Dungeons And Dragons Creatures I To J / Characters

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/DungeonsAndDragonsCreaturesIToJ

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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I

Ibrandlin

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Dragon (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Also known as "lurkers in darkness," these draconic creatures were bred to protect subterranean holy sites and the followers of the god of caverns.

Bioweapon Beast: In their home setting, ibrandlins were created by the faithful of Ibrandul, Lord of the Dry Depths... or more accurately, Shar. Ibrandul was actually inattentive towards his clerics and never gave them sufficient support to succeed with their efforts, but after he was slain by and had his portfolio usurped by Shar during the Time of Troubles, she lent her power to Ibrandul's clerics to help realize the ibrandlins as a self-sustaining species. The disciples of Ibrandul haven't realized any of this, they're just pleased that the ibrandlins instinctively follow the orders of those wearing the dark purple robes of Ibrandul.
Breath Weapon: Ibrandlins can breathe a 30-foot cone of flame, though it doesn't deal nearly as much damage as proper dragonfire.
Our Dragons Are Different: Ibrandlins look something like red dragons, but with predominantly grey scales and wingless, elongated bodies. 3E classifies them as lesser dragons, though ibrandlins are actually derived from fire lizards, oversized, flame-spitting animals of uncertain relation to true dragons.

Ice Serpent

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Elemental (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

A variant of air elemental that feeds upon the heat of creatures they wrap in their freezing coils.

Flight: They're a noted aversion among air elemental creatures, instead ice serpents move by pushing themselves against the ground like mundane serpents.
An Ice Person: Ice serpents are Large masses of freezing air whose only attack is constricting around living creatures. This deals subdual damage from the numbing cold each round the grapple is maintained, until the victim loses consciousness, at which point the ongoing damage becomes lethal.
See the Invisible: They're naturally invisible, but an ice serpent's position can be discerned by the snow particles, loose ice and small stones stirred up by its passage. Thus, they lack any improved defenses based on their invisibility.

Ice Toad

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Monstrosity (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 1 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

8-foot-long amphibians with an uncharacteristic affinity for cold.

Amphibian at Large: This toad is the size of a horse.
An Ice Person: An ice toad is immune to cold, and can exude a sphere of numbing cold from its body, dealing damage to all who draw close. On the flipside, this leaves them Weak to Fire.
More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Unlike normal toads, the ice toad has a mouth filled with small, sharp teeth.
Overly-Long Tongue: They can use their 10-foot tongus to reel in creatures of Medium size or smaller, and potentially swallow whole Small-sized creatures.

Icegaunt

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

The freeze-dried husks of humanoids who died of exposure in the high mountains or arctic, or were sacrificed to cruel mountain deities.

Bad Samaritan: Icegaunts' well-preserved corpses allow them to pass for aged, tanned hermits with rasping, halting voices. The undead are cunning enough to take advantage of this, offering to guide the living through the mountains, only to lead them into glacial crevasses, along mountain paths prone to avalanches, or onto dangerously thin ice.
An Ice Person: They have the cold subtype, deal cold damage with their slam attacks, and know ice magic such as conjure ice beast, chill metal and column of ice.
Non-Health Damage: Their slam attacks deal Constitution drain.
The Virus: Any humanoid slain by an icegaunt rises the next night as one under the original's control.

Id Fiend

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Aberrant Magical Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (4E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Large intelligent reptiles who use their psionic abilities to debilitate their prey with fear before striking.

Eye of Newt: Dried id fiend blood is used in potions that allegedly give brief boosts to the imbiber's psychic ability, while 4th Edition mentions that instructors at Draj's House of the Mind pay top coin for id fiend corpses for use in a dubious concoction meant to awaken psionic potential.
I Know What You Fear: Id fiends' signature ability is psychically drawing out their victims' greatest fears, "magnifying anxieties until the line between fantasy and reality is shattered." In 2nd Edition, this means those who fail their saving throws will suffer combat penalties and struggle to cast spells, while in 4th Edition, an id fiend's "manifest fear" action leaves those who succumb dazed and slowed, and vulnerable to a "fearful torment" attack that deals damage and immobilizes them.
It Can Think: They look something like 10-foot-long gila monsters, but id fiends are smarter than the average human and fully sapient. In 2nd Edition they can psychically communicate using mind link, while 4th Edition mentions that id fiends are smart enough to ally with other creatures, or manipulate one group into attacking another by overlaying the first group's fears upon the second.
Psychic Powers: In 2E, they know additional psionics such as biofeedback, mind thrust and ego whip.

Illumian

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

A seemingly-human race easily recognized by the glowing sigils that orbit their heads like a halo, granting them various powers.

Arch-Enemy: In 3rd Edition, illumians despise the githyanki for sacking their Library of the Sublime. Illumian "vengeance cabals" exist purely to hunt down and slaughter any githyanki they can find and will ally themselves with githzerai (or even with mind flayers) to achieve that end.
Death Cry Echo: When an illumian dies, they release a "final utterance" of ululating syllables which lasts for a number of rounds equal to their total hit dice. This utterance takes place even if the illumian was torn apart or disintegrated, so a high-level illumian's final utterance will last for several minutes with no way to silence it.
Deity of Human Origin: Their pantheon consists of formerly mortal illumians who ascended to demigodhood.
Fantastic Racism: Their World Axis incarnation fought a bloody civil war of near-total mutual annihilation over which of their subraces was superior; those attuned to the Word of Soul, or those attuned to the Word of Mind.
Genocide from the Inside:
- For unknown reasons, the illumian god Wathaku wants to eradicate his own race: the illumian people, their gods, and even their language itself.
- The World Axis illumians slaughtered each other halfway to extinction, then nearly finished the job when they got the maruts to intervene and pushed for the maximum possible penalties.
Human Subspecies: They are descended from humans who performed the Ritual of Words Made Flesh and have the human subtype for gameplay purposes. Physically they look no different from their human ancestors, apart from the ring of magical sigils which orbit their heads.
Jack of All Stats: They're a versatile race and designed to excel at multiclassing. Their favored class can be whatever they want, their power sigils give them a bonus to all checks related to one or more ability scores of their choice, and the words formed by these sigils allow them to combine unrelated class features in unique and interesting ways. Want to use your Strength score to determine how many bonus spells you get, or convert a Turn Undead attempt into extra damage with a melee weapon? An illumian can do that.
Language of Magic: They are the physical embodiment of such a language, and have several traits reflecting this. Every illumian has a halo of arcane sigils floating around their head: two of these are power sigils, which grant passive benefits on their own and combine to produce words of power with unique effects. Illumian sigils interact strangely with glyph-based spells like explosive runes, either making the illumian more vulnerable to such magic or allowing them to No-Sell it.
Retcon:
- In 3rd Edition, illumians are a relatively young race, born when a scholar, monk and wizard named Tarmuid devised a new language based on other tongues' methods of expressing magic, then used it to develop the Ritual of Words Made Flesh, infusing his followers with the power of this Illumian language. After creating the first generation of illumians, Tarmuid and his followers began to worry about the Ritual being used for nefarious purposes, and so the illumians split up into a number of hidden cabals, each guarding a single part of the Ritual of Words Made Flesh. Tarmuid and his closest disciples eventually elevated themselves to godhood, while the illumians became a self-sustaining race.
- In the World Axis, illumians are descendants of mortals who served a god who perished during the Dawn War, and were entrusted by that god with two of the Supernal Words of Creation; the Word of Soul and the Word of Mind. They inhabited their former patron's celestial realm of Shom for a time, but eventually they fell into civil war over which of the two Words of Creation was superior. This devastated their population, but the final blow was when they demanded the intervention of the maruts to end their war, with both sides demanding ridiculously high punishments for the guilty party. The maruts found both sides guilty, and massacred the survivors, scattering the few remnants across the multiverse and leaving Shom an empty wasteland.

