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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.

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So-Sy

Soarwhale

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 15 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Creatures resembling colossal baleen whales that drift through the skies rather than the ocean. They're docile enough to be domesticated and used for transporting passengers and cargo.

Living Gasbag: They're basically organic blimps 40 feet wide and 80 feet long, and can be outfitted with gondolas or howdahs to carry over 130,000 pounds.
The Paralyzer: When threatened, a soarwhale can empty its air bladders as a defense mechanism. This causes the soarwhale to plummet a hundred feet before stabilizing, but leaves a cloud of gas in its prior position that can paralyze anything around it, which is very much a bad thing to have happen a mile above the ground.
Space Whale: Of the "Air Whale" variant. Sages agree that the odds of such a thing occuring naturally are slim to none, but if some mage had a hand in soarwhales' creation, there are no records of it.

Sorrowfish

Origin: Critical Role
Classification: Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: 0 (individual), 6 (swarm) (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Tiny aberrant fish that dwell in deep ocean trenches, where they sometimes fall under malign influences.

Emotion Bomb: If a sorrowfish school suffers damage, it emanates a "virulent sorrow" that can cause adjacent creatures to become despondant, making them sluggish in their next round of combat.
Meaningful Name: One theory is that sorrowfish are named for the flavor of their flesh, "which is distasteful enough to put the creatures that eat them in a dismal mood."
The Swarm: An individual sorrowfish is barely a threat, but a school of them is much more dangerous. Those caught in the school's space are subjected to both a swarm of bites as well as a psionic attack that both damages and stuns victims.
The Symbiote: Sorrowfish often hide from predators among the tentacles of a death embrace, which can petrify creatures.

Sorrowsworn

The Angry (5e)

Classification: Shadow Humanoid (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 25 (4E); 1/4 (the Wretched), 7 (the Lost), 9 (the Lonely), 11 (the Hungry), 13 (the Angry) (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned (4E), Neutral Evil (5E)

Creatures native to the Shadowfell, formed of congealed negative emotions felt by people who travel there.

Anthropomorphic Personification: Each sorrowsworn personifies a different aspect of despair or distress.
Extreme Omnivore: These Hungry consume all life and energy they encounter, eating flesh and drinking screams.
Multiple Head Case: Each of the Angry has two heads, which constantly bicker with one another until they find something else to vent their wrath on.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: The Lost try to embrace any creatures they can reach, attempting to find solace in the contact. Aside from the horror of being embraced by such a thing, the victim experiences a flood of fear and panic.
Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Sorrowsworn are dangerous monsters, each being a powerful mid-game boss or late-game Elite Mook. But they are also so utterly miserable that you have to feel sorry for them.
You Will Not Evade Me: The Lonely launch their harpoon-like arms to drag their victims close.
Zerg Rush: The Wretched are individually very weak, but gather in large packs to scour the Shadowfell for prey. When they find a creature, they surge forward to sink their fangs into their victims.

Soul Shaker

Classification: Undead (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Tangled masses of grasping undead limbs, born from necromantic experiments or the congregation of a number of crawling claws.

Asteroids Monster: When reduced to 0 hit points, a soul shaker explodes into multiple crawling claws. If at least two of them survive, about a week later they teleport to the site of the soul shaker's destruction and merge together, re-forming the monster.
Life Drain: They can drain vitality from a grappled victim, dealing necrotic damage and recovering an equal amount of hit points.
Mind Control: Beyond using telepathy to communicate, soul shakers can cast the geas spell once per day, usually on a weak-willed individual the undead then uses as a lure to draw in other victims.
Mind Hive: Soul shakers possess fragments of memory from their component limbs' previous owners, which can influence their behavior.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: They're nothing but arms. However, rather than having multiple attacks, soul shakers can make only one "Crushing Grasp" action where it focuses its many hands on grabbing and grappling a single target.

Souleater

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

Large, mist-shrouded fiends from the Gray Waste of Hades, feared for consuming the very essence of their victims.

Achilles' Heel: Their connection to negative energy makes them vulnerable to Turn Undead attempts, which can daze a souleater.
Level Drain: Souleaters emanate an aura of negative energy, which other creatures can feel as if a cold wind is swirling towards the monster. This automatically inflicts a negative level on all creatures within 30 feet, and also interferes with incarnum-using classes attempting to shape and bind soulmelds or allocate essentia.
Monster Mouth: Their main features (and most dangerous weapons) are huge maws filled with More Teeth than the Osmond Family.
Soul Eating: Unsurprisingly, these fiends consume the souls of any creature that dies within their negative energy aura, gaining hit points as well as a long-lasting bonus on attack rolls and saving throws for every soul consumed. Anyone who becomes a souleater's prey cannot be revived until the fiend is destroyed, and even then it takes magic like true resurrection, wish or miracle to bring them back.
Telepathy: They are The Speechless, but can telepathically communicate with anyone who has a language.

Soulspark

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (least) to 7 (greater) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Neutral, Neutral Good, or Neutral Evil

Sentient embodiments of incarnum, which can form spontaneously or at the behest of a meldshaper.

Diverting Power: Soulsparks have an essentia reserve, which they can invest into a Healing Factor, or bonuses to attacks or defense, as needed on a round-by-round basis.
Familiar: They can be created to serve as such by a meldshaper, growing more powerful based on which chakra they're bound to.
Non-Elemental: They attack with "soul blast"s that deal undefined damage.
Our Souls Are Different: Soulsparks are made of incarnum, the magical essence of souls in the multiverse, though not any singular soul in particular, and fortunately a soulspark's destruction doesn't have any negative effect on the souls involved.
Will-o'-the-Wisp: They're a spin on the trope, being free-floating balls of light that can be as dim as a candle or as bright as a sunrod, though they're considered native outsiders rather than aberrations, as 3rd Edition will-o-wisps were classified. Soulsparks tend to act according to their alignments, so evil ones will look for opportunities to harm other creatures when they least suspect it.

Space Clown

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Fiend (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Fiend-tainted clowns who prowl Wildspace in garish starships, or set up carnival tents on worlds to lure in victims.

Defeat Equals Explosion: When slain, space clowns pop like balloons, splashing adjacent creatures with acid.
Electric Joybuzzer: Not explicit, but they do have a "Shock" melee attack that deals a good bit of lightning damage.
Helpless with Laughter: Their colorful ray guns deal psychic damage, and can also cause victims to be incapacitated with laughter as they find everything they see or hear to be hilariously funny.
Lie to the Beholder: Three times per day they can take on a phantasmal form, cloaking themselves in an illusion to appear to be something like a child or floating balloon, though one that won't hold up to close physical inspection.
Monster Clown: In SPACE! Once mortal worshippers of a god of revelry, they were transformed into fiends after becoming addicted to the elixir "Thrill Joy," distilled from demon ichor and the nectar of the bozo flower. An encounter with the dohwar led to the space clowns acquiring spelljammer helms and spreading across the multiverse, bringing the "love and fear of clowns" with them.
Shout-Out: You could call them killer clowns from Wildspace.
To Serve Man: They feed upon humanoid flesh.
With Catlike Tread: Subverted; their squeaky shoes can be heard up to 30 feet away, and interfere with any attempts at stealth, except this squeaking is silenced when a space clown dons an illusory disguise.

Space Hamster

Giant space hamster (5e)

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Beast (giant), Monstrosity (miniature) (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned (giant), Neutral Good (miniature)

Bear-sized rodents introduced to Wildspace by gnomes, to serve as pack animals, livestock and even power sources. Wizards have also used magic to miniaturize giant space hamsters, which are sometimes introduced to Material Plane worlds and come to be known as "hamsters."

Alien Animals: 5th Edition asserts that when a giant space hamster is magically miniaturized, the resulting creature becomes smarter and telepathic. Sure enough, space hamsters have a slightly higher Intelligence than ogres and are sapient enough to have an alignment, but they usually keep their telepathic abilities hidden from other creatures.
Explosive Breeder: Giant space hamsters grow to maturity in two years, can have several litters per year, and remain fertile for half their 18-year lifespan. Fortunately, they're easy prey for carnivores, which can keep a wild population in check.
Eye Scream: Tiny space hamsters can make a "Go for the Eyes" attack, potentially blinding an opponent for a round.
Fantastic Livestock: Gnomes find giant space hamster meat, or "spaham," quite tasty. So do githyanki.
Hamster-Wheel Power: Gnomish spelljammer ships sometimes use giant space hamster wheels as a power source.
Oxymoronic Being: The miniature giant space hamster.
Underground Monkey: Taken to the point of self-parody. The 2E Monstrous Compendium — Spelljammer Appendix I explains that the "worst aspect of the giant space hamster (aside from its ludicrous existence)" is how easily new variants of it can be created by gnomish breeders. Mentioned but not statted are the woolly, mottled, ochre, Oriental, Occidental, chartreuse, spotted, not-quite-so-spotted, only-a-little-spotted, plaid, cave-dwelling, three-toed, lesser, greater, greater lesser, lesser greater, albino and flightless giant space hamster subspecies. And then there are the really weird ones: subterranean, sabre-toothed, rather wild, invisible, sylvan/jungle, armor-plated, yellow musk, ethereal (a misnomer: only their flesh is, giving them the disturbing appearance of a giant skeletal hamster), carnivorous flying, two-headed Lernaen bombardier, fire-breathing phase doppelganger, great horned, and abominable giant space hamsters, and of course the huge but harmless Tyrannohamsterus rex. There are also legends of a "giant space hamster of ill omen," also known as Woolly Rupert, said to be colossal, intelligent, a powerful spellcaster, and prone to squashing any gnomes he comes across beneath his fearsome paws.

Spawn of Juiblex

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_spawn_of_jubilex_3e.jpg

Classification: Elemental (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (lesser), 10 (greater), 14 (elder) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Revolting masses of infernal slime spawned from the Demon Lord of Ooze.

Combat Tentacles: A spawn of Juiblex can cover foes with a thick coat of slime and subsequently animate it, causing the slime to sprout tentacles and attack nearby creatures.
Extra Eyes: About the only features these fetid oozes have are lots of red eyes dotting their surface, glaring hatefully and hungrily at any creatures around them.
Giant Wall of Watery Doom: Elder spawns of Juiblex are Gargantuan slime monsters, so they're capable of doing this on their own. Stories speak of them blotting out the sun like a tidal wave before crashing over a town, leaving only ruins and bones behind.
Gone Horribly Wrong: These monsters were created when Zuggtmoy, Demon Queen of Fungi, attempted to banish her rival demon lord to another plane. Instead she succeeded in sending part of Juiblex's essence to the Elemental Plane of Water, where it polluted the elemental matter around it until the natives evicted the source of corruption. This inadvertantly created a "Demiplane of Filth" inhabited by the rogue shard of Juiblex's essence, while scattering the spawn of Juiblex across the Material Plane at the same time.
Muck Monster: A spawn of Juiblex is a nauseating mass of toxic sludge, capable of flowing over even difficult terrain faster than a man can run. Anything engulfed by it takes damage and may be sickened, or even suffer Constitution damage from the larger specimens.
Non-Elemental: The damage dealt by this demonic sludge's corrupting touch is undefined, so there are few defenses against it.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Spawn of Juiblex are so horrific in appearance that other creatures have to save or be forced to retreat from the monsters.
Truly Single Parent: Once it has consumed enough food, a spawn of any size splits off a new lesser spawn.

Spawn of Kyuss

Origin: Greyhawk
Classification: Undead (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E, 5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Sometimes known as "sons of Kyuss," these zombies are created by followers of that Elder Evil. Their undead bodies are infested with, and controlled by, a swarm of parasitic worms.

Deceased and Diseased: Their 3rd Edition stats have their slam attacks transmit a disease known as Kyuss' Gift, which deals both Constitution and Wisdom damage as the victim's flesh and mind rot away.
Logical Weakness: In 3rd Edition, using a spell like remove curse or remove disease destroys the undead's parasitic worms, rendering it an ordinary zombie.
The Virus: Scores of little green worms crawl in and out of a spawn of Kyuss. If a worm penetrates a humanoid, it makes its way to the creature's brain, where it kills its host and animates the corpse, transforming it into a spawn of Kyuss that breeds more worms.
The Worm That Walks: Downplayed. They are not fully made of worms, but as time goes on their bodies are covered by more and more worms until it's hard to make out the original corpse. Their creator is certainly this.

Spawn of Tiamat

Yes. I am blessed. I have borne Tiamat's child in Her stead. Holy be Her plans, and may those that use this godslayer come to fruition... swiftly.

— Kazeranthamus, blue dragon

Tiamat, Goddess of Evil Dragonkind, has struggled against her brother Bahamut in an eons-long conflict known as the Dragonfall War. In an effort to tip the balance decisively in her favor, Tiamat has exerted her influence on the eggs of chromatic dragons, causing them to hatch into a wide variety of dragonblooded creatures that have since bred true. Individually, each of these dragonspawn is a dangerous predator or soldier, but together they form a terrible army meant to conquer the world for the Chromatic Dragon Queen. Dragonspawn usually congregate in packs with their own kind, but willingly work with chromatic dragons, or even other evil creatures such as hobgoblins — but those allies should remember that the spawn of Tiamat are ultimately loyal only to their creator.

Beast of Battle: All of the non-humanoid spawn of Tiamat can serve effectively as war-beasts or mounts.
Draconic Humanoid: Some spawn of Tiamat are bipedal, and classified as Monstrous Humanoids in 3rd Edition.
Dragon Knight: Their (dragonblood) subtype qualifies them for various feats and Prestige Classes with this theme, meaning that an above-average spawn can easily pick up additional powers like wings or attacks which channel the element of their parent's Breath Weapon.
Elemental Powers: All spawn of Tiamat are immune to the energy type associated with their "parent" dragon breed, and many have attacks that deal the same energy damage as well.
Friendly Fireproof: Conferred by the "Tiamat's Blessing" ability certain dragonspawn share. For example, bluespawn stormlizards will grant any other spawn within 5 feet (this includes their riders) immunity to electricity, even if they have a non-blue dragon heritage.
Our Dragons Are Different: All dragonspawn have an obvious draconic heritage, but they fall short of being classified as true Dragons, and instead have the (dragonblood) subtype. This means that they are classified as either Magical Beasts or Monstrous Humanoids, but certain spells and magic items affect them as if they were true Dragons.

Blackspawn Corruptor

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_blackspawn_corrupter_3e.jpg

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

Stunted but powerful humanoids usually found alone in dismal swamps, guarding secret locations for Tiamat.

Acid Attack: They can splash all those near their pool of putrid water, dealing acid damage and potentially blinding victims for a few rounds.
Friendly Fireproof: Unlike other spawn of Tiamat, blackspawn corruptors can turn this ability off at will. They frequently use this fact to bully any dragonspawn allies.
Poisonous Person: Their bite carries a Strength-damaging poison, while their noxious presence is enough to befoul non-magical liquid in a 30-foot radius, so that anything that consumes it has to save or take permanent Strength drain.
Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Corruptors can target other creatures with a "Watery Death Urge," giving them a compulsion to leap into the dragonspawn's acidic, poisonous pool.
Wicked Witch: They're hybrids of black dragons and green hags, giving them disturbingly crone-like facial features. Their black dragon fathers abandon them upon birth, and their hag mothers similarly dump them in some swamp. This can bring corruptors into conflict with other hags, who don't appreciate the dragonspawn spoiling perfectly good swamp water.

Blackspawn Raider

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

Cunning and vicious hunters that only put aside their competition for kills when faced with the prospect of slaying a metallic dragon.

