D&D General Gargoyles need to be redone.

[MarkB]

"You see a somewhat grotesque statue on a plinth, with a small but shiny brass plaque."
"..."
"Well, the plaque says: 'Aesoph the Gargoyle'."
"..."
"No, nothing unusual, but as you turn away, your peripheral vision catches a tiny bit of movement."
"..."
"You're not sure, but you think it may have winked at you."

"They spelled my name wrong."

 

[Shades of Eternity]

honestly, have them contract out and have a rental agency.

Fun at birthday parties, weddings and rock concerts.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

ok got the fluff done (roughly 30 pages worth). I wrote the base one up in 5.0 D&D, but I'm unsure of the changes in 2024, so I'm posting it here.

Gargoyle (Baseline)
Medium elemental, typically neutral
Armor Class 16 (stone hide)
Hit Points 60 (8d8 + 24)
Speed 30 ft., fly 40 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
17 (+3)	12 (+1)	16 (+3)	8 (−1)	12 (+1)	8 (−1)

Saving Throws Str +5, Con +5
Skills Perception +3, Stealth +3
Damage Resistances: bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks.
Damage Immunities poison
Condition Immunities: petrified, poisoned, exhaustion.
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13
Languages Terran; understands the primary language of its parent structure’s builders but usually speaks only in short, gravelly phrases.
Challenge 3 (700 XP)
Proficiency Bonus +2
Traits
Living Stone. The gargoyle doesn’t need to eat or breathe. It sleeps by entering a rigid, statue-like state. It has the advantage on saving throws against effects that would reshape stone (such as transmute rock, stone shape, or flesh to stone).
False Appearance (Statue). While the gargoyle remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from an inanimate stone statue or architectural ornament.
Architectural Imprint. Each gargoyle is subtly shaped by the structure it grew from (cathedral, fortress, academy, mausoleum, etc.). As a default, choose one imprint when you place the gargoyle:
· Warden of Heights. Advantage on Strength (Athletics) checks made to climb or grapple.
· Buttress-Born. When the gargoyle is adjacent to a wall, column, or other stone support, it has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks to hide.
(You can swap these out for custom imprints later for subspecies.)
Stone Sleep (Narrative). During a short or long rest, the gargoyle becomes rigid, blending into the surrounding stone. While in this state, it regains hit points as usual, and creatures that aren’t explicitly searching for it have disadvantage on checks to notice it. (This rarely matters in combat but is huge for ambush encounters and ecology flavour.)
Actions
Multiattack. The gargoyle makes two attacks: one with its bite and one with its claws, or two with its claws.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target.
Hit: 8 (1d8 + 3) piercing damage.
Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target.
Hit: 6 (1d6 + 3) slashing damage.
Tactics (Quick DM Notes)
· Ambush Predator. Use False Appearance and height—perch them on ledges, domes, crypt roofs. They wait until someone defaces, robs, or threatens “their” structure.
· Grapple & Drop. Classic: one claw attack replaced with a grapple, then fly up and let go on its next turn.
· Territorial Pack. Baseline gargoyles work well in trios or quads—one pins, one harasses casters, one body-blocks exits.

besides being unsure of how it would change in 2024, how best to do templates?
I got ideas that the environment will affect the overall design as well as special abilities.

 

[Corinnguard]

False Appearance (Statue). While the gargoyle remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from an inanimate stone statue or architectural ornament.

If I was an adventurer and I suspected that I came across a gargoyle while it was using False Appearance, what DC would I need to overcome while making a Perception/Investigation check? Would I also be at Disadvantage?

 

[Brendan Byrd]

Any interaction with Stonecunning when they are hiding?

 

[Corinnguard]

Warden of Heights. Advantage on Strength (Athletics) checks made to climb or grapple.
· Buttress-Born. When the gargoyle is adjacent to a wall, column, or other stone support, it has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks to hide.

These two would be nice Heritage gifts for a Gargoyle heritage in Level Up.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

If I was an adventurer and I suspected that I came across a gargoyle while it was using False Appearance, what DC would I need to overcome while making a Perception/Investigation check? Would I also be at Disadvantage?

Any interaction with Stonecunning when they are hiding?

I am thinking let's keep it simple. Disadvantage to perception/investigation checks, stonecunning negates.

I am also looking for any public domain and/or creative commons for the blog which means...show me your favorite medieval grotesques/gargoyles.

 

[Corinnguard]

Since Gargoyles in RL are known for being waterspouts, the playable version could have this spell from Laser Llama when they reach 3rd level:

Torrent​

1st-level Evocation

---

• Classes: Druid, Magus, Sorcerer, Wizard
• Casting Time: 1 action
• Range: Self (30 foot line)
• Components: V, S, M (a mirror)
• Duration: Instantaneous

---

A burst of elemental water erupts from you in a line 30 feet long and 5 feet wide in a direction you choose, forcing any creature in that area to make a Strength saving throw. On a failure, it takes 1d12 cold damage and is knocked back 10 feet in a straight line and falls prone. On a success, it takes half as much damage and is not moved or knocked prone. A Huge or larger creature has advantage on its saving throw.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd-level or higher, the damage increases by 1d12 and it knocks back 10 additional feet for each slot level above 1st


Unlike the actual spell, this spell could emerge from the Gargoyle PC's mouth and do 1d12 Bludgeoning damage.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

ok will do this in chunks
will need to refine the text for the blog, but what the hey, I spent the day working on it and want to show off.

