Manananggal
Manananggal — The Encounter
The Sundered One, who flies on bat wings to drink the unborn · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Manananggal
Across the seven thousand islands she is whispered of by many names, but her hunger is always the same. By day the manananggal passes as a comely village woman, perhaps a neighbor, perhaps a friend. By night she anoints her body with oil, splits clean at the waist, and casts her lower half into the brush to abandon it standing like a felled tree. Her winged upper torso takes to the sky, organs dangling, and she seeks the homes of expectant mothers. Through thatch and shutter she threads her hair-thin tongue to the sleeping womb and drinks the unborn or the heart's blood of the weak. Her one terror is the dawn: should her halves stay parted when light comes, she perishes. So the wise leave her abandoned body, and pack the raw waist with salt, ash, crushed garlic, and a sting of vinegar, so that when she returns to rejoin herself the sundered flesh will not knit, and the rising sun will end her.
Run Manananggal in Sixty Seconds
- It is two creatures. The flying upper torso fights; the lower body stands inert nearby. Sundering is a bonus action and grants nonmagical-weapon resistance, so it opens combat by splitting and taking to the air.
- Kill the body, not the bat. Destroying the abandoned lower half (AC 11, 30 HP), or packing the open waist with salt, ash, or garlic, stops it rejoining and kills it at dawn. Telegraph this to players; it is the whole encounter.
- Open on the sleeping or the prone. The proboscis deals heavy necrotic, heals the manananggal, and lowers max HP. It hunts the weakest target and drinks, so guard your downed and your healers.
- When bloodied, it runs for its halves. A wounded manananggal disengages with Take Wing and flees to rejoin its body before sunrise rather than die. Block the route or it escapes to hunt another night.
- Three ways to run it: a single-session horror mystery (find the body before dawn), a flying skirmisher dropped beside a bigger boss, or a recurring village stalker that retreats and returns until the party learns its salt-and-ash weakness.
Manananggal
Medium fiend (shapechanger), neutral evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINESunder (Recharges after a Short or Long Rest). As a bonus action, the manananggal splits at the waist. Its winged upper torso gains a flying speed and acts on its own; its abandoned lower body remains standing and inert with AC 11 and 30 HP. The severed body is the manananggal's one weakness: while sundered, the creature has resistance to nonmagical weapon damage, but if its lower body is destroyed, or salt, ash, or garlic is packed into the open waist, the upper torso cannot rejoin at dusk's end and the manananggal dies when the sun rises.
Proboscis Feeder. The manananggal has a long thread-thin tongue. Its bite reaches farther than its size suggests, and it deals extra damage to creatures that are prone, restrained, or sleeping (see Multiattack).
Sunlight Dread. If the manananggal is sundered when dawn breaks, it dies. It avoids fighting near sunrise and flees to rejoin its body before first light.
Actions
Multiattack. The manananggal makes two attacks: one with its claws and one with its proboscis. Against a prone, restrained, or sleeping target the proboscis deals an extra 9 (2d8) necrotic damage.
Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) slashing damage.
Proboscis. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) piercing damage plus 9 (2d8) necrotic damage, and the manananggal regains hit points equal to the necrotic damage dealt. The target's hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the necrotic damage taken until it finishes a long rest.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Take Wing (Bonus Action). While severed, the manananggal can take the Disengage or Hide action as a bonus action, beating its bat wings to slip out of reach.
Severed at the waist, a beautiful woman's upper half rears up on leathery bat wings, her viscera trailing as she lunges; below, her abandoned legs stand bloodless and hollow, waiting for her to crawl back at dawn.
Manananggal, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINESalt-Keeper (signature). Manananggal carries a pouch of blessed salt and ash. As an action it can pack an open wound or a severed manananggal's waist, preventing that creature from rejoining its body or regaining hit points for 1 minute.
Actions
Bolo Slash. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d8 + 3) slashing damage, plus 4 (1d8) radiant damage to fiends and undead.
Reactions
Ward the Womb. When an ally within 5 ft. would take necrotic damage, Manananggal interposes a charm and reduces that damage by 1d8.
An aswang-hunter's familiar in a wide woven hat, who knows that the monster's weakness is never its claws but its abandoned other half.
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 from the rafters with a proboscis strike on a sleeping or prone target for the bonus necrotic, then fly out of reach. Kill-priority is whatever is healing the party. Pair it with a bigger aswang or a cult leader; it is the ambush-and-drain piece, not the anchor.
Open by Sundering on turn one so it flies free with weapon resistance, then dive on the squishiest caster with the lifedraining proboscis. If clustered, it picks off stragglers from the air and Disengages with Take Wing. The party's counter is to find and destroy the abandoned lower body, so run it as a riddle, not a slugfest; pairs with a flagship boss it can drain HP from to outlast.
Sunder immediately and stay airborne; lead with proboscis on prone or restrained targets for stacked necrotic and self-healing. Kill-priority is anyone holding salt, fire, or radiant damage. Pair it with grapplers or webs that set up the prone/restrained bonus; it is the lurking assassin add-on, not the centerpiece.
Put Manananggal 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 Manananggal?
Its native build is CR 6 (2,300 XP), tuned for a Tier 2 party of levels 5-10. The stat record also provides scaled CR 2-ish and CR 11-ish columns so you can drop it into Tier 1 or Tier 3 tables without rebuilding it.
Can Manananggal be a companion or ally?
Not as the aswang itself, but the record includes Salakot, a bound aswang-hunter familiar (AC 13, 66 HP) who carries blessed salt to seal wounds and a radiant-edged bolo, making an ideal ally NPC for a party that hunts the manananggal.
How do players actually kill a Manananggal?
They must defeat or trap the winged upper half AND deny it its lower body. Finding the abandoned waist and packing it with salt, ash, garlic, and vinegar prevents rejoining; if the halves stay parted at sunrise, the creature dies. A straight damage race is the hard way; the folklore weakness is the intended solution.
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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