Index | Playable Races | Monsters (Humanoids | Animals | Beasts | Plants | Fungi | Fey | Dragons | Aberrations | Constructs | Oozes | Undead | Spirits | Elementals | Ethereal | Shadow | Vitality | Void | Dream | Time | Astral | Celestials | Monitors | Fiends)
This page is part of the character sheet for Pathfinder, covering Animal creatures.
Animals are for the most part just that — relatively normal animals. Some are more bizarre than others by real life standards — this category, for instance, also includes dinosaurs, Ice Age megafauna, and certain purely fictional creatures — but all animals are united by their limited intelligence and lack of preternatural powers, their powers and abilities being limited to what regular biology can be expected to produce.
In 1st Edition, non-cephalopod invertebrates were classified as Vermin, a separate type from animals, which can be distinguished from Animals by their lack of an Intelligence score; this category was folded with animals in 2nd Edition. Certain creatures formerly classified as magical beasts in 1st Edition were also reclassified as animals in 2nd Edition, due to their lack of sapience and magical abilities. For tropes pertaining to animals in Starfinder, see Starfinder Animals and Starfinder Vermin.
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In General
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Most arthropods or worms that receive stats as individuals (and not swarms or hazards) are much larger than their real life counterparts, frequently reaching Small size or more, and some going all the way to Colossal size like the dragonroach, black scorpion or shipwrecker crab.
- Dire Beast: 1st Edition inherits dire animals from Dungeons & Dragons (which are bigger and tougher than their mundane counterparts, and have spikes), but changed their appearance to resemble real life prehistoric animals. In 2nd Edition, the word 'dire' is gone for good (except in case of the dire wolf); these animals are now simply referred to by their actual scientific names.
- Dumb Muscle: No matter how strong and powerful an animal is, they never have access to magic, and their Intelligence modifier is never more than -4; creatures with higher Intelligence are never classified as animals.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: 1st Edition initially inherited the animal and vermin creature types from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, which are applicable only to real animals (including oversized versions), with nearly everything completely fictional being classified as magical beasts. However, throughout 1st Edition, the definition changed and expanded to include some fictional creatures that are sometimes explicitly magical (like the enchanter heron). 2nd Edition subsequently formalised the change by reclassifying some magical beasts inherited from the OGL (including frost worms, bulettes and owlbears) as animals; designer James Case stated that while animals in 1st Edition were basic and had few advanced tactics, 2nd Edition ones can do really bizarre things.
- No-Sell: Being mindless, non-cephalopod invertebrates are immune to all mind-affecting effects.
- Prehistoric Monster: Many "dire" versions of common animals are also called by the names of extinct animals similar to their base version — dire apes are Gigantopithecus, dire bears are either short-faced or cave bears, dire crocodiles are Sarcosuchus, and so on. Cenozoic megafauna, dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals are also statted as fightable monsters.
- The Swarm: The kinds of vermin that are not oversized tend to attack in swarms consisting of thousands of individual animals.
- True Neutral: Most animals aren't smart enough to bother with good, evil, law or chaos and by default all have this alignment.
- Underground Monkey: Each group of invertebrates come in several variants differing mostly in size and one or two special abilities.
- Uplifted Animal: Downplayed with vermin that serve as a spellcaster's familiar, which are granted an Intelligence score (which vermin normally lack) and become capable of communication with their masters.
Fictional Animals
Afziaka
Level: 6 (brute), 12 (stalker)
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Size: Large
- Dynamic Entry: An afziaka stalker can teleport at their quarry from a distance of 50 feet.
- Horror Hunger: When farther than 100 feet away from its vrykolakas' burial ground, an afziaka doesn't gain sustenance from eating food and eventually starves to death.
Amphisbaena
Level: 4
Size: Large
Giant snakes with a head at each end of their bodies.
- Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product: Amphisbaena venom, when ingested in small doses, has a number of medical properties and is used to safeguard pregnancies and create poultices that dull aches and pains. As a result, amphisbaenas have become a common symbol of healing and medicine.
- A Head at Each End: Like their Greek inspiration, they have a head at each end of their bodies. Since they don't have a designated front end, they don't slither like other snakes do; instead, they fling one head forward while anchoring themselves with the other, move the hind head towards the former, and then sling the second head forward and repeat.
- No-Sell: They're immune to petrification, which makes them popular pets among medusas.
Ankhrav
2E
Level: 3 (ankhrav), 9 (hive mother)
Size: Large (ankhrav), Huge (hive mother)
Ankhravs are large insectoid creatures capable of burrowing and spitting acid.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Ankhravs are horse-sized bug-like monsters. Those found in remote deserts get to be even bigger.
- Horse of a Different Color: Ankhravs can be trained as mounts and are popular among the savage races.
- Super Spit: Ankhravs can spit a wave of acid when startled.
Aoyin
Level: 10
Size: Large
- Brutish Bulls: The aoyin is a highly aggressive and territorial predator that resembles a common draft ox.
- Hate Plague: Tales in certain isolated areas claim that the growling call of an aoyin can drive those who hear it to hunger and violence and consume themselves by infighting without the aoyin entering their borders. Although it's possible powerful aoyins can do this, most of these stories can in truth be attributed to those who know that aoyin horns are a potent material for crafting magical items that induce a frenzied state or blood loss.
- Hungry Menace: An aoyin is primarily driven by hunger and poses a terrible threat to most communities. Though they usually live high in the mountains and are rarely seen, in lean winters an aoyin might descend from its mountain home in search of food, potentially decimating an entire village.
Augdunar
Level: 2
Size: Medium
- Lost Technology: While the augdunar population is self-sustaining, the original methods to breed them was lost after an attack on Highhelm. Many dwarves now seek to rediscover this knowledge, though success is limited.
- Only the Chosen May Ride: Augdunars seem to instinctively dislike riders, and a would-be rider needs to put in a lot of effort and persistence.
- True-Breeding Hybrid: Unlike other mules, augdunars can produce viable offspring.
- Undying Loyalty: Augdunars are quite loyal to their owners and loudly bray and kick when strangers try to steal their load, making it very difficult to make off with them.
