons above quadrone level attack paraii on sight, while the paraii routinely capture modrons and convert them into new paraii.
Art Evolution: 2nd Edition paraii are depicted (if not necessarily described) as feminine figures in form-fitting black leather dresses, with realistic female faces and hair of metal wires. 3rd Edition visilights have more masculine bodies (but are still specifically wearing dresses), and their porcelain masks are nearly blank (and missing the mouth and wire hair).
Energy Beings: The ball of glowing light behind a parai's backless mask is the true creature, everything else is just a husk it uses to interact with the world. There's nothing inside of its dress or gloves, just like there's nothing physically wearing its mask.
Hive Mind: They share a collective consciousness, and can communicate telepathically with one another out to 100 feet.
No Body Left Behind: When slain, a visilight's ball of light explodes in a harmless burst of energy, their porcelain hands and mask crumble to dust, and all that's left is an empty leather dress.
The Paralyzer: In 3rd Edition, visilights can paralyze other creatures as a gaze attack.
Vampiric Draining: In their 3rd Edition rules, visilights specifically equate perfection with beauty, and when they meet a creature with a higher Charisma score than their own, they'll grapple and drain them of it, absorbing their victim's personality while their mask reshapes itself to resemble their prey. These stolen Charisma points decay at a rate of one per hour, and the visilight's mask slowly returns to its blank state.
The Virus: In their AD&D rules, paraii reproduce by assimilating creatures that meet their lofty standards of intelligence, strength or beauty. A parai's ball of light leaves its husk, which then grapples and entangles a victim as per the web spell. Over the next three days, the stuck victim is transformed into a new parai, while the watching ball of light forms a new husk-body to inhabit over the course of a day.
White Mask of Doom: Their "faces" are simply masks in front of glowing balls of light, which shine through the eye and mouth holes.

Vitreous Drinker

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

Eye-studded servants of Vecna, the god of secrets, these creatures steal the sight of the living and thus gather knowledge for their patron.

Creepy Crows: A vitreous drinker can control up to 24 spectral ravens, which it can create at a rate of one per day. They aren't quite Familiars and can do nothing but fly around, but the drinker is constantly aware of what its ravens see and hear.
Deadly Gaze: They have a gaze attack so horrifying that it can nauseate a victim.
Eye Scream: Downplayed; any creature lashed by a vitreous drinker's tongue develop thick cataracts that limit their vision to 60 feet, imposes a 20% miss chance on attacks within that range, and inflicts penalties on their saving throws against the vitreous drinker's abilities and spells. Only magic like greater restoration or miracle, or the destruction of the vitreous drinker, can restore a victim's diminished sight.
Eyes Do Not Belong There: A vitreous drinker's body is covered in bulging, moist eyes.
Multipurpose Tongue: They can make tongue lash attacks up to 10 feet away.
Seeing Through Another's Eyes: Once a vitreous drinker has "drank" a victim's eyes, it can freely see though their eyes as if they weren't impaired, no matter how far the victim and the drinker are from each other. A vitreous drinker can only see through one victim's eyes at a time, however.
The Spymaster: Vitreous drinkers' role in the world. They build up an unwitting spy network by drinking the eyes of beggars and other unfortuntes, supplemented by their spectral ravens, before moving on to more valuable targets like sages, wizards, rulers and adventurers. They frequently coordinate their activities with the cult of Vecna, becoming handlers and Knowledge Brokers for multiple subversive groups as they fulfil their god's unknowable agenda.

Vivisector

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Insectoids that, true to their name, cut into their helpless victims, harvesting organs to incorporate into their own bodies.

Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Vivisectors reproduce by harvesting and absorbing the organs of no fewer than ten Medium-sized humanoids, until the creature becomes bloated with stolen viscera. After two weeks, the original vivisector opens its carapace to release a smaller creature, which grows to full size in another week.
Insectoid Aliens: They're five-foot-tall creatures that resemble humanoid preying mantises. Though intelligent, they have no language, and are wholly dedicated to harvesting organs from their prey.
Invisibility: Three times per day, vivisectors can use a swift action to become fully invisible for a single round, even if they attack.
The Needless: They don't age, sleep, breathe, or even eat or drink, instead vivisectors sustain themselves by stealing other creatures' vital organs, until they rot away into uselessness. On the downside, this means vivisectors don't slowly, naturally heal damage like other living creatures.
No-Sell: Vivisectors are deaf, and thus immune to language-dependent magic. They're also immune to sonic damage.
Organ Theft: Vivisectors sustain themselves by harvesting organs from other creatures, tearing them out and inserting them into the vivisectors' hollow carapaces. Instead of making a Coup de Grâce attack, vivisectors can instead deal an automatic Critical Hit as they hack into their victim's torso, which heals the monster by the same amount of damage dealt to the victim. There are rumors that some older vivisectors are able to harness the abilities of creatures whose organs they've stolen.

Vizier's Turban

Origin: Al-Qadim
Alignment: True Neutral, or the same as their host

Symbiotes that typically take the form of a turban with gemstone eyes, granting additional power to a wizard in exchange for some of their vitality.

Anti-True Sight: Zig-zagged; vizier's turbans don't register as magical to spells like detect magic, but can be picked up by those that detect life forms or alignments. They even seem to be amused by the efforts wizards have to go through to locate them, and perhaps view such trials as a test of a would-be host's worthiness.
Gender Bender: These creatures don't seem to have conventional sexes, and will adopt the same gender as their host, even changing their appearance between turbans, scarves and veils as necessary to accessorize with their host's other garments.
Hat of Power: They function as such, with increasing effects depending on how many hit points their wearer is willing to give up.
Living Hat: On the one hand, a vizier's turban is capable of speech and has a genius-level intellect, and will eagerly engage in philosophical discussions with its host. But on the other hand, they don't have much of a personality, and will quickly adopt the ethical outlook of their wearer. Unlike other intelligent magic items, vizier's turbans will never disagree with their bearer's actions unless directly asked for their opinion, and will only abandon a host if they're ignored and left behind one too many times. It should also be noted that vizier's turbans are unreliable sentries, as they'll respond to a threat sneaking up behind their host with the same sense of wonder they have while experiencing the wider world, and won't think to warn their host.
No-Sell: They're completely immune to physical damage, and even targeted attacks with weapons will pass harmlessly through the vizier's turban (and then usually smash into their host's head).
The Symbiote: A vizier's turban grants its wearer additional spell slots, and an increasing amount of magic resistance, based on how many hit points the wizard is willing to sacrifice to it. In an extreme situation, a turban can return all but one of those hit points to a host to help them survive an attack, but the symbiote will expect those hit points back once their host has recovered, and the process will result in a point of Maximum HP Reduction for the wizard. And if an unhappy vizier's turban ditches its host, half of the hit points the wizard allocated to it are permanently lost.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can change their appearance between different types of silken headwear, and enjoy restyling themselves from time to time.

Voadkyn

Playable: 2E
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Giant-kin who dwell in forests, leading to their somewhat erroneous description as "wood giants."

Great Bow: Their favored weapons are Huge longbows, which makes up for the voadkyn's inability to throw boulders.
Humanshifting: Voadkyn can polymorph into any humanoid figure between three and 15 feet in height, though they can only become generic examples of the desired race, not a specific form. They've been known to use this ability to infiltrate adventuring parties and swipe some treasure.
Our Elves Are Different: They look something like nine-foot-tall wood elves, though voadkyn are hairless and their jaws are heavier due to their oversized molars meant to chew plants inedible to humans. Voadkyn and wood elves have gotten along for as long as the two races can remember, to the point that some of the giant-kin prefer to live among elves, and the voadkyn as a whole have picked up some elven traits like a near-immunity to sleep or enchantment effects, as well as an affinity for archery.
Our Giants Are Bigger: While the voadkyn insist that they are legitimate children of Annam the All-Father, the rest of giantkind holds that they're another product of Othea's affair with Ulutiu, which resulted in the voadkyn getting kicked out of giant's empire of Ostoria and removed from the ordning. The voadkyn decided that since Annam had not assigned Ostoria's woodlands to anyone, they would claim the forests and become wood giants, and promptly cut ties with the rest of giantkind.
Stealth Expert: They can move silently through woodland, and blend in with forest surroundings to become effectively invisible.