Immoth

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Elemental (3E)
Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Eight-foot-tall beings from the Paraelemental Plane of Ice, who are obsessed with magic and the power of words.

Curse: The story goes that immoths were once ordinary ice paraelementals who refused to obey the commands of a wizard or witch. Said mage then cursed then with the immoths' current forms, and tasked them with finding the literally-frozen words of their ignored commands and bringing them to the Mountain of Ultimate Winter.
An Ice Person: Immoths are elementals with the cold subtype, and favor ice magic when casting spells. Their AD&D rules also let them tweak spells to fit a frozen theme, turning stone shape to ice shape, for example.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: While in 3rd Edition their poison, delivered by their tail slaps, merely deals Intelligence drain, 2nd Edition elaborates that victims will start babbling nonsense, each word they speak vanishing from their vocabulary, until they're cured or expire.
Runic Magic: Immoths' bodies are studded with nuggets of ice containing runes, which the creatures can break to trigger prepared spells.
The Unfettered: Immoths are relentless in their pursuit of knowledge, and while they'll barter for information if necessary, they're just as willing to kill to get what they want.
Wall Crawl: They have the Icewalking ability, which functions like the spider climb spell so long as the immoth is moving across an icy surface.

Imp of Ill-Humor

Sanguine imp (3e)

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

Small, winged fiends representing imbalanced emotions. They can be found across the Lower Planes, usually in the service of stronger beings, or as evil mages' familiars.

Affably Evil: Sanguine imps are jovial, genial and happy to engage in conversation with interesting company, and show equal glee when attacking those who fail to entertain them.
The Berserker: Choleric imps are angry at the world and relentlessly pick fights, with little regard for their own safety.
Beware My Stinger Tail: Each has a scorpion-like stinger to attack with.
The Eeyore: Melancholic imps are fatalistic pessimists who don't see the point in fighting, and try to talk their way out of conflicts by expressing their bleak viewpoint. Though they'll also try to stab someone in the back, given the opportunity.
Emotion Bomb: Anyone stung by an imp of ill-humor has to save or become afflicted with a humor imbalance, a condition that is permanent unless cured by magic such as remove disease or heal. Those afflicted by a choleric imp fly into a rage and attack the nearest creature, friend or foe, until everything around them is dead. Melancholic imps cause creatures to fall into a deep depression, imposing a penalty on rolls. Phlegmatic imps make their victims slow and unresponsive, while the poison of a sanguine imp makes someone unnaturally cheerful as per Tasha's hideous laughter.
Four-Temperament Ensemble: Each kind of imp of ill-humor possesses the negative qualities of one of the four humors, and fights differently depending on their temperament.
Frozen Face: These imps' faces are set in the emotion they embody, so sanguine imps are Perpetual Smilers, melancholic imps are Perpetual Frowners, etc.
Lazy Bum: Phlegmatic imps are more forward-thinking than their kin, but focused only on getting other creatures to work on their behalf. In combat, they'll hang back and only engage when there's minimal risk to themselves.
Our Imps Are Different: They're little fiendish humanoids, and distinguished from "standard" D&D imps for being Neutral Evil free agents rather than Lawful Evil devils from Baator.
Plaguemaster: Imps of ill-humor can cast contagion once per day, spreading a disease that varies by the type of imp in question. Sanguine Imps can only use it to inflict a disease called "Red Ache", but the other types can manifest either of two diseases; "Cackle Fever" or "The Shakes" for Choleric Imps, "Blinding Sickness" or "Filth Fever" for Melancholic Imps, and "Mindfire" or "Slimy Doom" for Phlegmatic Imps.

Ineffable Horror

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Ogre-sized monsters with wings and a mass of tentacles on their stomachs, who lurk in the mid- to lowest reaches of the Underdark.

Combat Tentacles: Theirs are actually their intestines, protruding from their bellies, which they use to grab prey and feed.
Descriptively-Named Species: They're horrific monsters about which little can be said — ineffable horrors are intelligent, sapient and speak Undercommon, but rarely bother to communicate, so next to nothing is known about them. Instead they regularly attack other creatures, and murders of the horrors are capable of depopulating entire villages, either killing the inhabitants or driving the survivors to flee elsewhere.
Vampiric Draining: Victims grappled by a horror's intestines take up to five points of Constitution damage per round as their blood is drained, and the creatures don't stop drinking until their prey is dead.

Inevitable

From left to right, a zelekhut, kolyarut and marut (3e)

Classification: Construct (3E, 5E), Immortal Humanoid (4E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Constructs from the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, created by Primus to enforce specific principles of cosmic order such as "lawbreakers should be punished," "bargains should be kept" and "everyone dies eventually."

Clockwork Creature: Most inevitables resemble humanoids made out of complex clockwork mechanisms.
Grew Beyond Their Programming: Inevitables newly-emerged from Mechanus' forges have little knowledge beyond how their powers work and their first target to bring to justice. After arriving on another plane, they absorb information to aid them in future missions, pick up basic conversation skills from interacting with the locals, and will eventually develop a rudimentary personality shaped by these interactions, enough to "evince basic empathy or hostility toward allies or enemies." Inevitables that have been away from Mechanus for a while will even take on an individual name (or adopt one given by others), and may show initiative like keeping track of transgressions they witness while pursuing their current missions that they can go after next. But the longer they stay away from Mechanus, the stronger their drive to return grows, after which all of this mental development is then wiped away.
Implacable Man: Inevitables are obsessive and single-minded in their pursuit of transgressors. They never rest, give up or compromise, and even if a foe escapes them in the short term they will simply keep following them, never stopping, until — even if years down the line — they finally catch up and resume combat. Inevitables who need to cross oceans have been known to simply walk into the waves and traverse the ocean floor on foot, or, if they know that their target is part of an Eternal Recurrance, they're willing to wait patiently for centuries until the next opportunity to enact justice arrives.
Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Inevitables pass judgement on transgressors, determine appropriate punishment (often death) and carry it out themselves.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: Inevitables periodically return to the "crèche-forges" that constructed them, into which they disappear for weeks before emerging with no memory of their previous existence. "Whether the crèche-forge wipes away those memories, stores them, or transfers them to another entity is unknown."
Precursors: Inevitables are actually young by planar standards, and were preceded by angelic "aphanacts" that ruled Mechanus and crusaded to spread the principles of Law across the planes. Sources disagree on whether the deities intervened to remove the aphanacts, or if their aggression prompted an alliance between celestials and fiends. At any rate, the aphanacts were wiped out ten thousand years ago, only for massive crèche-forges to appear in Mechanus that eventually produced the maruts and later other inevitables.
Principles Zealot: Each inevitable is absolutely dedicated to enforcing one specific principle of law on an individual basis, but has "no interest in matters beyond the next target brought to justice." They thus have no larger society, nor any ambition to spread the general principles of law across the cosmos — which planar scholars speculate is a deliberate choice on behalf of whoever made the inevitables to replace the aphanacts. "Without broad ambition or the inclination to organize in groups, the inevitables remain individually powerful, but collectively dormant."

Anhydrut

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)

Crawling, insectoid constructions that defend deserts and the inevitability of the wasteland. They will usually overlook small communities of desert nomads, but those who try to change the wastes through irrigation and farming may find themselves targeted for termination.

Beware My Stinger Tail: Their tail attacks also deal fire damage.
Global Warming: Once per century, a anhydrut can use the global warming epic-level spell to increase the temperature within a 100-mile radius, presumably to preserve a desert biome.
Scary Scorpions: They're built to resemble mechanical scorpions on tank treads.

Kolyarut

Challenge Rating: 12 (3E), 20 (5E)

These mechanical humanoids consider themselves part of the enforcement clause of contracts. They are among the most talkative of inevitables, and can attempt to pass themselves as a mortal when their missions call for subtlety, but when they reach their quarry they are ruthlessly efficient in forcing compliance.

