Padilla
Padilla — The Encounter
The Reaper Crowned, who rides the pale horned steed over the slain · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Padilla
They call him the Reaper Crowned, and the old soldiers' songs name him last among the four riders that folklore sends across a field once the killing is done. He was a war-captain in life, vain of his banners and crueler than the wars he won; the legend holds that he made a pact to never quit the saddle, and so death obliged him, fusing bone to barding and breath to a dry rattle. His horned steed is no living horse but a thing of grave-iron and old hunger, and it eats the ground between Padilla and the fleeing. The cleaver he carries is said to have reaped a thousand throats and remembers each one. Where he passes, the recently fallen twitch and climb to their feet, marshaled into his silent column, for the harvest of the slain is his alone. Peasants bar their doors when the hoofbeats come without a horse to make them. To meet his eye, the songs warn, is to feel your own name being written into his ledger of the dead.
Run Padilla in Sixty Seconds
- Hold its turn until the party clusters then lead with Dread Decree (DC 16, 6d8 necrotic + frightened) to break their formation before you commit.
- Open by Charging the back line 60 ft. of mounted move plus the cleaver's prone-on-hit lets you reach a squishy caster turn one and put them on the floor.
- Kill-priority is mobility and the healer anyone who can dismount, slow, or out-heal the Harvest of the Slain heal-on-kill is your first target.
- When bloodied, lean on the heal loop every creature dropped within 30 ft. gives you 10 HP and a bonus 2d8 on your next swing, so finish the dying and Marshal the Dead to flood the table.
- Three ways to run it: lone dread cavalier (T1), mounted captain with an undead warband (T2), or graveyard centerpiece with legendary actions and a tide of risen dead (T3).
Padilla
Large undead, neutral evil
CR 9 · 5,000 XP · GUIDELINECharge. If the rider moves at least 20 feet straight toward a target and then hits it with the reaping cleaver on the same turn, the target takes an extra 13 (3d8) slashing damage and must succeed on a DC 16 Strength save or be knocked prone.
Harvest of the Slain. Signature. Whenever a creature the rider can see is reduced to 0 hit points within 30 feet of it, the rider regains 10 hit points and its next attack before the end of its next turn deals an extra 9 (2d8) necrotic damage. The battlefield's dead feed the reaper.
Actions
Multiattack. The rider makes two attacks with its reaping cleaver.
Reaping Cleaver. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8+5) slashing damage plus 9 (2d8) necrotic damage.
Dread Decree (Recharge 5-6). The rider raises its blade and rasps a sentence of doom. Each creature of its choice within 30 feet must make a DC 15 Wisdom save, taking 27 (6d8) necrotic damage and becoming frightened of the rider until the end of its next turn on a failure, or half damage and no fear on a success.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Reaping Stroke. Reaction. When a creature within 10 feet of the rider stands up from prone, casts a spell, or moves out of its reach, the rider makes one reaping cleaver attack against that creature.
Legendary Actions (3/Round)
Legendary Actions. The rider can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature's turn. The rider regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.
Trample (Costs 1). The steed moves up to half its speed without provoking opportunity attacks. One creature it passes within 5 feet must succeed on a DC 16 Dexterity save or take 9 (2d8) bludgeoning damage and be knocked prone.
Cleave. The rider makes one reaping cleaver attack.
Marshal the Dead (Costs 2). Each undead ally within 60 feet of the rider can use its reaction to move up to its speed or make one weapon attack.
A crowned skeletal warlord rides a black, horned warhorse barded in fanged steel, swinging a blood-slicked cleaver over a base of impaled and broken dead. Where its steed treads, the slain rise to march.
Padilla, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEGrave-Iron Hide (signature). The steed is immune to poison and the frightened condition, and it has resistance to necrotic damage. It can carry its rider at full speed across broken or corpse-strewn ground without difficulty.
Actions
Goring Hooves. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8+4) bludgeoning damage. If the steed moved at least 20 feet straight toward the target, the target must succeed on a DC 15 Strength save or be knocked prone.
Reactions
Shield the Rider. When its rider is hit by an attack, the steed can rear so that it becomes the target instead, taking the damage in the rider's stead.
A black warhorse of grave-iron and old hunger, its skull caparisoned in fanged steel and a single horn rising from its brow. It obeys only the crowned dead thing in its saddle.
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 a Charge into your softest target to knock it prone, then Reaping Cleaver. Trample fleeing low-HP characters; let Harvest of the Slain heal you off the first kill. At this tier run it as a single dread cavalier with a couple of skeleton spears as escort, not a full lair.
Lead with Dread Decree to fear the cluster, then Charge the controller or healer. Kill-priority is whoever can dismount you. Use Reaping Stroke to punish casters and anyone who breaks away. Pair it with a small undead warband so Harvest of the Slain keeps topping you up.
This is a mounted centerpiece: open by Charging the back line, drop Dread Decree on the bunched party, then spend legendary actions on Cleave and Trample to stay everywhere at once. Kill-priority is the party's mobility and the healer. Marshal the Dead turns any dead bodies into a tide; deploy it with a graveyard of minions or pair it with a bigger necromantic threat for a full battlefield.
Put Padilla 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 Padilla?
Padilla's home tier is Tier 3 (levels 11-15), built around CR 9 (5,000 XP). Because it is a true solo centerpiece with three legendary actions and a punishing reaction, its sheet sits one band below raw CR 11 so a four-player party doesn't get out-acted. Drop it to the Tier 1 or Tier 2 line for lower-level tables; the traits and actions stay identical and only the numbers move.
Can Padilla be a companion or ally?
Padilla himself is a boss, but his bound mount makes a strong companion. The Horned Steed (AC 16, 100 HP) has Grave-Iron Hide for poison and frightened immunity plus necrotic resistance, Goring Hooves for a prone-on-charge attack, and Shield the Rider to soak a hit meant for its master. Hand it to a death-knight NPC ally or a player cavalier who has earned a grave-iron steed.
Is Padilla based on a real myth?
Yes. He is framed as the last of the four riders of folklore, the crowned reaper that older war-songs send across a battlefield once the killing is done, a vain war-captain who bargained never to leave the saddle and so was bound bone-to-barding in death. It is public-domain mythology, with no proprietary cosmology attached.
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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