Thar'an Thadu
Thar'an Thadu — The Encounter
The Blood-Skinned Reaver, Glutton of the Skull-Heap · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Thar'an Thadu
They say Thar'an Thadu was no demon at first, but a war-chief who drank too deeply of a battlefield's spilled blood and let something old crawl in behind his ribs. Now the skin has gone the red of an open wound and the face has worn down to a horned skull that smiles whether it kills or is killed. Where it walks, it gathers heads — not as trophies but as food, cracking the bone and supping what it believes is the courage still pooled inside. Lesser fiends follow it for the leavings of its slaughter, and it suffers them only so long as the killing does not slow. It cannot be cowed, cannot be charmed, and feels neither cold nor fire; pain only sharpens its hunger. Banish it and it claws back across the years, drawn always to the largest crowd of the living, for a battlefield is to Thar'an Thadu a feast laid out and waiting.
Run Thar'an Thadu in Sixty Seconds
- Hold turn 1 for the charge — let a PC commit forward, then trigger Goring Charge so you open with a free hit before initiative even matters.
- Open Reckless and slam the nearest caster or low-AC target with the Rending Gauntlet to knock it prone; the Reaver's Blade follow-up adds necrotic on top.
- Kill-priority: the bloodied — Blood Frenzy hands you advantage against anyone below max HP, so finish the wounded and ignore the fresh fighter.
- When it drops someone, remember the snowball: +10 temp HP and +10 ft. speed this turn, so chain into the next-nearest hurt target.
- Three ways to run it: (1) a brute add-on to a caster boss, (2) the bouncer in a skull-pit lair guarding a feeding-ground, (3) a roaming nemesis that banishment only delays.
Thar'an Thadu
Large fiend (demon), chaotic evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEReckless. At the start of its turn, Thar'an Thadu can gain advantage on all melee weapon attack rolls during that turn, but attack rolls against it have advantage until the start of its next turn.
Blood Frenzy. Signature. Thar'an Thadu has advantage on melee attack rolls against any creature that does not have all its hit points. The first time each turn it reduces a creature to 0 hit points or scores a critical hit, it gains 10 temporary hit points and its speed increases by 10 ft. until the end of its next turn.
Actions
Multiattack. Thar'an Thadu makes two attacks: one with its Rending Gauntlet and one with its Reaver's Blade.
Rending Gauntlet. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (3d8 + 5) slashing damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.
Reaver's Blade. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) slashing damage plus 4 (1d8) necrotic damage.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Goring Charge. Reaction — when a creature Thar'an Thadu can see moves to within 10 feet of it, it makes one Rending Gauntlet attack against that creature.
A mountain of crimson muscle wrapped in jagged scrap-plate, Thar'an Thadu plants its boots in a cairn of harvested skulls, one fist a snarl of clawed iron and a hooked blade swinging at its hip. The horned, fleshless grin of its face never changes as it wades forward.
Thar'an Thadu, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINECarrion Loyalty (signature). Thar'an Thadu has advantage on saving throws against being frightened while within 30 feet of an ally it can see. When its bonded ally drops a creature to 0 hit points, Thar'an Thadu can move up to half its speed as a reaction.
Actions
Cleaver. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) slashing damage.
Reactions
Scavenger's Lunge. When an enemy within 5 feet of Thar'an Thadu is reduced to 0 hit points, it may immediately make one Cleaver attack against another creature within reach.
A hunched, gore-caked lesser fiend that trails the reaver to gnaw whatever it leaves behind, snapping forward whenever fresh meat hits the ground.
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 charging the nearest fragile caster or archer and using Goring Charge to punish anyone who closes. Keep it on one target so Blood Frenzy snowballs once they're bloodied. Pair it with a couple of cultists so it isn't surrounded and dropped before it can feed.
Open with Reckless and barrel into the squishiest target, knocking it prone with the Rending Gauntlet so allies pile on. Kill-priority is whoever is already bloodied — Blood Frenzy gives advantage and the temp-HP/speed snowball. Run it as a frontline bruiser beside a controller or caster boss; Goring Charge taxes anyone trying to reposition past it.
Use it as the muscle in a lair fight, not a solo — it has no legendary actions and a 4-PC party will out-maneuver it alone. Reckless in, knock a key martial prone, and let minions finish. Pair it with a bigger threat that controls the battlefield while Thar'an Thadu eats anything that drops.
Put Thar'an Thadu 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 Thar'an Thadu?
Natively CR 6 (Tier 2, ~2,300 XP) — a frontline demonic brute. Scale it down to roughly CR 2 for Tier 1 parties or up to about CR 11 for Tier 3 by swapping in the numbers on the tier table; traits and actions stay identical.
Can Thar'an Thadu be a companion or ally?
As written it is a mindless, hungering fiend and a poor true ally, but its bound scavenger Skull-Gnaw makes a usable companion or summoned helper. Use Skull-Gnaw's stat block for a player-side ally rather than the reaver itself.
Is Thar'an Thadu a solo boss?
No. It has no legendary actions and only a single reaction, so a four-person party will out-act it if it fights alone. It shines as the muscle beside a control-focused boss or amid minions in a lair — keep something else on the table to threaten the back line.
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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