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The Right Monster for the Job: D&D Monsters Listed by Function

The idea for this post comes from my son Evan, who DMs a weekly game for his friends. He noticed that the gem stalker from Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons has a Protective Link feature that enables the creature to absorb damage meant for another target. The ability means that a challenge rating 5 gem stalker can serve a protective role much like a CR 7 shield guardian. DMs writing adventures with a part for a less-powerful bodyguard could cast a gem stalker in place of a shield guardian. Evan suggested an article listing different creatures, at different power levels, able to fill the same game role.

Gem StalkerThis led me to think of other monster jobs that a dungeon master could fill for a particular adventure. Many campaigns need masterminds to plot evil schemes, guards to defend hoards, and perhaps assassins to attack when the meddling do-gooders become a nuisance. DMs creating dungeons often need undying foes that can survive a vault for a 1,000 years until foolhardy treasure hunters invade.

These lists come from the Monster Manual and  Monsters of the Multiverse and all the categories that I thought would prove useful. But I consider them a work in progress. What other jobs deserve lists? Each monster includes a short list of aspects, including types, terrain, and typical allegiances.  For now, I’ve omitted most humanoid type monsters.

Agents

Creatures that carry messages or conduct strikes and other missions for masterminds and other leaders.

CR Creature
0 Homunculus (Construct wizard)
1/4 Pseudodragon (Dragon wizard)
1/2 Jackalwere (Shapechanger lamia Graz’zt)
1/2 Magmin (Elemental fire)
1 Imp (Devil)
1 Quasit (Demon)
2 Spined devil (Devil)
3 Deep Scion (Monstrosity aquatic)
3 Redcap (Fey hags mages)
3 Wight (Undead)
4 Deathlock (Undead warlock)
4 Succubus/Incubus (Fiend shapechanger)
5 Banderhobb (Monstrosity hags)
5 Cambion (Fiend)
5 Mindwitness (Aberration telepathic)
7 Draegloth (Demon Lolth)
7 Oni (Giant)
9 Hydroloth (Yugoloth aquatic)
10 Yochlol (Demon Lolth)
12 Boneclaw (Undead)
12 Death Knight (Undead)
13 Devourer (Undead Orcus)
13 Narzugon (Devil)
17 Dragon Turtle (Dragon aquatic)

Ambushers

Creatures that attack from hiding to gain surprise.

CR Creature
1/2 Darkmantle (Monstrosity Subterranean Shadowfell)
1/2 Piercer (Monstrosity Subterranean)
1 Choker (Aberration)
2 Ankheg (Monstrosity)
2 Mimic (Monstrosity)
3 Cave Fisher (Monstrosity Subterranean)
3 Grell (Aberration Subterranean)
3 Trapper (Monstrosity)
5 Bulette (Monstrosity)
5 Otyugh (Aberration Garbage)
5 Roper (Monstrosity Subterranean)
5 Shambling Mound (Plant Forst Swamp)
11 Remorhaz (Monstrosity Cold)

Bodyguards

Protectors of other creatures.

CR Creature
2 Shadow Mastiff (Monstrosity)
3 Displacer Beast (Monstrosity)
4 Clockwork Stone Defender (Construct)
4 Flameskull (Undead)
5 Gem Stalker (Monstrosity Gem Dragon)
5 Unicorn (Celestial Forest)
7 Shield Guardian (Construct)
12 Gray Render (Monstrosity)

Collectors of secrets and lore

Creatures that find and hoard secrets and magical lore.

CR Creature
2 Berbalang (Aberration)
2 Nothic (Aberration)
4 Bone Naga (Undead)
8 Spirit Naga (Monstrosity)
10 Guardian Naga (Monstrosity)
11 Gynosphinx (Monstrosity)
17 Blue Abishai (Devil Tiamat)
17 Androsphinx (Monstrosity)
17 Nagpa (Monstrosity)
18 Sibriex (Demon)
20 Morkoth (Aberration)

Commanders

Creatures that lead groups into battle.

CR Creature
3 Chordrith (Monstrosity Lolth)
5 Wraith (Undead)
7 Mind Flayer (Aberration Illithid)
9 Flind (Fiend Gnoll)
9 Drow House Captain (Humanoid Lolth)
12 Death Knight (Undead)
13 Nalfeshnee (Demon)
14 Ice Devil (Devil)
16 Marilith (Demon)
18 Aminzu (Devil),
19 Balor (Demon)
19 Red Abishai (Devil Tiamat)
20 Pit Fiend (Devil)

Controllers

Creatures that support other fighters with tricks or magic.

CR Creature
1/4 Kobold Inventer (Dragon)
1/4 Kobold Scale Sorcerer (Dragon)
1 Firenewt Warlock Of Imix (Elemental Imix)
5 Kraken Priest (Monstrosity Aquatic Kraken)
8 Green Slaad (Aberration)
9 Gray Slaad (Aberration)
10 Death Slaad (Aberration)
12 Arcanaloth (Yugoloth)
12 Oinoloth (Yugoloth)
15 Skull Lord (Undead)

Enforcers

Brutish thugs and enforcers for masterminds and other leaders.

CR Creature
6 Chasme (Demon)
7 Elemental Myrmidons (Elemental)
8 Chain Devil (Devil)
9 Bone Devil (Devil)
14 Cadaver Collector (Construct)

Friends, guides, and patrons

Creatures likely to help or guide adventurers.

CR Creature
1/8 Flumph (Aberration Underdark)
1/4 Pixie (Fey Forest)
1/4 Sprite (Fey Forest)
2 Centaur (Monstrosity)
2 Pegasus (Celestial)
3 Dolphin Delighter (Fey Aquatic)
4 Couatl (Celestial)
5 Unicorn (Celestial Forest)
5 Werebear (Shapechanger Forest)
9 Treant (Plant Forest)
10 Deva (Celestial)
10 Guardian Naga (Monstrosity)
10 Stone Giant Dreamwalker (Giant)
11 Gynosphinx (Monstrosity)
12 Ki-Rin (Celestial)
16 Planetar (Celestial)
17 Androsphinx (Monstrosity)
21 Solar (Celestial)
23 Empyrean (Celestial)

Guards

Protectors of treasure or locations.

CR Creature
0 Shrieker (Plant Underdark)
1/4 Flying Sword (Construct)
1/4 Skeleton (Undead)
1/4 Zombie (Undead)
1 Animated Armor (Construct)
1 Scarecrow (Construct)
1 Stone Cursed (Construct)
2 Gargoyle (Elemental)
2 Guard Drake (Dragon)
2 Rug Of Smothering (Construct)
2 Shadow Mastiff (Monstrosity)
3 Basilisk (Monstrosity)
3 Displacer Beast (Monstrosity)
3 Hell Hound (Fiend Fire)
3 Owlbear (Monstrosity)
3 Spectator (Aberration)
3 Water Wierd (Elemental)
3 Wight (Undead)
4 Chuul (Aberration Aquatic)
4 Clockwork Iron Cobra (Construct)
4 Flameskull (Undead)
4 Girallon (Monstrosity)
4 Helmed Horror (Construct)
5 Barbed Devil (Devil)
5+ Golem (Construct)
5 Clockwork Oaken Bolter (Construct)
6 Galub Duhr (Elemental)
8 Canoloth (Yugoloth)
10 Guardian Naga (Monstrosity)
10 Yochlol (Demon Lolth)
11 Gynosphinx (Monstrosity)
12 Eidolon (Undead)
16 Stone Giant Quintessent (Giant)
17 Androsphinx (Monstrosity)
18 Demilich (Undead Tomb)

Haunts and corruptions

Creatures that bring chaos or corruption to locations and people.

