Lythalia
Lythalia — The Encounter
Horned bride of the strangling briar, who blooms from rot · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Lythalia
Of the bride of the briar the old hedge-books speak only in warning. She was a maiden left to die in a rose garden, the grimoire says, and the garden took pity in the wrong way: it grew up through her and made her its mouth. Now she is neither woman nor thicket but the marriage of both, horned with the curl of new shoots, her veins running sap and her breath thick with crimson pollen. Where she walks the bramble follows, and where the bramble strangles she blooms. Hedge-witches leave her offerings of carrion at the wood's edge, for she feeds the soil and the soil feeds her, and a field she favors yields fat and red while a field she curses chokes on its own thorns. She does not hate the living. She simply has no further use for them standing, when they would compost so much better lying down.
Run Lythalia in Sixty Seconds
- Open with Strangling Vines on the tightest cluster of PCs to restrain the front line and split the party before anyone closes.
- Kill-priority is the briar wall, not her — break restrained allies free first; while they're rooted she claws them for slashing plus poison every round.
- When bloodied she pops once — Rose-Curse Pollen sprays a 15-ft. poison cloud, so don't bunch your melee on her at half health.
- Cold iron and magic cut deep — her thornwood shrugs off mundane weapons, and touching her in melee earns 1d10 thorn damage back.
- Three ways to run her — a lair controller walling a flagship boss, a hedge-witch ambush from her thicket, or a slow-grind curse on a field the party must cross.
Lythalia
Medium fey, neutral evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEBriar Body. Lythalia's flesh is woven of living thornwood. A creature that touches her or hits her with a melee attack while within 5 feet takes 5 (1d10) piercing damage from her thorns.
Rose-Curse Pollen. Signature. When Lythalia is reduced to half her hit points or fewer (bloodied), a cloud of crimson spores bursts from her blossoms. Each creature within 15 feet must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution save or be poisoned for 1 minute; a poisoned creature that fails takes 7 (2d6) poison damage at the start of each of its turns until it repeats the save and succeeds. This burst occurs only once per encounter.
Actions
Multiattack. Lythalia makes two Thorned Claw attacks, or makes one Thorned Claw attack and casts a spell of 3rd level or lower (entangle).
Thorned Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6+5) slashing damage plus 7 (2d6) poison damage.
Strangling Vines (Recharge 5-6). Woody tendrils erupt across a 20-foot square within 60 feet. Each creature in the area must succeed on a DC 15 Strength save or take 18 (4d8) bludgeoning damage and be restrained by the briars until freed. A restrained creature can use an action to make a DC 15 Strength check, freeing itself on a success.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Step Through Bramble. Bonus Action. If Lythalia is within 5 feet of difficult terrain made of plants, vines, or thorns, she teleports up to 30 feet to another unoccupied space within 5 feet of such terrain.
A gaunt, rose-pale woman crowned with two great curling horns rises from a churning thicket of thornwood and bloodred blossoms, her clawed fingers trailing creeping vines that drink the rot of the soil.
Lythalia, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINERooted Guard (signature). While within 10 feet of Lythalia, the Lythalia has advantage on saving throws against being moved or knocked prone, and any creature that ends its turn adjacent to it takes 3 (1d6) piercing damage.
Actions
Rending Bramble. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6+2) slashing damage, and the target's speed is reduced by 10 feet until the end of its next turn.
Reactions
Tanglefoot. When a creature within 5 feet tries to move away, the Lythalia may force it to make a DC 13 Strength save or have its movement stopped for that turn.
A knee-high knot of animate thornwood that scuttles at her heel, all knuckles and barbs, eager to root an enemy in place for its mistress.
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 Strangling Vines on the clustered front line, then claw the closest restrained target. Pair her with a bigger threat or a small thornling pack; she is a controller, not a brawler. Kill-priority her only after you break free of the briars, or she resets the wall every other round.
Open with Strangling Vines to lock the cluster, then claw and entangle the freed casters. When bloodied, let Rose-Curse Pollen burst into the packed melee for stacked poison. Run her alongside a flagship boss in a thorn-choked lair; she is an add-on controller who feeds healers and frontliners into reach.
Open Strangling Vines on the heaviest cluster, Step Through Bramble to reposition, and grind restrained PCs with poison claws. Pair her with minions or a larger lair-bound horror; she is not a solo and a party will out-act her alone. Kill-priority is whoever your party can free first, or she walls them anew every recharge.
Put Lythalia 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 Lythalia?
Her native build is CR 6 (2,300 XP), tuned as a Tier 2 controller for a party of levels 5-10. The record also gives scaled Tier 1 (CR ~2) and Tier 3 (CR ~11) bands so you can drop the same traits and tactics into any table.
Can Lythalia be a companion or ally?
As a fey of the briar she is rarely anyone's friend, but a druid or hag-pact warlock who feeds the soil she favors can bargain her into a season's alliance. Her bound Thornling makes a more practical attendant — a rooted guard that snares enemies for its keeper.
Do I need cold iron to fight her?
It helps a great deal. Lythalia resists nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing unless the weapon is cold iron, so magic weapons or cold-iron blades roughly double your effective damage. Casters should lean on fire, force, and ability-score saves to bypass her bark entirely.
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
Played Lythalia at your table? Log in with your Obsidian Tavern account to leave a balance note, a war story, or a file issue — the sharpest reports get the block revised.
Log in to comment