Hallows' Eve Bestiary [Monster Thursday]

We getting spooky! -Stephen

As is tradition for every blog, vlog, celebrity personality, and pretty much everyone in the entire world, it is time to get spooky! We don't like to break tradition (sometimes) and so for this Monster Thursday, we are looking at some creepy monsters you can stick in your game! All of these creatures were designed with the idea of throwing them into one-shots, side adventures, and other places at varying levels to give you a few options to really spook up your games this month!

Black Cat (CR 1/2) Alright, maybe not super terrifying - but... this can be a great minion for a boss fight where you want to up the challenge a little bit. With its nine lives feature, even powerful heroes are going to be annoyed as this thing just keeps coming back to life! Which makes it a pain to fully remove from the fight as it keeps bouncing back and ready to curse your table with bad rolls! Hopefully your party has some low Wisdom saves so that they experience the full curse of the Black Cat!

.... I also added in a minor Magic Item, the Mirror of Bad Luck which... well, curses people to have a bad time. What can I say, I was feeling angsty!

Bogeyman (CR 9) We don't just have cats, we also have real spook'ems! The bogeyman is a strange creature to design as no one can really agree on anything about it. I largely took some inspiration from a Nightmare Before Christmas, but also grabbed some inspiration from Supernatural and some Wikipedia articles. The creature became focused on devouring dreams and moving back and forth between the Ethereal Plane and the Material Plane. 

Headless Horseman (CR 8) It's headless and it is on a horse - potentially. This foul undead creature roams the roads on their spectral horse and hates the living because well... You're alive and they're dead. That's all the reason they need. 

They can be quite terrifying seeing as how they ride on their pony and carry their head, or a facsimile, around with them, probably laughing and chortling to themselves. Also, if you decide to fight them for whatever reason, they can throw their head at you and that is going to hurt... plus, you are going to be running around with a head biting you like it's a tick. Not fun. 

Jack-o'-Lantern (CR 2) HORROR! A SENTIENT PUMPKIN! This pumpkin is all sorts of angry and evil, devouring any creature that gets too close to it. In addition to chomping on its poor victims, it also gets lair actions if you want to make the fight a bit harder on your players! These monsters can be a fun warm-up fight before the party must face the real boss, or simply have a massive pumpkin as the final boss fight - that's super spooky!  

The Scarecrow King (CR 6) Was very close to calling it King Spookums - this scarecrow is an elite form of the normal Scarecrow stat block in the Monster Manual and comes with legendary actions, lair actions, and regional effects! 

Witch (CR 3) Our last monster for this week is the witch, who is probably responsible for everything! I also include a new spell for the witch to use and cast on your players (or itself if it enjoys being a frog). 

That's all for this week, if you have a group of monsters you'd like to see in a future Monster Thursday, let me know in the comments!