Summary
Between the bird-sung grottos and elven cities of light and splendor, creatures of muck, grime, filth, and disease can be found lurking. InDungeons & Dragons, all kinds of disgusting creatures make their way through the various planes, forcing all to avert their eyes and plug their noses.
Although a great way for a dungeon master to flex their description skills, grotesque monsters serve as a way to hint at a greater corruption threatening a village, whether a creature can be trusted, or to create a tone of horror. While there are hundreds of nasty monsters in D&D, a few are considered truly the most vile.
10Sibriex
Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters Of The Multiverse
Floating deep in theinfinite layers of the Abyss, a Sibriex appears as a giant mound of putrid flesh from which spills rivers of blood and bile. They can even harness their bile and spray it on their enemies, covering them in acid and melting their armor, flesh, and dignity.
Outside the Abyss, a Sibriex emits a vile aura that contaminates all life within 30 feet and potentially giving creatures the poison condition. A Sibriex can also warp the flesh of other creatures, forcing them to grow extra limbs, eyes, and fingers, or swelling their head and gut until they no longer resemble their past self.
9Gibbering Mouther
Monster Manual
An ever-shifting creature made from foul magic and rituals, a Gibbering Mouther is an amorphous mass of teeth and eyes that grows with each body it consumes. The writhing mass also extends within ten feet of it, making the ground become doughy and flesh-like.
What makes this abomination even wetter is its Blinding Spittle attack, which launches a chemical blob that explodes into light. Everything about a Gibbering Mouther is made to be squishy and terrifying, even as the mouths and eyes of its victims bubble to the surface after being swallowed whole.
You can increase the CR of a Gibbering Mouther by increasing its size category along with its health, according to how many bodies it has consumed.
8Unspeakable Horror
Van Richten’s Guide To Ravenloft
Despite being mostly customizable by the DM that summons an Unspeakable Horror, it contains more than a handful of design elements that suggest a focus on the grotesque. On the Body Composition table, you can roll for Malleable Mass and Oozing Organs, making the Horror covered in pustules or become inside out while secreting foul ichor.
Of their many interchangeable attacks, you can allow it to blast a spray of acidic bile that covers creatures in a massive 60-foot line or make its flailing limbs cause targets to corrode. However you design your Unspeakable Horror, its mechanics speak to an otherworldy charm filled with ooze and pus.
7Zombie Clot
A gargantuan mass of rotting corpses, Zombie Clots shamble graveyards and battlefields, adding to the undead horde that allows it to shamble forth and engulf more victims. The Zombie Clot can even break off parts of itself and hurl the rotting bodies at its target, restraining and slowly suffocating it with a horrid stench.
A Zombie Clot’s stench is so fatal that it emits an aura that deals poison damage and grants the poison condition to any creature close enough to give it a good whiff. While they smell bad on the outside, being slowly consumed by a mass of death and rot is the most horrifying and stinky way to go.
6Sea Hag
The ugliest of the hags, and proud of it, Sea Hags make their home in underwater caves and putrid swamps where they craft ever more horrid ways to lure and trap victims. Since Sea Hags value being as execrable and repellent as possible, they will simply attack anything they view as beautiful.
Because of this, they strive to fill their layer with fish guts, rotting corpses, and pools of ichor while dressing themselves as abominable as possible. A Sea Hag actively makes attempts to become as disgusting as possible rather than simply existing that way, meaning DMs can take great strides in being as creative about their descriptions as possible.
5Orc Nurtured One Of Yurtrus
Volo’s Guide To Monsters
When an orc tribe succumbs to disease, the priests of the orcish god of disease and death will sometimes shape the ones who won’t survive into living carriers of disease, poison, and ichor. These Nurtured Ones of Yurtrus willstumble into battle first, exploding into bile and pus.
A Nurtured One can even trigger this effect early, choosing to drop to zero hit points and burst itself while spreading its poison and corruption on whoever is unlucky enough to be nearby. In this way, Nurtured Ones are designed to be weak and expendable to serve as walking bags of infection.
4Spawn of Kyuss
Raised from the corpses of ancient necropolises, a Spawn of Kyuss is a mass of burrowing, green worms that infect a body. Any living creature can become a Spawn of Kyuss after being infected with the worms and slowly eaten to death from the inside.
While one Spawn alone is already horrifyingly repulsive, a whole horde can become terrifying and difficult to escape as they fling fistfuls of green worms toward any exposed skin. The one saving grace is that these worms can be withered and destroyed with a Remove Curse spell.
3Corpse Flower
A play on the real-life corpse flower, which is both massive and known for its death-like stench, the Corpse Flower crawls across graveyards and battlefields while feeding itself on the decaying remnants. Even without the added corpses, the Corpse Flower emits a noxious odor that poisons all nearby creatures.
While slowly digesting the rotting flesh it pulls into itself, the Corpse Flower can even reanimate those bodies and use them to attack living things to replace them. With each cycle of death and digestion, the Corpse Flower only grows ever stinkier as it shambles forth.
2Juiblex
Out Of The Abyss
A demon lord of the Abyss, Juiblex is the king of all oozes and exists only to consume as much mass as possible. While similar to most other oozes, Juiblex also contains hundreds of eyes that shift and blink to the surface as it forms gargantuan shapes of slime.
Like any properly disgusting creature, Juiblex also has a stench aura that poisons any nearby creatures with a foul odor. Juiblex can also eject its own slime and cover anything and everything in acidic muck until it dissolves into nothing. Cultists of Juiblex can be morphed into having goopy organs and slimy skin that make them resemble their lord.
1Oinoloth
A Yugaloth fiend playing both sides of the Blood War, an Oinoloth is a carrier of disease and pestilence and wears its boils and warts proudly. Wherever an Oinoloth goes, death follows as it corrupts the ground, fields, and people with torturous maladies stemming from any number of diseases.
Ironically, an Oinoloth can also heal creatures and remove all diseases affecting it, making it a complex creature that can be bought and sold across the material plane for whatever deeds are required. Whenever an Oinoloth blights an area surrounding itself, all plants wither and die, and creatures are afflicted with a deadly poison.