Azlanti Chariot Beetle
Level: 5
Size: Medium
These mighty beetles once served the Azlanti war machine. After thousands of years without purpose and their masters long dead, these beetles have degenerated to barely remarkable vermin, whose once army-blasting carapace now merely sparkles weakly to befuddle the minds of those nearby and powerful wings have shriveled to vestigial growths.Their 3.5 stats can be found in Revenge of the Kobold King. Their Pathfinder 1st Edition stats can be found online here
.- Horse of a Different Color: Azlanti chariot beetles once carried a dozen Azlanti war wizards on their back.
Blackwisp Egret
Level: -1
Size: Small
- Glowing Eyes: The blackwisp egret's piercing orange eyes reflect any light that hits them, making them appear to glow ominously.
- Sham Supernatural: At night, blackwisp egrets' glowing eyes are often mistaken for will-o'-wisps. Many people flee in terror upon seeing flocks of glowing orbs in the night and wind up twisting an ankle on a gnarled tree root or falling into a sinkhole. Even the most dangerous predators avoid groups of blackwisp egrets when encountered in darkness, fearing that they may actually be a group of will-o'-wisps. Swamp druids have been known to domesticate them to ward away unwanted visitors at night.
Blood Boar
Level: 6
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Size: Medium
- Chained by Fashion: Blood boar handlers often have their pets wear chains, manacles and spikes to look as fearsome as possible.
- The Nose Knows: Blood boars possess an unparalleled awareness of blood, including the ability to precisely detect a bloodied creature's location and movements, and can track their prey from up to a mile away.
Bore Worm
Empress (2E)
Level: 5 (swarm), 7 (empress)
Size: Large (swarm), 7 (empress)
- Asteroids Monster: When killed, an empress bore worm violently expels the young it carries.
- Big Eater: An empress bore worm eats everything in its path in an attempt to sustain itself. However, its metabolism demands more from its body than what it can physically sustain, and most live only a few days, or weeks at best, eating nonstop before starving to death.
- Eat Dirt, Cheap: Lava worms dwell in the deepest, hottest reaches of the Darklands, and consume minerals and rare earths.
- Raising the Steaks: An undead sorcerer in Nemret Noktoria developed necral worms by filling an empress bore worm's abandoned exoskeleton with a unique alchemical paste. These undead bore worms radiate the energies of death.
Bregdi
Level: 9
Size: Large
- Sea Monster: Bregdis hunt warm-blooded prey, lurking in the waters of major port cities and hitching onto the underside of boats pulling into port. When the careless or unlucky fall into the water, they make quick work of their hapless victims. Bregdis that feed well can become large enough to wrap their long fins completely around the hull of a ship.
Bull of Zagresh
Level: 7
Size: Huge
Massive bovines often used as warbeasts.- Brutish Bulls: Bred for war and violence by the Murdered Child orc tribe, bulls of Zagresh are used in ravine fights and trained for combat, and respond to most threats by charging anything that stands and goring whatever is left.
Bunyip
Level: 3
Size: Medium
Fierce predators that hunt in the shallows all over Golarion.
- Mighty Roar: Bunyips can unleash load and terrifying roars, which they use to sow panic and confusion among their prey.
- Monstrous Seal: Bunyips are enormous seal-like monsters with shark-like teeth (and sometimes dorsal fins), and are infamous for their ferocious and aggressive natures, insatiable appetites and willingness to attack and devour anything smaller than themselves. They often compete for food and territory with other predatory pinnipeds, such as leopard seals.
- Underground Monkey: Bunyips are adaptable and found in almost every water-based habitat in the world, leading to the evolution of several specialized variants. Specific types include blubbery arctic bunyips resistant to cold, swamp-dwelling muck bunyips with large tusks and diseased bites, and fast-swimming oceanic bunyips with powerful tail attacks.
- Yowies and Bunyips and Drop Bears, Oh My: Bunyips are monstrous seal-like predators found in rivers and lakes, preying on creatures that cross or approach their waters.
Caustic Monitor
Level: 13
Size: Huge
- Acid Attack: Caustic monitors hunt by expelling the acidic contents of their stomach at prey.
Cave Worm
A rock worm.
Level: 8 (juvenile), 10 (larva swarm), 11 (grave worm), 13 (rock worm), 15 (benthic worm), 16 (arctic worm), 18 (magma worm), 20 (shadow worm)
Size: Large (juvenile), Gargantuan (adult)
Monstrously large worms native to the Darklands, cave worms burrow through soil and stone in an endless search for food and are neatly feared by subterranean races due to both their appetites for flesh and the damage caused by their tunneling.
- Aquatic Mook: Benthic worms are the water-dwelling variant of the cave worm family, adapted to living in underground waters.
- Casting a Shadow: A shadow worm can exhale a blast of clinging shadow.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each cave worm variant comes in a distinctive color thematically related to its preferred environment — basic burrowing ones are purple, the aquatic ones are blue, the ones in volcanic caverns are red, the glacier-dwelling ones white and the kind found in graveyards grey.
- Eat Dirt, Cheap: Although they prefer meat, cave worms can synthesise minerals and nutrients from the vast amounts of dirt and minerals they consume as they burrow underground. Rocks, vegetation and detritus make up a large portion of their normal diet.
- Energy Absorption: Fire-based attacks will actively heal magma worms.
- Healing Factor: Magma worms naturally regain health when submerged in magma. Shadow worms do so in dim light or darkness.
- Hermaphrodite: Cave worms are hermaphroditic, though unable to reproduce alone. When two cave worms mate, both fertilise the other.
- Metal Muncher: Every few hundred years, when the mating instinct takes hold, a cave worm seeks a meat- and iron-rich diet, which provides the additional energy to find a mate.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: Young cave worms hatch together as a brood, remaining together until the local food supply is exhausted before turning on each other. About a dozen surviving cave worms, out of a hundred in a brood, reach adulthood.
- Mutants: The grave worm is sometimes called an unnatural species, since they're theorised to hatch near thousands of graves and have been warped by the negative energy associated with so many collective deaths.
- No Peripheral Vision: Cave worm vision is restricted to a 45-degree arc on either side of their head, with the bulk of their body blocking most vision to the sides and behind.
- Playing with Fire: Magma worms are closely linked to elemental fire, allowing them to breathe fire and to heal when in contact with fire or intense heat.