CR Creature
1/8 Boggle (Fey)
1/2 Skulk (Monstosity Shadowfell)
4 Dybbuk (Demon)
4 Succubus/Incubus (Fiend Shapechanger)
5 Allip (Undead)
7 Bheur Hag (Fey)
6 Annis Hag (Fey)
9 Glabrezu (Demon)
11 Alkilith (Demon)
11 Balhannoth (Abberation)
13 Wastrilith (Demon Aquatic)

Impersonators

Creatures that can disguise to infiltrate.

CR Creature
3 Doppelganger (Monstrosity)
4 Succubus/Incubus (Fiend Shapechanger)
7 Maurezhi (Demon Gnoll)
7 Oni (Giant)
8 Green Slaad (Aberration)
9 Gray Slaad (Aberration)
10 Death Slaad (Aberration)
10 Yochlol (Demon Lolth)
13 Rakshasa (Fiend)
15 Green Abishai (Devil Tiamat)

Masterminds and arch-villians

Creatures that lead and plot, often while avoiding direct action.

CR Creature
2 Sea Hag (Fey Aquatic)
4 Deathlock Mastermind (Undead Warlock)
4 Lamia (Monstrosity Desert Graz’Zt)
5 Night Hag (Fiend Planes)
7 Mind Flayer (Aberration Illithid)
7 Oni (Giant)
8 Spirit Naga (Monstrosity)
10 Aboleth (Aberration)
10 Alhoon (Aberration Illithid Wizard)
10 Death Slaad (Aberration)
11 Genie (Elemental)
12 Death Knight (Undead)
13 Beholder (Aberration)
13 Rakshasa (Fiend)
13 Vampire (Undead)
13 Ultoloth (Yugoloth)
14 Death Tyrant (Undead)
14 Elder Brain (Aberration Illithid)
15 Mummy Lord (Undead Tomb)
15 Skull Lord (Undead)
17 Nagpa (Monstrosity)
18 Sibriex (Demon)
19 Balor (Demon)
20 Pit Fiend (Devil)
21 Lich (Undead Wizard)
23 Empyrean (Celestial)
23 Kraken (Monstrosity)
V Dracolich (Undead Wizard)
V Dragon (Dragon)

Mounts

CR Creature
1 Hippogriff (Monstrosity)
1 Steeder (Monstrosity)
2 Griffon (Monstrosity Cliffs)
2 Pegasus (Celestial)
3 Nightmare (Fiend)
6 Wyvern (Dragon)
11 Roc (Monstrosity Mountain)

Protectors of nature

Creatures that defend natural places.

CR Creature
1/4 Sprite (Fey Forest)
1 Dryad (Fey Forest)
5 Unicorn (Celestial Forest)
5 Wood Woad (Plant Forest)
9 Treant (Plant Forest)

Soldiers

Creatures who follow orders to fight in number.

CR Creature
1/4 Skeleton (Undead)
1/2 Chitine (Monstrosity Loth)
1/2 Nupperibo (Devil)
1/4 Zombie (Undead)
1 Firenewt Warrior (Elemental Imix)
1 Sea Spawn (Monstrosity Aquatic)
3 Bearded Devil (Devil)
3 Bulezau (Demon)
3 Wight (Undead)
4 Merregon (Devil)
5 Barlgura (Demon)
5 Mezzoloth (Yugoloth)
5 Red Slaad (Aberration)
5 Salamander (Elemental Fire Efreet)
5 Tanarukk (Demon)
6 White Abishai (Devil Tiamat)
7 Armanite (Demon)
7 Blue Slaad (Aberration)
7 Dhergoloth (Yugoloth)
8 Hezrou (Demon)
8 Howler (Fiend)
11 Horned Devil (Devil)
14 Fire Giant Dreadnought (Giant)
V Giant (Giant)

Spies and assassins

Creatures that spy or assassinate using stealth.

CR Creature
0 Cranium Rat (Aberration Illithid)
0 Homunculus (Construct)
1/4 Pseudodragon (Dragon Wizard)
1/2 Darkling (Fey)
1 Clockwork Bronze Scout (Construct)
1 Imp (Devil)
1 Quasit (Demon)
2 Darkling Elder (Fey)
5 Cambion (Fiend)
5 Oblex Adult (Ooze Illithid)
7 Black Abishai (Devil Tiamat)
10 Oblex Elder (Ooze Illithid)

Support soldiers

Creatures that typically augment other troops.

CR Creature
1 Half-Ogre (Giant)
2 Ogre (Giant)
2 Ogre Bolt Launcher (Giant)
2 Ogre Howday (Giant)
2 Ogre Zombie (Undead)
3 Hell Hound (Fiend Fire)
3 Manticore (Monstrosity)
3 Ogre Chain Brute (Giant)
4 Ogre Battering Ram (Giant)
5 Troll (Giant)
8 Shoosuva (Demon)
9 Nycaloth (Yugoloth)
11 Horned Devil (Devil)
12 Erinyes (Devil)
17 Goristro (Demon)

Stalkers

Creatures that seek targets for termination.

CR Creature
3 Slithering Tracker (Ooze)
4 Yeth Hound (Fey)
5 Revenant (Undead)
6 Chasme (Demon)
6 Invisible Stalker (Elemental)
8 Canoloth (Yugoloth)
10 Orthon (Devil)
14 Retriever (Construct Lolth)
16 Steel Predator (Construct)

Story creatures

Creatures that work better as story elements than as combat foes.

CR Creature
1/2 Gas Spore (Plant)
2 Nothic (Aberration)
4 Ghost (Undead)
25 Marut (Construct Inevitable)

Threats, subterranean

Dangers that lair underground.

CR Creature
1/4 Grimlock (Humanoid Illithid)
1/2 Gray Ooze (Ooze)
2 Quaggoth (Humanoid Lolth)
3 Hook Horror (Monstrosity)
4 Black Pudding (Ooze)
5 Umber Hulk (Monstrosity)

Threats, undying

Creatures that can perpetually survive in a location until disturbed

CR Creature
1/4 Mephit (Elemental)
1/4 Skeleton (Undead)
1/2 Shadow (Undead)
1 Specter (Undead)
2 Gibbering Mouther (Aberration)
2 Will-O’-Wisp (Undead Desolation)
3 Deathlock Wight (Undead Warlock)
3 Mummy (Undead Tomb)
4 Banshee (Undead)
4 Shadow Demon (Demon)
5 Spawn Of Kyuss (Undead Aquatic)
5 Wraith (Undead)
6 Medusa (Monstrosity Ruins)
8 Sword Wraith Warrior (Undead)
6 Bodak (Undead Orcus)
8 Sword Wraith Commander (Undead)
14 Cadaver Collector (Construct)

Threats, urban

Creatures typically met in cities.

CR Creature
2 Wererat (Shapechanger)

Threats, wandering or hunting

Creatures that roam, often seeking to slake their hunger.

