Your friendly neighborhood wizard, Klepsis, is back with another of my occasional articles on the challenging but fascinating and rewarding hobby of keeping small monsters. Previous articles covered your beast’s dietary needs and habitats for your monsters. This time, I’ll be covering what to do if your small monster gets sick. 

With proper care, your tiny monster should bring you years of enjoyment. However, it can and does happen that your creature may become ill. Whether the problem is a virus, bacterial infection, parasite, or other condition, watching the monster that you somehow managed to acquire and have spent so much time, gold, and spell components caring for suffer can be the worst feeling a wizard can have. And should this happen, it is very unlikely that your local veterinarian will have any useful advice, as the ailments and parasites that affect aberrations and monstrosities are often very different from those that your dog, cat, or horse are likely to contract. The treatments can also vary, even for similar infections. Do not worry, though. Whether your stirges have sniffles or your remorhaz has rot grubs, the important thing is not to panic and maybe make things worse. Years of research and personal experience have taught me that applying just a bit of common sense can go a long way toward curing whatever bothers your monster. To give you a head start, here are the most common conditions seen in captive small monsters, and home remedies that are often effective.

I hope this guide is helpful to those who take up the fascinating and rewarding hobby of collecting and caring for small monsters.