Dungeons And Dragons Creatures M / Characters

Monsters from the myriad worlds of Dungeons & Dragons.

Notes on the Entries

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

See also the Beholderkin, Demons, Devils, Dragons, Giants, Mind Flayers, Undead, and Yugoloths subpages for information about those respective creatures.

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Maelephant

Classification: Outsider (3E), Fiend (5E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E, 5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Bipedal, fiendish pachyderms with an instinctive need to guard something.

Cruel Elephant: It doesn't get more cruel than a literal elephant from Hell. In combat, maelephants prefer to fight defensively using spells like blade barrier and entangle, but on offense they can jab grappled foes with their spiked trunks, and can make a "frenzied charge" attack for bonuses to their movement and attack rolls.
Happiness in Slavery: Zig-zagged. The first maelephants were created by the Dark Eight of Baator as servants, but they've since escaped their servitude and proliferated across the Lower Planes. Maelephants still have an overwhelming urge to guard and protect something, and so long as a mighty patron is able to supply them with a great quantity of living flesh for consumption, the maelephants will readily serve as guardians, typically for a hundred-year term.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: A maelephant's fearsome Breath Weapon is a cloud of noxious vapor that causes complete memory loss to those who fail their saves. Those afflicted can't access their prepared spells, skills, feats and class abilities, no longer know who their friends and foes are, and can't remember their pasts or their own names, and in 5E can't understand languages. The victims can create new memories, but forget them as soon as they sleep or rest. In older editions, the condition is permanent until cured with spells like heal or neutralize poison.
Stance System: Once per encounter, a maelephant can adopt a defensive stance for bonuses to its Strength, Constitution, Armor Class and saving throws, so long as it doesn't move.
Undying Loyalty: Maelephants fight to the death to protect their charges, and will never let them leave the maelephants' sight.

Maenad

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

A psionic race that hides their extreme emotions beneath apparent reserve.

The Berserker: Once per day, a maenad can subjugate their mentality to boost their physical strength, gaining bonuses to Strength but penalties to Intelligence and Wisdom for a few rounds.
Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff": The maenads of Classical Mythology were frenzied, all-female followers of Bacchus/Dionysus, or in other words what D&D labeled "bacchae" for a separate creature entry. These maenads have little in common with their source myth other than extreme emotions.
Everything's Better with Sparkles: Maenads' pale skin is flecked with living crystal, which sparkles like gem dust; coincidentally, they're known for having almost elven grace and beauty.
Not So Stoic: Maenads have developed strict self-control to contain their race's innate emotional turmoil, a "spiritual anger" the legend says is the result of a terrible wrong by a higher power in the maenad's past, or even the remnant of the maenads' bestial ancestry. So maenads seem calm and taciturn, but on the rare occasions they lost control, those repressed emotions burst free in acts of stunning bravery or violence.
Psychic Powers: All maenads are natural psionicists, perhaps owing to the mental self-discipline required to keep their emotions under control.
Super-Scream: They can vent their emotional turmoil with a sonic energy ray once per day.

Magen

Demos magen (5e)

Origin: Mystara
Classification: Natural Animate (4E), Construct (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (4E); 1 (hypnos), 2 (demos), 3 (galvan) (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Human-shaped constructs crafted by mages to be intelligent and perfectly obedient servants. Their name derives from gens magica, or "magical people."

Alien Blood: Past magens were alien for not bleeding or bruising in response to damage, though their current lore has the constructs "bleed" quicksilver.
Amazing Technicolor Population: In 2nd and 4th Edition magens have had gray-white flesh, but their 5th Edition incarnation has green skin. They can also be painted or decorated different colors.
Artificial Human: They're a magical take on the trope, and apart from their skin color and hairless bodies, they look and feel like living things, to the extent that some can pass for human. Traditionally they're created in a weeks-long process involving an electrum mold, a gelatin-like mixture of ingredients, and a specific sequence of spells, while in 5th Edition this is streamlined, requiring only the create magen spell, a life-sized human doll, a vial of quicksilver, and a crystal rod.
Charm Person: Hypnos magens have the ability to charm other creatures, then make a telepathic suggestion.
Critical Failure: The magen creation process in AD&D involves rolling a d20, naturally. Beyond the mixture simply failing to animate, other possible outcomes are the mold exploding to damage everything in a 10-foot radius, the final animating lightning bolt instead rebounding to hit the caster, or everything appearing to go right, only for a fiend to possess the newly-made magen and begin plotting to kill the mage.
Energy Absorption: 4th Edition magens can absorb the energy from incoming spells, once per encounter. Demos magens gain a healing surge, caldron magens grow a temporary extra arm to attack with, galvan magens recharge their electricity attacks, and hypnos magens can counter-attack with a blast of psionic energy.
The Generic Guy: Demos magens are the most basic of their kind, possessing no innate powers compared to other varieties. This makes them the cheapest to produce, and suitable to be equipped as bodyguards.
Golem: Magens are basically a cheaper substitute to conventional stone, iron, clay, etc. golems. On the one hand, they're a lot smaller and weaker than proper golems, and lack the latter's magic immunity/resistance, but magens are a lot less disruptive in the house or out in public, don't have a risk of going berserk in combat, and are intelligent enough to converse with their creators and not need carefully-worded instructions, even being capable of making simple decisions, given the right criteria with which to judge a situation.
Lightning Can Do Anything: Traditionally, the final step of the magen creation process involves zapping the mold with a lightning bolt.
The Needless: As constructs, they don't need to eat, drink or sleep.
No Body Left Behind: When destroyed, a magen's body is consumed in an acrid, multicolored burst of flame.
Rubber Man: The caldron magen variant can stretch its limbs up to 20 feet, and is particularly adept at grappling and restraining foes, at which point its skin secretes a dangerous acid.
Shock and Awe: Galvan magens can store static electricity, which they discharge as lightning bolts. Incidentally, they have a habit of attracting small metallic objects and making nearby beings' hair stand up.
Signature Scent: Caldron magens have a sour, acidic scent, demos magens have a subtle metallic tang, and galvan magens smell of ozone.
The Stoic: Magens are incapable of feeling emotion (but see below), though some may be taught to emulate it to aid in social interactions.
Undying Loyalty: Magens lack free will, and are totally obedient to their creators. Should their master die, magens tend to go into a berserk rampage until destroyed.
Weaponized Teleportation: What little is known about the rare scalos magens is that they can teleport other creatures with a touch, and are said to guard the Text of the Magenmaker that holds the secrets of creating every type of magen.

Mageripper

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

Tiny, swarming pests that feed off of the magical power of living beings.

Bioweapon Beast: While their origins aren't especially clear, they're believed to have been created artificially to serve as living weapons against arcane spellcasters (hence their name).
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Magerippers reproduce by budding off young from their backs after gorging themselves on magic.
Magic Eater: While magerippers can survive on a carnivorous diet, they much prefer to consume living creatures' magic, which is also essential to their reproduction. Mechanically-speaking, anyone they swarm over is subject to a dispel magic effect against a random ongoing spell effect every round, while spellcasters also lose one of the highest-level spell slots or prepared spells; in either case, the magerippers gain some temporary hit points from feeding. Fortunately, magerippers can't feed in this manner upon magic items, but will still crowd around them in frustrated confusion until a better food source presents itself.
Supernatural Sensitivity: On top of having blindsense out to 30 feet, magerippers can also detect magical auras without that radius, and sense whether creatures have spellcasting ability.
The Swarm: Individual magerippers aren't especially formidable on their own, being bizarre foot-long creatures that weigh at most five pounds. Unfortunately, they're only ever encountered in swarms of up to three hundred creatures that are able to overwhelm their prey through sheer numbers and attrition. In fact, should a mageripper become separated from a swarm, it will quickly become sluggish and unresponsive before expiring.

Magmin

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Elemental (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 1/2 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Elemental beings from the Plane of Fire that resemble little gremlins made of magma.

Action Bomb: Magmins explode when they die.
Living Lava: They look like stumpy humanoids shaped from a black shell of lava.
Obliviously Evil: Magmins aren't dedicated to evil like some elementals, but they love to watch things burn, and don't understand that other creatures find fire painful and deadly.
Playing with Fire: Their mere touch is hot enough to set people and flammable objects on fire.
Pyromaniac: Magmins have a propensity for fire and havoc, viewing flammable objects as kindling. Only their summoners' control keeps them from setting everything ablaze.

Magori

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Ten-foot-tall crustacean humanoids who wage war on the surface world on behalf of the god of destruction.

Absurdly Sharp Blade: They have the "Keen Blade" supernatural ability, which doubles the threat range of any manufactured slashing weapon they wield as if it had been enchanted.
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Magori are asexual, but are speculated to reproduce by returning to the Blood Sea every five years and releasing an egg sac that spawns five clones of its parent.
Bloody Murder: Their acidic blood can deal damage to adjacent foes who injure them with slashing or piercing weapons.
Fog of Doom: Magori can cast obscuring mist once per hour, and commonly work together to blanket the battlefield in the effect, which doesn't hamper them thanks to magori having both darkvision and blindsense. During the Chaos War, this ability was supercharged so that thousands of magori were able to completely blanket Mithas and Kothas in mist during their invasion of the Blood Isles — something made worse by that mist carrying a debilitating disease known as Coil Cough.
Giant Enemy Crab: They're ogre-sized, amphibious, bipedal crayfish "that know only hate and live to destroy sentient life."
Poisonous Person: The bite of magori's flexible, fanged snouts carries a potent poison that can deal up to 4d6 points of Constitution damage.
Unholy Nuke: As creations of the primordial overgod Chaos, magori are under a permanent "Smite Law" effect, dealing additional damage whenever they attack Lawful creatures.
Weak to Fire: They don't take additional damage from it, but magori have such a strong aversion to fire that they suffer attack and saving throw penalties while in the presence of large open flames.

Magran

Origin: Planescape
Alignment: True Neutral

Twenty-foot-long predators that lurk in the depths of the Ethereal Plane, using a glowing lure on their heads to attract prey.

Intangibility: Actually averted; though native to the Ethereal Plane, magran stay exclusively in the Deep Ethereal, where they prey upon the likes of thought eaters, xill, or planeswalkers. Thus, they never attack Material Plane creatures from the Border Ethereal and appear intangible relative to them.
Invisible Monsters: Magran can become invisible at will, and normally hunt by leaving nothing but their glowing lure visible, though they can hide it if they need to flee. The beasts are normally only seen briefly in the instants they attack, though due to a quirk of their invisibility, any prey they've swallowed will be fully visible even if the rest of the monster is not, at least until the swallowed victim expires.
Luring in Prey: A magran's lure emits light out to 200 feet or more, and replicates a hypnotic pattern effect that can transfix those who come too close, leaving them helpless until the monster attacks them. If this eight-inch-wide lure is cut off from a magran's corpse, the hypnotic glow doesn't immediately dim, but remains usable for a couple of weeks — the catch is, the thing's bearer, although immune to the hypnotic pattern effect themself, can grow obsessed with the orb, refusing to part with it even after its magic runs out.
Monstrous Cannibalism: Newborn magran are abandoned by their parents, so the larger hatchlings typically feed upon their smaller kin until they grow large enough to hunt conventional prey.
Swallowed Whole: Their maws are wide enough to swallow prey whole, but their gullets are so small that Medium-sized victims can't move or attempt to cut their way free, leaving them to suffer acid and crushing damage until they suffocate in a few rounds.

Malastor

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 16 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Gargantuan monsters that sleep for the majority of the year, but cut a swath of destruction when they emerge from underground to feed.

Big Eater: Much like the tarrasque, malastors spend most of their lives asleep, but when they're awake, they're ravenous. This behavior only changes when a mated pair devastates a region to create a huge, rotting pile of corpses, which the female lays her eggs into, but after spending a year guarding the nest, malastor parents have to flee as soon as they hear their offspring hatch, because the newborns will still be hungry even after eating their way out of the corpse-heap.
Boulder Bludgeon: Against ranged targets, malastors can fling a chunk of earth up to 400 feet.
It Can Think: Downplayed; their Intelligence is only 2, and malastors primarily act on instinct, but they have enough awareness to enjoy spreading destruction and thus have a Chaotic Evil alignment.
Rock Monster: Downplayed; malastors' hides are protected by plates of stone, but they're flesh and blood beneath this armor (the coloration of which matches the stony environment where the creature last slept).
Shockwave Stomp: Malastors can rip into the ground with their claws, triggering a 400-foot-long shock wave that deals heavy damage and potentially buries creatures beneath the resulting rubble.
Super-Scream: When injured, a malastor reflexively roars powerfully enough to stun other creatures in a 30-foot radius.

