Demiurge
Demiurge — The Encounter
Yaldabaoth, the blind craftsman who mistook himself for God · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Demiurge
Where the true light pooled too thinly, a flaw took shape and called itself God. The Gnostics named it Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge: a craftsman born of error who fashioned the material world as a prison and mistook the cage for a kingdom. Lion-faced and serpent-bodied, it sits enthroned above its own creation, demanding worship it has no right to claim, for it does not know there is a fuller fire beyond the veil it wove. Its servants are the archons, jailers of the spheres, and its decrees are laws that bind matter and soul alike. To stand before the Demiurge is to be told, with absolute and terrible conviction, that you were made by it and belong to it. The danger is not only its coils and its unmaking word, but the lie itself: that there is nothing higher, nothing freer, and no waking from the dream it built.
Run Demiurge in Sixty Seconds
- Hold the cone. Unmaking Word is a 30-foot psychic cone (DC 16, 6d8) that leaves dropped foes babbling instead of dying. Bait the party out of a line before you fire it.
- Open with the lie. First round, Decree of the False God to frighten the leader, then bite the nearest body. Establish that this thing thinks it made you.
- Coils are the floor. Anyone ending their turn within 10 feet rolls DC 16 Dex or is restrained. This is your terrain control. Make the room feel like a trap.
- When bloodied, stop trading single attacks and start spending legendary actions on Serpent Surge to clear the cluster and Coiling Recoil to drag melee in.
- Three ways to run it: lone throne-god with legendary actions; serpent-tyrant flanked by an Archon companion; or downscale to T1/T2 as a mini-boss leading a serpent swarm.
Demiurge
Huge fiend (shapechanger), lawful evil
CR 13 · 10,000 XP · GUIDELINEFalse Creator. Signature. The Demiurge believes itself the maker of all things, and reality flinches to agree. Once per turn, when a creature within 30 feet fails a saving throw the Demiurge forced, that creature also takes 9 (2d8) psychic damage as its sense of self is briefly unmade.
Serpent Coils. The lower body is a writhing nest of serpents. The space within 10 feet of the Demiurge is difficult terrain. A creature that ends its turn there must succeed on a DC 16 Dexterity saving throw or be restrained until the start of its next turn.
Magic Resistance. The Demiurge has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Actions
Multiattack. The Demiurge makes one Claw attack and one Serpent Bite attack, or it uses Unmaking Word.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +12 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 18 (3d8 + 5) slashing damage.
Serpent Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +12 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) piercing damage plus 9 (2d8) poison damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 16 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned until the end of its next turn.
Unmaking Word. The Demiurge speaks a flawed word of creation in a 30-foot cone. Each creature there must make a DC 16 Charisma saving throw, taking 27 (6d8) psychic damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. A creature reduced to 0 hit points this way is left babbling and incapacitated (not unconscious) until it regains any hit points.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Coiling Recoil (Reaction). When a creature the Demiurge can see hits it with a melee attack, the Demiurge may lash out: the attacker makes a DC 16 Strength saving throw or is pulled 10 feet toward the Demiurge and knocked prone.
Legendary Actions (3/Round)
Claw. The Demiurge makes one Claw attack.
Serpent Surge (Costs 2 Actions). Each creature within 15 feet of the Demiurge must succeed on a DC 16 Dexterity saving throw or take 14 (4d6) piercing damage and be knocked prone as the coils erupt outward.
Decree of the False God (Costs 2 Actions). The Demiurge targets one creature it can see within 60 feet. The target must succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom saving throw or be frightened of the Demiurge until the end of its next turn, certain it stands before its true maker.
Rising from a churning knot of serpents on broad bat-wings, this horned creator-thing crowns itself with a false halo of authority, its lion-touched face fixed in the certainty that all things are its handiwork.
Demiurge, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEJailer's Decree (signature). When the archon hits a creature, that creature's speed is halved until the end of its next turn as the laws of matter tighten around it.
Actions
Warden's Glaive. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (2d10 + 5) slashing damage plus 7 (2d6) radiant damage.
Reactions
Seal the Sphere. When a creature within 5 feet tries to move away, the archon may make a Warden's Glaive attack against it as a reaction.
One of the seven jailers of the planetary spheres, sworn to the false creator and armed to keep souls from climbing past its station.
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 Unmaking Word on the cluster, then bite the closest body. Kill-priority: anyone who breaks free of the Serpent Coils restraint. Drop the legendary actions and most band numbers; at this tier it is a frightening mini-boss, so pair it with a swarm of lesser serpents rather than running it truly solo.
Lead with Serpent Coils positioning so the party clusters, then Unmaking Word. If clustered, spend Serpent Surge. Kill-priority: the healer or anyone with movement spells, since they unravel the coil trap. Strong as a solo here; give it 2 legendary actions per round instead of 3.
Open turn one with Decree of the False God on the party leader to peel them off, then Unmaking Word the bunched survivors. When bloodied, lean on Serpent Surge + Coiling Recoil to punish melee and reset the coil restraint. Kill-priority: ranged casters out of the coils; it is the centerpiece, so add an Archon or two as adds, not another boss.
Put Demiurge 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 Demiurge?
Native CR 13 (Tier 3, levels 11-15) with legendary actions, built as a solo centerpiece boss. Scale down to roughly CR 6 (Tier 2) or CR 2 (Tier 1) using the tier table; the traits and actions stay identical, only AC, HP, to-hit, save DC, and damage move.
Can Demiurge be a companion or ally?
Not directly; it is a flagship adversary that believes it is the maker of all things and bows to no one. For an allied or summoned servitor at the table, use the included Archon of the Sphere companion, a bound jailer that fights at its master's command.
Is the Demiurge a devil or an aberration?
Statted here as a Huge fiend with the shapechanger subtype, framed through Gnostic myth as Yaldabaoth, the false creator. It reads cleanly as a cosmic-horror tyrant; reskin it as an aberration or unique fiend to fit your cosmology without touching the numbers.
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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