Dungeon Master Assistance

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D&D 5E – Dinosaurs

4 Comments Posted by on January 7, 2018

5th Edition Dinosaurs

I am looking forward to running a “Tomb of Annihilation” campaign. One of the fun things in that book are the dinosaurs. I like to use miniatures on my battlemat and I thought an inexpensive way to do that was to get some small toy dinosaurs the right size, glue them to a base and paint them. I have some rubber toy dinosaurs and one or two of them may do, but I am finding that most of them are too large. Also I realized that I didn’t know what some of the different dinosaurs look like. Unlike most monsters in the Monster Manuel, it doesn’t have pictures of each different dinosaur type. As usual, Google is my friend. There is no shortage of information regarding dinosaurs.

Here is a compilation of what I have found regarding the Dinosaurs in the Monster Manual (MM), Volo’s Guide to Monsters (VGtM) and Tomb of Annihilation (ToA).

List of Dinosaurs:

Allosaurus (Large) MM page 79
Allosaurus, Young (Medium) ToA in dinosaur races
Ankylosaurus (Huge) MM page 7
Brontosaurus (Gargantuan) VGtM Page 139
Deinonychus (Medium) VGtM Page 139 & ToA page 217
Dimetrodon (Medium) VGtM Page 139 & ToA page 217
Hadrosaurus (Large) VGtM Page 139 and 140 & ToA page 224
Plesiosaurus (Large)  MM pages 79-80
Pteranodon (Medium)  MM pages 79-80
Quetzalcoatlus (Huge) VGtM Page 139 and 140
Stegosaurus (Huge) VGtM Page 139 and 140 & ToA page 231
Triceratops (Huge)  MM page 79-80
Triceratops, young (Medium) ToA in dinosaur races
Tyrannosaurus Rex (Huge)  MM page 79-80
Tyrannosaurus Zombie (Huge) ToA page 241
Velociraptor (Tiny) VGtM Page 139 and 140 & ToA page 235

Dinosaur Size:

Playing on a grid where one inch = 5 feet, I want to mount the miniatures onto round bases. A one inch diameter base will just fit into a one inch square and is the size for a medium creature. This table shows the size of bases I need for my dinosaurs.

Size Base Dia. Dinosaur
Tiny 1/2 in. Velociraptor
Small 1 in. None
Medium 1 in Deinonychus, Dimetrodon, Pteranodon,
Large 2 in. Allosaurus, Hadrosaurus, Plesiosaurus,
Huge 3 in. Ankylosaurus, Quetzalcoatlus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus Rex
Gargantuan 4 in. or larger Brontosaurus

And here is what they look like:

Allosaurus (Large) MM page 79

Allosaurus, Young(Medium)

Ankylosaurus (Huge) MM page 7

Brontosaurus (Gargantuan) VGtM Page 139

Deinonychus (Medium) VGtM Page 139 & ToA page 217

Dimetrodon (Medium) VGtM Page 139 & ToA page 217

Hadrosaurus (Large) VGtM Page 139 and 140 & ToA page 224

Plesiosaurus (Large)  MM pages 79-80

Pteranodon (Medium)  MM pages 79-80

Quetzalcoatlus (Huge) VGtM Page 139 and 140

Stegosaurus (Huge) VGtM Page 139 and 140 & ToA page 231

Triceratops (Huge)  MM page 79-80

Triceratops, young (Medium)

Tyrannosaurus Rex (Huge)  MM page 79-80

Tyrannosaurus Zombie (Huge) ToA page 241

Velociraptor (Tiny) VGtM Page 139 and 140 & ToA page 235

Playing Aids, Reference Material , , ,

4 responses to “D&D 5E – Dinosaurs”

  1. Anonymous March 18, 2019 at 7:03 pm

    Thats not a plesiosaurus, though it is in the same family. that is an elasmosaurus, the actual plesiosaurus was quite smaller than people think. it was actually about the size of a shark or even a dolphin, not counting the neck of course.

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    • Ronny March 19, 2019 at 8:22 am

      Thank you for that information. I am constantly amazed by the wealth of knowledge I find in the people who enjoy this game/hobby.
      I found these that illustrate exactly what you say.

      Plesiosaurus:

      Elasmosaurus:

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  2. Anonymous May 29, 2020 at 8:21 am

    Oh my god that’s Awesome! i made a stat block for the indominus rex. My group of level 17 players all got destroyed. that’s something i think you should add.

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    • Ronny May 29, 2020 at 8:54 am

      I wish I had been there to see that. It sounds like you had a blast!
      Several people have come up with homebrew Indominus Rex stat blocks. I was trying to limit this post to official monsters.

      If you like this post you might be interested in the follow-up post where I show what I ended up using for properly scaled D&D mini dinosaurs:

      D&D 5E – Dinosaur Minis

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