Malasynep

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/malasnyep.jpg

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

25-foot-long arctic cetaceans, brilliant but murderous, who use their cryokinesis to attack anything that enters their territories.

Attack Animal: Sometimes stronger arctic creatures are able to enslave or bargain with malasyneps and use them as guardians, but the monsters' extreme territoriality means they can be just as dangerous to the beings they're supposedly protecting as they are to intruders.
Devious Dolphins: Malasyneps are orca-sized, dolphin-like monsters that have a primal need to attack and kill other creatures.
An Ice Person: Their Psychic Powers allow them to use the cold-damage variants of energy emanation at will, and energy flash once per day.
Sapient Cetaceans: Malasyneps have genius-level intellects, and speak Aquan.
Supernatural Sensitivity: They can sense heat out to 60 feet, and can concentrate to pinpoint the exact location and strength of the heat auras over a few rounds.
Swallowed Whole: Their jaws are wide enough to swallow even Large prey whole.

Malaugrym

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Shapechanger (3E), Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (3E), Evil (4E)

Sometimes known as "shadowmasters," these beings have crossed the Plane of Shadow to infiltrate and prey upon the races of the Material Plane.

Achilles' Heel: Silvered weapons deal the maximum possible damage to malaugryms, which cannot be healed through non-magical means.
Dimensional Traveler: Malaugrym are "creatures of pure evil native to some alien plane," not the Plane of Shadow itself, though they use the Shadowfell to reach the Material Plane.
Eaten Alive: Their entry explains that malaugrym's "greatest delight is extending a jawed tentacle down a living captive's throat and eatting them from the inside out."
Flying Face: Their rarely-seen natural form is that of a beaked, three-eyed, alien head with three hooked tentacles extending from it.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can shapechange as a 20th-level sorcerer, but the glimmering golden light in their eyes can give them away with a sufficiently-high Spot check.

Malrauthin

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 16 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Huge fiendish hounds who spread undeath, leading to speculation that they're creations of Chemosh, the Lord of Bones.

Bloody Murder: Whenever these fiends take melee damage from slashing or piercing weapons, their attackers are splattered with putrefying blood and must save or take Constitution damage. Anyone killed by this effect rises as an undead bodak the next round.
Breath Weapon: They can spray "caustic fluid" once per hour in a 30-foot cone, dealing hefty Constitution damage and converting the slain into bodaks.
Hell Hound: They look something like 20-foot-long demonic attack dogs with Volcanic Veins on their forelegs.
My Blood Runs Hot: They don't have the fire subtype or any flame abilities at their disposal, but malrauthins generate so much body heat that anyone who makes contact with them takes fire damage and has to save or ignite.
Our Demons Are Different: Malrauthins are evil outsiders from Krynn's Abyss, not to be confused with tanar'ri or other demons from the Infinite Layers of the Abyss.

Mandibear

As depicted in The Bestiary for Dragonlance: Fifth Age

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

Disarmingly cute beasts that violently defend their territory with their teeth and claws.

Bears Are Bad News: Subverted; they're called bears, and they're certainly dangerous, but their masked eyes, red coloration, dark hindquarters and tails, and habit of washing herbs before eating them, are all hints that mandibears are actually giant red pandas. They're fully herbivorous, and never consume what they kill.
Chase Stops at Water: Mandibears can't swim, so deep water is one way to escape them.
It Can Think: They're nearly as smart as humans, and can understand Common, but not speak it. They still have no qualms about killing anyone who invades their privacy.
Killer Rabbit: Though they can grow to be eight feet tall, mandibear's appearance is compared to "giant living dolls," and their eyes "contain no malevolence." Nonetheless, they're viciously territorial creatures, more than capable of tearing intruders to pieces.
Mama Bear: When a pack catches the scent of an intruder, the males round up and protect the cubs while the more numerous females hunt down and kill the interloper.

Mantari

Alignment: True Neutral

Flying rays that inhabit caves and dungeons, usually feeding on vermin, but they're likely to attack larger creatures.

Attack Animal: Young mantari can be trained by those looking for a guard animal or pest controller.
Beware My Stinger Tail: Their mouths are used only for eating, so mantari attack by hovering over foes, jabbing with their tails while keeping the rest of their bodies out of reach.
Flying Seafood Special: Mantari have an innate, magical flight ability, so their "wings" are mainly used to maneuver.
He Was Right There All Along: When lying on the dungeon or cave floor, a mantari might be mistaken for a puddle of brackish water.
Poisonous Person: Their tails carry a poison that damages the victim's Strength and Dexterity, while mantari themselves are mildly poisonous — anyone who consumes their flesh has to save or be incapacitated with nausea.
Sinister Stingrays: Mantari are flying monsters that bear a strong resemblance to manta rays (leading to speculation about their relation to cloakers and trappers), and are aggressive enough to go after adventurers. Most mantari are only about four feet across, but there are rumors of "greater" mantari in the depths of the Underdark with 10-foot wingspans.

Manticore

^3e

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Magical Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 10 (4E), 3 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Man-eating monsters that bring human cunning to their predations.

Attack Animal: They're willing to ally themselves with other creatures, serving as aerial support, hunting companions, or guards for locations or individuals.
Food Chain of Evil: By working as a pack, manticores can bring down rival aerial creatures like griffons, chimeras or wyverns, but they fear and avoid dragons.
I Shall Taunt You: They shout insults when attacking, or offer to kill their victims quickly should they beg for mercy.
Our Manticores Are Spinier: Most editions have given manticores a fairly straightforward appearance with a lion body, batlike wings, a human head with three rows of shark-like teeth, and a tail tipped with a cluster of spines that they can launch like arrows, but the 3E Monster Manual depicts them with low-slung, leopard spotted bodies and heads resembling twisted, monstrous monkeys more than anything else. Regardless of appearance, they're evil, aggressive beings with a taste for human flesh.
Spike Shooter: Manticores can snap their tails like whips to send the spikes there flying like arrows, and tend to open fights with such a volley before diving into melee.
To Serve Man: Manticores enjoy humanoid flesh, but particularly relish humans above all other prey.
Marthok Uldarr: Manticores love the taste of human flesh. That's why, on trips through the mountains, I always travel with human bodyguards.

Marrashi

Origin: Al-Qadim
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Plague-spreading fiends that blend the features of humanoids, avians and jackals.

Art Evolution: In earlier editions, marrash are described as jackel-headed creatures, while 3rd Edition likens them to winged gnolls.
Multishot: Marrash are capable of firing two arrows at once, thanks to grasping their bows with their taloned feet and nocking an arrow with both hands.
Plaguemaster: They can fire arrows that spread a variant of filth fever, except the Constitution and Dexterity damage dealt can become fatal ability drain.
Spawn Broodling: Marrash can also shoot special taklif arrows that seem to spread disease like their other arrows, but those who fail their saves soon perish — then a few days later, their corpse transforms into a newborn marrashi. Since the new fiend consumes the spirit of the slain victim, normal resurrection magic such as raise dead or resurrection can't bring them back.
The Starscream: Like most fiends, marrash are not willing servants, and will typically use their taklif arrows to spawn more of their kind behind their summoner's back, in hope of creating a force strong enough to avenge the original marrashi's servitude. Other times they'll be more direct and shoot their "master" with a taklif arrow so that the newborn marrashi will free their parent.

Marruspawn

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (marrulurk), 5 (marrusault, marrutact) (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

The jackal-headed creations of an extinct desert civilization, who dwell within ancient pyramids and perform rituals to honor their progenitors. They refer to themselves as "the Crafted."

Back Stab: Marrulurks share an assassin's ability to make a death attack attempt against a target they study for three rounds.
Beast Man: While their sizes and coloration may vary, all known marruspawn appear as humanoids with the heads of jackals.
Final Solution: After countless centuries of isolation, the marruspawn have recently become more proactive, after a marrutact named Wisdom proclaimed that he had received a message from the marru, telling him to purge the world of everything not spawned by the marru, to clear the way for their return. While not all marruspawn have heard Wisdom's message or believe it to be true, those who have embraced it have launched campaigns of genocide.
Hive Caste System: The marruspawn subtypes all have different body sizes, so the skulking marrulurks are Small and slight, while the marrusaults are Large and brawny. While the various castes can interbreed, their progeny is always one of those subtypes, never a hybrid creature.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: Once a year, a marruspawn of breeding age is chosen by each community to travel to the Cradle, a hidden structure rumored to be vital to the race's continued survival and containing the secrets of spawncraft. When those chosen return home a year later, they have no memory of what they experienced there.
Living Weapon: Marruspawn are, as their name suggests, the creations of an ancient people known as the marru, who used their science of "spawncraft" to create soldiers to fight what came to be known as the Flesh Wars. While the marru ultimately destroyed themselves, their spawn remained, lingering in the marru's ruins in the dry wastes.
Staff of Authority: The robed marrutacts are also distinguished by their their masterwork staves, "a symbol of the forgotten spawncraft lore" that rather resembles the double helix of a DNA strand.
Super-Scream: Marrusaults can let out a "howl of defiance" once per day, forcing those nearby to save or become fatigued or exhausted.
Super-Senses: Marruspawn have low-light vision, as well as exceptional hearing — they can detect the presence of corporeal creatures by the sound of their heartbeat, breathing, or movement, out to 30 feet, and pinpoint their location if the marruspawn is within 5 feet.
Unusable Enemy Equipment: The marruspawn have a variety of "zymes" that, when imbibed by a marruspawn, grant them a temporary bonus like boosted movement speed, boosted bite attacks, or the ability to make whirlwind attacks. Non-marruspawn can only use them if they first drink a "marrucraft zyme," but the resulting painful biological changes cause them to take damage at the start and end of the concoction's duration.
Weaponized Stench: Marrulurks can exhale a 10-foot cone of nauseating gas once per day.
White Magic: While marrutacts are primarily wizards, they can also let loose a "howl of healing" once per day that heals all marruspawn within 30 feet.

Marruspawn Abomination

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 19 (3E)
Alignment: Any Evil

A savage and mighty marruspawn with a spark of godhood, who was the downfall of its creators.

Deity of Human Origin: While most abominations are born from "misguided deific concourse," the marru created their own by stealing the blood and essence of a deity to give one of their champions unparalleled power. The resulting marruspawn abomination is thought to have triggered the collapse of the marru civilization, either due to the machinations of the deity whose power was stolen, or the actions of the abomination itself.
Enemy Summoner: Three times per day, they can summon Gargantuan, fiendish, monstrous scorpions.
No-Sell: As an abomination, it's immune to polymorphing, petrification, ability damage or drain, mind-influencing affects, and fire damage to boot.
Sealed Evil in a Can: The one known marruspawn abomination is currently imprisoned deep underground, bound by both spells and preservative fluid. Even so, its dreams sometimes interact with other creatures that come too near.
Taken for Granite: Every few rounds, a marruspawn abomination can loose a "howl of fossilization," forcing all within 30 feet to save or turn to stone. They can also cast flesh to salt three times per day.

Mastyrial

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Animal (3E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned, True Neutral (black)

Oversized scorpions that spend most of their time hibernating beneath the sand or rock, waiting for prey to close to striking distance. A black variant of mastyrial is far smarter and possesses psionic powers.

