Player Races | Creatures (Aberrations | Beasts | Celestials | Constructs | Dragons | Elementals | Fey | Fiends | Giants | Humanoids | Monstrosities | Oozes | Plants | Undead)
open/close all folders
Ankou
Challenge Rating: 8 (soul seeker), 21 (soul herald)
Alignment: True Neutral
- The Ageless: The dragons that become ankou serve for eternity. Though they can live until the end of time, ankou can be killed.
- Angelic Transformation: The first dragon to die each century is reborn as an ankou under the death god's auspices and is charged with living a second life.
- Dem Bones: The ankou's true form is the bleached-white bones of a dragon.
- Do Not Fear The Reaper: The ankou have the grim but necessary duty of sending creatures to the realms of death.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Ankou rarely manifest before mortals in their natural form for fear of sowing chaos. The most popular forms for ankou to assume are humanoid skeletons, ravens, kindly elders or young children.
- Invisible Monsters: If not in bright light, an ankou can turn invisible by cloaking itself in shadows.
- Morphic Resonance: An ankou can adopt the form of any creature it has seen in its life or unlife, but tell-tale signs of its true nature always leak through to the new form, such as a hollow voice that does not echo or wispy hair, fur, or feathers that move by an unfelt wind.
- Power Nullifier: Necromancy spells can't be cast within 120 feet of the ankou.
- Psychopomp: The ankou is an apparition that ushers the souls of the dead to their final resting places.
- Worthy Opponent: Creatures that cheat death through cunning and their own wit are often treated with grudging respect by the ankou, who are nonetheless duty-bound to give them death.
Dracotaur
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Elemental Weapon: Dracotaurs can fire arrows that, upon impact, explode into lightning, fire, thunder or poison (depending on species).
- Our Centaurs Are Different: The dracotaur is a centaur-like creature with the upper body of a lizardfolk and the lower body of a dragon.
- Playing with Fire: Red dracotaurs' breath weapon is a cone of fire.
- Poisonous Person: Green dracotaurs can fire poisoned arrows and exhale a cloud of toxic gas.
- Shock and Awe: A blue dracotaur can exhale lightning and fire lightning arrows.
True Dragon
- Arch-Enemy: In particular, void dragons despise light dragons, and light dragons warn one another of a void dragon's approach.
Boreal Dragon
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Blood Knight: Boreal dragons are truculent and love nothing better than getting into a fight, but do not target creatures far weaker than themselves unless they are hunting.
- Fantastic Racism: Boreal dragons hate most other dragons with a passion and war constantly with neighbours, driving off or killing any dragons they encounter.
- Playing with Fire: Boreal dragons inhabit the arctic and alpine places of the world, but are creatures of heat and flames. Their breath is filled with burning embers, and they prefer to live near a natural heat source.
- Wreathed in Flames: An ancient boreal dragon can wreathe its body in searing blue and white embers.
Cave Dragon
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Big Eater: Cave dragons are always hungry.
- Casting a Shadow: An adult or older cave dragon can generate an aura of darkness.
- Deadly Gas: Toxic gases suddenly fill passages and caverns, and just as quickly disperse, within six miles of the cave dragon's lair.
- Eyeless Face: In place of eyes, cave dragons have long, thin spikes that help them navigate tunnels.
- Fast Tunnelling: An adult cave dragon glides through any sort of earth except metal as easily as a fish swims through water. Its burrowing produces no ripple or other sign of its presence and leaves no tunnel or hole unless the dragon chooses to do so.
- Food Chain of Evil: Cave dragons are ready to eat absolutely everything: undead, plant creatures, or anything organic.
- Poisonous Person: The cave dragon's breath weapon is a cone of black poison gas.
Flame Dragon
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Disproportionate Retribution: Some flame dragons spend centuries torturing a family line for nothing more than trespassing. Others plot eternal curses after twisting poorly chosen words into the most dire of insults. Flame dragons relish such opportunities for revenge, seeing each as a delightful hobby; the vengeance itself is less important.
- For the Evulz: Flame dragons bring complete and total ruin to entire civilisations for the fun to be had.
- Manipulative Bastard: Aging flame dragons use politics, murder and magic in elaborate schemes only their ilk can appreciate. Many create plots so intricate and layered that they lack a true resolution, creating only endless manipulation.
