Other thanthrough magic items, players and dungeon masters alike might be unaware of the handful of other curses found throughoutDungeons & Dragons. Curses in Fifth Edition are unique in that there are only a few ways to remove them, and they can be delivered through any number of means with a variety of effects.
While it might be easy to homebrew curses depending on the theme of your campaign, balancing them might require looking at the official curses for inspiration or just as a jumping-off point. Spread across the D&D 5e sourcebooks and adventure guides are some unique curses that will be sure to introduce a terrifying surprise to your campaign.
Updated on July 05, 2025, by Matthew Cochran:As we get closer to One D&D, a lot of rules for Fifth Edition are being looked at with more scrutiny than usual, and this includes curses. With the release of Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, Barovia has more direct rulings for curses and provides useful examples for any DM wanting to spice up their campaign with waking dreams of terror. Each addition gives clerics another reason to finally start preparing Remove Curse each day, but it is also an interesting way to add challenge to encounters other than just tossing in more monsters. Hopefully, with One D&D, we will see more interesting curses added to monster attacks and in more unexpected ways.
1Bestow Curse Spell
One of the simplest options to curse your players is to have a spellcaster cast Bestow Curse on them. You can also combine this with the Glyph of Warding spell to store Bestow Curse and set up traps. Although, this type of curse is best used during combat as your players can likely save from of it in under a minute.
Despite the base wording of the spell giving your creatures a bonus to damage and your players a disadvantage to saves and checks, there is an additional aspect to the spell that is open-ended and allows you to create unique effects. This can be conditions like blindness, deafness, incapacitation, or more unique effects like rapid aging, short-term madness, and temporary polymorphing.
2Cursed Treasure
Like the Aztec gold in Pirates of the Caribbean, some treasures are not meant to be touched. By simply removing it from a tomb or dungeon, your players can be cursed with significant mechanical debuffs or never-ending nightmares.
You can use examples within D&D 5e that employ this style of curse, like the treasure of a mummy lord or within The Hidden Shrine of Toamoachan. Until the treasure is returned, whoever stole it has a permanent disadvantage to saving throws. This can be a potentially permanent problem if your players sell it off or otherwise spend the treasure unknowingly.
3Lycanthropy
One of the most iconic curses in all fantasy lore, lycanthropy in 5e can take a number of forms. While the most common form of lycanthropy is with werewolves, you can use the many other types while borrowing from their stat blocks tocome up with homebrewedvariants like weresharks or even weresquirrels.
Although, employing lycanthropy can be difficult as the Monster Manual doesn’t explicitly give stats or rules other than whether the player accepts the curse or resists it. If your players choose to accept the curse, consider adding drawbacks like forcing a change in alignment or taking control of their character while they are transformed. Otherwise, it might become more of a gift than a curse.
4Mummy - Rotting Fist
One of the few creatures that can employ curses in their attacks, mummies use their Rotting Fist to drain their target of life until they eventually turn to dust. Despite having low health and damage, this is what makes mummies so dangerous, as your players will slowly lower their maximum health until they die.
If your players are caught in the middle of the desert with no Remove Curse spell ready, be careful using this curse, as you might be outright killing one of your players with a delayed fuse. There are other ways to employ this curse, though, such as giving it to any creature that sits upon the mummy lord’s throne or through the bite of a hoard scarab hiding among its treasure.
5Demilich - Vile Curse
One of the legendary actions of the demilich is employing Vile Curse, which gives disadvantage on attacks and saves. This is a brutal curse during combat that can essentially remove one of your players from the initiative, anda demilich can do iton another player’s turn.
If you want to make any undead creature more powerful, give them the same legendary action. You can balance it by making it require more or less legendary actions or changing the save DC. But since this is a curse and not a magical effect, it is more likely to succeed, while other effects could be removed from spells like Dispel Magic.
6Fomorian - Curse of the Evil Eye
Cursed by the fey to appear as misshapen and grotesque, fomorians can target their curse onto others, potentially deforming them while halving their speed and giving them disadvantage on saves, checks, and attacks. This can be a unique curse in that it is up to you how malformed you want your players to get.
You will want to be careful not to use this curse on a player who is fond of their character’s aesthetic or would otherwise ruin it for them. Beyond that, it is an amazing tool to surprise players you know to be comfortable with body transformation.
Since the curse requires just the formorian’s eye, you can place it anywhere a severed eye might be or even used by other creatures like hags.
7Rakshasa - Claw
One of the more complicatedcreatures to role-playwith success, rakshasas are clever and tricky, and their curse effect makes them especially dangerous. With their Claw attack, they give their target horrible nightmares and make it so they can no longer benefit from resting.
This effect stacks with each rest as you’ll find your players will become less and less useful without being able to restore their class or species' resources. This can put a timer on beating the rakshasa (or any creature you give this curse attack to), as your cursed players will not be able to restore hit points by normal means.
8Ancient Seal
One of the example curses in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft is that this curse protects against any would-be grave robbers plundering a tomb. If a marked sarcophagus is opened, the body disturbed, or treasure stolen, that character is hunted by a wraith or similar spirit every dusk.
The wraith takes ten days to reappear when it is defeated, and usually, that amount of time is quickly forgotten by players, making this curse especially troublesome. Only by replacing the stolen treasure or replacing the remains of the sealed corpse will relieve the party from their nightly haunts.
9Broken Vow
Very similar to when a paladin breaks their oaths by violating one of their holy tenets, when a solemn or unholy vow is broken between a character and a powerful force, they can become cursed. In Van Richten’s Guide, this curse gives the character three levels of exhaustion that can only be removed by upholding the vow.
This will severely weaken the cursed character but not enough to completely remove them from potential encounters, making it an urgent curse to restore. Depending on your campaign, you might disallow spells like Remove Curse to solve the problem if you feel the vow is important to the game.
10Final Breath
When you slay an avatar or servant of a powerful deity, they can use their last breath to curse the character that slew them. The cursed character will then have disadvantage on all attack rolls as the deity submits them to confusion and hysteria.
Van Richten’s Guide is pretty vague on how to resolve this curse, but generally you will want to flavor it based on whichever deity was scorned. This can be making a sacrificial offering to a moon goddess during a full moon or returning a holy relic to its rightful place.