CR Creature
1/2 Jackalwere (Shapechanger Lamia Graz’Zt)
1/2 Rust Monster (Monstrosity Subterranean)
1 Ghoul (Undead)
1 Meazel (Monstrosity)
1 Vargouille (Fiend)
2 Carrion Crawler (Monstrosity)
2 Gelatinous Cube (Ooze Subterranean)
2 Intellect Devourer (Aberration Subterranean Illithid)
2 Ochre Jelly (Ooze Subterranean)
2 Ogre (Giant)
2 Meenlock (Fey)
2 Merrow (Monstrosity Shore Aquatic)
2 Rutterkin (Demon Abyss)
3 Displacer Beast (Monstrosity)
3 Flail Snail (Elemental)
3 Vampiric Mist (Undead)
3 Yeti (Monstrosity Cold)
5 Xorn (Elemental Subterranean)
5 Tlincalli (Monstrosity Desert)
6 Drider (Monstrosity Underdark Spider)
6 Vrock (Demon)
8 Cloaker (Aberration Subterranean)
8 Hydra (Monstrosity Shore Aquatic)
9 Abominable Yeti (Monstrosity Cold)
10 Death Kiss (Aberration)
11 Roc (Monstrosity Mountain)
13 Devourer (Undead Orcus)
13 Neothelid (Aberration Subterranean)
15 Nabassu (Demon)
15 Purple Worm (Monstrosity Subterranean Mountain)
17 Dragon Turtle (Dragon Aquatic)
20 Leviathan (Elemental Aquatic)
20 Nightwalker (Undead)

Threats, wild

Dangers that appear in wild places often in or near a lair.

CR Creature
1/8 Stirge (Beast)
1/2 Cockatrice (Monstrosity)
1 Harpy (Monstrosity Cliffs)
1 Hippogriff (Monstrosity)
2 Ettercap (Monstrosity Spider)
2 Giffon (Monstrosity Cliffs)
2 Merrow (Monstrosity Shore Aquatic)
2 Peryton (Monstrosity Mountain)
3 Basilisk (Monstrosity)
3 Manticore (Monstrosity Pack)
3 Owlbear (Monstrosity)
3 Werewolf (Shapechanger Pack)
4 Wereboar (Shapechanger Orc)
4 Ettin (Giant Solo)
4 Girallon (Monstrosity)
4 Weretiger (Shapechanger Jungle)
5 Catoblepas (Monstrosity Swamp)
5 Gorgon (Monstrosity)
5 Troll (Giant)
6 Chimera (Monstrosity)
6 Wyvern (Dragon)
8 Corpse Flower (Plant)
9 Frost Salamander (Elemental Cold)
10 Froghemoth (Monstrosity Swamp)
11 Behir (Monstrosity)
11 Remorhaz (Monstrosity Cold)

Creatures that cause cataclysms

Creatures that cause unnatural disasters.

CR Creature
16 Phoenix (Elemental)
23 Elder Tempest (Elemental)
23 Kraken (Monstrosity)
30 Tarrasque (Monstrosity)

Tricksters and troublemakers

Creatures that favor mischief over battle.

CR Creature
1/8 Boggle (Fey)
1/4 Pixie (Fey Forest)
1/4 Mephit (Elemental)
1/2 Satyr (Fey)
1 Quickling (Fey)
1+ Faerie Dragon (Dragon)
2 Will-O’-Wisp (Undead Desolation)

D&D’s Best Monsters for Fun and Utility

I love beholders and I know most Dungeons & Dragons fans share my affection, but fights against beholders tend to fizzle into disappointment. At first, the eye beams incapacitate a character or two, so the monster feels threatening even if fear or paralysis idles a couple of players who stop having fun. But beholders can’t damage reliably enough to threaten level-appropriate foes, so the battle turns into a series of rolls to see if bad luck kills a character who suffers random disintegration.

At the table, beholders disappoint, but some less glamorous monsters prove more better than they seem at a glance. The lowly twig blight offers my favorite example. As foes for new characters, blights boast several advantages:

  • They’re creepy.
  • They’re supernatural, unlike the mundane foes that tend to appear a low-levels.
  • Even new characters can fight several.
  • Needle blights and vine blights team to ranged and special attacks.
  • No one worries about their families.
  • Not rats.

Blights may lack flash, but they make useful foes.

For similar reasons, I love giants. Aside from giants, the D&D monster toolkit includes few foes able to challenge higher-level characters without complicating battles with a bunch of special attacks and abilities. Plus giants logically appear in groups that hardly make sense for beholders, dragons, or other more exotic monsters. The simplicity of giants isn’t a bug; it’s a feature.

Gith boast similar virtues: They logically appear in numbers, threaten higher level characters than other humanoids, and don’t slow fights with complexity. Geoff Hogan writes, “I always present them as being friendly but with a culture and history that is hard to understand, so players are always scared of breaking a taboo.” Plus, elite types of Gith give DMs more options for adventures.

When I asked D&D enthusiasts to name their favorites, John touted animated armor as simple troops. “Their blindsight makes them good guards, but as programmed automatons with Intelligence 1, players might invent fun tricks to avoid battle.”

“I love ghouls because they’re dangerous for many levels,” writes Eric Stephen. The ghoul’s appearance in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide example of play “scared the shit” out of him at age 12. “You see a sickly gray arm strike the gnome as he’s working on the spike, the gnome utters a muffled cry, and then a shadowy form drags him out of sight. What are you others going to do?” I love describing ghouls with milky eyes and ragged dagger nails, scuttling to tear and feast on living flesh.

Dave Clark recommends wyverns as a lower-level alternative to dragons. Wyverns give a taste, but save a real dragon showdown for later in a campaign. When a wyvern stings and players learn the high damage total, I love the fear and surprise at the table. Does that make me a mean DM?

Other surprisingly scary monsters include shadows and skulks. Marty Walser favors shadows. “Players start crapping their pants after losing several points of Strength, which is basically the new dump stat in 5e since few people go with Strength fighters.” “I think skulks are great as terrifying tier 1 foes, and they scale well into tier 2 in large numbers because of invisibility and advantage,” writes Graham Ward. Graham notes that players who research and prepare for skulks can overcome their invisibility and prevail. That adds a rewarding story thread.

Of course many monsters shine because they feature special attacks and abilities that, unlike the beholder’s eye rays, tend to create fun battles. I’ve run several entertaining fights against bulettes. Their burrow speed lets them hit and run, leaving worried players to wonder where the land shark will next erupt from the ground and crash down.

Ropers gained recommendations. Ropers grab and reel characters, while players worry about the nearing maw and try to decide how best to escape. “Every roper encounter is hilarious,” writes ThinkDM.

Creatures that swallow characters usually create fun encounters. When characters get swallowed and then cut their way out, players feel badass and love it. Teos Abadia’s list includes froghemoths, behirs, and giant toads. Teos also favors creatures that deal damage on contact, making a remorhaz a double win.

Jeffrey S. Mueller recommends manticores for challenging, low-level fights. “A few of them can really create a lot of fun scenarios for an encounter other than the usual stand and bang it out fights.”

Some monsters flop when miscast in a typical, three-round D&D combat, but they excel in other roles. Arithmancer Ken suggests hobgoblin iron shadows as spies able to cast charm person and disguise self. If caught, powers like Shadow Jaunt and the silent image spell give them a good chance of escaping.