- Playing with Fire: The flame dragon's breath weapon is a cone of fire.
Imperial Dragon
Alignment: True Neutral
- Shock and Awe: The imperial dragon's breath weapon is a cone of lightning, and it can cause a bolt of lightning to strike a point it can see in its lair.
- Weather Manipulation: Imperial dragons are creatures of wind and water, and the eldest of their kind exhibit mastery over the weather.
Light Dragon
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Light 'em Up: Light dragons passively shed bright light, and can exhale dazzling light or radiant energy.
- Light Is Good: Light dragons are benevolent but remote, wishing all creatures well, but preferring to only interact with others of their kind or creatures who exhibit and appreciate beauty.
Mithral Dragon
Alignment: True Neutral
- Choosing Neutrality: Mithral dragons are rebellious dragons who once sought to make peace between chromatic and metallic dragons. Having failed in that, they declared themselves neutral and seek out opportunities to make peace elsewhere.
- Private Military Contractors: Mithral dragons occasionally serve as mercenaries against the Mharoti.
Sea Dragon
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Making a Splash: The sea dragon's breath weapon is a crushing wave of cold seawater.
- Sea Serpents: A sea dragon has a shark's head that tapers off into a sleek eel-like body, and is big enough to hunt whales and entire schools of tuna.
- Weather Manipulation: Sea dragons prefer spells that manipulate water or the weather.
Void Dragon
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Asteroids Monster: When an ancient void dragon dies, some of its biomass cleaves from its body to produce liminal drakes.
- Celestial Body: A void dragon is seemingly formed of the night sky and has bright white stars for eyes. Lesser stars twinkle in the firmament of its body.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: When an ancient void dragon is killed, it explodes in a swath of celestial destruction.
- Gravity Master: One of the void dragon's breath weapons is a cube of localised gravity.
- Infectious Insanity: Void dragons are all unhinged, and their madness is contagious. It flows out of them to break the minds of lesser beings when they fly into a rage and lash out.
- Star Power: One of the void dragon's breath weapons is a cone of star fire.
- Tele-Frag: In its lair, a void dragon can rip the fabric of space, forcing two creatures it can see to suddenly exist in the same place. Space itself repels the creatures to their original positions.
Wasteland Dragon
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Collector of the Strange: Wasteland dragons often bring home curious devices, arcane tomes, and relics of the dead places in which they live, some likely infused with forbidden magic. Though they have little use for such things, a plundered hoard could spell disaster for the world outside.
- Does Not Like Magic: Wasteland dragons hate spellcasters and any who employ magic above everyone else.
- Mutants: Wasteland dragons were once of different breeds altogether before they were warped by an unfettered magical catastrophe and the foul energies brought through to this world from the Void.
Wind Dragon
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Blow You Away: The wind dragon can exhale a blast of wind.
- The Bully: Wind dragons number among the greatest bullies and worst tyrants among mortal creatures. They take personal offence at any perceived challenge and great pleasure in humiliating rivals.
Dragon Eel
Challenge Rating: 12
Alignment: True Neutral
- Giant Animal Worship: Dragon eels often lord over awed tribes, allowing locals to revere them as a mighty spirit. Some use such tribes as the core of a pirate fleet or raiding parties carried on their backs.
- Ride the Lightning: During storms, a dragon eel can swim through the air.
- Shock and Awe: A dragon eel's body generates a potent charge of lightning, and its breath weapon is a lightning bolt.
Dragonette
Keyhole Dragonette
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Alignment: True Neutral
- Big Eater: Belying their small frames, keyhole dragonettes have voracious appetites and can consume a variety of foods.
- Bioweapon Beast: Keyhole dragonettes were magically bred to be adept at entering closed-off or hard-to-reach places to hunt urban vermin.
- Master of Unlocking: Keyhole dragonettes regularly find themselves employed as living lockpicks. Their long, deft tongues enable them to pick even the most complex of locks.
Lantern Dragonette
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
- Artificial Hybrid: Most believe lantern dragonettes are the result of an arcane fusion of a radiant spirit with a paper drake.
- Fantastic Diet Requirement: A lantern dragonette devours four ounces of candle wax per day, plus four more ounces if it uses its belly lantern.
