Strength
Strength — The Encounter
The Eighth Arcanum, who masters the beast within by main force · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Strength
In the deck of the elder arcana, the Eighth card shows not a sword but a bare hand closing a beast's jaws, and this is the creature the image was drawn from. Folk of the cold marches call it the Unbent One, a thing of the lower wilds that learned the oldest lesson of the card it embodies: true strength is not rage but the mastery of rage. Frost answers its temper, sheathing its spine in icy thorns, yet it strikes with measured patience, never wild. Hunters say it cannot be made to flee, for fear has no purchase on a heart that has already conquered itself. It is drawn to places where the desperate make their stand, and it has been known to roar courage into faltering allies before wading in. Where it walks, weaker fiends quiet and the ground glitters with rime, as though the world itself braced for the weight of its tread.
Run Strength in Sixty Seconds
- Hold the brute as a wall, not a glass cannon: it has no ranged option, so it must close, and it cannot be frightened or routed.
- Open with Multiattack on the enemy front-liner, landing Crushing Fists first to knock them prone and steal their movement.
- Kill-priority is the party's healers and controllers, whoever can stand allies back up or negate the prone-lock the brute lives on.
- When bloodied it gains advantage on all melee attacks (Unbroken Will), so it actually gets deadlier, lead with your hardest control before it drops below half.
- Three ways to run it: a frost-mawed siege brute battering a chokepoint, a stoic guardian roaring courage into faltering minions with Lion's Heart, or a relentless duelist that hunts one chosen foe and never lets go.
Strength
Large fiend, chaotic neutral
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEUnbroken Will. The brute is immune to the frightened condition and has advantage on saving throws against being charmed, stunned, or knocked prone. While below half its hit points, it has advantage on all melee attack rolls.
Frozen Mane. Jagged spurs of ice erupt from the brute's spine. The first time on each of its turns that a creature within 5 ft. hits the brute with a melee attack, that creature takes 5 (2d4) cold damage.
Actions
Multiattack. The brute makes two attacks: one with its Crushing Fists and one with its Goring Horns.
Crushing Fists. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (3d8 + 5) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.
Goring Horns. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) piercing damage plus 4 (1d8) cold damage.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Lion's Heart (Recharge 5-6). As a bonus action, the brute lets out a defiant roar. Each ally within 30 ft. that can hear it gains 9 (2d8) temporary hit points and can immediately end one effect on itself causing it to be frightened or charmed.
A horn-crowned giant of corded muscle stands within a tarot arch, jagged spurs of frost bursting from its spine as blue witch-light crawls across the broken stone at its feet.
Strength, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINESure-Footed (signature). Strength cannot be knocked prone and ignores difficult terrain made of ice, snow, or rubble.
Actions
Frost Maul. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) bludgeoning damage plus 4 (1d8) cold damage.
Reactions
Brace the Line. When an adjacent ally is hit by an attack, Strength adds 2 to that ally's AC against the triggering attack, planting its bulk to absorb the blow.
A half-grown echo of the Unbent One, all stubborn shoulders and frost-crusted hide, that refuses to give ground beside those it has chosen.
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 by charging the squishiest caster and using Crushing Fists to knock them prone, then pin them. If the party clusters, position so its Frozen Mane punishes whoever melees it. At this tier it is a terrifying mini-boss; pair it with two or three lesser brutes, not as a lone fight.
Open with Multiattack on the front-line tank to knock it prone, then grind through it. Kill-priority is enemy healers and controllers, who can negate its prone-lock. Use Lion's Heart the moment its own minions falter; run it as a lieutenant guarding a bigger threat, never solo against a full party.
Open by smashing into the densest knot of melee so Frozen Mane bleeds the whole line, then knock the tank prone. When bloodied it gains advantage on every swing, so save your strongest control for that window. Pair it with a flagship boss and a screen of minions, anchoring the lair as an unkillable wall rather than the centerpiece.
Put Strength 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 Strength?
Its home stat block is CR 6 (2,300 XP), tuned for a party of levels 5-10. The record also gives a level 1-4 version (about CR 2) and a level 11-15 version (about CR 11), with identical traits and only the numbers scaled.
Can Strength be a companion or ally?
Yes. Use the bundled Rime-Cub, Bound profile (AC 13, 80 HP) as a sturdy frontline ally that braces beside its chosen, or reskin the full brute as a sworn champion who simply will not break and will not flee.
Does its frost make it a cold-themed monster I can swap into icy encounters?
Easily. Its Frozen Mane and cold-laced horns already key it to rime and winter; drop the Abyssal flavor and it reads cleanly as a glacial guardian or a beast of the frozen marches without changing a single number.
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 Strength 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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