With the September 21 release of The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, the jabberwock makes its return to Dungeons & Dragons. The dragon first appeared in second edition D&D's Monstrous Compendium Annual: Volume III, but it has its roots in other works. It originated in Lewis Carroll’s 1871 poem "Jabberwocky," which was published as part of the novel Alice Through the Looking-Glass. The creature has since become a fixture in popular media as well as other fantasy tabletop RPGs, and its esoteric nature makes it perfect for an adventure set in the Feywild.
Here's a sneak peek at the jabberwock in all of its peculiar glory:
“The jabberwock, with eyes of flame
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood
And burbled as it came!”
— "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll
Monster preview: Jabberwock
A jabberwock is a solitary, temperamental predator that haunts pristine forests and ancient ruins. Accurate descriptions of jabberwocks are difficult to come by, because the rare survivors of an encounter with one retain only a confused impression of its parts and not a sense of the whole. Pieced-together accounts describe it as a sinewy, dragon-like creature that can walk on its hind legs as easily as it travels on all four. Its eyes can emit fiery beams.
Source: The Wild Beyond the Witchlight
The jabberwock is a powerful foe worthy of being used as the final boss in a campaign. Its Confusing Burble is the cornerstone of its stat block. An ode to the nonsensical words that defined Carroll’s poem, the jabberwock’s hypnotic mumblings can leave any hero who dares to stand near it a gibbering mess. Avoiding this ability will require characters to invest in a set of earplugs or corral the dragon into the center of a silence spell, lest they risk losing their turn again and again.
Confusing Burble. The jabberwock burbles to itself unless it is incapacitated. Any creature that starts its turn within 30 feet of the jabberwock and is able to hear its burbling must make
a DC 18 Charisma saving throw. On a failed saving throw, the creature can’t take reactions until the start of its next turn, and it rolls a d4 to determine what it does during its current turn:1–2. The creature does nothing.
3. The creature does nothing except use all its movement to move in a random direction.
4. The creature either makes one melee attack against a random creature it can see or does nothing if no visible creature is within its reach.
The jabberwock's Fiery Gaze punishes characters that line up. The ability is reminiscent of a dragon's breath weapon. The jabberwock fires off an eye beam in a 120-foot line, dealing 31 (7d8) fire damage on a failed save and half as much on a successful one. This attack recharges on a 5 or 6 on a 1d6 roll, but smart adventurers can disable it by blinding the jabberwock.
Fiery Gaze (Recharge 5–6). Unless it is blinded, the jabberwock emits a 120-foot-long, 5-foot-wide line of fire from its eyes. Each creature in that line must make a DC 18 Dexterity saving throw, taking 31 (7d8) fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
Jabberwocks typically focus on a single target at a time. Against them, the jabberwock will make judicious use of its Rend and Tail attacks. If the jabberwock needs to get a host of creatures off its back, it can use its Wing Attack legendary action to damage all foes within 10 feet of it and knock them prone. If the jabberwock’s primary target attempts to flee, the creature will hunt it down using its Uncanny Tracker ability, which allows it to know the direction and distance of any creature it has damaged in the last 24 hours.
The jabberwock has one more trick up its scaley sleeve that will leave characters flummoxed: Regeneration. This trait lets the jabberwock recover 10 hit points at the start of its turn unless it takes slashing damage. The dragon is also vulnerable to slashing damage from a vorpal sword. This is another reference to Carroll’s poem, which stars a knight battling the jabberwock with such a blade:
"One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.”
Jabberwock statistics
Playing with the jabberwock at your table
The jabberwock is best portrayed as the alpha predator of a forest or ruin that has an almost mythological quality. People who live on the outskirts of its territory might speak of it in hushed tones or doubt that it even exists, thanks to unreliable observer accounts that only describe portions of the creature — for instance, its creepy murmurs or bulbous eyes.
In combat, the jabberwock’s tendency to focus on a single target should be expounded upon. Other creatures might split up their attacks between party members and react with some degree of logic, but not the jabberwock. To put players on edge, roll a die at the start of combat to determine which character has drawn the jabberwock's ire. Then, only switch targets when the first one has been knocked out — or killed.
For an adventure hook involving the jabberwock, see below.
The dark depths of Mistmasch Wood
How many hours have passed since you first set foot onto Mistmasch’s gnarled trails? It can only have been a few, but it feels like days. All sense of time has vanished in this bewitching forest, and its twisted, many-branched trees stretch so far overhead that they seem to be completely covering the sun — or is it the moon? Your compass has ceased working, and the mist is so thick you can barely see your hands in front of your face.
Your sole companion is the mumbling that echoes through the mist, confounding your thoughts and making you question why you ventured here in the first place. That frightful, accursed garbling. It just won’t go away ... and it seems to be growing louder.
Mistmasch Wood is a strange forest that can be injected into any campaign setting. Located about a day’s travel from a village named Tulgei, the forest always seems to be obscured by a thick mist. Tulgei locals speculate that Mistmasch is home to a large fey crossing. Many refuse to enter the woods, fearing for their safety. Those who have tested their luck have either gone missing or emerged gibbering about a dragonlike monstrosity. However, the town healer will occasionally venture to the outskirts of Mistmasch Wood to collect flowers used to brew potions of healing.
