Jhong Navarro
Jhong Navarro — The Encounter
Grinning Penitent of the Cities of the Plain, shield-bearer of pestilence · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Jhong Navarro
When fire fell on the twin cities of the plain, not all the wicked burned at once. Some were left to crawl from the ash, marked but breathing, that they might carry the rot of those places outward into the clean lands. Jhong Navarro was a shield-bearer in a doomed garrison, and the only joy left to him after the ruin was the spreading of his affliction. He plates the survivors of his own retinue behind a great gilded shield looted from a temple treasury, herding them ahead of him like cattle to be infected and used. The grin upon his swollen face never falters; chroniclers debate whether it is rapture, lockjaw, or the simple madness of a man who has outlived his own salvation. Where he passes, wells turn brackish, livestock bloat, and children take to fevered laughing. Burn the body and salt the ground, the wise say, and do not look long upon the smile.
Run Jhong Navarro in Sixty Seconds
- Hold the line: Jhong is a defensive bruiser, not a sprinter — plant him in front of squishier allies and dare the party to come to him.
- Open by clustering: wade into melee so 2-3 PCs swing at him, then every hit triggers Contagious Grin — they poison themselves on his laugh.
- Kill-priority for the party: whoever cures poison/disease (cleric, paladin) — Jhong bashes them prone to deny the cleanse, so protect your healer.
- When bloodied (60 HP): Plaguebearer's Vigor jumps to -10 damage taken — he gets harder to finish, not easier; commit to burst or he stabilizes.
- Three ways to run him: as a guardian shielding a boss, as a frontline plague-spreader buffing a horde, or as a lone tank in a chokepoint that just won't fall.
Jhong Navarro
Medium humanoid (cultist), neutral evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEPlaguebearer's Vigor. Jhong's bloated, corrupted flesh refuses to die cleanly. The first time each turn he takes damage, he reduces it by 5. While he has 60 hit points or fewer, this reduction increases to 10 instead.
Sheltering Bulwark. While Jhong holds his golden shield, any ally within 5 feet of him gains +2 AC. He can interpose the shield to grant himself advantage on Dexterity saving throws against effects he can see.
Contagious Grin. Signature. When a creature within 5 feet hits Jhong with a melee attack, it must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned until the end of its next turn as his rictus laugh spreads sickness. A creature poisoned this way takes 4 (1d8) necrotic damage at the start of its turn.
Actions
Multiattack. Jhong makes two attacks with his curved blade, or one curved blade attack and one Shield Bash.
Curved Blade. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8+3) slashing damage plus 7 (2d6) necrotic damage from the festering edge.
Shield Bash. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d8+3) bludgeoning damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 14 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Shield Wall (Reaction). When an ally Jhong can see within 5 feet is hit by an attack, he raises his shield to give that ally +3 AC against that attack, possibly causing it to miss.
A stooped, grinning penitent in scavenged plate and travel-worn robes, hauling an outsized golden shield and a curved blade slick with rot. His swollen face is fixed in a glassy, joyful rictus, as though the plague that claims him is a gift he longs to share.
Jhong Navarro, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEPlague Ward (signature). While you wield the looted golden shield, you and allies within 5 feet have resistance to poison damage and advantage on saving throws against disease.
Actions
Shield Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d8+4) bludgeoning damage, and a Medium or smaller target must succeed on a DC 14 Strength save or be pushed 10 feet.
Reactions
Interpose. When an ally within 5 feet is hit, redirect that attack to yourself; you take the damage instead.
The temple shield he carries is a relic in its own right, a slab of inscribed gold that drinks pestilence and turns it aside for those it shelters.
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 behind the shield and lock down your party's front line; let melee strikers swing into Contagious Grin and take the poison. Bash the lowest-HP martial prone, then carve them while they're down. Pair him with cultists or zombies who feed off the sickness he spreads.
Open by wading into the cluster so two or three PCs are tempted to melee him, then punish every hit with Contagious Grin's poison. Kill-priority is the healer or whoever can cure poison/disease; bash and prone them to deny the cleanse. Hold near minions so Shield Wall and Sheltering Bulwark keep your weakest add alive.
Run him as a plague-anchor amid a horde, not alone: he soaks the front while infected thralls flank. Open on the cluster, bash-prone the caster, and let Plaguebearer's Vigor drag the fight long. Pair him with a bigger threat (a fiend or undead flagship) so the party can't focus him down before the sickness spreads.
Put Jhong Navarro 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 Jhong Navarro?
Natively CR 6 (Tier 2, levels 5–10): AC 16, 123 HP, +6 to hit, save DC 14. The Tier 1 (CR ~2) and Tier 3 (CR ~11) columns reskin the same traits with rescaled numbers, so you can drop him into any party level.
Can Jhong Navarro be a companion or ally?
He's built as an adversary and not solo-capable — he's an add-on defender meant to shield a bigger threat. If you want him on the table as an ally, lend the party The Gilded Bulwark companion instead: the looted golden shield wards against poison and disease and can interpose to take hits for its bearer.
How do I keep Jhong from dragging the fight out forever?
His Plaguebearer's Vigor reduces incoming damage (worse once bloodied), so chip damage stalls. Burst him with big single hits, force Constitution saves to bypass the poison loop, and don't let melee PCs trade blows into Contagious Grin — that's exactly the attrition war he wins.
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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