Dungeons and Dragons’ Best Monsters and Villains Ever

Thoughts you, a Tarrasque is not a god. It is not even significantly clever. It is a lizard-like creature of titanic proportions, armored with a thick carapace that’ll decelerate virtually any social gathering of adventurers. Like Dunes sandworms, it is a drive of nature that rises out of its slumber solely to destroy every part round it. It is so tough to struggle that it is by no means been featured in a significant online game or perhaps a tie-in novel. It exists as an “oh crap” machine; a Godzilla-level terror that solely the luckiest and most ready events can hope to defeat. Even then, they in all probability will not. The lore of the Forgotten Realms goes as far as to recommend that there is just one Tarrasque alive at any time, and it could even be a weapon left behind by previous gods.

Thoughts Flayers (Illithids)

The Thoughts Flayer is one in all D&D‘s core monsters. It is a recognizable monstrosity that seems all through the franchise multiverse, together with the sci-fi-themed Spelljammer setting. Clever, telepathic spellcasters with rubbery, octopus-like options, their design was clearly impressed by HP Lovecraft’s work. Really, m Gary Gygax was studying a Brian Lumley novel and got here up with Thoughts Flayers on the spot.

Thoughts Flayers’ lore additionally borrows from Lovecraft’s Mi-Go and the Mi-Go mind cylinders. Thoughts Flayers actually have a ruling class of Elder Brains which are stored secure inside their secret cities. Their in-universe origins are stuffed with troubling uncertainties. They’re both alien refugees from a future they’ve forgotten, or some horrible evolution now scattered by time and area. There’s a minimum of one citadel of the Thoughts Flayers in Faerun, Oryndoll, deep within the Underdark. As an enemy, they’re horrifying mind suckers that require talent to defeat. As a species, they’re an interesting take a look at among the darkest corners of D&D lore

holders

Probably essentially the most well-known D&D creature is the beholder: a fleshy, bulbous factor with means too rattling many eyes. Relying on the subspecies — there are dozens of them, together with an Eyeball cutie wizards use as a well-known — it will possibly have as many as eleven eyestalks, along with a bigger eye sometimes set within the heart mass.

The holder is the face of the franchise with a face solely a mom may love. Now strive not to consider how child beholders are made. It is an authentic monster with no historic or mythological genesis moderately than the implications of the widespread phrase “magnificence is within the eye of the beholder.” Created by Gygax’s pal, Terry Kuntzit wound up on the duvet of one of many earliest official D&D dietary supplements, Greyhawk. The beholder straddles (wobbles?) the road between Gygax’s residence video games and the period when Dungeons & Dragons grew to become a tabletop drive. There it floats, watching all of it, and stirring itself to struggle with a wide range of totally different skills, one for every unblinking eye.

Gelatinous Dice

The Gelatinous Dice is one other Gygax authentic. It is a geometric ooze vaguely impressed by amoebae whose critics sometimes miss the purpose. Sure, they’re sluggish and silly, however the cubes developed to suit into, after which reshape themselves within, normal dungeon corridors. This makes them not simply an annoyance, however a good way to lose a favourite piece of substances. Or your life.