Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep — The Encounter
The Crawling Chaos, ten-thousand-formed herald of the outer dark · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Nyarlathotep
Of the messengers that crawl between the stars, none is named with more dread than Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. Where the elder powers sleep dreaming in drowned cities, this one walks waking, wearing ten thousand faces and serving none but the blind idiot void at the center of all things. The grimoires warn that it comes not to devour but to teach: it whispers truths that unmake the mind, hands the curious the keys to ruin, and watches civilizations gut themselves on knowledge they begged to receive. Cultists raise it on pillars of cold fire, mistaking its attention for favor. It has no favor. It is the herald, the goad, the laughing thing that walks ahead of the apocalypse to be sure the door is left open. To bargain with it is to lose, slowly, and to be grateful for the lesson until the very end. Burn the idol. Salt the ash. It remembers your name regardless.
Run Nyarlathotep in Sixty Seconds
- Hold Maddening Presence ticks before initiative — anyone in 30 ft. who sees it eats 3d6 psychic and attacks at disadvantage, so the party fights debuffed from turn one.
- Open with Whispered Truth on the enemy spellcaster: 6d6 psychic and incapacitated is a turn stolen, and that's your kill-priority — silence the casters first.
- Reaction Recoiling Mass means every spell cast in line of sight or every step into reach earns a free tentacle — melee swarms and careless casters bleed for approaching.
- Bloodied Ten Thousand Forms reshapes it: grab fly to break a melee pin, 20-ft. reach to double-grapple, or bonus psychic to burst a cluster — reroll the shape as it keeps dropping.
- Three ways: solo dread boss with full legendary kit (T3); a shrine-bound avatar flanked by cultists (T2); or a shrunken fragment haunting a single room (T1).
Nyarlathotep
Huge aberration, chaotic evil
CR 11 · 7,200 XP · GUIDELINEMaddening Presence. Any creature that starts its turn within 30 feet of Nyarlathotep and can see it must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or take 10 (3d6) psychic damage and have disadvantage on attack rolls until the start of its next turn. On a success, the creature is immune to this trait for 24 hours.
Ten Thousand Forms. Signature. Nyarlathotep's flesh is never fixed. As it is reduced past each 50 hit points, and when it first becomes bloodied, it sloughs into a new shape: roll a d4 — 1 it gains fly 40 ft., 2 its tentacle reach becomes 20 ft., 3 it gains advantage on saving throws until its next turn, 4 its weapon attacks deal an extra 7 (2d6) psychic damage until its next turn. The form persists until it shifts again.
Magic Resistance. Nyarlathotep has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Actions
Multiattack. Nyarlathotep makes three Tentacle attacks, or two Tentacle attacks and uses Whispered Truth.
Tentacle. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 18 (3d8 + 5) bludgeoning damage plus 7 (2d6) psychic damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 16) if it is Large or smaller.
Whispered Truth. Nyarlathotep utters a secret no mind should hold. One creature it can see within 60 feet must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or take 21 (6d6) psychic damage and be incapacitated until the end of its next turn (half damage and no incapacitation on a success).
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Recoiling Mass (Reaction). When a creature Nyarlathotep can see casts a spell or moves within its reach, it makes one Tentacle attack against that creature.
Legendary Actions (3/Round)
Legendary Actions. Nyarlathotep can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature's turn. It regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.
Lash. Nyarlathotep makes one Tentacle attack.
Shifting Step (Costs 2 Actions). Nyarlathotep collapses into a roil of limbs and re-forms in an unoccupied space it can see within 40 feet. This movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.
Maddening Whisper (Costs 2 Actions). Nyarlathotep uses Whispered Truth.
A towering pillar of writhing tentacles and serpentine flesh erupts from cold flame, crowned by an eyeless, fanged visage and a single questing proboscis that tastes thought itself. No two who behold it describe the same shape.
Nyarlathotep, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEBorrowed Sight (signature). The acolyte sees through Nyarlathotep's truesight while within 120 feet of it, and cannot be surprised.
Actions
Ritual Athame. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6 + 2) piercing damage plus 7 (2d6) psychic damage.
Reactions
Whispered Ward. When the acolyte or an ally within 10 feet takes psychic damage, the acolyte can reduce that damage by 7 (2d6) by speaking a stolen secret.
A robed devotee whose eyes have been replaced by the god's gift of seeing too much, mouthing prophecies it no longer understands.
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.
A diminished avatar — a fragment of the Chaos squeezed into a haunted shrine. Open with Whispered Truth on the loudest spellcaster, then tentacle-grapple the closest fighter. Lean on Maddening Presence to grind the party's accuracy; this is a hard fight even shrunken, so pair it with cultists rather than running it raw.
Open by shifting beside the healer and using Whispered Truth to incapacitate them. Recoiling Mass punishes the first caster who tries to nuke it. When bloodied, Ten Thousand Forms is your lever — take fly to escape melee or 20-ft. reach to grapple two PCs at once. Pair it with bound acolytes who soak psychic damage for it.
Run it as a true solo boss. Open with Maddening Presence already taxing everyone, then Multiattack into a grapple and a Whispered Truth on the strongest single-target threat. Spend legendary actions on Lash and Shifting Step to stay loose and never get pinned; Recoiling Mass means casting at it costs an extra tentacle to the face. Kill-priority is the party's casters — incapacitate them, then peel them off the wall.
Put Nyarlathotep 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 Nyarlathotep?
Natively CR 11 (Tier 3, levels 11–15): AC 17, 190 HP, +8 to hit, save DC 17. Because it is a genuine solo boss with three legendary actions and the Recoiling Mass reaction, its sheet is pitched one band below the lair-fight math — the action economy lets it play up against a full party. Scale it down to CR 6 (T2) or roughly CR 2 (T1) with the alternate rows.
Can Nyarlathotep be a companion or ally?
No — the Crawling Chaos serves nothing and no one survives bargaining with it. For a controllable allied piece, use the Hollow Acolyte stat block (AC 13, 114 HP), a bound devotee that borrows the god's sight and wards allies against psychic damage with stolen secrets.
How do I keep one boss interesting for a whole fight?
Use the kit deliberately. Maddening Presence pressures positioning, Recoiling Mass punishes the obvious counters, and Ten Thousand Forms physically changes the fight every 50 HP — narrate the new shape each time. Spend legendary actions to relocate (Shifting Step) so it never gets cornered, and always aim Whispered Truth at whoever the party most needs that round.
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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