Spellcasters, beware! Tiny monstrosities are on the loose, and they love snacking on spellcasting components and familiars! But whatever you do, don't cast spells!
Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft introduces the gremishka, a catlike creature with an unhealthy relationship with magic. Cast a spell near one, and chaos will ensue as the gremishka's tiny body surges with magical energy. If you're unlucky enough, a single gremishka can explode into a whole swarm of gremishkas.
Monster preview: Gremishka
Gremishkas are the vicious products of mistakes made by novice spellcasters seeking to create life. The results are cat-sized, magically unstable creatures with a taste for the trappings of magic — particularly spellbooks, spell components, familiars, and the like. Gremishkas delight in tormenting magic-users, holding vicious grudges against those who gave them life as they infest the walls of spellcasters’ homes or the surrounding lands.
Source: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft
Gremishka are born out of unstable magic — and boy, do they despise their creators! These creatures look like monstrous familiars, and their tempers are just as fierce. Gremishkas hunt spellcasters, and will terrorize areas where magic is regularly found.
While gremishkas have low hit points, they make up for this with their cunning. They'll happily work in packs to terrorize adventurers, or even mimic the sounds of a wounded child or animal to coax do-gooders into a trap. But the real danger in gremishkas is in the unpredictable way they respond to spells cast near them:
Magic Allergy (1/Day). Immediately after a creature within 30 feet of the gremishka casts a spell, the gremishka can spontaneously react to the magic. Roll a d6 to determine the effect:
1–2. The gremishka emanates magical energy. Each creature within 30 feet of the gremishka must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or take 3 (1d6) force damage.
3–4. The gremishka surges with magical energy and regains 3 (1d6) hit points.
5–6. The gremishka explodes and dies, and one swarm of gremishkas instantly appears in the space where this gremishka died. The swarm uses the gremishka’s initiative.
Like the gremishka's Bite, Magic Allergy can do serious damage to low-level adventurers. Gremishkas have a low challenge rating of just 1/8, too. That means you'll be facing these creatures in multiples.
For a group of four 1st-level adventurers, three gremishkas represent an easy encounter, according to our Encounters tool. Five gremishkas represent a medium encounter. So, one cast spell can have your Dungeon Master reaching for multiple d6s as each gremishka within 30 feet surges with magic.
For spellcasters who are being attacked by multiple gremishka, they'll be faced with a serious dilemma: get overrun by these monstrosities, or see what fate the dice hold when they cast a spell to defend themselves. Depending on how the dice fall, things can quickly sour, however, as each gremishka has a chance of becoming a swarm!
Gremishka statistics
Monster preview: Swarm of gremishkas
Gremishkas can be a pest when thrown into any combat encounter, but things can get dangerous when these creatures explode into a swarm with a challenge rating of 2. Like a swarm of cranium rats, a swarm of gremishkas have a slew of damage resistances and condition immunities. The gremishka's Magic Allergy is also replaced with two abilities that make these creatures even more problematic for spellcasters: Limited Spell Immunity and Spell Redirection.
Limited Spell Immunity. The swarm automatically succeeds on saving throws against spells of 3rd level or lower, and the attack rolls of such spells always miss it.
This first ability is straightforward. It forces low-level spellcasters to utilize auto-hit spells like magic missile and area of effect spells like thunderwave that deal damage on a successful save. Choose a different strategy, and you're liable to fail altogether. But player characters might not immediately realize that a swarm of gremishkas has spell immunity. That is due, in part, thanks to this ability:
Spell Redirection. In response to a spell attack roll missing the swarm, the swarm causes that spell to hit another creature of its choice within 30 feet of it that it can see.
As a reaction, a swarm of gremishkas can bounce a spell back at the spellcaster or at another target in range. For a creature with solid Intelligence and Wisdom ability scores, the swarm of gremishkas is liable to choose a target that is visibly hurt or represents the biggest threat.
When it's the swarm of gremishkas' turn in combat, it has one option for its Attack action, Bites. The swarm's bonus to attack rolls is low, but when Bites hits, it deals 3d6+2 piercing damage, plus 2d6 force damage. The amount of piercing damage the swarm deals drops significantly when it has half of its hit points or fewer, but the force damage remains the same. As Absorb Elements doesn't grant resistance to force damage, you'll want to reserve your spell slots for Shield, instead.
Swarm of gremishkas statistics
Playing with gremishkas at your table
Gremishkas are angry little critters packed with chaotic magic. But their efficacy in combat depends on the party's composition. In a group with a lone spellcaster, gremishkas won't represent much of a threat. Once the party learns about Magic Allergy, the spellcaster will likely pull out their dusty dagger and start swinging rather than risk casting another spell.
Luckily, gremishkas are intelligent and fairly wise, so they can be picky when choosing targets, and use tactics to avoid getting stomped. When including gremishkas in your game, be mindful that their low challenge rating can be deceiving. A single gremishka can quickly become a swarm depending on how you roll with Magic Allergy. For 1st-level adventurers, this can bump an easy combat encounter to a deadly one.
Here is an easy way to introduce your player characters to gremishkas:
Infestation at the inn!