Eric Menge casts doppelgangers for similar roles. “They make great spies, thieves, and grifters.” He also takes a page from the Fantastic Four comics where one of Doctor Doom’s robot doubles takes the fall. “You killed the villain! Oh no! It’s just a doppelganger! Wahwah!”

As mere combat foes, nothics never live up to their creepy appearance, but as story pieces they excel. Before running a nothic, read the advice from Keith Ammann in The Monsters Know What They’re Doing. Eric Menge also likes nothics as patrols. “They’re better watchdogs than serious threats. Use them in creepy search parties or in patrols around objectives to give PCs a challenge.”

Monsters of the Multiverse Should Have Given Foes a Boost, But it Didn’t. Next Chance: 2024

As part of setting the math at the foundation of a Dungeons & Dragons edition, the game’s designers target the number of rounds a typical fight should last. Fifth edition aims for 3-4 rounds. Monsters deal enough damage to feel threatening to level-appropriate characters over those 3 or so rounds. In a deadly fight, that damage might match the characters’ hit points.

PCs Avg HPs/PC Party HPs CR of 4-5 monsters, barely deadly challenge Avg MM/Volp’s Dmg, monster of that CR Avg Dmg/rnd, 4 monsters Rounds to defeat all PCs
Five Level 2 PCs 17 85 5 x CR 1 10 50 1.7
Five Level 4 PCs 31 155 2 x CR 1
2 x CR 2
10
15
50 3.1
Five Level 8 PCs 59 295 5 x CR 4 25 125 2.36
Five Level 12 PCs 87 435 5 x CR 6 35 175 2.485714
Five Level 16 PCs 115 575 4 x CR 6
3 x CR 5
30
35
230 2.5
Five Level 20 PCs 143 715 4 x CR 9 45 280 2.553571

According to a table calculated by freelance designer Teos “Alphastream” Abadia, fifth edition lands that 3-round target . At most levels, a deadly group of monsters needs about 2.5 rounds to slay typical characters. That number assumes every monster attack hits, and that the characters never bother to heal while failing to kill a single foe. Short of terrible luck, most groups will survive 5 rounds or more, finish their foes in 3-4 rounds, and win a potentially deadly encounter.

Fifth edition’s linear math seems sound, but as characters level, they keep adding on extra abilities that resist, block, and heal. Character power doesn’t grow linearly, it surges. As levels climb, that linear increase in monster damage becomes increasingly ineffectual.

From player feedback, the D&D team learned that monsters often fail to bring as big a threat as their challenge rating suggests.

Combat encounters can be fun for many reasons: Sometimes players relish a chance to flaunt their characters’ power by destroying overmatched foes. Sometimes players think of an ingenious tactic that leads to an easy victory—everyone loves when a plan comes together. But for most players, such romps would become tiresome if the game never offered hard battles. Difficult fights challenge players to fight smart, work as a team, and stretch their characters’ abilities. Tension builds until the group almost always wins. Fifth edition’s design makes hard fights feel more dangerous than they are. That’s one of the edition’s best features. But fifth edition lacks monsters able to consistently deliver fights that feel hard at higher levels.

When a battle falls short of expectations, we all feel disappointed. Teos writes, “The worst games I encounter are those where the story of the game, and the expectations of players and DM, don’t match the challenge level. It’s supposed to be the cinematic clash with the great demon, but it’s lame. It’s an ambush by a terrifying beast…that can’t deal any real damage.”

Sure, DMs can swap tougher monsters, but as levels rise, the options dwindle. And the game’s weak monsters force changes to every published adventure not aimed at low-level characters.

DMs can always add more monsters, but that approach suffers drawbacks too. More monsters means more mental load and more time running foes for the DM. all that adds more idle time for the players. More monsters also take more damage to defeat, potentially turning a slugfest into a grind. Fewer monsters mean faster paced, more exciting fights, as long as the monsters can threaten.

To help DMs run foes at the threat set by their challenge rating, Monsters of the Multiverse changes some monsters. These changes mainly appear in monsters that cast spells. Rather than burying the best combat options in a spell list, the new stat blocks spotlight the most potent powers with full descriptions. This helps DMs run a creature effectively during its typical 3-4 rounds of survival.

Still, better tactics can only do so much. If every monster book included a copy of The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, the poor creatures would still prove overmatched.

The problem circles back to how the monsters’ linear rise in damage fails to match the characters’ escalating ability to heal, block, and avoid damage. Somewhere in tier 2 the monsters start falling behind and the gap widens as levels increase.

So I hoped that Monsters of the Multiverse might update monsters to close the gap by increasing damage. The book does not.

To be clear, extra damage doesn’t aim to kill characters. At low levels, the designers assume players have little invested in their characters and will accept a few casualties. But for experienced characters, fifth edition boasts a design that makes deaths rare. By level 5, revivify makes total-party kills more common than individual deaths. By level 9, raise dead and more powerful spells can make death a dramatic choice. Players only fear disintegration. Extra damage does make players feel jeopardy though, even in a game that makes death a mere setback.

So what are the D&D designers afraid of? Why no changes?

Are the designers aiming for a game where monsters just serve to help PCs show off? I call this the Washington Generals style of game, and it offers a perfectly fine style for folks who enjoy it. The Washington Generals were the deliberately ineffective opponents who enabled the Harlem Globetrotters to showcase their basketball skills.

Are the designers afraid of making the game too dangerous for newer players who happen to play mid- to high- level games? Ironically, the game causes far more deaths at 1st and 2nd level. Just look at the 1.7 rounds 2nd-level characters survive a near-deadly encounter. Every fifth-edition character I’ve lost died at 2nd level.

Are the designers wary of side effects? For example, in games I’ve played where monsters automatically deal double damage, concentration spells become much weaker. I love wall of fire and spirit guardians and want them to last.

Do the designers want to avoid trashing their challenge rating spreadsheet and the game’s assumptions so close to an edition update coming in 2024? Surely the designers take some pride in their game and feel reluctant to change the math behind its monsters. The designers know DMs can adjust their games to account for what might seem like matters of taste. Besides, most campaigns hardly reach the levels where monsters fall seriously behind.

Obviously, DMs have the tools to adjust, just like we adapt all our games to the taste of our players. I just wish the D&D team had seized the chance to offer us better monstrous tools.

The Strange Mystery of the D&D Monster Called a Thoul

A theory of mine led me to check the dungeon encounter tables in the original Dungeons & Dragons rules booklets. There, I spotted a monster that made me immediately stop chasing my theory and start investigating a new mystery.

What’s a thoul?

The dungeon encounter tables in Underworld & Wilderness Adventures include a listing for Thouls, a D&D monster that I’ve never seen mentioned in my decades of playing the game. What’s a thoul? Why do thouls lack a description or statistics?

Theory 1: The “Thouls” entry should read “Ghouls”, but was mistyped. But an entry for “Ghouls” appears immediately after “Thouls,” wrecking this theory. None of the dungeon monster tables include duplicate entries.

Theory 2: Thouls come from the Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. D&D author Gary Gygax loved Burroughs’ Mars series and stocked volume 3’s desert wilderness tables with Barsoom creatures like tharks, thoats, and sith. Like the thouls, all these creatures lack game descriptions. However, a quick search reveals that thouls never appear in Barsoom or anywhere but D&D.

