Your players are walking through the woods, moving from one adventure to another, chatting about treasure or past triumphs.

Suddenly, there is a rustling in the underbrush. They grip their weapons – is it a troll? A displacer beast? A shambling mound? Something terrible, surely. Something with tentacles, or spells, or curses.

Bursting from the leaves is none of those things. It is a giant boar.

Your players relax. They thought it was going to be a real threat.

And that’s why at least one of them dies today.

It would be easy to dismiss a Giant Boar as just another beast of the woods, but tell that to Saint Emeric of Hungary or Wilhelm II of Henneberg‑Schleusingen, or Miklós Zrínyi, who are all said to have been killed by boars, or eight to ten people who die of boar attacks every year. These beasts have sharp tusks and hooves, and a brain that is little more than a spinning ball of rage.

The best thing about putting a Giant Boar in your game? Your players will underestimate it — and that’s what gets them killed. In battle, these creatures are vicious. With a running start, the Giant Boar can knock a player off their feet, seriously injuring them. And when the Giant Boar is at half-health, its rage gives it advantage on melee attacks, as it tears through its enemies with a singular murderous fury.

If you want to build on this relentlessly horrifying creature, you need to play up its danger. Villages near the woods have been plagued by dead livestock, crippled farmers, and traders who refuse to come around anymore. Everyone has heard of it, but none have seen it. Only the results of its violence, writ in blood and wreckage.

Make sure your players hear these stories – some true, some rumors – and see what has happened to those who’ve fallen to this monster (which by now, of course, has a name — “Barrowhide” or “Ghost-Tusk” perhaps).

But — and this is important — they don’t see the Boar. Not until the right time. Think of it as the Jaws of your world. Present, but unseen until it’s time for it to attack. Every rustle of leaves and cracking of twigs should send a shock up your players’ backs as they wonder if this is it. This is how they die.

As to what the Boar actually is, well, there are so many options to choose from!

For example, perhaps the Boar was bound to a sacred site, a guardian of a forest deity that was happy to simply exist in the Green. But adventurers or loggers or miners came and destroyed the site, toppling its sacred trees and stones. Now the Boar is untethered, directionless, and furious. Is this a creature to be slain, or should it be your players’ mission to re-consecrate the divine site, giving the Boar purpose again?

Maybe the Boar is a creature tortured by war, used in an arcane battle that pitted man against beast, and this creature was given strength beyond what nature gave it. For a little while, it tore through armies, toppled towers, and pitiful humans ran from it as though it were Death itself. Now that the war is over, though, and the magics have worn off, it remains furious. Furious that it had been used and then discarded. Furious that its strength is diminished. Furious that those who ran before it once now see it as just another beast of the wild. This Boar is determined to die fighting, and take as many with it as it can.

Perhaps this isn’t even a Boar at all. Long ago, a Druid, panicked and hunted, transformed themselves into a Boar to escape certain death. Their fear has fueled the willpower to stay in this form, far longer than a Druid should be able to, and that has taken a toll on their mind. Half-person, half-beast, this Boar no longer knows who it is or whom to trust. Was it a Druid pretending to be a Boar, or a Boar that thought it was a Druid? Either way, it will attack first, because neither Boar nor Druid is ever going to be vulnerable to capture again.

Or maybe it is neither of those things. Civilization hungers, and what it devours is wilderness. Wood, stone, pelts – all of these go into the insatiable maw of the civilized world. Perhaps, however, the people have taken too much, cut too close. The wilderness has raised a champion, and it wouldn’t be too hard to bump a CR 2 Wild Boar higher as an Avatar of the Wood emerges, howling and frothing with rage as it mows down every humanoid it sees, impervious to arrow and axe in its rampage. Give it extra attacks and a Barbarian’s Rage ability, and this will be a true threat to put your party up against.

Beasts in D&D, as we have discussed, can mean a lot more than just a combat encounter or some sense of utility. They should mean something to the world in which they live. And for good or for ill, beasts like the Wild Boar encourage your players to examine how they exist in the world, and what impact that existence has.

And they had best figure it out, or the Wild Boar will figure it out for them.