These Dungeons And Dragons Monsters Make Surprisingly Great Player Characters For Any Party

One of the best things about Dungeons & Dragons is the variety of species your character can be, from elves to orcs, dwarves, tieflings, and even expansion books that allow you to play with creatures like goblins, kobolds, lizardfolk, and more. There are a lot of options out there.

Dungeons & Dragons art of a gnoll or evil wild shape druid moves to attack.

Dungeons & Dragons: Species From Older Editions To Bring To The 2024 Ruleset

Over the years, DnD has created many playable species, but not all of them have made it to 5e.

That said, D&D has many famous monsters, and not all of them were adapted for players, as they weren’t meant to be in the players’ hands in the first place. Still, you and your friends get to play however you want to, and if your DM gives you the green light to use a monster creature, you can go for it. Which ones would be interesting choices, then?

For players: Keep in mind that all ideas here are homebrew, and you need to talk to your DM beforehand and get their approval before creating your character.

For dungeon masters: We’ll adapt some monsters into a PC version, nerfing some abilities or even removing others. It’s up to you whether you want to use our recommendations or do the homebrewing yourself.

7

Humanoid Animal

Pick Any Animal And Have Fun

The hedge species in the Humblewood Dungeons & Dragons setting.

D&D already offers a lot of humanoid animals as playable species, like aarakocras, tabaxis, lizardfolk, and many others. Still, if there’s one animal that you want to play as that didn’t get such treatment, you can go to the list of animals from the Monster Manual, like wolves, and adapt them into a playable species.

If their monster version doesn’t offer a lot of traits, like the jackal, you can adapt real traits from the animal, traits from similar animals (wolves could work here for jackals, too), or use traits from similar creatures, like the jackalwere in this case.

6

Illithid

Mind Blowing

Qunbraxel, Leader Of The Grimlocks In Gibbet Crossing, Sits On A Throne.

Movement	30ft (9m), 15ft (4.5m) fly.
Resistance	Psychic
Tentacles	You can do unarmed strikes with your intelligence modifier (or spellcasting modifier).
Mind Blast	We recommend copying the dragonborn’s Dragon Breath but making it psychic damage, turning the damage die into d6s, calculating DC with spellcasting modifier, and making enemies roll an intelligence saving throw, where failing this saving throw stuns them.

Mind Flayers are some of the most popular monsters in D&D, so the idea of playing as one of them is exciting. They have to be tuned down to an extent, as they are too powerful to leave in a player’s hands, but they can work.

The roleplaying potential is also intriguing (though difficult, to be fair), as most people hate and fear the illithid, and you’ll need to eat brains to survive. Adding githyanki NPCs to the narrative would be a nice plus.

5

Drider

Spider-Centaur

Drider by Jodie Muir, Dungeons & Dragons, A drider holding a sword, ready to be attacked.

Movement	30ft (9m), 30ft (9m) climb
Spider Climb	You can climb difficult surfaces, including ceilings, without ability checks.
Web Walker	Ignores movement restrictions caused by webs and can identify creatures in contact with the same web as them.
Spells.	You get Faerie Fire at level three and Web at level five. They can use each once per long rest without spell slots, or use them further by consuming spell slots.

Centaurs are already playable in D&D, so why not driders? They also work as terrifying creatures from a narrative standpoint, and if you and your DM are on board with the idea, you can also use the madness system with the drider character since the transformation twists the mind.

A Mind Flayer, a Drow, and a Beholder, from Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons: Best Monsters To Use In The Underdark

These D&D monsters are perfect for an Underdark setting.

You can also leave them as large creatures, something unique for player characters, or make them the smallest drider in the world by making them medium – something centaurs went through when they became playable, too.

4

Dryad

The Ultimate Druid

Type	Fey
Speak With Beasts and Plants	You can freely talk to animals and plants without requiring spells to do so.
Spells	You get Entangle at level three and Pass Without Trace at level five. They can use each once per long rest without spell slots, or use them further by consuming spell slots.
Tree Stride	If you’re in contact with a large or bigger tree, you can use your bonus action to teleport to another large or bigger tree within 60ft (18m) of you.

If being an animal doesn’t intrigue you, then you can always be a plant instead. Dryads are a great option for being unique without causing fear and disgust from NPCs, as the previous options will cause. Plus, you can talk to animals and plants, which is a fun roleplaying gimmick.

They are also a great option to play as a fey, which can be a magnificent character to have in the party if other fey creatures are going to be prominent in the story. Your clash with big cities is also a fun narrative to have.

3

Mimic

Be Anything

A room full of mimics, from Dungeons & Dragons.

They can use their bonus action to resemble any medium or smaller object. Other than that, the stats would depend on the object, so we recommend preparing a few beforehand, like a druid changing through Wild Shape.

If you want to make a fun concept with a friend, why not be one of their weapons? Or any weird object that has sentience of its own? They’re amorphous creatures that can take over any mundane objects, so you can swap as you go, too.

You could choose something that is human-shaped, like armor or a statue, but if you’re going with something without hands, we recommend your character to be a spellcaster so you don’t need to worry about using weapons yourself.

2

Pseudodragon

Playable Familiar

Dungeons & Dragons, the Pseudodragon crouching down on a book, prepared to pounce, by Crystal Sully.

Type	Dragon.
Movement	15ft (4.5m), 30ft (9m) fly.
Senses	10ft (3m) of blindsight.
Sting	Once per long rest, one of your attacks can be a sting, that forces an enemy into a constitution saving throw (DC also based on your constitution). They take 2d4 poison damage and are poisoned for a turn. They roll again next turn, and if they fail, they fall unconscious for an hour or until someone wakes them up.

Most DMs dread flying characters, but adjusting their size is a fun way to balance that. That said, being a tiny creature makes up for the flying speed, and pseudodragons offer a very different way for the player to play the game.

Three different species, drows, elves, and dwarves in a split image in DND.

Dungeons & Dragons: Best Species For Expert Players

Do you feel like you’ve played every species in the book when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons? Try one of these options for expert players.

It’s almost as if the player is a familiar, being able to get around tight places and do things others can’t, but they’re also easily grappled and tossed around by enemies in combat. We also recommend spellcasters here, though martials who don’t rely on strength can still excel.

1

Quaggoth

Straightforward Menaces

Movement	30ft (9m), 30ft (9m) climb.
Immunity	Poison damage and condition.
Bloodied Fury	You have advantage on attack rolls when bloodied. Your melee attacks also cause an extra d6 damage when bloodied.

Quaggoths don’t have a lot going for them, but martial characters might enjoy the creature – though you can use the stronger version that has access to spellcasting as a reference, too, giving the species more variety.

Either way, they are similar to our first options, aka species that most people will treat like monsters, and you can do interesting roleplaying out of that. They’re not common outside the Underdark, so people might not know you.