Alyce Humphrey, the daughter of one of the first sages to ever study a jabberwock, came to Tulgei a week ago. Ignoring everyone’s advice, she ventured into the woods with a team of three adventurers, claiming that she was interested in the Feywild and had a powerful vorpal sword to defeat any monsters that crossed her path. She and her party have been missing ever since. While the superstitious locals would normally be quite happy to forget her, one of her adventuring companions was the estranged son of Tulgei’s mayor, who is beside himself with grief and willing to pay handsomely for news of his child.
Mistmasch Wood is the perfect location for an adventure involving troublesome Feywild creatures like darklings and redcaps, culminating in a battle with the jabberwock. Dungeon Masters might consider making the forest mazelike similar to the Lost Woods in The Legend of Zelda series. Players can easily lose their way and be haunted by the laughter of fey spirits from the murky darkness, not to mention the crazed whispers of the jabberwock. Whether Alyce Humphrey and her companions remain alive or dead is up to the DM, but hopefully that vorpal sword lies hidden in the wood somewhere, waiting for hardened adventurers to put it to good use!
More creatures of the Feywild to come
The jabberwock is only one of several new fifth edition fey creatures in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Whether you’re new or familiar with this frightful beast, the jabberwock won’t disappoint with its peculiar range of abilities and traits. May its unnerving barbles haunt the ears of your players, and may their blades all go snicker-snack!
Jeremy Blum (@PixelGrotto) is a journalist, gaming blogger, comic book aficionado, and fan of all forms of storytelling who rolled his first polyhedral dice while living in Hong Kong in 2017. Since then, he's never looked back and loves roleplaying games for the chance to tell the tales that have been swirling in his head since childhood.
An absurdly boring mismash of other creatures' abilities.
Is it me or is the jabberwock’s Regeneration ability functionally nonexistent? What D&D party doesn’t have weapons which do slashing damage?
The Confusing Burble has me...confused. Say a character starts their turn within range of the Burble, and fails the charisma save. I get they've lost reactions, and I get what happens if they roll a 3 or a 4 on the d4. But if they roll a 1 or a 2, do they still get their normal movement and attack? I guess my misunderstanding comes from if "The creature does nothing" means the Burble doesn't force the character to do anything, or if it means they are unable to do anything at all.
I believe it means the character does nothing as in they take no action or movement. They spend their turn doing nothing.
I preodered WBTW and I will use this thing.
I've seen it happen. In 5E there's practically no incentive to carry a mix of weapon types.
Woah, that thing is SICK. I always loved the weird interpretations of Jabberwocks in fantasy settings, this is something I'd love to use. I unno if I'll buy the book but I'll definitely get this.
I love this, though I'm just a little disappointed that it's attacks don't have any "jaws that bite" or "claws that catch", just a nondescript "rend".
Yep. In a party of casters, monks and rogues (not uncommon, at least for my group) then there will be a lot of pretty much every damage type but slashing.
And even with one or more fighters, paladins, and barbarians in the group they could still end up focused on bludgeoning or piercing damage.
Yes, though that’s rarer because all the big damage weapons often used by those classes deal slashing damage. I’m not trying to argue with you or anything, I’m just saying it’s a bit rarer.
That is not completely true. most of them are, however there are a few, such as the maul, that do bludgeoning or piercing damage.
I agree, slash is probably one of the most common damage types. If I were to run it i'd likely give it immunity to non magical bludgeoning piercing and slashing because Looking for a magical slashing weapon is roughly equivalent to looking for a silver weapon like what the loup garou has. To me that makes more sense than poison immunity, sometimes it feels like WOTC just hates poison.
Wait I just realized that the Jabberwock having Legendary Actions makes it immune to the beheading property of a Vorpal Sword! The one creature it's designed for it can't even behead!
Finally an interesting monster with a good stat block! Glad they start adding back specific vulnerabilities and immunities + specific type of melee damage (slashing to counter the regeneration) instead of the usual melee mush. Can't wait to read the book.
Okay so the short version is that there was this lady who was named mother Leeds. She had already had twelve children and was pregnant with a third. She was kind of fed up with children at this point so she cursed the thirteenth child while in labor. When the child came out, it began to morph into a beast (the tale varies here) with a horse’s head, dog’s teeth, a goat’s body, bat’s wings, and a devil’s tail. The legend says he whipped his mother and her midwives until midnight with his tail, then flew up out of the chimney, preying on man and beat alike. There have actually been several sightings from the 1800s to the 1950s, when the Devil disappeared. More people in New Jersey know more of the Devil than of Sasquatch or Chupacabra. Over the several sightings, reports varied wildly as to what it looked like. It was actually shot with a cannon during one sighting, appearing to seriously wound it but the Devil kept on flying unawares.
Another fun fact: Mother Leeds was a real person, and her house is still standing. (It’s in the pine barrens of South Jersey) Several people (including me) are distantly related to the Leeds family, and therefore Mother Leeds
Magical slashing is actually slightly easier to get ahold of then any other magical damage type because many items reference a sword that deals slashing damage or something similar, plus most unique weapons are longswords or greatswords.
The 1871 poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Caroll is about a massive dragon called the Jabberwock and is the inspiration for both this monster and the Vorpal Sword. The reason the Vorpal Sword cuts off heads with critical hits is because of this quote:
"One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back."
A DM could make an exception for this, I guess. That's what I would do.