Dagul
Dagul — The Encounter
The grinning unborn, a Filipino infant-spirit that feeds on the living · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Dagul
They say the dagul is what becomes of a child slain before its first cry, or one unwanted and discarded into the river reeds. It does not rest. It crawls back from the dark beneath the house, smaller than a basket, and it remembers every face that turned away. By day it weeps the cry of a hungry babe to lure the soft-hearted near; by night it grins and feeds, prizing first the warm meat of the brain and heart. Mothers of the old barrios hang scissors and garlic above the cradle and never answer a crying child found alone upon a path after dusk, for the dagul wears innocence the way a fisher wears bait. To slay it you must find the unmarked grave where its bones still lie, salt the earth, and speak the name it was never given. Only then does the grinning thing weep true tears and finally still.
Run Dagul in Sixty Seconds
- Bait first. Open every dagul encounter with False Innocence; if a PC fails the DC 12 Insight check they lose their first turn, so the dagul effectively acts twice before the fight is fair.
- Kill priority. It dives for casters and low-AC targets. Raking Claws drains hit point maximum until a long rest, so the dagul wants to whittle one PC down rather than spread damage.
- When bloodied. Wail of the Unborn comes back online; the dagul lets a PC end its turn nearby, then frightens them to break up the melee and buy a Crawling Horror escape.
- Three ways to run it. Lone ambusher in a haunted home (creepy investigation), a scuttling pack of two to three (attrition swarm), or elite minions guarding a flagship aswang or grave-spirit (boss support).
- Slay it for good. If players find its unmarked grave, salt it, and speak a true name, it weeps and dies without a fight, a clean narrative off-ramp.
Dagul
Small undead, neutral evil
CR 2 · 450 XP · GUIDELINEFalse Innocence. The dagul can take the form of a small, weeping child as an action. Until it attacks or is wounded, a creature that has not seen it transform must succeed on a DC 12 Wisdom (Insight) check to recognize it as a threat; on a failure, the creature is incapacitated until the start of its next turn as it hesitates.
Crawling Horror. The dagul ignores difficult terrain and can move through a space as narrow as 1 foot wide without squeezing. It has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made to hide.
Actions
Multiattack. The dagul makes two attacks: one with its Gnashing Bite and one with its Raking Claws.
Gnashing Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8+3) piercing damage plus 3 (1d6) necrotic damage.
Raking Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d6+3) slashing damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or have its hit point maximum reduced by 3 (1d6) until it finishes a long rest.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Wail of the Unborn. Reaction (recharges after the dagul is bloodied): When a creature the dagul can see ends its turn within 30 feet, the dagul looses a newborn's piercing wail. The creature must succeed on a DC 12 Wisdom saving throw or be frightened of the dagul until the end of its next turn.
A bloodied infant with pointed ears and a too-wide grin perches upon a broken chair, cradling the steaming organ of its last meal. Its eyes glow like dying embers, and its smile never reaches them.
Dagul, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEPitiful Cry (signature). Once per short rest, the dagul looses a mournful wail. Each hostile creature within 20 feet that can hear it must succeed on a DC 12 Wisdom save or be frightened of it until the end of its next turn.
Actions
Gnashing Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8+3) piercing damage plus 3 (1d6) necrotic damage.
Reactions
Scuttle. When a creature ends its turn within 5 feet, the bound dagul can move up to half its speed without provoking opportunity attacks.
Bound by salt and a whispered name, the little horror clings to its keeper's shadow, half-pet and half-curse, and weeps when no one is watching.
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 False Innocence so the party wastes a round, then dart in with Multiattack on the squishiest caster. Use Crawling Horror to vanish into furniture or floorboards after each strike, and pop Wail of the Unborn once bloodied to scatter melee. Run it in a pack of two to three, or as a horrible surprise inside a flagship haunting.
Same playbook, scaled up: lure with False Innocence, swarm the back line, fade with Crawling Horror. Bigger hit-point-max drain on Raking Claws makes a cluster of three a genuine attrition threat. Pair it with a bigger threat (a vengeful spirit or aswang matriarch) that herds the party toward the dagul's nest.
Deploy as elite minions in numbers, never alone. Have them open from hiding (Crawling Horror) and converge on whoever failed the Insight check, stacking max-HP drain to soften the party before the real boss commits. Fold them into a lair of weeping cradles and false children so the fight never offers a clean target.
Put Dagul 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 Dagul?
Its home tier is CR 2 (Tier 1, levels 1-4): AC 13, 45 HP, +5 to hit, save DC 12. It scales to CR 6-equivalent stats at Tier 2 and CR 11-equivalent at Tier 3 using the numbers in the tier table, with all traits and actions unchanged.
Can Dagul be a companion or ally?
Yes, with the right ritual. The Companion block (Dagul, Bound) gives a salt-and-name-bound version with AC 13, 27 HP, its Pitiful Cry fear wail, a bite attack, and a Scuttle reaction, a half-pet, half-curse for a darkly inclined patron.
Is Dagul a solo boss?
No. The dagul is an add-on horror, best run in packs or as minions to a larger threat such as an aswang matriarch or vengeful spirit. It lacks legendary actions, so a four-PC party will out-act a single one quickly; lean on numbers, ambush, and False Innocence instead.
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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