Always Accurate Attack: If a 5E kolyarut is within sword range of a target, it will hit it.
Glamour: They can use disguise self at will.
Inspector Javert: These inevitables are described as simultaneously the easiest and hardest to deal with, since on the one hand, getting a kolyarut off your back can be as simple as returning to compliance with a contract (or proving that the other party violated it too, at which point the kolyarut will walk away from the situation). On the other hand, kolyaruts are utterly unsympathetic about the reasons for breaking a contract — "The circumstances are indeed extenuating, but they aren't part of the contract. You are thus in breach."
Level Drain: Kolyaruts can fire black beams that replicate the enervation spell.
Life Drain: They make liberal use of their vampiric touch ability.
Mind Control: Kolyaruts rarely kill except in self-defense (or if someone made the mistake of swearing upon their life to do something), instead they prefer to use spells like suggestion, mark of justice or geas/quest to force targets into compliance.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Their 5E incarnation is as four-armed, quad-wielding constructs, which they use on offense and to parry attacks.
Retcon: In 5th edition, the Kolyarut is reimagined as a singular entity who oversees the signing of contracts made within Sigil's Hall of Concordance. It no longer hunts down people who break said contracts, leaving that duty to its marut enforcers instead. But Morte's Planar Parade elaborates that the Kolyarut might send aspects of itself (known simply as kolyaruts) out onto the planes as fact-finders so the Kolyarut can render accurate judgments.
We Have Reserves: Kolyaruts are willing to work with other creatures to complete their mission, and just as willing to use vampiric touch on those allies if they need the hit points.

Marut

Challenge Rating: 15 (3E), 21 (4E), 25 (5E)

Maruts are hulking humanoids who can deal terrible damage to transgressors with their bare fists.

Always Accurate Attack: In 5th edition, a marut always hits with its unerring slam attack, and its Blazing Edict ability does not allow a saving throw to reduce its damage.
Art Evolution: Their design has changed significantly over the years. In 2nd edition, they resemble muscular, lantern-jawed men in weird armor◊. In 3rd and 4th edition, they instead look like hulking obsidian statues dressed in Greco-Roman armor◊. 5th edition turns maruts into vaguely humanoid but utterly inhuman-looking robots with no heads, and a giant eyeball in the center of their torso.
Bad Boss: In 4e, maruts are described as making brutally horrible taskmasters; as inhuman beings forged of soul-stuff, stone and steel, they have little understanding of mortal fragilities, they feel no compassion or empathy for others, and they cannot understand the concept of compromise or renegotion. They're not purposefully cruel, but life for many of those under the control of a marut can be quite short, unless they can truly embrace the marut maxim: Obedience or Death.
Cyclops: In 5th Edition, a marut's face consists of nothing but a single gigantic eye.
Elemental Punch: In 3E, a marut's fists are infused with thunder and lightning. A punch with the left hand will blow out your eardrums, while a punch with the right hand will shock and blind you.
Fixed Damage Attack: In 5th edition, a marut's attacks inflict fixed amounts of damage. Unerring Slam inflicts 60 force damage with every hit, and Blazing Edict inflicts 45 radiant damage to everything within its area-of-effect.
Gone Horribly Right: The World Axis maruts of 4th edition were an attempt to create the ultimate unbiased arbitrator. The gods got what they want, and then abandoned them because they didn't like themselves being held to the same standards as everyone else. Now the maruts basically want to conquer reality and forcibly reshape it to make everything "more orderly".
No Social Skills: All inevitables suffer from this to various extents, but maruts have it the worst, as 3E explains that since their targets, typically liches and master necromancers, live apart from society, maruts get few opportunities to interact with normal creatures, and are thus slower to develop interpersonal skills and distinct personalities.
Order Is Not Good: The 4e incarnation of maruts are literally made of inflexible order and uncompromising law; their very nature is to bring order to reality. But this makes them a race of tyrants in the making, and as beings literally incapable of feeling pity, mercy or compromise, their rule is called out as brutal and cruel in a way many mortal tyrants would shudder at.
Punch-Clock Villain: 4e maruts don't really want to rule over anything. They have no inherent desire for power, adulation, or any of the emotions that compel mortals to take command. But they are compelled to enact and enforce order, and in the face of an inherently chaotic and random multiverse, they find that only assuming direct control over everything will bring them peace.
Retcon: Maruts have been around since 1st Edition, and actually predate the concept of inevitables. Their lore can also be completely different from one edition to another.
- AD&D 1st Edition introduced the maruts as golems created by Rudra, the Hindu god of plagues, death and destruction, sent to fulfill various tasks he assigns them.
- AD&D 2nd Edition built upon the 1E lore, mainly by noting that maruts can also be found in the service of other deities, usually having been traded to them by Rudra as payment for favors.
- 3rd Edition introduced the inevitables and placed the maruts among them as enforcers of mortality, hunting down and killing the undead and those who unnaturally extended their lives.
- 4th Edition removed the inevitables and made maruts their own individual faction in the Astral Sea. They were created by the gods collectively to serve as the ultimate arbiters of law, order and judgment, especially in terms of divine conflict. They worked too well, and were largely abandoned after the gods realized they truly could not be swayed to favor any one god. Now the maruts seek to enforce law and order, especially in the form of contracts or oaths, with a long-term goal of conquering The Multiverse to bring about "true order."
- 5th Edition keeps the idea of maruts as enforcers of contracts and oaths, making them celestial golems that are created in the Hall of Concordance. There they serve as witnesses to (and enforcers of) forged agreements, which they carry with them as engraved circular sheets of gold inset into their chests.

Quarut

A quarut (right) and varakhut (left) (3e)

Challenge Rating: 17 (3E)

Quaruts enforce the laws of time and space, hunting down those whose meddling poses a threat to reality.

Clock Roaches: The quaruts' task of enforcing the laws of physics mostly involves hunting down and neutralizing time travelers and people who cause temporal paradoxes.
Clocks of Control: They have hourglasses for heads and wield powers over time. Sometimes the sand in said hourglasses can be observed flowing upwards, but the quaruts have no comment on the significance of this.
Cosmic Retcon: The best way to reach a nonviolent solution with a quarat is not to revert whatever dramatic reality-altering magic attracted its attention, but to rework time so that the change never happened in the first place.
Hypocrite: Quaruts are highly disapproving of mortals who use spells such as miracle, temporal stasis, time stop, and wish, as they consider these dangerously disruptive to the balance of reality. This does not prevent them from using these same spells with impunity.
Time Stands Still: Quaruts prefer to deal with their foes by trapping them in bubbles of stopped time.

Varakhut

Challenge Rating: 19 (3E)

Varakhuts enforce the laws of Divinity. Any being attempting to ascend to godhood will find themselves relentlessly pursued by these mighty enforcers of law.

Enemies Equals Greatness: Some would-be divinities actually try to antagonize varakhuts, in order to legitimize their bid for godhood.
Godhood Seeker: Not them, but their prey — varakhuts hunt down those who would make themselves gods. Mere egomaniacs aren't worth their attention, varakhuts are only sent after powerful beings who have a credible chance at a divine apotheosis.
Kill the God: Subverted. By their nature, they don't kill gods. The being they do kill, however, are usually close enough to godhood that the difference is semantics.
My Master, Right or Wrong: Of a kind. If a being manages to evade the varakhuts and truly ascend to godhood, the varakhut will call off the pursuit, since the being now is part of the divinity they seek to protect.

Zelekhut

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E)

Zelekhuts enforce the rule of law, hunting down those who would escape lawful punishment for their crimes.