Vodyanoi

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

Fey resembling potbellied old men, who dwell within lakes and rivers, bringing weal or woe to nearby communities.

Glamor Failure: Sometimes vodyanoi leave their waters to purchase a cow with treasure collected from the river- or lakebottom. They might be mistaken for an odd, unkempt trader, save for how they create puddles around their feet.
Making a Splash: Vodyanoi can use control water three times per day.
Nature Spirit: They're similar to rusalkas in that they're freshwater fey, but vodyanoi can freely leave their home body of water. Since a friendly vodyanoi can bring ample fish harvests and mitigate the effects of flooding, and an irate vodyanoi can cause the opposite, communities around the fey often make sacrifices of fish or cattle to keep them happy, with the caveat that vodyanoi are so unpredictable that such gestures have no guarantee of winning them over.
The Pig-Pen: They look like potbellied old men with green-tinged skin, a tangle of reeds for hair, and long dirty fingernails.
Retcon: Vodyanoi appeared in 2nd Edition as an aquatic variant of umber hulks, just with only one set of eyes, green, slimy skin, and webbed claws. 3rd Edition brought the creature more in line with its origins in Slavic Mythology.
Sinister Suffocation: In combat, vodyanoi usually try to grab and pin a foe beneath the water's surface, drowning them.
Smoke Out: An odd variant; vodyanoi can summon a school of illusory fish while underwater, which is mechanically quite similar to a fog cloud spell. Beyond giving themselves concealment, some vodyanoi use this ability to trick people into thinking the fey has blessed them with plentiful fish (if a vodyanoi does want to lure fish into an area, they use their Survival skill).
Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Vodyanoi sometimes make wives of the much more beautiful rusalkas.

Voidwraith

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

Former air elementals that have been reduced to clouds of malevolent darkness that hunger for the breath of the living.

Elemental Embodiment: They were creatures of elemental air, now they're undead embodiments of vacuum.
Horror Hunger: Voidwraiths have an inescapable craving for living creatures' breaths.
"Instant Death" Radius: A voidwraith is surrounded by a vacuum, so any creature fighting one has to hold their breath. While 3rd Edition is pretty generous with how many rounds something can hold their breath before coming into danger, the problem is that each attack from a voidwraith reduces that total.
Intangibility: These former creatures of air are incorporeal.
Life Drain: Their "Steal Breath" attack inflicts Constitution drain and simultaneously gives the voidwraith some temporary hit points.
Non-Human Undead: You can't get less human than an undead elemental.
Oxymoronic Being: Former air elementals that now exist as unliving embodiments of air's absence.

Volodni

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Also known as "pine folk," these humanoid plants claim the cold forests as their own and vigorously defend them from despoilers.

Druid: Their favored class, and the only kind of spellcaster they respect. Most volodni bands are led by a druid who belongs to a forest-wide hierarchy, though their war-leaders are instead usually rangers.
Gaia's Vengeance: They consider all forests their territory, actively colonize woodlands to bring under their protection, and react to those seeking to harvest the forest's resources the same as civilized folk would view an outsider plundering their farmland and houses. Some open-minded volodni are willing to negotiate with outsiders for limited access to their forests, but other pine folk aggressively defend their borders. The most ambitious volodni seek to expand their forests, "and dream of a day when all Faerûn once again lies cloaked in unbroken green."
In Harmony with Nature: Thanks to their biology, volodni have little impact on their home forests. The only structures they build are stone circles or hearthstones, and they work with stone, leather and wood, avoiding working metal or kindling fires whenever possible. This mindset helps volodni get along with the likes of centaurs and elves, though the latter tend to disapprove of the volodni's "dispassionate ruthlessness."
Plant Person: Volodni are heavily on the "person" side of the trope, but are still clearly plants — their skin is the color of pine needles, their flesh is woody and tough, their thick hair grows in scaly locks similar to the bark of a young tree, and they have clear sap instead of blood. Their plant traits mean that volodni only take half damage from piercing weapons, need only two hours of sleep each night to feel fully-rested, and they can absorb enough nutrients from their environments to require only a quarter of the food and water as an ordinary human. Note that volodni are not Weak to Fire, and their evergreen traits grant them cold resistance as well.
Was Once a Man: They're descended from a now-forgotten tribe "who traded their humanity in exchange for shelter from their enemies."