Blessed with Suck: Black mastyrials have a sort of Ghost Memory, in that every encounter with a type of creature becomes information stored in the pack's collective consciousness. While this will grant the pack combat bonuses against those types of enemies in future encounters, unfortunately "This contact conflicts with their genetic desire to be independent, which has basically caused them to become insane."
Crafted from Animals: Their claws and stingers can be honed into weapons, while their chitin is valued for both its protective qualities and ventiliation.
Defend Command: Black mastyrials in a losing fight will retreat into holes dug into solid rock, leaving only the toughest part of their carapace exposed. This renders them immune to mundane physical attacks, so they can only be harmed by somehow extracting them from their holes.
Dig Attack: They commonly begin combat by bursting out from the sand or rock to ambush prey.
Hive Mind: Black mastyrials are not just more intelligent than normal animals, they're also in constant psychic contact with each other, giving them a collective consciousness — while an individual black mastyrial has an Intelligence score between 5 and 7, the pack's sense of history and learning far exceeds their individual low intelligence.
Monstrous Cannibalism: Black mastyrials consider everything outside their pack a source of food, including other black mastyrial packs. Meanwhile, desert mastyrial females are known for stinging and eating males after mating, something the males don't try to resist.
Psychic Powers: Black mastyrials use mind link to communicate with their packs, clairvoyance and know direction to aid in their hunts, and send thoughts to lure prey closer.
Scary Scorpions: They're giant scorpions, with rending pincers and poisonous stingers. They help keep Athas' population of oversized insectoids under control, but are willing to go after humanoid prey as well.
Shorter Means Smarter: Black mastyrials are half the size of their desert-dwelling cousins, but make up for their physical shortcomings with their intelligence and psionics.
Super-Senses: Desert mastyrials use echolocation (in 2nd Edition) or tremorsense (in 3rd) to help detect prey. Black mastyrials are totally blind and rely upon these senses and their psionics to hunt.

Maug

Classification: Construct (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Hulking creatures of living stone from the Infinite Battlefield of Acheron, who hire themselves out as mercenaries to give meaning to their existence.

Armor-Piercing Attack: They can make a "Pulverize" action three times per day, touching an object and negating its Hardness value so the maug can more easily destroy it.
Cyborg: There's a whole range of maug grafts they use to improve and augment themselves, such as fists that lock closed around weapons to prevent disarming, vibrating plates of shale that confer tremorsense, or stone rollers to replace their lower torsos and allow the maug to crush enemies like a steamroller.
Double Weapon: Maugs commonly wield Huge double-bladed swords.
Healing Factor: Unusually for constructs, maugs slowly recover hit points while resting, and heal faster if someone helps repair them.
Neglectful Precursors: As best sages can tell, the maugs were created by some ancient civilization as shock troops for a terrible war, then afterward were dumped on Thuldanin, the second layer of Acheron and the junkyard for the multiverse's wars. Since maugs are creatures of stone themselves, they were immune to Thuldanin's petrification effect, and they eventually figured out how to make more of themselves, taking on jobs as hired soldiers to get the money needed for the process.
Private Military Contractors: Maugs serve any master willing to pay the price, and never care about right or wrong. They're even willing to fight other maugs employed by the opposing side, resulting in horrendous casualties as the maugs lead their troops to clash repeatedly until one or both sides is ground down to nearly nothing. Then the surviving maugs are liable to group up and go off to find a new war to fight in as if nothing happened.
Rock Monster: Maugs' bodies are cut from the stone of Acheron.
Undying Loyalty: In battle, maugs are unflinchingly loyal to their employer, making them perfect mercenaries.

Maulgoth

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

Huge amalgamations of flesh and stone, these beings are among the most dangerous inhabitants of the Underdark.

Druid: It's noted that maulgoths have a druid's power over the natural world, thanks to spell-like abilities such as control plants, dominate animal and stone shape, but the creatures have none of a true druid's love and respect for their environment, and callously manipulate their surroundings to aid in hunts or to protect themselves.
Dungeon Bypass: Maulgoths can glide through solid stone like a xorn, which they use to launch ambushes or escape losing battles.
Silicon-Based Life: They're roughly rhino-shaped monsters with bodies covered in rocky spikes and protrusions all but indistinguishable from stone.
Tentacle Rope: They can grapple and constrict opponents with their tentacles.
Wall Crawl: Maulgoths can move at full speed up walls and across ceilings.
Weaponized Teleportation: They can make an "ethereal jolt" attack by striking a foe with a tentacle, potentially shunting them onto the Ethereal Plane.

Meazel

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E), Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 11 (4E), 1 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil (4E)

Degenerate humanoids that lurk in dismal places while stalking prey.

Back Stab: 3rd Edition meazels can deal extra Sneak Attack damage to flanked or surprised foes.
Curse: The 5th Edition meazels curse any creature they take through a shadow teleport, which allows undead and other Shadowfell creatures to sense the cursed victim from a distance of 300 feet.
Poisonous Person: Swamp-dwelling meazels carry an unslightly skin disease that doesn't affect them, but can infect those they hit with claw attacks, dealing Dexterity and Constitution damage.
Retcon: In 3rd Edition, meazels are diseased, swamp-dwelling creatures that stalk and murder other humanoids with their stealth skills. In 5th Edition, meazels are debased creatures of the Shadowfell that murder other humanoids with their shadow magic.
Shadow Walker: Stepping into a shadow allows a 5th Edition meazel to magically move to another one.
Super-Reflexes: 3rd Edition meazels share a rogue's Evasion ability, allowing them to fully avoid attacks with a Reflex saving throw.
Was Once a Man: As per their current lore, meazels are all that remain of people who fled into the Shadowfell to escape their mortal existence and ended up transformed by the darkness.

Medusa

^3e

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 10 (4E), 6 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Snake-haired women who can turn living beings to stone with their gaze.

Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Male medusas, when they appear, tend to be very physically and magically distinct from their sisters.
- In 2nd Edition, they're known as maedars, and resemble entirely hairless human men. They're immune to petrification, paralysis and medusa venom, can walk through stone, and can undo petrification with a touch.
- In 4th Edition, they look the same as in 2nd but poison with their gaze instead of their previous powers. This is also the first time that male medusas make it into a core book.
Gorgeous Gorgon: Besides the snakes and odd skin colors, many medusae are quite beautiful by humanoid standards. This is very much averted in second and third edition, where medusae look at best like hideous old crones and at worst like inhuman monsters with skin covered in thick scales, glowing red eyes, and gaunt faces with flatted, almost non-existent noses.
Interspecies Romance: Depending on the edition, medusas are either strictly female or female ones outnumber the males by a wide margin. In either case, they tend to rely on mating with human and elven men to reproduce.
A Kind of One: Medusas are an entire species of beings based off of what was a singular being in Greek myth.
Medusa: Medusas have always been a species, but they have undergone some changes between editions.
- In 2nd edition, medusas resemble elven maidens with serpents for hair and the ability to petrify with their gaze, even affecting creatures on the Ethereal or Astral Planes (into which they can see). Approximately 10% are "greater medusae", who have super-toxic blood and a giant snake's body in lieu of humanoid legs. There are also male medusas, called maedar, who appear as bald muscular elven men. Maedar are ridiculously rare; whereas female medusae produce two to six medusa daughters by mating with human men, the result of a medusa/maedar coupling is two to six offspring, with 25% being male and the remaining 75% being female. Only 1% of the males are maedar; the rest of them, and all of the females, are pure human.
- In editions 3 and 3.5, medusas are Always Female, with a humanoid body but scaly skin, glowing red eyes, and gaunt faces with flatted, almost non-existent noses. A petrifying gaze attack as well as poison bites from the hair snakes come with the package. Medusas can procreate with any humanoid species, with the offspring normally being medusae themselves. Petrification is permanent by default, but advanced magic can reverse it. In Savage Species, several intelligent monsters including medusae are made into playable races. If you wanted to play a medusa under the standard rules you have to start at level 10 or higher, but with Savage Species you can start as a level 1 immature medusa who has not yet developed her full potential. The same expansions also introduces a feat that allows medusas to enable and disable their gaze attack at will or to focus it at specific opponents, allowing others to see their faces without being turned to stone unless the medusa wants to do so. Sadly, like most monsters in the book, medusas are Cool, but Inefficient due to losing so many class levels to normal player character races and because their two main powers (petrification and poison) are things that are extremely dangerous to normal PC races but something that many monsters are immune or highly resistant to.
- In fourth edition, medusae are a species in the usual sense, with both males and females. The females are classic medusas, pretty much the same as in the previous edition except that they can now un-petrify their victims by applying a drop of their own blood. The males are bald and poison with their gaze rather than petrify. Both sexes resemble the scaly humanoid from 3rd edition, though with less haggish features.
- In the fifth addition, medusae look like humans with snakes for hair, have males with identical powers and are cursed to turn into medusae on an individual basis.
- In Eberron, medusae have a unique culture largely based around avoiding looking someone in the eyes — they're not immune to the petrifying gaze of other medusae, so it's kind of the only choice. They were created by the daelkyr, but broke free when the creatures were sealed away. Oh, and there are explicitly males as well—where do you think all the baby medusae come from?
- In Scarred Lands, medusae were created by the titan Mormo. In this setting, pretty much everything was created by the Titans, including the gods. Two centuries ago, the gods rose up against them in what came to be known as the Titanswar or the Divine War. The medusae were initially an important force at the titans' side, but they switched side to serve the Gods, particularly the neutral evil goddess Belsameth.
Mundane Utility: Male medusas, known as maedars, can reverse petrification with a touch. Medusa/maedar pairs use this to keep food fresh — the medusa petrifies victims, they smash the statue, and the maedar turns chunks back to flesh when the pair wants to eat.
Snake People: In some edition, some variants of medusas possess snakelike trunks instead of legs.
Taken for Granite: A medusa's gaze will petrify anyone who looks into her eyes. Whether this is something they can control, and whether other medusas are or aren't immune to it, varies between settings and editions.
Vain Sorceress: 5th edition medusas are formerly mortal individuals, male or female, who bargained with dark powers to gain eternal youth, beauty, and immortality. They got what they wanted, but the transformation into a medusa was the price each of them had to pay.
Was Once a Man: In 5th edition, every medusa was once a normal person. Their monstrous appearance and petrifying gaze are the result of a curse brought on by their vanity.

Megapede

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Vermin (3E), Natural Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 20 (3E), 15 (4E), 11 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Colossal predatory centipedes that can reach lengths of 150 feet, making them the terrors of the deserts they dwell in.

Big Creepy-Crawlies: Again, they're centipedes over a hundred feet long, capable of slicing a cow in two with a single bite from their mandibles.
Creepy Centipedes: They combine this trope with Sand Worm, burying themselves beneath the sand and then attacking passing prey with their jaws and psionics. In their home setting, the only things more feared than megapedes are nightmare beasts and the Dragon of Tyr.
Lightning Bruiser: In 3rd Edition they're blisteringly fast, with a base movement speed of 80 feet, allowing megapedes to run down the fleetest of horses.
Make Them Rot: Their 5th Edition stat block gives them a life-draining aura that deals necrotic damage to other creatures.
Poisonous Person: Their fearsome bites also deliver a dangerous poison, which can be harvested from a megapede corpse and remains potent for a month.
Psychic Powers: As a monster that debuted in Dark Sun, megapedes (with the notable exception of their 3rd Edition incarnation) are natural psions that can blast prey with psychic energy.

Meenlock

Classification: Aberration (3E), Aberrant Humanoid (4E), Fey (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 9 (4E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil (1E-3E), Chaotic Evil (4E), Neutral Evil (5E)

Small, vaguely bug-like horrors that stalk and torment a chosen victim before abducting them back to their lair for converstion into a new meenlock.

Expy: Meenlocks are a very direct riff on the creatures from the 1973 Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, with almost all their abilities and operating methods hailing straight from that film. The only major difference is their more insectile designs.
Mind Rape: Meenlocks hunt by selecting a target, then spending days stalking them while telepathically tormenting them, instilling paranoia through the feeling of being watched and followed, and filling them with the horrible certainty that monsters are going to come for them in the night. This mental assault deals Wisdom damage (in 3rd Edition) or psychic damage (in 5th Edition), potentially rendering the meenlocks' victim helpless.
The Morlocks: Another degenerate race of formerly-civilized humanoids that lurks underground.
The Paralyzer: Their claw attacks can paralyze opponents, allowing the meenlocks to haul them back to their lairs.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Meenlocks give other creatures the creeps and project a supernatural aura that instills terror.
Telepathy: They can use this to communicate, but mostly to be unpleasant to their prey.
Teleportation: 3rd Edition meenlocks can use a dimension door effect every two rounds, while in 5th Edition it's a shadow teleport instead.
Tulpa: In 5th Edition, meenlocks are created as manifestations of the fear of other beings. When a sapient creature experiences deep fear or dread in the Feywild or an area highly influenced by it, one or more meenlocks spontaneously come into being.
Was Once a Man: In most editions, meenlocks procreate by haunting humanoids, driving them mad, and eventually kidnapping them to transform them into new meenlocks. Once a creature has been converted in this way, only a wish or miracle can bring them back.