Blade Below the Shoulder: A zelekhut can extend and retract bladed whips from its forearms at will.
I Want Them Alive!: Since zelekhuts exist to help enforce mortal laws, they typically just carry transgressors back for punishment unless they were already sentenced to a penalty like death or corporal punishment, in which case the zelekhut carries out the sentence itself.
Our Centaurs Are Different: They resemble mechanical centaurs with retractable wings.
Retractable Appendages: A zelekhut's wings can be extended from and retracted into its body at will.

Infinity Vine

Origin: Spelljammer
Alignment: Unaligned

Leafless green flowering vines that thrive in Wildspace, growing impossibly fast around asteroids or spelljamming ships.

Alien Kudzu: This vine's signature ability is its absurd growth rate — once it enters the air envelope of a starship or planetary body smaller than 100 miles across, infinity vine starts growing at a rate of 10 cubic feet per round, until whatever it's landed on is buried in 10 feet of vines. This quadruples a ship's original tonnage, potentially immobilizing it, with the only solace being that infinity vine is edible (if not tasty) and will refresh the ship's air supply. Infinity vine is easily destroyed by fire and sharp weapons and the like, but will instantly regrow unless moved underwater, plunged into darkness, or moved to the phlogiston, and will vanish entirely after an hour on a large planet.
From a Single Cell: Even a small bit of infinity vine, drifting through Wildspace after being cut from a larger mass, will end its dormancy and explode into growth once it enters an air envelope.
Weak to Fire: As mentioned, contact with flame will instantly destroy infinity vine, the problem is that it's not always a practical solution on a wooden ship.

Inix

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Animal (3E), Natural Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 9 (4E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Huge lizards often domesticated as mounts and beasts of burden. Not to be confused with Imix, the evil Archomental of Fire.

Big Eater: The main problems with inixes is how much vegetation, carrion or small animals they need to consume every few hours to keep up their strength, and how if they can't get enough to eat, inixes become impossible to handle. For this reason, inixes are never taken into lands where foraging is scarce.
Crafted from Animals: The shell-like carapace on their backs can be made into excellent armor as good as mail, or the more flexible scales on their undersides can be woven into a fine leather mesh as effective as studded leather armor.
Horse of a Different Color: These 16-foot-long, two-ton reptiles can carry passengers or cargo in a howdah at a steady pace for a full day or night before needing rest, and in short bursts can move as fast as a kank.
Truly Single Parent: Part of the inixes' success as a species comes from females' ability to produce viable eggs without a male.

Inquisitor

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Fearsome and sadistic undead who exist only to torture other creatures.

Cruel Mercy: Inquisitors prefer to fight to incapacitate rather than kill, but only so they have victims to drag to their torture chamber.
Deceased and Diseased: Their yellowed claws carry a unique disease that deals both Strength and Constitution damage.
Driven to Madness: In 2nd Edition, an inquisitor's victims have to save after every day of torture or go temporarily insane, unable to tell friend from foe or recognize familiar surroundings. A few weeks' rest or a heal spell will let them recover.
Non-Health Damage: The effects of their torture are represented with permanent (in 2E) or temporary (in 3E) Charisma damage.
Sadist: Not only do inquisitors take twisted joy in others' suffering, their 2nd Edition rules state that these undead will literally waste away if denied victims, permanently losing a hit point each year until they're destroyed.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: The very view of an inquisitor's face inspires terror.
Torture Technician: Inquisitors can often be found serving the likes of liches as interrogators, though those without masters will continue to abduct and torture victims anyway, asking impossible questions as an excuse to perfect their hideous technique.
Whip of Dominance: These torturers are rarely seen without a whip in hand.

Insectare

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Humanoid (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Humanoids blending elven and insect traits, who seek to covertly gather information and magical power in their bid to rule the spaceways.

The Chessmaster: The insectares' ultimate goal is to dominate all other lifeforms, and since they aren't (yet) powerful enough do to that through raw force, the insectares stay in the shadows, manipulating other races and playing them against each other.
Combat Tentacles: Insectares' antennae are fully eight feet long when fully uncoiled, and can be used in combat like whips, or to entangle a foe's weapon hand.
Fantastic Racism: Insectares aren't popular, since others have noticed their deviousness and secrecy — "Few races trust the insectare, and if they knew half of what these insectoid schemers planned, they would trust them even less." Elves in particular despise insectare, denying any relation to them, while orcs and goblinoids, especially scro, hate insectare as another type of elf to exterminate.
God-Emperor: The insectare's god Klikral lives among them on their homeworld, and is viewed as the head of a great household that encompasses their entire race. While nearly every insectare priest remains on their homeworld to be close to their deity, only ten high priests, who are fully twice the size as normal insectare, are allowed to communicate directly with Klikral. Despite this devotion, insectares infiltrating other races often pretend to worship other deities, something Klikral seems to approve of.
Hidden Elf Village: Subverted; insectares obsessively keep their homeworld's location a secret from other races, and any outsiders who trespass there are harshly interrogated and publicly executed, but insectares are very interested in the wider universe.
Human Resources: Or Humanoid Resources, in this case; an insectare's exoskeleton can be worked into a +1 shield, while their antennae can be harvested for use as whips. Naturally, "insectare consider this practice abominable, and anyone who uses such a weapon or shield earns every insectare's instant hatred."
In the Hood: They habitually hide their unusual features beneath hooded cloaks or robes, and keep their distance from others so they don't notice the insectare's eyes.
Insectoid Aliens: They look like taller, muscular, green-skinned elves with antennae protruding from behind their ears. Most also have compound eyes (which aren't noticeable unless someone comes within five feet of an insectare), though for an unexplained reason, insectare priests have ordinary humanoid eyes. They also have tough exoskeletons that grant them a minor (in 3E) or exceptional (in 2E) natural armor bonus.
No Need for Names: Whatever name an insectare uses among other races is an alias for their current infiltration. Among their own kind, their ability to communicate empathically means they have no need for individual designations.
Starfish Language: Their spoken language is "a clicking, lilting tongue that is a mixture of the common tongue and the insects' original language" — someone who speaks Common has a 30% chance of getting the gist of a conversation in Insectare, but won't be able to provide a full translation. Insectare much prefer to communicate directly with one another by touching their antennae together.
The Stoic: They seem icy and insular to other races, though this is a byproduct of insectare physiology — they're used to expressing emotions directly by touching antennae.
Underground City: Insectare cities are made from hollowed-out mountains and can extend deep underground. For this reason, they feel most comfortable infiltrating dwarven territory.

Intellect Snare

Classification: Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: 8 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Far Realm entities that rip thoughts from those they wrap in their tentacles. Not to be confused with intellect devourers, an illithid creation.

Brown Note Being: These creatures echo with "the cacophonous sounds of every thought the snare has consumed," a passive psychic assault that is so overwhelming that it can incapacitate those who simply come within 30 feet of the creature.
Combat Tentacles: They lash at and grapple prey with their tentacles.
It Can Think: Though intellect snares look like floating masses of writhing tentacles, they're veritable geniuses and are capable of communicating using telepathy and Dark Speech.
Mind Hive: A variant; they're spawned from other Far Realm creatures' psychic attacks, which can leave "shreds of thought" behind that may coalesce into an intellect snare.
Mind Rape: An intellect snare can make a "Siphon Thoughts" attack against a grappled victim, dealing psychic damage and "leaving a tattered mind in its wake."
Scavengers Are Scum: These evil creatures are described as aberrant scavengers, often found feasting on the weakened survivors of mind flayer attacks.

Invisible Stalker

Classification: Elemental (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 6 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Creatures of elemental air summoned to the Material Plane for a specific task, typically to retrieve an item or assassinate a target.

