Page 8 - Monster Manual [11th Print]

summon fiends to the material world to do their bidding. ALIGN E N T
M
If an evil celestial is a rarity, a good fiend is almost
inconceivable. Fiends include demons, devils, hell A monster's alignment provides a clue to its disposition
hounds, rakshasas, and yugoloths. and how it behaves in a roleplaying or combat situation.
ffi
Giants tower over humans and their kind. They are For example, a chaotic evil monster might be di c ult
humanlike in shape, though some have multiple heads to reason with and might attack characters on sight,
(ettins) or deformities (fomorians). The six varieties of whereas a neutral monster might be willing to negotiate.
true giant are hill giants, stone giants, frost giants, fire See the Player's Handbook for descriptions of the
giants, cloud giants, and storm giants. Besides these, different alignments.
creatures such as ogres and trolls are giants. The alignment specified in a monster's stat block is
Humanoids are the main peoples of the D&D the default. Feel free to depart from it and change a
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world, both civilized and savage, including humans monster s alignment to suit the needs of your campaign.
and a tremendous variety of other species. They have If you want a good-aligned green dragon or an evil storm
language and culture, few if any innate magical abilities giant, there's nothing stopping you.
(though most humanoids can learn spellcasting), and a Some creatures can have any alignment. In other
bipedal form. The most common humanoid races are words, you choose the monster's alignment. Some
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the ones most suitable as player characters: humans, monster s alignment entry indicates a tendency or
dwarves, elves, and halflings. Almost as numerous but aversion toward law, chaos, good, or evil. For example,
far more savage and brutal, and almost uniformly evil, a berserker can be any chaotic alignment (chaotic good,
are the races of goblinoids (goblins, hobgoblins, and chaotic neutral, or chaotic evil), as befits its wild nature.
bugbears), ores, gnolls, lizardfolk, and kobolds. Many creatures of low intelligence have no
A variety of humanoids appear throughout this book, comprehension of law or chaos, good or evil. They don't
but the races detailed in the Player's Handbook-with make moral or ethical choices, but rather act on instinct.
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the exception of draw a re dealt with in appendix B. These creatures are unaligned, which means they don't
That appendix gives you a number of stat blocks that have an alignment.
you can use to make various members of those races. ARMOR L A S S
C
Monstrosities are monsters in the strictest sense­
fr ightening creatures that are not ordinary, not truly A monster that wears armor or carries a shield has
natural, and almost never benign. Some are the an Armor Class (AC) that takes its armor, shield, and
results of magical experimentation gone awry (such Dexterity into account. Otherwise, a monster's AC is
as owlbears), and others are the product of terrible based on its Dexterity modifier and natural armor
curses (including minotaurs and yuan-ti). They defy if any. If a monster has natural armor, wears arm�r,
categorization, and in some sense serve as a catch-all or carries a shield, this is noted in parentheses after
category for creatures that don' t fit into any other type. its AC value.
Oozes are gelatinous creatures that rarely have a
fixed shape. They are mostly subterranean, dwelling H I T POINTS
in caves and dungeons and feeding on refuse, carrion, A monster usually dies or is destroyed when it
or creatures unlucky enough to get in their way. Black drops to 0 hit points. For more on hit points, see the
puddings and gelatinous cubes are among the most Player's Handbook.
recognizable oozes. A monster's hit points are presented both as a die
Plants in this context are vegetable creatures, not expression and as an average number. For example,
ordinary flora. Most of them are ambulatory, and some a monster with 2d8 hit points has 9 hit points on
are carnivorous. The quintessential plants are the average (2 x 4V2).
shambling mound and the treant. Fungal creatures A monster's size determines the die used to calculate
such as the gas spore and the myconid also fall into its hit points, as shown in the Hit Dice by Size table.
this category.
Undead are once-living creatures brought to a HIT DICE BY SIZE
horrifying state of undeath through the practice of
necromantic magic or some unholy curse. Undead Monster Size Hit Die Average HP per Die
include walking corpses, such as vampires and zombies, Tiny d4 21/2
as well as bodiless spirits, such as ghosts and specters. Small d6 31/2
Medium d8 41/2
TAGS Large dlO Sl/2
A monster might have one or more tags appended to H u ge dl2 61/2
its type, in parentheses. For example, an ore has the Gargantuan d20 1 0 1/z
humanoid (ore) type. The parenthetical tags provide
additional categorization for certain creatures. The tags A monster's Constitution modifier also affects the
have no rules of their own, but something in the game, number of hit points it has. Its Constitution modifier is
such as a magic item, might refer to them. For instance,
a spear that is especially effective at fighting demons multiplied by the number of Hit Dice it possesses, and
the result is added to its hit points. For example, if a
would work against any monster that has the demon tag.
1
monster has a Constitution of 2 (+ 1 modifier) and 2d8
1
Hit Dice, it has 2d8 + 2 hit points (average 1 ).
INTRODUCTIO N
7