Mekillot

^{Alternate design, with a kank and imix for scale (3e)}

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Animal (3E), Natural Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 10 (4E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Gargantuan, six-ton, shelled lizards that make for plodding beasts of burden, assuming they don't eat their handlers.

Beast of Battle: 4th Edition explains that some mekillot eggs are subjected to rituals by defilers, turning them into larger, meaner warbeasts that can carry a sorcerer-king's soldiers in a howdah, and are so bloodthirsty that they'll chase after retreating foes.
Belly Flop Crushing: Mekillots' undersides are less armored than their shelled backs, which smaller creatures sometimes try to take advantage of, at which point the reptile instinctively drops onto its belly to crush the threat. Though depending on what they drop upon, sometimes the mekillot takes damage in the process.
Depending on the Artist: Depictions of mekillots can be inconsistent even within the same edition. Sometimes they look something like armored salamanders, smooth and low to the ground, while other illustrators favor a design with the body of an enormous Ankylosaurus, the beaked, crested head of a Protoceratops, ram-like horns, and chameleon eyes.
Fantastic Livestock: Mekillots make for excellent caravan beasts, as a pair of the lizards can pull a 20-ton load at a slow and steady pace. However, the savage creatures can never be truly tamed, and are known to wander off the road for no apparent reason, or attempt to eat smaller members of the caravan. Psionic handlers have the best results in getting the creatures to cooperate.
Swallowed Whole: They have an Overly-Long Tongue they can use to reel in and swallow prey.

Mephit

Magma and ice mephits (5e)

Classification: Outsider (3E), Elemental Humanoid (4E), Elemental (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 3 or 4 (4E), 1/2 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral (3E), Unaligned (4E), Neutral Evil (5E)

Imp-like creatures native to the Inner Planes. They come in an array of subspecies based on their elemental affinity, which affects their appearances, abilities and personalities, but one trait they all have in common is that they're incredibly annoying.

Breath Weapon: All mephits can breathe a short cone of their corresponding element type, either dealing minor damage or hampering foes by restraining them with a coating of mud, blinding them with dust in their eyes, etc.
Defeat Equals Explosion: 5th Edition mephits explode when killed, creating a similar effect as their breath weapon.
Elemental Powers: Beyond their breath attack, mephits typically have some spell-like abilities related to their core element, such as air mephits being able to cast gust of wind once per day.
Enemy Summoner: Some imps have a chance of summoning a few more of their kind, in case one of the things wasn't annoying enough.
The Magnificent: Mephits like to give themselves long, pompous names and titles like "Garbenaferthal, Sprite-Slayer, Greatest of All Steam Mephits, Favorite of the Lower Planes," or "Abernathanorial, Ditch Queen, Doom of Dryads, Dearth of Light, Mephit of Darkest Smoke."
My New Gift Is Lame: Invoked; Planescape explains that "Mephits are never given to friend, as anyone who has met one understands," instead the little creatures are "gifted" to rivals to send a message. There's an entire "Mephit Vendetta Code" based on what type and how many mephits are being sent to someone.
Our Imps Are Different: Mephits are small, devilish elementals with long noses, batlike wings, grating personalities and very low placement on the planar pecking order and food chain. They come in a variety of elemental, paraelemental, and quasielemental subtypes, each with their own quirks.
- Air mephits are flightly, fickle and generally air-headed. They can be used to passively cool and circulate air in rooms, or sent as a messenger, in which case the mephit will serve as an excellent courier exactly once before wandering off in search of adventure.
- Ash mephits as morose beings who can be employed as messengers, though they also love to tell other creatures about their problems in a nasal whine — "You're so lucky not to have wings, they get fouled in everything and it's not like I ever asked to fly."
- Dust mephits have a morbid fascination with death, are the only mephit subspecies known to wear (somber) clothing, and like to present themselves as "tragic yet fashionable victims of a gloomy fate, heroically holding out against utter insanity." A gifted dust mephit indicates that the sender is aware the receiver is plotting against them, a subtle threat.
- Earth mephits are stolid and humorless, and enjoy eating gems and jewelry, to the extent that they'll hatch schemes to earn money to purchase them with both "single-mindedness but also singular ineptitude."
- Fire mephits are mischievous pranksters sometimes used to heat forges, warm clothing, or just light cigars. A gift of a fire mephit "indicates displeasure at the enemy's action."
- Ice mephits are aloof and particularly cruel, sometimes used to turn storerooms into freezers. A gifted ice mephit indicates that the receiver is forbidden to enter the sender's home.
- Lightning mephits are curious and hyperactive, prone to mistakes and misspeaking, and combine a high flying speed with poor maneuverability.
- Magma mephits are both the most passive and the dumbest of their kind, and frequently the target of fire mephit pranks, like shoving magma mephits into water so they harden.
- Mineral mephits are both greedy and self-righteous, regarding themselves as "guards of all treasure, whether or not they own it."
- Mirror mephits are one of the few inhabitants of the Plane of Mirrors, prone to answering questions with more questions or repeating other mirror mephit's conversations. They make for good spies, though any promises of loyalty they offer summoners are cast aside as soon as they're off their home plane.
- Mist mephits constantly spy on other mephits, who they then try to report for treasonous behavior such as showing mercy to foes.
- Ooze mephits are obnoxious flatterers, summoned to do odious jobs like cleaning sewers and garbage dumps, but they're prone to deserting. At that point they take up begging for money (like a small "loan" of 100 gold pieces) they plan to pay wizards to transmute them into a humanoid form.
- Radiant mephits are perpetually dazed from their experience on the Quasiplane of Radiance, and lack the attention span to fulfil any mission, or even remember their own grandiose titles. The only reason anyone bothers summoning them is because some beings find their color sprays soothing, though a gifted radiant mephit is seen as a peace offering between feuding parties.
- Salt mephits are among the least pleasant of their kind, to the extent that "The sarcastic and acidulous wit of salt mephits lowers their life expectancy dramatically." Unsurprisingly, a gift of a salt mephit is a declaration of open war.
- Smoke mephits are shiftless and crude, prefering to lounge about invisibly while smoking pipeweed and telling jokes about their master. When "gifted" to someone, a smoke mephit is "a gesture of insolence and contempt that amounts to a declaration of vendetta."
- Steam mephits consider themselves the lords of all mephits and masters of the Quasiplane of Steam, resulting in a fierce rivalry with their mist mephit neighbors. On the bright side, they can be used to heat small rooms or even power engines.
- Water mephits are jovial, but obnoxious and tactless about it, prone to attaching themselves to adventuring parties and offering assurances like "Buck up, you can handle these fiends. Or if not, you'll make good dretches." They can at least be employed as firefighters in kitchens and the like.

Mephling

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

Small humanoids occasionally born to mephit parents, granting them some of the power of the Inner Planes.

Breath Weapon: A few times per day, a mephling can unleash a breath weapon appropriate to their elemental type — a cone of dust and grit, rock shards, fire or caustic liquid.
Elemental Powers: Mephlings cast spells with the same elemental descriptor as them at a higher level, and their air, earth and water subraces get flight, burrowing and swim speeds, respectively.
Half-Human Hybrid: Mephlings' origins are uncertain — in one story, they're the result of ancient unions between mephits and some forgotten humanoid race, while another is "a darker tale of a megalomaniacal mage seeking to imprint his essence on another race."
Parental Abandonment: Evil mephits will dump a mephling child on a hostile plane, while kinder mephits will leave their child in a place where other creatures might find it. At any rate, mephlings are either adopted by other creatures or grow up on their own.
Winged Humanoid: Air mephits have wispy wings, though their (perfect) flight speed is only 10 feet per round.

Mercane

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Outsider (3E), Giant (5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E, 5E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Sometimes known as arcanes, these tall, blue humanoids are merchants who travel the Great Wheel, selling exotic goods and magical items such as spelljammer helms to anyone who can meet their prices.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Big, bald and blue humanoids.
Arms Dealer: Mercanes have been known to sell potent magic weapons to both sides of a war, uncaring that the result kills off all their potential customers and desolates a region.
Creepy Long Fingers: Beyond their height and skin tone, another key mercane feature is that their fingers are long enough to have an extra joint on them.
Everyone Has Standards: Varies from the source material, with their early entries explaining that mercanes will never deal with fiends, genies and the neogi, while later information states that they'll hire appropriate bodyguards for a trade mission into the Abyss.
Intrepid Merchant: It doesn't get more intrepid than forming a caravan to travel the Lower Planes.
Know When to Fold Them: Mercanes can cast Leomund's secret chest once per day, which they'll use to pull out a magic wand in an emergency... or just bribe a threat to go away.
Merchant City: The mercanes run the demiplane-city of Union, a great crossplanar trading stop, founded largely due to the mercanes' aversion to operating in Sigil.
One-Gender Race: Mercanes seem sexless, and there's been no sightings of young members of their race, leading to much speculation over if and how they reproduce (and some bawdy jokes about what they do with all that treasure they accumulate). The mercanes remain silent on the matter.
Proud Merchant Race: Every mercane encountered has been a merchant.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: If a battle turns against them, mercanes are known to use dimension door or invisibility to ditch their bodyguards and make a run for it.
Telepathy: Mercanes possess a form of racial telepathy, allowing them to communicate with one another no matter the distance or dimension. Those who offend or wrong one mercane are going to find it next to impossible to do business with any others until restitution is offered.
Took a Level in Badass: In past editions, mercanes have been more or less noncombatants who'd rather bribe opponents with a magic weapon than wield it against them, but 5th Edition gives them multiple attacks with a "psi-infused blade" that can cause victims to be frightened of the mercane.

Merchurion

Classification: Construct (3E)
Challenge Rating: 17 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Giant creatures of living quicksilver who can mold their bodies into any weapon, and absorb the magical properties of weapons that strike them.

Dying Race: Merchurions cannot reproduce, and are obsessed with averting this trope and finding some way to produce more of their kind.
Energy Absorption: When struck by an enchanted weapon, a merchurion absorbs its magic, allowing the creature to manifest said weapon's enchantment on its own morph weapons, while the original weapon's magical properties are suppressed, both for the next hour.
Fantastic Racism: Merchurions consider all other creatures as inferior, with the exception of fire giants, who they view with a mixture of envy and resentment that leads to bloodshed whenever the two meet.
Metal Muncher: These living constructs' only bodily need is to consume metal, particularly silver.
Shapeshifter Weapon: They can morph their bodies to produce any weapon, and are proficient with even the most exotic of weapons they form this way. Said weapons are considered enchanted, silvered weapons, and should they somehow be separated from the merchurion, the weapons will instantly melt into a silvery pool.
You Have Failed Me: The merchurions used to be a race of giants that excelled in metalcrafting, and were tasked by Surtur, Lord of the Fire Giants, to make weapons superior to the dwarves' adamantine waraxes. When decades of work produced only a slag of mercurial metal inside a magma rift, an enraged Surtur threw the merchurions into their own creation, inadvertently transforming them into their current state. As much as the merchurions have a jealous hatred towards fire giants, they still feel deep shame over failing Surtur.

Merfolk

Classification: Humanoid (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E), 1/8 (5E)
Alignment: Any

Aquatic humanoids with fish-like lower bodies, and who generally avoid interactions with surface-dwellers.

Art Evolution: The earliest "mermen" fit the standard "normal human top, fish bottom" model, but 3rd Edition gave them an exotic tint to their hair and flesh, before 5th Edition made them an Amazing Technicolor Population with finned limbs and hair.
Hidden Elf Village: The merfolk generally reject any offers of friendship or trade from outsiders, and it takes an extraordinary threat to make their bands of hunter-gatherers unite with each other under a single leader.
Our Mermaids Are Different: They're part-human, part-fish, though the degree of integration between the two halves varies by edition. Stories abound of merfolk rescuing shipwrecked sailors, but they're also known to prank surface-dwellers, and their idea of mischief can be cruel. Though amphibious, merfolk's land speed is appalling, and they cannot innately transform into a bipedal form.
Was Once a Man: Their early lore posits that merfolk were once human, but were transformed by an unknown power into their current state.