Because You Were Nice to Me: Though they dislike servitude, invisible stalkers might regard a quick, uncomplicated task as a pleasant diversion, and will view a summoner who gives them such a mission more positively. "Anyone who has befriended an invisible stalker in the past will find that voyages through the plane of elemental Air are far less hazardous than they might otherwise have been."
Blow You Away: Their slam attacks are actually sudden, intense blasts of air that deal bludgeoning damage.
Exact Words: They're resentful servants at best, and don't like complex missions or protracted duties. In such cases, an invisible stalker will attempt to pervert the intent of their summoner's command unless it's worded carefully — an order of "keep me safe from all harm" might cause the stalker to carry its summoner back to a secure location on the Elemental Plane of Air.
Invisible Monsters: Invisible stalkers are composed of air and are naturally invisible, even when attacking. A spell that allows someone to see the invisible reveals only the invisible stalker's vague outline.
Painting the Medium: Some of their older Monster Manual entries use an empty frame for the picture of the stalker.◊ It is invisible, after all.
Scarily Competent Tracker: Invisible stalkers are expert hunters, and have the Improved Tracking ability in 3rd Edition.

Irda

As they appear on The Irda: The Lost Histories Volume II

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Humanoid (3E), Giant (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E), 1 (5E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Lawful Good or Neutral Good

Also known as "high ogres," the irda are a fair and gentle people who have withdrawn from the world, due to the superstitions that linger from their dark past.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Their skin tones range from midnight blue to deep sea green, with black, white or silver hair.
Art Evolution: 5th Edition gives the irda small horns on their foreheads and cheekbones.
Defector from Decadence: The irda are descended from a faction of ancient ogres who had a Heel–Face Turn, urged their kin to change their evil ways, and were driven into hiding in the ensuing civil war.
Fantastic Racism: On Krynn, people still tell stories about evil, slave-taking ogres, and the irda are considered harbingers of those ogres' return — as such, the irda prefer to move among other races in disguise, lest they be hunted down and killed. For their part, despite their Good alignments, the irda can't help but hold themselves superior to other races, though the well-traveled among them have learned to respect other peoples for their strengths and resilience.
Hidden Elf Village: In their home setting, most of the remaining irda live in isolation on the island of Anaiatha. They don't trade goods with outsiders, and at most will offer their knowledge of plants and animals in exchange for tips about irda stuck on the mainland.
Human Shifting: They're natural shapeshifters, able to assume any Small to Large humanoid form. Their 2E lore notes that this takes years of practice, and most irda have a single disguise they prefer to use.
Inhumanly Beautiful Race: Irda are considered extraordinarily beautiful by the likes of humans and elves, they "move with a fluid motion so graceful that it is a joy to watch," their voices are "rich, melodic tones that are among the most beautiful sounds heard on Krynn," and so forth.
Mage Species: In 3rd Edition, irda can cast magic like dancing lights, flare and mage hand as spell-like abilities each once per day, while 2nd Edition notes that due to their enhanced understanding of magic, irda spellcasters gain one additional spell of the highest level they can cast.
Our Ogres Are Hungrier: On Krynn, they're actually the closest to the original incarnation of ogres, who were as beautiful as they were tyrannical before being cursed with forms that better reflected their evil nature. Their ogre heritage gives the irda superior strength (in their 2nd Edition rules), but they dislike fighting in general and melee combat in particular, and so rarely take advantage of this. The irda have also lost their ogre hardiness, resulting in a susceptibility to poison and a racial Constitution penalty.
Veganopia: The irda are strict vegetarians as a way to further distance themselves from their savage ogre kin, and beyond that refuse to drink milk or use any animal products. They wear simple linen smocks or silken gowns, and never utilize wool or leather, though they will wear modest jewelry.

Ironclad Mauler

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

Magically-enhanced ursine warbeasts that can dominate the battlefield, though some have escaped to menace the wilderness.

Axe-Crazy: As a result of their training and magical conditioning, ironclad maulers will fearlessly charge into masses of foes, and enjoy fighting, whether dueling a dangerous opponent or crushing formations of wealkings. They never flee, always fight to the death, and if one escapes to take over a pack of mundane dire bears, it will lead its kin "into crueler and more violent activities."
Bioweapon Beast: Ironclad maulers are dire bears given enough magical augmentation that they can no longer interbreed with their parent species. Designed to destroy entire infantry formations on the battlefield, they're such valuable weapons that ironically, their owners may come to consider them Too Awesome to Use in open warfare.
Clingy Costume: Their armor is grafted onto them, offering them substantial protection without impeding their movement. But since each set of armor is customized to an individual warbeast, not enough another ironclad mauler can wear one's armor.
Make Them Rot: Ironclad maulers are surrounded by a "sickening aura," a field of negative energy that doesn't deal outright damage, but can sicken those within ten feet for a full hour.
Trampled Underfoot: They're large and heavy enough to trample smaller foes.

Ironmaw

Origin: Planescape
Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Carnivorous tree-shaped monsters that originated in the Abyss before spreading across the Lower Planes.

Combat Tentacles: An ironmaw has four tendrils that can reach up to 60 feet in length, which it can use to grab and reel in prey to be swallowed, or lash at opponents, dealing persistant bleeding damage and potentially infecting them with a Constitution-damaging illness.
He Was Right There All Along: When not attacking, an ironmaw's tendrils are wrapped around its upper trunk, or contorted to hide their true length and resemble gnarled branches, while its mouth remains closed to look like another crevice in its bark-like hide. By the time other creatures get close enough to notice the ironmaw's leaves and their distinct coloration resembling blood splotches, those creatures are usually within the monster's reach. A better warning sign might be that no wildlife ventures near the "tree," and the ground around it is often littered with the remains of past victims.
Super-Toughness: Ironmaws' bark is, as their name suggests, as hard as iron. This grants them an impressively high Armor Class and Damage Reduction in 3rd Edition, and 2nd Edition ironmaws are immune to bludgeoning weapons.
Swallowed Whole: Any Large or smaller creature that ends up adjacent to an ironmaw is in danger of being engulfed, taking bludgeoning damage each round it spends in its trunk, on top of suffocating from lack of air.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: In their Planescape rules, ironmaws can camouflage themselves as other types of tree by slowly growing leaves and changing the texture of their bark to match the flora around them.
Weak to Fire: 2nd Edition ironmaws don't take additional damage from fire attacks, but fire will make them drop a victim held in their tendrils or mouth, and they won't try to grab someone carrying a torch, instead swatting them away.
When Trees Attack: Ironmaws look like gnarled old oak trees, can shamble around when necessary, and attack anything that comes within reach of their tendrils, even when they've recently fed.

Ironthorn

Classification: Plant (3E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Carnivorous desert trees that grab passing prey with their thorny tendrils, impale them upon poisoned thorns, and feed on the body as it decomposes.

Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Anything grabbed by an ironthorn will be pulled deep into its mass of thorns to be impaled.
Poisonous Person: The tree's thorns are poisonous, with paralysis as the initial effect and hefty Constitution damage as a secondary effect. Worse, an impaled victim has to save against the secondary effect again each minute they're trapped in the tree.
Solid Gold Poop: An ironthorn's sap is a valuable natural hardening agent used to make armor and such, but harvesting it is obviously dangerous.
When Trees Attack: They're thorny plants the size of apple trees, and aren't particularly fast, but have a surprising 15-foot reach with their main tendrils.

Istarian Drone

Origin: Dragonlance
Classification: Construct (5E)
Challenge Rating: 6 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Relics of a fallen civilization, which can still be found defending and maintaining its ruins.

Improvised Weapon: Their viscous gel, which hardens into crystalline mortar, can also be used in battle to restrain attackers.
Mechanical Insects: Istarian drones resemble short, stout mantises made from marble and metal, with four scuttling insectile legs and barbed, scythe-shaped arms.
Ragnarök Proofing: Not only did some of these constructs survivor Istar's destruction in the apocalyptic Cataclysm, they're still kicking 300 years later.

