Bonewyrm Dreadfang
Bonewyrm Dreadfang — The Encounter
The risen wyrm whose grave-cold breath strips flesh from bone · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Bonewyrm Dreadfang
When a dragon-blooded beast dies upon ground soaked in mass death, the Mortisbane working can call it back wrong. The Bonewyrm Dreadfang is such a thing: a wyrm of the old war-fens raised by the revenant-craft of grave-singers, its flesh stitched back over a frame of weeping bone. The crest of spines that once flared in courtship now serves as a lattice for the cold that fills it, and where its breath touches, the living wither as the grave-chill gnaws their very vitality away. It remembers the tongues of its handlers but cannot answer; only the hunger answers, and the standing order whispered into its skull. Grave-singers prize it as a battering ram of the dead, sending it ahead of their shambling ranks to break a shield-wall and drag the screaming down by the throat. It feels no fear, no pain it will heed, no mercy. It simply does not stop.
Run Bonewyrm Dreadfang in Sixty Seconds
- Open with the cone. If two or more heroes stand within 30 feet, lead with Withering Breath before they spread out, then Multiattack the survivor closest to the casters.
- Grapple and drag. Two claws on one target means a grapple (escape DC 14). Use it to peel the healer or controller out of formation and chew on them.
- Kill-priority is radiant and crits. Undead Fortitude shrugs off normal killing blows; only radiant damage or a critical hit ends it cleanly, so let the cleric and the lucky roller finish it.
- When bloodied (64 HP), it stops retreating. It plants on the most wounded hero, spends Tail Sweep on anyone who flanks, and bites until something drops.
- Three ways to run it: the wall (front of an undead horde, breaking the line), the snatcher (grapple-and-isolate a key PC), or the chiller (cone-spam to grind hit point maximums down over a long fight).
Bonewyrm Dreadfang
Large undead, neutral evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEGrave-Cold Spines. The wyrm's crest and dorsal spines drip a glacial, necrotic frost. The first time on each turn a creature touches the wyrm or hits it with a melee attack while within 5 feet, that creature takes 5 (2d4) necrotic damage.
Undead Fortitude. If damage reduces the wyrm to 0 hit points, it must make a Constitution saving throw with a DC of 5 + the damage taken, unless the damage is radiant or from a critical hit. On a success, the wyrm drops to 1 hit point instead.
Actions
Multiattack. The wyrm makes one Bite attack and two Claw attacks. If both Claws hit the same Large or smaller target, the target is grappled (escape DC 14).
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8+4) piercing damage plus 7 (2d6) necrotic damage.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6+4) slashing damage.
Withering Breath (Recharge 5-6). The wyrm exhales grave-cold frost in a 30-foot cone. Each creature in the area makes a DC 14 Constitution saving throw, taking 27 (6d8) necrotic damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. A creature that fails has its hit point maximum reduced by an amount equal to the damage taken until it finishes a long rest.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Tail Sweep (Reaction). When a creature the wyrm can see moves within 10 feet of it, the wyrm may sweep its bone-spiked tail. The creature makes a DC 14 Dexterity saving throw or takes 9 (2d8) bludgeoning damage and is knocked prone.
A horse-sized draconic horror dredged up from a war-grave, its scaled hide knit over jutting bone, its skull crowned with teal spines that weep killing frost. A scavenged harness of plate still binds its ribs, and its claws are as long as short swords.
Bonewyrm Dreadfang, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEGrave-Cold Hide (signature). The first time each turn a creature hits the whelp with a melee attack while within 5 feet, that creature takes 4 (1d8) necrotic damage.
Actions
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d10+4) piercing damage plus 4 (1d8) necrotic damage.
Reactions
Shielding Coil. When an ally within 5 feet is hit by an attack, the whelp coils around them, reducing that damage by 5 (1d8+1).
A lesser revenant wyrmling that pads at its sire's flank, half-tamed, snapping at anything the great beast does not reach first.
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 squishiest caster and grappling them with both claws. Save Withering Breath for when 2+ heroes cluster in the cone. Pair it with skeletons or a grave-singer who buffs from the back rank.
Lead with Withering Breath at the tightest knot, then bite-and-grapple the dropper or healer and drag them off. Kill-priority is whoever pumps radiant or crits, since that bypasses Undead Fortitude. Run it as the front-line bruiser of an undead pack, not alone.
At this tier it is a battering ram, not the boss. Hold Tail Sweep to knock down anyone trying to slip past to the casters, breathe on clusters, and grapple to anchor the party in the kill zone. Pair it with a bigger threat or a haunted lair so the heroes can't focus it down for free.
Put Bonewyrm Dreadfang 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 Bonewyrm Dreadfang?
Its home tier is CR 6 (2,300 XP), built for a 5th-10th level party. The card also gives scaled-down CR 2-ish numbers for Tier 1 and beefed-up CR 11-ish numbers for Tier 3, so you can drop it into almost any table without rebuilding it.
Can Bonewyrm Dreadfang be a companion or ally?
As a bound, mindless revenant it makes a grim war-mount or guardian rather than a true companion. For a player-side option use the Frostmaw Whelp, Bound on the card (AC 14, 76 HP) - a smaller leashed wyrmling that bites, shrugs off blows with its grave-cold hide, and coils to shield an ally.
Is the Withering Breath's hit point maximum reduction permanent?
No. The reduction lasts until the affected creature finishes a long rest, then resets. It stacks across multiple failed saves in the same fight, though, so a hero caught in two cones can find their effective health alarmingly low before the night is out.
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
Played Bonewyrm Dreadfang at your table? Log in with your Obsidian Tavern account to leave a balance note, a war story, or a file issue — the sharpest reports get the block revised.
Log in to comment