Magical beast (Dungeons & Dragons)

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, magical beast is a type of creature, or "creature type". Magical beasts are similar to animals in many ways, but usually have a higher intelligence, and possess supernatural or extraordinary abilities.

In 3rd and 3.5 editions, all magical beasts have darkvision out to 60 feet as well as low-light vision. As a group, they have no other special abilities or immunities.

In 4th edition, magical beasts are non-humanoid creatures with humanlike intelligence.

Magical beasts in the Monster Manual

• Ankheg
• The aranea is a spider-like magical beast that lives in temperate forests. Its natural form is a spider of monstrous size, with two small humanlike arms below its mandibles. An aranea is usually neutral in alignment. It has the ability to change its shape into that of a humanoid, or a spider-humanoid hybrid. It has the poison and webspinning ability of a spider, as well as the ability to cast spells like a sorcerer.^[1][2][3][4]
• Basilisk
• Behir
• Bulette
• Blink dog
• Chimera
• Cockatrice
• Darkmantle
• The digester is a velociraptor-like magical beast (though it only has two limbs), with a bony head sporting short tendrils.^[5] It has a serrated spine and skinny lower legs. As can be guessed from its name, the Digester is an eating machine that attacks with acid. When it is hungry, it looks for a likely target in its forest or scrubland home, and then rushes forward, squirting a gout of acid from a tube in the top of its skull. The prey is effectively reduced to soup, and the Digester drinks. If the victim is not dead but the digester has used all its acid, it attacks with its legs until it can squirt acid again. When it does not wish to eat, which is rarely, it lays down in the grass and avoids other creatures. Though sometimes solitary, they also sometimes group in packs of three to six.
• Displacer beast
• Dragonne
• Ethereal marauder
• Frost Worm
• Giant eagle
• Giant owl
• Girallon
• Gorgon
• Gray Render
• Griffon
• Hellwasp swarm
• Hippogriff
• Hydras
• Kraken
• Krenshar
• Lamia
• Lammasu
• Manticore
• Owlbear
• Pegasus
• Phase Spider
• Purple Worm
• Remorhaz
• Roper
• Shocker Lizard
• Sea Cat
• Sphinxes
• Spider Eater
• Stirge
• Tarrasque
• Unicorn
• Winter wolf
• Worg
• Yrthak

Magical beasts from the Monster Manual II

• Ash Rat
• Asperi
• Blood Ape
• Chaos Roc
• Chimeric Creature (template)
• Cloaked Ape
• Cloud Ray
• Corollax
• The fiendwurm is a magical beast. They are monstrous worms which have portals to the Abyss in their bellies.

Fiendwurms are the result of an ordinary earthworm having demonic magic cast upon it. In addition to greatly altering and mutating their physical form, this also creates the portal to the Abyss mentioned above in their stomach. This portal causes them enormous pain, and the only way to relieve this is by eating. Because of this the fiendwurm has a violent nature and attempts to swallow any creature it encounters, and unfortunately, as one might expect, anything swallowed by it goes straight through the portal to the Abyss.

Fiendwurms can be found in deserts, plains, and underground.

Fiendwurms have legless, worm's bodies. They are fairly huge, about the size of a frost worm or purple worm. On their underside, they are colored a peach, blood-like pink. On the topside, they are a sickly purple. Though they were supposedly once earthworms, the head of the fiendwurm is completely unlike an earthworm's eyeless, tubular, all-mouth, head, and instead is almost draconic. They have a pair of horns which point back and up, as well as a few spikes around the lower mouth. Their tongues are long and purple.

Wizards of the Coast designer and developer Ed Bonny, who was working on thinking of creatures for the Monster Manual II, humorously claims to have imagined the fiendwurm while eating dinner in Manhattan with friends. Supposedly the idea it just struck him while eating, and he scrawled the concept on paper tablecloth, and it eventually blossomed into the fiendwurm.^{[citation needed]}

Fiendwurms appeared in the 3rd edition Monster Manual II.

^[6]

• Frost Salamander
• Gambol
• Gravorg
• Leviathan (Dungeons & Dragons)
• Mooncalf (Dungeons & Dragons)
• Moonrat (Dungeons & Dragons)
• Mudmaw
• Nethersight Mastiff
• Nightmare Beast
• Phase Wasp
• Phoenix (Dungeons & Dragons)
• Shadow Spider
• Spellgaunt
• Swamplight Lynx

Magical Beasts from the Monster Manual III

• The avalancher is a magical beast that lives in mountains. It is portrayed as having a large, round central body made entirely out of rock, with six insect-like, stony appendages for legs and a single eye stalk with a large, orange, glowing eye protruding from the top of the front. At the front of the central body is a toothed mouth. An avalancher attacks by using its legs to dislodge boulders and cause earthquakes and avalanches.^[7]
• Bearhound
• Brood Keeper
• Feral Yowler
• Ironclad Mauler
• Milvorn
• Phoera
• Zezir

Magical beasts from the Fiend Folio

• Abrian
• Blood Hawk
• Chronotyryn
• Cranium Rat
• Death Dog
• Disenchanter
• Flame Snake
• Gathra
• Jackalwere
• Kuldurath
• Lucent Worm
• Senmurv (Dungeons & Dragons)
• Shadow Asp
• Shedu (Dungeons & Dragons)
• Spirit of the Air
• Terlen
• Thunder Worm
• Ti-Khana (template)
• Varrangoin

Magical beasts from Monsters of Faerûn

• Banelar
• Black Unicron
• Darkenbeast
• Giant Strider
• Leucrotta
• Peryton
• Spectral Panther

Magical beasts from other sources

• Bhaergala
• Banderlog
• Cooshee
• Debbi
• Debbil
• The Displacer serpent is akin to an ophidian version of the Displacer beast. It resembles a flat, purplish-black snake, 8 feet long and weighing about 200 pounds, with glowing green eyes and violet stripes down its sides. They possess powers similar to the ordinary Displacer Beast, E.G... The ability to make themselves appear in a different location to where they actually are. Displacer serpents are found alone, or in pairs, or sometimes in broods of 2 to 7 with a leader or 2. They live in warm forests. They are usually chaotic evil in alignment. Displacer serpents appeared in the Miniatures Handbook.
• Giant bat
• Jackalwere
• Leucrotta
• Kirre
• Tyrg
• Wolfwere

References

1. ^ Cook, David, and Tom Moldvay. The Isle of Dread (TSR, 1981).
2. ^ Moldvay, Tom. Castle Amber (TSR, 1981).
3. ^ TSR 9173 - AC9 - Creature Catalogue (1986)
4. ^ Williams, Skip, Jonathan Tweet, and Monte Cook. Monster Manual (Wizards of the Coast, 2000).
5. ^ Williams, Skip, Jonathan Tweet, and Monte Cook. Monster Manual (Wizards of the Coast, 2000)
6. ^ Bonny, Ed, Jeff Grubb, Rich Redman, Skip Williams, Steve Winter. Monster Manual II (Wizards of the Coast, 2002)
7. ^ Burlew, Rich, et al. Monster Manual III (Wizards of the Coast, 2004)