Ixitxachitl

Classification: Aberration (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (standard), 3 (vampiric) (3E); 1/4 (standard), 2 (cleric, vampiric) (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Intelligent and malevolent stingrays that dwell within tropical reefs, menacing all around them.

Made a Slave: The ixitxachitl routinely take slaves, usually other aquatic creatures such as merfolk and nixies, though even surface-dwellers might become captives if they're wearing magic items that provide water breathing. These slaves are usually forced to excavate the ixitxachitls' dwellings, or end up sacrificed to the monsters' vampiric leaders.
Sinister Stingrays: They're sentient, rapacious rays that enslave other intelligent creatures and tend to over-hunt their territories until the ixitxachitls are forced to relocate.
Vampiric Draining: The "vampiric" ixitxachitl leader caste can inflict Level Drain upon victims, healing damage in the process. Despite this trait, they're not actually undead.

Ixzan

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

A larger, freshwater variant of ixitxachitl that look more like manta rays.

Always Chaotic Evil: Explicilty averted; ixzan are born Neutral, but are subjected to "a gruelling process designed to make them as strong and ruthless as possible," so that they either develop their Chaotic Evil alignment or perish.
Beneath the Earth: Most ixzan dwell in bodies of water within the Underdark.
Eats Babies: Kuo-toa sometimes use ixzan in a brutal Rite of Passage to weed out weakness, by throwing juvenile kuo-toa into an underwater maze in which the ixzan gorge themselves on any youngsters unable to escape. Those who survive are considered full-fledged adults.
Mage Species: While AD&D states that only 1 in 20 ixzan are wizards, 3rd Edition lets the entire species use spell-like abilities such as levitate, fly, magic missile or invisibility. It's noted the ixzan spellcasters are fond of levitating up to cling to a cavern ceiling, similar to a lurker/trapper.
Poisonous Person: Some mutant ixzan in 2nd Edition, and all ixzan in 3rd Edition, have a poisonous bite.
Villain Team-Up: Ixzan have a natural affinity for their fellow evil aquatic Underdark neighbors, the aboleths and kuo-toa. Ixzan end up subordinate to the former, and use the latter as Dumb Muscle. Since the ixzan and kuo-toa's divine patrons, Ilxenden and Blibdoolpoolp, are on good terms with each other, it's not uncommon to find the two races living in mixed communities.

J

Jabberwock

Classification: Dragon (5E)
Challenge Rating: 13 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral (2E), Chaotic Evil (5E)

Little-known and solitary beasts, these manxome dragons dwell within ancient ruins and tulgey woodland, and their attacks leave few survivors to go galumphing back home.

Eye Beams: In lieu of a conventional breath weapon, a jabberwock in 5th Edition can shoot a long line of fire from its bulging eyes, unless it has been blinded by something.
A Kind of One: The original jabberwock was, by what information the poem provides, a singular monster, and most adaptations follow suit. 2nd Edition posits that there is only ever a single jabberwock, which might be generated as a Genius Loci to protect a woodland from intruders, while 5th Edition assumes there is an entire species of such monsters.
The Paralyzer: A 2nd Edition jabberwock's searchlight-like eye beams can replicate the effects of a wand of paralysis.
Resurrective Immortality: Should a jabberwock be slain, a new one appears a few years later anywhere within a thousand miles of where the last one died. It's noted that no immature jabberwock has ever been sighted, and the creature(s?) do not appear to age, so it's possible that all jabberwock sightings are of the same resurrecting beast.
Stupidity-Inducing Attack: The burbling of a jabberwock can confuse other creatures, causing them to stand in place, wander at random, or attack a nearby creature, friend or foe.
Super-Persistent Predator: Once a jabberwock has chosen a target, it pursues them until either one of them dies, or the target escapes via teleportation magic.
Tracking Spell: A jabberwock can unerringly track any creature it has wounded within 24 hours as long as they're on the same plane.

Jackal Lord

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

Jackal-headed humanoids who work to undermine governments and priesthoods on behalf of their dark and sinister deity, while indulging their own vanity and gluttony.

The Beastmaster: They can summon a pack of jackals three times per day, and can dominate canines at will (including victims of their "curse of the jackal" ability).
Diabolical Mastermind: Jackal lords usually start out in isolated settlements as sponsors for bandits, then the successful ones can move into the city, posing as respectable businessmen while using blackmail, bribery, scheming and terrorism to expand their influence.
Dirty Coward: They prefer leaving the fighting to their minions, and when pressed, will take the form of jackals and try to blend in with a pack of the creatures to escape from combat.
Evil Versus Evil: Many of a jackal lord's Machiavellian schemes are dedicated to defeating a rival jackal lord and absorbing their territory. On rare occasions two jackal lords will team up, usually to defeat a good-aligned group or establish a temple dedicated to their deity, but they'll betray each other as soon as that objective is accomplished.
Forced Transformation: Once per day, a jackal lord can make a gaze attack that, if successful, turns the victim into a jackal, a curse that can only be broken by a jackal lord or with magic such as limited wish or miracle
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can use change self at will, as well as shapeshift into the form of a large jackal.

Jackalwere

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Natural Humanoid (4E), Humanoid (5E)
Challenge Rating: 2 (3E), 3 (4E), 1/2 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil, Evil (4E)

A shapeshifting jackal that can take humanoid form in order to lure in victims.

Forced Sleep: Their gaze can put other creatures into a magical sleep.
Pinocchio Nose: Inverted; attentive onlookers might notice that a jackalwere winces in pain whenever it tells the truth.
Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Varies by edition. 3rd Edition jackalweres have their equipment fuse with them when they take jackal form, which prevents them from using it until they shift to their hybrid or humanoid forms and their gear returns. In 4th and 5th Edition, a jackalwere's equipment explicitly isn't transformed along with them.
This Was His True Form: They revert to their true jackal forms when slain.
Uplifted Animal: Their 5th Edition lore paints them as once-ordinary jackals given the gift of speech and magical power by the demon lord Graz'zt, so they could better serve his lamia minions.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: A jackalwere has three physical forms that it shifts between: a true form, indistinguishable from a normal jackal; a human form, which often appears gaunt and wretched in order to attract sympathy from well-meaning passersby; and a human-sized hybrid form, a biped with the fur and head of a jackal, allowing the creature to make both bite attacks and strikes with held weapons.
Wounded Gazelle Gambit: A lone jackalwere might try to lure in victims by assuming human shape and acting wounded or otherwise debilitated, until someone comes close enough to be affected by its sleep-inducing gaze. In other cases, adventurers sent to investigate a frontier massacre might find another supposed "search party" already on the case, who will work with them until nightfall, at which point the other party tries to tear out the heroes' throats while they sleep.

Jaculi

Classification: Magical Beast (3E), Beast (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E), 1/2 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil (3E), Unaligned (5E)

Large, arboreal snakes infamous for their tactic of launching themselves at prey.

Chameleon Camouflage: They can change the color and texture of their scales to blend in with their surroundings.
Crafted from Animals: The shed skin of jaculis is prized as an ingredient in boots of striding and springing and cloaks of invisibility.
Deadly Lunge: Their trademark ability is to hurl themselves at targets like a javelin — sometimes from as far as 30 feet away, or from 50 feet above the ground — taking prey by surprise and dealing extra damage from the impact. Some species of jaculis have even developed broad, flat heads and/or spines and barbs to enhance the damage dealt from this attack.
Hypnotic Eyes: Faerûnian jaculis are known to hypnotize prey by flashing their eyes and swaying in a certain manner, replicating an animal trance effect.
It Can Think: While "jaculi" can be a collective term for tree-dwelling serpents, the Faerûnian variant is a very particular creature with human-level intelligence, allowing them to learn from past experiences, avoid stupid mistakes like launching themselves at sharp objects, and target sleeping victims for easy meals. Unfortunately, with this intelligence comes an evil alignment.

