The Best Pet in D&D

Holy cow, I did not expect that to be such an endeavor.

So in my latest YouTube video, I put on my best Unraveled hat and tried to find the best pet in all of dungeons and dragons. Over 1800 unique monster statblocks, all combed through and categorized, and it damn near broke my brain about a dozen times. But I did it. It took like a month of work, but I did it.

Speaking of narrowing things down, this video involved making a lot of cuts. I cut monsters, I cut jokes, I cut entire books. I was originally planning on keeping careful track of every monster I cut and why so I could present them in a list here, but at some point, I lost a big chunk of the list and I just did not have it in me to go back and redo several hundred monsters worth of work. So, instead of that, I hereby present a brief rundown and exploration of some of the cuts I made and why.

“Cut For Being Too Much Like a Person”

Basically the first major cut I made was the entire category of humanoids, because owning a person as a pet is just slavery. Past that, I hit a lot of things that weren’t technically listed as humanoids in their monster type, but were nevertheless clearly sapient, civilized beings. Things like the Aldani and centaurs where you’re like “Okay, those aren’t fantasy creatures, those are oddly shaped people.” This did put me in the odd position of determining what constitutes personhood, but I’m sure absolutely no one disagrees with any of my takes on which monsters qualified.

But then I started running into inhuman, alien intelligences. Things that were clearly capable of intelligent thought, but weren’t bound by the same perceptions and realities as a normal person. This first came to my attention when I encountered demons and devils, living embodiments and personifications of evil who, at least to my mind, do not mentally operate on the same level as people. A demon is cunning, but it doesn’t experience doubt or regret. It doesn’t have a secret heart of gold. It just wants to kill. That, to me, is just fundamentally not a person. A dragon can feasibly be old enough to have seen all of human history. To classify something that timeless as just a person, to even try to compare its thoughts and feelings to something with a perspective of a human or even an elf feels wrong.

But it’s also just close enough that I hesitated.

What tipped it over for me was the suc/incubus. Someone saying that wanted one of those as a pet rang very specific “Nope, not going there,” alarms which quickly led to basically all the fiends getting cut. And from there, there were a lot more cuts along similar “nope, still too much like a person” lines.

I’ll freely admit having a vaguely humanoid shape was a pretty big factor in falling into this category, but there were plenty of non-humanoids that got cut for this too. Usually by being the sort of thing more likely to keep you as a pet than the other way around, like dragons and beholders.

Before they were cut, I did try to just section them off into their own categories: Big Brothers were powerful, intelligent, but benevolent creatures who could be counted on to guide and protect you. Sidekicks despite the name, were sapient, roughly equal partners who could be at your side. Think Rocket’s relationship with Groot. And the Evil and Smarter Than You were those specifically malicious, powerful creatures where any relationship with them would probably end with you as it’s pet if it didn’t just kill you.

These three categories ended up including the following monsters:

• Devils

• Yugoloths

• Hag

• Archon of the Triumvirate

• Abashi

• Alhoon

• Angels

• Blood Drinker Vampire

• Cambion

• Centaur

• Chitine

• Choldrith

• Vampire

• Ghost

• Half-Ogre

• Incubus/Succubus

• Indentured Spirit

• Demilich

• Barghest

• Intellect Devourer

• Rakshasa

• Berbalang

• Eblis

• Lamia

• Oni

• Yochlol

• Aboleth

• Chromatic Dragons

• Elder Brain

• Kraken

• Oblex

• Atropal

• Mind Flayer

• Morkoth

• Manticore

• Master of Cruelties

• Medusa

• Sire of Insanity

• Skull Lord

• Star Spawn Larva Mage

• Flumph

• Korred

• Wood Woad

• Xorn

• Awakened Plant

• Cackler

• Azer

• Fire Snake/Salamander

• Myconid

• Pixie

• Satyr

• Avatar of Death

• Galeb Duhr

• Gargoyle

• Madcap

• Quickling

• Quori

• Sprite

• Boggle

• Darkling

• Dolgrim

• Kruthik

• Magmin

• Stone Cursed

• Tanarukk

• Vegepygmy

• Tlincali

• Death Knight

• Drowned Assassin

• Draegloth

• Dryad

• Empyrean

• Giants

• Ettin

• Fomorian

• Cyclops

• Doppleganger

• Banshee

• Modron

• Metallic Dragons

• Couatl

• Ki-rin

• Sphinx

• Naga

• Treant

• Marut

• Cloaker

• Harpy

• Mephit

• Neogi

• Nothic

• Ogre

• Orthon

• Demon

• Revenant

• Merrow

• Valenar Animal

• Beholderkin

• Demons

• Bloodfray Giant

• Lich

• Minotaur

• Troll

• Genies

Comparing these to the monsters who did make the cut, I could see some people coming away with the idea that I was a bit inconsistent with my standards of personhood. Why are Flumphs too people like but Balhannoths aren’t? Full disclosure, it’s mostly just a vibe.

You’re free to disagree and do your own mass sorting of all the monsters.

Godspeed if you try it, no one should.

I Didn’t Have the Book

I own most core books for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, on DNDBeyond if not physically as well, but I don’t own all of them. That said, when I started scripting this video, the only major source of monsters I didn’t own in some form were Mordenkainen’s Fiendish Folio Volume 1, Rime of the Frostmaiden, Acquisitions Incorporated, and Mythic Odysseys of Theros. I could hower still see their monsters listed in the DNDBeyond monster listing though, and just going off of names and tiny thumbnails, I don’t think I’m missing out on much if anything. Certainly nothing that would have overturned the “winners” of the video.

However, since writing, more books have come out. In particular, Van Richeten’s Guide to Ravenloft, which apparently has 32 more monsters in it. And that’s just so far, that I know of. Strixhaven’s coming out soon, and that’s bound to have new monsters in it. Ditto for dang near every other book Wizards releases for the foreseeable future. So this video is just going to become more and more out of date as time goes on. That’s fine.

̶I̶’̶l̶l̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶r̶e̶d̶o̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶l̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶s̶t̶e̶r̶s̶.̶

Named NPCs

I mentioned in the video about excluding unique, named enemies like Strahd or Jarls from Storm King’s Thunder, because I think it’s wrong to consider them viable pet options since you could only ever hope to find a generic, average creature, not a specific instance of them. What I didn’t mention was what a headache these monsters caused me during the initial sorting process.

There are some weird monster names. “Ixitxachitl” springs to mind. So when I scrolled through the monster list and saw a name like “Lifferlas,” I would think, “Oh, I’ve never heard of this monster. What’s it’s deal?” And only then discover it was just an awoken tree NPC.

This was such a recurring problem for me I actually reached out to DNDBeyond about it on Twitter. And got a response!

I don’t remember how long “NPC” has been a tag in DNDBeyond’s monster list, but I like to imagine it was my suggestion that got it added. I mean, it still doesn’t completely solve the problem, because it fails to include unique creatures like Gorthok the Thunder Boar, and really until there’s a way to exclude content based on tags it still wouldn’t really have helped me…but hey, it’s something!

Who knows what I’ll maybe accomplish with my next video!

The fact that I included a mass appeal to the Critter fandom in the video on the off chance they get offended by two of my jokes is, I think, incredibly optimistic, but then I often surprise myself with how much of that I’ve got lying aroung.