Defination of 'Creature'

Where can I find the official defination of "creature" in the rules? Tried searching D&D Beyond ot no avail, glanced through the players hand book and the basic rules but nothing jumped out, googling brings up a lot of fan sites but nothing official.

Playing with new players and the DM keeps being asked if each new monster is a "creature"; to my understanding "creature" is just a catch all term for any living thing to differentiate from "object" but that's just my understnading, I want to know where the actual defination is written down so I can read it and show it to them.

This is just one of those things they never bothered to write down an in-game definition of due to their idea of using natural language because they assume that everyone knows what a "creature" is already.

Quote from 2000AD >>

to my understanding "creature" is just a catch all term for any living thing to differentiate from "object" but that's just my understnading,

Yep, anything that's up and about and moving around. Any humanoid, beast, demon, undead, construct or whatever, even a mimic qualifies.

Creature is any monster or NPC usually coming with a type. Objects in comparison don't. 

If you're inquiring about a specific thing you're not sure about fell free to post it here and you will get an answer quickly.

The Monster Manual defines a monster as "any creature that can be interacted with and potentially fought and killed."

As others have wrote.  There really is no creature.  it is just a generic universal term to lump together things that appear in the books.

Creatures would be Beasts,  Undead,  Fey, etc...

I'd give creature as anything with grammatical animacy.

For gameplay mechanics, I think what we really want to know: What isn't a creature? To the best of my understanding, inanimate objects, wieldable/wearable/usable gear, empty ground, physical manifestations of spells (Cloudkill, Fireball, Wall of Fire and the like) that cannot be interacted with and slain/defeated. The campfire, the rations, the hemp rope, the Immovable Rod, the Staff of Power, and your character's underwear are all not creatures. Golems, undead, an artificer's eldritch canon, an invisible stalker, elementals, constructs, are all creatures. 

Where the rubber meets the road? A barbarian wielding a Vicious Warclub will do an extra 2d6 damage to to all the undead hoards, elementals, golems and constructs inside and outside the fortress of the end boss lich. When it comes time to smash through the massive doors (because that's the only way forward), he will not do the extra 2d6 damage. 

If I'm wrong then I've been DM'ing wrong and inadvertently creating house rules. So if I'm wrong, let me know. 

Ok, so this thread was started in 2023, so was about the 2014 rules. However, the 2024 rules do in fact define “creature”. 

From the Rules Glossary:

Creature

Any being in the game, including a player’s character, is a creature. See also “Creature Type.”

Creature Type

Every creature, including every player character, has a tag in the rules that identifies the type of creature it is. Most player characters are of the Humanoid type. These are the game’s creature types:

The types don’t have rules themselves, but some rules in the game affect creatures of certain types in different ways.”

So, essentially, if it has a Creature Type, it’s a Creature.

And dead dead things are not creatures, they are object.  Undead dead things are creatures.

Quote from Mog_Dracov >>

And dead dead things are not creatures, they are object.  

There was some merit to this interpretation in the 2014 rules, but with the 2024 rules this is just incorrect.

From the Rules Glossary:

Dead

A dead creature has no Hit Points and can’t regain them unless it is first revived by magic such as the Raise Dead or Revivify spell. When such a spell is cast, the spirit knows who is casting it and can refuse. The spirit of a dead creature has left the body and departed for the Outer Planes, and reviving the creature requires calling the spirit back.

If the creature returns to life, the revival effect determines the creature’s current Hit Points. Unless otherwise stated, the creature returns to life with any conditions, magical contagions, or curses that were affecting it at death if the durations of those effects are still ongoing. If the creature died with any Exhaustion levels, it returns with 1 fewer level. If the creature had Attunement to one or more magic items, it is no longer attuned to them.

Also:

Raise Dead:

With a touch, you revive a dead creature if it has been dead no longer than 10 days and it wasn’t Undead when it died.

