Black Bear Guai
Black Bear Guai — The Encounter
Black bear-spirit of the mountain, roaring in golden chains · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Black Bear Guai
In the old mountain registers it is named a xiong-guai, a black bear that fed too long on the offerings left at a forgotten shrine and woke one winter with a man's cunning behind its eyes. It tore the gilded chains from the altar and wears them yet, half ornament and half the only vestment of a god it devoured. Hunters who climb its slopes speak of a roar that empties the lungs and a charge that splinters pine like kindling. It does not hoard treasure for wealth but to bait the greedy into its caves, where it folds them into an embrace no man walks out of. Priests insist it can be reasoned with, for it understands every prayer spoken to it; the bones at its den say otherwise. To strike it only stokes its temper, and a wounded guai is a worse thing by far than a hungry one.
Run Black Bear Guai in Sixty Seconds
- Hold the Earthshaking Roar for the opening round, when the party is still bunched up and one good fright can blow up their formation.
- Open by closing distance fast (40 ft. + climb) and grappling the nearest body, then spend every turn feeding that victim into Crushing Embrace.
- Kill-priority: whatever it has grappled. A restrained target eats Bite + Crushing Embrace and rarely escapes DC 15 on its own.
- When bloodied, Bristling Fury jumps to +3d6 on its first hit each turn, so encourage the players to keep swinging into it and then watch the damage spike.
- Three ways to run it: a lone shrine-guardian mini-boss; the bruiser beside a caster flagship; or a pair of guai herding a party into a cave choke point.
Black Bear Guai
Large monstrosity, chaotic evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEKeen Smell. The guai has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell, and cannot be surprised by a creature it can smell.
Bristling Fury. Signature. Each time the guai is struck by a melee attack, the rage in its mountain heart swells. The first time on each of its turns that it takes damage, its next melee weapon attack this turn deals an extra 7 (2d6) damage. While the guai has less than half its hit points, this extra damage increases to 11 (3d6).
Actions
Multiattack. The guai makes two Claw attacks and one Bite attack. It can replace one Claw attack with Crushing Embrace if a creature is grappled by it.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) slashing damage. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature, it is grappled (escape DC 16).
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6 + 5) piercing damage.
Crushing Embrace. One creature grappled by the guai must make a DC 15 Strength saving throw, taking 16 (3d6 + 5) bludgeoning damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. On a failure the target also has the restrained condition until the grapple ends.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Earthshaking Roar. Recharge 5-6. The guai looses a roar that shakes the mountainside. Each creature of its choice within 30 feet that can hear it must succeed on a DC 14 Wisdom saving throw or have the frightened condition until the end of its next turn. (Bonus Action.)
A boulder of black-furred muscle reared on its hind legs, jaws gaping in a roar, golden prayer chains and a red tartan sash slung over a body that long ago stopped being any honest beast.
Black Bear Guai, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEPack Tactics (signature). Black Bear Guai has advantage on an attack roll against a creature if at least one of the guai's allies is within 5 feet of the creature and the ally isn't incapacitated.
Actions
Maul. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d4 + 4) slashing damage.
Reactions
Cover the Flank. When an ally within 5 feet of Black Bear Guai is hit by a melee attack, Black Bear Guai can move up to half its speed toward the attacker without provoking opportunity attacks.
A lesser bear-spirit drawn to the guai's roar, half-tame and quick to bite for the alpha that feeds it.
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 Earthshaking Roar to scatter the squishiest two PCs, then charge the nearest into a grapple. Kill-priority: whoever it has grappled, since Crushing Embrace ends fights at this tier. This is a hard mini-boss for level 3-4 parties; throw it alone or with two of Lantern.
Open by roaring, then bull into the cluster: two Claws to grapple, Bite, and feed grappled targets into Crushing Embrace. When bloodied, Bristling Fury spikes to 3d6, so let the party hit it and punish the very next swing. Pair it with a bigger threat (a sorcerer-king or oni) as the door-smashing bruiser piece, not the brains.
Same playbook, bigger numbers: grapple the melee anchor and Crushing Embrace it every round. Kill-priority is whoever it can pin, then the healer. At this tier it is an add-on muscle piece beside a true flagship caster; let it tank the front line while the boss kills from the back.
Put Black Bear Guai 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 Black Bear Guai?
Native CR 6 (2,300 XP) as a Tier 2 brawler. The stat record also gives drop-in numbers for Tier 1 (around CR 2) and Tier 3 (around CR 11) so you can scale it to your table without changing how it plays.
Can Black Bear Guai be a companion or ally?
Not the guai itself, but the record bundles Lantern, Bound, a lesser bear-spirit (AC 13, 38 HP) with Pack Tactics that can fight alongside the party or as the guai's pack. Use it as an ally NPC or as reinforcement that arrives mid-fight.
Is Black Bear Guai a spellcaster?
No. It is a pure melee bruiser built around grappling and crushing. Its only ranged threat is Earthshaking Roar, a fear effect, so a party that spreads out and answers the grapple will weather it; one that clusters gets folded up 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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