- Sand Worm: Giant worms that live underground and tunnel through solid rock, consuming any organic material that they encounter.
- Solid Gold Poop: Some ores, including gold and silver, are indigestible to cave worms, and so are excreted whole. Tracking a worm to its nest and waiting for it to leave is an efficient way to retrieve whatever valuables it consumed in its last rampage, and is certainly less dangerous than confronting it directly.
- Swallowed Whole: They're notorious for swallowing their prey whole.
- Underground Monkey: Each cave worm is a distinct creature, having adapted since birth to deal with the environment it finds itself in: the common rock worms, sleek, mottled benthic worms that dwell in underground bodies of water, the magma worms found in volcanic areas, glacier-dwelling arctic worms, graveyard-haunting grave worms and the shadow worms that live in the Netherworld. Note that cave worms are only one species: two cave worms of different variants can mate, and their litter will not necessarily be the same variant as either parent; it is entirely possible that hybrid cave worms may exist.
Chetamog
Level: 2
Size: Large
- Horse of a Different Color: Properly trained chetamogs are capable of serving as combat mounts.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: The chetamog is a species of horse-sized squirrel.
Chitikin
Level: 4
Size: Large
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Unlike normal centipedes, a chitikin has a stinger dripping with venom.
- Voice Changeling: The chitikin attracts prey by mimicking the screams of its intended victims. Many survivors claim they recognised their loved ones' voices and therefore suspect something sinister at work.
- Wall Crawl: Chitikins cling to cavern ceilings with most of their legs and reach down to slash at prey below.
Con Rit
Level: 7
Size: Large
- Artistic License – Biology: The con rit, a species of very large centipede, is constantly referred to as an insect.
- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: A con rit's eggs never hatch until their progenitor dies and releases a strong-smelling chemical into the air and water that triggers the hatching process.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Throughout its life, a con rit will lay thousands of eggs in its cave that will never hatch, eating any that gets too old.
- Poisonous Person: The con rit can launch its venom in a concentrated blast, shooting birds out of the sky or knocking sailors off ships.
Damibwa
Level: 4
Size: Medium
- Super-Hearing: Damibwas are capable of detecting prey or predators via echolocation thanks to their exceptionally large ears and keen hearing.
Dark Spitter Beetle
Level: 3
Size: Large
Spitter beetles are used as mounts by hryngar explorers.
- Breath Weapon: They can spray a cone of acid.
Desa-desa
Level: 2
Size: Small
- Playing with Fire: Desa-desas can lyse water and store the resulting hydrogen and oxygen in the polyp-like bladders on their skin, which are lined with an electricity-conducting material that allows the desa-desa to create sudden blasts of flame in all directions.
- Poisonous Person: The desa-desa's bite passes along its bubble venom, which can ravage the fluids in the victim's body. This reaction causes water in cells to split rapidly, creating bubbles of gas that percolate through flesh to skin, where it balloons outward in large, painful blisters before popping.
Devil Monkey
Level: 6
Size: Huge
- Mooks Ate My Equipment: A devil monkey's fangs are devastating against clothing, and can deal damage to both armour and its wearer.
Digmaul
Level: 3
Size: Medium
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Their tails end in bony clubs studded with spikes, which they use as flail-like weapons to bludgeon prey to death or to trip opponents in combat. Silvercats have smooth balls instead, which they can swing with greater force than other digmauls can.
- Fearsome Critters of American Folklore: They're based off of the ball-tailed cat, of which the digmaul and the silvercat are specific variants. Like their folkloric inspiration, they are tree-dwelling ambush predators who use their club-like tails to beat their prey to death. Silvercats, unlike in the original tales, have entirely smooth tail clubs — the kind from real-life folklore has a tail that's half smooth, for knocking prey unconscious, and half-spiky, to grapple and injure when it needs to.
Draft Lizard
Level: 4
Size: Medium
- Eat Dirt, Cheap: In lean times or before domestication, draft lizards sustain themselves on stones. They can still occasionally be observed gnawing on large rocks, especially when overworked.
- Horse of a Different Color: Draft lizards can handle loads four times their own weight and are popular as mounts in Highhelm.
- Poisonous Person: Draft lizards can defend themselves with venom.
Emperor Bird
Level: 2
Size: Medium
- Beware My Stinger Tail: The emperor bird's deadliest weapon is its tail, in which long, whiplike blades of bone are hidden.
- Feathered Fiend: The emperor bird is highly territorial and not afraid to attack larger prey.
Enchanter Heron
Level: 3
Size: Large
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: Prolonged exposure to magical fallout has allowed enchanter herons to cause their throat sacs to glow blue.
Fading Fox
Level: 2
Size: Tiny
- Stealth Expert: With fur that shifts between hues of red, dull brown and silver as it moves, the fading fox vexes any pursuer. It has a knack for escaping traps, leaves no footprints, and seemingly disappears into thin air.
Faerie Mount
Level: 1
Size: Medium
- Horse of a Different Color: The faerie mount is a canine whose sturdy legs, low center of gravity and muscular torsos are especially well-suited to navigating the twisting, hilly, greenery-choked landscape of the First World, making them the preferred mounts for those small enough to ride them.
Frost Worm
Level: 12
Size: Huge
- Breath Weapon: The frost worm can exhale a blast of frost.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: When a frost worm dies, it explodes in a burst of searing cold blood.
Gallerok
Level: 2
Size: Large
- Beast of Battle: Most Darklands residents believe that galleroks are a legacy of the long-fallen xulgath empire, where they served as guard animals. Many xulgath tribes still keep some galleroks to protect their territory or help hunt more dangerous beasts.
Gliding Turtle
Level: 2
Size: Large
- Not Quite Flight: A gliding turtle has a thin, scaly membrane extending from its shell to its legs, allowing it to glide from ridges and drop onto prey.
Goblin Dog
Level: 1
Size: Medium
- Horse of a Different Color: Goblins often ride these things like horses.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: Despite its name, the goblin dog is actually a species of very large rat.
