Yaksha King
Yaksha King — The Encounter
Crowned Wild-Spirit of Tree-Root and Buried Hoard · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Yaksha King
Older grimoires name the yaksha not as a demon but as a yaksha, a guardian-spirit of the deep places: of tree-root and well-spring, of the gold men bury and forget. Their crowned kings rule the wild margins where no road runs, courteous to the respectful and merciless to the greedy. This one is sovereign of a scorched grove, his hide cured to leather by the fires he commands, his horns the branches of a tree that burned and would not die. He does not hate the living; he merely owns what they covet, and answers theft with flame. Travelers who leave an offering at the grove's edge pass unharmed and sometimes wake to find their packs heavier with buried coin. Those who dig where they should not are marked, and the king follows their scent across rivers and mountains until the debt is paid in ash. He keeps his word absolutely and remembers every slight forever.
Run Yaksha King in Sixty Seconds
- Hold its turn until a caster is in reach — this is a leaping striker, not a tank; Leaping Pounce + Multiattack on a prone wizard is the whole gameplan.
- Open with Pounce: move 15+ feet, Claw to knock prone (DC 15 STR), then spend remaining attacks beating up the downed target.
- Kill-priority is the looter — whoever took from the hoard triggers Hoard-Bound (advantage + 1d6 fire). Steer the king at them every round.
- When bloodied, Root-Step out of the melee scrum and re-emerge next to a healer or fleeing PC; the marked-thief tracking means it never loses them.
- Three ways to run it: vengeful tracker hunting tomb-robbers across the wild; territorial grove-guardian that fights only inside its burning lair; or a courteous king who offers a deal first and turns lethal only when refused.
Yaksha King
Medium fey (yaksha), chaotic neutral
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEHoard-Bound. The yaksha king is the keeper of a buried treasure. While within 60 feet of its hoard, or of an object stolen from it, it has advantage on attack rolls and adds 1d6 fire damage to each weapon hit. A creature that takes from the hoard is marked, and the king always knows that creature's direction while on the same plane.
Leaping Pounce. The yaksha king's long jump is up to 30 feet and its high jump up to 15 feet, with or without a running start. If it moves at least 15 feet straight toward a target before a Claw attack, the target must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.
Actions
Multiattack. The yaksha king makes three Claw attacks, or two Claw attacks and uses Wild-Fire Lash.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) slashing damage.
Wild-Fire Lash. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) fire damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or catch fire, taking 5 (1d10) fire damage at the start of each of its turns until it or an adjacent creature uses an action to douse the flames.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Root-Step (Bonus Action). If the yaksha king is within 5 feet of a tree, stone, or its own buried hoard, it sinks into it and emerges from another such feature it can see within 60 feet, then makes one Claw attack.
Spite of the Wild (Reaction). When a creature the yaksha king can see hits it with an attack, it lashes out with reflexive fire, dealing 7 (2d6) fire damage to that creature if it is within 15 feet.
Crouched mid-leap on splayed talons, this gaunt crimson spirit-king bristles with horns and a mane of pale wild hair, its taloned hands trailing ribbons of fire while the very ground erupts in spear-like tongues of flame around its feet.
Yaksha King, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEGrove-Sense (signature). The ember-yaksha knows the location of any worked metal, gemstone, or coin within 30 feet, even behind cover or buried.
Actions
Burning Talons. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d4 + 4) slashing damage plus 3 (1d6) fire damage.
Reactions
Cinder-Veil. When an ally within 10 feet is hit by an attack, the ember-yaksha bursts into protective smoke; the attacker takes 5 (1d10) fire damage and the ally gains half cover until the start of its next turn.
A lesser spirit of the same scorched grove, lashed to a worthy oath-keeper, it scouts for buried treasure and shields its companion behind veils of ember and smoke.
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 Leaping Pounce to knock a front-liner prone, then claw it on the ground. Keep Wild-Fire Lash for clustered low-HP PCs and let burning tick them down. Pair it with a tougher anchor; alone at this tier its fire output ends fights fast, so cap encounters at one king plus weak minions.
Open by leaping into the casters' rank, Pounce to prone the squishiest, then Multiattack the prone target with advantage. Use Root-Step to escape focus fire and re-engage a healer, and lean on Spite of the Wild to punish melee. Kill-priority is whoever looted the hoard (Hoard-Bound gives it advantage and bonus fire there). Run it as a fast skirmisher beside a slower brute or a spellcasting overlord.
At this tier deploy it with a flame-grove lair and burning minions, never as the lone threat. Open with Root-Step ambushes from the trees, Pounce the most mobile PC, and use Spite of the Wild plus reflexive fire to grind anyone who clusters. Pair it with a bigger threat (an elder fire-elemental or a fiendish overlord) and let the king run flanks, dragging marked thieves down while the centerpiece holds the line.
Put Yaksha King 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 Yaksha King?
Its native build is CR 6 (2,300 XP), tuned for a party of levels 5-10. The tier table also gives a scaled-down CR 2-ish version for levels 1-4 and a scaled-up CR 11-ish version for levels 11-15; traits and actions stay identical, only the numbers move.
Can Yaksha King be a companion or ally?
The full king is a CR 6 adversary, but if a player wins its oath there is a bound companion stat block, the Ember-Yaksha (AC 15, 74 HP): a treasure-sniffing scout that shields allies with cinder-veils and burns attackers. Use it as a sidekick-style ally rather than fielding the king itself on the party's side.
Is the Yaksha King a devil or a demon?
Neither. It is fey (a yaksha), a nature-and-treasure guardian-spirit from world folklore, not a fiend. Its fire and menace are wild and territorial, not infernal, so effects that target fiends do not affect it, while it keeps fey vulnerabilities like banishment back to its grove.
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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