Ankhegs 5e
Guide by Sam West, @CrierKobold
Bugs are a menace to society. They’re everywhere. They bite. They ruin our food, walls, and beds, all for the sake of their endless reproduction and swarms ranging from nuisance to actual health risks. How do you make bugs even worse? You make them LARGE!
Enter Ankhegs: D&D's burrowing, spitting alien-bug hybrid ready to pop out of nowhere and devour your players. They’re detailed in the Monster Manual; if you want some Forgotten Realms-specific lore, I recommend checking them out there.
Running Ankhegs
Ankhegs are surprisingly versatile baddies to play with. They’ve got a 60 ft. tremorsense and 60 ft. darkvision, often giving them the feeling of having blindsight. They can’t rapidly tunnel in combat, but their burrow speed lets them set up ambushes easily and aids in their retreat methods. They can pop up, bite a creature, and slowly drag in underground with them, leaving no tunnel behind and forcing their allies to dig through the dirt to try to save their friend from suffocating and being devoured.
If you’re planning on running some Ankhegs, there are some rules I’d look to brush up on, namely sight, burrow speeds, and grappling. The most important takeaway is burrowing doesn’t leave a tunnel behind, simply loose earth replacing where they move, and they can drag creatures they’ve grappled at half-speed, or full speed of their prey is small.
Player Levels
Groups of 2nd and 3rd-level characters won’t have too much trouble taking down a pair or trio of ankhegs given they get the drop on them. Ankhegs put out a decent chunk of damage, averaging between 13 to one creature or 10 to a line, making them lethal threats to 1st level groups. With a bit of hit point padding and focused attacks, a group can burst them down in a reasonable fashion, especially seeing as their AC isn’t particularly high.
Upper-tier encounters can make a ton of use out of groups of ankhegs, as they take a couple of hits to bring down with extra attack and pose a major hindrance with their automatic grappling bite.
Defining Gameplay to Work With
There is a lot to ankhegs; the element I find most engaging is their burrow speed. When run as lethal, apex predators, these monsters want to pop out of the ground, grab their prey, and drag it underground where they’ll be blind and grappled, helplessly flailing in the dirt.
Their acid spray helps prevent them from being entirely helpless against flying enemies or threats engaging them from a distance.
An element that I adore about these monsters is their AC is reduced by 3 when prone, highlighting an element players can target for some extra advantage. More monsters deserve this kind of weakness, and it's implemented beautifully here to showcase a “soft belly” or “hardened outer shell” the players can work around.
Unique Movement
Ankhegs want to be underground both for protection and for the element of surprise. They can use their termor sense to detect creatures on the surface. When they can detect an isolated creature, ideally a small one, they’d first want to get directly 5 feet beneath it. Then, it can use 5 feet of burrow to get out of the ground, bite the target, and use the remaining 5 feet to drag it underground. If it's medium or larger, the creature gets a round to try to break free before being taken below.
If it has to move 10 or more feet above ground with its speed, it can’t use its burrow speed at all in the same turn rules as written. Keep that in mind when playing with these things.
Mentality and Tactics
I want to run ankhegs like hunting insects that have risen to the top of the food chain, and want to incorporate insectoid “hive-mind” tactics to them. Their size and hit points make it challenging to run dozens of them, meaning I’ll lean harder on their ambuscade tactics.
It makes little sense for these things to stay above ground unless necessary. Tactically, they’d aim to surprise their prey and drag them 5 feet deeper every round until they died, using their acid spray as a defensive measure to get other creatures off of them as they retreat. Staying above ground gets them killed quickly, and doesn’t enable any of the main advantages that set them apart from other monsters, namely their burrow speed and tremor sense. When facing party members who are prepared for their underground assault, they’d likely leave and seek easier prey that won’t strand them out of their favored terrain.
A single hunting ankheg could take down a hunting party that was isolated and unprepared, leaving only loose dirt as any hint of the brief abduction that occurred. They can make a fantastic early-tier “horror” baddy for this reason.
Combating the Monster
Going in unprepared against a group of ankhegs can result in player death easily, especially in the low tiers. More so than most, going in with a plan can save lives. You do not want to get caught unaware before fighting these things, or else you risk being isolated underground and devoured before any other party members notice you’re gone.
Methods of Engagement
The best way to combat ankhegs is simple: ready actions. If one pops up, you want a plan to deal with it. Attacks can burn through its 39 hit point pool fast enough, but spells like Hideous Laughter that prevent it from escaping back below ground can remove any semblance of power it has.