Breath Weapon: They can breathe a line of acid.
Glory Seeker: Blackspawn raiders constantly compete for the glory of killing the biggest and most dangerous targets.
Matriarchy: Their leaders are "spawnmothers" who have at least five living adult children. Since blackspawn raiders are Chaotic Evil, this leads to vicious politics where spawnmothers try to get each others' children killed in dangerous assignments, or steal eggs from fertile mothers to increase their own standing.
Ninja: Their best ambushers train to become "exterminators," taking ranks in the ninja class.
Religious Bruiser: They're vicious killers, but blackspawn raiders take their role as "the Children of Tiamat" seriously, and when they slay and ritualistically devour metallic dragons, they consider it an act of worship.

Blackspawn Stalker

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

Horrible combinations of dragon and spider, and expert hunters and trappers.

Breeding Cult: Blackspawn stalkers believe that the best way to serve Tiamat is by breeding her the ultimate servant. As such, they try to reproduce as much as possible, forming mated pairs and distributing their eggs among a half-dozen nests each year.
Giant Spider: They're Large-sized, spider-like creatures with a 10-foot legspan and weigh 5,000 pounds.
Projectile Webbing: They can throw webs like nets to entangle creatures.
Super Spit: Rather than an official breath weapon, blackspawn stalkers can spit globs of acid at a single target up to 60 feet away.

Bluespawn Ambusher

Classifiaction: Magical Beast
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

These pack hunters bury themselves underground before bursting out to attack prey with their claws, horns and electricity bursts.

Dig Attack: Bluespawn ambushers can burrow through earth and stone as fast as they can walk, and will either lie in wait beneath the surface until prey approaches, or burrow towards prey before erupting to the attack.
Horn Attack: They can make gore attacks with their facial horns, unlike proper blue dragons with which they share a skull structure.
Shock and Awe: They can periodically blast anything within 10 feet with electrcity, and in protracted combats usually duck back underground while this ability recharges.

Bluespawn Burrower

Classification: Magical Beast
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Other dragonspawn use these creatures to erect earthworks or glass monuments to their queen, but they're just as capable in combat thanks to their massive claws and electrified tails.

Beware My Stinger Tail: Their tails are not just spiked like the heads of maces, they also constantly crackle with electricity for additional damage.
Elemental Barrier: Bluespawn burrowers carry a potent electrical charge that lashes out at anything that grapples or makes a melee attack aginst them, and enemies wearing metal armor take a penalty on the resulting saving throw.
Shock and Awe: They can make a conical "lightning sweep" attack three times per day.

Bluespawn Godslayer

Classifiaction: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E), 22 (4E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Giant draconic humanoids that excel at killing dragons and extraplanar creatures.

Crafted from Animals: Their huge, heavy shields are crafted from dragon skulls.
The Friend Nobody Likes: Between their arrogance and talent at killing fellow dragonblooded creatures, other spawn of Tiamat, and even dragons who aren't wholly devoted to Tiamat, tend to hate and fear godslayers.
Hunter of Monsters: Godslayers get damage bonuses when fighting dragons or outsiders.
Punched Across the Room: They make liberal use of their Awesome Blow feat to send enemies flying, while keeping close enough to hit them again when their victim tries to get off the ground.
Shock and Awe: Their enormous swords don't have enchantments on them to deal lightning damage, all the electricity crackling around them is coming from their wielders.
Sterility Plague: Unlike most spawn of Tiamat, bluespawn godslayers are sterile and can only be born to blue dragon parents who have earned Tiamat's favor, or are lairing near an enemy the Dragon Queen wants dead. This just makes bluespawn godslayers consider themselves Tiamat's favorites.

Bluespawn Stoneglider

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

Insectoid dragonspawn used as guard animals by the cult of Tiamat.

Big Creepy-Crawlies: Bluespawn stonegliders look something like human-sized, draconic termites.
Dungeon Bypass: They have the "Earth Glide" ability of xorn and similar earth creatures, allowing stonegliders to move through earth and rock as easily as a fish swims through water. Stonegliders use this ability to ambush intruders or retreat from a losing fight.
Hitbox Dissonance: So long as they move more than 5 feet each round, bluespawn earthgliders gain a blur effect that can cause attacks to miss them.
Psychic Link: While each earthglider is an autonomous entity, they share a group awareness that lets them more easily flank enemies together, and grants them a bonus on attack rolls so long as two or more of them are fighting the same foe. This means that lone earthgliders usually retreat to find more of their kind.
Shock and Awe: Their bite attacks are electrified, and may stun victims.

Bluespawn Stormlizard

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

These draconic quadrupeds serve ably as war mounts, crashing into the enemy like rhinos and electrifying foes caught between them.

Angsty Surviving Twin: Any bluespawn stormlizard that survives the loss of its sibling will fly into a berserk rage until it too is slain. Even simple separation can be dangerous, with the stormlizard refusing to eat until its sibling returns.
Combination Attack: Bluespawn stormlizards don't just generate electricity, it arcs between them and others of their kind. As a swift action they can cause a line of electricity to fire from their horn to another stormlizard within 100 feet, dealing damage to anything in a line between the two spawn.
Hereditary Twinhood: All bluespawn stormlizards are born same-sex twins hatched from the same eggs. They spend their lives together, take another pair of twins as mates, and use the same lair for egg laying. Once the resulting sets of twins are born, the pairs break up, taking the twins of the same sex with them to raise them.
Horn Attack: They can make devastating gore attacks with their horn on a charge.
Shock and Awe: Aside from arcing electricity between their horns, bluespawn stormlizards can fire a 100-foot line of electricity every few rounds.

Greenspawn Leaper

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

These agile creatures are swift climbers, allowing them to serve as arboreal predators or mounts for smaller spawn of Tiamat.

Combat Pragmatist: Greenspawn leapers compete by challenging each other to races through the forest canopy, with the loser being the first to slip up and fall or balk at attempting a jump or risky climb. They're cunning enough creatures to deliberately fall behind in an attempt to bait an opponent into being the first to reach what they know is a dangerously weak tree branch.
Compete for the Maiden's Hand: During their triannual mating season, male greenspawn leapers invade a female's territory, racing against each other for the right to breed with her. This means that the lucky winner faces a long trip home once the female tires of him, and they may cross several rival males' territory only to find that their home stretch of forest has been claimed by a neighbor.
Poisonous Person: Once per day, a greenspawn leaper can release a cloud of poison that affects everything within 5 feet of them. The poison is absorbed through the skin, at which point it converts to acid and damages victims.
Wall Crawl: They have an impressive climb speed, which is usually employed to scramble through the forest canopy of their preferred territory, but can be applied elsewhere if the leapers join an army of other spawn of Tiamat.

Greenspawn Razorfiend

Classification: Magical Beast
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

These voracious predators use their modified wings as weapons, and are equally dangerous in forests and swamps.

Breath Weapon: They can spray a cone of acid every few rounds (since 3rd Edition's green dragons dealt acid damage with their breath weapons rather than poison damage).
Dragon Hoard: Unlike most spawn of Tiamat, greenspawn razorfiends have inherited a proper draconic instinct for hoarding treature, and will collect coins and other shiny valuables in their lairs.
In a Single Bound: Greenspawn razorfiends can't quite fly with their wings, but they can use them to assist with jumping, resulting in a whopping +22 bonus on such skill checks.
Razor Wings: Their claw-tipped wings hit as hard as greatswords and have the Augmented Critical trait, so they're more likely to deal a Critical Hit.

Greenspawn Sneak

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

These small draconic humanoids serve the armies of Tiamat as scouts and skulkers.

Back Stab: They can deal Sneak Attack damage like Rogues against flanked or flat-footed foes.
In Harmony with Nature: Greenspawn sneaks are an interesting variant. Their outposts, positioned in woods or marshland bordering what they consider to be enemy territory, have a surprisingly small impact on the local ecosystem, since the sneaks have slow metabolisms and don't need to hunt much, and supplement their diets with wild plants they tend. But this isn't out of any love or respect for nature so much as a desire to evade detection by their victims.
Stealth Expert: Greenspawn sneaks have respectable bonuses on Hide and Move Silently checks, and are wholly dedicated to their roles as the reconnaissance arm of Tiamat's forces.

Greenspawn Zealot

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

Draconic humanoids who serve as the religious leaders of Tiamat's forces, and support other dragonspawn on the field of battle.

Life Drain: Their "Touch of Tiamat" ability deals damage to enemies they touch and simultaneously heals a dragon or dragonblooded creature (potentially the greenspawn zealot making the attack), up to a certain number of points of damage per day.
The Political Officer: Greenspawn zealots are essentially commissars, ensuring that other spawn of Tiamat are properly decidated to the Dragon Queen's cause. While this earns them the resentment of the more chaotic dragonspawn, few dare oppose Tiamat's faithful. This trait may make the greenspawn zealots the most dangerous spawn of Tiamat, as while they aren't the most powerful of her children, they are often the motivational force that marshalls their fellow dragonspawn into effective armies.
Warrior Monk: They live in monasteries and temples dedicated to Tiamat, where they train in warcraft and commune with their goddess.

Redspawn Arcaniss

Classifiaction: Monstrous Humanoid
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These draconic sorcerers provide magical support to Tiamat's armies, with a predictable affinity for destructive fire magic.

Born as an Adult: While most spawn of Tiamat age rapidly, redspawn arcanisses are hatched fully-grown and adult-sized, with an instinctive grasp of their spells. After a week of instruction on the lay of the land and their place in the world, they're ready to go off and form a new warband.
Feed It with Fire: They're not just immune to fire effects, they're healed by them. This includes their own fire spells, so redspawn arcanisses will happilly drop a fireball on themselves to recover health and damage foes in the same stirke.
Mage Species: All Redspawn Arcaniss are natural sorcerers.
Playing with Fire: Redspawn arcanisses cast fire spells at a boosted level. That said, they're not so obsessed with fire that they use it exclusively, so they also know spells like Melf's acid arrow or magic missile to bring against fire-resistant targets.
Religious Bruiser: They consider themselves "the Burning Ones of Tiamat," her favored children who will purge the world of nondragons and rule over what remains, and study a holy text called the Scrolls of Fire that was purportedly written by Tiamat herself.

Redspawn Berserker

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Ogre-sized draconic humanoids that fight as brutal shock infantry.

The Berserker: Subverted; despite their name, redspawn berserkers never go out of control during combat, and their entry notes that while they are innately chaotic creatures, they're unfailingly obedient to Tiamat or her representatives.
Counter-Attack: Redspawn berserkers prioritize attacking opponents who injured them with a melee strike in the previous round of combat, and gain a damage bonus against such foes.
Crafted from Animals: They're depicted with dragon-skull shields and boney morningstars, suggesting they've converted their conquests into wargear.

Redspawn Birther

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

Large, saurian dragonspawn who combine voracious hunger with unnatural fecundity.

Big Eater: They have an "insatiable need to devour other creatures," and when left unsupervised will eat anything from humans to rodents. The cult of Tiamat can try to regulate respawn birther's diets towards a specific result, and while the creatures will usually cooperate so long as they're given a steady supply of live victims, sometimes their greed leads to them being caged.
Friendly Fireproof: Averted; unlike other spawn of Tiamat, redspawn birthers don't convey "Tiamat's Blessing" on their allies. This allows them to activate their "Fire Shield" aura to harm their handlers if they're feeling ornery.
Hybrid Monster: Implied; the cult of Tiamat studied deepspawn's ability to replicate creatures they eat and somehow bred this ability into respawn birthers. Though it's noted that unlike with deepspawn, a redspawn birther has no control over its progeny.
Mook Maker: An "offscreen" case, in that their entry doesn't have rules describing the process, but redspawn birthers serve this role in Tiamat's armies. They're directed to consume dragonblooded creatures, or even rogue evil dragons, and somehow the furnace heat within redspawn birthers allows them to "fuse and meld" their prey inside of them, allowing the creatures to give birth to new dragonspawn, amalgams of all the things the birthers have eaten recently.
The Spiny: Redspawn birthers generate such intense heat that other creatures who come within 10 feet of them have to save or suffer from heat exhaustion, while those who actually strike one in melee will take fire damage. Incidentally, this means that unlike most creatures with the fire subtype, redspawn birthers don't take extra damage from cold attacks.
Swallowed Whole: Unsurprisingly, they can try to swallow smaller creatures they catch in their jaws.

Redspawn Firebelcher

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E), 12 (4E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (3E), Unaligned (4E)

These lumbering creatures can serve other dragonspawn as mounts, or as living artillery pieces.

Dumb Muscle: Redspawn firebelchers are rock stupid, with an Intelligence score of 1, dumber than some mundane animals. But they're just smart enough to be trained to work with other dragonspawn, after eating only a few of their kin.
Never Smile at a Crocodile: They're compared to crocodiles in general appearance and behavior, only they lounge around lava pools rather than in water.
Super Spit: They can "belch" fire up to 60 feet away, dealing heavy damage to targets directly hit by the attack, and lesser damage to those adjacent to that target.

Whitespawn Hordeling

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

The weakest dragonspawn, these small draconic humanoids are nomadic predators barely more intelligent than animals.

Breath Weapon: They can breathe a 30-foot cone of ice every few rounds for a bit of cold damage.
The Horde: Their only "organization," until other spawn of Tiamat rope them into a proper army, is as wandering bands of up to 150 hordelings.
Zerg Rush: Their sole strategy in combat.

Whitespawn Hunter

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

Brutish but crafty, these draconic humanoids are adept stalkers.

The Berserker: They derive status from strength and displays of aggression, so any who can fly into a battle rage become the tribe's leaders.
Chain Pain: Their berserkers carry spiked chains into battle.
Made a Slave: Whitespawn hunters aren't smart, but can see the value of slave labor, whether captive humanoids or the smaller, weaker whitespawn hordelings. Such slaves tend not to last long, and are unceremoniously eaten once they succumb to their poor conditions.
The Social Darwinist: Whitespawn hunter society, such as it is, is all about the strong persevering over the weak. Their eggs are abandoned with the expectation that the hatchlings will fight and devour their weaker siblings, their coming-of-age ritual involves two hunters bringing down prey but only one returning to the tribe with it, and they'll even turn on white dragons in desperate times. As a result, they view other whitespawn hunter tribes as rivals to be driven off, enslaved or eaten.

Whitespawn Iceskidder

Classification: Magical Beast
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These draconic creatures are uniquely adapted for rapid movement across ice.

Breath Weapon: They cna breate a 30-foot cone of ice that deals damage and can partially freeze victims in place, with effects similar to that of a tanglefoot bag.
My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Their clawed feet are apparently organic ice skates, allowing whitespawn iceskidders to ignore all terrain penalties related to snow or icy ground, and succeed on Balance checks caused by ice or cold magic.
Wings Do Nothing: They're depicted with wings, but have no flight speed or wing attacks.

Specter

Classification: Undead (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 1 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil (3E), Chaotic Evil (5E)

Though easily confused for ghosts, specters are wholly malevolent spirits bound to the Material Plane for all eternity, a condition that has left them in a state of murderous rage.

Barred from the Afterlife: Specters are defined by being unable to pass onto the afterlife due to some dark influence, and if defeated experience the Cessation of Existence that comes from the destruction of the soul.
Enemy to All Living Things: In 3rd Edition, specters generate an unnatural aura that causes animals to flee from them, or freeze up in terror if they're forced within 30 feet of the specter.
Ghostly Goals: Unlike a ghost's Unfinished Business keeping it from moving on, a specter's only goal is to kill any living creature which crosses its path, as they remind it of the life it can never have and killing them provides a temporary distraction from its miserable existence.
Intangibility: Incorporeal undead, much like ghosts.
Level Drain: Specters' attacks traditionally give their victims negative levels like wights' do, while in 5th Edition they reduce the victim's maximum hit points until they recover with a long rest.
Poltergeist: 5th Edition presents poltergeists as specter variants, the confused spirits of those with no sense of how they died, who express their rage by telekinetically hurling objects about.
Weakened by the Light: Sunlight pains specters, being a source of life that no specter can ever hope to douse. When day breaks, specters retreat into the darkness, until night falls again. In 5th Edition this translates into specters having disadvantage on attack rolls in natural sunlight, while in 3rd Edition they couldn't attack at all.