Gorthek
Level: 7
Size: Large
The gorthek is, without a doubt, one of the crankiest beasts found roaming in the wilderness. Both immensely powerful and preternaturally hard to injure, their thick, battering-ram heads and powerful bodies make them fearsome opponents, particularly when riled up and in full charge.- Horse of a Different Color: Gorthek riders bond with the creatures from a very young age, and use gorthek masks to make that bond stronger. In battle, the rider sits in a specially crafted saddle secured behind its massive horns and guides the gorthek using spiked reins.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: A gorthek resembles a strange combination of primeval bison and ornery rhinocero, but with a leonine head crowned with ramlike horns.
Griffon
2E
Level: 4
Size: Large
- Fantastic Racism: Griffons whose bird and feline parts are of different kinds from those predominant in their region (such as a tiger-striped griffon born among lion-based ones) are shunned by their parents and forced to live on their own. Likewise, the wingless alces are looked down upon by winged griffons, leading to a strained relationship between the two kinds.
- Horse of a Different Color: Between their intelligence, flight and powerful beak and claws, they make excellent and coveted mounts. Many try to obtain griffon eggs and chicks to raise as mounts — something that, since griffons are sapient, is considered slavery — while others undergo the more arduous task of convincing an adult griffon to carry them and thus obtain a loyal and willing mount.
- Our Gryphons Are Different: Raptorial bird in front, cat behind and no external ears. They're fierce predators with a particular taste for horseflesh, and are often the bane of farmers living in their hunting grounds. They're also sometimes used as guards for gold and other treasure, referencing how mythological griffons guarded troves of gold. While eagle-and-lion griffons are the most common kind, certain environments are home to specific variants: desert-dwelling griffons typically have the heads and wings of hawks and the hindquarters of mountain lions, while jungle-dwellers may blend the bodies of panthers with those of colorful parrots or black-feathered eagles. A griffon whose egg is brooded by its father, rather than its mother, will hatch into a swift-running, wingless griffon called an alce.
Groplit
Level: 0
Size: Small
- Frozen Face: Due to how their bones are structured, groplits exhibit an imperturbable smile of sorts, which has earned them the nickname 'grinning toads'.
- Undying Loyalty: Groplits are famously loyal and highly sociable companions. They appear to take great pride in obeying commands, performing stunts even in the face of obvious danger. An unscrupulous master might train a groplit with the intent to sacrifice it in an emergency, a fate to which the groplit is happily resigned.
Hippocampus
Level: 1
Size: Large
Fish-tailed equines commonly domesticated by aquatic and coastal communities.
- Horse of a Different Color: Aquatic races often use hippocampi as mounts. They're also in use in the port city of Absalom, which has a special sea cavalry in the form of hippocamp-mounted Wave Riders.
- Our Hippocamps Are Different: They're generally depicted as blue-skinned horses with fins instead of manes and hooves, and are popular mounts and beasts of burden for aquatic races.
Hippogriff
Level: 1
Size: Large
Equine beasts with the heads, wings and talons of flesh-eating birds, hippogriffs are often used as flying steeds.
- Horse of a Different Color: They're popular flying mounts, and are sometimes used in armies to field airborne cavalry and patrols.
- Our Gryphons Are Different: They're fairly typical hippogriffs, but with bird talons on all four legs. They're rumored in-universe to have been created through magic as a weird sort of joke on griffons' habit of preying on horses. They themselves don't get along too well with their kin — in fact, griffons are known to hunt and eat hippogriffs.
Hobbe Hound
Level: 2
Size: Medium
- Angry Guard Dog: Hobbe hounds are aggressive in the extreme, with wild packs claiming large swathes of territory and attacking almost anything that enters, even predators many times their own size.
- Canis Major: Hobbe hulks are the result of overindulging hobbe hounds' species-wide addiction to mutagens, which causes them to grow to the size of a small horse.
- Hybrid Monster: Hobbe hounds are not natural creatures, but rather the result of careful breeding and hobgoblin alchemical tinkering.
- Made of Incendium: The greasy, alchemical musk that constantly coats a hobbe hound's body is highly flammable, and bursts into flame with the slightest spark.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: A hobbe hound pup generally makes its first meal of its stillborn littermates.
Hook Fly
Level: 1 (swarm), 2 (normal), 3 (matriarch)
Size: Diminutive (swarm), Small (normal and matriarch)
Giant blood-drinking flies that reproduce rapidly.Their stats can be found in Gallows of Madness or online here.- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: The process of spawning a hook fly swarm typically kills the parent. A few live up to another 6 months, but the damage to their abdomens leaves them unable to spawn again.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: If a giant hook fly dies after draining blood but before disgorging a hook fly swarm, its swollen abdomen bursts, sending dead hook flies in every direction.
Iridescent Animal
- Light 'em Up: An iridescent animal has undergone a magical transformation to become a luminescent beast that can glow in the dark and use dazzling light-based powers. This effect is desirable for people that typically purchase these glowing beasts, but never for the animal itself.
Kareq
Level: 5
Size: Large
- Make Some Noise: A kareq has a resonance chamber in its lower body. When it flexes its back legs against it, pressure builds up and sound waves are amplified and then focused as the kareq opens its mouth and releases a potentially-lethal shock wave.
Khefak
Level: -1 (scuttler), 3 (thasteron)
Size: Small (normal), Medium (thasteron)
- Metal Muncher: Khefaks were bioengineered to consume thasteron rubble, scrap and dust.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Khefaks are similar to a cross between a centipede and crab, with a hard exoskeleton, 20 segmented legs and frontfacing pincers.
Krooth
2e
Level: 7
Size: Large
- Mama Bear: Female krooths are likely to shy away from potential predators but swiftly turn violent when their brood is threatened.
Lagofir
Level: 3
Size: Large
- Made of Incendium: Lagofirs secrete a thick, sweet-smelling, flammable oil that coats their fur. They mark their territory by brushing against solid surfaces, coating them in this oil. This makes their burrows incredibly hazardous; a single spark can cause an explosion.
Lich Newt
Level: -1
Size: Tiny
- Poisonous Person: Lich newts produce a toxic mucus that causes numbness and muscle spasms. Some humanoid tribes, especially the orcs of the Northern Fangwood Forest, trap them and refine their venom into weapon blanches and drugs.
Marax
Level: 11
Size: Large
- Armless Biped: Maraxes lack forelimbs, and balance on a single pair of legs.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: A cluster of venomous barbs sprout from the end of a marax's tail.