Vorr

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Intelligent hunting animals native to the Abyss, adept at stalking prey from shadow to shadow.

Back Stab: They can deal sneak attack damage like a rogue.
Hell Hound: Vorrs are usually encountered in packs, and some powerful denizens of the Abyss like to use them as hunting hounds.
Living Shadow: Once per day, a vorr can assume a shadowy form for up to 10 minutes, allowing it to avoid most damage, blend in with dark surroundings, and move effortlessly up walls, on the underside of ceilings, or across the surface of liquids.
Mix-and-Match Critters: They're described as canines, but have hyena-like features, a feline build, and a rat-like tail.
Shadow Walker: They can jump between shadowy areas as per the dimension door spell.

Vryloka

Playable: 4E
Alignment: Any

Former humans who have become "living vampires," gaining increased longevity and power, at the cost of some vitality.

Blue Blood: The first vrylokas were the noble class of a now-forgotten kingdom (in fact, the name for their kind comes from the first noble family to transform themselves, the Vryloka). While their subjects revolted when they learned the truth about their rulers, and the vrylokas scattered in the wake of their kingdom's fall, they've since joined the upper classes of other nations, attaining positions of wealth and power.
Determinator: Vrylokas don't do anything by halves — any task that they don't feel passionate about, they'll abandon, but the goals they do hold onto are goals they'll do anything to complete.
Dhampyr: They're more or less 4th Edition's equivalent to the recurring "dhampir" playable race. Vrylokas enjoy a lesser form of full vampirism, and while they don't have fangs or a bite attack, they do gain racial powers that let them shapeshift into a wolf or bat, revive a slain comrade by feeding them blood (potentially turning them into a new vryloka), and so forth. That said, vrylokas have a racial taboo against becoming a full vampire (which is treated as a player class in 4E) — "They seek eternal life, not the empty shell of an undead existence." This hasn't stopped rumors that some old, powerful vrylokas are hiding their true vampiric natures.
Immortality Seeker: The desire for an extended lifespan is what drove the first vrylokas to undergo their transformation, and most of them can live for at least three centuries, remaining in their prime up until their deaths. Some powerful vrylokas are said to be truly unaging. The downside of this is that vrylokas' lifespan combined with their passionate natures can leave them battling against ennui and restlessness, driving them to immerse themselves in their studies, the arts, the thrill of combat, or convoluted schemes and power struggles.
Life Drain: The vrylokas' racial power gives them temporary hit points, as well as a speed boost and attack roll bonus, after killing or bloodying a foe.
Mortality Grey Area: Their "Living Dead" racial trait lets a vryloka choose whether to count as living or undead whenever a spell affects them.
Racial Transformation: A being known as the Red Witch offered the first vrylokas the blood-bonding ritual that made them living vampires, and similarly, a vryloka can use their own blood to revive a dead human as one of their own.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Their eyes are usually dark gray or blue, but turn red when a vryloka is excited or angered.
Thicker Than Water: Vrylokas are immensely loyal to their bloodlines, and are taught to be devoted to their families first and foremost — which can cause trouble when these familial ties conflict with a vryloka's bonds with their True Companions. Those who break their bonds of blood are typically exiled, and some shunned vrylokas undergo a complete mental breakdown from the isolation, turning into vicious killers.

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