Spectral Lurker

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

Huge, tentacled predators who haunt dungeons, emerging from solid surfaces to ambush their prey.

Intangibility: They're naturally incorporeal, and prone to lurking within solid objects until victims come within reach of their tentacles.
Mistaken Identity: Spectral lurkers' tentacles and mouth give off a faint white glow, sometimes causing them to be mistaken for odd ghosts.
Tentacle Rope: They can grab and constrict foes with their tentacles for additional damage.
Tele-Frag: Spectral lurkers have the power to "incorporealize" victims held by their tentacles, an effect that lasts until the monster lets go. They thus like to hunt by grabbing prey, yanking them into a material object, and then releasing their victim — the re-corporealizing creature gets shunted out of the object, taking unavoidable, nonspecific damage in the process, a tactic the spectral lurker repeats until their victim is dead.
Touch the Intangible: A spectral lurker's teeth and tentacles are treated as having the ghost touch property, allowing them to affect corporeal and ethereal targets alike.

Spectral Lyrist

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

Undead that used their powers of performance and persuasion to cause evil in life, and now continue to do so in death.

The Bard: They were cursed after death for using their bardic powers to lure innocents to their deaths or urge others to commit violence.
Glamour: They can freely alter their appearance to disguise themselves as someone living and solid.
Horror Hunger: Spectral lyrists have an inescapable craving for the elan and personality of the living, which they satisfy by hitting living targets with their touch attacks to deal Charisma drain.
Intangibility: Naturally incorporeal, like other specters and spirits.
Magic Music: Spectral lyrists' signature ability is making use of the bard class' fascinate and suggestion features.

Spectral Rider

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

Undead knights that often serve as bodyguards for powerful necromancers.

Cool Horse: They can summon a phantom steed at will.
Cross-Melting Aura: Spectral riders are surrounded by an evil aura that not only replicates the desecrate spell, it can cause the holy symbols of good deities to dissolve into acidic vapor, dealing damage to their bearers.
Fallen Hero: Most spectral riders were evil knights or blackguards in life, but some are paladins who had their bodies ritualistically desecrated, then their spirits were lured back to their tainted corpses by a deceptive spellcaster, corrupting them into murderous undead.
Glamour: They can use their "Shroud of Living Days" ability to appear as they did in life, usually to trick victims into mistaking them for an ally.
Intangibility: They have a "Ghost Shift" ability that lets them (and their steeds) temporarily become incorporeal until the end of their turn, allowing them to pass through terrain or evade attacks.
Unholy Nuke: Rather than "Smite Evil," spectral knights can make "Unholy Strike" attacks to deal bonus damage to good targets.

Spelleater

Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 14 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Saurian monsters with the intelligence of dragons and the power to absorb magic.

Bioweapon Beast: Spelleaters were created by dragons in ancient times to combat the rise of humanoid wizards, but turned out to be nearly as dangerous to their creators as they were to their intended prey. The dragons attempted to purge their creations, which is why the descendants of the spelleaters who survived continue to avoid true dragons.
Feed It with Fire: Any time an attacker fails to overcome a spelleater's spell resistance, the monster converts the energy into a beneficial effect that lasts for a few rounds — a bonus on attack and damage rolls, damage reduction, fast healing, or a magic-dampening field that reduces nearby spellcasters' effective caster level.
Mage-Hunting Monster: Spelleaters were bred to be this, and their burning, instinctive urge to target spellcasters can lead them to ignore more dangerous threats in favor of hounding a mage. Spelleaters are fully aware of this proclivity, which is part of the reason they try to make their lairs far from civilization.
Supernatural Sensitivity: They can detect magic at will, allowing the spelleater to identify any mages and try and provoke them into casting a spell they can devour.
Waddling Head: They're more or less a Huge, quadrupedal example.

Spellgaunt

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Oversized arachnids that destroy magical items with their jaws, feeding on the arcane energy released.

Giant Spider: They look like gold-furred spiders ten feet long, though spellgaunts have fanged mouths rather than mandibles.
Magic Eater: They consume the energy released when their disjunctive bites destroy a magic item. This can backfire horribly should a spellgaunt attempt to feed on a magical artfiact, which forces them to make a saving throw or die instantly from the overwhelming energy. Spellgaunts can also be dumb about how they go after magical auras — in one case, a monster detected a swarm of magical blades conjured by a spellcaster, ran headlong into them, and got sliced to pieces.
Mooks Ate My Equipment: Spellgaunts' "disjunctive bite" attacks go even further than a Dispel Magic effect, which merely suppresses magical effects for a few rounds, by instead forcing magic items they chomp on to save or permanently lose their enchantment. Significantly, this has a 1-in-3 chance of applying even to magical artifacts, which normally require extreme measures to destroy.
Projectile Webbing: Spellgaunts can throw webs, but theirs are made of invisible force and thus can affect even ethereal creatures. These webs hang around for up to four hours, and can only be destroyed by spells like disintegrate or items like a rod of cancellation.
Supernatural Sensitivity: Spellgaunts can see magic auras in their direct line-of-sight, out to 120 feet.

Spellscale

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

A vivacious race of humanoids easily identified by their fine, lustrous scales, and infamous for their mercurial temperament and whimsical nature.

Draconic Humanoid: Downplayed. Spellscales are humanoids with draconic heritage, but in terms of appearance look more like elves with scaly skin and tiny claws — possibly an adaptation of the original appearance of the half-dragon.
Dragon Ancestry: They have the dragonblooded subtype, and more significantly, spellscales can undertake a daily "blood-quickening meditation" to attune themselves to a draconic deity, gaining different bonuses based on the deity in question. For example, to honor Astilabor the Hoardmistress, a spellscale might tabulate the net worth of their gear, gaining a bonus on Appraise checks and unlimited use of the Eschew Materials feat, while another day that spellscale might honor Bahamut by reflecting on the differences between metallic dragon breeds, gaining the ability to smite evil creatures with magic a few times that day.
In Love with Love: Spellscales throw themselves wholeheartedly into romantic relationships of any kind — falling helplessly in love with a total stranger, enjoying an illicit tryst, pining for someone unattainable, or suffering through a Mayfly–December Romance or an unfaithful spouse — before growing bored and finding love again. Other races describe spellscales as eternal adolescents, but it should be noted that they do care for their partners and their relationships, though melodramatic and often short-lived, are genuine.
Mage Species: Spellscales are all born to powerful sorcerers, however distantly, and in return have a very strong racial proclivity for the sorcerer's arts.
Racial Transformation: There is a magical rite by which a spellscale can permanently transform a willing humanoid into another spellscale. Unfounded conspiracy theories hold that the transformation can also be forced.

Spell Weaver

Classification: Monstrous Humanoid (3E), Immortal Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E), 28 (4E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Multi-armed beings from an alternate Material Plane, known for their adept spellcasting and for coveting magic items.

Art Evolution: Spell weavers' 2nd Edition art had them eschewing clothing, and mixed humanoid, reptilian and insectoid features. In 3rd Edition, they wear robes and have avian faces instead.
The Caper: These creatures are normally solitary, but sometimes several spell weavers will organize into a raiding party to go after a specific magic item, usually after months of magical and mundane investigation and preparation.
Inscrutable Aliens: Spell weavers sometimes leave written notes behind after they commit a theft. On the rare occasion they're in a legible language, they're so rambling and bizarre that they don't explain anything about what's going on.
Invisibility: Spell weavers can cast the spell at will, and frequently use it to steal a magic item before escaping via plane shift.
Mana Potion: Each spell weaver carries a six-inch-wide chromatic disc that constantly shifts color through the visible spectrum, which can "recharge" up to six spell levels per day. These discs are indestructible, unless a non-spell weaver should attempt to use them, in which case they detonate for up to 40 damage in a 30-foot radius.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: But not in direct combat — despite their six arms, spell weavers only have two slam attacks for pathetic damage in 3rd Edition. Instead, spell weavers can use their arms to cast multiple spells at once, so long as the spells' total levels don't exceed their number of arms. So they could cast one 6th-level spell per turn, a 4th-level and a 2nd-level spell, three 2nd-level spells, and so forth.
No-Sell: Spell weavers' alien thought patterns render them immune to any mind-affecting spells or abilities. Similarly, anyone attempting to make mental contact with them has to save or go temporarily insane, suffering the effects of a confusion spell for up to six days.
Ominous Owl: Their heads are decidedly owl-like, if devoid of feathers, and they can twist their long necks to look in any direction.
Telepathy: Spell weavers don't speak, but can communicate telepathically with one another to a range of a thousand miles. The most they try to interact with other creatures is by leaving rambling and confusing notes for humanoids to find.

Sphinx

Gynosphinx (5e)

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Immortal Magical Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: Varies by subspecies (3E, 5E), 16 (4E)
Alignment: Varies by subspecies, or Unaligned (4E)

Winged, leonine beasts with the heads of various other creatures.

Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Through early editions, sphinxes were infamous for this and their mating habits. Of the classic four varieties of sphinx, the only females are gynosphinxes, who want to breed with androsphinxes, but the males have no interest in sex and need to be bribed or coerced into it. These are the only couplings that produce andro- and gynosphinxes, sometimes in the form of fraternal twins. The ram-headed criosphinxes lust after gynosphinxes, but the latter find them repulsive, resulting in the criosphinxes trying to either bribe the females, or entrap them in their lairs. If a criosphinx does mate with a gynosphinx, the result is another male criosphinx. And then there are the evil, brutish, falcon-headed hieracosphinxes, who simply hunt down and rape gynosphinxes, producing more male hieracosphinxes. The good news for gynosphinxes is that they're smarter than all the males of their odd species, which helps them avoid the ones they dislike and track down androsphinxes. The bad news for gynosphinxes is that they're also slower than all the males of their species, and hieracosphinxes and criosphinxes aren't known for giving up once they catch sight of a female.
Our Sphinxes Are Different: Sphinxes have been present in D&D since 1st Edition. They're immortal, magical and extremely intelligent beings who resemble winged lions with the heads of various other creatures, and a fondness for riddles. The four varieties discussed above are the most commonly-occurring across the game's editions, but there are others.
Psychic Block Defense: In 5th edition, it is impossible to read a sphinx's mind. They are immune to any magical effect that would read their thoughts or sense their emotions, and divination spells only affect them if they allow it.
Riddling Sphinx: Sphinxes have a reputation as riddlers, though how accurate this is depends on the subspecies, as detailed below.
Time Master: 5th edition sphinxes can control the flow of time within their lairs. They can inflict Rapid Aging on their enemies or make them younger, can shunt the entire lair ten years into the past or future, or force everyone to reroll their initiative.
Unreliable Illustrator: Androsphinxes and gynosphinxes are described as resembling winged lions with the heads of humanoids, but their 3rd Edition artwork gives said heads strong feline features, and by 5th Edition sphinxes are invariably depicted with fully leonine heads.

Androsphinx

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E), 17 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good (1E-3E), Lawful Neutral (5E)

Sphinxes with masculine faces, and the mightiest of their kind's subspecies, serving as the guardians of all sphinxes.

Bribe Backfire: They have the least use for treasure of all sphinxes, and should an evil or uncouth humanoid try to offer them some in a bargain, the androsphinx is likely to take offense.
Celibate Hero: As mentioned, androsphinxes avoid gynosphinxes, both because their alignments clash and especially because androsphinxes are jealous of gynosphinxes' superior intellects. "However, most androsphinxes eventually succumb to the advances of a gynosphinx at least once in their lives."
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Androsphinxes can be gruff or even ill-tempered, and are generally solitary and shy, but they have noble hearts. "They appreciate small courtesies, but seldom admit it, and praise makes them feel uncomfortable."
Mighty Roar: An androsphinx can let out a magical roar up to three times a day. The first roar frightens its enemies, the second roar deafens and paralyzes them, and the third roar knocks them flat on their asses with a blast of sonic damage strong enough to crack stone.
Riddling Sphinx: Averted, androsphinxes traditionally dislike riddles, both because they're antisocial, and because they're jealous of the gynosphinxes' superior intellect. Androsphinxes in 5th Edition are more concerned with testing supplicants' courage than playing word games.
Save the Villain: They feel that they have a duty to defend all of sphinx-kind from other creatures, and androsphinxes will even aid the hated hierachosphinxes if necessary. This can lead to the androsphinx's downfall, as mentioned below.

Criosphinx

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

Ram-headed, always-male sphinxes of middling intelligence, who are primarily concerned with finding a mate.

The Blind Leading the Blind: They're prone to grouping up during the hunt for a gynosphinx, but will follow other criosphinxes even if their fellows have no idea where their quarry is.
Eye of Newt: A criosphinx horn can be used as an alternative material component for the shout spell.
Greed: If they're not on the trail of a gynosphinx, criosphinxes are hoarding treasure, and are known to shake down passers-by for everything they're carrying.
Horn Attack: They can attack with their horns.
The Magnificent: Criosphinxes have a habit of adding descriptive adjectives to their names, such as "Bold Necrotiki," "Great Rameses," or "Swift Ibericus."
Vegetarian Carnivore: Inverted; despite having the heads of grass-eating goats, criosphinxes have the sharp teeth and appetites of carnivores.
We ARE Struggling Together: When a mob of criosphinxes does find a gynosphinx, the result is a head-butting competition to determine who gets to claim the "prize." In the likely event that the criosphinxes forget to take measures like blocking the gynosphinx's lair entrance with boulders, the winner will find that the female has escaped while the males were literally butting heads.

Gynosphinx

Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 11 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral (3E), Lawful Neutral (5E)

Female sphinxes who are the wisest of their kind.

Art Evolution: Early gynosphinxes followed the classical model closely, being winged lions with women's heads (and bared breasts). But they picked up stronger leonine features in 3rd Edition, until in 5th Edition they have fully lion heads.
Riddling Sphinx: Played the straightest of the sphinx subspecies. Gynosphinxes are fascinated by riddles and games of wit, and enjoy testing themselves against others in this manner.
Single Woman Seeks Good Man: They spend their lives avoiding criosphinxes (whom they detest as little better than animals) and hieracosphinxes (whom they fear as abominable rapists), while hunting for an androsphinx. As such, gynosphinxes are willing to pay handsomely in treasure or magical services for leads on androsphinxes' locations.
Women Are Wiser: They are the smartest of the sphinxes, with genius-level intellects.

Hieracosphinx

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

Evil, animalistic, hawk-headed, and always-male sphinxes who are constantly on the hunt for a gynosphinx, or failing that, something to kill.

Distracted by the Sexy: Some evil warlords ride hieracosphinxes as an intelligent, bloodthirsty alternative to griffons, but clever illusionists can make the brutes go haring off after an illusory gynosphinx.
The Farmer and the Viper: Androsphinxes and hieracosphinxes often come to blows, fights the stronger androsphinxes usually win, but they also tend to let the evil sphinx go instead of finishing him off. This can lead hierarcosphinxes to use treachery or the advantage of numbers to kill the androsphinx, and then take up residence in his lair, waiting for a gynosphinx to come along in search of a mate.
Feathered Fiend: Hieracosphinxes have the heads of falcons, and are evil at heart. There's some speculation that an evil deity created hieracosphinxes simply to cause grief for the nobler subspeces of sphinxes.
Fragile Speedster: They're the smallest and weakest of the main sphinx subspecies, but also the fastest and most agile flyers.

