The Elder Thing
The Elder Thing — The Encounter
Star-winged horror of the elder dark, older than the world · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is The Elder Thing
Before the first cities, before the first gods of men, the elder things drifted down from the cold between stars and laid claim to the young, steaming earth. This one is a remnant of that age: neither beast nor demon but a living relic of an order of being that ruled when the world was molten and strange. Sages who pry into the Necronomicon and the drowned tablets of forgotten coasts describe such creatures as builders and breeders, architects of slaves and cities long swallowed by ice and sea. Its crown of tentacles tastes the world through senses we have no names for, and its mind presses against the minds of lesser things like a great cold tide. To stand in its shadow is to feel one's own thoughts grow alien. It does not hate the way mortals hate; it simply finds the warm-blooded small, transient, and useful, and reorders them accordingly.
Run The Elder Thing in Sixty Seconds
- Stay airborne. Fly speed 50 ft. and only 20 ft. on the ground means it should dive, grapple, and lift off, not slug it out toe-to-toe.
- Open by clustering them. Land or hover where the Maddening Aura catches two or three PCs at the start of each turn; that 2d6 psychic plus the fright is your real engine.
- Kill-priority: the grappled target. Tentacle Crown grabs one PC and restrains it; focus claws and the brood on that creature while it can't escape.
- When bloodied, kite. Pull up out of melee reach and let the aura and Hideous Recoil chip the party while they scramble to reach you.
- Three ways to run it: a lone aerial ambush over the squishies, a grapple-and-drag bruiser dropping PCs from height, or a swarm-anchor hovering above its Spawn-Brood.
The Elder Thing
Large aberration, chaotic evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEAlien Mind. The elder thing has advantage on saving throws against being charmed or frightened, and on ability checks and saving throws against being grappled or restrained. Its thoughts cannot be read except by another aberration.
Maddening Aura. Signature. At the start of each of its turns, each creature within 15 feet of the elder thing that can see it must succeed on a DC 14 Wisdom saving throw or take 7 (2d6) psychic damage. A creature that fails by 5 or more is also frightened of it until the start of the elder thing's next turn. A creature that succeeds is immune to this aura for 24 hours.
Actions
Multiattack. The elder thing makes one Tentacle Crown attack and two Claw attacks.
Tentacle Crown. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (3d6 + 4) bludgeoning damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 15) if it is a Large or smaller creature. Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained and the elder thing can't use this attack on another target.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) slashing damage plus 3 (1d6) psychic damage.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Hideous Recoil. Reaction. When a creature the elder thing can see hits it with an attack, the elder thing emits a pulse of warped thought. The attacker must succeed on a DC 14 Wisdom saving throw or take 7 (2d6) psychic damage and have disadvantage on its next attack roll before the end of its next turn.
A barrel of ridged, ancient chitin rises on membranous star-spanning wings; where a head should be, a crown of pale feeding tentacles writhes above a nest of squirming feelers, and the air around it bends with thoughts no waking mind was meant to hold.
The Elder Thing, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINESwarm of Feelers (signature). The brood is a knot of writhing tentacular spawn. It can move through any space large enough for a Small creature without provoking opportunity attacks, and it has advantage on attack rolls against any creature that is grappled or restrained.
Actions
Lashing Tendrils. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (2d6 + 3) bludgeoning damage, and the target's speed is reduced by 10 feet until the end of its next turn.
Reactions
Cover the Master. Reaction. When an ally within 5 feet would be hit by an attack, the brood throws a tangle of tendrils across them, granting that ally +2 AC against the triggering attack.
A heaving mass of pale spawn-feelers calved from the elder thing's nesting coils, kept close to shield and to feed.
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 by flying into a clustered group so the Maddening Aura clips two or three PCs, then grapple the squishiest with the Tentacle Crown and drag it skyward. Kill-priority is the grappled target, since it is restrained and easy to drop. Pair it with the Spawn-Brood or a few cultists; alone it can stall a low-level party but cannot win an action-economy war by itself.
Open from the air, drop into the middle of the formation so the aura hits multiple PCs, then Multiattack the grappled target while Hideous Recoil punishes whoever swings at it. When bloodied, fly to range and rely on the aura to grind clustered casters down. Kill-priority is any PC who shrugs off the Wisdom save and starts buffing allies. Best run as a flying horror over a swarm of spawn or alongside a bigger cult leader.
Lead with an aerial dive into a tight party so the aura frightens the front line, grapple a key martial and haul it off its feet, then trade blows freely since Hideous Recoil taxes every attacker. Kill-priority is the controller PC trying to ground its flight. At this tier it is a lieutenant, not a centerpiece: pair it with a larger Mythos horror or a full spawn-brood lair so the action economy keeps pace with the party.
Put The Elder Thing 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 The Elder Thing?
Its home tier is CR 6 (Tier 2, levels 5-10): AC 16, 127 HP, +7 to hit, save DC 14. The block also scales down to a CR 2-ish Tier 1 build and up to a CR 11-ish Tier 3 build using the same traits with shifted numbers.
Can The Elder Thing be a companion or ally?
Not as a player companion; it is an alien horror that regards warm-blooded creatures as material. Its bundled companion is the Spawn-Brood (AC 13, 76 HP), a mass of feeder-tentacles that shields and slows for the side the elder thing serves.
How do I keep my martials relevant against it?
Give them a way to ground it: net, grappling spells, a readied attack to force it down, or a flying or ranged option of their own. Once its flight is neutralized and a PC beats the aura's Wisdom save, the elder thing loses its kiting advantage fast.
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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