Wood Golem 2
Wood Golem 2 — The Encounter
Antlered heartwood given murderous life by old forest magic · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Wood Golem 2
When a grove is wronged, the elder roots remember. A wood golem is not carved but coaxed: a hedge-witch or druid binds a guardian spirit into the heartwood of a fallen sentinel tree, and the timber knits itself upright around the bargain. The antlered crown marks the old pact with the stag-spirits of the wild, and the single glowing knot is the eye through which the forest watches its borders. It feels no pain, no fear, and no haste; it simply walks the bounds it was made to keep, crushing trespassers beneath root and bough. Such guardians stand silent for decades until a single broken branch or felled neighbor stirs them. Woodsmen speak of clearings where the same dead tree is never in the same place twice, and where those who carry axe or torch are found pressed flat into the loam, their bones threaded through with fresh green shoots.
Run Wood Golem 2 in Sixty Seconds
- Stage it still. Place the golem as a dead tree (False Appearance) on the map before initiative; spring it when the party clusters underneath.
- Open with Splinter Burst. Cone the bunched-up group, then Multiattack the nearest target to knock it prone with the leg-sweep rider.
- Kill-priority is the torch-bearer. It has fire vulnerability and the burned-target slam bonus cuts both ways, so deny the party easy fire and punish whoever lights one near you.
- When bloodied, back into a chokepoint, keep Splinter Burst on recharge, and use Slam to keep spellcasters prone and off their feet.
- Three ways to run it: lone grove-ambush guardian, paired with a druid or hedge-witch handler, or as a wall-of-wood add-on beside a bigger flagship threat.
Wood Golem 2
Large construct, unaligned
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEFalse Appearance. While the golem remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from a dead tree or a heap of timber.
Vulnerable to Fire. Signature. The golem's heartwood is dry and resinous. It has vulnerability to fire damage. While it has taken fire damage during the current or previous turn, its branching limbs flare and the next slam attack against a creature deals an extra 7 (2d6) fire damage.
Actions
Multiattack. The golem makes two Slam attacks.
Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (3d6 + 5) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone as the root-claws sweep its legs.
Splinter Burst (Recharge 5-6). The golem flexes and hurls a spray of barbed splinters in a 15-foot cone. Each creature in that area must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw, taking 22 (5d8) piercing damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success.
A towering figure of fused trunk and ironbark, crowned with a rack of antler-like branches and lit by a single knot-hole eye. Its root-fingered hands flex with the slow patience of something that has grown, not been born.
Wood Golem 2, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINERooted Vigil (signature). While Wood Golem 2 is within 5 feet of a willing ally, that ally gains 5 temporary hit points at the start of each of its turns (to a maximum of 15).
Actions
Branch Rake. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d4 + 4) slashing damage.
Reactions
Grasping Roots. When a creature the companion can see moves within 5 feet of it, Wood Golem 2 can force that creature to make a DC 13 Strength saving throw or have its speed reduced to 0 until the end of its next turn.
A knee-high tangle of living root and sprouting twig, a shard of the same grove-spirit, that scuttles at a warden's heel and snares the careless.
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 as terrain: stand it as a False Appearance dead tree and let the party walk under the antlers, then Slam to drop a frontliner prone. Anyone holding a torch is your friend, so keep slamming the burned target for the bonus fire. Run it as a single ambush threat or pair it with a hedge-witch handler.
Open with Splinter Burst into the clustered party, then Multiattack the prone-knocked target. Kill-priority is anyone carrying fire, because fire vulnerability ends this thing fast; bait them into wasting it. Pair it with a druid or a pack of woodland minions, never alone, since a four-PC party out-acts a single construct.
Use it as a lair anchor in a haunted grove: Splinter Burst on recharge while it walls off a chokepoint, Slam to keep casters prone. It still folds to concentrated fire, so surround it with minions and a real flagship boss to soak the party's action economy. Frame this fight as overrunning a guarded threshold, not a solo duel.
Put Wood Golem 2 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 Wood Golem 2?
Its home build is CR 6 (2,300 XP), tuned for a tier-2 party of levels 5-10. The stat card also gives drop-in CR 2-ish and CR 11-ish columns so you can field the same antlered guardian at tier 1 or tier 3 without rebuilding it.
Can Wood Golem 2 be a companion or ally?
Yes. Use the bound companion Saplingward, a knee-high root-spirit that grants nearby allies temporary hit points and snares enemies with grasping roots, for a player whose druid, ranger, or hedge-witch awakened a piece of the grove.
Why is it vulnerable to fire if it's a construct?
Its body is dry, resinous heartwood rather than stone or metal, so flame catches fast. That weakness is the intended counterplay: it hits hard and shrugs off mundane weapons, but a torch, a Fire Bolt, or a flask of oil turns the fight quickly in the party's favor.
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 Wood Golem 2 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