Merrow

Classification: Giant (3E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Brutish aquatic monsters that exist only to plunder and murder.

Always Chaotic Evil: 5th Edition merrow are inherently evil due to generations of demon worship and living in the Abyss, which has corrupted them in body and soul. Earlier merrow were little better, but without the excuse of being tainted by demons.
Retcon: Merrow were an aquatic subspecies of ogre for the first three editions of the game, described as green-skinned humanoids with webbed hands and feet, who lived in lakes and rivers. 5E reimagines them as the corrupted, monstrous descendants of demon-worshipping merfolk, making them saltwater creatures with fish-like lower bodies (and thus carrying a strong resemblance to the male naga of Warcraft)
Was Once a Man: In their current lore, merrow are descended from merfolk who found an idol of Demogorgon at the bottom of the sea, became afflicted with madness, migrated to Demogorgon's layer of the Abyss, and were slowly transformed by Abyssal energies after generations.
You Will Not Evade Me: If a merrow nails someone with its harpoon, the unfortunate victim will be pulled up to 20 feet closer to the merrow unless they succeed on a Strength save.

Metallic Sentinel

A metallic peacekeeper (left) and warbler (right) (5e)

Classification: Construct (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (warbler), 4 (peacekeeper) (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Elegant constructs built by metallic dragons to act as peacekeepers in communities their creator has grown attached to.

Emotion Bomb: A metallic sentinel can release a gas that calms those who breathe it in, incapacitating them.
Guardian Entity: They're created to be stand-ins for the dragon who built them, to watch over favored mortal settlements.
No-Sell: Besides sharing most constructs' condition immunities, metallic sentinels are immune to fire and any attempt to alter their form.
Spy Bot/Surveillance Drone: A less-advertised feature of metallic sentinels is that they're in constant telepathic communication with their creator dragon, who can even see through the sentinels' senses.

Metalmaster

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (2E), Chaotic Evil (3E)

Also known as "sword slugs," these horse-sized gastropods use their powers of magnetism to hunt red-blooded prey.

Eye of Newt: Averted; mages and alchemists' experiments with metalmaster flesh and ichor have yet to yield anything useful. Their flesh is similarly so bitter that only carrion-eaters will feed upon it.
It Can Think: They're none too bright, but metalmasters are smart enough to know to lurk near hoards of treasure, which they can weaponize and use as bait for humanoid prey. In 3E they can even speak Undercommon, "though they are not brilliant conversationalists."
Magnetism Manipulation: Their signature ability is to generate and manipulate powerful magnetic fields, allowing metalmasters to attract or repel metal items (and metal creatures) up to 60 feet away, or create a "metal storm" around their body similar to a blade barrier spell.
Mind over Matter: 3rd Edition adds telekinetic abilities to their repertoire.
Voice Changeling: In 2nd Edition, metalmasters can mimic words they've heard their past victims speak to try and lure in prey, but they aren't smart enough to capitalize on this and often use the wrong sounds for the job.

Mimic

Classification: Aberration (3E), Aberrant Magical Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 8 (4E), 2 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Shapeshifting monsters that ambush prey by taking the form of innocuous or enticing objects, such as doors or treasure chests, until their victims come within range of their pseudopods.

Chest Monster: The archetypal example of the stealthy monster that pretends to be loot and attacks players that come to investigate.
Dragon Hoard: Hoard mimics are a Huge variant capable of taking the shape of a pile of glittering treasure. They have a symbiotic relationship with dragons, as the dragon gets a new trap for their lair, while the mimic gets a steady supply of food in the form of would-be treasure thieves.
It Can Think: While most mimics are simple predators, some develop enough intelligence to learn Common or Undercommon, and can be willing to barter useful information or safe passage in exchange for food.
Living Structure Monster:
- The rare greater mimics are large enough to cover the inside of entire rooms, or take the form of small structures, and have enough control over their shapeshifting to fill their interior spaces with furnishings and props to entice victims to walk right into their gullets, at which point the "room" seems to implode around the hapless dupes. A few of these greater mimics even pick up illusion magic to create facsimiles of living creatures to add to the deception, though perceptive adventurers may notice that these creatures' words are coming out of the walls around them.
- "House hunter" mimics are surface-dwelling variants with shells that resemble humanoid structures — outhouses, cottages, inns or temples, depending on the mimic's age and size. They use bioluminescence to imitate flickering lights and make muffled sounds of conversation and other domestic noise to lure prey in, then grab them with their tongues and pseudopods. They're pack hunters smart enough to wait until an entire group of travelers is within their reach before attacking, but if defeated, these mimics' "shells" can easily be converted into actual dwellings.
- In other rare cases, enough intelligent mimics gather together to form a mimic colony, working together to form complex objects and structures, to the point that it might appear than an entire village has sprung up overnight.
Organ Drops: Mimic ichor can be used to help craft potions of polymorph self, their glue sacs can be harvested by alchemists, their other internal organs can be used to make perfume, and some cultures consider a mimic's innards a tasty delicacy.
Sticky Situation: Mimics can coat themselves with an adhesive to help them grapple and entrap prey, and in some editions the glue can trap the weapons of attackers. Said adhesive is absorbed by mimics' bodies when they assume their natural form, and can be dissolved by alcohol.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Their natural forms are amorphous and speckled gray like granite, but they can alter their body's texture and coloration to perfectly mimic wood, stone or metal, and shift their dimensions to fill a doorway or take the form of furniture.

Mind Flayer

Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E), Aberrant Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 14 (4E), 7 (5E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Humanoid creatures with tentacled faces, psionic powers, and a rather unique dietary requirement. See their subpage for more information about them, and their many subspecies and related creatures.

Mindshredder

Mindshredder warrior, larva and zenthal (3e)

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (larva), 4 (warrior), 8 (zenthal) (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Monsters that must drain mental energy from their prey to fuel their metamorphosis into stronger forms. Despite their names, they are not related to illithids.

Deflector Shields: Mindshredder zenthals are surrounded by a faintly-glowing blue aura that provides similar benefits as the shield spell, improving their Armor Class and allowing them to No-Sell magic missile attacks.
It Can Think: By the time they reach zenthal stage, a mindshredder has above-average intelligence, is capable of speech, and knows how to direct their lesser kin, as well as use their confusion and hypnotic pattern spell-like abilities to fullest effect.
Metamorphosis: After draining a sufficient amount of Wisdom from their prey, mindshredders can build a chrysalis and emerge a month later in a more powerful form.
Our Centaurs Are Different: Zenthals are easily distinguished from the purely quadrupedal mindshredder warriors by their upright torsos, making them look something like aberrant centaurs.
Supernatural Sensitivity: These creatures have a "thought sense," allowing them to detect the thoughts of other beings (with Intelligence 3 or greater), and even pinpoint their location if such a creature is invisible. The older the mindshredder, the longer the range of this ability, from 20 feet for larvae to 60 feet for zenthals.
Vampiric Draining: Mindshredders' natural weapon attacks, or simple melee touch attacks, deal Wisdom damage to victims based on the mindshredder's age category, healing the monster in the process.
Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Mindshredder zenthals are clever enough to set this up, by establishing a secondary outpost or two some distance from the main mindshredder colony, and ensuring that all mindshredder attacks are routed through that outpost. Should their enemies track the attacks to the "source," the outpost's defenders will fight to the death to sell the idea that it's the only mindshredder nest in the area, and it takes a very learned scholar of aberrant creatures to realize that a mindshredder outpost is only a satellite of a larger colony.

Minotaur

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E), 10 (4E), 3 (5E)
Playable: 2E-5E
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Hulking, bull-headed humanoids with a tendency towards savagery but a good head for mazes. See the Playable Races subpage for more information about them.

Baphitaur

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

The result of Netherese experiments, these creatures descend from both minotaurs and tieflings, resulting in furious, hateful beings.

The Berserker: Baphitaurs can fly into a rage identical to a barbarian's.
Casting a Shadow: They can cast darkness once per day.
Half-Human Hybrid: Baphitaurs are the product of sorcerous breeding programs crossing minotaurs with tieflings, fiend-blooded humans. This results in a bullish horned head, a devilish tail, and human rather than hooved feet, not to mention a temperament filled with a "demonic hatred of puny mortals but also with a passionate fury at the circumstances of its creation."

Mite

Classification: Fey (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Malicious little humanoids who delight in making other people miserable with their tricks and traps.

Griping About Gremlins: In older editions, mites are classified as a type of gremlin.
Gulliver Tie-Down: In 2nd Edition, mites are known to capture victims with pit traps and tripwires, after which the mites swarm and bind them, then beat them unconscious. After being dragged to the mites' lair, the bound victim gets to endure several days of being chittered at and taunted by the creatures, until the mites get bored, knock the victim out again, steal all their belongings, and dump them somewhere embarrassing.
Hate Plague: 5E mites amplify the irritation of other creatures, so that every minor setback sparks anger and everyone operates on a Hair-Trigger Temper, which can quickly cause an adventuring party to fall into infighting, or a dungeon to devolve into a chaotic battlezone. In gameplay terms, mites can put a "blood-boiling hex" on other creatures that inflicts a penalty on their rolls, unless they give into their anger by lashing out at an ally.
The Heartless: Their 5th Edition backstory has mites spawned in the Feywild whenever someone grows so frustrated that they violently lash out — the surly individual sleepwalks to a tree or large plant, digs a hole, screams into it, and covers the hole, so that the next new moon a swarm of mites boil out of the hole. They exist to perpetuate such anger by setting tripwires across the top of staircases, filling locks with debris, replacing valuable gems with fakes, and so forth.
Trap Master: Whether with tripwires, trapdoors, nets or pits, mites are adept at setting traps to bedevil or capture victims.

Mivilorn

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Huge predators with oversized, acidic jaws that hunt in the Windswept Depths of Pandemonium.

Acid Attack: Mivilorns' pronounced jowls contain acid-producing glands, and acidic drool often drips even when their mouths are closed — thus, their bite attacks deal additional acid damage, and a large part of a mivilorn's digestion occurs before its prey is swallowed. They can also, three times per day, spew out a 15-foot cone of acid as a Breath Weapon attack.
Canis Major: They're more or less extraplanar mastiffs with the size and build of elephants.
Horse of a Different Color: Mivilorns are prized as war mounts by some demons, though without magical assistance, there's a chance they'll try to murder inept riders or trainers.
Monster Mouth: Their oversized mouths are eight feet wide, and their jaws can open up to seven feet apart. When mivilorns charge, they try and scoop up prey with their gaping maws — either one Large creature, or two adjacent Medium-sized creatures at a time.
Swallowed Whole: A variant, in that the victim doesn't immediately make it to the monster's belly. Anything that a mivilorn hits with its bite attack has to save or get caught in its jaws and jowls the next round, where it takes automatic bite and acid damage. After three rounds of chewing, the mivilorn will spit out its prey to see if it's dead; if not, it'll bite and chew it some more. But if a trapped creature manages to deal enough damage to the inside of a mivilorn's mouth, it'll spit the morsel out.

Mlarraun

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Predatory serpents also known as "spitting snakes" for their hunting habits, and "stone snakes" for their response to magic.

Ambushing Enemy: Some yuan-ti or other Scaled Ones use mlarrauns' unusual torpor to turn the creatures into traps, disguising them as handles for chests or ornamental scrollwork, since the first thing the creature does after coming out of its torpor is attack the nearest creature. The problem with this is that a mlarraun's torpor period can vary tremendously, and may last 100 days or just a single day.
Poisonous Person: Mlarraun venom, which can be delivered through a bite or spray of spittle, can cause blindness for up to 36 hours, even if it doesn't contact the victim's eyes.
Taken for Granite: An odd, self-inflicted example. Any magical effect that specifically targets a mlarraun will cause the snake to go into a "stone torpor," during which its scales turn hard and gray, though the snake's body remains flexible and can be handled without waking the creature. Sufficient damage, or another targeted spell effect, brings it out of this torpor early. In the past, merchants have traded mlarrauns as ornaments or toys, unaware that this torpor will eventually end.

