Glossary

Following are some common terms or phrases you may run into while playing this game or browsing this site.

Aasimar: A humanoid whose ancestry is mingled with celestials. Aasimars are often the result of half-celestials crossbreeding with normal mortal humanoids.

Aberration: An alien creature, usually from a strange, distant dimension or primordial times.

Abjurer: A wizard specializing in defensive magic.

Aboleth: An intelligent, malevolent, eel-like aberration with potent psychic abilities. It easily reaches 20 feet long or more.

Adamantine: A rare and incredibly hard metal, prized for use as armor.

Angel: A general type of celestial that includes devas, planetars, and solars. Common folk may use “angel” and “celestial” interchangeably.

Ankheg: A bear-sized burrowing insect, known for devouring livestock.

Annis hag: A large hag with iron nails and teeth who loves creating paranoia and fear.

Arcane spellcaster: A person whose magic comes from something other than prayer or devotion to a deity or natural force; the opposite of a divine spellcaster. Examples are bards, sorcerers, warlocks, and wizards.

Arcanist: An arcane spellcaster.

Balor: A huge fiery demon wielding a sword and whip, often a general of demonic armies.

Barbarian: A warrior who can go berserk in battle.

Bard: A person whose magic comes from music, song, poetry, or similar skills.

Belker: Evil, wraithlike smoke creatures from the Elemental Plane of Air.

Bugbear: Big, brutish, sneaky, hairy goblin-humanoids who often work as mercenaries for evil creatures.

Bulette: A bear-sized burrowing predator resembling a cross between an armadillo and a snapping turtle, sometimes called a “land shark.” Cantrip: A very minor spell, easy enough for an apprentice or dabbler to learn.

Celestial: An inherently good creature from the Upper Planes. Angels are celestials.

Choker: A gangly, skulking aberration that ambushes foes and chokes them with starfish-like hands on the ends of its rubbery arms.

Chromatic dragon: One of five types of dragons that tend to be evil, each with scales of a different color. Their scale color indicates what their breath weapon is (black is acid, blue is lightning, green is poison, red is fire, and white is cold).

Chuul: A semi-intelligent lobster creature, able to move on land.

Cleric: A divine spellcaster who is a warrior and a priest (as opposed to a more scholarly priest who doesn’t use armor or weapons).

Cloaker: A flying manta-like aberration with eerie magical abilities.

Conjurer: A wizard specializing in magic that transports or produces creatures or objects.

Construct: A creature that was made rather than born, such as a golem, magically animated statue, or clockwork machine.

Corporeal: A physical creature, like a human or an ogre (the opposite of incorporeal). Creatures like air elementals and fire elementals (whose bodies aren’t flesh and bone) are still corporeal beings.

Dark elf: A magical type of elf that prefers darkness and living underground. They usually have obsidian-black skin and white or yellow hair.

Demiplane: Another dimension, usually smaller than an essentially infinite true plane (although “smaller” might mean anything from the size of a house to that of an island or continent).

Destrachan: A blind quasi-humanoid aberration that creates destructive blasts of sound and can sense its environment with keen hearing.

Deva: A silver-skinned angel who takes humanoid form and carries messages to the mortal realms or watches over mortals on behalf of godly beings.

Devourer: A horrible, gaunt, ogre-sized undead that traps souls in its chest cavity and uses them to fuel its own magic.

Dire animal: A large, tough, ferocious variety of a normal creature such as a wolf, boar, rat, or bear, often twice the size of a normal specimen.

Divine spellcaster: A person whose magic comes from prayer or devotion to a deity or natural force; the opposite of an arcane spellcaster. Examples are clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers.

Diviner: A wizard specializing in magic about knowledge and secrets.

Doppelganger: A creature with the natural ability to imitate humanoid shapes and read thoughts, allowing them to pretend to be other people.

Dragon turtle: A huge, turtle-like, water-dwelling dragon, known for overturning boats and breathing deadly clouds of steam.

Druid: A divine spellcaster whose power comes from devotion to nature or a nature deity. Their magic focuses on animals, plants, the sun, and the moons.

Dweomer: Another word for a spell, magical effect, or the aura of magic that can be detected by people with the right knowledge.

Elemental: Creatures native to the Elemental Plane of Air, Earth, Fire, or Water. Semi-intelligent creatures such as fire elementals are elementals, as are magically talented creatures such as genies.

Enchanter: A wizard specializing in magic that affects or controls minds.

Erinyes: A beautiful devil with feathery wings whose role in Hell is to punish those who disobey.

Ettercap: A spider-like humanoid that can spin webs and communicate with normal and giant spiders.

Evoker: A wizard specializing in magic that creates cold, electricity, fire, and similar things.

Extradimensional space: A very small area in another dimension, larger on the inside than it appears to be on the outside, often the result of a spell or magic item (such as a backpack that can easily hold two adult humans).

Fiend: An inherently evil creature from the Lower Planes. Demons and devils are fiends.

Fighter: A warrior who masters the use of weapons, armor, and fighting techniques.

Gibbering mouther: A crazed, blob-like aberration covered in dozens of eyes and mouths, whose constant babbling confuses foes.

Gm: Game master. The person who creates adventures for the player characters, runs the NPCs and creatures, and helps make sure everyone has fun playing the game.

Gnoll: A tall, hyena-like humanoid corrupted by demonic power, savage and bloodthirsty.

Hag: A wicked kind of creature native to the fairy realms, usually in the form of an old woman, with magical power and physical might.

Half-celestial: A creature with strong celestial ancestry; the opposite of a half-fiend. Not all half-celestials are humanoids.

