Index | Playable Races | Monsters (Humanoids | Animals | Beasts | Plants | Fungi | Fey | Dragons | Aberrations | Constructs | Oozes | Undead | Spirits | Elementals | Ethereal | Shadow | Vitality | Void | Dream | Time | Astral | Celestials | Monitors | Fiends)
This page has been split because of its length. This index page will cover monsters without a specific type. For 0-Hit Die Races that can be built using standard character creation rules, see the Playable Races page. See the respective sub-pages for:
- Humanoids
- Animals
- Beasts
- Plants
- Fungi
- Fey
- Dragons
- Aberrations
- Constructs
- Oozes
- Undead
- Spirits
- Elementals
- Ethereal
- Shadow
- Vitality
- Void
- Dream
- Time
- Astral
- Celestials
- Monitors
- Fiends
See also Starfinder Monsters for the monsters in Pathfinder's companion game Starfinder, which also reuses a large number of Pathfinder monsters.
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Templates
Broken Soul
Level Adjustment: +2
Creatures horribly mutilated and tortured to the point of madness- Agony Beam: They have a gaze attack that wracks the target with the same pain they feel.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: They are usually
Chaotic Evil, regardless of what alignment they started out of. - Break the Cutie: The example broken soul is a lillend, which are rather pretty and cute.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Most of the canon broken souls (including the example one) started out as good but turned evil as a result of what happened to them.
Boreal Creature
Level Adjustment: +1
In the land of Irrisen, where winter reigns year round, most creatures died off due to the constant freezing temperatures. Some instead adapted to the permeating winter magic by taking it into their own bodies and allowing it to strengthen them. This template can be applied to any Huge or smaller corporeal creature that does not have the fire subtype.
Their stats can be found in Irrisen: Land of Eternal Winter or online here
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Cryptid
Alignment: Any
- Cyborg: An experimental cryptid has been purposefully altered through alchemy, engineering, magic or ritual to contain some degree of construct components.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: Upon death, some mutant cryptids explode into flame, acid, a pile of toxic goop, or something stranger still.
- Kryptonite Factor: A mutant cryptid gains an unusual, specific weakness, such as saffron or the sound of children's laughter.
- Mutants: A mutant cryptid can defy the normal expectations of its kind. Mutations can come from a wide variety of sources: a quirk in their lineage, effects from their environment, radiation from bizarre crystals, or exposure to uncontrolled magic.
- Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: In addition to various real life cryptids like the bunyip and yeti, these templates can be applied to most creatures to turn them into cryptids, who resemble the familiar creatures common to the world, but are always just a bit off.
- Prehistoric Monster: Primeval cryptids are resilient survivors of their kind, long thought extinct, or particularly clever individuals.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: A rumoured cryptid's eyes are distinctive; perhaps they burn bright red in the dark night.
- Tulpa: As stories spread about a rumoured cryptid, it is transformed by the weight of collective belief to match the tales.
Dread/Cursed Lord
Level Adjustment: +1 (dread lord), +2 (cursed lord)
Alignment: Evil
Dread lords are intrinsically tied to the territories they inhabit, either through ancestry, by claiming them in costly battle, or through some other means. Cursed lords gain dominion over their lands through evil deeds that result in powerful curses that trap them within their realms. These templates can be applied to any creature with at least 6 Intelligence and Charisma.
Both of these templates can be found in Horror Adventures, or online here for dread lords and here for cursed lords.
- Charm Person: Lords that take the Unquestioned Ruler special ability gain a number of charm spells they can cast at will, as well as a few limited use command spells if they're of a higher CR.
- Green Thumb: A lord that takes the Plant Affinity ability gets this.
- Home Field Advantage: A dread lord loses all the benefits of their template if not in their designated domain, heavily incentivizing them to fight enemies while on their home turf. Cursed lords technically don't have that problem, but only because of the Sealed Evil in a Can below.
- Resurrective Immortality: Only for cursed lords. Under normal circumstances, killing them will just cause them to respawn within their domain 24 hours later. The only way to put them down for good is to accomplish a goal specific to that cursed lord, such as disinterring the corpse of the lord’s slain lover and reburying it outside the domain, stealing vast treasures from the lord’s castle and returning them to the poor people they were stolen from, or destroying a dam to set free a river the cursed lord has prevented from flowing through its lands.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Cursed lords are trapped in their domains and cannot leave by any means, including the usual trump card wish.
