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The monsters in this page actually were shafted the worst during my original review batch, with me barely acknowledging any of the monsters. Not even the Vampire! Why did I do that? Why did I not sit down and talk a bit more about the Wraith and Will-O-Wisp and Yeti and assumed everyone knew what they are? And even if they do, the whole point of reviewing a basic Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual is to sit down and look at the tropes that D&D is drawing for the iconic-mythology monsters.
I do realize that this article actually runs a bit longer, but we actually only cover eight 'entries' here. The length is fully because of me giving the Vampire its due, and I talk a lot about the new Vampire variants introduced in the 5.5E Monster Manual. Between 2019 and 2025, I have grown to really, really appreciate Vampires a lot after experiencing a lot of how they are used in fantasy beyond just Dracula. Fiction like Penny Dreadful, Skyrim: Dawnguard, The Witcher III: Blood and Wine, re-experiencing Innistrad, and, yes, D&D's own Curse of Strahd have really gotten me to appreciate these vampire tropes, and I am quite delighted at the large expansion we've gotten in 5.5E.
So yeah, it is a bit of a bulkier article, but consider that this, the next article and parts of the previous part were all stuffed into a single big article where I rushed through all the monsters. Honestly, the original version of this and the original version of the demons/devil page was what convinced me to do a full rewrite of my old Monster Manual reviews.
[Originally published on December 2019; Updated in December 2025]
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Unicorn
- 5.5E/5E: Large Celestial; Lawful Good; CR 5
We get another good 'fantasy horse', this time the Unicorn. Where the Pegasus is portrayed as just a flying horse, the Unicorn is considered a full Celestial, tying with the Middle-Eastern mythologies and heraldry depicting the Unicorn as a near-holy animal associated with purity and goodness. D&D 5E's Unicorns might not be the most powerful beings at CR 5, but the writeup really does make them feel like badass.
A Unicorn's power, of course, is tied to its horn. Its horn has the ability to heal the sick and injured, and they have the supernatural ability to sense the goodness and pure-hearted. They allow good creatures or beasts to enter the woods they dwell in, but evil creatures are driven out or slaughtered by the Unicorn itself. It is quite interesting where a lot of the real-world legends surrounding the Unicorn does paint it with language that resemble a lot of the themes that D&D's Fey explore... but the Unicorn itself is considered a 'Celestial', a remnant from when the game didn't really codify the Fey all that much. 5E handwaves this by noting that Unicorns were placed by the gods, but they hang out naturally with fey due to their duties of guarding locations.
Most commonly, these Unicorn Forests grant the celestial equine has supreme knowledge. Unicorns inherently know every single thing that transpires beneath the trees that it resides in, every creature and every plant. This translates beautifully to the 'regional effects' mechanic, where the Unicorn transforming the region around the Unicorn and causing nonmagical flames to instantly extinguish, its allies to be obscured by foliage, curses on good beings to fail and healing effects cast in its domain always triggering the maximum possible effect. In a Unicorn's forest, the beasts feel more tame, and many of the non-hostile Fey find it a capricious haven to keep to themselves, away from both industrial civilization as well as evil.
As it is with real-world myths, a Unicorn's horn is a font of divine magic that contain powerful magic, making the horns a potential for plot hooks. A Unicorn might be targeted by much more powerful evil horses who want to use the Unicorn's horn for some dark ritual, or simply to use it as a crafting tool for a powerful magical item. Or perhaps this choice is granted to the adventurers, who have to decide whether to slaughter this majestic and very sentient being for its horn just for the chance to get a powerful artifact. Even ground unicorn horns are potent magical catalysts.
The Unicorn is another creature that was absolutely wrecked by the 5.5E Monster Manual's random truncations, going from having a full page's worth of behaviour, habits and legends detailed to two short sentences that really give you nothing other than "they are good horsies that like nature". Shame.
The Unicorn feels like a well-crafted creature to be a NPC, or at least an early-game boss that turns out to be benevolent. They themselves are a type of spellcaster enemy, but a lot of the description in the 5E Manual description really hints at a creature capable of doing much more than the dozen spells it knows is able to do. I've never really honestly cared about Unicorns in general until D&D made them pretty cool mysterious celestial-fey patrons and even potentially coming with its own ready-made 'dungeon'.
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Vampire
- 5.5E/5E: Medium Undead; Lawful Evil; CR 13 (Vampire)
- 5.5E/5E: Medium Undead; Neutral Evil: CR 5 (Vampire Spawn)
- 5.5E: Small or Medium Humanoid; Neutral Evil; CR 3 (Familiar)
- 5.5E: Small or Medium Undead; Neutral Evil; CR 8 (Nightbringer)
- 5.5E: Small or Medium Undead; Lawful Evil; CR 15 (Umbral Lord)
I love vampires. You could make an entire bestiary just on vampires alone, and the idea of what a vampire is has evolved so much within the fantasy culture that you've got entire games and settings revolving around vampires only, without the rest of the 370 pages of the Monster Manual. And in Dungeons & Dragons, vampires have been identified as one of the premier monsters for quite a while, with one of the most iconic villains (particularly in 5th Edition) being Count Strahd von Zarovich, of Curse of Strahd fame.
