Sigbin
Sigbin — The Encounter
The backward-walking blood-thief of Visayan shadow · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Sigbin
In the old Visayan reckoning the sigbin is no mere wild thing but a kept thing, fed in secret by families called sigbinan who hoard it in clay jars for the luck and gold it drags home. It walks the world backward, head lowered between its hind legs, so that it sees its quarry upside down and is never seen coming. By night it grows unseen, drinking a victim's blood not from the throat but from the shadow they cast across the ground, and on the eve of the Day of the Dead it is loosed to harvest hearts, which its master strings into amulets of dread power. Folk hang charms of garlic, salt, and a stingray's tail by the door, for these alone are said to turn it. Catch its scent — sour as a struck match — and you have only moments before the cold tug at your own shadow tells you it is already behind you.
Run Sigbin in Sixty Seconds
- Hold for shadow — keep the sigbin in dim light or darkness; it Hides as a bonus action and ambushes for a free heal, so deny the party clean light and it stays slippery.
- Open with a surprise Bite on whoever strays to the party's edge — the necrotic blood-drain heals the sigbin, making the first exchange a net win.
- Kill-priority: edge-loiterers and low-HP casters; the Lashing Tail knocks a frontliner prone so the Bite can slip past to the soft target.
- When bloodied, stop trading blows — use Backward Gait and Heart-Snatcher to break line of sight, regroup in shadow, and re-ambush next round.
- Three ways to run it: lone luck-beast terrorizing a village (T1), flanking bleeder beside a flagship horror (T2), or a brood of two-three in a lightless lair (T3).
Sigbin
Medium monstrosity, neutral evil
CR 2 · 450 XP · GUIDELINEBackward Gait. The sigbin moves with its head lowered between its hind legs and its body turned away from prey. It does not provoke opportunity attacks when it moves, and creatures have disadvantage on attack rolls of opportunity against it.
Shadow-Blooded. While in dim light or darkness, the sigbin can take the Hide action as a bonus action and has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks. When it hits a creature it has surprised, it regains 5 hit points.
Actions
Multiattack. The sigbin makes one Lashing Tail attack and one Bite attack.
Lashing Tail. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6+3) bludgeoning damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 13 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (2d4+2) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or take 4 (1d8) necrotic damage as the sigbin drinks its blood from the shadow it casts; the sigbin regains hit points equal to that necrotic damage.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Heart-Snatcher. When the sigbin reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a Bite, it can move up to half its speed without provoking opportunity attacks. The next attack roll made against the sigbin before the start of its next turn has disadvantage as it vanishes into shadow.
A hairless, ash-grey beast the size of a hound that scuttles backward with its great horned head bowed between its hind legs, its whip-thin tail coiled overhead like a scorpion's sting.
Sigbin, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINECling to Shadow (signature). While within 5 feet of an ally in dim light or darkness, the whelp and that ally have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks.
Actions
Nipping Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d8+2) piercing damage.
Reactions
Backstep. When a creature ends its turn adjacent to the whelp, the whelp can move up to 15 feet backward without provoking opportunity attacks.
A jar-raised pup that shadows its keeper's heel, trading luck and stolen trinkets for scraps of warm meat.
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 dim light or darkness with a surprise Bite to drain a straggler and heal off the hit. Kill-priority: pick off whoever wanders to the party's edge, then Backward Gait away before melee closes. Pair it with a Manananggal or a Tikbalang stalker so the party fights two ambushers from opposite shadows.
Run it as a pack predator harrying the flanks while a bigger horror anchors the room. Open with Shadow-Blooded ambush on the lowest-HP caster, then use Heart-Snatcher to vanish after each kill. Pairs with a Bakunawa or Batibat as the centerpiece — the sigbin is the bleed, not the boss.
Field two or three as a hunting brood in a lair of total darkness, each fixed on a different PC's shadow. Concentrate Bites to stack necrotic drain and self-heal faster than the party can burst one down. Never run it alone here — chain it to a flagship horror and let the sigbin punish anyone who breaks formation.
Put Sigbin 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 Sigbin?
Its home tier is CR 2 (Tier 1, ~450 XP), an ambush predator built as an add-on rather than a centerpiece boss. The Tier 2 and Tier 3 lines scale the same kit to roughly CR 6 and CR 11 so it can keep harrying higher-level parties beside a larger threat.
Can Sigbin be a companion or ally?
Yes — the sigbinan of folklore keep them in jars for luck and stolen gold. Use the bound Sigbin Whelp companion block (AC 12, 27 HP) as a stealthy familiar that shares shadow-hiding with its keeper and skitters out of danger backward.
How do I stop a sigbin from draining my shadow?
Light is the counter. Its best tricks key off dim light or darkness, so flooding the area with bright light shuts down its bonus-action Hide and surprise heal. Folk wards of salt, garlic, and a stingray's tail make great flavorful plot keys if you want a non-mechanical out.
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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