Other Sphinxes

Astrosphinx

Origin: Spelljammer
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Twisted parodies of true sphinxes who are dangerously insane.

Batman Can Breathe in Space: Astrosphinxes can survive in Wildspace without air.
Chain Lightning: They can fire such as Eye Beams, the catch is that it takes a round for the attack to charge up (during which the pinpricks of light in their eye sockets change color from violet to gold), and the astrosphinx is blind for the following round as the attack recharges (during which their eyes are red, returning to violet when recharged). As such, astrosphinxes usually hit foes with their sleep breath to leave them helpless while their lightning attack charges up.
Forced Sleep: Their Breath Weapon is a cone of sleep gas.
Our Sphinxes Are Different: They arguably aren't sphinxes at all, since they have draconic scales, bat-like wings, humanoid hands, and seemingly a Skull for a Head. They're so dangerously unstable that even other evil creatures will hunt down and kill astrosphinxes as threats to all life, and it's considered unlucky to keep any body parts from an astrosphinx.
Riddling Sphinx: Astrosphinxes like riddles, the problem is they're completely insane, so their questions run along the lines of "What's the speed of down?" or "How loud is blue?" or "What do a kobold and the Spelljammer have in common besides triangles?" Anything that can't answer "correctly" is destroyed, but there is a 1% chance that an astrosphinx will perceive a similarly nonsensical answer to be the correct response to its "riddle," causing the monster to explode in a massive burst of electricity. These sphinxes are so crazy that they'll ask their riddles of dumb animals, insects and even plants, and inevitably kill them for failing to answer.

Canisphinx

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

Jackal-heades sphinxes who, despite their intelligence, exist as ruthless desert predators.

Scavengers Are Scum: Canisphinxes are among the weakest sphinxes, have the heads of desert scavengers, and specifically target prey too weak to fight back, and will flee from fierce opposition.
Super-Scream: They can roar three times per day, with cumulative effects on victims during a prolonged encounter. First, their roar acts as a Supernatural Fear Inducer, then as The Paralyzer that also deafens victims, and finally a third roar deals Strength damage. Multiple canisphinxes' roars have the same cumulative effect as one sphinx roaring repeatedly.
Victory by Endurance: They're endurance hunters, chasing prey through the desert for hours on end until their victims drop from exhaustion.

Crocosphinx

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

Brutish sphinxes with the heads of crocodiles, who ambush prey from the water.

Logical Weakness: Their feathered wings need to dry off for a minute before a crocosphinx can use them to fly. Most of these sphinxes see little need to, however.
Never Smile at a Crocodile: They're nightmarish mash-ups of crocodile, lion and bird, and hunt similarly to mundane crocs (with which they are fully capable of interbreeding), drifting through the water with just their eyes and nostrils showing until they draw close enough to suddenly lunge at prey.
Sinister Suffocation: Crocosphinxes prefer to grab prey in their jaws, then drag them into the water to drown them.

Dracosphinx

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Sphinxes with the features of red dragons, making them intelligent, mighty and very dangerous.

Breath Weapon: They can blast foes with a cone of fire, unsurprisingly.
Dragon Hoard: Dracosphinxes inherit a dragon's greed, and accumulate hoards of coins and jewels, though they also have a strange compulsion to, should someone describe an item in said hoard in minute detail, surrender that item without a fight.
Hybrid Monster: They're believed to descend from a red dragon and androsphinx, but have gone on to become a self-sustaining species, with male and female sexes, unlike "normal" sphinxes.
Master of Illusion: Dracosphinxes are gifted illusions, with the spells of a 9th-level wizard, though they cast such illusion magic as if 12th level.
Monstrous Cannibalism: Female dracosphinxes have to lay their eggs in individual nests, since otherwise their young are likely to eat each other.
Riddling Sphinx: They'll engage other creatures in games of riddles, but only as a ruse — as soon as the other creature lets its guard down, the dracosphinx will attack.
The Social Darwinist: Dracosphinxes live by the philosophy "only the strongest and cleverest survive and the weak and cowardly get what they deserve." As such, during meetings with humanoids, signs of weakness like fear or poor leadership will provoke a dracosphinx attack, but a show of strength — such as successfully repelling that attack — will make the dracosphinx much more helpful. Dracosphinxes also respect cunning, and have been known to let weak but clever captives go in exchange for a service such as acquiring a magical item, and a prisoner can delay being devoured by a dracosphinx by keeping its interest with rare knowledge (translating to daily Intelligence checks).

Loquasphinx

Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Rare, human-headed sphinxes who wield the power of Truespeech.

Knowledge Broker: These sphinxes are generally solitary, but will venture from their lairs in search of rare knowledge from books or scholars, and conflict with loquasphinxes can be averted by offering interesting information. They're willing to trade what they know for a large enough bribe, and prefer offers of information over mere gold or baubles.
Language of Magic: Loquasphinxes are 10th-level truenamers, and know utterances such as spell rebirth, agitate metal and shockwave.
Our Sphinxes Are Different: They're unusual for having humanoid heads but also two genders, rather than needing to seek out an androsphinx or gynosphinx to mate with.
Riddling Sphinx: Subverted; these sphinxes like to subject opponents to a "Truespeech interrogation," a barrage of riddles in Truespeech intended to leave them confused. Those who have ranks in Truespeak, however, can respond in kind with an opposed check, negating the effect.

Luposphinx

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Forest-dwelling, wolf-headed, evil sphinxes.

Savage Wolves: They have lupine heads and are man-eating evildoers.
Super-Scream: They can howl in combat, deafening opponents and forcing the weakest of them to save against fear.
Trademark Favorite Food: Luposphinxes prefer the flesh of elves and halflings over other humanoids.
Villain Team-Up: They can sometimes be found leading small bands of similarly evil humanoids, like gnolls or xvarts.

Saurosphinx

Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Mild-mannered sphinxes with inquisitive, reptilian faces.

Achilles' Heel: Downplayed; they don't take extra damage from cold effects, but saurosphinxes intensely dislike the cold, and will flee from anyone wielding freezing magic or enchanted weapons.
Sapient Eat Sapient: They're the victim of this; saurosphinxes have human-level intellects and are civilized beings, more interested in conversing with or learning from others than fighting. Unfortunately for them, "Other, more aggressive sphinxes often see saurosphinxes as little more than educated food."
Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Saurosphinxes avoid combat whenever possible, fighting from the air and using Hit-and-Run Tactics on ranged combatants until it's safe to flee.

Threskisphinx

Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Sagacious sphinxes with the heads of ibises.

Friend to All Living Things: Threskisphinxes have a soft spot for mundane ibises, and will often protect flocks with their spells.
The Power of Creation: These sphinxes tend to make a few wondrous magic items over their lifetimes, mainly as academic exercises.
White Mage: Threskisphinxes' magical repertoire runs along the lines of cure wounds, neutralize poison and remove disease, with a side of summon nature's ally.

Spider

Classification: Vermin (3E), Natural Beast (4E), Beast (5E)
Challenge Rating: Varies
Alignment: Unaligned

Eight-legged arachnids, usually either web-spinners who wait for prey to come to them, or active pursuit hunters. While mundane spiders are barely more than annoyances in worlds with neutralize poison spells, there is a worrying number of oversized arachnids to threaten adventurers, including some with magical powers of their own.

Blade Below the Shoulder: Sword spiders have legs that end in sharp, chitinous blades that resemble metallic weapons.
Brain Food: The aptly-named brain spider uses Psychic Powers to subdue prey, then injects a venom that allows the spider to slurp up their liquified brains and nerves.
Giant Spider: Giant versions of common spiders are an old and recurring enemy type, and can range from the size of a dog to the size of a house.
It Can Think: Whisper spiders, native to Krynn, are Huge web-flingers who are smart enough to understand (but not speak) Common, and adapt their tactics to their opposition. "Many adventurers are not prepared for a monstrous spider which has heard them talk among themselves and reacted accordingly."
Mooks Ate My Equipment: Ruin spiders are Large creatures spawned by the magic of the Deck of Many Things (and indeed they sport the card backs' pattern on their carapace). Their acidic bites corrode their victims' armor, while any weapon that strikes these spiders similarly deteriorates.
Staircase Tumble: Shadow spiders get their name from their ability to use shadow walk at will, but they actually hunt by lurking in the shadows at the bottom of a staircase or slope, then when prey tries to traverse it, the spider sprays a layer of slick shadow-silk onto the surface, so that their meal tumbles down into the shadow spider's waiting foreclaws.
Underground Monkey: Numerous variant spider types have appeared, such as woolly snow spiders found in frozen lands.
Wall Crawl: Most spiders can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, as if they were flat.

Asteroid Spider

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 15 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Ten-legged arachnoids that live in Wildspace, lurking in asteroid belts to ambush passing prey.

Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: When an AD&D asteroid spider detects something caught in its webs, it tries to skewer them with enough of its legs to transfer its impaled prey to the mouth on its underside, which can deliver a paralytic poison allowing the spider to eat its meal at its leisure.
No Warping Zone: 5th Edition asteroid spiders spin webs large enough to ensnare passing spaceships, and any such ship's spelljammer helm is disabled while it's entangled.
Projectile Webbing: 5E asteroids spiders can fling lengths of webbing to entangle and then reel in prey, and can entangle up to six creatures at a time in this manner.
That's No Moon: When it wraps its legs tightly around its body and closes its eyes, a 5E asteroid spider resembles nothing more than a mundane asteroid.
Retcon: In 2nd Edition, asteroid spiders are five-foot-wide creatures with black bodies that blend in with the void of space, named for their habit of stringing their webs across asteroid belts. In 5th Edition, they're instead Gargantuan monsters that can disguise themselves as asteroids, and despite being mute are highly intelligent.

Bloodsilk Spider

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

Wolf-sized, bloated red spiders that use their webs to drain the blood of their prey.

Life Drain: A bloodsilk spider can make its webbing drill into entrapped victims, siphoning out blood to damage the target and give the spider some temporary hit points. The spiders will take advantage of this, bolstering itself by feeding on weaker prey before going after something tougher.
Projectile Webbing: Like other monstrous spiders, bloodsilk spiders can throw their sticky blood-red webbing similarly to nets, in order to entangle victims that evade what they string up as traps.
You Have to Burn the Web: Averted; their dripping, bloody nets are immune to fire damage, unlike conventional spider webbing.

Harpoon Spider

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4, 9 (dread harpoon spider) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Arachnoid aberrations around 8 feet long, who reel in prey with organic harpoons, then impale victims upon their spiny carapaces for later consumption. "Dread" harpoon spiders can reach 18 feet in length.

Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The spines covering harpoon spiders will damage foes that attack them in melee, but their primary purpose is to secure prey. Harpoon spiders can impale a helpless victim upon their spiny bodies, dealing damage and letting the monster carry on normally without having to maintain a grapple.
Non-Indicative Name: Harpoon spiders are not true spiders at all, possessing ten legs, human-like eyes, and hundreds of razor-sharp spines covering their bodies.
Poisonous Person: Their bites carry a poison that deals Dexterity damage, potentially paralyzing victims who succumb to it.
Sadist: They're fully sentient, capable of speech in Common and Undercommon, and have a morbid sense of humor as they play with victims "ripening" on their spines.
You Will Not Evade Me: A harpoon spider can launch its fangs up to 20 feet, then use leathery tendrils to drag any prey it catches straight to its maw.

Inferno Spider

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

Spider-shaped elementals of magma and flame, standing eight feet across and weighing as much as 600 pounds.

Death by Childbirth: At the end of their mating ritual, two inferno spiders charge one another, collide and explode, giving birth to hundreds of young.
Living Lava: Inferno spiders' bodies are covered in transparent plating revealing their molten cores, and randomly break out in flames that dance along their legs and abdomen.
Playing with Fire: Their thrown web attacks are naturally on fire, dealing damage each round a creature is entangled in them. Fortunately, a moderate amount of cold damage extinguishes their webs' flames and makes them brittle and easier to break.
Poisonous Person: The bite of an inferno spider delivers a caustic venom that burns a victim from within, dealing additional fire damage.
Wreathed in Flames: Their flaming, superheated bodies damage any creature that grapples or attacks them with non-reach melee weapons.

Phase Spider

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

Large arachnids which can slip in and out of the Ethereal Plane at will.

Art Evolution: Phase spiders have actually gotten more spidery over the editions, as they originally had humanoid faces that made them easy to confuse for neogi or driders. 3rd Edition scaled things back by simply giving them a pair of large eyes to set them apart from other giant spiders, while their 5th Edition art has them looking mostly normal apart from their size and coloration.
Intangibility: Thanks to its ability to shift between the Ethereal and Material Planes, a phase spider can use Hit-and-Run Tactics against its unsuspecting victims largely without fear of reprisal.
It Can Think: Phase spiders are far more intelligent than any normal spider. The average phase spider is at least as smart as the average ogre or hill giant.

Tentacle Spider

Origin: Eberron
Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Human-sized, tentacled, web-spinning creatures with some resemblance to spiders.

Combat Tentacles: Instead of fangs, the tentacle spider has four slimy, pink tentacles, whose venom renders foes clumsy and helpless.
It Can Think: They've got a "rudimentary intelligence," not enough to let them speak, but enough to have an alignment.
Non-Indicative Name: Tentacle spiders are not actually spiders at all, but the initial moniker given by explorers has stuck.
Projectile Webbing: Tentacle spiders can throw a writhing web, which holds its targets fast and prevents movement. More disturbingly, exposure to the air causes the web to coil and twist like tentacles, which helps it entrap prey.
Spider Swarm: Unlike natural spiders, tentacle spiders are pack hunters, and may even form colonies high in the trees.

Tomb Spider

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Shadow Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (broodswarm), 4 (web mummy), 6 (tomb spider) (3E); 11 (4E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Withered, horse-sized spiders suffused with negative energy, and which seek out humanoid corpses to infest with their young.

Animate Dead: Any human-shaped corpse wrapped in a tomb spider's webbing becomes animated as a web mummy, which shambles along to serve as its creator's minion even as a brood of tiny tomb spiders grow within it.
Grave Robbing: As per their name, tomb spiders seek out crypts and burial grounds to provide corpses for their young. Only after they have a good number of web mummies on their side do tomb spiders begin hunting on the surface.
Monstrous Cannibalism: If nothing destroys a web mummy, the young spiders within it feed upon the decaying internal organs of their host, then hunt and eat each other until the single survivor emerges as a fully-grown tomb spider several weeks later.
Projectile Webbing: Like other monstrous spiders, tomb spiders can throw their webbing like nets.
Revive Kills Zombie: Their tomb-tainted souls render tomb spiders vulnerable to positive energy and makes negative energy heal them, as if they were undead. Their poisonous bites cause their victims to be the same for a minute.
Spider Swarm: If a tomb mummy is destroyed, a tomb spider broodswarm boils out of the corpse, ready to attack.
Sticky Situation: Weapons that strike at a web mummy are in danger of getting stuck, while creatures using natural weapons run the risk of being grappled by it.
Turns Red: Should the tomb spider that made it be slain, a tomb mummy flies into a rage, gaining a bonus on attack rolls.

Spider Eater

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

Giant flying insects that mostly feed on other oversized arthropods.

