A jhakar, a stocky dog-lizard hybrid with a pug-like face. Copyright 2010 Wizards of the Coast.

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The Lore

Described as “small, squat, and pugnacious”, these round boys are reptilian dog equivalents with keen senses and a vicious streak. On the wild they follow your standard pack hunter structure, but they’re also frequently “tamed” by people for use as combat, guard, and tracker animals.

“Tamed” is in quotes here because jhakars don’t form bonds of loyalty with their handlers. They respect strength and pain, but they also nurse grudges. So the process of training a jhakar is quite cruel and results in a creature that’s likely to turn on their handler as soon as it sees a chance. Ironically, because of this owning a trained jhakar is seen as a sign of strength.

The Numbers

Jhakars are Small Natural Beasts with the Reptile tag. They have a ground speed of 6 and Low-Light Vision. Their signature ability is Uncanny Senses, which makes their attacks ignore concealment.

Jhakars don’t have supernatural tracking abilities like some of the monsters we saw before, but you can probably consider them as good at it as a trained mundane hound.

Jhakar Tracker

This specimen is a Level 1 Skirmisher with 28 HP and all standard jhakar traits. As mentioned above, it’s probably as good at tracking as a mundane dog, but its stat block focuses more on what it does once it finds its prey.

The tracker’s bite does standard damage with a sizable bonus against targets granting combat advantage to it. The attack also lets the tracker shift 1 square as an effect.

Once per encounter the tracker can use an Opportunistic Chomp as a reaction when an enemy ends its turn within 2 squares. It lets make a free bite attack with the damage bonus.

Trackers are unlikely to stay in one place for very long. Their free shift with a bite lets them move in, bite, and then dart away.

Jhakar Trapjaw

This beefier specimen is a Level 3 Soldier with 47 HP. Its Bite is a bit stronger, grabs on a hit, and lets the trapjaw make a secondary attack against Fortitude. If that one hits, the grabbed victim takes 5 ongoing damage until the grab ends.

The trapjaw can also Drag Down a grabbed victim, attacking their Fortitude. If they hit, they deal heavy damage and knock the target prone. It can’t get up until the grab ends either! This recharges when the creature is first bloodied.

Unlike trackers, jhakar trapjaws are set up to choose a PC and make their day extremely bad. They’ll do exactly that, positioning themselves as the center of attention to let their quicker buddies attack the party while they’re distracted. This works no matter who those allies are, so it’s appropriate for both wild and domesticated jhakar.

Encounters and Final Impressions

This entry is short and to the point, just like the creatures it describes. You’ll never ever need to include normal dogs or wolves in our Dark Sun Campaigns if this book has anything to say about it.

An encounter group of wild Jhakars will probably include one or two trapjaws with trackers making up the rest of the numbers. And of course any of the other doglike creatures in this or other books could be reskinned as a jhakar. They also work in any mixed encounter as trained beasts, as they are fairly common in that role.