Theory 3: Gary Gygax invented thouls, but forgot to include a description. If the lack of statistics came from an oversight, no one rushed to correct it. All the D&D supplements omit thouls, as does the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual in 1977. The first mention of a thoul appears in 1978 in the Monster & Treasure Assortment – Set 3. The entry reveals almost nothing. “#AT: 2/1; AL: 8; AC: 6; ST/F 3; SA: Paralysis by touch.” The monster finally gains a description in the 1981 edition of the D&D Basic Set from Tom Moldvay.

None of these descriptions come from Gary’s lost notes. Other D&D designers spotted the creature’s name in the original book, and then created the monster.

The 1981 description explains why thouls failed to gain much traction in D&D lore. They look and play like hobgoblins with a gotcha, which hardly seems memorable.

The mystery has one more clue: Thouls first appear in the fifth printing of the original D&D box. The table in earlier printings includes “Toads” in the same spot, right before the entry for ghouls. This makes thouls seem like a typo.

Thoul from Mystara Monsterous Compendium Appendix

In 1975, typesetters entered a document’s text at a keyboard to get printed strips of text. Then layout artists would paste the columns onto boards representing the document’s full pages. Printers duplicated those camera-ready, paste-up boards.

So a typesetter in 1975 started entering the table row for “Toads” when their gaze skipped one row down to the line for “Ghouls.” They mistyped “Thouls” and made D&D history. Who can blame the typesetter? Half the manuscript surely seemed like nonsense words. Who has ever heard of a sith?

But why would such a mistake appear in the fifth printing rather than the first? Because TSR corrected rough-looking text in the first four printings by redoing the type for the fifth. Before desktop publishing, that meant a typesetter needed to retype the text. That person accidentally contributed a monster to D&D.

Meanwhile, I failed to find support for my theory.

The original Charm Person reads, “If this spell is successful, it will cause the charmed entity to come completely under the influence of the Magic-User until such time as the ‘charm’ is dispelled.” That seems strong. By my theory, original Charm Person rated as less powerful than it seems because the game focused on places that lacked any persons to charm stronger than 1 hit die bandits or brigands. But the encounter tables include plenty of higher-level targets, listed by level titles like superhero, sorcerer, and evil high priest. A lucky first-level magic user could charm someone quite powerful.

Turning a Monster Into a Puzzle

In first-edition Dungeons & Dragons, clay golems could only be hit by magical bludgeoning weapons. Also, only three spells, move earth, disintegrate, and earthquake, affected these monsters. As foes, they worked as puzzles. “Our DM ran the golem encounter from Mordenkainen’s Fantastic Adventure this way,” recalls @Stoltzken. “It was terrifying. The key to making it work for us was we had fair warning in the initial round that this was as much a puzzle as a fight. First round was minor damage. From there on though…”

Poul Anderson’s novel Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961) inspired D&D’s regenerating trolls. To the hero of the novel—and to early D&D players unfamiliar with the book—the problem of killing a troll makes a puzzle.

Now everyone knows how to kill a troll, and that shows one problem with puzzle monsters such as trolls and golems. Players learn the solutions. Early in D&D’s history, co-creator Gary Gygax figured that only dungeon masters would read the books of treasures and monsters. He assumed players would learn the game’s secrets in play. In practice, even kids who couldn’t find a group studied the Monster Manual. At every table, someone knew every monster’s vulnerability.

That problem invites obvious solutions: Invent new monsters, vary existing monsters with new immunities, or add secret enchantments that block familiar attacks. @StaffandBranch writes, “I ran a rock, paper, scissors, encounter where the rock golem could only be defeated by wood, the treant by metal weapon, and the storm of swords by stone or rocks.”

Recent editions of D&D rarely add strong immunities to monsters. The third-edition rogue reveals why. That edition’s designers gave rogues a sneak attack ability limited by numerous monsters immune to sneak attacks. Creatures like oozes lack vulnerable spots, so those limitations made sense. But players saw too many encounters where rogues could not use their signature ability. Since then, D&D’s designers have steered toward avoiding immunities that hamper characters and lead players to feel-bad moments.

Mainly though, the blame for driving puzzle monsters from D&D belongs to foolhardy players. When did you last see players run from a fight? In early D&D games, players expected to find monsters too strong to defeat. Fragile characters made retreat a common option. Often now, players who face a creature that seems immune to attack just try hitting harder. (See The Story of the Impossible Luck that Leads D&D Parties to Keep Facing Threats They Can Beat.) When players don’t know the key to beating a puzzle monster, such encounters can lead to total party kills.

Still, puzzle monsters can enrich D&D and many players love them. Creatures with secret vulnerability make D&D games feel more mythical. They let players work their brains while their characters flaunt their power.

For some monsters, players can find the key to victory during battle. Perhaps pushing that clay golem into running water dissolves the thing. Often puzzle monsters must be trapped rather than killed. I’m reminded of Spider-Man trapping the Sandman in a vacuum cleaner.

Other puzzle monsters might require gathering lore and engaging with the game world. A hunt for a lich’s phylactery can work like that. Some might spur a quest for the artifacts that enable a monster’s defeat. Curse of Strahd works like that.

Puzzle monsters work best in games seeded with rumors of the creature’s invincibility and hints to the creature’s vulnerability. For players particularly slow to spot clues, devise a plan B enabling an escape or rescue. I once put a puzzle-based golem on a ledge over water. If the players took too much damage before spotting the creature’s invulnerability, the jump offered an easy escape. I didn’t even fill the water with sharks. Sometimes I’m such a cupcake.

The adventure Deep Carbon Observatory by Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess features my favorite puzzle villain. Spoilers follow. In the adventure, a rescued child whispers in an character’s ear.

There was a bad old woman who lived in the corn.
Only children knew that she was real.
She had seven souls and couldn’t die the same way twice.
So all the children poisoned her.
Then they stabbed her and smashed her and sliced her
and burnt her and drowned her.
And then they threw her in the well.
That’s Six And Seven Makes All…

To slay the witch, the players need to find a means of death the children never used.

What’s your favorite puzzle monster?

Three Reasons the Ecology of Monsters Can Make Creatures Worse

Larry Niven's disk

The Magic Goes Away inspired Larry Niven’s disk

During the early years of Dungeons & Dragons, speculative fiction enjoyed something of a fashion for combining science and fantasy, so the popular Pern novels by Anne McCaffrey and Darkover novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley provided scientific explanations for fantasy-flavored worlds of dragons and magic. Meanwhile, in The Magic Goes Away, hard science fiction author Larry Niven treated magic as science and investigated all the implications.

Readers appreciate these kind of hybrids for a couple of reasons. The injection of science gives magical concepts a boost of plausibility. In some future world, perhaps science really could engineer telepathic dragons as in Pern. Plus writers and readers who enjoy explaining things with science’s reasoning get to play with fantasy’s toys. I get it. I’ve never been entirely satisfied with fantasy that leans too heavily on “just because” to explain candy houses and winged monkeys. For instance, I keep trying to imagine a scientific explanation for the long and varying seasons in the world of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, even though I’m confident George has no such explanation to offer. In Westeros, seasons last for years because it supports theme and story. Winter is coming.

