Moss lurkers look like a troll the size of a gnome, with a personality more toward brutal bullies. Despite their small size, they are often fans of large, heavy weapons, often wielding blades that seem too large for their bodies rather than their natural claws or something more appropriately sized. They also have a fondness for dropping heavy rocks onto enemies, and train to improve their accuracy with such threats, as well as finding ideal locations for such tactics in their environments.

Morphoi are shape-shifting plant creatures that can take the form of nearly any creature. In their natural form, they appear as 5 to 6 foot tall androgynous beings with blue skin, and two eyes on each the front and back of their head, and no other features. They have a dark red sap in place of blood. They don't need to eat, gathering nutrients from sunlight and water, but while disguised as humanoids or other creatures they will consume small amounts of food to maintain their cover.

A gigantic, dark gray, 11 armed starfish, the mordant snare is an artificially created bioweapon designed to eliminate entire villages at a time. They use spiked filaments within their many arms to inject acid within the bodies of living creatures, dissolving the internal structures then pouring additional filaments and acid within to puppet the corpse about, using a crowd of them to lure in additional prey.

Beautiful and elaborate suits of armor animated with shadow magic and fueled by a flickering blue flame that is both freezing cold and burning hot to the touch, these constructs are more decoration that guardian, being fairly fragile for their cost. They are inordinately expensive, both in terms of material construction and magical animation, far beyond their combat prowess is worth.

Mngwa are elusive cat-like creatures with high intelligence and the ability to speak with other felines. They are strong and cunning, picking hunting grounds among rocky and terrain and foggy weather to better suit their hunting skills. The strongest mngwa will recruit other great cats into prides to aid in hunting, and sometimes even cat-like humanoids. Inspired by the Tome of Beasts 1.

A pair of fey beings for this update. Mirager Fey creatures of deserts and oasis, miragers in their natural form appear to be roughly humanoid sand figures, though few see them in this form. They typically remain disguised as humanoids, taking on attractive appearances clad in veils and flowing robes to accentuate their beauty and lower the guard of those who find them.

Map Mimic Stunted or young mimics, these aren't truly separate creatures from regular mimics. These are simply noted distinctly for surviving in a territory outside of usual mimics, infiltrating libraries and other regions of civilization and feeding off of small pests without being noticed. Given their small size and limited volume, they most often replicate small paper objects, with maps being dramatic enough that they became the defining name for these creatures.

For the finale of my villain special month, I have one of the most highly recognized foes from a D&D adventure. Dragotha is the foe for the second last part of the Age of Worms adventure path, second only to the demigod Kyuss in power, and has proved an insurmountable roadblock for many parties over the years. A wyrm red dragon dracolich (3.5 dragon ages had a lot more steps than any edition since) with 8th level sorcerer spellcasting, a touch that paralyzed with every natural attack, a paralyzing gaze, and one of the most devastating breath weapons unleashed, he had a power that dwarfed most full campaigns, and one of if not the largest treasure hordes ever put to an adventure.

The final villain from 13th Age, Azgarrak comes from the Book of Demons and is one of the most dangerous non-Icon enemies in the setting. His abilities strike at parts of the mechanics that aren't normally targeted, including the ability to force players to choose between extreme damage and their One Unique Thing, cutting through their destiny and past. This obviously fit with a Mythic concept for Pathfinder, so just like the Whispering Tyrant (and the final stat block coming out after this) we're building a Mythic threat.

The last update for villain month from Pathfinder, we have one of the greatest threats in the setting. In 1e he came out to a clean CR 26, not the absolute highest but not a lot of figures outside demon lords outstrip him (and he even poses a greater threat than some of the lower tier ones!). Of course a villain of this prestige and authority has to make an appearance in an event like this (and the Runelords, another set of villains who are probably even more worthy of such an inclusion are simply too many for me to convert all of them...