Implacable Stalker
Level Adjustment: +2
Alignment: Evil
Implacable stalkers embody murderous predation. They not only revel in hunting down and killing their victims in gory, brutal fashion, but they draw supernatural strength and power from their victims’ fear and terror. This template can be applied to any creature with at elast 3 Intelligence.
This template can be found in Horror Adventures or online here.
- Obviously Evil: An implacable stalker can be identified by their heavily scarred bodies and aura of menace.
- Our Slashers Are Different: Implacable stalkers embody murderous predation and revel in hunting down and killing victims in gory, brutal fashion.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: They can teleport hundreds of feet so long as the destination point is adjacent to a creature with the shaken, frightened, or panicked condition.
Simple Templates
Advanced Creature
Challenge Rating Adjustment: +1
Fiercer and more powerful creatures than their ordinary bretheren. This template can be found in Bestiary 1 or online here.
- Boring, but Practical: The advanced template doesn't come with any cool new abilities or resistances, but it does give a +4 in all stats and a +2 to armor class. Definitely not flashy, but very useful.
Calcified Creature
Challenge Rating Adjustment: +1
Creatures infected with the sting of an incutilis lord, with their body preserved by the toxins of the barb and their minds brought under its sway. This template can be applied to any living corporeal creature and does not change their creature type. This template can be found in Plunder & Peril or online here.
- No Ontological Inertia: If the incutilis lord controlling a calcified creature dies, all the calcified creatures it controls are freed from its control, though they may be dead by that point.
Crystal Creature
Challenge Rating Adjustment: +1
Creatures infected with living crystal. This template can be found in Lost Cities of Golarion.
- Achilles' Heel: They have a vulnerability to sonic damage.
- Attack Reflector: Not directly, but being struck by light-based spells temporarily increases the DC of their dazzling aura.
- Light 'em Up: Their bodies amplify and refract light, creating an aura that dazzles those within it.
- No-Sell: They're immune to light-based spells.
- Taken for Granite: They're the end result of a disease that inflicts this on its victims. Depending on the strain, either all victims become crystal creatures after the infection progresses enough or only creatures that already have the earth subtype do, with those who don't becoming inanimate statues. Crystal creatures themselves further spread this infection trough their attacks.
Terror Creature
Challenge Rating Adjustment: +0
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Creatures warped by prolonged exposure to the Void. This template can be found in City of Golden Death or online here.
- Fearless Undead: Not actually undead, but close enough to gain immunity to fear effects.
- Innate Night Vision: If a creature didn't already have darkvision, they gain it from the terror creature template.
- Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration: Sort of type IV. Terror creatures don't become undead (though they may have been undead already) but they gain the ability to heal from Negative Energy to a lesser degree, much like undead.
- Supernatural Fear Inducer: Terror creatures gain a fear aura.
Misc Monsters
Benaioh
Level: 7
Alignment: True Neutral
Size: Large
- Defeat Equals Explosion: When a benaioh's clay form is destroyed, it shatters violently, exploding in a spray of jagged clay shards.
- I'm a Humanitarian: During times of dormancy or when meat is scarce, the worms sustain their population through cannibalism.
- Living Statue: The benaioh is a statue-like sarcophagus animated by divinely-imbued worms.
- The Virus: A benaioh carries wormrot, a contagion which infects other creatures and turns them into another benaioh when they die.
- The Worm That Walks: A benaioh is an ooze-like colony formed by a swarm of divinely imbued worms that live within a morass of their own waste and digestive secretions.
Brainchild
Level: 11
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: Large
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Brainchildren are beings of terror given physical form. Not only do their abilities and appearances shift unpredictably depending on their believers' expectations, but even when one is slain, another just like it can return if anyone still believes in it. It's nearly impossible to permanently destroy a brainchild that has developed a sufficiently broad base of belief.
- Non-Human Undead: In rare cases where an attempt is made to eradicate a brainchild by killing everyone who believes in it, an unusual undead brainchild can result.