Chest Burster: Spider eaters reproduce by paralyzing Large-sized or larger creatures and laying eggs in their bodies, which after six weeks hatch into young that proceed to eat their way out of their host.
Food Chain of Evil: As the name implies, these things mostly eat giant spiders.
Horse of a Different Color: Provided sufficient training, spider eaters can serve as exotic flying mounts.
No-Sell: They're under a constant freedom of movement effect, which allows them to ignore the webs of their favored prey.
The Paralyzer: Their stings inject a poison that can leave a victim paralyzed and helpless for six to thirteen weeks, more than enough time for a spider eater's young to hatch from a host.

Spider-Horse

Alignment: Unaligned

Magical blends of equines and arachnids, allowing them to easily traverse difficult terrain.

Horse of a Different Color: Spider-horses are typically created by wizards who live in mountains, since they can tuck in their spider legs to gallop over flat areas like normal horses, or use their spider legs and lines of webbing to go up and down sheer cliffs. However, it takes special riding proficiency and customized saddles to stay on the mount during these manuevers.
Mix-and-Match Critters: They're another magical crossbreed, adding spider legs and web-spinning to a riding horse (which makes any ordinary horses around them skittish and nervous). Unlike other hybrids like the armadillephant, dragonfly turtle, duckbunny, moat cat or venom dog, spider-horses are all sterile, though the wizards who create them are working on overcoming this defect.
Projectile Webbing: Spider-horses can shoot strands of webbing at enemies, then reel the entangled foe in with its front arachnid legs. Outside of combat, spider-horses can weave tent-like shelters for themselves and their riders.
Sleeps with Both Eyes Open: Or eight eyes open, in this case. Spider-horses are incapable of closing their compound eyes, even when sleeping, allowing them to instantly awaken to danger.

Spiker

Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Evil or Lawful Neutral

Humanoids covered in metallic spines, making them relatives of the bladelings who similarly live on the Infernal Battlefield of Acheron.

Alien Blood: Like the bladelings', spikers' is black and oily.
Blood Knight: Fittingly for creatures of Acheron, spikers love fighting and think the best way to test one's skill and courage is through no-holds-barred combat.
Chrome Champion: Subverted; despite the metallic hue of their flesh, spikers aren't actually metallic in nature, and thus resist acid damage and don't suffer ill effects from rusting attacks.
Dark Age of Supernames: Spiker first and second names, regardless of gender, "tend toward visceral or combat-oriented words," so they'll go by things like "Dirk Gutrender," "Spike Demonbane" or "Thrust Bloodletter."
Necessary Drawback: The metal spines covering spikers' bodies lets them deal extra damage with unarmed attacks or grapples, and helps them resist damage from bludgeoning weapons, but it interferes with spikers' attempts to wear armor, increasing their gear's armor check penalty and decreasing its maximum Dexterity bonus.
Spikes of Villainy: Spikers are naturally spiny, love waging war, and tend towards Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil, making Good spikers a misfit minority that usually ends up leaving Acheron.

Spinewyrm

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2-22 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral (2E), Neutral Evil (3E)

Relatives of the silk wyrm, these 30-foot-long flying serpents can be seen during daytime but usually start their hunts at dusk, constricting prey against their spined chitinous shells before swallowing them whole.

Flight: These wingless serpents can fly thanks to "a special organ unique to the wyrms of Athas."
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In 3rd Edition, those who take damage from the creature's spine attacks have to save or have a spine detach and get lodged in their body, inflicting a cumulative penalty to attacks, saves and checks until the spines are removed, which will deal additional damage without a high Heal check.
Our Dragons Are Different: Their 3rd Edition entry describes spinewyrms as "the closest thing Athas has to a traditional D&D dragon," and gives them an immunity to paralysis or sleep effects, age categories, a frightful presence, and boosted Intelligence, though they still lack a true dragon's Breath Weapon and body plan. 2nd Edition doesn't make any attempt to link them to dragons, but does note spinewyrms' tendency to hoard shiny objects in their lairs.
Spike Shooter: They can launch volleys of spines from their bodies at foes, which grow back over six weeks in 2nd Edition, but regenerate in a matter of rounds in 3rd Edition.
Stealth Expert: 2nd Edition spinewyrms combine their chameleon power and ectoplasmic form abilities to become 90% undetectable.
Swallowed Whole: They eat by unhinging their jaw to swallow prey, but only do this after carrying a helpless victim to their lair, since spinewyrms are grounded for several hours as they digest their meal.

Spirit Centipede

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (least), 1 (lesser), 2 (greater) (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Spirits appearing as human-headed centipedes, sent by the Celestial Bureaucracy to punish the unjust.

Beast with a Human Face: In their base forms, they appear as centipedes six inches to four feet long, with vaguely human heads featuring bald pates, bushy mustaches, and nine eyes encircling their skulls.
Poisonous Person: Spirit centipedes can cough up a poisonous black cloud, the size of which varies upon the power of the creature. The effects of the poison range from inducing paralysis or unconsciousness, to dealing Constitution or Dexterity damage, or simply obscuring vision, based on what form the spirit centipede is in when it releases the cloud.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Spirit centipedes can transform into other venomous animals; least spirit centipedes can also take the shape of a toad, lesser specimens can additionally shift into a snake, and greater spirit centipedes can additionally become scorpions or spiders.

Spirit Folk

Origin: Kara-tur
Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E)
Playable: 1E, 3E
Alignment: Neutral Good

The descendents of humans and the spirits of the forests, mountains or water, giving them a deep connection to the natural world.

Amazing Technicolor Population: 2nd Edition describes spirit folk as fitting human ideals of beauty but having unusual skin tones, pale yellow or gold for bamboo spirit folk, dark green-brown or gray for sea spirit folk, and so forth.
Apparently Human Merfolk: River and sea spirit folk have natural swim speeds and can breathe underwater, but lack fins or any other piscine features.
Child of Two Worlds: Spirit folk often live in human settlements, and have fully-human relatives, but are never quite at home there since they're also beings of the sprit world.
No-Sell: As they have the spirit subtype in the Rokugon setting, spirit folk are immune to spells like hold person or charm person, at the cost of being susceptible to magic like invisibility to spirits.
Place of Power: In their 2nd Edition rules, bamboo and river spirit folk have a connection to a specific natural feature — a particular bamboo grove or section of river — that allows them to heal themselves by returning to it, but they'll suffer and potentially die if this natural feature is despoiled or destroyed.
Speaks Fluent Animal: Once per day, spirit folk can speak with fish, birds, or any animal, depending on whether they're river, mountain or bamboo spirit folk.

Spirit of the Air

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Simian beings with bat-like wings, who whimsically fly for the joy of it, but are bound to serve powers of the wind and sky.

Blow You Away: They can use magic like control winds and call lightning at will, as well as more potent spells like control weather and whirlwind once per day.
Elemental Shapeshifting: In 3rd Edition, spirits of the air can transform into a damaging whirlwind for up to 10 rounds, once per day.
Happy Place: Their AD&D entry explains that in "the small space between the drawing and releasing of a single breath," spirits of the air rage and plot against the powers that control them, and imagine a truly free existence in which they build cities, court and marry, and wage glorious wars, to the point that they feel like those lives are their true existence and their time as servants is a dream. "Each life is as rich and detailed as the other, so who can say which is the lie?"
Prehensile Tail: Their tails are strong and dexterous enough to wield heavy maces in combat.
Servant Race: Spirits of the air live free and aren't bound to any specific power, but any entity related to the winds can demand their service.

Spirit of the Land

Earth manifestation (3e)

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 23 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

A mighty nature spirit that defends a specific geographic region from despoilers.

Elemental Powers: They can use powerful magic like chain lightning, incendiary cloud, earthquake, and create water at will, which is usually sufficient to deal with threats to their domains. When it wishes, a spirit of the land can physically manifest in the shape of a Huge elemental composed of one particular element, gaining the ability to control this element.
Fighting a Shadow: The destruction of a spirit of the land's elemental manifestation at most renders the fey dormant for a day.
Genius Loci: They embody either a specific, bounded landform - a valley, a desert, a lake - or one aspect of such terrain, in which case multiple spirits of the land can coexist in the same region. They're aware of everything that happens in their domain, and while usually dormant, will awaken and punish anyone that would ravage the land under their protection.
Intangibility/Invisible Monsters: In its natural form, a spirit of the land is an invisible, shapeless mist.
Mouth of Sauron: Their AD&D write-up mentions that spirits of the land prefer to work through a druid living in their region.
Weather Manipulation: Much of their spell-like abilities pertain to changing the weather — control water, control winds, sleet storm, fog cloud, and of course control weather.

Spiritus Anime

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

The spirit of a spiteful person who died bearing a grudge, and now possesses the bodies of the dead to attack the living.

Invisible Monsters: A spiritus anime is naturally incorporeal and invisible, making it difficult to identify, much less damage.
Possessing a Dead Body: Their signature ability is being able to enter a corpse and animate it as a zombie with up to 14 hit dice, which they can do as often as they want - a spiritus anime frequently jumps from one corpse to another as its "rides" are destroyed in combat. The catch is that when a possessed zombie is destroyed, any "overkill" damage from the attack is applied to the spiritus, though the undead's incorporeal nature means this isn't a problem if its "ride" was destroyed by a non-magical weapon.
Soul Jar: The one exception to a spiritus anime's corpse animation ability is its original body, which it also can't move more than 100 feet away from - a spiritus will usually animate a zombie to carry its original body around if it wants to relocate to more fruitful hunting grounds, or hide its body out of reach of enemies. So long as a spiritus anime's original body is intact, it will regenerate within a few days of being destroyed, but any attack made against its body will deal damage directly to the spiritus, and if a spiritus is reduced to 0 hit points, and then its body takes so much as a single point of damage, the spiritus is instantly, permanently destroyed, while its original body crumbles to dust.

Spirrax

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 18 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Gargantuan, floating, tentacled terrors that methodically consume living matter in an ever-widening spiral pattern of destruction.

Bioweapon Beast: Spirraxes were created by the inhabitants of an ancient demiplane that fell victim to a magical catastrophe, dooming their civilization to decay. Out of desperation, the demiplane's inhabitants sent the spirraxes to other planes to consume living matter, convert it to energy, and transfer that energy back to their home demiplane in an attempt to halt its destruction.
Defeat Equals Explosion: When slain, a spirrax tears open a planar rift that lasts for a few rounds, sucking its body and potentially others within 150 feet to a random other plane.
Eldritch Abomination: Spirraxes are sickening masses of tentacles and putrescent alien organs, arranged around a single bulging eye. Their mindset is little better, and entertains no other thoughts than a drive to collect biomatter in a precise and orderly pattern.
Emotion Bomb: They're surrounded by an indifference aura that can cause other creatures within 180 feet to become affected by calm emotions, unable to fight or even run.
Horde of Alien Locusts: Spirraxes exist only to consume anything living, leaving behind barren earth, stone and metal marred by strange spiral patterns.
Organ Drops: Their shells are laced with over 150 pounds of adamantine, which can be repurposed should the monster be defeated or driven off.
Power of the Void: They can make "void blast" attacks, dealing horrendous Non-Elemental damage in a 120-foot line or 30-foot radius, leaving behind a fine powder and discarded equipment.
The Speechless: Spirraxes are quite intelligent, but never speak, and don't show any hint of communicating with others of their kind should multiple spirraxes work to consume the same area.
Subsystem Damage: If a spirrax is reduced to a quarter of its hit points, its shell collapses, exposing its putrid form to the world (and sickening those who get within 10 feet of it), but also reducing its Armor Class by half, and negating its Damage Reduction and ability to fly. If the spirrax takes damage again after that point, it'll try to plane shift back to its home demiplane to recover and rebuild its shell.
Tentacle Rope: They can grab foes they strike with their tentacles, dealing Constiution drain as the spirrax consumes their life force.

Splinterwaif

Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (standard), 6 (knave) (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Murderous fey that dwell within cities, lurking around wooden shacks, lumber piles and decommissioned ships to snipe at targets with deadly splinters.

Back Stab: They can deal sneak attack damage like a rogue, and the "knaves" that lead them are particularly good at it.
Chameleon Camouflage: They can change their skin coloration to blend in with their surroundings.
Child Eater: Splinterwaifs relish the taste of children they kill and convert into shrubs for consumption. They never eat adults converted in this way, the fey find them dry and unpalatable.
Gaia's Vengeance: One theory about splinterwaifs is that they're the warped remnants of a dryad who somehow survived her oak being cut down and converted into a city structure. However, the creatures show no attachment to a specific part of the environment, and might end up transported to entirely new cities after stowing away on a ship.
Green Thumb: These fey can cause a thorny branch to sprout from any nomagical wooden structure around them, which the splinterwaif can command to attack or grab opponents. They can also convert a dead humanoid's body into a thorny brush over the course of a minute — such plants don't radiate magic, but a body so converted can only be restored to life by magic like true resurrection or miracle. A bunch of small, thorny shrubs in an empty lot or lumberyard is a clue that a splinterwaif is behind some local disappearances.
Spikes of Villainy: Splinterwaifs' bark-like bodies are covered in patches of thorns, they have wooden spines for "hair," and even their tongues are studded with wooden barbs and splinters.
Spike Shooter: They can spit a splinter of wood as a ranged attack, and can apply sneak attack damage if the target is close enough.

Sporebat

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Flying fungoid predators with eight-foot wingspans and dangerous, one-eyed gazes.

Eye Beams: In AD&D, the eye of a sporebat can fire a ray of damaging poison, while in 3rd Edition it is instead an enervation effect, inflicting negative levels.
It Can Think: Sporebats display clear intelligence in their hunting tactics, have some way of communicating with one another, and grow enraged if a clutchmate is killed. However, they lead strictly predatory existences, whatever language they have cannot be understood by other creatures, and any attempt at mental contact with a sporebat yields "a series of strange and disturbing images, none comprehensible."
Planimal: They're flying, carnivorous fungi who reproduce by pairing up and shedding spores over a fresh kill, yielding a clutch of up to six young sporebats within a day. This incidentally means that carnivores have no taste for sporebat flesh, but herbivores will happily munch on them, while some humanoid societies consider sporebat a delicacy.
Stealth Expert: Sporebats are extraordinarily (but not supernaturally) stealthy, able to fly in total silence and blend into shadows for concealment. Even infravision is useless against them, since their body temperature is the same as their surroundings.

Spriggan

Classification: Fey (3E), Fey Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 8 (4E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (2E), Any Chaotic (3E), Evil (4E)

Ugly, malicious gnome-kin who rob and terrorize other creatures, aided by their ability to change size at will.

Back Stab: 3rd Edition spriggans can deal sneak attack damage like rogues.
Barbarian Tribe: Fortunately for everyone else, spriggans are too disorganized to exist as anything other than roving packs of brigands, who cause trouble in an area until they're driven out.
Our Gnomes Are Weirder: In some settings or editions they're the descendents of ordinary gnomes warped by magic, either by the Netherese or fomorians. Despite (or because of) this relationship, spriggans hate gnomes above all others, though in extreme circumstances, a lone spriggan will try to pass themselves off as a more civilized gnome to gain entry into a settlement.
The Pig-Pen: They are disgustingly filthy creatures who never bathe or clean their equipment, and thus reek of earth, sweat and rancid flesh.
Sizeshifter: Among other spell-like abilities, spriggans can replicate an enlarge effect at will, growing from Small to Large size and gaining a corresponding boost to Strength and Constitution, at the expense of their Armor Class and attack bonus.

Sprite

Classification: Fey (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/4 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Tiny winged fey who militantly defend their sylvan glades and groves.