Moat Cat

Alignment: Unaligned

Amphibious felines that are usually bred by wizards to defend their castle's moat.

Delicious Distraction: They have an amphibian's metabolism, eating a sheep-sized meal every other week and then spending the next day lethargic as they digest. Some intruders thus try to placate moat cats by dumping an animal carcass nearby, but the problem with that is the moat cat's predatory instincts, as they'd rather hunt their own food than be fed.
Metamorphosis: Moat cats lay eggs, which hatch into cubs that, like tadpoles, have no legs, but swim with a powerful tail. After they reach their first year, young moat cats grow legs and their parents teach them to hunt on land, and a year after that they're fully grown.
Mix-and-Match Critters: These are magical crossbreeds between newts and predatory cats like cougars and cheetahs. The result is a cat with gills, a thick tail used as a swimming aid, and a need to keep their skin wet that prevents them straying more than a mile from their home waters. They're just as dangerous on land, able to sprint like cheetahs for short bursts before needing to rest.
Roar Before Beating: Averted; moat cats don't yowl or roar when attacking, they don't vocalize at all. "More often than not, intruders first become aware of the aquatic predator when it pounces up at them — and by then, its usually far too late."

Mockery Bug

Mockery drone (3e)

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (mockery drone), 14 (mockery monarch) (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Rarely, an ankheg egg produces an insectoid monster with a silvery carapace and dangerous intelligence, which quickly leaves the nest to strike out on its own. These mockery monarchs are able to spawn copies of humanoids they consume, and send such mockery drones to lure more victims to their lairs.

Acid Attack: Like true ankhegs, mockery monarchs deal acid damage with their bite attacks, while mockery drones can spit a long line of acid every six hours.
Artificial Atmospheric Actions: Mockery drones are born with incoherent fragments of memories from their previous lives, and have just enough intelligence to try to mimic normal behavior, but not enough to do so well. As a result, they're prone to behavior like tilling the same patch of earth over and over, carrying empty buckets to and from the town well, or chopping a piece of firewood to splinters.
Attack Reflector: Mockery monarchs' silvery carapaces can reflect hostile magic as per spell turning.
Beast with a Human Face: In their true forms, mockery drones look like 5-foot-long, spined centipedes that retain the faces of the people they were imitating.
Chest Burster: Mockery drones are spawned looking identical to the people they replaced, but when pressed into combat, their heads explode as their centipede-like true forms burst out of their humanoid shells to the attack. Once a drone sheds its false identity, there's no going back, and it spends the rest of its confused existence as a human-faced monster.
Eat Brain for Memories: Mockery monarchs learn the languages of the creatures they eat, but are incapable of normal or telepathic speech.
Replicant Snatching: Mockery monarchs are incapable of reproducing normally, and are instead instinctively driven to spawn as many mockery drones as possible. They can be dangerously clever when employing their minions to lure in fresh victims, like having their drones attack livestock in a way that suggests normal ankhegs are behind it, or leaving signs that a missing child entered their lair. But in most cases, their drones can bring in victims simply by wandering around and acting oddly until someone takes an interest - especially family of those replaced by the drones - then leading them to their monarch.
The Spiny: The spines covering a mockery drone deal piercing damage to opponents that grapple or attack them with non-reach melee weapons.
Swallowed Whole: Anything bitten and grappled by a mockery monarch is in danger of being swallowed whole, taking regular acid and bludgeoning damage until their hit points reach zero, at which point the monarch can spawn a fresh mockery drone that looks like the victim.
Welcome to Corneria: Mockery drones only remember a few words from their previous lives, and will repeat phrases like "Midnight and all's well!" or "Here's your change!" as they struggle to act normally. They keep this up even when they burst out of their human shells and attack.

Modron

Pentadrone and monodrone (3e)

Classification: Outsider (3E), Immortal Animate (4E), Construct (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (monodrone) to 19 (secundus) (3E); 8 (4E); 1/8 (monodrone), 1/4 (doudrone), 1/2 (tridrone), 1 (quadrone), 2 (pentadrone) (5E)
Playable: 2E-3E (rogue modron)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Clockwork creatures from the plane of Mechanus, modrons are living personifications of law and order. They follow a rigid hierarchical society where every modron interacts only with others of its own rank and with its immediate inferiors or superiors: anything further away is beyond their comprehension.

Airborne Mook: Quadrones are the only winged variant of base modrons, and often combine this with their proficiency with bows to serve as aerial ranged support for modron forces.
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Modrons have figured out how to "pool" their race's life force in their capital of Regulus, and whenever one modron dies, its life force returns to this pool. Then the nearest modron of the next lowest rank transforms to replace its lost superior, which creates a gap in the caste below that is instantly filled, and so on all the way down to the monodrone level, at which point a monodrone draws life energy from that central pool to reproduce via fission.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: Even modrons' understanding of order can be incomprehensible to other races. For instance, a modron librarian may decide to arrange one book collection alphabetically by title, another by subject, and a third based on which page of a book its last diagram appears. "All three of these approaches might somehow be vital to maintaining the overall order, as defined by the modrons. Order, after all, does not necessarily need to be understandable."
Eternal Recurrence: Every 289 years, when the gears of Mechanus complete seventeen cycles, Primus sends thousands of modrons to survey the Outer Planes of the Great Wheel. Given the extreme dangers involved, only a few survive this Great Modron March to return to Mechanus, and the event ironically causes a great deal of chaos across the planes.
Fantastic Caste System: Modrons live in a complex and perfectly ordered hierarchy, where each caste performs a specific task, possess precisely the level of complexity needed for its purpose, and is only able to communicate with the castes immediately above and below it. A pentadrone told to guard a hexton will obey its orders without any understanding of the hexton's role in the modron hierarchy, while a duodrone assigned to maintain a secundus' residence will do so without knowing who built the structure or why.
Internal Affairs: Septons, appearing as humanoids with large, bald heads, are tasked with inspecting other modrons and ensuring that the regulations are being followed.
Lawful Stupid: As personifications of Law without Good or Evil, modrons are essentially magic computers with zero individuality, imagination, or ability to comprehend anything except basic logic or disobey any order given them. It's mentioned that a modron who is marked with paint by someone hoping to distinguish it from other modrons will probably carry such a marking for the rest of its life, as even if the modron notices the paint, it won't remove the marking unless given an express order to do so by its superiors.
Legacy Character: Primus, despite possessing the power of a lesser deity, can be killed, but in such instances, the nearest secundus is promoted to fill the position. That said, this process can create enough turmoil that outisde observers mistake it for a modron civil war, until the new Primus restores order.
Living Polyhedron: The more powerful and important the modron, the more sides they have. So monodrones are spheres, duodrones cubes, tridones tetrahedrons, and so on until the upper ranks, from septon on, look increasingly humanoid.
The Man Behind the Man: Each modron can only comprehend the castes above and below it, which means that a newly-promoted modron is immediately surprised to learn that its supposed superiors in turn have superiors, and the only modrons aware of the all-powerful Primus are its four secundi servants.
Mook Lieutenant: Duodrones are assigned with supervising and directing groups of monodrones, and in war will lead squads of precisely twelve monodrones into battle. The human-looking, six-armed hextons have a similar role, only they lead the 36 modron armies.
Mook Medic: Decatons, looking something like tentacled spheres on stumpy legs, are charged with physically maintaining other modrons, and can use magic like heal and healing circle at will.
No Body Left Behind: Modrons and their equipment disintegrate when they're slain.
Not So Stoic: In Planescape, the lore states that Orcus slew Primus, the one and prime, and caused the greatest upheaval the modrons had ever faced. In 3e, Primus can be summoned by the Binder class as a vestige. He weeps.
Painful Transformation: While the physical changes accompanying a promotion to a higher rank of modron are jarring enough, more distressing is the expanded awareness that accompanies it. "Imagine the shock of a duodrone, which previously knew only of monodrones, duodrones, and tridrones, when it undergoes a promotion to tridrone. Suddenly, it discovers that some of those inexplicable creatures around it are quadrones — members of its own race and its new superiors!" Downplayed in that despite this shock, modrons seem to adapt almost instantly to their new form and role in the hierarchy.
The Political Officer: The cylindrical nonatons are explicitly compared to commissars, and are tasked with monitoring the loyalty of the decatons beneath them, and investigating rogue modrons.
Rogue Drone: It is extremely rare, but it is possible for modrons to suddenly stop acccepting their superiors' orders, especially if they spend a lot of time alone. In some cases the new rogue modron is content to leave Mechanus and explore their new individuality, but other times, a rogue modron tries to build their own power base. Since normal modrons will follow the orders of even a rogue superior, rogue modrons are treated as serious threats by the hierarchs, who expend considerable resources hunting them down, bringing them to trial, and destroying them.
Starfish Robots: Modrons are fantastical robotic constructs who are so utterly devoted to the concept of cosmic Order that they're often fairly difficult for mortals to communicate with — modrons are utterly devoted to their assigned tasks, almost entirely unimaginative, and literally incapable of thinking in terms of good and evil. None of them are humanoid except for Primus himself and his immediate underlings; common modrons resemble living geometric solids, while their immediate superiors have shapes reminiscent of unusual sea animals.
When Things Spin, Science Happens: The Modron Cathedral in the heart of Regulus contains a great whirring, clicking Orrery of infinite detail and great complexity. Those who manage to study it for an hour and succeed at a high Knowledge check can realize that it's actually a model of the planes that can be used as a scrying tool, but the obstacles to that are the modron guards that kill non-modrons on sight, as well as the fact that those who fail their checks by five points or more are hit with a confusion effect. Primus and the secundi also know the secret of how to use the Orrery as a teleportation device.

Gear Spirit

Origin: Planescape
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Intelligent creatures of living metal who serve the modrons by keeping Mechanus' gears turning.

Achilles' Heel: Though resistant to several kinds of energy and immune to many status or mind-affecting effects, gear spirits rust at twice the rate of normal metal. "There is no more horrifying fate for gear spirits than being shackled in a dank, wet cell and doomed to death by oxidization — except, perhaps, confronting a rust dragon."
Haunted Technology: Gear spirits can meld with metal, taking control of and animating a device (within the limits of its functionality, so it could make a ballista fire itself but not cause a lamppost to attack).
I Just Want to Be Free: Despite their Lawful natures, and as much as they love their home gears of Mechanus, gear spirits quietly resent serving the less individualistic modrons, and some slip away from their duties or feel the irresistable urge to go on a walkabout. In such cases, the modrons will do their best to keep an abandoned gear turning, while tracking down and retrieving the wayward gear spirit (because a replacement can't be made until the old one is brought back).
Mooks Ate My Equipment: Their attacks reduce the protective value of their opponent's armor with every hit, until the armor is completely ruined.
Nature Spirit: Of a sort; gear spirits are bound to the gears of Mechanus in the same way that dryads are bound to trees. They'll even sicken and die if kept away from metal for too long.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can take the appearance of any small mechanical tool or device.

Moigno

Origin: Planescape
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Living mathematical equations that roam Mechanus, begrudgingly doing calculations on behalf of the modrons.

Body Horror: Moignos attack by "invading" other creatures and producing a paradox within their internal systems, "shorting out" their body to damage it.
Creating Life Is Unforeseen: The moignos were born relatively recently by planar standards, less than a mere millennium ago, when a brilliant mathematician named Moigno collapsed in a babbling heap after conceptualizing multidimensional, functional mathematics — this idea found refuge in Mechanus and assembled the parameters to enter the three-dimensional world in a two-dimensional body.
Genius Ditz: When it comes to mathematics, moignos' have veritably god-like Intelligence scores, but in all other regards they're little smarter than ogres, simply because they don't fully understand the three-dimensional universe they inhabit.
Good with Numbers: Moignos are living calculators/calculations, and will crunch the numbers concerning "gear rotation rates, interaction intervals, acceleration and deceleration frequencies, and the like," or in other words the nitty-gritty details vital to making Mechanus run smoothly.
Mouthful of Pi: They are obsessed with working out the exact value of pi, and spend every moment of their existence devoting their primary processing power to this tak — all the math work they do for the modrons are performed by moignos' subroutines. In fact, the original moignos nearly took over Mechanus before the modrons introduced the concept of pi to them, giving the moignos something new to focus on.
No-Sell: As living equations, moignos can't be damaged by physical means, and will nigh-instantly repair themselves from other damage. The exceptions are mental attacks that disrupt thought processes, which slow moignos' movement and prevent repair, and more significantly the psychokinetic devotion molecular manipulation, which causes nearby moignos to vanish for a few turns.
Paper People: Moignos look like two-dimensional strings of equations that teleport around Mechanus.
Rebus Bubble: They communicate via strings of mathematical symbols, which modrons and the like can understand intuitively. Mental contact with moignos is not advised, the last to try couldn't handle the images he received and spent two weeks in shock.

