Bulgasari
Bulgasari — The Encounter
The Iron-Eater That Cannot Be Slain · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Bulgasari
Hammered first from a starving monk's discarded rice grains and iron needles, the bulgasari grew with every blade it ate. Where it walked, swords softened to slag and armor flaked away like autumn bark, and the more steel the realm fed it the larger and the more unkillable it became, until its name was spoken only as a warning: the one that cannot be slain. Folk learned to bury their weapons and meet it bare-handed, for iron was its meat and its medicine both. It hungers without malice, a slow furnace of appetite, swallowing nails, ploughshares, and broken spears alike. Some say it once devoured an army's whole armoury in a single night and walked out the far gate twice the size it entered. To wound it is to feed it; to feed it is to make it grow; and so the wisest grimoires counsel not killing the iron-eater at all, but leading it gently away to the cold mountains where no metal is left for it to find.
Run Bulgasari in Sixty Seconds
- It eats your gear: every hit that lands on a metal weapon or armor wearer ruins the metal and heals the beast 10 HP. Tell players this fast so they stop feeding it.
- Open with Gore: hit the heaviest-armored front-liner to knock them prone and start chewing their plate, then Trunk Slam to grapple a backline caster into the brawl.
- When bloodied it grows: drop it to half and it gains +10 max HP and advantage on a save next turn. Burst it past that threshold instead of trading blows.
- Beat its resistance: it shrugs off nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing plus fire, so lean on magic weapons, cold, lightning, or radiant.
- Three ways to run it: a brute that ruins the party's arsenal; a grapple-and-drag bully that isolates the caster; or a folkloric puzzle the party must lead away rather than kill.
Bulgasari
Large monstrosity, neutral
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEIron Glutton. Signature. The bulgasari devours metal. When it hits a creature wielding or wearing a metal weapon, shield, or armor, that object takes a permanent -1 penalty (cumulative; a weapon dealing 0 or armor giving no bonus is consumed). Whenever the bulgasari swallows or destroys metal, it regains 10 hit points.
Ever-Growing Hide. Each time the bulgasari is reduced to half its hit points or below and survives until its next turn, its maximum hit points increase by 10 and its skin hardens, granting it advantage on the next saving throw it makes before the end of its next turn.
Actions
Multiattack. The bulgasari makes two attacks: one with its Gore and one with its Trunk Slam.
Gore. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (2d10 + 5) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.
Trunk Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) bludgeoning damage, and if the target is Medium or smaller it is grappled (escape DC 15). The bulgasari can grapple only one creature this way at a time.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Spine Bristle. Reaction. When a creature within 5 ft. hits the bulgasari with a melee attack, the bulgasari's bristling spines lash out. The attacker takes 7 (2d6) piercing damage.
A bear-bodied beast plated in iron-grey scales, crowned with a flaring mane and the tusked, trunked head of an elephant, its flanks erupting in barbed quills. It plants its claws and rears, and rusted nails rain from its grinding maw.
Bulgasari, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINELesser Glutton (signature). When the Bulgasari hits a creature wearing metal armor or wielding a metal weapon, it regains 5 hit points and the target's attack rolls with that weapon take a -1 penalty until the end of its next turn.
Actions
Butt. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6 + 5) bludgeoning damage.
Reactions
Stubborn Bulk. When the Bulgasari would be moved or knocked prone, it may roll a d6; on a 4 or higher it is unaffected.
A half-grown bulgasari, its scales still soft as wet clay, trailing the great beast and gnawing at every nail it finds.
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 a Gore on the front-line fighter to knock them prone, then Trunk Slam to drag a caster into reach. Kill-priority is whoever swings metal weapons, since every hit feeds it and heals it. Pair this scaled-down version with a stronger flagship; alone it is a slow grinder, not a centerpiece.
Open by goring the heaviest-armored target to begin eating their armor, then Trunk Slam to grapple a squishy mid-line caster. When bloodied its hide grows tougher, so burst it down fast or switch to magical/elemental damage that bypasses its nonmagical resistance. It is the wrecking-ball add-on beside a smarter boss who directs it.
Open against a metal-clad melee line, gore to prone, then grapple and drag the party's controller. Kill-priority for the DM is denying it metal to eat; for the players, magical damage to sidestep its resistance. Stack it next to a legendary boss so its growth and spine-reaction punish anyone who clusters in for a focus-fire.
Put Bulgasari 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 Bulgasari?
Its home tier is CR 6 (Tier 2, levels 5-10): AC 16, 138 HP, +7 to hit, save DC 15. Scale it to CR 2 for levels 1-4 or roughly CR 11 for levels 11-15 using the tier table; the traits stay identical and only the numbers move.
Can Bulgasari be a companion or ally?
Not the full adversary, but the bundled Slag-Calf (a half-grown bulgasari, AC 14, 82 HP) works as a bound beast ally that eats enemy metal and shrugs off being shoved. A diorama might run the great beast led on a chain rather than fought outright.
Why is it so hard to kill, and how should a party deal with it?
Bulgasari means 'cannot be killed' in Korean folklore. Mechanically it resists nonmagical physical damage, heals by devouring metal, and grows tougher when bloodied. Smart parties win by denying it metal, hitting with magic or elemental damage, or skipping the fight and luring it to barren mountains as the legends advise.
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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