As you settle into your bed at the inn to rest for the night, you hear a quiet rustling from the floor. You peer over the edge of the bed and see two bald, catlike creatures tearing into your spell component pouch. Leaping to you feet, the creatures hiss and run for the open window on the far side of the room. Just then, you feel claws digging into your legs as more of these creatures climb up your nightshirt, their teeth chittering.
A spellcaster has limited options when they're without a component pouch, and gremishkas know this. If gremishkas can devour the contents of a spellcaster's component pouch, they will begin tracking the spellcaster in the hopes of catching them defenseless and unawares. The gremishkas could follow the spellcaster as they venture to a magic shop for a replacement component pouch, and attack in an alleyway or other area where there are few passerby to help.
Because gremishkas are about the size of a cat, they can be found in all manner of places. They could lurk under the floorboards of an inn or be hidden behind books on a shelf, for example. When they do attack, gremishkas will prioritize spellcasters. As much as gremishkas despise magic, triggering their Magic Allergy is key to their victory. If things start looking grim for gremishkas, they're sure to retreat and formulate a new plan of action.
Wreck magical havoc with gremishkas
With the release of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, gremishkas and swarms of gremishkas offer new ways to terrorize your players.
As with the carrionettes we previewed last week, gremishkas and swarms of gremishkas are strongest when player characters are guessing at their abilities. A damage-dealing Cantrip could cause the battlefield to erupt with magical energy, or your player characters could discover that their bag of holding has been chewed through, and the diamond they'd reserved for Revivify has been eaten. What do you think of gremishkas?
Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is available for preorder now in the D&D Beyond Marketplace! All preorders come with digital dice, as well as character themes, frames, and backdrops!
Michael Galvis (@michaelgalvis) is a tabletop content producer for D&D Beyond. He is a longtime Dungeon Master who enjoys horror films and all things fantasy and sci-fi. When he isn’t in the DM’s seat or rolling dice as his anxious halfling sorcerer, he’s playing League of Legends and Magic: The Gathering with his husband. They live together in Los Angeles with their adorable dog, Quentin.
Ooh, how fun! This could be a good little challenge for a party of spellcasters to navigate around.. although knowing my players, they’d probably try to recruit it as a pet. Somehow.
Friendly edit: it is “wreak havoc,” not “wreck havoc.”
This is the one thing from Van Richten’s I might actually use. Well done. You made me actually like something from a horror themed book. Bravo.
also 3rd
Challenge, write “The gremshika ate my” and then hit the middle suggestion button until it makes a little sentence.
These seem like things made specifically to annoy players, kind of a metagame creation.
Using these next session. The parties wizard's gonna hate me...
These are really cool! Only thing that might make them lack-luster out of combat is if your spellcasting players use arcane focuses. Besides that, I love these cute little magic eaters.
They are a gotcha, most definitely and in that sense they probably were born of a metagame question. Though as a DM almost everything i create starts with the question "what if x"? So i have no problems with the metagame design conceit.
All that said, the concept of creatures that are corrupted by magic, react badly to it, and even hunt sounds perfectly reasonable/epic.
The gremshika ate my bread and drank the tea...
Love it, chaos and confusion are my favourite.
Ohhh I love these! I have a custom wild magic surge table for my Urd sorcerer, and want to incorporate summoning these into it. Would be amazing and chaotic.
Ooh, evil magic cat to be a familiar for an evil hag, I can see that working...
Shouldn't these be like chaotic evil or something? Where is the alignment?
I mean this is a preview, not the final text. Surely an alignment will be in the final product, even if it is overly irrelevant for the most part.
No. It’s not there. WotC has moved away from providing alignment in its stat blocks for various reasons. Run them as seems most appropriate to you.
These things are amazing! I love the idea of magical energy going wrong, or randomly creating strange, evil creatures. (It doesn't have the alignment, but creatures that have an innate desire to kill and don't care about anything else are probably at least neutral evil). I also love the idea of a spellcaster trying to pull out a fireball on a swarm of these things, finding that the creatures are nearly immune to them. The mighty fireball finally laid low! (Actually, it deals so much damage anyway that the things'll die next turn, but whatever). I'd also like to use these as minions, targeting the spellcasters of a team and destroying their spells. Eating a component pouch and components is all good, but what about eating every spellcasting focus in the whole party? What about eating a wizards spellbook? Also, sorcerers are innately magical. Does that mean gremishkas will attempt to target and eat them at all costs? They offer so much stuff to mess around with.
Huh. I might use these. They're unpredictable, even as the DM, so I'll probably tweak them to just choose what I want on Magic Allergy instead of rolling a die if I do use them.
Oh No, I really hope my DM doesn’t see this or I’m in serious trouble since I love playing wizards.
I get the feeling that creatures that seek out and attempt to hunt magic wouldn't be that in to serving an innately magical being. Plot holes aside, I love this idea, and I'll probably be a hypocrite and use them in the employ of a hag.
Heck yeah they do, and I'm so here for it. Any encounter that gets the party thinking outside the box is almost always a good time (for everyone involved), in my experience. Plus, the "lore" of where these things come from and why they're the way they are, are pretty solid in my opinion.
Oh contraire, my fellow DM - an arcane focus is almost better than spell components, when you're looking to eat magic-related gear! It might teach your spellcaster(s) to value the worth of their "regular old" wand or staff or orb that they've taken for granted. They'll still have to venture to a magic shop for a replacement, as desired...