Jaebrin

Classification: Fey (3E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Former fey jesters who went into self-imposed exile after a species-wide scandal, and now live on the Material Plane as entertainers, swindlers, and/or adventurers.

Acquired Poison Immunity: A supernatural variant; jaebrins used to serve as Court Jesters among their fellow fey, reveling in their role as their superiors enchanted the jaebrins to perform various silly or weird acts. But as the centuries passed, the jaebrins built up a tolerance to enchantment magic, so that they were forced to feign falling under such spells. When the fey nobility eventually discovered the ruse, they lost interest in the jaebrins, who went into exile out of shame.
Big Eater: They have hedonistic appetites and fey metabolisms, allowing jaebrins to indulge their gluttony whenever they want without gaining weight.
Face of a Thug: Jaebrins' oversized mouths filled with needlelike teeth, and their large eyes can be unsettling depending on the lighting and the fey's mood, but while they're decadent, egotistical jokers, they're not malevolent or cruel.
Man Bites Man: They have a natural bite attack that deals only minor damage, but forces victims to save or suffer a penalty on Will saves for the next minute.
Pluralses: A good number of jaebrins both lisp and pronounce words as plurals, even when unnecessary ("I hears the femaleses in this town are all beautieses"), solely to enjoy others' laughter at their strange speech.
No-Sell: They're immune to enchantment spells and effects.
Pretend to Be Brainwashed: Jaebrins absorb the magic of enchantment spells, and instinctively know the intended effect of them. They thus can feign being enchanted so well that they can fool even spells like detect magic (since the energy from the spell is still displayed on the jaebrin's magical aura). It takes a caster succeeding at a Sense Motive check opposed by the jaebrin's Bluff for them to realize the fey is only playing along.

Jahi

Classification: Undead (3E)
Challenge Rating: 16 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Undead parasites, these spectral serpents use mortal hosts to fulfil their debauched desires by creating cults of hedonistic excess.

Intangibility: Incorporeal undead, which presumably helps jahis evade detection when they're attached themselves to their chosen ones.
Mind Control: They can use dominate person four times per day.
Non-Health Damage: Jahis' touch attacks deal Charisma damage, while a host they're bonded to suffers permanent Charisma drain every day. In either case, the jahi heals as their victim's ability score decreases.
Snakes Are Sinister: Jahis look like three-headed serpents with elongated, human-like faces.
The Symbiote: A parasitic example. Jahis drain the Charisma of their "chosen one," then wrap their ghostly bodies around the host's throat or chest, investing it with the jahi's exceptional Charisma score of 18. This allows the chosen one to form the nucleus of a cult of excess, but if the jahi is ever threatened, or sees a more desirable host, it can dump its chosen one, who then collapses into a catatonic state as its Charisma score falls back to 0.

Jammer Leech

Origin: Spelljammer
Classification: Plant (5E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Space-dwelling barnacles that attach themselves to the hulls of spelljamming ships.

Brown Note: In 5th Edition, killing a jammer leech while it's attached to a ship's hull causes a spelljammer overload, hitting the vessel's spelljammer with psychic damage.
Combat Tentacles: They can defend themselves with their spiked tentacles, but they're only about as effective as daggers.
Counter-Attack: Jammer leeches can respond to physical damage by retaliating with the spells they've stolen (in 2nd Edition), or zapping foes with a magical discharge (in 5th). For this reason, spelljammer crews prefer to scrape these barnacles off the hull without directly attacking them.
Magic Eater: These leeches survive by siphoning magic. In 2nd Edition, they drain prepared spells from their host ship's spelljammer, while in 5th, they instead absorb magical energy from the ship's spelljamming helm.

Jermlaine

Classification: Fey (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 1/2 (3E), 1/8 (5E)
Playable: 2E
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Tiny but malicious fey also known as jinxkin or bane-midges. They're sneaky subterranean brigands reviled for their foul dispositions and evil treatment of their victims.

Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Some jermlaine tribes will allow themselves to be bribed into allying (or pretending to ally) with members of the bigger races, but will almost always turn on them at some point.
Freudian Excuse: 5th Edition attributes part of jermlaine's anger towards other creatures from a history of being hunted for food as well as their hides, which other races have (unsuccessfully) tried to turn into magic items bestowing jermlaine's invisibility to darkvision.
Griping About Gremlins: 2nd Edition classifies jermlaine as a type of gremlin, and notes their habit of stealthily cutting at the straps of a passersby's equipment so that it all comes apart after the jermlaine have scampered back into hiding. They also like to sneak into other creatures' camps to vandalize whatever they can't carry back to their lairs.
Gulliver Tie-Down: Should jermlaine come across a sleeping victim, or if someone succumbs to one of their traps, the little fey tie them up and proceed to strip them of clothes and valuables, shave off their body hair to make ropes, urinate in their water flasks, summon rodents to eat their food, and do other nasty things to them. When the jermlaine are finished, their victim is left naked and helpless for whatever happens upon them next.
Molotov Cocktail: They've caught on that would-be victims in heavy armor are hard to subdue, so jermlaine tend to attack such targets with firebombs, or dump acid on them.
Our Gnomes Are Weirder: Beyond classifying them as a type of gremlin, 2E also claims jermlaine are an "extremely" distant relative of gnomes.
Promoted to Playable: There are rules for playing jermlaine in 2nd edition in the pages of Dragon.
Speaks Fluent Animal: All jermlaine have the spell-like ability to speak with any form of rat.
Stealth Expert: Their stone-textured hides help them blend in with their surroundings, and they're extraordinarily sneaky in general, so that they're 75% undetectable in 2E even when someone is on the lookout for them, while 5th Edition notes that jermlaine are also completely invisible to darkvision.
Trap Master: They're fond of using traps like tripwires, nets or pits to incapacitate victims, then the jermlaine mob them, batter them unconscious, and tie them up.

Jerren

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

Once a halfling tribe facing extinction at the hands of goblinoids, the jerren resorted to dark magic and vile acts to defeat their foes, becoming something even worse than the goblins.

Always Chaotic Evil: Like vasharans, jerren are vile, sadistic and evil beings to the last, and seek to capture, kill or corrupt anyone who trespasses on their stretch of the prairie. Unlike vasharans, the jerren's evil is societal, as any among them who show a hint of weakness or mercy are killed and devoured by their kin.
Evil Counterpart: Jerren are to halflings what vasharans are to humans, drow are to elves, and duergar are to dwarves.
Horrifying the Horror: By the time the jerren turned the war around, they were performing atrocities that horrified even their goblinoid foes.
I'm a Humanitarian: Jerren are as willing to eat each other as they are to devour outsiders.
It Gets Easier: Using poison and underhanded tactics was only the jerren's Start of Darkness. Resorting to those tactics made it easier to take the next step, and then the next, and so on until the goblinoids' heads decorated the boundaries of jerren territory.
Master Poisoner: One of the jerren's deadliest tools, their poisons are legendary for the amount of pain and suffering they inflict. Jerren probably could make a poison that ensures a quick death. They just don't want to.
That Man Is Dead: Applied to the entire race. Jerren dislike being called halflings, as they see their halfling kin as weak and ineffectual.

Jhakar

^2e

Origin: Dark Sun
Classification: Natural Beast (4E)
Challenge Rating: 1 (4E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Vicious reptilian pack hunters that can be tamed and domesticated, provided their handlers keep their guards up.

Art Evolution: In 2nd and 3rd Edition, jhakar are depicted with upright postures, colorful sails on their backs, and very toothy mouths, but 4th Edition makes them blunter, thicker and lower to the ground, downplaying their sailed back.
Attack Animal: While jhakar are commonly used as Angry Guard Dogs or tracking hounds in their home setting, they're notably stupid creatures that have trouble recognizing their handlers from one day to the next. 4th Edition elaborates that while jhakar "respect pain and strength," they also carry grudges, and will turn on their leaders should they ever show weakness.
Bully Bulldog: They're explicitly described as scaled bulldogs, "small, squat and pugnacious."
Personal Space Invader: Jhakar that hit with their bite attack latch onto their victim, hoping to work with their packmates to pull their prey to the ground. Or in gameplay terms, they automatically deal bite damage in subsequent rounds and can try to overbear their target (in 2nd Edition) or grapple and shift their target (in 4th Edition).

