I can’t be the only person who was thrown into an existential crisis by the Toy Story film franchise. Sure, maybe toys just magically come to life as part of their creation— that’s fine. But what if every single talking toy in those movies are actually ghosts who have found the perfect place to ride out their afterlife, unbothered by such things as "unfinished business?"

Once you consider this possibility, you might reconsider leaving articulated figures lying around, ready for the nearest ghost to snatch up. It’s from this very reasonable fear that we find the Fellforged from Kobold Press’s Tome of Beasts 1.

• The Fellforged: Ghost in the Machine
• How a Fellforged Faces Foes
• When to Forge a Fellforged

Unleash Over 400 Monsters from Kobold Press

Tome of Beasts 1 introduces hundreds of new monsters for use in your home games. When you purchase your copy of the book on D&D Beyond, you'll immediately find the monsters in the compendium and available for use in our encounter builder; combat tracker; and Maps, an official virtual tabletop.

The VTT requires only the DM to have a Master-tier subscription, and it allows you to drop in monster tokens and maps on the fly to make running your sessions faster and easier.

The Fellforged: Ghost in the Machine

If you thought only buildings could be haunted and only living beings could be possessed, think again. Tome of Beasts 1 delivers us the Fellforged, or, what happens when a ghost finds the perfect discarded Construct body in its desired neighborhood and price range. The motivations for a Specter binding itself to the gears of an automaton can range from maliciously destructive to simply the practicality of a physical form, but the end results are these ghastly CR 5 hermit crabs roaming the world.

How a Fellforged Faces Foes

When a Specter possesses the body of a discarded Construct to create a Fellforged, it does so intentionally to exchange its noncorporeal nature for physical strength. So the focus of a Fellforged’s attacks will be largely physical, with a bit of ghostly power mixed in.

Spooky Slam!

The Fellforged’s primary attack is a Multiattack action that allows it two uses of an ability called Necrotic Slam.

Necrotic Slam is, basically, exactly what it sounds like. The Fellforged has a +5 to hit with a melee weapon attack dealing 2d6+2 Bludgeoning damage plus 2d8 Necrotic damage. Plus, if the target is a creature, they must make a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or they’ll have their maximum HP reduced by the amount of Necrotic damage taken. This reduction lasts till the creature takes a Long Rest, and if their HP maximum drops down to zero, the creature dies.

So, an important safety tip from Egon: Try not to get hit by the Necrotic Slam.

Bursting at the Seams with Damage

Because the construct is merely a shell that the Specter is inhabiting, the ghost feels no real inhibitions toward randomly flinging parts of its machine body at its enemies. To this end, the Fellforged can use its Burst Gears ability as a Bonus Action to strain the construct’s body and send pieces of it, such as clockwork gears or outer plate panels, flying.

Creatures within 5 feet of the Fellforged must make a DC 14 Dexterity saving throw or take 2d6 Piercing damage, or half as much on a successful saving throw.

This Bonus Action costs the Fellforged 5 feet of its movement speed. It can continue to use this on future turns, but once its movement speed has dropped to 0, it can no longer activate Burst Gears until it completes a Long Rest. Presumably it has time during this period to reconstruct its body.

Strengths and Weaknesses

As a spectral construct, a Fellforged does not need to eat, drink, sleep, or breathe. It also suffers from the same Sunlight Sensitivity as a Specter, so while the Fellforged is in sunlight, it has disadvantage on attack rolls as well as Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.

The Specter inside the Fellforged is still vulnerable to abilities that turn undead, and they can be used to force it out of its construct. Once the Specter is outside the construct, it maintains the HP totals it had before being expelled. The Specter can re-possess the construct as a Bonus Action while it is within 5 feet of it. However if the Specter remains outside of its shell for over a minute, the dormant Fellforged body crumbles and is destroyed.

When to Forge a Fellforged

The possibilities for when to include a robot possessed by a ghost in your game seem pretty endless, but here’s some ideas that jumped out at me for some fun Fellforged story ideas.

Minions

One of the suggestions in Tome of Beasts 1 is to have a Fellforged work as a soldier in support of a more powerful Undead, such as a Vampire or Mummy. This is a fun option because it gives you some variety in the types of encounters your players might have in pursuit of such a being. Shake things up beyond your typical bats, wolves, and corrupted Gur hunters.

It’s Old Man Withers, the Guy Who Runs the Abandoned Clockwork Factory!

With its CR 5 and the high risk of death with its Necrotic Slam attacks, a Fellforged is also a solid choice for a major encounter for a tier 1 group of player characters. Set up an abandoned laboratory or warehouse full of clockwork parts, mix in local folklore about the noises people hear at night or some sort of tragedy that happened 30 years ago on this very night, and you have an adventure that leads characters to explore a creepy space before facing off against this monster.

Functional Fellforged

Another suggestion from the book, Tome of Beasts 1’s description mentions that in Kobold Press’s Midgard setting, Fellforged will intentionally be created for the purposes of fighting against other Undead spirits and then melted down. This could certainly be done by groups in the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or other settings as well. Or, the players could be encountering Fellforged who resisted such a task and turned on their creators with a vengeance.

Forge Ahead

A Fellforged combines two distinctly different types of D&D monsters. Not only that, it also blends two different tones of story vibes—horror and steampunk—to give you an encounter that can play as a fun hybrid of the two. They’re a great example of the versatility and flexibility of D&D games and how different aspects can be brought together to create a new and memorable experience.

Riley Silverman (@rileyjsilverman) is a contributing writer to D&D Beyond, Nerdist, and SYFY Wire. She DMs the Theros-set Dice Ex Machina for the Saving Throw Show, and has been a player on the Wizards of the Coast-sponsored The Broken Pact. Riley also played as Braga in the official tabletop adaptation of the Rat Queens comic for HyperRPG, and currently plays as The Doctor on the Doctor Who RPG podcast The Game of Rassilon. She currently lives in Los Angeles.