The Empath: Sprites can put their hands upon another creature and sense their emotional state by the beating of their heart, or even discern the creature's alignment or know if they're in love.
Good Is Not Nice: Though good defenders of the forest and sworn enemies of evil fey and goblinoids, sprites are noted to lack warmth or compassion, and are much more serious about their duties than the flighty pixies.
Our Fairies Are Different: "Sprite" traditionally has encapsulated an entire subgroup of little winged fey folk, including "standard" sprites, pixies, nixies, sea sprites, grigs, and atomies. They all have insect features, usually just dragonfly or moth wings, but the grigs look to be half-cricket. They're generally inoffensive, if prone to mischief, but dislike other creatures intruding on their homes.
Forced Sleep: Their arrows deal little damage, but are coated in a poison that puts targets to sleep.
Invisibility: They can turn invisible at will.
Treetop Town: Sprites build little villages high in trees, or even in willing treants.

Squamous Spewer

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

Ravening blobs of eyes, teeth and scales from both chromatic and metallic dragons.

Blob Monster: They're amorphous masses of scales, Extra Eyes and Too Many Mouths, leading to speculation that they're related to gibbering beasts. In practical terms, squamous spewers' fluid anatomy means they can't be flanked and aren't subject to Critical Hits.
Dragon Ancestry: They have some draconic qualities, such as superior vision and an immunity to paralysis and magical sleep effects, but squamous spewers display no loyalty to true dragons, and the two generally despise each other.
It Can Think: Despite their freakish appearance, and in contrast to gibbering mouthers, they're fully intelligent and capable of speaking Draconic.
Random Effect Spell: The shape and effect of their Breath Weapon (which can come from three of a spewer's mouths at the same time) is randomized, either a cone or line of acid, cold, electricity or fire damage.
Super-Senses: Their keen sense of smell and echolocation give them the benefit of blindsight out to 60 feet.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Three times per day they can let loose a Mighty Roar that can cause those within 60 feet to become panicked or shaken.

Squealer

Alignment: True Neutral

Ogre-sized, three-armed, porcine predators adept at moving through their forest habitats.

Attack Animal: If raised from infancy, squealers can be trained as guard animals capable of learning several commands, and known for being loyal to their masters.
It Can Think: Squealers aren't brilliant, but their Intelligence score can be higher than an ogre's, and they're smart enough to knock prey unconscious and tie it up with vines if they aren't hungry enough to eat it right away. Squealers are even known to feed captive prey for days until the creature is ready to kill and eat it.
Killer Bear Hug: Squealers are known to hang from a branch by their third arm, grab a victim with their other two arms, and then simultaneously squeeze, bite, and claw the victim with their feet.
Mister Seahorse: A mundane example; male squealers have pouches, which females place newly-delivered squealer infants into. Several months later, the young squealers emerge from their father's pouch to loiter in the highest tree branches, until they're fully grown in about a year.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Perhaps their signature trait is having a third arm extending from their backs, slightly longer than the other two, which a squealer uses to attack, grab prey, and climb.
Voice Changeling: While squealers get their name from their shrill cries, they can also imitate a range of other sounds, from the wails of a humanoid baby to screams of terror.

Ssurran

^4e

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Natural Humanoid (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (4E), 1/2 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil (2E), Any (5E)

Sometimes known as "sandscale lizardfolk," these reptilian humanoids are nomadic desert-dwellers who do whatever it takes to survive their harsh homeland.

Art Evolution: In 2nd and 4th Edition, ssurrans are somewhat sturdier, sand-colored lizardfolk, but 5th Edition redesigns them with elongated, snakelike bodies, thin limbs, and almost avian, beaked faces.
Desert Bandits: In their home setting, some ssurran tribes survive by raiding other humanoid settlements, looting and eating the corpses of those they kill, stripping the village of valuables, and then moving on.
Lizard Folk: They've been described as "lizard men of the desert," and are considered lizardfolk for all intents and purposes.
Made a Slave: On Athas, many young ssurrans are captured by slavers to be raised as gladiators. Those "civilized" ssurrans who earn their freedom can often make a good living as bodyguards, mercenaries, or desert trackers.
Psychic Powers: Oddly enough averted in most editions, despite the ssurrans' debut in the psionics-heavy Dark Sun setting, and it's only in 5E that ssurran "defilers" are given some psionic abilities. Athasian ssurrans usually have shamans casting divine magic instead.
To Serve Man: Ssurrans are dedicated carnivores who are perfectly happy to eat those they slay in battle, or feast on captives. They particularly enjoy the taste of halfling flesh.

Stahnk

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_anhkolox_5e.png

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Undead (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 or 10 (anhkolox) (3E); 9 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Huge undead beasts known for trapping prey in their barbed rib cages.

Adaptation Name Change: While in most editions, an anhkolox is an advanced form of stahnk or gholor, 5th Edition uses the name for what is clearly a stahnk but lacks any of past anhkoloxes' signature abilities.
Caged Inside a Monster: These undead's signature attack is using their rib cages like hunting traps to ensnare victims — and since those ribs are barbed and jagged, their victim usually takes constant damage each round while the stahnk continues moving and fighting.
Elite Zombie: Some of these undead beasts are known as anhkoloxes, and have enchanted bones that glow green and are hot enough to damage anything that touches them, as well as a Breath Weapon of cold green flames. In 3rd Edition this condition is even contagious, and any corporeal undead affected by these special attacks may turn into an anhkolox itself.
Knock Back: 5th Edition "anhkoloxes" can shove around Large or smaller targets they hit with their claws, up to 20 feet.
Raising the Steaks: These vicious undead creatures are created from the bones of beasts, assuming a roughly ursine shape, though in 2nd and 3rd Edition their heads at least are horned and dragon-like.

Star Lancer

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Celestial (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Also known as vah'k'rel in Gith, these creatures reside within the husk of a dead god drifting on the Astral Plane, and are used as mounts by the githyanki.

Flying Seafood Special: A star lancer resembles a shark with four wings and a long serpentine tail.
Horn Attack: Rather than biting foes, a star lancer rams with its horn, which deals extra damage during a charge.
Horse of a Different Color: Githyanki employ star lancers as mounts, especially for stealth actions in which dragons or astral skiffs would attract too much attention.
Invisibility: They and their riders can turn invisible three times per day.
Reincarnation: Star lancers are reincarnations of the most ardent followers of a nameless dead god whose corpse lies floating in the Astral Sea.
Respawn Point: When a star lancer dies, its soul instantly returns to the hollow heart of its god. There, a fully grown star lancer rises magically from the cavern floor and becomes the soul's new host.
Sapient Steed: Star lancers are about as smart as the average human, and capable of conversing in Celestial or via telepathy.

Star Spawn

Classification: Aberrant Humanoid (4E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

The servitors of malevolent stars, descended to the world of mortals to spread madness and destruction.

For the creatures 5th Edition dubs "star spawn," see the "foulspawn" folder.

Fighting a Shadow: Each star spawn is the avatar of a star, sent to wreak havoc. Some stars only have a single avatar, others are served by entire swarms of horrors.
Sentient Stars: The star spawn are sent by baleful stars of the night sky, who gaze upon the world with a mixture of hatred, anger and hunger.
When the Planets Align: Star spawn can only reach the world when their host star is in a certain position, and its light shines down at just the right angle. This has allowed some arcane astrologers such as the warlock Thulzar to chart past star spawn incursions and find a pattern that can predict future attacks, "but he, his tower, and all his works simply vanished one starless night, leaving behind only a smooth, glass-coated crater.

Herald of Hadar

Challenge Rating: 15 (4E)

Avatars of the dying red star Hadar, which was infamously once the brightest star in the night sky, until it flared and faded during the fall of Bael Turath.

Anti-Regeneration: Their "Breath of a Dying Star" attack prevents victims from recovering hit points until they save to shake off the effect.
Hungry Menace: A herald of Hadar feeds upon living creatures' Life Energy, which it channels back to its flickering ember of a creator in an attempt to sustain it.
Increasingly Lethal Enemy: They can make additional "Hungry Claw" attacks each round a combat encounter continues.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: A herald of Hadar looks like a crazed human, save for its eyes, which have Hadar's dim red glow to them.
Turns Red: Whenever a nearby creature spends a healing surge, a herald of Hadar can react by moving closer to the creature, make an immediate attack against it, recharge an encounter power, or gain an attack roll bonus.

Maw of Acamar

Challenge Rating: 15 (4E)

Avatars of the corpse-star Acamar, which devours other stars that draw too close, just as its maws consume everything in their path as they wander the world.

Celestial Body: They look like humanoid starscapes clad in tattered robes.
Damage Over Time: Many of their attacks deal ongoing damage (making maws of Acamar deadly in numbers), and their "Destroyer of Life" ability means that adjacent enemies don't end such effects on a successful save, they only reduce the ongoing damage.
Unrealistic Black Hole: Maws of Acamar basically are walking, fantastic black holes, surrounded by a howling vortex of wind that pulls nearby creatures towards them, and rending victims with their devouring touch.
You Shall Not Evade Me: They can pull victims closer with their "Corpse Star's Grip" ability, and are surrounded by an aura that makes moving away from them cost extra movement.

Scion of Gibbeth

Challenge Rating: 17 (4E)

Creations of the cursed green star Gibbeth, which is prophesized to plunge the world into insanity during the end times.

Apocalypse Cult: Unlike other star spawn, scions of Gibbeth are willing to tolerate certain mortals drawn to them, mainly prophets, lunatics and cultists.
Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Nobody can agree what a scion of Gibbeth looks like — "Some see a green-skinned, horned giant, while others report a red, spiderlike creature with a child's face or a serpentine monstrosity with dozens of gibbering mouths along its body." Instead, it's theorized that each scion of Gibbeth has a shard of that eldritch star-being at its core, which forces observers to visualize something horrible but explicable to avoid going insane.
Deadly Gaze: Their "Mind-Splintering Gaze" and "Gibbeth's Baleful Glare" attacks deal psychic damage.
Emotion Bomb: Scions of Gibbeth are surrounded by an "Aura of Revulsion" that prevents foes from attacking unless the scion is the closest available target (which is probably why these star spawn tolerate mortal groupies).
Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: When reduced to 0 hit points, this star spawn inflicts the "Revelation of Gibbeth" upon nearby creatures, forcing those who succumb to attack their allies until they snap out of it.
Speak of the Devil: The Revelations of Melech, a scroll about hostile stars, has little to say about Gibbeth, only that "Better not to write or think overlong on this greenish point in the sky."

Spawn of Ulban

Challenge Rating: 26 (4E)

Heralded by blue comets, the spawn of Ulban foment rebellion and infighting wherever they crawl.

Cold Flames: They can hurl "Bluefire" at foes that is considered both cold and fire damage.
Immune to Mind Control: Anything that attempts to dominate a spawn of Ulban falls under its control instead.
Mind Control: Their "Ripple of Betrayal" burst attack can dominate foes.
Power Nullifier: The blue-white light of Ulban interferes with seers' attempts to provide guidance or see the future.
Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Their "Touch of Strife" deals psychic damage to a victim, and forces that victim to attack an ally.
Tentacled Terror: Though their upper torsos are humanoid, their lower bodies resemble the tentacles of starfish or cephalopods.

Emissary of Caiphon

An Emissary of Caiphon with a Serpent of Nihal (4e)

Challenge Rating: 28 (4E)

The avatars of the purple star Caiphon take humanoid guise and infiltrate a society, posing as a benefactor while steering those who trust them to ruin.

Attack Reflector: Any attempt to blind an emissary of Caiphon with an effect instead blinds its attacker.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The star Caiphon sits near the horizon, acting as a year-round guide star, and seems to grow brighter during disasters. This can lead the desperate to plead to the star for assistance, and when such prayers grow strong enough, an emissary of Caiphon is sent to make things worse.
Invisibility: An odd variant; an emissary of Caiphon can use its "Blinded by Need" ability to render itself and every ally except a particular one invisible to a specific enemy.
Lie to the Beholder: They can disguise themselves as a Medium or Small humanoid, though a high Insight check will pierce the illusion.
Treacherous Advisor: An emissary of Caiphon makes suggestions that sound reasonable — perhaps the lord of a town gripped by a plague has a cure he isn't sharing — that end up getting their followers killed.
Winds of Destiny, Change!: An emissary of Caiphon is surrounded by an aura that imposes penalties on enemies' saving throws, and can hit a target with an "Invocation of Calamity" that causes them to automatically fail their saves for a turn.

Serpent of Nihal

Challenge Rating: 29 (4E)

The reddish Nihal is known as the Serpent Star for its writhing path through the heavens, and is served by snake-like creatures that similarly slither through reality in search of prey.

Dimensional Traveler: Serpents of Nihal wind in and out of the cosmos, and can blink out of existence if an attack against them misses, or at the start of a combat, only to suddenly reappear next to a choice victim. A serpent isn't shifting to or from the Ethereal Plane during this, instead it's simply "removed from play" until it's time to come back.
Gone Horribly Wrong: The ancient jungle realm of Az-Kiral was originally devoted to Zehir the Great Serpent, but turned to Nihal for greater power. When its people opened a portal to the star itself, the serpents of Nihal burst forth, consuming everything in Az-Kiral until its cities were empty tombs, then spreading into the surrounding jungles.
Situational Damage Attack: Their "Mindbite" psychic attack deals extra damage if a serpent of Nihal has nearby allies, and in such circumstances will prevent a victim from using action or power points.
Snakes Are Sinister: They're serpentine creatures composed of starstuff, which swallow any prey they find to feed Nihal's hunger.

Allabar, the Opener of the Way

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_allabar_4e.png

Classification: Aberrant Animate (4E)
Challenge Rating: 30 (4E)

Unlike other celestial bodies, Allabar has no fixed path or location in the heavens, but moves as it wills. Whenever the Opener of the Way draws near a baleful star, that star's spawn manifest on a world below.

Create Your Own Villain: At the dawn of creation, Allabar was made by the primordials, in imitation of the planets of the Material Plane. The gods noticed the primordials' work and experimented on it, granting the world a spark of life, but grew afraid of its new power, and cast it into the Far Realm. This unsurprisingly warped Allabar in body and mind, so when it eventually returned to reality, it was dedicated to destroying the world of mortals, or perhaps perverting it into something like itself.
Combat Tentacles: Allabar's surface seems to be covered in them, and it lashes foes with its tentacles in combat. Worse, its "Wrath of the Forsaken World" attack causes enemies to sprout tentacles as well, which attack the victim's allies.
Coup de Grâce: Should any nearby enemies drop to 0 hit point, Allabar quickly absorbs them into its fleshy bulk, devouring the bodies and preventing revival.
Counter-Attack: Any attacker that damages Allabar has to save to avoid being dazed by the resulting psychic feedback.
Damage Over Time: Its "Unravel Essence" is a nasty example, dealing ongoing damage after one failed saving throw, then after a second failed save, said damage increases while the victim is both weakened and insubstantial, dealing and receiving halved damage. With three failed saves, a victim drops to 0 hit points, potentially putting it in danger of being absorbed by Allabar.
Genius Loci: It's a malevolent Rogue Planet moving through the cosmos, half-insane but still brilliant, enacting an eons-long plan to bring ruin to the world of mortals. This means that any heroes who end up fighting Allabar are likely battling a Gargantuan avatar, or the living planet has reduced its size somehow.
Gravity Master: As a hostile planet, Allabar can pull in opponents using its gravity well.
Greater-Scope Villain: Allabar is sometimes characterized as a trickster entity that incites other stars to war, or in other accounts, the greatest of such hostile stars and the creator of various star spawn. Whatever the case, it is frequently the motive force behind a star spawn incursion.
Turns Red: When bloodied, Allabar retaliates by sprouting more tentacles to attack in a flurry.

