Bugbear 3
Bugbear 3 — The Encounter
Folklore's hairy bogey-man, the ambush that waits in the dark · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Bugbear 3
Goodwives bar the door against the bugbear and tell their children it is the hairy thing that waits where the rushlight does not reach. In the old tongue a bug was a goblin or hobgoblin set loose to frighten, and a bear was the shape it wore in nightmare: stooped, shaggy, broad as a barn-beam. It does not roar a challenge as the orc does. It holds still in the dark of the warren or the wood, breathing low, until a sentry passes within the span of those terrible arms, and then there is one fewer sentry and no sound at all. Camps of lesser goblins prize the bugbear as a captain of ambush, for where it crouches the smaller kin grow bold. Hunters who track it find only skulls arranged at the mouth of a cave, a warning and a tally both, each one a fool who mistook the silence for safety.
Run Bugbear 3 in Sixty Seconds
- Hold it in shadow. The bugbear's whole value is the ambush - don't reveal it until it can land Surprise Assault on a soft target in round one.
- Open on the squishiest. Grasping Claws into a grapple, then Drag Into Dark to yank a caster or healer away from the group.
- Kill-priority for the party is the rescuer. Anyone who can shove, teleport, or out-grapple the bugbear is the real threat to its plan - it should body-block them.
- When bloodied, it stops dragging and just slams twice a turn to drop the closest threat before it falls.
- Three ways to run it: lone warren-stalker that picks off a straggler; ambush captain leading a goblin pack; or enforcer paired with a bigger boss to break the front line.
Bugbear 3
Medium humanoid (goblinoid), chaotic evil
CR 2 · 450 XP · GUIDELINEBrute. A melee weapon deals one extra die of its damage when the bugbear hits with it (included below).
Surprise Assault. Signature. If the bugbear surprises a creature and hits it during the first round of combat, the target takes an extra 7 (2d6) damage. The bugbear's long reach and patient stillness let it open every fight from the shadows.
Actions
Multiattack. The bugbear makes two attacks: one with its grasping claws and one with its slam, or two slams.
Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d8+3) bludgeoning damage.
Grasping Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6+3) slashing damage, and if the target is Medium or smaller it is grappled (escape DC 13).
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Drag Into Dark. When the bugbear hits a creature it is grappling, it can move up to half its speed, pulling the grappled creature with it.
A slab of muscle crowned with a matted mane, this bugbear crouches low over a litter of cracked skulls, one long arm cocked back to seize whatever steps too close. Bandaged knuckles and a hide kilt mark a creature that fights with raw reach and patience, not steel.
Bugbear 3, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEPack Bully (signature). Once per turn, when Bugbear 3 hits a creature already engaged by an ally, the target takes an extra 4 (1d8) damage.
Actions
Club Sweep. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6+2) bludgeoning damage.
Reactions
Shove the Slow. When an enemy ends its turn within 5 feet, Bugbear 3 can shove it 5 feet toward the nearest ally.
A wiry goblin lieutenant who learned to fight at the bugbear's heel, all elbows and stolen confidence, never more than a stride from the bigger shadow.
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 from hiding with Surprise Assault on a backline caster, then grapple and Drag Into Dark to split it from the party. Kill-priority: anyone who can pull it off the grappled victim. Run it as the muscle in a goblin pack so the small ones swarm while it isolates.
Same ambush opener, but now it can grapple a frontliner and Drag them into a kill-box while minions collapse on the isolated target. Focus whoever frees the grappled ally. Pair it with a bigger threat (a hobgoblin captain or a hag) and let the bugbear be the snatcher, not the boss.
Use it as a heavy enforcer alongside a flagship adversary and its lair: it opens, grapples, and drags a chosen PC out of formation each round. Kill-priority remains the rescuer. Never run it solo at this tier - a party out-acts it; it shines as the brute that breaks the line for something deadlier behind it.
Put Bugbear 3 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 Bugbear 3?
Natively CR 2 (Tier 1, ~450 XP) - a hard-hitting ambush brute for levels 1-4. The stat tiers scale it up to CR 6-ish numbers for Tier 2 and CR 11-ish for Tier 3 without changing how it plays.
Can Bugbear 3 be a companion or ally?
Yes. As an adversary it's an ambush enforcer, but the included companion, Mawl, Bound, is a goblin lieutenant statted as a lighter ally so a PC or NPC warband can field the brute's pack tactics on their side.
Is the bugbear a devil or a fiend?
Neither - it's a Medium humanoid (goblinoid), drawn from English folklore where a bugbear was the shaggy bogey set loose to frighten travelers. It has no resistances or immunities, just reach, stealth, and brute muscle.
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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