- Tulpa: An intense belief in a remorseless and implacable killer can come to life, creating a brainchild. A brainchild is strong when pursuing a believer but weak against skeptics, making it only as bad as one thinks it is. Brainchildren are harmless to and cannot be perceived by mindless creatures. When a brainchild is destroyed, it returns if anyone still fully believes it exists.
Unfettered Eidolon
Level: Any
Alignment: Any
Size: Small - Huge
Eidolons are created when summoners drawn on the energy of the Maelstrom to create a creature they can bind to themselves as a loyal companion. Normally when a summoner dies the eidolon is dismissed forever, but when the bond is shattered through unnatural means the eidolon may persist as a living force of chaos. Formian
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
- Bee People: Formians live in eusocial hives dominated by queens.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: A formian warrior, taskmaster or myrmarch's tail ends in a wickedly barbed stinger.
- Elaborate Underground Base: Formian hives tend to run for miles underground, leaving vast swathes of surface wilderness untouched.
- Hive Caste System: Each type of formian is intentionally bred with features and characteristics appropriate to the functions.
- Insectoid Aliens: Formians are ant people native to Castrovel.
- Mutants: In parts of Akiton where he holds sway, the King of Biting Ants has forced formian queens to create mutant types of formians, many of which do not outlive whatever task the King of Biting Ants intended them for.
- Undying Loyalty: All formians are born with an instinctive deference for the queen.
Formian Worker
Level: 0
Size: Small
- You Are Number 6: When they leave their larval stage, workers are given a unique number carved into their carapaces, which is used in place of an individual name. Only particularly remarkable workers are given proper names.
Formian Warrior
Level: 3
Size: Medium
- Old Master: Formian warriors that grow too old to fight are expected to end their lives for the good of the hive, except the most exceptional ones, who receive permission to live out their remaining years as teachers and drill instructors, passing their skills on to younger generations.
Formian Myrmarch
Level: 10
Size: Large
- Poisoned Weapons: In combat, myrmarchs apply their natural poison to their javelins.
- Praetorian Guard: The most accomplished, trusted, and battle-tested formian myrmarchs form the queen's elite bodyguard.
Formian Mageslayer
Level: 16
Size: Medium
- Mage Killer: Formian mageslayers are created for the express purpose of fighting enemy spellcasters.
Formian Queen
Level: 17
Size: Large
- Insect Queen: Each formian hive is built around a queen, who rules it as its absolute monarch and is the only one who can reproduce.
- Villain Override: A formian queen can transfer her consciousness to the body of any formian within range of her telepathy.
Roiling Incant
Level: 7
Alignment: True Neutral
Size: Large
- Cast from Hit Points: A roiling incant needs to drain its own magic to cast a non-cantrip spell, taking 5 force damage.
- Pure Magic Being: A roiling incant is magic of a certain tradition and school taking on life and manifesting as a mindless entity.
Shade
Level: 1
Alignment: Same as home plane
Size: Same as base creature
The souls of the dead before they've transitioned into something more.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The shades of the Outer Rifts, called larvae, appear as pallid, maggot-like creatures with the face the creature had in life.
- Brought Down to Normal: No matter how strong they were in life, all shades' level is reduced to 1 (or at most 3) by time they become one.
- Dem Bones: The shades in the Boneyard appear as animated skeletons but are not undead.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: The hunted shades of Abaddon are doomed to be stalked and eventually consumed by the daemons that lust for souls unless if they survive long enough to become a daemon.
- Holy Halo: The elect shades of Heaven possess a golden halo.
- Living Currency: Demons often use larvae, the form adopted by evil souls sent to the Outer Rifts, as a cross between livestock and currency, as they will both consume them and exchange them for goods and services in an extensive barter system.
- Perpetually Protean: The forms of the Maelstrom's shapeless shades constantly waver and shimmer.
Soulsliver
Level: 2
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Size: Medium
Beings from the half-dimensions behind mirrors, soulslivers watch material creatures in order to take their forms and kill the original.- Defeat Equals Explosion: When a soulsliver is killed, its body explodes into jagged glass shards.
- Mirror Monster: From the half-dimensions behind mirrors, a soulsliver watches creatures on the Material Plane, assumes their likeness, then crawls through the mirror to kill and feast upon prey.