Drake
Alehouse Drake
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Bouncer: Older alehouse drakes usually befriend the proprietor and help manage flared tempers and weepy drinkers in return for living space and a generous tab.
- Knowledge Broker: Alehouse drakes gossip endlessly. Perched in hiding places throughout busy taverns, they overhear many stories, and often trade in information, making them good sources for news about town.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: When an alehouse drake targets a creature with a mind-affecting spell, the creature can immediately forget the source of the spell.
- Poisonous Person: An alehouse drake can burp a cloud of intoxicating gas.
Ash Drake
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Alien Catnip: The ash drake enjoys a pile of ash like a cat would catnip, rolling around in it and becoming wild-eyed.
- Ashes to Ashes: An ash drake can spew a cone of blistering hot, choking ash, or beat its wings and create a cloud of ash.
Bathhouse Drake
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
- Benevolent Boss: While they are as arrogant as any dragon, bathhouse drakes treat their subordinates (typically kobolds) with some respect, rarely abusing them.
Camouflage Drake
Challenge Rating: 1
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Chameleon Camouflage: Camouflage drakes can change colour to blend in with their environment.
Cave Drake
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: True Neutral
- Poisonous Person: The cave drake is an ambush predator that attacks prey with its blinding venom.
- Super-Persistent Predator: A cave drake will follow prey patiently for miles, unless its quarry wanders into the territory of another cave drake.
Coin Drake
Challenge Rating: 5
Alignment: True Neutral
- Tracking Spell: Coin drakes among a pile of coins become attuned to the coins and can sense movement of those coins.
Coral Drake
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Beware My Stinger Tail: A stinger frilled with tiny barbs curves at the end of the coral drake's tail.
- Chameleon Camouflage: Like a piece of moving coral, a coral drake's coloration and scale patterns change to match nearby anemones, corals, seaweed and sea urchins.
- Weaponized Offspring: Coral drakes nurture their offspring in specialized throat sacs, and can pressurize these sacs to spew forth a cone of spawn.
Crater Drake
Challenge Rating: 11
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Mutants: Crater Mutation is common among crater drakes. Two drakes, even those hatched from the same clutch, rarely have identical biology. They continue to mutate as they age, and it isn't unusual for a crater drake to develop new abilities through these mutations.
- Walking Wasteland: The presence of a crater drake has a profoundly negative impact on its environment. Stunted or dead vegetation and pools of toxic water surround a crater drake's lair.
Crimson Drake
Challenge Rating: 1
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Beware My Stinger Tail: The crimson drake's tail ends in a scorpion-like stinger.
- Playing with Fire: The crimson drake's breath weapon is a cone of fire.
Deep Drake
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Make Them Rot: A deep drake can blast forth a crackling line of necrotic energy that wracks its victims with pain.
Diminution Drake
Challenge Rating: 5
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Shrink Ray: The diminution drake's toxic breath weapon and stinger reduce the size of its prey.
- Sizeshifter: The diminution drake can shrink or grow from cat-sized to person-sized and vice versa.
Elder Shadow Drake
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Casting a Shadow: The elder shadow drake's breath weapon is a ball of black liquid that explodes into a cloud of frigid black mist, extinguishing lights.
- Invisible Monsters: An elder shadow drake naturally fades from view in areas of dim light or darkness. Darkvision doesn't overcome this, because the shadow drake magically becomes invisible.
- Shadow Walker: An elder shadow drake can travel between shadows.
Fey Drake
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Charm Person: When a fey drake fails to convince someone to perform tasks for Silvaniel, it uses magic to force the person to comply.
Forest Drake
Challenge Rating: 2
Alignment: True Neutral
- Playing with Fire: Forest drakes can breathe fire, and love setting forest fires to cull dead and diseased trees and prevent the woods from becoming tinder-dry.
- Prehensile Tail: Forest drakes can swing through the treetops with their prehensile tails.
Hoard Drake
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Lazy Bum: Hoard drakes are perhaps the most avaricious and lazy of all dragonkind, spending their days lying on huge hoards, rarely if ever venturing out of their lairs.
- Money Mauling: The hoard drake's breath weapon is a cone molten gold, which can be collected and sold once it has cooled.
- Super-Persistent Predator: Hoard drakes are roused to terrible anger when even the smallest portion of their treasure is taken. At such times, a hoard drake leaves its lair to relentlessly pursue the thief, not resting until its treasure is reclaimed and the offending party is slain and eaten.