Part of what makes fantasy powerful is that not everything needs explanation. Sometimes Fantasy just needs to feel true. And sometimes resonate stories come from mystery.

Ecology of the PiercerPerhaps inspired by the fashion for using science to explain fantastic concepts, Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards took a somewhat silly monster, the piercer, and wrote “The Ecology of the Piercer,” which first appeared in the UK fanzine Dragonlords. The piercer seems obviously contrived to harass dungeon-crawling PCs, so a dose of science and ecology adds some verisimilitude. Dragon magazine editor Kim Mohan must have fancied the article’s concept, because he reprinted the piece in the April 1983 issue of Dragon. The ecology series took off and Dragon went on to print more than 150 installments.

The ecology concept improves some monsters, especially those that share the non-magical nature of the piercer, but adding a dose of science to every prominent creature damaged the assumed world of Dungeons & Dragons.

For many monsters, magic provides a better creative basis than science and ecology.

1. Monsters that come from magic can inspire stories

Magical creatures can bring histories that go beyond ecological niches and breeding populations; they can come from stories that players can participate in. Magical creatures can begin with a curse, they can be created for a sinister purpose, or in experiments that went wrong. For example, in “Monsters and Stories,” D&D head Mike Mearls explains how medusas come from a magical bargain and a curse. He tells how this can inspire gameplay. “One medusa might be a vicious, hateful creature that kills out of spite, specifically targeting the most handsome or beautiful adventurers that invade its lair. Another might be a secluded noble desperate to conceal her true nature, and who becomes a party’s mysterious benefactor.”

2. Magical creatures can be evocative in ways that natural creatures cannot

Does imagining dragons as a form of dinosaur, as presented the 2nd Edition Draconomicon, improve either dragons or dinosaurs? Dragons become less magical, less mythic. Meanwhile, dinosaurs don’t need to be blurred with fantasy to excite us—they were huge and real. Mythology teems with chimeric hybrid creatures from the gryphon to the cockatrice. Does supposing these creatures have populations with natural ranges and diets improve them? Why can’t the cockatrice emerge from a tainted, magical mating of bird and serpent? Why cannot gryphons be a divine creation based on some godling’s favorite creatures?

3. Magical creatures can break the laws of nature

Every culture seems to include giants in their myths. Giants may be the most pervasive and resonate monster of the human imagination. But giants defy science’s square-cube law and walk in defiance of physics. We ignore that because we like giants, and because of magic.

When I did my post on the 11 most useful types of miniatures, I determined that elemental and, especially, undead monsters appear in a disproportionate number of adventures. In the early days of the hobby, dungeon designers could put living creatures in a remote and unexplored dungeon without a source of food, and no one would care. Now days, dungeon designers feel limited to populating their crypts, lost castles, and vaults with the undead and elementals that gain an exemption from the bounds of nature. This stands as the stifling legacy of the ecology articles. By treating most D&D creatures as natural things that feed and breed and live natural lives, we make them difficult to use in the game.

Embrace the magic in magical creatures

We should embrace the obviously magical nature the D&D bestiary and free more creatures from the limitations of nature. Unnatural creatures can be unique. They can spontaneously generate in places where foul magic or bizarre rituals were practiced. They can leak into the world in places where the barriers between planes have weakened. They can be immortal. Undying, they can survive aeons trapped in some underground lair, growing more hateful and cunning with each passing year.

In the Wandering Monsters post “Turned to Stone,” James Wyatt writes, “One of the things that we’ve been thinking a lot about is that we are creating—and facilitating the creation of—fantasy worlds. The monsters of D&D aren’t races of aliens in a sci-fi setting. They don’t all need to have logical biology.”

D&D operates in worlds’ brimming with enchantment. The ecology articles threw too much magic away.

Would Dungeons & Dragons Play Better If It Stayed Loyal to How Gary Gygax Awarded Hit Points?

In a typical fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure, characters will reach every battle with full hit points. Healing comes too easily to enter a battle at less than full health. Above level 10 or so, spells like Aid and Heroes Feast mean parties routinely pass their day with hit point totals above their ordinary maximums.

By the time characters near level 10, few monsters inflict enough damage to seem threatening. Except for a few outliers like giants, foes lack the punch to dent characters at maximum hit points. If round of combat results in a gargoyle hitting a 90-hit-point character 6 damage, then the fight seems like a bookkeeping exercise. “At this rate, I can only survive 14 more rounds!”

The fifth-edition design limits the highest armor classes so weaker monsters can attack stronger characters and still hit on rolls less than a natural 20. This design aims to enable hordes of low-level monsters to challenge high-level characters. In practice, the hits inflict such pitiful damage that the hero would feel less pain than the bookkeeping causes to the player. It’s the pencils that suffer the most.

The obvious fix to high-level creatures and their feeble damage is to make monsters’ attacks hurt more. Mike “Sly Flourish” Shea routinely makes creatures inflict maximum damage on every hit.

But what if the solution doesn’t come from the monsters? What if characters at double-digit levels just have too many hit points?

If high-level characters had fewer hit points, high-level monsters with their puny attacks would suddenly become a bit more threatening. Lower-level monsters could pose more of a threat high-level heroes without becoming too dangerous to low-level characters. High-level PCs would still rip through weak foes, but the survivors could deal enough damage to seem dangerous rather than laughable.

D&D no longer focuses entirely on dungeon crawls where characters judge when to rest based on their remaining store of hit points and spells. The game’s move to storytelling means characters often face just one fight per day. Healing comes cheap and easy, so characters start fights at full hit points. Lower hit points at high levels would suit the reality that characters enter every fight at maximum health. In more battles, foes would seem like credible opponents.

Of course, no one has ever argued that low-level characters sport too many hit points. New characters feel as fragile as soap bubbles. Before level 5, don’t get too attached to your hero. As characters near level 10, they begin to seem stout. They rarely go down in anything short of a slugfest, so they feel like superheroes, but not invulnerable.

But in double-digit levels character hit points keep rising at the same steep rate until DMs resort to letting monsters routinely deal maximum damage. D&D might play better if, somewhere around level 10, characters stopped gaining so many hit points.

When I first considered this notion, I dismissed it as too big a break from the D&D’s conventions. For nearly two decades, characters have gained a full die worth of hit points at every level.

Except for most of D&D’s history, somewhere around level 10, characters stopped gaining so many hit points.

From the original game through second edition, when D&D characters reached level 9 or so, they started gaining hit points at a much slower rate. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, fighters rising above 9th level gained 3 hit points per level with no bonus for constitution. Other classed gained even fewer points. Continuing to let characters gain a full hit die plus constitution bonus at every level defies D&D’s origins.

The original limits to hit dice served as co-creator Gary Gygax’s way of putting a soft level cap on D&D. The cap kept the game’s link to the Chainmail mass-combat rules, where the best fighters acted as “superheroes” who could match the power of 8 soldiers. Gary wanted a game where crowds of orcs or goblins could still challenge the heroes.

Admittedly, when I started playing D&D, I disliked how characters’ hit points topped out. Gary and his hit-dice tables seemed to punish players of high-level characters—especially fighters.

Although the soft cap on hit points lasted 25 years, the cap on the other perks of leveling started to disappear as soon as the first Greyhawk supplement reached gamers. While the original box topped out at 6th-level spells, Greyhawk included spells of up to 9th level. Gary never intended player characters to cast the highest-level spells, but that didn’t stop players.