- Underground Monkey: Variations of maraxes dot Castrovel's biomes just as big cats stalk Golarion's. The arctic-dwelling tundrax is smaller, but can hibernate for months beneath the snow and reawaken in moments to pounce upon unsuspecting prey, while females of the bioluminescent ghostback marax possess a resin-producing gland. A smaller, wheezing variety prowls Akiton's equator.
Mokele-mbembe
1E
Level: 9
Size: Huge
Amphibious, predatory sauropods found in lakes and rivers within tropical jungles.
- Animal Jingoism: They're infamous for their enmity with hippopotami; mokeles are some of the hippos' few natural enemies, hunting them as meat-rich but dangerous prey, and the two also clash for control of their riverine territory. The battles between the two animals are violent and ferocious, and the rivalry between mokele-mbembe and hippopotami is legendary among those who share their territories.
- Horse of a Different Color: It's rare, but some mokele-mbembe are tamed as war mounts by the Lizard Folk.
- Mokele-Mbembe: They're based off of the mokèlé-mbèmbé, the most famous of Africa's pseudo-dinosaurian mythical beasts. Their article in Mystery Monsters Revisited emphasizes their role as mysterious, almost mythical creatures even in a world of elves, dragons and unicorns, due to both their legendary status among the people they live close to and their preference for remote habitats, such as thick jungles, trackless swamplands and deep, isolated lakes, where tracking and observing them is difficult at best.
- Tail Slap: Much like the real-life diplodocid sauropods they resemble, mokele-mbembes have flexible, whiplike tails that they can use as weapons when hunting and fighting.
Mome Rath
Level: 2
Size: Medium
- Poisonous Person: All raths defend themselves with powerful kicks and spurs on their hind legs that are coated with burning venom.
- The Symbiote: Mature mome raths cultivate a garden of plants on their backs to retain water, ward off parasites, and help them blend in to their environment.
Olobigonde
Level: 2
Size: Large
- Eat Dirt, Cheap: Olobigondes feed on solid detritus floating in the Plane of Water, usually free-floating aquatic plants, hunks of coral, or waste from underwater cities.
- Fiendish Fish: Olobigondes have been known to lie in wait to ambush smaller creatures, such as water scamps or lone passing merfolk, and can grow truly immense, seemingly with no limit to their size.
- Make Them Rot: Olobigonde venom weakens and decomposes living flesh, allowing it to easily gulp down the resulting slurry.
- Poisonous Person: Olobigondes' mouths are filled with a unique venom.
Onwu Azu
Level: 1
Size: Small
A species of saltwater flying fish that grow to a hefty size and have a taste for the blood of warmblooded animals. Their stats can be found in Plunder & Peril or online here.
- Flying Seafood Special: They can soar and glide out of the water for extended periods of time, and use this ability to pursue land-dwelling and flying prey.
- Meaningful Name: It means "flying death" in Mwangi.
- Piranha Problem: They're for all intents and purposes a variant on the classic hyper-aggressive piranha of fiction, but capable of limited flight and adapted to living in the sea.
Pagulin
Level: 7
Size: Large
- Acid Attack: Pagulins spit their mildly acidic saliva to temporarily blind prey before finishing them off.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: The four large spikes on a pagulin's tail can impale prey, preventing them from escaping.
- Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: The pagulin is a species of six-legged lizard.
Petromin
Level: 1/3
Size: Tiny
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: The fur of petromins is awash in sapphire-blue bioluminescence, unnoticeable during the day but distinctive from dusk until dawn. Petromins can control this natural light to attract the large insects on which they feed.
Roc
Level: 9
Size: Gargantuan
- Giant Flyer: The roc is a Gargantuan-sized bird of prey, putting it in the same overall size range as adult dragons.
- Horse of a Different Color: Trained rocs are used as flying mounts by cloud and storm giants.
- Roc Birds: Rocs are highly territorial, mountain-nesting raptors that grow so large that they can dwarf full-grown dragons. Much like in Marco Polo's account, they typically hunt by snatching up their prey, carrying them high into the air and dropping them to ground, before flying down to eat the remains. Roc eggs fetch tremendous prices and are especially prized by cloud and storm giants, who use the giant birds as guard animals and flying mounts.
Rot Grub
Level: 3 (giant), 7 (swarm)
Size: Diminutive (normal), Small (giant)
- Monstrous Cannibalism: Individual rot grubs that mature before the rest of the swarm does are quickly eaten by the latter.
Scrapshell
Level: 6
Size: Large
Large mollusks found in the waters around the Eye of Abdenego, scrapshells are fiercely territorial and react with violence to any creatures that draw too near. Their stats can be found in Seers of the Drowned City or online here.
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Official Fan-Submitted Content: The scrapshell was created by Jason Evans as part of Paizo's RPG Superstar competition in 2015.
Sea Crawler
Level: 1
Size: Medium
- Healing Factor: Sea crawlers' lost tentacles regrow after one week.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: A sea crawler has the body of a lemur and the arms of a sea star or octopus.
Sea Serpent
Level: 12 (normal), 19 (deep sea)
Size: Gargantuan
- Sea Serpents: They're enormous, predatory sea creatures with both piscine and reptilian characteristics that attack and capsize ships; they're among the largest of Golarion's sea-going terrors, capable of preying upon giant squid, whales and, in the largest specimens' case, even krakens. They're also frustratingly elusive creatures despite their immense sizes, and can be maddeningly difficult to track down between attacks. Deep sea serpents are a more ferocious and alien-looking species of sea serpent, with enormous eyes and a more fishlike appearance.
Shocker Lizard
Level: 2
Alignment: True Neutral
Size: Small
- Shock and Awe: Individual shocker lizards can deal painful electric shocks to defend themselves, and can create lethal electric currents when working together.
Skin Beetle
Level: 3 (single), 8 (swarm)
Size: Tiny
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: A typical skin beetle is 1-1/2 feet long and weighs 10 pounds—about the size of a house cat.
