Tiamat
Tiamat — The Encounter
Primordial Saltwater Chaos, Mother of the Five-Headed Brood · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Tiamat
Before the ordered heavens were split apart, there was only the bitter sea, and the sea had a name: Tiamat, mother of the deep. From her churning waters spilled the first monstrous brood, and when the younger powers slew her consort she armed her serpents with venom in place of blood and set five crowned heads upon a single titan body. So the grimoires of the river-kingdoms record her: the primordial whose five maws each speak a separate ruin, who cannot be cowed by terror because terror was her own firstborn. The hero-myths claim she was cleaved in two and her carcass became the vault of sky and the floor of ocean—yet wherever brackish water meets old ruin, cultists insist she only sleeps. They carve her likeness above flooded altars and pray the chaos-mother will rise to unmake the orderly world a second time, swallowing kingdom and constellation alike back into the formless brine from which all things were torn.
Run Tiamat in Sixty Seconds
- Five elements, never the same twice — each head's breath fires once per recharge, so she can cone acid, then fire, then cold on three straight turns. Never let the party plan around one resistance.
- Open with the cone on whichever cluster is tightest, then Multiattack to Bite-and-grapple the backline controller and drag them out of position.
- Kill-priority for the party is impossible up front — she has no single weak head; tell players the only answer is sustained focus-fire while eating breaths.
- When bloodied (104 HP), go aerial: Wing Buffet to scatter melee, then rain out-of-turn Chaos Breath each round via legendary actions.
- Three ways to run her: drowned-temple solo boss (Tier 3), flagship over serpent minions (Tier 2 lair), or a colossal terror cameo the low-level party must flee (Tier 1).
Tiamat
Gargantuan dragon, chaotic evil
CR 11 · 7,200 XP · GUIDELINEBrood of Five Maws. Tiamat has five draconic heads. Each head can act independently for the purpose of breath weapons, opportunity attacks, and being denied benefits from being blinded. While she has more than two heads, she has advantage on saving throws against being charmed, frightened, knocked prone, and stunned, and on any saving throw that targets her senses.
Many-Headed Vigilance. Tiamat cannot be surprised, and she has advantage on initiative rolls. She can make one opportunity attack with a different head against each creature that leaves her reach on the same turn.
Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If Tiamat fails a saving throw, she can choose to succeed instead.
Actions
Multiattack. Tiamat makes one Bite attack and two Claw attacks. She can replace the Bite with one use of an available Breath Weapon.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (2d12 + 5) piercing damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 16) by one of her heads.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6 + 5) slashing damage.
Breath Weapon (Recharge 5–6). One of Tiamat's heads exhales primordial chaos in a 30-foot cone. Each creature in the area makes a DC 16 Dexterity saving throw, taking 45 (10d8) damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. Choose the damage type when she breathes: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison. Each head's breath can be used only once between recharges, letting her unleash a different element on consecutive turns.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Snapping Heads. When a creature Tiamat can see hits her with a melee attack, she can use her reaction to make one Bite attack against that creature with a free head.
Legendary Actions (3/Round)
Detect. Tiamat makes a Wisdom (Perception) check.
Tail Sweep. Tiamat makes one melee attack with her tail: +9 to hit, reach 20 ft., one target; Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) bludgeoning damage and the target must succeed on a DC 16 Strength save or be knocked prone.
Chaos Breath (Costs 2 Actions). Tiamat uses an available Breath Weapon from one of her heads, even on another creature's turn.
Wing Buffet (Costs 2 Actions). Tiamat beats her wings. Each creature within 15 feet makes a DC 16 Dexterity save or takes 12 (2d6 + 5) bludgeoning damage and is pushed 10 feet. She can then fly up to half her speed.
A gargantuan five-necked dragon of primordial salt and chaos rears over a drowned temple, each maw promising a different death—venom, frost, fire, acid, and thunder.
Tiamat, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINESweet-Water Ward (signature). Allies within 15 feet of Tiamat have resistance to acid, cold, fire, lightning, and poison damage while he is conscious.
Actions
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (2d10 + 5) piercing damage.
Reactions
Primordial Recoil. When an ally Tiamat can see takes elemental damage, he can use his reaction to halve that damage and gain temporary hit points equal to the amount prevented.
Tiamat, the fresh-water consort wreathed in serpentine coils, mantles the chaos-mother and turns the elements of her brood aside from those she favors.
Guideline numbers — formula-tuned and read from the miniature's design, not yet table-proven. Tell us how it ran in the comments.
How It Fights — by Tier
Same creature, scaled threat. The traits never change; only the numbers move.
Open with a single head's Breath Weapon on the tightest cluster, then Bite-and-grapple the squishiest PC. Use Snapping Heads on whoever melees her so the party fears closing in. Pair her with a couple of cultists—at this size she is a terrifying set-piece, not a fair solo.
Lead with Breath, then alternate elements turn to turn so resistances never line up. Grapple a striker with Bite and drag them away from healers; spend legendary actions on Tail Sweep to prone, then Chaos Breath out of turn. Best run as a flagship over a flooded-temple lair with minion serpents.
Solo-capable: open with a recharged 30-ft. cone on the clustered party, then Multiattack-grapple the controller. Burn legendary actions on Chaos Breath (out-of-turn elements) and Wing Buffet to scatter and reposition; punish every melee swing with Snapping Heads. Save Legendary Resistance for save-or-suck spells—her many heads already shrug off fear, prone, and stun.
Put Tiamat on the table
Download the presupported STL and run the fight tonight — the model, and the encounter that comes with it.
Get the STL on MyMiniFactory →Clay Cyanide Companion Rules v1
How a bound creature acts
- A companion acts on its owner's initiative, immediately after the owner.
- It uses the Companion block above — roughly ×0.6 HP and damage, no recharge abilities, and at most one reaction trait.
- It moves freely; it takes its Action only while its owner is conscious.
- At 0 HP a companion is broken, not dead — restored on a long rest unless your table rules otherwise.
Original Clay Cyanide material © Clay Cyanide LLC — explicitly not the non-SRD official sidekick rules.
Questions, Asked at the Table
What CR is Tiamat?
Her home tier is 3 (levels 11–15), built around CR 13 with AC 18, 207 HP, +13 to hit and a DC 16 elemental cone. Because she is a true solo boss with multiple legendary actions and the Snapping Heads reaction, her sheet sits one band below raw Tier 3 so a full party can still out-act her fairly. Scaled stat blocks for Tier 1 (~CR 2) and Tier 2 (~CR 6) are included.
Can Tiamat be a companion or ally?
Not realistically—she is a chaos-primordial set-piece adversary, not a controllable ally. If you want a draconic ally at the table, use her bound consort companion, Apsu, Bound, whose Sweet-Water Ward grants nearby allies resistance to all five elemental damage types.
How do I keep the five-element gimmick from bogging down combat?
Track it loosely: write the five elements on a sticky note and cross one off as each head breathes, then reset them all when Breath Weapon recharges. Default to whichever element the party is NOT resisting that round, and use Chaos Breath legendary actions to keep the pressure on between her turns.
Tell Us How It Ran
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 ("SRD 5.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Clay Cyanide Miniatures is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. This content is compatible with the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game. Companion rules, lore, names, and original mechanics © Clay Cyanide LLC.
Technical Specifications
32mm, 75mm
STL, Pre-supported STL
Standard or ABS-like resin, 0.05mm layer height
Yes — ready to print, optimized supports included
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