If you get grappled, but not dragged underground yet, hitting it usually is better than trying to break free for your action. Being grappled doesn’t impose disadvantage on your attacks; if it's dead, it’ll let you go. If it’s alive and you fail, you’re going to be far away from taking it down and suffocating below the earth hoping your party can dig you out in time. You want a fighting chance against it should you get dragged under, and hopefully you and your party can down it first to prevent that from happening.
Should you find yourself taken underground, most magic can’t bail you out, as you’re likely blind to your surroundings and will have a hard time talking with all that dirt in your mouth. Your best chance still probably is attempting to finish off the ankheg if it's been damaged- otherwise, you’re probably going to flail around attempting to break free and hope to dig your way back up to the surface.
Mold Earth on a teammate above ground can help excavate the now loose earth the ankegs dragged you through, which is a nice niche for the spell to serve.
A tactic that can help is tying the group together with rope. This gives the team a way to drag an ally up from below ground should they get dragged under. If everyone is anchored together, ankhegs won’t have as easy a time isolating you, and you have a much better chance getting to safety, or at least forcing it to waste turns biting the rope instead.
Staying grouped together does amplify the danger of their acid spray, but simultaneously protects you from abduction by means of attacks of opportunity. If it attempts to leave your threat range, you get a stab at it at least.
Elements to Target
An ankheg who ends its turn above ground is going to have a bad time. Its AC isn’t particularly high, and its hit point pool can be dealt in a single round by most 2nd or 3rd-level parties. Knocking it prone has an even higher benefit here given that it’ll not only give your team advantage on attacks against it, but it drops its AC, making it incredibly likely to die in a single round of attacks.
When possible, you do not want to let these things get under you. Good perception checks can help with this- keep moving, and ideally stay on top of objects 5 feet or larger if you suspect an ambush. Carts and wagons are particularly helpful here, as are horses and donkeys you aren’t particularly attached to.
Ankhegs don’t have the ability to easily perceive what they’re attacking beyond their general size prior to breaking through to the surface. Baiting with your strongest ally who can easily break free of the grapple or the paladin with an AC of 20 who isn’t likely to get dragged under can set you up for success.
The World Around Ankhegs
As the Main Antagonist
A lot of early-tier adventuring can involve being local heroes helping farmers and peasants across the realms. Ankhegs make a perfect villain for that scope of play; they would be a major pain for farmers who would lose goats and sheep to them, and have a bit more to them than wolves or foxes, as there is mystery in the sudden disappearance they cause.
To scale them up, having a hive that’s growing out of control can present a major threat the group would need to prepare for. It could start as handling a lone case of animal abduction, and lead back to a major ecological disaster being caused by an uncontrolled population of ankhegs meticulously bursting from below and decimating wildlife and the surrounding people.
They fit beautifully into a “monster hunter” style campaign where the party is tasked with handling monster of the week threats, or as random encounters found delving into the underdark or other dangerous regions.
The following quest hook table has some easy ideas to get an adventure rolling around ankhegs.
Quest Hook Table
| d4 | Quest Hook |
|---|---|
| 1 | Livestock has been going missing; a farmer has claimed to see a massive insect burst from below and abduct her best dairy cow. |
| 2 | A hunting party went missing on their yearly hunting trip- their campsite was eerily empty, with the only signs of struggle being some odd mounds of dirt. |
| 3 | Travelers have been telling tales of monsters lurking on the main road, breeching from below and stealing horses and men alike, dragging them into the depths below in the blink of an eye. |
| 4 | A robbery has occurred at a local castle; the criminal attacked from below the earth using some kind of burrowing beast to get there. |
As a Supplementary Monster
While I like ankhegs on their own, I love ankhegs as minions. Their auto-grapple on hit makes for a creature the party can’t easily ignore and adds a separate axis to hit points they have to deal with.
Obvious leaders would include earthen entities like Dao and evil dwarves and duergar. Dao in particular want to use their Earth Glide to seamlessly move through the earth. They can attack through the earth with the ankhegs, making the grapple and drag-down strategy all the more devastating.
Beholders can fit in a similar category; ankhegs can burrow vertically as easily as horizontally, making them have an easy time moving through the walls of a beholder’s lair while acting as a lock-down tool the beholder is fine keeping in their non-magic cone. Keeping enemies at a safe distance is their core play pattern; having a burrowing, grappling ally that’s too stupid to reasonably contest their right to rule is exactly what a beholder wants out of a minion.