Slurk
Level: 2
Alignment: True Neutral
Size: Medium
Long ago, dwarves dragged giant forest toads beneath the earth and altered their physiology with powerful magic in hopes of creating perfect underground beasts of burden and mounts. The slurk is the disgusting result of their aborted efforts. Their 3.5 stats can be found in Crown of the Kobold King. Their Pathfinder 1st Edition stats can be found in Bestiary 2 or online here
.- Horse of a Different Color: Kobolds often domesticate and train slurks as mounts and guardians. Kobold riders often hide in the upper ledges of a cave, harrying foes with ranged attacks, and take advantage of the slurk's ability to climb, and charge at their enemies from the walls of a cavern.
Sportlebore
Level: 7
Size: Large (swarm)
- Chest Monster: The sportlebore is an entire family of insects that specialise in mimicking everyday objects.
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter: On its own, a single sportlebore is treated as a hazard rather than a creature, as it mimics foodstuffs and reproduces into a swarm after being eaten.
Tauhoti
Level: -1
Size: Diminutive
- Photographic Memory: A tauhoti can remember the scent and appearance of hundreds of animals, and it recalls which ones have taken or given it food.
Titanboar
Level: 6
Size: Large
- Full-Boar Action: Titanboars were bred for size and ferocity, and are unsurprisingly dangerous to lands where they're released, destroying entire farmsteads to satisfy their hunger.
- Hybrid Monster: The titanboar is a crossbreed of Verduran wild boars and wild daeodons.
Torble
Level: -1 (individual), 2 (swarm)
Size: Diminutive (individual), Tiny (swarm)
- Blob Monster: Torbles, also called ooze bugs, are ooze-like insects with a bulbous, beetle-like translucent body, six legs, long eyestalks, and no true organs.
Ugvashi
Level: 3
Size: Medium
- Overly-Long Tongue: Ugvashi tongues can extend up to 5 feet in length and flatten to almost nothing, allowing them to harvest termites embedded in the deepest parts of a wooden building's infrastructure.
Warcat of Rull
Level: 13
Size: Huge
Large creatures resembling a cross between cat and armadillo.- Horse of a Different Color: Warcats of Rull often act as mounts for the Ice Tooth clan's champions.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Warcats of Rull have the shapes and habits of great cats and the skin of armadillos.
Wolliped
Level: 3
Size: Large
Alien beasts used as mounts, livestock and beasts of burden on the planet Triaxus.
- Horse of a Different Color: Eight-legged, tusked, shaggy beasts used as mounts and transport on an alien world, and especially good at navigating deeps snow, icy terrain and steep cliffs and scree fields.
- Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: They have eight hoofed legs.
Xenopterid
Level: 7
Size: Medium
Man-sized insects evolved to blend and feed in a humanoid settlement.
- Artistic License – Biology: Like the original short story they seem to be a naturally evolved species, this still doesn't answer how a bug can possibly get that big.
- Binomium ridiculus: Xenopterid is a Greek word construct which roughly means "strange fern"; if it was "xenopteron", then it'd mean "strange wing"; all versions have the bugs use their wings to emulate some human covering.
- Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Or robe or suit or whatever. These bugs mimic whatever heavy garment helps them blend into their environment.
- Determinator: Their Ferocity trait means that they'll keep fighting well after a humanoid would have been dead and buried.
- Hive Drone: A realistic version of this, with the sterile drones being the ones who do most of the hunting for a colony.
- Hive Queen: Like actual eusocial insects, specifically termites, there is a fertile male and female pair that are the linchpin of each xenopterid colony.
- To Serve Man: Humanoids are xenopterids' natural prey, and in some sort of depraved parody of bees they turn their prey into a meat slurry meant for their young. Cultures that eat humans consider it a delicacy.
- Shout-Out: To the Mimic short story and the eponymous francise.
Xotanispawn
Level: 17
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: Large
Monstrous versions of scavenging beetle larvae that have been corrupted and mutated by feeding on the remains of Xotani the Firebleeder, a slain Spawn of Rovagug buried beneath Pale Mountain in Katapesh.
Their 2nd Edition stats can be found in Age of Ashes: Against the Scarlet Triad or online here.
- Breath Weapon: They can exhale a cone of magma every few rounds.
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Like Xotani they have the light blindness trait.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: When killed, a xotanispawn detonates in a blast of fire.
- My Blood Runs Hot: Like their "father," the internals of a xotanispawn are more akin to an engine of magma and fire than conventional organs. Anything that touches it or attacks it in melee is set on fire from convection alone. As a result, they're also vulnerable to cold damage.
- Supernatural Fear Inducer: They inherited the Frightful Presence aura from Xotani.
Yzobu
Level: 1
Size: Large
A yzobu is a herd animal found in cold hills, plains, and mountains. They are used by hobgoblins as mounts and beasts of burden.
- Horse of a Different Color: Yzobu cavalry are a staple of hobgoblin military action.
- In-Series Nickname: Hobgoblins usually refer to them as battle yaks.
Zetogeki
Level: 7
Size: Large
- Picky Eater: Zetogekis drink steaming, mineral-rich water near active volcanoes, and cannot digest anything else.
Natural Animals
Dinosaurs
Level: Varies
Size: Varies
Immense reptiles that thrived in the early ages of the world, dinosaurs are now only found in isolated Lost Worlds and in the most inaccessible depths of the jungle.
- Domesticated Dinosaurs: The nations of Droon and Holomog are known to domesticate and employ dinosaurs.
- Headbutting Pachy: Otherwise relatively unremarkable herbivorous animasl distinguished chiefly by their ability to make powerful headlong charges against their foes.
- Non-Indicative Name: The 1st Edition Bestiary itself acknowledges that the term dinosaur here also encompasses non-dinosaurian reptiles like Pteranodon and Elasmosaurus. In 2nd Edition, the term dinosaur is no longer applied to these species, and has the same meaning as in real life.
- Sea Monster: Elasmosaurus often hunt in oceans near where dinosaurs are common.
- Tail Slap: A blow from the Ankylosaurus' clubbed tail can stun most creatures.
- Temper-Ceratops: Styracosaurus and Triceratops have a notorious reputation for having very ill tempers and instinctively charging at opponents they deem a threat or anything that irritates them with its presence.