Happy Halloween Wordpress! For this post, I decided to go back to AD&D and find a major villain who, to my knowledge, has never actually been updated to any later edition of the game. That was actually somewhat of a challenge, as pretty much all the iconic villains have been mined heavily by WotC for repeat appearances in later editions, even ones who rightfully should be dead, and a lot of their adventures don't have really major villains, being more point crawls or similar that don't have a significant villain to pull out.

Another 13th Age free adventure villain, the Maker of Many comes from a high level one shot adventure called Swords Against Owlbears. The premise of this involves the party being prisoners of the creator of the owlbear and many other mutated and warped creatures, the Maker of Many. A grandiose title and cv, to be sure, though she doesn't quite get that exact history for a Pathfinder setting version.

The final villain for the Abomination Vaults adventure path in Pathfinder 2e, Belcorra doesn't need a PF2e conversion. Even with the remaster, her stats are pretty close to the same, just with some renamed spells and abilities, and dropping the alignment tag. A ghostly sorcerer driven by furious rage against the city where she grew up, she refused to accept death as a permanent obstacle and continues to plan her revenge.

This particular villain might be the most obscure of all the ones I pick for this month, at least within his own system. This is mostly because he's from 4th edition, the version with the fewest well recognized adventures released for it. Checking popular consciousness shows that most highly ranked D&D adventures come from every other edition (though 5e is massively over represented in almost everything, I don't believe it has 21 out of the top 25 best premade adventures of all time).

The Eyes of the Stone Thief adventure is the big adventure for 13th Age. As far as I've been able to tell, no other premade adventure is as large, with this one spanning levels 4-8, with dozens of encounters you're meant to mix and match into the story based on the decisions of the players and what's most dynamic and dramatic for the moment.

Nualia was the final boss of the very first Pathfinder Adventure Path book, and one that Paizo would probably make differently now so many years later. Her story has some of the more edgy aspects that early Pathfinder leaned into. The story of a young woman miscarrying a demon child and turning evil is one that is extremely sensitive, and very easy to do poorly.

Giving a little love to the Ebberon campaign setting with the Lord of Blades. For those not in the know, Ebberon originated the warforged player option, a very mechanically powerful race with a lot of resistances and immunities to various conditions, and which have remained a popular choice ever since even with the power and balance of the option being brought more in line.

13th Age provides a slight complication for villain month (maybe I should have planned this out more fully ahead of time), in that it has a lot fewer iconic villains (who are also within range of combating a party, the Icons themselves don't count for this purpose). It's a system that has a lot less material made for it than D&D or Pathfinder, and the material it has focuses less on the setting in detail and is much more inclined toward giving tools to build your own setting and the aspects within it.

Pathfinder has fewer iconic villains than D&D, partly due to its much shorter lifespan (around 20 years compared to around 50 years), but also because the living setting of Golarion kills quite a few of its villains. The rapid pace of adventure paths for much of Pathfinder's lifespan meant a lot of its major foes get introduced and eliminated in the same real world year, and a lot of the longer lasting villains tend to be foes that are much, much harder to fully stat up.

Our first classic villain for Halloween, Strahd von Zarovich is one of the major iconic enemies of D&D's history. Originating all the way back in AD&D's adventure module I7, he has had stats in every edition of the game since and two additional full adventure books dedicated to him and his domain of dread. These conversions are mostly inspired by his 3.5 era stat block from…

Mi-Go Mi-go are a fungal, space faring species of great scientific curiosity and malevolence. They travel to new worlds in large groups, folding space to cover distance at incredible speeds. When they find a world they proceed to experiment and research into it, starting with the dominant life forms. One of their greatest technological developments are the brain cylinders, a device that permits the extraction and survival of a living brain.

Burnt and dead dryads, mavka gain great power in their new vampiric state. The original mavka were the results of experiments by a vampire, but others have since picked up the method of creation and now more wander the world, draining life from the environment and spreading evil. Rarely do they have clear goals, aside from that which their creators may give them, though they are mortal enemies of red hags, who call them "greenbanes." …