Hoarfrost Drake
Challenge Rating: 2
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- An Ice Person: A hoarfrost drake's cold breath creates a glaze of frost and ice, and it can create a cloud of freezing fog that rimes everything in frost.
- I Shall Taunt You: Hoarfrost drakes enjoy slicking the ground and rendering objects slippery, taunting those who fall on the ice or lose their grip on weapons and shields.
- Weak to Fire: Hoarfrost drakes are vulnerable to and despise fire, especially magical fire. If they are targeted by spells or effects that deal fire damage, they focus their attacks on the source.
Kelp Drake
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Acid Attack: The kelp drake's breath weapon is a line of kelp coated in acidic bile.
Light Drake
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Glowing Eyes: The light drake's eyes glow yellow.
- Light 'em Up: The light drake's breath weapon is a line of brilliant white light.
- Light Is Good: Light drakes use their light to aid lost travellers and defeat the denizens of the darkest parts of the world.
- That's No Moon: Light drakes tend to sleep together in piles for warmth and light in the cold darkness, and are sometimes mistaken for a pile of glittering treasure.
Liminal Drake
Challenge Rating: 14
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Brown Note Being: The liminal drake's very appearance is nauseating to many observers.
- Celestial Body: The liminal drake's body resembles a combination of starlight and void.
Moon Drake
Challenge Rating: 5
Alignment: True Neutral
- The Cavalry: Moon drakes are often only able to overcome their fear of others when they are the only ones able to save innocent people. The people of countless villages have stories of being nearly eviscerated by a rampaging werewolf, only to be saved by a moon drake, which cured the werebeast in a flash of pearlescent light before vanishing as quickly as it arrived.
- Lunacy: Their connection with the moon allows moon drakes to turn into moonlight and exhale a searing lunar beam.
- Man of Kryptonite: The moon drake's saliva is liquid moonlight, which can cure lycanthropy.
Pact Drake
Challenge Rating: 1
Alignment: True Neutral
- Magically-Binding Contract: Creatures that make a pact or agree to terms while a pact drake witnesses the agreement are bound by the drake's magic.
Paper Drake
Challenge Rating: 2
Alignment: True Neutral
- Grammar Nazi: Some paper drakes have a compulsion to correct errors in text or speech. They can help scribes correct mistakes, update outdated text, or erase entire volumes so they can be hand-lettered again with different text.
- Paper Cutting: The paper drake's razor-sharp claws and teeth are folded from paper.
- Power Tattoo: Paper drakes are sometimes subjected to strange magical rituals in which wizards tattoo powerful runes and symbols onto their skin. Those who survive this process gain even stranger, esoteric abilities.
Peluda Drake
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Acid Attack: One of the peluda drake's breath weapons is a cone of acid.
- Beast of Battle: Peluda drakes are often tamed and trained by elves for use as beasts of war. While they do not take well to other races, they have a strange rapport with those of elven heritage.
- Spike Shooter: The peluda drake's body is covered in enormous quills, which can be flung as a ranged attack.
Rust Drake
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Metal Muncher: Rust drakes feed on scrap metal.
Sanddrift Drake
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: True Neutral
- Beast of Battle: The fallen Fey Lord Tarkun has been known to capture and tame sanddrift drakes for use in his army.
- The Paralyzer: The sanddrift drake's bite holds a paralytic venom, which it uses to separate its prey from a group or herd.
Skull Drake
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: True Neutral
- Deadly Gas: The skull drake can breathe a noxious, necrotic black gas.
- Kill Steal: Skull drakes enjoy chasing smaller scavengers away from a prize meal.
Spider Drake
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Lawful Evil
- All Webbed Up: The spider drake wraps its prizes in silk, encasing the valuables and the corpse together. Opening the treasures of the lair often reveals the spider drake's most recent kills.
- Deadly Gas: The spider drake's breath weapon is a cloud of toxic gas.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: More primal than true dragons, spider drakes combine draconic and arachnid features.
Star Drake
Challenge Rating: 15
Alignment: True Neutral
- Celestial Body: A star drake has mottled metallic scales and a nimbus of tiny stars surrounding its body.
- Playing with Fire: One of the star drake's breath weapons is a cone of fire.