By the time designers started work on third edition, they aimed to deliver perks to every class at every level from 1 to 20. The soft cap on hit points must have seemed vestigial. The designers felt the game’s math could handle a steep rise in hit points past level 10. The design abandoned any aim of making groups of low-level mooks a match for high-level heroes. Besides, a steady rise in HP made the multi-classing rules simpler.

Today’s D&D game does a fine job of awarding every class—even fighters—perks at every level. Nobody leveling into the teens gets excited about another helping of hit points. Reverting to smaller hit point advances doesn’t spoil anyone’s fun.

Fifth edition keeps levels and monsters at power levels broadly similar to those in original game. This loose compatibility makes adventures written during D&D’s first 20 years continue to work with the new edition. In theory, a DM can just swap in monster stats from the new game and play. In practice, higher-level characters have more hit points, more healing, and the creatures fail to do enough damage to keep up. Story-centered adventures make the mismatch worse.

Suppose Gary Gygax had hit points right all along. Would D&D play better if characters stopped gaining so many after level 9?

The Stories (and 3 Mysteries) Behind D&D’s Iconic Monsters

Like every other kid who discovered Dungeons & Dragons in the late 70s, the Monster Manual suddenly became my favorite book. I studied the pages, and then turned to books of mythology to learn more about cyclopses, manticores, and harpies. But not all the monsters came from myth. Some started with Gary Gygax and other D&D contributors. Of these original monsters, Wizards of the Coast reserves the most evocative as part of D&D’s product identity:

  • beholder
  • gauth
  • carrion crawler
  • displacer beast
  • githyanki
  • githzerai
  • kuo-toa
  • mind flayer
  • slaad
  • umber hulk
  • yuan-ti
Signed Greyhawk Cover

The Original Beholder

The leap of imagination required for some monsters seems short. When Gary needed “something new” to populate the underworld, he imagined fish men and called them koa-toa. When Dave “Zeb” Cook needed memorable foes for an overgrown, forbidden city in the jungle, he made snake men called yuan-ti. D&D features a long history of frog men, but Charles Stross says a literal fever led him to imagine the extra-planar, chaotic slaad.

The gauth just offers a junior beholder to pit against lower-level adventurers. But where did the beholder come from?

Many of D&D’s classic monsters have better stories behind their inspiration.

Beholder

One of D&D’s original players, Rob Kuntz eventually joined Gary Gygax as co-dungeon master in the Greyhawk campaign. Rob credits his brother Terry with a wild imagination and the idea for the beholder, originally called the eye of doom. Terry provided most of the game stats. Before the creature appeared in the Greyhawk supplement, Gary explained that “All I needed to do was a bit of editing to make it a great addition to the terrible monsters to be found in the D&D game.”

Bugbear

Bugbear, Ghoul and Friends

In the original D&D books, the bugbear sports a pumpkin head. Gary recalls describing the creature as having a fat, oval head like a pumpkin, which led the artist to draw an actual pumpkin head.

Carrion Crawler

In the early days of D&D, Gary hosted games 7 days a week. During weekends, adventuring parties included as many as 20 players with their characters, hirelings, and henchmen. Rob Kuntz ran sessions too. All these expeditions delved the mega-dungeon under Castle Greyhawk. “When the encounter was eliminated I simply drew a line through it, and the place was empty for the foreseeable future. I’d give Rob the details of any session he was not at and vice versa.” Rather than imagining a dungeon piled with rotting corpses of monsters and adventurers, Gary conceived dungeon scavengers like the carrion crawler. “I needed something nasty for the clean-up crew, so I thought this one up.”

Displacer Beast

Cover by Gil Kane

Although Wizards includes the displacer beast in D&D’s product identity, the monster owes its appearance to an alien in the 1939 story “The Black Destroyer” by author A. E. Van Vogt. In the tale, a character describes a thing called a “coeurl” that looks like “a big cat, if you forget those tentacles sticking out from its shoulders, and make allowances for those monster forelegs.” The beast first appeared in the Greyhawk supplement, but the coeurl lacks the displacer beast’s defensive power. That power comes from the Displacer Cloak, which appeared in the original D&D books.

Mystery: The cloak and beast’s displacement power seems like a defense that Gary could have taken from a golden-age science fiction story. Did Gary invent the notion, or did he adopt it?

Drow

The first hint of dark elves comes in D&D’s fourth supplement, Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes (1976), by James Ward and Rob Kuntz. “These elves dwell beneath the earth, and cause trouble for anyone wandering through their territories. They live and cause evil upon Svartalfheim.” Perhaps inspired by the mention, Gary offered more hints in the first Monster Manual. “The ‘Black Elves,’ or Drow, are only legend. They purportedly dwell deep beneath the surface in a strange subterranean realm. The Drow are said to be as dark as faeries are bright and as evil as the latter are good. Tales picture them as weak fighters but strong magic-users.” The word “drow” comes from Scots dialects and refers to a sort of malevolent being. Gary remembered pulling the name from an old, unabridged dictionary. In Descent into the Depths of the Earth (1978), the drow made their first appearance. Gary gave them powers “to highlight their unique nature and potency.”

Mind Flayer

Gary credits the form of the mind flayer to the cover of the Brian Lumley book, The Borrowers Beneath. “The cover made me think: Now what sort of nasty bastard is that? So without a qualm I made up the Illithid, the dread mind flayer, so as to keep the players on their toes—or to have their PCs turn theirs upwards.”

Mystery: None of the editions of The Borrowers Beneath that I’ve found show a humanoid, tentacle-faced creature that resembles a mind flayer. The most common cover shows tentacles erupting from the ground. In another reminiscence, Gary said the cover that inspired him showed a humanoid creature. What cover actually inspired the mind flayer?

Update: The fellow in the upper, far right corner of this cover for Brian Lumley’s The Caller of the Black strikes me as the most likely inspiration for the mind flayer. Wisconsin-based Arkham House published this edition in 1971, so Gary very likely saw this picture before inventing the monster.

Githyanki

Although Wizards claims githyanki as part of D&D’s product identity, Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin has a claim to them too. For D&D, science fiction author Charles Stross took the name githyanki and a bit of backstory from Martin’s SF novel Dying of the Light. “I’ve always felt slightly guilty about that,” Stross said. “Credit should be given where credit’s due.” Martin’s githyanki never develop beyond an unseen threat with limited intelligence. But like the D&D monsters, the originals were living, psychic weapons and former slaves of an alien race. Stross credits another legendary author with additional inspiration. “The Illithid/Githyanki relationship probably slid into my mind as a result of reading Larry Niven’s The World of Ptavvs, which features a psionic master/slave race relationship far in the past that nearly killed all the sapients in the galaxy when it turned hot.”

Bulette

Before D&D, Gary’s Chainmail games required miniatures. Back then, no one sold fantasy figures for gaming, so he improvised. He converted a plastic stegosaurus into a dragon. “I haunted the dime stores looking for potential additions and eventually found figures to represent ogres, elementals, etc.” Some of the improvised figures came from bags of assorted, plastic critters sold in those dime stores. The labels marked the toys as “Prehistoric Animals” but few resembled anything from natural history or even mythology. For pictures of the creatures and their packages, see a post by artist Tony DiTerlizzi.