Half-fiend: A creature with strong fiendish ancestry. A half-fiend humanoid is often called a cambion. A tiefling is often the result of a cambion crossbreeding with a normal humanoid mortal.

Hellfire giant: A fiery giant infused with hellish energy.

Hezrou: An ogre-sized, anthropomorphic toad demon.

Humanoid: A creature with the same general shape as a human—two arms, two legs, a head, and so on. Dwarves, elves, gnomes, goblins, halflings, orcs, and similar creatures are humanoids.

Illusionist: A wizard specializing in illusion magic.

Incorporeal: A nonphysical creature like a ghost or specter; the opposite of corporeal.

Ioun stone: A magical gem that orbits its owner’s head. Each type has a different magical power (strength, protection, and so on).

Lamia: An evil creature with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a lion, skilled in the magic of curses and illusions.

Lammasu: A good-hearted, intelligent winged lion with a human head and magical powers.

Locathah: A primitive fishlike humanoid who lives in coastal waters and is generally distrustful of surface dwellers.

Mage: An arcane spellcaster.

Manticore: An aggressive, stupid lion-like creature with bat wings, a spiked tail, and a toothy human head.

Marilith: A powerful demon with the upper body of a six-armed woman and the lower body of a giant snake.

Medusa: A magical creature with a humanlike body and snakes for hair; its magical gaze turns creatures to stone.

Metallic dragon: One of five types of dragons that tend to be good, each with scales of a different metal. Their scale color indicates what their breath weapon is (brass is cold or sleep, bronze is lightning or repulsion, copper is acid or slowing, gold is fire or weakness, silver is cold or paralysis).

Mithral: A bright metal as strong as steel but much lighter.

Mohrg: A zombie-like undead creature that is the animated corpse of a mass murderer, with a long, grasping tongue.

Monk: A martial artist who channels their internal mystical energy (ki) to perform amazing feats.

Naga: A creature resembling a large snake with a vaguely humanlike face and magical powers.

Nalfeshnee: An ogre-sized winged demon resembling an ape and a boar, intelligent and cunning.

Necromancer: A wizard specializing in the magic of life, death, and undeath.

Nightcrawler: A huge undead worm that can summon shadowy minions.

Nightshade: A type of powerful undead made of darkness and evil magic. Nightcrawlers, nightwalkers, and nightwings are nightshades.

Nightwalker: A 20-foot-tall undead giant.

Nightwing: A huge, shadowy bat-like undead with spells and the power to destroy magic items.

Ogre mage: A somewhat ignorant term for an oni.

Oni: An intelligent ogre-like creature with magical powers and blue or green skin.

Ooze: A type of amorphous creature, generally mindless, that can dissolve flesh and objects by touch.

Orb of dragonkind: A powerful artifact created to lure and command dragons, but tainted with evil and prone to corrupt its owner.

Otyugh: A strange, semi-intelligent aberration the size of a bear, with tentacles and three legs; it lives in garbage and waste, and allies with other creatures willing to supply it with food.

Outsider: A term for all creatures native to another dimension, whether they are celestials, elementals, or fiends.

Owlbear: A vicious, bad-tempered predator that is a mix of owl and bear.

Paladin: A holy warrior of good and law who relies primarily on physical might instead of spells.

Plane: A dimension, whether the “normal world” where humans and similar creatures live (sometimes called the Material Plane), or a stranger place like the native homes of angels (the Upper Planes), elementals (the Elemental Planes), or demons and devils (the Lower Planes).

Planetar: A large, powerful angel with opalescent green skin. It enacts the will of the deity it serves.

Planetouched: A mortal (usually a humanoid) who has celestial, elemental, or fiend ancestry. Aasimars and tieflings are planetouched.

Ranger: A skilled hunter and tracker who knows some nature magic.

Rast: A flying, blood-draining, spider-like elemental made of ash and cinder, native to the Elemental Plane of Fire.

Rogue: A person skilled at subtle combat, subterfuge, and stealth, such as a cat burglar or thief.

Rust monster: A squat, armored insect-like creature whose touch instantly turns metal into rust, which it eats.

Sahuagin: An evil fish-like humanoid that lives in ocean shallows and deeps, and who can communicate with sharks. Sometimes called a “sea devil.”

Salamander: An evil serpentine elemental with dark red scales and a humanlike head and arms.

Scrying: A type of divination magic that sees and hears things that are far away.

Shadowdancer: A rare kind of warrior who mixes shadow magic and stealth.

Skum: A humanoid transformed into a fish-like slave-creature by an aboleth.

Solar: An incredibly powerful kind of angel, often the general of a deity’s army.

Sorcerer: An arcane spellcaster whose talent for manipulating magic comes from innate ability rather than study or a supernatural pact with another entity.

Succubus: An attractive, humanlike female fiend who uses seduction and temptation to control and corrupt mortals. In male form, it is called an incubus.

Summoning: A type of magic that creates or brings a creature to the spellcaster, usually to fight on the caster’s behalf. A summoned creature normally vanishes when the magic that summoned it runs out.

Tiefling: A humanoid whose ancestry is mingled with fiends. Tieflings are often the result of half-fiends crossbreeding with normal mortal humanoids.

Transmuter: A wizard specializing in magic that transforms energy and matter.

Troglodyte: A subterranean, reptilian humanoid whose skin produces a smelly slime.

True angel: A category of celestials that includes devas, planetars, and solars.

Warlock: An arcane spellcaster whose magic comes from a pact made with a powerful mystical entity.

Wizard: An arcane spellcaster whose magic comes from study and practice.

Yeth hound: An evil, flying doglike fiend whose howls incite fear.

scroll to top