Cerberus
Cerberus — The Encounter
Three-throated hound that guards the gate of the dead · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Cerberus
Where the road of the living ends and the river of the dead begins, the three-throated hound keeps watch. The old tongues name it Cerberus, whelped of the serpent-mother and the storm-father, set as warden at the threshold no shade may recross. Its purpose runs both ways: the dead it lets pass inward, fawning at their heels, yet it shows them only fangs should they turn back toward the sun. The living it suffers not at all. Heroes who would steal a soul from the silent country learned to lull it — with honeyed cake, with the music of a grieving harp, with a draught of sleep. Those who came with steel instead were torn apart by jaws that never all close at once, for while two heads feed the third still watches. To slay it is no triumph; it cannot truly die while the gate it guards endures, and it will be standing there again before the next moon.
Run Cerberus in Sixty Seconds
- Hold the gate. Cerberus is a guardian, not a hunter — it fights to keep the party away from a threshold, door, or descent, and never willingly leaves its post.
- Open with the grapple. Triple Bite (or three Bites) to lock down three different heroes at once; Pack of One then forces each grappled victim to attack only Cerberus, splitting the party from its support.
- Kill-priority: nobody — keep the heads. Cerberus has no target it must drop. The PARTY'S priority should be removing heads/conditions; while two heads stand it can't be surprised and shrugs off fear, charm, and stun.
- When bloodied, it releases all grapples, Lunges past the front line, and pours every Bite into the lowest-AC caster — a sudden burst meant to drop one PC before it falls.
- Three ways to run it: a lone gate-boss (T2 solo), the anchor of a guardian pack beside undead or a Goetic warden (T3), or — true to myth — a hazard the party should BYPASS with cake, song, or a sleep spell rather than fight.
Cerberus
Huge monstrosity, neutral evil
CR 9 · 5,000 XP · GUIDELINEThree Heads. Cerberus has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks and on saving throws against being blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, stunned, and knocked unconscious. While at least two of its heads remain, it can watch in every direction at once and can't be surprised.
Keen Smell. Cerberus has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell, and it can track a creature that has passed within the last hour.
Pack of One. Signature. When Cerberus hits a creature with a bite, its other heads snap at the same prey. Until the start of its next turn, that creature has disadvantage on attack rolls against any creature other than Cerberus, hounded on all sides.
Actions
Multiattack. Cerberus makes three Bite attacks, one from each head.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8+6) piercing damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 16) if it is Large or smaller. Cerberus has three mouths, each of which can grapple only one target.
Bone-Crushing Drag. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature grappled by Cerberus. Hit: 16 (2d10+6) bludgeoning damage, and the target is knocked prone as it is shaken in the hound's jaws.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Watchful Snap. Reaction. When a creature Cerberus can see moves out of a free head's reach, that head makes a Bite attack against it.
Legendary Actions (3/Round)
Detect. Cerberus makes a Wisdom (Perception) check.
Lunge. Cerberus moves up to half its speed without provoking opportunity attacks.
Triple Bite (Costs 2 Actions). Cerberus makes one Bite attack with each of its three heads against up to three different creatures within reach.
A wall of muscle, bone plate, and dragon-fanged heads, the gate-hound stalks across molten ground with skulls strung along its spine like trophies of the dead it has turned back.
Cerberus, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINETwo-Headed Watch (signature). The whelp can't be surprised while conscious and has advantage on saving throws against being frightened.
Actions
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6+4) piercing damage, and a Medium or smaller target is grappled (escape DC 14).
Reactions
Snarl Down. When an ally within 10 feet is hit by a melee attack, the whelp snaps at the attacker, who must succeed on a DC 14 Strength save or be pushed 5 feet and knocked prone.
A younger gate-hound, only two heads grown in, that heels to whoever fed it last and bristles at every stranger on the threshold.
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.
Drop the legendary actions and run it as a single-head terror that grapples the loudest target. Open by biting the front-liner and dragging them prone, then let the party peel it off. At this tier it is a deadly mini-boss alone; do not also field the whelp.
Solo centerpiece. Open with Triple Bite to grapple three different heroes, then use Pack of One so each grappled victim can only hit Cerberus. Kill-priority: nothing — it wants the party spread thin. Spend legendary actions on Watchful Snap and Lunge to deny escape; when bloodied it abandons grapples and goes all-in on the squishiest caster.
Scale the numbers up and pair it with a Goetic warden or a clutch of undead so it is the wall the party must break to reach the gate. Open by Lunging into the casters, then Triple Bite to lock three of them down. Keep all three heads alive — losing Three Heads is its only real weakness.
Put Cerberus 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 Cerberus?
Its native build is CR 9 (5,000 XP), tuned as a solo centerpiece for a party of levels 5-10. Because its legendary actions let it play up, the sheet sits a band above a standard CR 6 add-on. The tier table also gives a CR 2-ish version for levels 1-4 and a CR 11+ version for levels 11-15.
Can Cerberus be a companion or ally?
The full three-headed gate-hound is a boss, not a sidekick — but the Skull-Strung Whelp, Bound (AC 14, 100 HP) is a two-headed younger hound that heels to whoever fed it last. It bites and grapples, watches every direction so it can't be surprised, and snarls down attackers who strike its allies.
Is Cerberus public-domain safe to publish?
Yes. Cerberus is drawn straight from Greek myth — the three-headed hound that guards the gate of the dead, born of Echidna and Typhon. It is statted as a generic SRD Huge monstrosity with no proprietary cosmology, places, or ranks, so its identity is clean.
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 Cerberus 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.
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