Tanuki 1
Tanuki 1 — The Encounter
Straw-Hatted Trickster of the Old Japanese Roads · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Tanuki 1
Along the old post-roads, where lantern light gives out and the cedars lean close, the tanuki keeps its mischief. It is no mere beast: a shape-shifting spirit of the wild, fond of drink, fatter than it has any right to be, and forever in want of a joke at a traveler's expense. By moonlight it pads upright on two legs, swaddled in borrowed armor it won at dice, twirling a staff capped in brass that rings like a temple bell when it cracks a skull. It conjures coins from folded leaves to pay for sake it never means to honor, and when a merchant counts his purse the next dawn he finds only acorns. Cruel it is not, but careless of consequence, and a cornered tanuki will fight with a tumbler's grace before dissolving into a curl of leaf-smoke. Offer it rice wine and a riddle, and it may guide you true; cheat it, and it will lead you in circles until your boots wear thin.
Run Tanuki 1 in Sixty Seconds
- Disguise first. Start the tanuki as furniture or a friendly traveler so the party burns a turn before the fight even begins.
- Open with the staff. Lead with Capped Staff on the closest melee PC for a knockdown, then follow with a second strike while they are prone.
- Punish clustering. Use Conjured Leaf-Coins to shove a caster or archer 5 feet off a ledge or out of formation.
- When bloodied, lean on Vanishing Smoke and Tumbler's Step to bleed the party of opportunity attacks and stall while allies close in.
- Three ways to run it: roadside trickster ambushing travelers, a disguised infiltrator in a crowded shrine, or one of a pack pestering the flanks of a real boss.
Tanuki 1
Medium fey (yokai), chaotic neutral
CR 2 · 450 XP · GUIDELINEShapechanger Mischief. The tanuki can use a bonus action to magically alter its appearance, mimicking a humanoid it has seen or a piece of mundane furnishing (such as a kettle or statue). Its statistics are the same in each form. A creature can discern the disguise with a successful Wisdom (Insight) check contested by the tanuki's Charisma (Deception).
Tumbler's Step. Opportunity attacks against the tanuki are made with disadvantage, and difficult terrain costs it no extra movement.
Actions
Multiattack. The tanuki makes two strikes with its capped staff.
Capped Staff. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8+3) bludgeoning damage. If the target is Large or smaller, it must succeed on a DC 13 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.
Conjured Leaf-Coins. Ranged Spell Attack: +5 to hit, range 30 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6+2) force damage as a fistful of illusory coins snaps real for an instant. On a hit, the tanuki may shove the target 5 feet.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Vanishing Smoke (Reaction). When a creature the tanuki can see ends a turn within 5 feet of it, the tanuki can burst into a puff of leaf-smoke and teleport up to 20 feet to an unoccupied space it can see. It does not provoke opportunity attacks for this move.
A stout raccoon-dog yokai stands upright in a conical straw hat and lacquered armor, a rope cinched at its belly, twirling a long gold-capped staff with a grin full of teeth.
Tanuki 1, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEBorrowed Face (signature). Once per short rest, the kettle-spirit can take on the exact appearance of an ally within 30 feet until the end of its next turn. The first attack against the wrong target each round misses outright.
Actions
Brass Headbutt. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d6+3) bludgeoning damage.
Reactions
Puff and Roll. When hit by an attack, the kettle-spirit rolls 10 feet to an unoccupied space, reducing the damage by 3 (1d6).
A walking tea-kettle with stubby legs and a sly painted face, the tanuki's favorite disguise come loose and given a will of its own.
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 hiding or disguise so the party wastes a turn; lead with Capped Staff on the nearest melee PC to knock it prone, then teleport with Vanishing Smoke when surrounded. Kill-priority: drop the tanuki's tricks fast by readying for the smoke-teleport. Pair it with a flagship yokai or a band of bandits it leads on a merry chase.
Run it as a slippery skirmisher harassing the flanks while a bigger threat anchors the room. Open with leaf-coins to shove casters off ledges, then dive in with the staff and vanish before focus fire lands. Pair it with a larger oni or temple-guardian boss; it is the annoyance, not the centerpiece.
Deploy two or three as a trickster pack in a haunted-shrine lair, each disguised among statues. Open with simultaneous staff knockdowns to scatter the party, then teleport-shuffle to keep the melee chasing ghosts. Pair them with a high-tier yokai lord; they soften and split the party rather than soloing it.
Put Tanuki 1 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 Tanuki 1?
Its home tier is CR 2 (450 XP), a Tier 1 add-on built for parties of levels 1-4. Scaled versions for Tier 2 (levels 5-10) and Tier 3 (levels 11-15) are provided so it can keep harassing higher-level groups as part of a larger encounter.
Can Tanuki 1 be a companion or ally?
Yes. A tanuki won over with sake and good humor makes a mischievous guide and scout, and the included Kettle-Spirit companion gives a friendly party a disguise-and-decoy ally for infiltration.
Is the tanuki a spellcaster?
Not in the formal sense. Its leaf-coin trick and shapeshifting are innate fey illusions, not spells, so they ignore counterspell and most anti-magic targeting while still reading as a trickster's bag of tricks.
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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