Star Spawn Emissary

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: 19 (lesser), 21 (greater) (5E)

Shapeshifting agents of hostile and alien dimensions, who infiltrate mortal societies to set the stage for an apocalypse.

Eldritch Abomination: In its "lesser" form, a star spawn emissary is "a roughly bipedal mas of agitated organs, self-cannibalizing alien orifices, and appendages suggestive of forms it has previously devoured." They're even worse in their "greater" form, which "sheds all pretense of being part of a plane's reality and openly mocks it."
Enemy Summoner: As a byproduct of a "greater" emissary's "unearthly bile" Acid Attack, gibbering mouthers spawn around affected creatures that fail their saving throws.
Hope Crusher: It's mentioned that a star spawn emissary only reveal their true forms when they're seriously threatened, or when their opponents have lost all hope.
Mind Rape: A "lesser" emissary can make a "psychic lash" legendary action, dealing heavy psychic damage to a target and stunning them, while a "greater" emissary can unleash a "mind cloud" psychic attack against everything in 30 feet that damages them and ends any ongoing spell effects.
One-Winged Angel: If a star spawn emissary is reduced to 0 hit points in its "lesser" form, it immediately assumes its "greater" form at full hit points, becoming a 25-foot-tall "pillar of violent flesh amalgamating the meat and voices of every form the emissary has ever mimicked." If it isn't slain in its "greater" form and killed for good, the emissary can assume its "lesser" form after a long rest.
Too Many Mouths: The "greater" emissary is depicted with multiple maws, and can take a legendary action to warp the ground around them into a landscape of gnashing teeth and maws, difficult terrain that damages anything moving across it.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: A "lesser" emissary can freely take the form of any Small or Medium creature, and are perfectly willing to appear as a harmless animal to serve their purposes.
Weaponized Teleportation: A "lesser" emissary can take a legendary action to teleport 30 feet and immediately attack a target with a lashing maw.

Starfly

Origin: Spelljammer
Alignment: Unaligned

Two-foot-long, mobile plants that fly through Wildspace.

Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: Starflies are fruit that fly through space on butterfly wings, which trap sunlight to convert into sugary food for the seed within it. They taste delicious, and are considered by spelljammers to be an omen of good luck that ends hunger and symbolizes wealth and happiness.
Organic Technology: This humble flying fruit has been cultivated by starfaring elves into gadabout space suits, or enlarged into living ships for the elven armada.
Terraform: The winged starfly fruit is the mobile stage of a much larger plant form. Should a starfly encounter a comet, it lands and takes root, growing into a sapling that digests the comet's water and minerals, then develops reflective leaves it uses to focus sunlight on the comet, and eventually grows a waterspout to propel the comet closer to the nearest sun. By the time the comet has melted, the new mother-tree has grown big enough to generate its own gravity plane, which attracts space debris so the tree's planetoid grows larger, while an air envelope allows plants and animals to join the burgeoning ecosystem. There are even rumors that it's possible to mount a spelljammer helm on a fully-grown mother-tree to fly it through space as a mobile Baby Planet.

Starlight Apparition

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Celestial (5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Good

Luminous, ghostly beings found in Wildspace or the Astral Sea, seeking to help someone accomplish a daunting task.

Light 'em Up: With a touch or a gesture, a starlight apparition can cause an eruption of radiant energy that damages and potentially blinds foes.
Our Ghosts Are Different: They're not classified as undead, for one thing. Starlight apparitions aren't a soul trapped in the mortal world until some Unfinished Business is done, they died in Wildspace or on the Astral Plane, then moved on to the afterlife. But with the help of a god or powerful celestial, they managed to project a glowing copy of their spirit across the planes in order to help someone. Once their objective is achieved, a starlight apparition fades away. They do, however, share ghostly traits such as intangibility and being able to possess mortals.
Phosphor-Essence: They glow enough to shed bright light out to 20 feet, and dim light for an additional 20 feet.

Starsnake

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

Ten-foot-long, intelligent winged serpents who sleep through most of the day and night, but can be seen flying at twilight.

Counter-Attack: When sleeping, a starsnake builds up electrical energy that damages anyone who touches them or tries to attack with a metal weapon. They also generate a "Dream Shield" that converts any incoming magic into a lightning bolt fired right back at the caster, dealing damage based on the spell-level of the blocked effect.
Familiar: High-level spellcasters with the Improved Familiar feat can acquire a starsnake as a familiar.
The Paralyzer: Their bites carry a Dexterity-damaging poison that can leave victims paralyzed.
The Prankster: They're usually content to hunt rodents and only retaliate against those who attack them, but starsnakes are also known to be pranksters who use their charm person and suggestion spell-like abilities to implant ludicrous, but harmless, suggestions in intelligent beings.
Truly Single Parent: Starsnakes are hermaphrodites who can reproduce without others of their kind, and in fact detest each other's company.
Wise Serpent: Starsnakes are not only smart enough to speak Sylvan and learn other languages, their Intelligence and Wisdom scores are an impressive 16, while their Charisma comes in at a whopping 26.

Steel Predator

Classification: Outsider (3E), Immortal Animate (4E), Construct (5E)
Challenge Rating: 13 (3E), 20 (4E), 16 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral (3E), Evil (4E), Lawful Evil (5E)

Metallic feline hunters that would be formidable in battle even without their sonic roars.

Adaptational Villainy: In 3rd Edition, steel predators were simply animalistic beings that killed only to feed themselves, but 5th Edition cast them as assassins that occasionally go rogue and begin to kill indiscriminately.
Deadly Lunge: Like other "big cat"-type creatures, 3rd Edition steel predators can make a pounce and rake attack on a charge.
Killer Robot: A 5th Edition steel predator is a merciless machine with one purpose: kill its target regardless of distance and obstacles.
Metal Muncher: In 3E, steel predators feed on metal, and especially prize metallic magical items. Their natural home, the Outer Plane of Acheron, is littered with endless weapons-strewn battlefields and broken heaps of war machines, giving them a rich supply of food.
Mooks Ate My Equipment: Acheron-native steel predators are adept at sundering enemies' weapons, shields or other held items with their bites.
Retcon: In 3rd Edition, steel predators are outsiders native to the Infernal Battlefield of Acheron, prowling its warzones for fresh metal morsels. In 5th Edition, they're artificial killers created by a rogue modron to hunt down and slay targets across the planes.
Super-Scream: One feature that has remained constant is the steel predator's devastating roar, which deals heavy sonic/thunder damage as well as extra damage to brittle or crystalline items (in 3rd Edition), or may stun victims for a minute (in 5th Edition).
Super-Senses: They enjoy blindsight out to 30 feet, which is especially significant for the deaf 3E steel predators.
Supernatural Sensitivity: 3rd Edition steel predators can sense the presence of any metallic magic item from up to 120 feet away.

Steelwing

Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 14 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Intelligent raptors from the Infernal Battlefield of Acheron, notable for their adamantine feathers and 30-foot wingspan.

Crafted from Animals: Steelwing feathers can be used to make masterwork keen adamantine arrows or crossbow bolts. Each feather is worth 50 gp, and a single adult steelwing can produce 350 of them.
Crusading Widower: These creatures mate for life, and if one is slain its mate will track down the killers to enact vengeance.
Feather Flechettes: Steelwings' "razorfeathers" can be fired as a ranged attack, veering toward their targets to negate their cover, or the steelwing can spend a full-round action firing a Flechette Storm in a 60-foot cone that deals a massive amount of slashing damage.
Horse of a Different Color: Hextor and his followers have tamed a great many steelwings for an aerie in his Scourgehold, though the birds require exotic saddles to protect their riders from their feathers.
It Can Think: Steelwings are capable of speech and a little smarter than ogres. They still live as predators, hunting both Acheron's petitioners and visitors to the plane.
Razor Wings: Their razor-sharp wings are not only effective in combat, they have a 1-in-5 chance of landing a Critical Hit.
The Spiny: Steelwings are perpetually surrounded by a cloud of feathers that deals a moderate amount of damage to adjacent creatures, and provides the steelwings with concealment.

Stirge

^4e

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Beast (4E), Beast (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E); 1, 7 (dire strige), 12 (swarm) (4E) ; 1/8 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Bat-winged, needle-mouthed creatures that feed on larger animals' blood.

Ambushing Enemy: Desert stirges are flightless, and hunt by burying themselves in the desert sand to ambush creatures passing by. Jungle stirges are also poor flyers, and instead rely on hiding in thick canopies and falling prey passing beneath them.
Art Evolution: Depictions of stirges are somewhat inconstant. They gained a second pair of wings between 2nd and 3rd Edition, and in addition some depictions give them greater proportions of birdlike traits or depict their probosces as rigid beaks or hooked noses.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: In most regards, they act as a fantastical counterpart to mosquitoes and vampire bats.
Mix-and-Match Critters: While their specific appearance and proportions change between editions, stirges usually resemble mixes of vultures, bats and mosquitoes.
The Swarm: Individual stirges are fairly weak and pose little threat to all but the weakest humanoids, so they usually attack in large swarms.
Vampiric Draining: Stirges feed on the blood of living creatures, attaching and draining them slowly.

Stirgoi

Origin: Ravenloft
Classification: Monstrosity
Challenge Rating: 4 (5E)

Human-sized creatures with stirge features, born from arcane experiments or a stirge drinking the blood of a well-fed vampire.

Enemy Summoner: Once per day, a stirgoi can summon a swarm of stirges that follow its commands.
Life Drain: Their proboscis attack deals extra necrotic damage that heals the stirgoi by the same amount. Those slain by the attack are reduced to Empty Piles of Clothing and a husk of a corpse, which might reanimate as a boneless undead horror.
Vampire Vannabe: Some stirgoi embrace their monstrous forms and diets, and start mimicking vampires. "These would-be bloodsucker aristocrats create stirge courts amid scabrous husk-decorated villas and drain the life from any who balk at their grotesque gentility."

Stone Cursed

Classification: Construct (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

With a bit of basilisk blood and the ashes of a cockatrice feather, a petrified humanoid can be animated as a stony servitor, murderous but obedient to its creators.

He Was Right There All Along: Stone cursed are predictably good at disguising themselves as ordinary statues.
Living Statue: The stone cursed are spawned through a foul alchemical ritual performed on a petrified humanoid. A dim echo of the victim's spirit is awakened, animating the statue and turning it into a useful guardian.
Organ Drops: A side effect of their creation ritual is the formation of an obsidian skull-shaped stone within the stone cursed. If extracted from a slain stone cursed, a skilled arcanist can use the skull to try and extract a memory from the stone cursed's mortal life. Whether the attempt is successful or not, it can only be made once.
Taken for Granite: Not only was the stone cursed a victim of such an attack, their claws drip with a transformative sludge that can in turn petrify their enemies.

Stone Flyer

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Magical Beast (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Winged wolves of living stone, whose packs hunt prey in the Underdark.

Dungeon Bypass: They have the "Earth Glide" ability, and can pass through solid rock with the ease of a fish moving through water, without leaving a tunnel behind.
Horse of a Different Color: Stone flyers confer the above ability on anyone riding them, so the creatures are highly sought-after as mounts by Underdark races. This requires both a special saddle and special training, as well as a Diplomacy check to win the creature over.
It Can Think: They're no smarter than the average ogre, but stone flyers are sapient and speak Terran.
Silicon-Based Life: Stone flyers look to be carved from mottled granite, but are magical beasts rather than elementals, as well as fierce carnivores.

Stonechild

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 4 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Neutral Good

Half-elemental humanoids blessed with the great strength and fortitude of the earth as well as a keen intellect.

Challenge Seeker: Stonechildren relish challenges and opportunities to prove their (considerable) strength, and tend to go off on adventures at least once or twice over their lifetimes.
Happily Adopted: Stonechildren are rarely raised among others of their kind, and typically grow up in dwarf or human communities. Since the dwarven mindset and reverence for the earth meshes well with stonechildren's values, and both dwarves and humans greatly admire the stonechildren's strength and silence, stonechildren don't face the sort of stigma half-orcs or tieflings have to deal with. But they still have a tendency to leave their homes to go adventuring, and in old age try and find their way to the Elemental Plane of Earth to live among others of their kind.
No-Sell: They're immune to acid or poisons.
Silicon-Based Life: They look like powerful humanoids carved from stone, so are more this trope than Rock Monsters (especially since they're classified as Outsiders, not Elementals, despite having an Elemental Embodiment for a parent). Stonechildren are naturally hairless, and their eyes are gray or black, or a gemlike hue like green or a muted blue.
The Stoic: They tend to "keep their feelings hidden behind a slow practicality," and are stalwart in the face of adversity.
Suffer the Slings: Stonechildren can cast magic stone three times per day, turning ordinary pebbles into magical projectiles that deal better damage when hurled or slung, and deal additional damage to undead.

Stonesinger

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

Strange creatures of living stone, named for their haunting songs.

Captive Audience: Stonesingers have been known to raid towns simply to kidnap victims they then bury up to their necks, forcing them to listen to the monster's music, "haunting, booming songs that are often mistaken for the wind blowing over hollows in the desolate bandlands." Afterward, the audience is typically petrified and eaten.
Dishing Out Dirt: They can use spells like meld into stone, stone shape and wall of stone, but only while singing.
Eat Dirt, Cheap: While these creatures can subsist upon "natural" fossils, they get more nutrition out of eating creatures they've petrified themselves.
Large Ham: They're prone to making grandiose moves in combat, and using Power Attack more than is strictly necessary, just to make their attacks more impressive (and painful).
Music Soothes the Savage Beast: Stonesingers also appreciate other creatures' singing, and it's possible to impress them with a high enough Perform check, potentially placating an angry monster.
Silicon-Based Life: Stonesingers look something like 12-foot-long scorpions with scales comprised of plates of stone and crystal claw-tips, but are classified as aberrations with the earth subtype rather than elemental creatures.
Starfish Language: These creatures are quite intelligent, but speak their own language rather than any known tongue.
Super-Scream: Once every few rounds, a stonesinger can shriek, potentially dealing heavy sonic damage to and stunning a single target within 60 feet. Unusually, this is treated as a touch attack in which the monster makes a Perform check rather than a conventional attack roll.
Taken for Granite: A stonesinger's bite attack carries a poison that deals Dexterity damage, and any creature whose Dexterity hits 0 instantly fossilizes.

Storm Crab

Classification: Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Gargantuan crustaceans bred for war.

Bioweapon Beast: Like behirs and rocs, storm crabs were created by the giants' deities for their ancient war against the dragons, hence why their illustration depicts one attacking a dragon turtle. They're thus associated with storm giants, and can be found serving them or patrolling ancient giant ruins.
Giant Enemy Crab: They're colossal and crabby, though the fact that they have four clawed arms as well as stingers carrying a paralytic poison mean they aren't quite true crabs.
Bigby: Given all the weird things that swim in the deep ocean, who am I to complain about a colossal crab with a poison stinger that can knock you away with a high-speed jet of water?
Making a Splash: Their Breath Weapon is a water jet that can deal strong bludgeoning damage and Knock Back those who fail their saves up to 30 feet away.

Storm Drake

Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 17 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Reclusive, serpentine dragons who lair in fog-shrouded mountain peaks, storm drakes chiefly wish to be left alone to enjoy the vastness of weather and the sky.

Blow You Away: A storm drake's breath weapon is a gust of tornado-strong winds.
Colour-Coded Emotions: A storm drake's scales shimmer gold when it's happy and turn dark gray when it's angry.
Elemental Shapeshifting: Storm drakes can turn into a cloud of living gas and back at will.
Living Mood Ring: A storm drake's scales change in color based on its emotional state, gaining a pearlescent sheen when the creature is calm, shimmering gold when it's happy and turning a dark, leaden gray when it's angry.
Weather Manipulation: Storm drakes' innate magic mostly focuses on controlling weather phenomena, allowing them to create fog and clouds, manipulate wind, create blizzards and sleet storms, or call down lightning.

