Have you ever played Pokémon Mystery Dungeon? Have you ever found weird that you could find merchant Kecleons far deeper in the dungeon than they should be and than anybody could have explored due to monsters beating you down and forcing you to retreat? Well D&D has an elegant response to that: the mimic. The merchant doesn't fear monsters, because it is itself the monster that would beat you down given the chance. If you seem to weak, it would kill you and take your loot, and if you seem strong enough, it proposes deals: food for information and some of the gold it has stolen from other adventurers. Really, what better way to prevent your players from stealing from the merchant than having the merchant being litterally its own moving, common-speaking vault?

The mimic is not dumb. It has no mental penalty and +2 Wis. But it is much stronger than it is smart, with +8 Str, +2 Dex, +6 Con and +5 Natural Armor. Pretty good, but still nothing outside of what is expected of a 7 RHD monster.

It has two arms, which it can use to make two Slam attacks, and which it uses to drag the rest of its body on the ground (yes, this is why it only has a 10 ft movement speed). This could seem like a problem when you want to wield weapons, but when you're as good a shapeshifter as the mimic, this is no real issue. Just create a pocket in your arm where you store your weapons when you have to move, then take them out whenever.

Now, onto the special abilities. And they are really good ones, all things considered.

First, the adhesive. Whoever you touch is considered grappled, but they cannot break the grapple in any way until you die or decide to let them go. That means the enemy BSF will not be able to use their two-handed weapon, with nothing they can really do about it. If you somehow get access to dimension door, it can be a nice way to start a battle to just teleport yourself above the enemies and grapple as many of them as you can by falling on them. Plus you deal a bit of damage automatically when grappling someone. This also works on weapons, but it is significantly easier to break the grapple (only a Strength or Escape Artist check, but if someone can even attack you with a melee weapon, that generally means you are able to touch them the next round. The main use of this part of the ability will be when you are already grappling somebody and they try to attack you with a light weapon). It has a weird alcohol weakness, but if the marilith you're fighting takes out a flask of whiskey specifically to counter your mimic, then you can justifiably complain about metagaming.

And finally, what you were waiting for, the Mimic Shape. Contrary to what Inevitability said, there is a size restriction on it. "The creature cannot substantially alter its size, though." What this means is unclear, but as I see it, you cannot change the size category of the mimic, since its stats are supposed to be the same in any shape it takes. So the maximum size in any direction would be 10 ft or so. It does reduce the amount of cheese you can get away with, but that ability still have a metric ton of versatility. You can go through any opening, including keyholes or under most doors, you can hide as a rock, you can shapeshift into a tendriculos or a big amnizu and laugh as people try to blast you with acid to which you are immune, you can change into a pedestal with an object of any size on it, if your opponents would be wary of a 1.5 meter long chest. You can change into a wall with a ladder, and activate adhesive when people are climbing, or as a cupboard, or a table. You can hide literally anything inside your body by creating pockets.... That is a really good shapechanging ability.

So with all that, what is the mimic worth? Well, Mimic Shape shines in more RP-heavy situations, but I don't think it would really help in combat. Plus, it is very dependent on the amount of cheese your DM allows and the creativity of the player ("I store Orbs of Acid inside of my body and pour them all on the first enemy I grapple!"). Unbreakable grapple is extremely good, but this is pretty feat-heavy (you could take one level of monk and Choke Hold to be better, for example) and will generally only work on one opponent at a time. In the end, the stats are only subpar and the type is bad, so I suggest 5 RHD for the mimic. I have nothing to compare it to, really, so I'm waiting for your feedback. And the Aberration RHD are not that good, but are still something, so I would be comfortable with DLA-1.


I really like this monster. The fluff is incredible and it could be extremely fun to play. I think people would be more surprised by hearing the chest talk than just seeing it sprout teeth, and that is pretty funny. If I could convince someone to let me play this even though I'm the one who assigned the LA and already have a reputation of optimizer in my pretty casual gaming group, I would definitely do. But hey, anyway, that might make a pretty good DMPC/encounter (depending on how agressive the players are) in a campaign.
Next time, we will have the first Undead on this thread, the Mohrg!