Megafauna
Level: Varies
Size: Varies
Immense prehistoric mammals, along with some birds and reptiles. Megafauna are primal relatives of modern animals that are now mostly gone from the world, but unlike dinosaurs can still be found in some numbers in pristine and isolated wildernesses.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: The real Kaprosuchus was smaller than many extant crocodilians and does not even approach the size presented in Bestiary 4.
- Monster Whale: Basilosaurus are enormous, predatory whales that sometimes attack smaller ships for food, and are only threatened by monsters like krakens and sea serpents.
- Prehistoric Monster: This entire category consists of various kinds of extinct animals that cannot be considered to be a "dire" version of an extant animal.
- Rhino Rampage:
- The Elasmotherium is an enormous rhinoceros with an equally enormous temper that often attacks without provocation.
- While Arsinoitherium are not true rhinoceri (they were part of an extinct order that was not actually related to odd-toed ungulates like rhinos), they sure look the part and are just as ill-tempered and prone to charging down troublesome creatures.
- Tail Slap: A glyptodon's stiff tail is its strongest weapon.
Mammals
Ape
Level: 2 (gorilla), 3 (Gigantopithecus), 8 (Megaprimatus)
Size: Large (Gargantuan for Megaprimatus)
- Gentle Giant: Gorillas are generally shy and peaceful unless provoked.
Bat
Level: 2
Size: Diminutive (normal), Large (giant)
- Bat Out of Hell: Comes in the first (bat swarms) and second (dire bats) types; the former is vampiric.
- Sudden Name Change: In 1st Edition, giant bats were called mobats, a name that originated in Dungeons & Dragons. This name was dropped in 2nd Edition; these creatures are now simply called giant bats.
Bear
Level: 4 (grizzly), 5 (polar bear), 7 (cave bear), 8 (dire polar bear)
Size: Large
- Bears Are Bad News: Especially the cave bears, which are bigger and much more aggressive than normal grizzlies.
Boar
Level: 2 (boar), 3 (bristle boar), 4 (Daeodon)
Size: Medium (boar, bristle boar), Large (Daeodon)
- Artistic License – Paleontology: The game uses daeodons as a synonym for dire boars, following its tendency to identify various kinds of Dire Beast with real-life giant relatives of modern animals. However, the real-life Daeodon, although once thought like other entelodonts to be a member of the suids, is believed to have been more closely related to hippos and whales than to anything else, and didn't look a great deal like a pig or boar in any case.
- Fed to Pigs: Thieves' guilds often use boars to dispose of bodies.
- Full-Boar Action: Boars are ill-tempered, dangerous wild cousins of domesticated pigs.
- Horse of a Different Color: Orc cavalry are fond of using daeodons as mounts.
Dog
Level: -1 (normal), 1 (riding)
Size: Small (normal), Medium (riding)
- Horse of a Different Color: Bigger dogs can be fitted with saddles to be used as mounts by smaller races like halflings and gnomes.
Dolphin
Level: 0 (dolphin), 5 (orca)
Size: Medium (dolphin), Huge (orca)
- Heroic Dolphin: Sailors often tell tales of dolphins killing sharks or rescuing drowning fishermen.
Elephant
Level: 7 (elephant), 8 (anancus), 9 (mastodon), 10 (mammoth)
Size: Huge
- Artistic License – Paleontology: The Bestiary presents mastodons a bigger species of elephants with the same size as a woolly mammoth, while the real mastodon was actually slightly smaller than an African elephant.
Hippopotamus
Level: 5 (hippopotamus), 10 (behemoth hippopotamus)
Size: Large (hippopotamus), Huge (behemoth hippopotamus)
- Animal Jingoism: With mokele-mbembe; the mokeles are some of the hippos' few natural enemies, hunting them as meat-rich but dangerous prey, and the two also clash for control of their riverine territory. The battles between the two animals are violent and ferocious, and the rivalry between mokele-mbembe and hippopotami is legendary among those who share their territories.
Hyena
Level: 1 (hyena), 3 (Hyaenodon)
Size: Medium (hyena), Large (Hyaenodon)
- Artistic License – Paleontology: The Bestiary presents Hyaenodon as an alternate name for dire hyenas, while the real Hyaenodon was a creodont, part of an extinct mammal order which was distinct from though closely related to carnivorans, where hyenas can be found.
Primate
Level: 0 (baboon), 2 (swarm)
Size: Tiny (monkey), Small (baboon)
- Non-Indicative Name: Despite bearing the name "primate", this group contains only monkeys, not apes, which have their own group.
Rat
Level: -1 (dire rat), 2 (swarm)
Size: Tiny (normal), Small (dire)
- Rodents of Unusual Size: Dire rats grow up to 2 feet long and 25 pounds.
Skunk
Level: -1 (skunk), 3 (giant skunk)
Size: Tiny (skunk), Large (giant skunk)
- Smelly Skunk: Yep. Their musk is so foul to be able to sicken those that smell it, and making their scent ability completely useless.
Whale
Level: 3 (narwhal), 10 (whale), 12 (blue whale), 14 (great white whale)
Size: Large (narwhal), Gargantuan (whale), Colossal (blue whale, great white whale)
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": The great white whale is described as possessing an enormous box-shaped head over a toothy mouth. Yes, it's pretty obvious that this creature is supposed to be a sperm whale.
- Monster Whale: While most whales are portrayed, realistically, as peaceful filter-feeders, exceptions exist in the form of great white whales, immense, highly aggressive beasts capable of going toe-to-toe with powerful sea monsters and entirely happy to attack passing vessels, and crimson whales, ferocious, red-skinned beasts adapted for preying upon large creatures, which in their minds of course includes ships.
Birds
Axebeak
Level: 1 (diatryma), 2 (axebeak), 4 (terror bird)
Size: Medium (diatryma), Large (axebeak and terror bird)
- Feathered Fiend: All three varieties of axebeak are predatory, flightless birds taller than a man, and very aggressive.
- Horse of a Different Color: Axebeaks are large enough that domesticated breeds are sometimes ridden as mounts.
- Science Marches On: Although long thought to be a meat-eater, Diatryma — or, more properly, Gastornis — is now believed to have been a strictly herbivorous bird.
Dromornis
Level: 10
Size: Large
- Feathered Fiend: Particularly hungry or aggressive dromornises have been known to attack humanoids. While a lone dromornis is dangerous enough, a pack can take down a den of bears or village of humanoids.