Su-monster

Classification: Fey Beast (4E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 10 (4E), 1 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil, Unaligned (4E)

Intelligent but malevolent monkeys with psionic powers.

Bioweapon Beast: Legend has is that the first su-monsters were created by some evil spellcaster who wanted guardians to defend his forest against psionic enemies, and some sages believe su-monsters to be magical humanoid-ape hybrids.
The Family That Slays Together: Part of what makes su-monsters dangerous is that they hunt as a family group. And should anything threaten their young or their mates, the su-monsters will fly into a rage and benefit from a haste effect.
Maniac Monkeys: Su-monsters are a species of evil and aggressive monkeys.
Prehensile Tail: One of the su-monsters' favorite ambush methods is to sit atop a branch overlooking a path, then when prey passes below, grip the branch with their tails and then swing down to attack.
Psychic Powers: Su-monsters are naturally psionic, and know powers such as psionic crush and mind thrust.
Slasher Smile: It's noted that su-monsters often grin, "but this is usually a sharp-toothed threat rather than a gesture of friendliness."

Succubus/Incubus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_succubi_incubi_5e.png

Classification: Outsider (3E), Fiend (5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 9 (4E), 4 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (1E-3E), Evil (4E), Neutral Evil (5E)

Fiends specializing in seduction and sexual temptation, able to assume whatever form and gender they believe appeals to their victims.

See Dungeons And Dragons Fiends Demons for tropes related to the 3.5e depiction of incubi as a separate creature.

Charm Person: Succubi and incubi can charm other creatures at will, but normally do so only in emergencies, such as confrontations with adventurers. Evil acts committed under mind-control don't properly corrupt the victim's soul, after all.
The Corrupter: These fiends first take ethereal form to visit their sleeping targets and whisper in their ears, encouraging them to give in to their darkest desires and filling their mind with debauchery. Then they will assume a physical form that appeals to their target to befriend or seduce them, encouraging further depravity and evil acts. Once their victim has fully embraced evil, the fiend kills them and claims their soul.
Humanshifting: Succubi and incubi can take the form of any Small or Medium humanoid to aid in their seductions.
Intangibility: Succubi and incubi can shift to or from the Ethereal Plane with an action.
Kiss of Death: A literal example; a succubus or incubus can drain the life force of a charmed or willing recipient with a mere kiss, or other "act of passion." In most editions this resulted in Level Drain, while 5th Edition makes the effect some heavy psychic damage that can't be recovered until the victim has a long rest.
Retcon: Succubi have consistently been fiends, but which type varies by edition. Through 3rd Edition they were considered demons, but 4th edition reclassified them as devils, until 5th Edition declared they were fiendish free agents found across the Lower Planes. Succubi and incubi were also considered separate creatures until 5th Edition clarified that these fiendish seducers can change sex as easily as they change shape.
Sex Shifter: They can change from male incubi to female succubi as they please, though most of them prefer one form or the other.
Spider-Sense: Their 2nd Edition rules state that succubi can never be surprised in combat; alu-fiends' entry explains that this is an "innate intuition" that warns of danger, but said half-fiends' equivalent is only 75% as effective.
Succubi and Incubi: They're evil outsiders who use sex and seduction to damn mortal souls. Sometimes this results in the birth of a cambion.

Alu-Fiend

Alignment: Chaotic Evil, or rarely Chaotic Neutral or True Neutral

The offspring of succubi and humans, who inherit their mothers' supernatural beauty, charm and shapeshifting abilities, and often their evil temperament.

Child of Two Worlds: They tend to be hateful beings, "even for tanar'ri standards," as they're neither fully human nor demon, leaving them outcasts. Full tanar'ri consider alu-fiends "lowly and without purpose."
Life Drain: While full succubi can inflict negative levels, alu-fiends can heal themselves for half the damage they inflict with a melee attack.
Winged Humanoid: In their natural forms, alu-fiends look like attractive winged women, though their shapechange ability can help disguise the latter.

Sunfly

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Celestial (5E)
Challenge Rating: 0 (individual), 1 (swarm) (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Tiny, buglike creatures found across the Outer Planes, where they prosper and wane as their home plane fares.

Beware My Stinger Tail: Sunflies have stingers that inject a venom whose effect varies depending on the Outer Plane the sunfly is on. Sunflies on the Upper Planes can cause their victim to glow, which can foil invisibility effects, while on a Neutral plane their poison can impede concentration on spells, and on the Lower Planes sunfly poison can slow victims.
Love It or Hate It: In-universe, planar inhabitants tend to regard sunflies "as loathsome pests or adorable pets," with little middle ground.
One-Steve Limit: Averted; 3rd Edition also had "sunflies," but these were swarms of dragonfly-like creatures from the Upper Planes that could dazzle enemies with light, and were sometimes sent by gods to punish mortals. They're thus in the "Divine Wrath Swarm" folder elsewhere on this index.
The Swarm: Sunflies are hardly built for combat, and are only slightly more dangerous in swarms, which intensifies the effects of their poison.

Sunwyrm

Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 14 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Eight-legged, winged dragons with great power over light and radiance, sunwyrms spend their lives soaring above deserts and savannahs in an endless search for fresh prey.

Blinded by the Light: Anything that looks at a sunwyrm has to save or be blinded for several rounds.
Elemental Shapeshifter: Sunwyrms can transform into Pure Energy, either converting their claws or teeth into brilliant energy weapons that ignore armor, or turning their entire body into glowing energy, becoming incorporeal.
Glowing Eyes: A sunwyrm's eyes seep with seemingly liquid light.
Light 'em Up: Sunwyrms constantly radiate golden light from their eyes, wing membranes and tail bulbs, and can transform their claws and fangs into structures of searing radiance, breathe out laser-like light beams, and constantly emit blinding light.
Light Is Not Good: Sunwyrms are beautiful, golden dragons constantly glowing with steady golden light. They're also rapacious predators with little interest in anything beyond hoarding treasure and sating their hunger.
Non-Elemental: Their breath weapon is a line of burning yellow energy that deals untyped damage, with the catch that as with brilliant energy weapons, it's completely harmless to nonliving matter, including constructs or the undead.

Susurrus

^2e

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

Headless figures whose porous bodies produce a strange droning with a curious effect on the undead.

Berserk Button: Aside from attacking undead on sight, susurri attack anyone carrying a torch or wielding flames, as the smoke taints the air the creatures survive on. Otherwise, the creatures keep to themselves unless aggravated.
Brown Note: The "dronesong" produced by air moving through the hollows of a susurrus' body generates a soothing drone that echoes through dungeons to be heard up to a quarter-mile away. While it's harmless to most creatures, undead find it strangely calming, and may enter a state of torpor identical to a hold undead spell, refusing to move for up to ten rounds.
Retcon: The susurrus of 2nd Edition is actually a bamboo monster related to the shambling mound, and the dronesong it produces can put both living and undead creatures into a Forced Sleep for several hours.
The Spiny: Anyone striking a susurrus in melee with a non-reach weapon will take damage from the glass barbs covering its body.
Torso with a View: Susurri have several holes in their bodies, which don't impede them in any way, but instead produce their signature dronesong. This is also why other creatures have no luck reproducing the susurri language.

Sword Wraith

Classification: Undead (3E-5E)
Challenge Rating: As base creature +2 (3E); 3 (warrior), 8 (commander)(5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil (1E-3E & 5E), Chaotic Evil (4E)

These soldiers have risen from their graves to continue their search for battle, and retain all the martial skill they possessed in life.

Berserk Button: Sword wraiths fly into a rage if their valour is questioned. Conversely, praising their valor is an easy way to appease a sword wraith, leading to some villages holding annual festivals to honor and placate nearby sword wraiths.
The Berserker: 5th Edition sword wraiths can make special attacks with their "Martial Fury" ability, but doing so lets opponents make attacks against them with advantage, representing how the sword wraith is neglecting their defense.
Enemy Summoner: Sword wraith commanders can summon basic sword wraith warriors once per day, as a response to taking damage.
Glory Seeker: Some sword wraiths sought glory in battle in life, and rose from the dead after being slain in an ambush, by a magical barrage, or some other unceremonious end.
Non-Health Damage: 3rd Edition sword wraiths deal a point of Strength damage with every blow.

Swordwing

Classification: Aberrant Humanoid (4E)
Challenge Rating: 23 (slasher) to 30 (queen) (4E)
Alignment: Evil (4E)

Intelligent insectoids of the Underdark, known for their armblades and habit of collecting items for their nests.

Asskicking Leads to Leadership: "Crownwings" are elite swordwings, selected when members of a hive travel to the Buzzing Vaults to wage frenzied battle — surviving crownwings are considered to have defended their status, while lesser swordwings metamorphosize into new crownwings.
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Swordwings reproduce asexually, and get the urge to do so once in their lives. After receiving pheromones from their hive's queen in exchange for a proper offering, the swordwing hunts down and kills a humanoid, then implants an egg in the corpse's abdomen. The body is hung on the outside of the swordwing's home while the egg hatches and the resulting grub devours its host from the inside, converting the humanoid corpse into an aberrant insectoid over a year-long metamorphosis. New swordwings immediately begin collecting items, and are suspected to prefer objects that were significant to their hosts.
Blade Below the Shoulder: Swordwings get their name from the fact that one of their arms ends in a chitinous blade as hard as adamantine. Legend has it that those blades get sharper should someone rob a swordwing's hoard.
Collector of the Strange: They have an obsessive need to hoard objects, whether worthless trinkets, books the swordwing can't read, weapons or armor, gems and jewelry, or bloody body parts from their victims. The most successful swordwings in a hive will build themed collections, and crownwings will construct proper galleries to display their treasures (or what they consider treasure), but woe to anyone who trespasses in or steals from a swordwing's collection. While sometimes swordwings will trade with one another or other races to get desired items for their collections, in other cases the competition is vicious and violent — or a swordwing will agree to a deal, then immediately kill their trading partner to get their payment back.
Crafted from Animals: Other Underdark races sometimes harvest swordwing chitin and armblades to make into magic items, though any living swordwing who encounters someone using their kind's remains in this manner will fly into a murderous rage.
Hive Caste System: Like most insect-folk, swordwings live in hive cities with distinct biological castes.
- Mature swordwings (also called drones) and immature swordwings (cutters) serve the higher ranks, until they're given the opportunity to become a crownwing at the Buzzing Vaults.
- Shapers are a higher rank of drone, valued for their ability to construct the species' nesting spires.
- Crownwings are a hive's upper class, given tasks by the queen and drones to command to fulfil them (failure results in death, while success is no guarantee of advancement). They have their own complicated internal hierarchy in which status is derived from the value of a crownwing's collection, and the only way to advance is by killing one's superior and then demonstrating the merits of one's collection — a weeks-long process in which other crownwings scrutinize and debate the worthiness of a hoard, complete with sabotage by political rivals and bribery by ambitious swordwings.
- At the top of the hierarchy is a hive's queen, who generates the pheromones necessary for swordwing reproduction, leads the hive's worship of the Far Realm entity Dhogostho-Attu, and violently adjudicates any disputes lesser swordwings are unable to work out themselves. Any crownwing powerful enough to defeat their hive's queen becomes the new ruler.
Truce Zone: The Market Grottos are a stretch of caverns not far from the King's Highway in the Underdark, where swordwings from different hives meet to swap items for their collections. Uniquely, they do this without killing anyone but those who violate the "no violence" rule of the area, so brave (and well-armed) merchants from other races sometimes travel to the Market Grottos to do business.

Sylph

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

These beautiful winged women are air elemental-kin, rumored to be a crossbreed between nymphs and air spirits. They have a liking for the scenery of the Material Plane, and make their homes on mountaintops, but can be found almost anywhere due to their love of travel.

Alchemic Elementals: They're the sylphs representing air, obviously.
Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Their response to strangers is to turn invisible and observe from hiding, but even if they detect a potential threat, sylphs' curiosity can lead them to linger in dangerous situations just to watch what happens.
Enemy Summoner: Once per day, a sylph can summon a Large elemental of any variety.
Invisibility: They can use improved invisibility at will.
One-Gender Race: Sylphs are all-female and, according to their AD&D write-up, reproduce with male humanoids, most commonly elves but sometimes humans or halflings. This results in an egg three months later, which hatches into an infant sylph in another six months.
Retcon: Their size varies by edition, starting Medium-sized, getting downgraded to Small in 3rd Edition, then becoming Medium again for 4th.
Squishy Wizard: Sylphs are natural sorcerers, but are very squishy in direct combat — their 3rd Edition stats only give them 10 hit points despite being CR 5.
Winged Humanoid: Their 2nd Edition write-up states that sylphs can naturally levitate, and their wings simply provide thrust.

Synad

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

A naturally psionic race whose members are literally in three minds about everything.

Combat Clairvoyance: Their "oracle" mind can give synads a precognitive edge in combat, translating to a once-per-day bonus on an initiative check, attack roll or saving throw.
Dimensional Traveler: The synads used the Plane of Shadow to escape their homeworld, which most synads prefer to forget, claiming that "monstrosities of the mind roam there unhindered."
Ghost Memory: Their "collective" mind lets synads tap into their racial memory, letting them spend a power point to gain a bonus on Knowledge or Psicraft checks.
Humanoid Abomination: They look like tall, hairless humans, but their unique minds give them the Aberration type.
Mage Species: Synads are latent psionicists, giving them a starting pool of power points they can use to fuel their racial abilities, though they need to advance in psionic character classes to learn proper Psychic Powers.
Mind Hive: Each synad has three fully independent minds fused into a functional whole, an "overmind" that controls the synad's actions while their subminds, the "collective" and the "oracle," offer insight as needed, or even take over. This ensures that a synad is never truly alone, and always enjoys multiple viewpoints and cooperative planning during decision-making. Their threefold mind lets synads more easily resist mental effects, and they can spend a power point to "multitask" once per day, having a submind perform a purely mental action as a free action.
Multiple Head Case: In sunlight, synads can pass for tall, slim humans, but in dim lighting, and if a synad has exhausted all of their power points for the day, two ghostly heads appear around their physical head, representing their multiple minds.

Characters / Dungeons And Dragons Creatures S Part Two

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So-Sy

Blackspawn Corruptor

Blackspawn Raider

Blackspawn Stalker

Bluespawn Ambusher

Bluespawn Burrower

Bluespawn Godslayer

Bluespawn Stoneglider

Bluespawn Stormlizard

Greenspawn Leaper

Greenspawn Razorfiend

Greenspawn Sneak

Greenspawn Zealot

Redspawn Arcaniss

Redspawn Berserker

Redspawn Birther

Redspawn Firebelcher

Whitespawn Hordeling

Whitespawn Hunter

Whitespawn Iceskidder

Androsphinx

Criosphinx

Gynosphinx

Hieracosphinx

Other Sphinxes

Astrosphinx

Canisphinx

Crocosphinx

Dracosphinx

Loquasphinx

Luposphinx

Saurosphinx

Threskisphinx

Asteroid Spider

Bloodsilk Spider

Harpoon Spider

Inferno Spider

Phase Spider

Tentacle Spider

Tomb Spider

Herald of Hadar

Maw of Acamar

Scion of Gibbeth

Spawn of Ulban

Emissary of Caiphon

Serpent of Nihal

Allabar, the Opener of the Way

Stirgoi

Alu-Fiend

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