Welcome to Homebrew Horrors, a series where you get a set of brand-new homebrew monsters, plus lore and worldbuilding details that you can use to plant them in your own D&D setting. This week, check out three monstrous new hydras: the arctic cryohydra, the magma-born pyrohydra, and the vegetal floralhydra. Each threatens to bring the hurt to your players in new and exciting ways, and they’re the perfect way to throw your players who have memorized the Monster Manual for a loop!

Cryohydra

The cryohydra is a horrific, blubbery mammal not unlike a massive whale with four muscular tentacles and multiple heads on long, serpentine necks. Its heads, once severed, leave behind stumps which regrow two new heads in their place unless cauterized by flames. Even though it is a creature of flesh and blood, the supernatural frost that birthed it suffuses its entire body.

Created by the divine power of Auril the Frostmaiden, cryohydras are monstrous, many-headed amphibians untroubled by temperatures as low as –100 degrees Fahrenheit. Cryohydras stalk icy wastes and dwell in frigid pools, typically subsiding on arctic fish but devouring any mortal foolish enough to wander too close to their lairs. Some cryohydras swim through arctic seas, pursuing prey as large as killer whales—or even the whaling ships that hunt them.

A cryohydra typically makes its lair in aboveground ice caves, abandoned temples to the goddess that created it, or partially submerged sea caves. When creating a cryohydra lair, consider using the Healing Pools map or Coastal Temple map from Mythic Odysseys of Theros as a starting point.

If you’re playing in another campaign setting, you can decide upon a different deity of ice, winter, and snow to have created a cryohydra. In Eberron, this deity could be the Devourer, one of the Dark Six and the divine embodiment of nature’s wrath. The Devourer’s cryohydras are sleek, icy blue, and lined with white fins to help them swim through arctic oceans. In Wildemount, this deity could be the Raven Queen, whose hydras are bone-white, yet covered in patches of long, black feathers. In Theros, cryohydras are nonetheless servants of Nylea, whose power over nature can appear chaotic and unpredictable to mortals ill-versed in her divine modes of thought.  

The cryohydra is a fearsome CR 10 monster. See its full statistics and add this monster to your game using the D&D Monster Homebrew tool!

Pyrohydra

The pyrohydra is a hulking serpent of pure magma with a dozen flailing heads. Born of divine elemental power, this living pyroclastic floe leaves a trail of oozing, burning destruction wherever it moves. Its heads are amorphous extensions of its own elemental nature. Like other hydras, it can grow more heads whenever one of its existing heads is destroyed—however, it can also channel its own elemental life force into creating new heads. More frightful still, it can destroy its own heads to create an eruption of magma and toxic gas, burying all nearby in molten rock.

Pyrohydras were first brought into being by Imix, fiery prince of Elemental Evil, who used them to guard his domain on the Elemental Plane of Fire. Since their first creation, pyrohydras have become apex predators of the molten, flaming seas of the Plane of Fire—and have occasionally emerged into the Material Plane, sometimes called by Vanifer’s Cult of the Eternal Flame, sometimes emerging through natural planar rifts. On the Material Plane, pyrohydras frequently lair in natural volcanos, but they also makes lairs in ancient forests, and take great joy watching the world around them burn to cinders. When creating a pyrohydra lair, consider using the Volcano Temple map or Forest Shrine map from Mythic Odysseys of Theros, or the Weeping Colossus from Princes of the Apocalypse as a starting point.

These elemental behemoths possess brutish intelligence, and delight in appearing to mortals as demigods and demanding their worship. They have little use for material tribute, for such gifts simply melt in their molten bodies, but living sacrifices entertain them greatly.

The pyrohydra is a gargantuan, CR 13 creature of pure magma. See its full statistics and add this monster to your game using the D&D Monster Homebrew tool!

Floralhydra

The floralhydra is a verdant beast with a body shaped like a hog-sized plant bulb, propped up on a wriggling mess of vine-like legs. Emerging from this slimy, leafy bulb are five thick vines that writhe around like flailing pythons. At the end of each of these vines is a head shaped like a smaller bulb. When this head opens to feed, it unwraps into a pink, five-petaled maw dripping with acid and lined with small white hooks that grab its prey.

Unlike other hydras, which are the progeny of divine beings, floralhydras are the twisted creations of a druidic order called the Circle of Thorns. These zealots believe that plants are the superior form of life, particularly those that have been granted sapience through magic. Floralhydras are their proudest creations, for while they are adept at devouring the circle’s foes, they have another purpose. All beings devoured by a floralhydra are digested into dandelion-like seeds. Once a floralhydra goes to seed, all of the flesh-and-blood creatures it devoured are reborn as sentient, plantlike facsimiles of their former selves.

Floralhydras, while sentient, are about as intelligent as a well-trained dog. They show kindness to their masters and are capable of love and loyalty, but lack reason or any sort of higher thought.

The floralhydra is a CR 5 monster that lives to devour all humanoids! See its full statistics and add this monster to your game using the D&D Monster Homebrew tool!

What kind of homebrew monsters have you made for you game? Learn how to make homebrew horrors of your own in the D&D Monster Homebrew tool with Design Workshop: Monsters!

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James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Critical Role Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his fiancée Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.