Cephalopods
Squid
Level: 1 (squid), 9 (giant squid)
Size: Medium (squid), Huge (giant squid)
- Giant Squid: The giant squid grows up to 45 feet in length and can weigh up to 600 pounds.
Reptiles
Snake
Level: 1-10 (individual), 2 (swarm), 4 (venomous swarm)
Size: Tiny to Huge
- Poisonous Person: Many species of snakes have a venomous bite.
Fish
- Fiendish Fish: While most fish in Golarion can be assumed to be no more or less aggressive than the real-life kind, the ones that get full stats are often gigantic, predatory terrors with a taste for humanoid flesh.
Shark
Level: 1 (jigsaw), 2 (blue and bull), 3 (hammerhead and tiger), 4 (great white), 7 (angustiden), 9 (Megalodon)
Size: Small (jigsaw), Medium (bull), Large (blue and hammerhead), Huge (tiger and great white), Gargantuan (angustiden and Megalodon)
Amphibians
Frog
Level: 0 (poison frog), 1 (giant frog), 3 (goliath frog), 5 (frog father)
Size: Tiny (poison frog), Medium (giant frog), Large (goliath frog), Huge (frog father)
- Amphibian at Large: Giant frogs can grow up to 6 feet long and weigh over 200 pounds. Frog fathers are large enough to devour entire hives of monstrous vermin and any livestock that stray too close to their marshes.
Insects
Beetle
Level: -1 (fire, mining and flash beetles), 2 (bombardier beetle), 3 (dark spitter beetle), 4 (slicer beetle), 8 (goliath beetle)
Size: Small (normal), Medium (bombardier), Large (stag and dark spitter), Huge (goliath)
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: Fire beetles are nocturnal, lack darkvision and use bioluminescence for illumination.
- Lighting Bug: Flash beetles have a pair of glowing organs on their abdomens that continue to glow for a few days after the insect's death. They're often used as light sources by miners, as they're safer to carry than an open flame that might ignite a pocket of flammable gases and cheaper than lamps, and they're raised by many subterranean races which keep them in cages to serve as light sources.
Giant Dragonfly
Level: 3 (nymph), 4 (mature)
Size: Medium (nymph), Large (mature)
- Dreadful Dragonfly: They're are a fairly rare type of giant, swamp-dwelling insects that grow to be around the size of a horse. They're fast, agile and voracious hunters, and quite willing to hunt and eat humanoids as regular fare. Their nymphs also appear as statted monsters, but are, naturally, smaller and flightless, and thus less of a danger.
Giant Mantis
Level: 3
Size: Large
- Slaying Mantis: Giant mantises are extremely deadly, stealthy and efficient predators, and have gained a fearsome reputation. People who live alongside these giant insects fear them deeply, and believe any number of fearsome myths about them — that they can make themselves invisible, that they can smell fear, that they devour the souls of those they eat... there are even assassin societies that have taken to worshipping them as gods of sorts and emulate them in their fighting styles.
Arachnids
Scorpion
Level: -1 (greensting and ghost), 1 (cave), 3 (giant), 8 (deadfall), 11 (giant emperor), 15 (black)
Size: Tiny (greensting), Small (ghost), Medium (cave), Large (giant), Huge (deadfall), Gargantuan (giant emperor), Colossal (black)
- Stealthy Colossus: The deadfall scorpion is very stealthy for a creature of such a size.
Solifugid
Level: 0 (dog-eating), 1 (giant), 4 (albino cave), 8 (yellow terror), 11 (razormouth), 15 (banshee), 18 (duneshaker)
Size: Tiny (dog-eating), Small (giant), Medium (albino cave), Large (yellow terror), Huge (razormouth), Gargantuan (banshee), Colossal (duneshaker)
- Creepy Camel Spider: Solifugids, like most other arthropods, are portrayed as highly aggressive animals and in a range in increasingly titanic sizes, including razormouth solifugids that causes grievous wounds in those they bite and duneshaker solifugids larger than giants. The bestiary, however, correctly notes that, in-universe rumors to the contrary, solifugids possess no poison.
- Poisonous Person: The duneshaker solifugid is known for its extreme toxicity, although no species of solifugid is venomous in real life.
Spider
Level: -1 (scarlet and giant crab spider), 1 (giant spider and swarm), 4 (giant black widow), 5 (ogre spider), 8 (giant tarantula and crag spider), 11 (goliath spider)
Size: Diminutive (spider), Tiny (scarlet spider), Small (giant crab spider), Medium (giant spider), Large (giant black widow), Huge (ogre and crag spider), Gargantuan (giant tarantula), Colossal (goliath spider)
- Black Widow: Female goliath spiders often cannibalise their mates.
- Poisonous Person: They are spiders, what else did you expect?
Crustaceans
Crab
Level: -1 (king and coconut), 2 (giant), 4 (swarm and rock), 7 (shark-eating), 10 (great reef), 13 (shipwrecker)
Size: Diminutive (normal), Tiny (king), Small (coconut), Medium (giant), Large (rock), Huge (shark-eating), Gargantuan (great reef), Colossal (shipwrecker)
- Armor-Piercing Attack: A shipwrecker crab ignores up to 5 points of hardness when damaging objects.
- Giant Enemy Crab: A few variants of crabs are human-sized or bigger, particularly the whale-sized shipwrecker crab.
Cnidarians
Jellyfish
Level: 1 (death's head), 4 (crimson), 6 (swarm), 7 (giant), 11 (sapphire), 14 (vampire), 17 (whaler)
Size: Diminutive (normal), Small (death's head), Medium (crimson), Large (giant), Huge (sapphire), Gargantuan (vampire), Colossal (whaler)
- Poisonous Person: All jellyfish have a nasty, venomous stinger.
Miscellaneous
Myriapods
Centipede
Level: -1 (house, sewer, giant), 1 (hissing), 3 (whiptail), 4 (swarm), 6 (great forest), 8 (titan)
Size: Diminutive (normal), Tiny (house), Small (sewer), Medium (giant), Large (hissing), Huge (whiptail), Gargantuan (great forest), Colossal (titan)
- Poisonous Person: All variants of centipedes can inject venom with their mandibles.