The following table has some ideas for what kinds of monsters could cultivate and weaponize ankhegs effectively, gaining a symbiotic relationship or domesticating these monstrosities into war beasts.
Overlord Table
| d8 | Creature | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | A purple worm the colony of ankhegs follows, scavenging on the remains of its ruin | |
| 2 | A beholder eye-tyrant who cultivated a hive of ankhegs below its lair for protection against ground-locked intruders | |
| 3 | A dao merchant using a pack of trained ankhegs as protection | |
| 4 | A group of trolls having loosely domesticated some ankhegs in their caves to trap prey | |
| 5 | A villainous drow council has planted ankheg colonies below a critical region of food cultivation in an attempt to create a famine and raise discontent for in the ruling class | |
| 6 | A vengeful wraith’s tomb coincides with an ankheg nest; the wraith gets the life force of looters, the ankhegs the flesh | |
| 7 | A colony of kuo-toa use a captured ankheg locked to an island as a trial for outsiders to test their faith to one of their conjured gods | |
| 8 | Myconids have formed a symbiotic relationship with ankhegs who can’t digest them, patrolling their hunting grounds for remains already planted in fertile soil |
Environments
When I plan ankheg encounters, I think of real-world insect colonies and scale them up. Ankhegs could use their powerful acid and tunneling claws and legs to dig out massive underground networks housing their eggs. Termite mounds are massive in the real world; making one large enough to house 10 ft. tall termites would need to be as large as multi-story buildings.
They want to be in environments that lack a ton of hard stone, making them great threats for deserts and grasslands. Mesas and dry, arid regions would definitely look daunting with the tunnels carved into the monolithic landmasses worn down by centuries of erosion, repurposed to house these monstrous bugs.
In common, temperate woodland adventures, caves are the easiest place to put them. You don’t need to establish a colony or anything for them this way; they can be a one-and-done threat that’s causing some mayhem. The party tracks down the nest in some deeper caves nearby, torches their home, cleans up the few remaining, and gets paid.
The following table showcases some sample nests you can incorporate into your game.
Ankheg Nest
| d6 | Nest |
|---|---|
| 1 | Acid-dug tunnels transform a jutting multi-story rock formation into a twisting ant-like colony |
| 2 | A branching tunnel network below ground has a single open tunnel on the surface ankhegs use to drag their dead prey back faster |
| 3 | A community cemetery thought to be haunted has an ankheg infestation below it, accessible through tunnels bored below coffins |
| 4 | Ankhegs use an oasis as hunting grounds in the desert, travelers drawn in at the promise of water only to be ambushed and dragged into the sands below |
| 5 | A several story earth mound dotted with eight-foot-wide tunnels has been spotted in the middle of the arid plains, far from most settlements |
| 6 | Ankhegs raised by a beholder have taken over its lair as their new hive post their creator’s untimely undoing by a band of intrepid heroes |
Associated Loot
Getting loot from big bugs is a struggle. The obvious method is getting loot from the remains of their prey, usually reflected in objects that their acid wouldn’t destroy. Alternately, you could attempt to extract their acid for personal use, in which case I’d likely have a player make a Poisoner’s Kit check or a Medicine or Nature check to get some bonus Vials of Acid from them, maybe with a bonus d6 damage depending on the result!
The following table has some ideas for loot you could find early from an ankheg encounter:
Item Tables
| d10 | Item |
|---|---|
| 1 | Adamantine breastplate or splint |
| 2 | A Brooch of Shielding |
| 3 | A Decanter of Endless Water |
| 4 | A pair of Driftglobes |
| 5 | An Eversmoking Bottle |
| 6 | A silver raven Figurine of Wondrous Power |
| 7 | MIthral breastplate or splint |
| 8 | A Periapt of Wound Closure |
| 9 | A Rope of Climbing |
| 10 | Slippers of Spider Climbing |
All About Ankhegs
Hopefully this information sets you up for some high-stakes ankheg encounters in your games. They are a fantastic early game monster that supplement villainous spellcasters or ranged enemies perfectly. If you’re looking to add a new dynamic to a kill-or-be-killed encounter, these certainly will add a new and terrifying element the players have to quickly figure out how to handle.
Thanks for reading; good luck out there!
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