When Gary’s gaming group switched to D&D, they stopped using miniatures, but the strange creatures remained as inspiration.

Gary and his fellow gamers probably never saw the Ultraman television show produced in Japan in 1966-1967, so they never knew the likely basis of the creatures. Most of the toys were knock offs of Kaiju, giant monsters from Japanese entertainment.

Inspiration for the Bulette toy probably came from the creature Gabora, which appeared in episode 9 of Ultraman, “Operation: Uranium.”

In the Greyhawk dungeons, the beast made a couple of cameo appearances, charging down a hall and bowling over adventurers. The players called it a landshark after its back fin and a current series of Saturday Night Live sketches where a “landshark” knocks on doors to deliver a “candygram.”

When editor Tim Kask needed content to fill a page in the first issue of The Dragon, Gary told Tim to write stats for the landshark. The name puts a French spin on the creature’s bullet shape. As for the monster’s appetite for halflings and their ponies, Tim was showing a bit of spite for players who always played hobbits and favored ponies named Bill.

Umber Hulk

Ultraman episode 7, “The Blue Stone of Vallarge,” featured another burrower named “Antlar.” A knock off toy for this Kaiju probably led Gary to devise the umber hulk. The creature’s crude, insectile eyes inspired the monster’s signature confusing gaze.

Owlbear

Some have tried to find a Kaiju that resembles the owlbear toy, but even the closest match takes blurred vision and a big leap of imagination. The toy’s bowl-shaped hair stands out as its most distinctive feature. As badly as the toy resembles an owl or a bear, it also badly resembles a Kappa from Japanese mythology.

Owlbear Toy and Kappa by Toriyama Sekien

Rust Monster

No creature resembles its dime-store inspiration more than the rust monster. The toy lacks teeth and claws, so when Gary made it a monster, he needed another way to menace adventurers. In the original game, powerful undead drained “life energy levels” when they hit. Life draining terrorized players, and Gary saw the power as a test for clerics, ranged attackers, and players too reckless to run. “I don’t agree with those wimpy whiners who are afraid of a few living dead,” he teased. The toy’s tentacles led Gary to imagine a way to threaten something players prized even more than their levels—their magic weapons and armor.

Mystery: Of all the toys, the rust monster ranks as the oddest. How did a four-legged bug with a propeller tail wind up bagged with kaiju and mythological creatures? Did a Hong Kong designer aim for pure whimsy or imitate some other creature?

3 reasons science and ecology make a bad mix for some monsters

Larry Niven's disk

The Magic Goes Away inspired Larry Niven’s disk

Back in the formative years of Dungeons & Dragons, speculative fiction enjoyed something of a fashion for combining science and fantasy, so the popular Pern and Darkover novels provided scientific explanations for what fantasy-flavored worlds of dragons and magic. Meanwhile, in The Magic Goes Away and related stories, hard science fiction author Larry Niven treated magic as science and investigated all the implications.

Readers appreciate these kind of hybrids for a couple of reasons. The injection of science gives magical concepts a boost of plausibility. In some future world, perhaps science really could engineer telepathic dragons as in Pern. Plus writers and readers who enjoy explaining things with science’s reasoning get to play with fantasy’s toys. I share these impulses. I’ve never been entirely satisfied with fantasy that leans too heavily on “just because” to explain candy houses and winged monkeys. I keep trying to imagine a scientific explanation for the long and varying seasons in the world of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, even though I’m confident George has no such explanation to offer. In Westeros, seasons last for years because it supports theme and story. Winter is coming. Part of what makes fantasy powerful is that not everything needs explanation. Sometimes Fantasy just needs to feel true. And sometimes resonate stories come from mystery.

Ecology of the PiercerPerhaps inspired by the fashion for using science to explain fantastic concepts, Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards took a somewhat silly monster, the piercer, and wrote “The Ecology of the Piercer,” which first appeared in the UK fanzine Dragonlords. The piercer seems obviously contrived to harass dungeon-crawling PCs, so a dose of science and ecology adds some verisimilitude. Dragon magazine editor Kim Mohan must have fancied the article’s concept, because he reprinted the piece in Dragon issue 72. The ecology series took off and Dragon went on to print more than 150 installments.

The ecology concept improves some monsters, especially those that share the non-magical nature of the piercer, but adding a dose of science to every prominent creature damaged the assumed world of Dungeons & Dragons.

For many monsters, magic provides a better creative basis than science and ecology.

Monsters that come from magic can inspire stories

Magical creatures can bring histories that go beyond ecological niches and breeding populations; they can come from stories that players can participate in. Magical creatures can begin with a curse, they can be created for a sinister purpose, or in experiments that went wrong. For example, in “Monsters and Stories,” D&D pooh-bah Mike Mearls explains how medusas come from a magical bargain and a curse, and then he explains how this can inspire gameplay. “One medusa might be a vicious, hateful creature that kills out of spite, specifically targeting the most handsome or beautiful adventurers that invade its lair. Another might be a secluded noble desperate to conceal her true nature, and who becomes a party’s mysterious benefactor.”

Magical creatures can be evocative in ways that natural creatures cannot

Does imagining dragons as a form of dinosaur, as presented the 2nd Edition Draconomicon, improve either dragons or dinosaurs? Dragons become less magical, less mythic. Meanwhile, dinosaurs don’t need to be blurred with fantasy to excite us—they were huge and real. Mythology teems with chimeric hybrid creatures from the gryphon to the cockatrice. Does supposing these creatures have populations with natural ranges and diets improve them? Why can’t the cockatrice emerge from a tainted, magical mating of bird and serpent? Why cannot gryphons be a divine creation based on some godling’s favorite creatures?

Magical creatures can break the laws of nature

Every culture seems to include giants in their myths. Giants may be the most pervasive and resonate monster of the human imagination. But giants defy science’s square-cube law and walk in defiance of physics. We ignore that because we like giants, and because of magic.

When I did my post on the 11 most useful types of miniatures, I determined that elemental and, especially, undead monsters appear in a disproportionate number of adventures. In the early days of the hobby, dungeon designers could put living creatures in a remote and unexplored dungeon without a source of food, and no one would care. Now days, dungeon designers feel limited to populating their crypts, lost castles, and vaults with the undead and elementals that gain an exemption from the bounds of nature. This stands as the stifling legacy of the ecology articles. By treating most D&D creatures as natural things that feed and breed and live natural lives, we make them difficult to use in the game.

Embrace the magic in magical creatures

We should embrace the obviously magical nature the D&D bestiary and free more creatures from the limitations of nature. Unnatural creatures can be unique. They can spontaneously generate in places where foul magic or bizarre rituals were practiced. They can leak into the world in places where the barriers between planes have weakened. They can be immortal. Undying, they can survive aeons trapped in some underground lair, growing more hateful and cunning with each passing year.

In the Wandering Monsters post “Turned to Stone,” James Wyatt writes, “One of the things that we’ve been thinking a lot about is that we are creating—and facilitating the creation of—fantasy worlds. The monsters of D&D aren’t races of aliens in a sci-fi setting. They don’t all need to have logical biology.”

D&D operates in worlds’ brimming with enchantment. The ecology articles threw too much magic away; I’m thrilled to see the D&D Next designers bring some back.