The creature returns to life with 1 Hit Point. This spell also neutralizes any poisons that affected the creature at the time of death.

. . . If the creature is lacking body parts or organs integral for its survival—its head, for instance—the spell automatically fails . . .

Revivify:

You touch a creature that has died within the last minute. That creature revives with 1 Hit Point. This spell can’t revive a creature that has died of old age, nor does it restore any missing body parts.

The exact creature vs object status of a dead body or a part of one is probably going to remain left to DMs to arbitrate in 5e. Imo most of it comes down to common sense rulings- a corpse ain't gonna move or otherwise act for something like Command- and the more relevant sticky points like where a dead body or piece of one fits in for teleportation limits is largely dependent on how much of a roadblock the DM wants revival to be. If they're upfront that this is a hardcore campaign that doesn't make getting someone back from the dead easy, it's a fair call to say a corpse is still creature enough you can't just blink them back to base or the nearest friendly temple. Otherwise I'd say it'd be good form to let the bodies be treated as luggage rather than passengers, as it were.

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues >>

The exact creature vs object status of a dead body or a part of one is probably going to remain left to DMs to arbitrate in 5e...

I think the best way to treat a dead body (or a significant piece of that corpse) is that it is an object - but it is also a sort of gateway through which you can target the creature which has died if a spell requires it for targeting. It's not a creature currently however. 

Quote from RegentCorreon >>

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues >>

The exact creature vs object status of a dead body or a part of one is probably going to remain left to DMs to arbitrate in 5e...

I think the best way to treat a dead body (or a significant piece of that corpse) is that it is an object - but it is also a sort of gateway through which you can target the creature which has died if a spell requires it for targeting. It's not a creature currently however. 

 Would you allow the Locate Creature spell to find a dead creature that otherwise matches the caster’s criteria? (The spell wording doesn’t explicitly exclude dead creatures.)

I always understande that Creature is something that has, or had, Hit Points

Quote from ThelenyiWhinlaw >>

Quote from RegentCorreon >>

I think the best way to treat a dead body (or a significant piece of that corpse) is that it is an object - but it is also a sort of gateway through which you can target the creature which has died if a spell requires it for targeting. It's not a creature currently however. 

 Would you allow the Locate Creature spell to find a dead creature that otherwise matches the caster’s criteria? (The spell wording doesn’t explicitly exclude dead creatures.)

Short answer, no - but locate object could find the creature's body for a cheaper slot.

If it ever came up in a real game, probably yes I would allow the Locate Creature spell to find a specific body or at least give the information that the creature is dead if the corpse is in fact close enough to find (I feel out-of-combat information spells should lean in the direction of being helpful). Conversely, if they were searching for the nearest living unicorn in a forest then I would not have the spell point them to a nearby rotten unicorn corpse. And if the players were in some afterlife realm the spell could help locate the soul of the known creature if that was wanted. 

Quote from SaintLothar >>

I always understande that Creature is something that has, or had, Hit Points

This is definitely not the case in 5e/5.5e D&D, as objects can and often do have Hit Points.

Quote from wagnarokkr >>

Quote from SaintLothar >>

I always understande that Creature is something that has, or had, Hit Points

This is definitely not the case in 5e/5.5e D&D, as objects can and often do have Hit Points.

 What objects has Hit Points in the system?

PS: correcting myself already. Yes, doors and some other objects really has HP in 5.5

Quote from SaintLothar >>

Quote from wagnarokkr >>

Quote from SaintLothar >>

I always understande that Creature is something that has, or had, Hit Points

This is definitely not the case in 5e/5.5e D&D, as objects can and often do have Hit Points.

 What objects has Hit Points in the system?

PS: correcting myself already. Yes, doors and some other objects really has HP in 5.5

Any object can have hit points if the DM decides that makes sense. The 5.5e rules for this are described in the Rules Glossary here.

This was also the case in 5e, though the rules for it are only included in the Dungeon Master's Guide (see here).

i already correct myself about that