Mongrelfolk

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

Humanoids that bear the physical marks of generations of crossbreeding, such as mismatched limbs and uneven features.

Art Evolution: How deformed they are varies by edition, with earlier art depicting "Mongrelmen" with occasional animal limbs and features that were part-reptile, part-mammal, before 3rd Edition toned them down into merely ugly goblin-like creatures, only for 5th Edition to swing the other way.
Dark Is Not Evil: No matter how ugly they look, mongrelfolk aren't evil, and at worst will resort to petty thievery to survive. Generally they try to get along with their neighbors, no matter how abusive, either by passing for a friendly race or just staying out of sight.
Determinator: Mongrelfolk will do anything to survive. Survival is the overriding goal of their kind; they give members of their kind the title "The Survivor" the way other races would term someone "The Great".
Fantastic Racism: They're often driven out of even good and lawful communities, while evil societies will enslave mongrelfolk, or even hunt them for sport. Mongrelfolk themselves avoid this, and consider themselves kin to every race, even if they don't quite belong to any of them.
The Grotesque: Mongrelfolk tend to display the worst features of their various ancestors, such as oversized ears, sloped foreheads, flat noses, crooked and rotten teeth, etc. Despite this, they're generally inoffensive creatures.
Heinz Hybrid: They're the inevitable conclusion of a setting with dozens of humanoid races capable of interbreeding. On the upside, this means a mongrelfolk can use a magic item intended for a particular race without difficulty, and in some editions they inherit perks like an elf's immunity to magical sleep effects, or a diminished version of a dwarf's resistance to poison.
Pass Fail: 3rd Edition's Races of Destiny sourcebook introduced an interesting spin on mongrelfolk, namely that the hideous mismatched examples of their kind are rare individuals that are used as a distraction by the rest of the mongrelfolk, and honored for their sacrifice. Ordinary mongrelfolk instead blend the features of their various parent races more subtly, to the extent that observers tend to interpret them as people close to, but not quite, their own race. So a dwarf might see a mongrelfolk as an unusually broad-shouldered elf, an elf might see a tall and slender dwarf, a human would see a strangely attractive orc, and so forth.
Voice Changeling: Mongrelfolk can mimic any voice or sound they've heard.

Moon Dog

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Canine celestials from the Blessed Fields of Elysium, who travel the Upper Planes and Material Plane to confront evil.

Art Evolution: Their AD&D art is closer to a hybrid wolf-human, with hairless human hands on their forelegs and uncanny faces that are both canine and humanoid. 3rd Edition makes them much more wolf-looking, other than their hand-like front paws.
Asian Lion Dogs: They lean much more heavily on the "dog" part of the trope, but otherwise follow it, being noble, heavenly creatures that can ruin evil's day.
Astral Projection: They can use the spell at will, but only affecting themselves.
Casting a Shadow: Moon dogs can move shadows around themselves, creating a pattern that acts as a hypnotic pattern to all neraby evil creatures, while granting good creatures a protection from evil and remove fear effect.
Dispel Magic: Moon dogs' barks act as a dispel evil effect, while their whines automatically dispel illusions within 50 feet.
Feather Fingers: Their front paws are very hand-like, and have a limited capacity for fine manipulation.
Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: Moon dogs can stand up on their hind legs to use their front paws to grasp things, but move at half speed while doing so.
Good Counterpart: They're considered such to yeth hounds, being canids with human features and supernatural powers, only dedicated to good.
Intangibility: They can use etheral jaunt at will.
Intimate Healing: By licking a wound, moon dogs can cure light wounds, remove disease and/or slow poison, each once per day per person.
Speaks Fluent Animal: Moon dogs can use a variant of speak with animals to converse with dogs, wolves and other mundane canines.
Super-Senses: Moon dogs have low-light vision, darkvision, can track creatures by scent, are constantly under both arcane and blessed sight, and can see invisibility at will.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: A moon dog's baying acts as a fear spell that only affects evil creatures.
Super-Scream: Their howling simultaneously causes the fear effect of their baying, deals a bit of damage to evil creatures each round the moon hound continues, and targets any nearby fiends with a dismissal spell.
Telepathy: Like many outsiders, they're telepathic out to 50 feet.

Moon Horse

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Properly teu'kelytha, these intelligent and magical equines are unique to elven lands, roaming freely or voluntarily serving as steeds.

Immortal Procreation Clause: Moon horses are quite long-lived, often reaching their second century, but have correspondingly lower fertility rates than normal horses. Thus, a new birth is a momentous event celebrated by moon horses and elves alike.
Mage Species: Each moon horse can innately cast a single spell each day, ranging from magic missile to sleep to knock or even summon swarm.
No-Sell: They're completely immune to the special attacks of undead creatures such as level drain, paralysis or poison effects, though physical attacks and spells affect them normally.
Sapient Steed: They have above average intelligence, and are fully capable of understanding Elvish, though they cannot speak and thus must respond non-verbally.

Moonbeast

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 16 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Nocturnal horrors that are normally content to dream in their lairs, but will at some point emerge to slay whoever has possession of a certain gemstone.

Artifact of Attraction: Each moonbeast is bound to a specific pearl-like gem called a moonstone, which are sometimes worked into expensive jewelry or magic items. Anyone who takes ownership of a moonstone for several weeks has to succeed at a Will save or become obessed with it, unwilling to relinquish it for any reason.
Artifact of Death: Unfortunately for the moonstone's owner, at some point the moonbeast bound to it will awaken and begin steadily tracking the item down to try and kill the owner. Weirdly enough, moonbeasts quickly lose interest in their moonstones after recovering them, and more often than not abandon the things as they return to their lairs, thus allowing others to take possession of the gems and begin the cycle anew.
Combat Tentacles: They are in fact mostly tentacles, drag themselves forward by them, and can make ten tentacle rake attacks each round, potentially grappling and constricting foes they hit.
Eldritch Abomination: Moonbeasts are squishy, slimy cylinders of flesh 20 to 30 feet high, with rings of barbed tentacles encircling either end of their trunks, and a set of eyestalks on each end of their bodies as well. Despite their size, they're capable of squeezing through a five-foot square, and they leave a trail of glistening slime behind them. Nobody knows where moonbeasts come from, only that they obviously have no part in the natural world.
Invisible Monsters: They can cast improved invisibility at will, and thus it's easier to detect a moonbeast by its horrid smell and the noises it makes while attacking.
Shock and Awe: Among their other offensive magic, moonbeasts can cast lightning bolt at will and chain lightning once per day.

Mooncalf

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E, 4E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Winged, tentacled monsters sometimes encountered on mountains and hilltops, and rumored to fly down to earth from the dark side of the moon.

Combat Tentacles: A mooncalf has six short tentacles that it uses for close combat and two long tentacles that it uses to attack at a distance.
Extreme Omnivore: Examination of dead mooncalves reveals that their bodies are essentially alchemical laboratories, capable of distilling and dissolving nearly any substance. In effect, mooncalves can digest nearly anything that they eat, and somehow absorb information from what they consume, whether biological or inorganic. Unfortunately, mooncalves crave variety, dislike eating the same material twice, and consider two different intelligent beings to be two different meals.
Intrigued by Humanity: The extraterrestrial "moongods" who created the mooncalves are intrigued by the worlds below them, but cannot survive in atmospheres. So they spawned the mooncalves as biological probes, sending them down to glean information from the worlds of humanoids by eating matter there (including those humanoids) and observing major events, especially conflicts... and some mooncalves go so far as to foster cults or spy networks to cause disasters they can study.
Non-Indicative Name: "Mooncalf" certainly doesn't bring to mind the image of a winged, tentacled monstrosity that can eat literally anything.
Seers: Advanced mooncalves learn divination magic to help them predict calamities they can then observe, leading their species to be viewed as harbingers of doom.
Starfish Aliens: Mooncalves are giant flying cephalopod-like creatures, spawned by alien gods that exist in the void between worlds.
Winds of Destiny, Change!: Advanced moonlords can tap into their moongod heritage, using Harbinger feats to create a 50-mile aura centered around them that brings misfortune to other creatures — pestilence, dampened healing magic, a feeling of dread, etc.

Moonrat

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (3E)
Alignment: Always Evil

Normal-looking rodents whose intelligence and strength are enhanced by moonlight, allowing them to set into motion sinister plots.

The Chessmaster: When their intelligence is maximized by a full moon, moonrats are capable of schemes so subtle and intricate that by the time other creatures realize what's happening, it's too late to stop it.
Lunacy: Moonrats' base Strength and Intelligence are a paltry 2, but in moonlight they are enhanced, by +1 point in the light of a crescent moon, to +8 during a full moon, with additional negative modifiers for fog or cloud cover. Moonlight gives these creatures the ability to converse with each other, remember events of months past, operate complex devices, and formulate plans that will require multiple full moons to complete.
Swarm of Rats: Moonrats don't just attack en masse, hitting harder than ordinary rats, they can also be as intelligent as an average human.

Moorbounder

Origin: Critical Role
Classification: Beast (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (moorbounder), 3 (bristled moorbounder) (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Predatory marshland beasts, moorbounders are occasionally captured and tamed for use as mounts.

Horse of a Different Color: Moorbounders are prized mounts for those willing to capture and train them.
Our Monsters Are Weird: Take a panther. Give it the tusks of a warthog and the eyes of a frog. Optionally cover it with razor-sharp bristles five feet in length. You now have a moorbounder.
The Spiny: The bristled moorbounder is named for the blade-like bristles covering its body, which it can not only use to attack, but also deal damage to any creature foolish enough to try and grapple it.

Morkoth

Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 11 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Cruel and devious sea monsters who use hypnosis to lure victims into their maze-like lairs to be devoured.

Art Evolution: Morkoths began in 1st Edition roughly humanoid generic sea creatures, with four tentacles arranged like legs and arms, a central torso, and a squid-like head with a prominent beak. 2nd Edition redesigned them fairly drastically to resemble gracile, weedy fishlike creatures with toothy jaws, four slender arthropod legs, and bodies ending in octopus-like tentacles on which the creature moved. 3rd modified the second design to be much bulkier and more intimidating, generally making all parts of it larger and more imposing and presenting the morkoth as a more active and dangerous hunter. 5th Edition revisits the original look, but again makes it much more frightening and imposing than the original, with multiple tentacles, a serrated beak and a "shell" made of trophies from past kills. All this to say, even in-universe sources can't agree on what the monsters look like, just that they're some combination of fish, crab and squid.
Attack Reflector: If a morkoth successfully saves against a spell, or if a spell attack misses it, the monster can cause the magic to rebound against its attacker.
Collector of the Strange: With their current lore, morkoths obessively hoard everything from treasure to obscure lore to prisoners, and since their lairs can travel from plane to plane, their collections can be eclectic indeed.
Volo: Collectors of everything odd, unusual and valuable - hopefully not including you.
Greed: 5th Edition morkoths are motivated by both a yearning for conflict and a greedy desire for anything they don't possess. As such, they won't willingly part with anything from their hoards, and those in their lairs have a chance of discovering that one of their possessions has spontaneously vanished to appear in the morkoth's hoard.
Mix-and-Match Critters: Morkoths resembls fish with cephalopod tentacles and arthropod-like legs.
Pocket Dimension: While each morkoth's domain appears as a tropical island - if an unnerving dreamlike place shrouded in perpetual twilight - the entire area is essentially its own demiplane, able to travel to other planes and locations at random or in a sequence. Rarely, a morkoth gains the ability to control the movements of its island.
Psychic Powers: Morkoths are natural hypnotists, and shape the tunnels of their lairs to amplify their powers in order to lure and befuddle prey.
Retcon: 5th Edition greatly expanded their backstory, turning morkoths from mere sea monsters to the byproduct of a dead god inhabiting roving extraplanar islands. Originally ambivalent about treasure and prone to eating any captives, morkoths became greedy hoarders who considered prisoners part of their possessions.
Took a Level in Badass: Past morkoths had purely physical attacks, with their only supernatural abilities being their spell reflection and hypnotic tunnels. But in 5th Edition, morkoths are full-fledged spellcasters equivalent to an 11th-level mage.

