Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Billywig

At first I thought the Billywig was going to take two minutes to turn into a D&D monster. It certainly looks weird – essentially a chubby mosquito with helicopter wings on the top of its head – but I thought it would just be a simple stat block for a tiny insect.

Then I had a proper read of what that sting does:

“Those who have been stung by the Billywig suffer from giddiness followed by levitation.”

Fantastic Beasts

Now that is opportunity for a ridiculous encounter. The giddiness is something that players can roleplay, but the forced levitation is something I can tinker with. There is a levitate spell already in D&D, which can be inflicted on enemy creatures, but the extra quirk of the Billywig is that additional stings compound the problem.

Much like Wizards in the Potterverse, things can get tricky if you let the Billywig stab you too many times.

Billywig

So what we have is a very squishy monster that has the potential to give the characters a hard time. Any encounter is more likely to be hilarious/humiliating than deadly. I also made this monster a ‘fey’ creature – plane of pixies and elf ancestors – so this creature can also be summoned with a conjure fey spell, to cause the villains some floaty mischief.

Thank You For Reading

What do you think of the Billywig? How could you bring in this rascally monster in to mess with your players? Would you let the tiny bug sting you to feel giddy and floaty?

Next Up: Bowtruckle!