Minotaurus
Minotaurus — The Encounter
The Bull of the Labyrinth, horned hunter of lost souls · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Minotaurus
Sired in shame and walled away from the sun, the Bull of the Labyrinth was the curse made flesh, a thing neither man nor beast that the king could not kill and dared not free. They fed it on tribute, youths and maidens driven into the winding dark to wander until the snorting in the corridors found them. It does not hunt by sight alone; it knows every turn of its prison the way a spider knows its web, and it herds the lost toward dead ends with patient, terrible certainty. Those who survived the maze spoke not of a monster but of a presence, the smell of old blood and wet hide, the click of hooves always one passage behind. Heroes who finally cornered it learned the price of its rage: it fought without thought for its own ruin, goring and hewing until its heart burst or its prey lay still. To free a captive city of it, you must first become more lost than the captives, and then more savage than the bull.
Run Minotaurus in Sixty Seconds
- Open with Charge Move at least 10 ft. straight in, gore, and the target eats +2d8 piercing and a DC 16 Strength save or it is shoved 10 ft. and knocked prone. Lead every fight this way.
- Go Reckless on turn one Advantage on all your axe attacks for the price of being easier to hit. The bull does not care about its own safety, so neither should you.
- Kill-priority is whoever it bloodied Labyrinthine Recall gives advantage against any creature it has already bloodied this encounter, so commit to one target and finish them.
- When bloodied, lean into Goring Rush Anyone who steps away to heal or flee triggers a free reaction charge-and-gore. The maze belongs to the bull; nobody walks out clean.
- Three ways to run it As a corridor guardian that herds the party into a dead end, as the muscle beside a spellcasting boss, or as a lone berserk hunter that splits a careless party apart one isolated PC at a time.
Minotaurus
Large monstrosity, chaotic evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINECharge. If the Minotaurus moves at least 10 ft. straight toward a target and then hits it with a gore attack on the same turn, the target takes an extra 9 (2d8) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 16 Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 10 ft. away and knocked prone.
Labyrinthine Recall. (signature) The Minotaurus can perfectly recall any path it has ever walked. It can never become lost by nonmagical means and, while in a maze, corridor, or dungeon it has explored, it has advantage on attack rolls against any creature it has bloodied during the current encounter.
Reckless. At the start of its turn, the Minotaurus can gain advantage on all melee weapon attack rolls during that turn, but attack rolls against it have advantage until the start of its next turn.
Actions
Multiattack. The Minotaurus makes two greataxe attacks, or one greataxe attack and one gore attack.
Greataxe. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (2d12 + 5) slashing damage.
Gore. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 5) piercing damage.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Goring Rush. When a creature within 10 ft. that the Minotaurus can see moves away from it, the Minotaurus can use its reaction to move up to its speed straight toward that creature and make one gore attack.
A towering bull-headed brute caught mid-charge, hide harness creaking over corded muscle, a double-bladed axe raised to split a skull and a second axe lashed to its back for when the first is buried in bone.
Minotaurus, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEMaze-Born (signature). The Calf cannot be flanked and ignores difficult terrain made of rubble or worked stone. It always knows the location of its bonded ally while both are underground.
Actions
Horn Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6 + 4) piercing damage, and if the Calf moved at least 10 ft. toward the target this turn it must make a DC 14 Strength save or be knocked prone.
Reactions
Bull Rush. When an ally within 5 ft. is hit by a melee attack, the Calf can use its reaction to shove the attacker, forcing a DC 14 Strength save or be pushed 5 ft. and have the triggering attack made at disadvantage.
A younger, leaner beast still half-mad from the dark, loyal only to the larger bull whose scent it was raised to follow.
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 straight-line Charge to knock the front-liner prone, then Reckless every turn after. Kill-priority is whoever it has already bloodied (Labyrinthine Recall gives it advantage on them). At this tier it is a terrifying mini-boss for a party of four; pair it with a couple of skeleton warriors to plug the corridor behind it.
Charge the squishiest caster you can reach, then Multiattack to finish them. Use Goring Rush to punish anyone who tries to disengage and flee into the maze. It is a brute add-on, not a legendary boss: pair it with a bigger threat (a Goetic captain or a hydra) so the party cannot simply focus-fire the bull down without leaving the real boss free.
Lead with Charge for the prone-and-push, then stay Reckless and hew through the front line. Kill-priority is the healer once bloodied. Even scaled up it has no legendary actions, so keep it as the muscle beside a true centerpiece; let it body-block chokepoints while the boss controls the fight.
Put Minotaurus 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 Minotaurus?
Its home tier is CR 6 (2,300 XP), a Tier 2 brute built for parties of levels 5-10. The stat block also scales down to a CR 2-ish Tier 1 menace (AC 14, +4, DC 13) and up to a CR 11-ish Tier 3 enforcer (AC 18, +9, DC 17). Pick the row matching your table; the traits and actions stay identical and only the numbers move.
Can Minotaurus be a companion or ally?
Not the great bull itself, but its bound shadow can be. Asterion's Calf, Bound (AC 14, 75 HP) is a leaner maze-born beast that fights at a hero's side, slamming with horns, never letting itself be flanked, and shoving foes off allies with Bull Rush. Use it as a loyal but half-feral guardian, not a friendly NPC.
Is the Minotaurus a solo boss?
No. It has no legendary actions, so a focused party can drop it fast if it fights alone. It shines as muscle beside a true centerpiece, a chokepoint guardian, or a hunter that isolates and splits a careless party in the dark.
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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