Jiangshi

Classification: Undead (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 5 (3E), 9 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These undead were buried inproperly or in an auspicious location, and now seek retribution on those whose neglect led to their cursed existence. Their stiff gait has led to their nickname of "hopping vampires."

Anatomy of the Soul: As the 3E Oriental Adventures sourcebook explains, these undead's bodies are animated by the po or "lower" part of the soul, while the hun or higher soul has departed. This leaves the creature less than fully alive, allowing rigor mortis to set in and leading to jiangshi's signature stiff gait.
Chinese Vampire: They're stiff, life-draining "vampires" quite different from the entry later on this list.
Feral Vampires: The 3E "hopping vampire" entry explains that they behave more like wild animals than the sophisticated, intelligent vampires from the main Monster Manual.
Life Drain: A 5E jiangshi can consume a victim's energy as a special attack, dealing necrotic damage to the target and healing the jiangshi by the same amount. Worse, this gives the jiangshi a week-long boost to its mobility, increasing its base movement speed to 40 feet and letting it fly at the same rate. Anyone slain by this attack will also immediately rise as a wight under the jiangshi's control, and should that wight slay a victim, it will evolve into a jiangshi itself.
Supernatural Sensitivity: 3E hopping vampires cannot actually see living creatures, instead they can sense their breaths out to 120 feet. While this means illusions are useless against the monsters, a creature who can hold their breath, or who doesn't need to breathe, is effectively invisible to them.
The Virus: A 3E hopping vampire's claws carry a curse that can cause victims to transform into another hopping vampire in two to five days. The only way to stop the transformation is with a remove curse spell, though its onset can be delayed if the victim is willing to spend hours hopping around or dancing on sticky rice.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: A 5E jiangshi can polymorph into a humanoid, undead or beast at will, but can't move any faster than its base speed in this other form.
Zombie Gait: The good news is, these monsters' stiff limbs leave them with a base movement speed of only 20 feet.

Joystealer

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

The insoril, as they call themselves, are fey who haunt humanoid settlements, draining the emotions from their victims.

Arch-Enemy: Joystealers despise the ethergaunts for their long enslavement, and for "poisoning their purity."
Emotion Eater: A joystealer's intangible touch attack deals Charisma damage, and once a victim hits 0 Charisma, the fey can take an action to drain all emotion from them. This renders the victim incapble of being affected by fear or rage effects, or get any sort of penalty or bonus from morale effects, until the joystealer who stole their emotions is slain, or the victim receives a remove curse spell in a hallowed area.
Gem Tissue: Their eyes look like glittering gemstones, ruby red when the joystealer is hungry, and glowing golden once their appetite for emotion is sated.
Intangibility: Their long imprisonment on the Ethereal Plane has given these fey the incorporeal subtype.
Made a Slave: The entire insoril race was captured by the ethergaunts, who valued them as tools in their quest to purge themselves of emotion. While the joystealers have since escaped, the ethergaunts continue to hunt for them.
Necessarily Evil: The insoril used to be proud of their role of draining "excess" emotions from other creatures, a "refined culling" that they deemed necessary to reduce conflict and pain, so part of the reason they despise the ethergaunts is because the latter turned the joystealers into mere hunters, scrambling to drain a victim of emotion for life just so the fey can experience the momentary joy of stolen passion. Of course, to everyone else, the joystealers are just as cruel and selfish as they ever were.

Juggernaut

Classification: Construct (3E, 5E)
Challenge Rating: 11 (3E), 12 (5E)
Alignment: Unaligned

Ponderous animated constructions of stone that won't stop until their creator's foes are crushed beneath their rollers.

Horse of a Different Color: Some juggernauts have an interior hiding space large enough for two Medium-sized creatures.
The Juggernaut: They are slow - in some editions their speed is a paltry 10 feet per round, while in others it takes them several turns to build up any decent momentum - and sometimes juggernauts are also subject to rules about maneuverability. But with their high Armor Class, Damage Reduction and Fast Healing, as well as their construct immunities to conditions like sleep, stunning or paralysis, juggernauts are very difficult to stop.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Juggernauts have six limbs, three on each side, which they use to grab opponents and thrust them under the construct's rollers. In some juggernauts that are hybrid mimics, these limbs are grown as needed, while in others they are carved during the construct's creation and are always present.
Squashed Flat: The fate of anything subjected to their Squash attack. It deals a ton of damage, and victims may have to save to avoid a One-Hit Kill.
You Shall Not Evade Me: Some juggernauts can use spell-like abilities such as forcecage, slow or wall of force to ensure that their enemies can't escape their rollers. Said wall of force is also a useful way to navigate obstacles like cliffs and chasms.

Julajimus

Classification: Aberration (3E)
Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

These giant, man-eating monsters can take the forms of innocuous creatures to surprise their victims.

Creepily Long Arms: A julajimus' limbs are abnormally long, with four articulated joints on each.
Cute Is Evil: Certain villages tell stories about a disobedient child who adopts a cute animal as a pet despite their parents' warnings that there isn't enough food or space for it, only for said critter to become a julajimus who eats the kid.
Hate Plague: Downplayed; creatures become unusually aggressive when a julajimus is around, so increased attacks on domesticated animals by wildlife can be a clue that one of these monsters is in the area.
Killer Gorilla: They're 18-foot-tall killer simians, though they resemble baboons more than gorillas.
Killer Rabbit: They can disguise themselves as far more harmless wildlife. They are far from harmless...
Meaningful Name: Their name derives from julaji molus, or "eater of children."
Mighty Roar: Three times per day, julajimuses can loose an ear-splitting roar that can be heard for miles, which is intense enough to deal subdual damage and potentially deafen neary creatures for hours.
No-Sell: Julajimuses are completely immune to spells from the Enchantment school.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: Anything within 20 feet of them has to save or become frightened.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Julajimuses can polymorph themselves at will, but can only take the forms of small, cuddly animals like kittens, rabbits or chipmunks.
Was Once a Man: Some sources suggest that the first julajimuses were created by the cult of Tharizdun from human prisoners, in order to terrorize non-believers.
Weakened by the Light: A julajimus has to save against paralysis each round it's exposed to sunlight.

Justicator

Classification: Outsider (3E)
Challenge Rating: 13 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Nine-foot-tall exemplars of order from the Infernal Battlefield of Acheron, who seek out chaotic beings to destroy.

Good Wings, Evil Wings: They have feathered wings, but with a mix of black and white feathers, indicating their ambivalence towards good and evil.
Holy Hand Grenade: Justicators can make a "smite chaos" attack four times per day, dealing a burst of heavy damage to Chaotic creatures.
Know When to Fold 'Em: Justicators are cunning opponents who have a strategy worked out before they even enter combat, but if they aren't making headway after a few rounds of fighting, they'll plane shift to safety to recover and reassess their enemy.
Magic Knight: They're very dangerous with their enchanted greatswords, and can also wield an array of spell-like abilities such as invisibility purge, dimensional anchor, cure serious wounds, greater command and silence to aid them in battle.
Our Angels Are Different: Justicators look the part, being tall and imposing Winged Humanoids from the Outer Planes, but they're explicitly not angels and lack the traits and immunities associated with that subtype. They aren't good either, being more concerned with upholding law and punishing chaos, so that justicators "accord equal respect to archons and devils and equal hatred to demons and eladrins." This mindset makes them natural allies of the inevitables of Mechanus.

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