The Ecology of the Gargoyle​

Introduction: The Watchers Who Wake​

Perched on the edges of towers and tombs, the gargoyle waits. By daylight it is nothing more than weathered stone—another grim face among a choir of saints, sinners, and snarling beasts. But when the sun dips and the shadows thicken, the sculpture exhales dust, flexes wings of living granite, and steps down from its pedestal with the patient grace of something that has watched the rise and fall of kingdoms. Whether protector, predator, or something carved from deeper emotions than either, the gargoyle remains a creature of paradox: born of architecture yet undeniably alive; a guardian who can become a terror; a sentinel shaped by the memories, hopes, and fears of the mortals who raised the walls it first clung to. Their stories speak of loyalty and wrath, of stone that dreams, and of ancient clans who still glide under moonlight—silent watchers over a world that rarely notices them until it’s far too late.

Origin & Reproduction of the Gargoyle​

(Ecology of the Gargoyle — Section II)

The birth of a gargoyle is neither an act of passion nor an accident of nature—it is an architectural event. In this slow alchemy, emotion, magic, and the memory of stone itself crystallize into life. Scholars debate the exact moment a gargoyle “quickens,” for unlike other creatures, gargoyles do not begin as babies. They start as statues—silent, inert ornaments perched above the world, waiting for their moment of awakening.

The Seed of a Gargoyle: Emotional Masonry​

Gargoyles do not arise from ordinary walls or mundane buildings. Instead, they require places saturated with what mythwrights call “emotional pressure.”

This pressure may take the form of:

• Reverence in an ancient cathedral spire
• Fear in a fortress that has endured centuries of siege
• Sorrow in a plague hospital or medical college
• Joyful noise in an amphitheatre where crowds once roared
• Unquiet memory in ruins haunted by regret or triumph

Where strong emotion meets carved stone, the boundary between symbol and organism becomes thin. The statue begins absorbing the psychic echo of the people who built, worshipped in, or suffered around it.

Some sages claim gargoyles are the dreams of buildings, sloughed off and given form.

What Sparks the Awakening​

Three known triggers can cause a slumbering gargoyle statue to animate:

1. Ambient Magical Saturation​

Leyline intersections, arcane disasters, divine miracles, and wild magic surges can all catalyze petrified forms into actual life.

2. Overflowing Emotion​

A significant event—battle, plague, festival, tragedy—can “overcharge” a structure, causing one of its carvings to awaken in response to the intensity of mortal feeling.

This is why gargoyles often arise after:

• The fall of a kingdom
• A great betrayal
• A holy revival
• A siege broken by courage or vengeance

Each event leaves an emotional imprint that becomes a new personality.

3. Clan Awakening​

Existing gargoyles can awaken new gargoyles by transferring a portion of their inner “humours”—the alchemical fluids within their stone bodies—into an unawakened statue.

This ritual, called the Sharing of the Vein, is performed rarely, usually:

• When a clan rebuilds
• To replace fallen kin
• To defend a threatened home
• To prepare a generation for a long-term watch

Not every statue accepts the humours. Some remain stone forever. Others awaken… different.

Biological-Stone Reproduction: The Humour Cycle​

Unlike constructs, gargoyles possess interior “organs” formed of alchemical liquids that mimic the Four Humours—but in their own peculiar way:

• Flame Humour — rage, courage, vitality
• Glass Humour — memory, reflection, illusion
• Mortar Humour — devotion, protection, social bonds
• Ink Humour — knowledge, secrecy, runic magic

In a mature gargoyle, these humours pool in a core chamber. When preparing to “birth” a successor, the clan performs a rite:

• The Elder Cuts Their Vein (symbolically or literally)
• Humours flow into the chosen statue
• The statue absorbs them over weeks or months
• At the next Stone Sleep cycle, the statue cracks and awakens

The newborn gargoyle stands fully formed—physically adult but mentally empty, needing guidance like a hatchling.

Why Gargoyles Have No Children​

Gargoyles cannot reproduce biologically. Their Stone Sleep cycle converts their bodies into dormant architecture. Fertility in the mortal sense is impossible.

Instead, gargoyles “reproduce” by extending the legacy and emotional inheritance of their home.

For them, lineage is not bloodline but structureline.

Your ancestors are:

• The building that birthed you
• The clan that shared its humours
• The emotions that shaped your stone

Thus every gargoyle is, in a sense, a living piece of history.

Rare and Forbidden Origins​

A few aberrant cases deserve note:

The Weeping-Born​

Statues created out of obsession or grief, especially those carved in mourning over the dead, may awaken as melancholic gargoyles. These often have Weeping-Angel-like traits:

• Motionless when observed
• Capable of terrifying speed
• Vanishing from their plinth only when no eyes are upon them

Such gargoyles rarely integrate with clans and often haunt graveyards or abandoned urban districts.

The Carved-Born (Crafted Gargoyles)​

A mortal sculptor of exceptional skill, channeling vice or virtue into their art, can create a gargoyle intentionally. Many wizards, liches, and dragons exploit this method to raise guardians.

These gargoyles reflect the sculptor’s own soul—an imprint that can create tragedy or twisted devotion.

The Cataclysmic Brood​

When a region suffers overwhelming magical catastrophe—earthfall, planar breach, necrotic storm—entire clusters of statues might awaken at once, creating whole clans without elders.

Such clans are often unstable, powerful, and dangerously unrooted.

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