John Lloyd
John Lloyd — The Encounter
The Pale Rider Who Harvests the Fallen Field · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is John Lloyd
They call him the Reaper of the Field, though older tongues name him the Pale Rider, last of the four said to follow War and Famine across a ruined land. Once a mortal warlord who swore he would never quit a battlefield while a single enemy still drew breath, he kept that oath past death itself. The grave would not hold so great an appetite for slaughter. Now he rides a horned steed flensed to bone and bound in iron, harrowing old killing-grounds where the dead lie thick and unburied. His chain is forged from the manacles of every soldier he ever pressed into service, living or dead, and it answers when he calls. To meet him is to be conscripted: those he cuts down rise behind him as husks, swelling a host that never tires and never disbands. Folk who must cross a battlefield at dusk leave a coin and a blade for the fallen, praying the Rider finds his quota elsewhere.
Run John Lloyd in Sixty Seconds
- Hold the line. Dread Aura frightens anything starting its turn within 15 ft (DC 16 Wis) - frightened PCs can't approach and have disadvantage, so the party WANTS to spread out, which plays right into Spectral Gallop.
- Open with Toll the Dead on the lowest-HP caster (3d8 necrotic + frightened), then Multiattack the tank: Grave Chain to drag-and-grapple, Reaping Blade to deal the killing blow.
- Kill-priority is fear-breakers - drop the cleric/paladin first or the whole party shrugs off the aura and out-actions you.
- When bloodied, stop trading blows: gallop loose, use Marrow Harvest to raise every corpse you made, and hide behind the husk wall while Toll the Dead picks off stragglers.
- Three ways to run it: (1) lone horseman terrorizing a battlefield at dusk; (2) the captain leading a marching column of risen skeletons; (3) one of four riders - pair it with Famine and War for a tier-capping apocalypse set-piece.
John Lloyd
Large undead, neutral evil
CR 10 · 5,900 XP · GUIDELINEDread Aura. Each creature that starts its turn within 15 feet of the rider must succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom saving throw or be frightened until the start of its next turn. On a success, the creature is immune to this rider's Dread Aura for 24 hours.
Marrow Harvest. Signature. When the rider reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, it regains 10 hit points and the corpse rises as a husk at the start of the rider's next turn (use the skeleton stat block), bound to obey until destroyed.
Actions
Multiattack. The rider makes two attacks: one with its Reaping Blade and one with its Grave Chain.
Reaping Blade. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 18 (3d8 + 5) slashing damage plus 9 (2d8) necrotic damage.
Grave Chain. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6 + 5) bludgeoning damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 16) and pulled up to 10 feet toward the rider.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Trampling Charge (Reaction). When a creature the rider can see ends its movement within 5 feet of the rider's steed, the rider can force it to make a DC 16 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone and take 9 (2d8) bludgeoning damage as the warhorse rears and stamps.
Legendary Actions (3/Round)
Reap. The rider makes one Reaping Blade attack.
Spectral Gallop (Costs 2 Actions). The rider moves up to its speed without provoking opportunity attacks. Each creature it passes within 5 feet must succeed on a DC 16 Dexterity saving throw or take 9 (2d8) necrotic damage.
Toll the Dead. One creature the rider can see within 30 feet must succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom saving throw or take 13 (3d8) necrotic damage and be frightened until the end of its next turn.
A barrow-cold knight in blackened plate rides a horned, fleshless warhorse up out of a churned field of skulls, swords, and reaching bones, dragging a heavy grave-chain. Where it passes, the slain do not stay slain.
John Lloyd, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEDeathless Mount (signature). The steed cannot be frightened and ignores difficult terrain made of corpses, rubble, or bone. While its rider is mounted, the steed shares its rider's resistance to necrotic damage.
Actions
Goring Hooves. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 14 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.
Reactions
Shield the Rider. When its rider is hit by an attack, the steed can interpose itself, becoming the target instead if the attacker is within 5 feet of the steed.
A warhorse stripped to bone and crowned with iron horns, eyes burning like grave-lamps. It will gallop until its rider commands a halt, and not one instant sooner.
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 galloping into the densest cluster so the Dread Aura sweeps several PCs at once, then Reaping Blade the lowest-HP frightened target. Kill-priority is whoever can break fear (cleric/paladin). Pair it with a swarm of skeletons rising from the battlefield base so the party fights on two fronts.
Lead with Grave Chain to yank the back-line healer into reach, then Reaping Blade to trigger Marrow Harvest and start raising husks. Focus the controller who would otherwise lock down the mount. Run it alongside a handful of skeleton minions or a necromancer ally as the lieutenant of a larger threat.
Built to anchor a fight alone: open with Toll the Dead on the squishiest caster, Multiattack the front-liner, then spend legendary actions on Spectral Gallop to reposition and rake the line. When bloodied, gallop free, raise every fresh corpse via Marrow Harvest, and let the husk wall buy it space. Toll the Dead between turns keeps a target frightened and out of the fight.
Put John Lloyd 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 John Lloyd?
Natively CR 10 (Tier 3, levels 11-15) as a solo centerpiece - the dropped band reflects its real action-economy kit of three legendary options plus a punishing reaction. Scale down to the Tier 1 or Tier 2 line for lower-level tables; traits stay identical and only AC, HP, to-hit, save DC, and damage shift.
Can John Lloyd be a companion or ally?
The Rider himself is a boss, but its steed - the Carrion Steed, Bound - is the built-in companion: a deathless mount (AC 16, 97 HP) that shields its rider, gores and tramples, and never flees. Drop the Rider and the steed can serve a player necromancer or death-knight NPC.
Is John Lloyd safe to use without IP concerns?
Yes. He's framed entirely through public-domain folklore - the Pale Rider of scripture and the death-rider of the Wild Hunt - using only generic SRD undead mechanics. No proprietary settings, cosmology, or named characters appear in the stat block.
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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