Vine Drake
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: True Neutral
- Planimal: The vine drake is a plant-like dragon, with vines coiling around and branching out from its body, and lengthy thorns protruding from its head and down its spine. In the absence of food, it can subsist, though barely, on photosynthesis.
- Poisonous Person: The venom dripping from the vine drake's fangs causes a severe rash on its victims.
Felid Dragon
Challenge Rating: 19
Alignment: True Neutral
- Cat Like Dragons: The felid dragon resembles a tiger with draconic wings. Like most cats, felid dragons are naturally curious, often put themselves in danger just to learn more about the world, and like to play with their prey.
Jaculus
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Affably Evil: Some jaculi may feign docility or even pretend to be friendly and helpful, but wise travellers know that they drop such ruses as soon as they can steal what they're really after.
Linnorm
Vent Linnorm
Challenge Rating: 16
Alignment: True Neutral
- Sea Monster: Young vent linnorms spend much of their time searching through wreckages, while older ones actively sink passing ships, eating sailors and picking up treasures at their leisure.
- Sea Serpents: Vent linnorms live near hydrothermal fissures located in the deepest parts of the ocean.
Naina
Challenge Rating: 11
Alignment: Lawful Evil
- Glamour Failure: A naina shapeshifted into human form is nearly impossible to spot as anything but human unless she makes a mistake that gives away her true nature, like draconic roars, a flash of scales, a fondness for raw meat, or a wrathful dragon breath.
- Human Disguise: These dragons can take the shape of wise, old, human women. When rumours of a naina circulate, any woman who is a stranger may be persecuted, ostracised, or even tortured unless she can prove that she's entirely human.
Ouroboros
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: True Neutral
- Jekyll & Hyde: When an ouroboros comes back to life, it swaps behaviour and colours. If it was destructive in its previous life, it becomes peaceful, and vice versa.
- Resurrective Immortality: If slain, the ouroboros is reborn from the energy of its former body.
Piasa
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Unaligned
- Forced Sleep: The piasa's breath weapon is a gas that puts those that inhale it to sleep.
- Tail Slap: The piasa has an incredibly long lashing tail.
- To Serve Man: The piasa is well known for its hunger for humanoid flesh. While it will eat any meat, it prefers live prey that it has rendered unconscious and has a particular fondness for dwarf flesh.
- Weird Beard: The piasa has a 'beard' made of the same chitinous material as its scales.
Sandwyrm
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Unaligned
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Sandwyrms paralyse their prey with tail stings.
- Our Wyverns Are Different: Sandwyrms evolved as an offshoot to drakes or wyverns; their anatomy suggests they originally had four limbs and that their forearms are recent additions. The bones on their backs may have once been wings.
- That's No Moon: Long, jagged bones line a sandwyrm's backs, and resemble a sun-bleached ribcage so perfectly that it attracts carrion birds and curious travellers. When prey passes between the ribs, the sandwyrm snaps the rows of bone tightly over its prey.
Spawn of Nidhogg
Challenge Rating: 10
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Make Them Rot: The spawn of Nidhogg's breath is so foul that it causes plant life to wither and die.
War Wyvern
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Unaligned
- Armored Dragons: Their natural scales are enhanced with thick steel scale armour.
- Dragon Rider: War wyverns were bred to be fearsome, obedient, intelligent mounts for elite knights.
- Poisonous Person: Selective breeding has granted war wyverns the ability to spit venom, in addition to delivering it with their tails.
- Undying Loyalty: A war wyvern is unflinchingly loyal and has been taught to unerringly follow verbal commands given by its master. Despite their viciousness on the battlefield, war wyverns serve their masters out of love, not fear.
Zmey
Challenge Rating: 14 (full), 5 (headling)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Big Eater: A zmey headling has a voracious appetite and eats everything it can, including its previous body, to satisfy its maddening hunger and sustain its regeneration.
- Losing Your Head: A zmey's head doesn't die when severed from the body. Instead, the head rapidly sprouts a stunted body and two vestigial claws. Within days it develops into a complete, miniature zmey, and after two months, the head regenerates into a full-grown zmey.
- Salt Solution: Smearing at least a pound of salt on a zmey's severed head's stump prevents it from regenerating.
- To Serve Man: Zmey prefer intelligent prey, believing that intellect flavours the meat.