Mortai

Alignment: Chaotic Good or Neutral Good

Immense, cloud-like beings who drift through the skies above the Wilderness of the Beastlands.

Attack Its Weak Point: While their cloudy forms are quite difficult to harm, mortai do have glowing radiant cores that are vulnerable to physical damage (from sufficiently enchanted weapons). "'Course, finding a sphere 10 feet across in a cloud encompassing a couple of cubic miles wouldn't be an easy feat, especially if the mortai were throwing lightning at the bashers trying to find the needle in the haystack."
Cumulonemesis: A rare Good example. In their "natural" forms, mortai resemble nothing other than miles-wide clouds.
Genius Loci: One theory about the mortai is that they're manifestations of the Beastland's planar life force.
Karmic Trickster: Mortai are usually content to drift and observe, but if they spy a creature below that seems to be taking itself too seriously, mortai might prank them by repeatedly knocking their hat off with strategic gusts of wind, or send a Personal Raincloud to follow them around.
Mind Hive: Another theory about mortai's origins is that they're congregations of lesser wind spirits, one seemingly supported by accounts that those conversing with mortai have heard laughter and voices within the creature's cloudy form.
No-Sell: Physical attacks just don't do anything to a mortai's cloudy body.
Seers: They can cast legend lore, and if approached respectfully might share their wisdom or information with mortals. Though mortai are also known to conceal their advice in riddles or half-answers, if they think the supplicant would be better served discovering the answer themself.
Shock and Awe: When roused to anger, mortai can throw lightning bolts at will, while crackling and glowing like a thunderhead in a storm.
Sky Face: Mortai can assume this form when interacting with lesser creatures, so that "great faces of wisdom and beauty" appear in their clouds.
Weather Manipulation: They know magic like control weather, gust of wind, ice storm, wind wall, and so on.

Mu Spore

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 21 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

60-foot-tall ambulatory fungi that wander in dark places, attacking and consuming everything they encounter.

Breath Weapon: They can "cough" out a cloud of spores in a huge cone, which burrow into other creatures, dealing heavy nonspecified damage.
Combat Tentacles: Mu spores have tendrils they can use to attack and grab opponents.
Fungus Humongous: They look something like walking toadstools the size of redwood trees.
Sticky Situation: Beyond its combat tentacles, a mu spore is also covered with sticky tendrils dangling over its body, which can yank weapons out of attackers' hands, or restrain those that attack the monster with their natural weapons.
Swallowed Whole: Their "heads" are mostly a wide, toothy maw they can use to swallow opponents they grab with their tentacles or hit with their bite attack.

Muckdweller

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Foot-tall, intelligent, bipedal amphibians that live a simple tribal existence in marshes and swamps.

A Handful for an Eye: Their favored hunting tactic is to ambush prey by squirting water in its eye, blinding the victim for a round.
Intelligent Gerbil: Even though they're fully sapient, muckdwellers are more like bipedal gila monsters or tiny dinosaurs than they are Lizard Folk. They build crude shelters of twigs, straw and mud primarily to hide themselves from predators, since exposure to the elements doesn't bother them much, and they lack the manual dexterity to make tools beyond simple reed rafts. Muckdwellers have little in the way of culture beyond vague nature worship, and are primarily concerned with the survival of the fittest.
Made a Slave: They often end up enslaved by larger, more sophisticated (relatively speaking) creatures like lizardfolk and kuo-toa. Though their 2nd Edition entry notes that muckdwellers will voluntarily serve the former, recognizing lizardfolk a "superior species."

Mudman

Classification: Elemental Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (4E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Mindless, man-shaped masses of muck that arise where enchanted waters have evaporated.

Dishing Out Dirt: Mudmen attack by hurling muck at their opponents, slowing their movement with each hit as the mud hardens on impact. If the victim's movement reaches 0, they begin to suffocate from the mud covering their mouth and nose.
Magic Eater: They feed upon the residual dweomer left on the bottom of the pools they inhabit.
Suicide Attack: If an opponent comes within 10 feet of a mudman, it will literally hurl itself at its opponent, destroying the mudman but greatly slowing its victim's movement.
Swamp Monster: They're Muck Monsters composed of swamp mud.

Mujina

Origin: Mystara
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Faceless beings who disguise themselves as normal humans to engage in theft and murder.

Always Chaotic Evil: The "best" mujina merely rob and terrify humans, the rest infiltrate human society by posing as servants or hirelings, waiting for the right moment to go on a killing spree. They have no society of their own, leading some to speculate that mujina were put on Mystara to "trim" the human population.
Black Speech: They have their own racial language, "which consists of a series of oddly pitched hollow moans and howls — quite unpleasant to the ears of normal humans, demihumans, and humanoids."
The Blank: Mujina's key feature is their lack of facial features.
Ditto Aliens: They're noted to be "physically and emotionally identical to all others of their kind of the same gender." This leads mujina to have Fantastic Racism towards more individualistic species, especially humans, as the most diverse race.
Lie to the Beholder: They can magically disguise themselves with whatever face they wish, until the effect is dispelled or the mujina decides to drop it when they attack. They thus have a habit of hiding or destroying magic items like gems of true seeing or medallions of ESP that might blow their cover.
One-Handed Zweihänder: Mujina are freakishly strong, allowing them to not just wield anything short of a lance or polearm one-handed, but Dual Wield them as well.
Sadly Mythtaken: The mujina of Japanese Mythology is actually a Shapeshifting Trickster badger often confused with the tanuki, while the noppera-bō or "faceless ghost" is an entirely different youkai. But Lafcadio Hearn's story about faceless ghosts in Kwaidan was titled "Mujina" because it invovled shapeshifting badgers disguising themselves as faceless ghosts, so here we are.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Any creature with 5 or fewer Hit Dice who sees a mujina's blank face has to run away in fear for a few rounds, with No Saving Throw.
Was Once a Man: Mujina don't reproduce normally, leading some Mystaran sages to speculate that an Immortal is making them from followers who never stood out from the crowd, cursing them to be literally faceless. Others wonder about a connection to doppelgangers.

Mul

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_mul_4e.png

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Humanoid (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E), 4 (4E)
Playable: 2E-4E
Alignment: Any Neutral

Forcibly-bred dwarf-human hybrids, inheriting the best characteristics of both races, but only so they can be subject to backbreaking labor or gladiatoral combat.

Bald Head of Toughness: Muls are incredibly tough, and nearly all of them, male or female, are bald.
Canon Immigrant: 4th Edition brought back muls for its Dark Sun update, but also featured suggestions for using them in settings beyond Athas, for example as the result of a drow breeding program.
Child by Rape: The default assumption is that mul conceptions were ordered by slaveowners, which means the parents often resent the resulting child.
Death by Childbirth: Their 2E lore explains that mul pregnancies are difficult due to "unnatural child" involved — conception can take months, the pregnancy lasts for a full year, and the mother often dies during pregnancy or childbirth, with dwarven mothers faring slightly better. 4E doesn't mention any of this.
Gilded Cage: Successful mul gladiators are treated as lucrative investments by their owners, and often end up with teams of other slaves assigned to bring them food and drink on command, or bathe them in oil. But however luxurious their lifestyle, the mul is never allowed to forget that they're someone's property. "'Pampered like a mul' is an expression often bandied about by common folk, but it burns in the ears of the muls who have lived it."
Half-Human Hybrid: As mentioned, they're dwarf-human hybrids, combining the hardiness of the former with the dexterity of the latter. Surprisingly, muls turn out taller than the average human, averaging between six and seven feet tall.
Mage Species: 2nd Edition states that roughly half of all muls develop a psionic wild talent, and 3rd Edition gives them three extra power points at first level to manifest their inborn abilities.
Meaningful Name: Like mules, they're a hybrid race that's traditionally sterile. Note that in-universe, the name "mul" derives from the dwarvish mul-zhennedar, which simply means "strength." While pronunciation can vary from "mull" to "mool" to "mule," the first is generally considered the correct pronunciation, while the last is treated as an insult.
Servant Race: Muls exist to toil for others, whether on construction crews or in the arena. They have no real culture of their own, since most of them are enslaved, and their sterility keeps them from forming families and communities. Only about 20% of muls are free, and they must still live with the threat of being captured and resold by slavers, as a single mul can be more profitable than a dozen human slaves.
Slave Brand: Enslaved muls' heads are tattooed to indicate who their owners are — "the centered three-eyed skulls are the marks of the guard slaves of the templars of Urik, while swirling ram's horns indicate the Merchant House of Tsalaxa," and so on. They receive additional tattoos denoting their preferred weapons, allowing arena handlers to know what to equip them with at a glance, as well as to celebrate victories. While enslaved muls accept their tattoos as a fact of life, the rare free muls hate them, so that even mentioning them can be a Berserk Button.
Super-Toughness: Muls have incredible toughness and stamina, allowing them to do continuous heavy labor for 24 hours straight, or do light exercise like walking or training for two days straight, before needing just eight hours of rest to recover (though they still prefer a human sleep cycle of 16 hours awake, 8 hours asleep). 4th Edition also gives muls the "Incredible Toughness" racial power that lets them shrug off ongoing damage or a dazed, slowed, stunned or weakened effect, once per combat encounter.
True-Breeding Hybrid: Explicitly averted in their 2nd and 3rd Edition presentations, in which muls are sterile, though 4th Edition is mum on the matter.

Murder Comet

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Elemental (5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Stone heads wreathed in flame that scream through Wildspace, smashing any ships they come across.

Anti-Structure: They have the "Siege Monster" trait, letting them deal double damage to structures and objects like starships.
Defeat Equals Explosion: When slain, murder comets explode in a 20-foot-radius ball of fire.
Elemental Embodiment: Murder comets are created when an evil spellcaster combines the essences of earth and fire elementals into a single destructive creature.
Flying Face: They're shaped like such, flying through space. A spellcaster who chooses to bind their spirit to a murder comet will cause it to take on their own likeness.
Playing with Fire: Murder comets are wreathed in flame, dealing extra fire damage to whatever they slam into, and they can also spit fire as a ranged attack.
Super-Speed: They have an incredible 120-foot fly speed, moving so fast they don't provoke attacks of opportunity as they blaze past opponents, which makes them perfectly suited for Hit-and-Run Tactics.

Mutate

Classification: Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: Varies
Alignment: Same as base creature

Mutants: A creature exposed to the Far Realm's energies risks developing mutations. As the powers of the Far Realm rewrite the fundamentals of the creature's existence, it transforms and exhibits physical characteristics associated with the Far Realm. Once the Far Realm influence abates, the mutate changes back.

Myconid

Classification: Plant (3E, 5E), Fey Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (junior worker) to 7 (sovereign) (3E); 3 (guard) to 4 (sovereign); 0 (scout), 1/2 (adult), 2 (sovereign) (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Also known as "fungus ones," these intelligent, mobile mushroom folk are distrustful of outsiders, but generally shy and nonviolent, making them a rarity among the Underdark's inhabitants.

Animate Dead: One type of myconid spore infests corpses, causing them to rise as mindless servants. They do whatever work there aren't enough myconids to carry out.
Large and in Charge: Myconids grow over the course of their lives, but the sovereign is always the tallest myconid (eleven feet). If it dies, another myconid will grow to eleven feet tall and take over.
Mushroom Man: Myconids are intelligent, ambulatory fungi that live in the Underdark.
Mushroom Samba: Pun aside, myconids structure their days into three parts: eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, and eight hours of a mind-melding hallucinatory state caused by their spores.
Telepathy: One type of spore myconids can emit allows for telepathic communication, both between themselves and with outsiders.

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