A lot of the basic lore about Vampires are shared with all the common tropes for everyone's favourite gothic undead bloodsuckers. Vampires are immortal, they are charming and can look like regular humans, and they feed on the blood of the living. They hide in the day in coffins or similar resting places, and roam in the night, and when needed, they can turn more lesser mortals into their own.
The original 5E Manual gave us quite a significant chunk of writeup for just a regular 'Vampire', the minions, the 'Vampire Spawn', and even some nice tidbits on making your player characters into vampires (which are kind of bare-bones, similar to the lycanthrope one). But the 5.5E Manual expanded this heavily by giving us three new Vampire variants, meant to represent different levels in a Vampire's 'growth' and 'evolution', so to speak. And since we've got that distinction going on, we'll talk about it from the weakest to the strongest...
The absolute weakest minion of a Vampire isn’t even a ‘proper’ Vampire yet, the CR 3 Vampire Familiar being actually just regular, living humanoids that serve vampires. It’s most definitely a nice little lore gap that is usually filled with stat blocks like ‘cultist’ in previous 5E work, but I like that we’re actually filling in this little niche in vampire stories, of servile butlers and maids that work under the vampiric aristocracy.
Depending on the story you are telling, these Familiars are either fanatics who serve with the hopes of receiving the gift of immortality from their vampire lords, or are scared, cowering and pitiable people for our heroes to rescue. As the 5.5E art and the prose notes, Vampire Familiars show signs of their vampiric corruption, such as evidence of feedings (look at the puncture wounds on her neck!) and a more corpse-like complexion.
This also translates to greater power than an average humanoid, too. Familiars are still ‘regular’ humans, but they are tied supernaturally to their Vampire lords (who can perceive through their Familiar’s senses, just like wizards and their own familiars) but also possess enhanced reflexes.
Described in both Monster Manuals are the Vampire Spawn, standing at a CR 5, and are meant to represent newly-created vampires that are still a bit more feral and consumed by their thirst for blood. Both versions show their respective Spawns to have glowing eyes and a more feral expression, and again, this serves a nice little piece in fantasy vampire lore, of the new convert – not quite human, not quite a lesser undead like a ghoul, but slowly transforming into the intelligent monster that is the full Vampire. In 5E, Spawns are still under a control of their 'parent' Vampire, and only by drawing blood from the parent can the Spawn transform into a fully-fledged Vampire. This is something that is noted to be rare, due to the fact that the parent Vampire would relinquish control.
It's at this point that I think I can start talking about abilities. Vampire Spawns have most of the abilities that a Vampire has. They have the ‘bite’ attack that allows them to drain blood from the living and restore their own health. They can scuttle and climb on walls, and in 5E they are able to slowly regenerate as long as they are not in the sunlight.
The keystone of many vampire media is that despite all of the badass strength, intelligence, charm and magic that vampires have, they all have weaknesses. In D&D, ‘all myths are true’ and the Spawns are harmed by all of these weaknesses: they burned by the sunlight; they take damage if they cross running water; they are destroyed if any piercing weapon is driven through their heart; and they cannot enter a home uninvited.
5.5E adds a slightly stronger ‘lesser’ vampire, the CR 8 Vampire Nightbringer. Between Dracula and Nosferatu, there is always a bit of a demand on two different kinds of vampires – the ones that parade around in noble clothes, or the near-feral blood-guzzling bat-monsters. The Nightbringer’s art is a nice representation of that latter bit. He’s still an intelligent being, showcased by knowing how to accessorize himself with golden accessories, but the hunched-over state and that excellently drawn set of eyes and fangs really does imply a vampire that doesn’t really care to hide amongst nobility and cares only to feed.
5.5E’s lore is a bit minimal, noting that Nightbringers are ‘born of necromantic rituals and planes of existence suffused with negative energy’. Are they not connected to the ‘regular’ Vampire hierarchy, then? Can a Vampire Spawn become a Nightbringer, or can a regular Vampire ‘devolve’ into a Nightbringer if it’s obsessed with just feeding and dark energies? Are the Nightbringer more primal, more natural variants?
Notably, the Nightbringer doesn’t have much of the ‘classic’ weaknesses that the Spawn or even regular Vampire has. It can enter your house uninvited! The only thing the Nightbringer fears is the sunlight. I do like this little change, showing that there’s a lot more variety among Vampirekind. It really reminds me of the more monstrous, more animalistic lesser vampires from Witcher III.
And of course, we come to the main course, the ‘Vampire’, standing at a respectable CR 13. Vampires are portrayed as pale humanoids dressed in fancy regalia, with prominent fangs and glowing eyes. A lot of the tropes that matter in more ‘social’ interactions with the Vampires also come into play here. They do not cast shadows or reflections, and combined with their sensitivity to sunlight (which damages them, not annihilates them) makes them prefer dark, dismal castles and remote locations.
Vampires can retain memories from their past life, but any that do tend to be a bit twisted by undeath. Love turns into obsession; and emotions turn into fixations of physical symbols… and in D&D’s lore, none, perhaps, embody this better than Count Strahd mentioned above, whose eternal torment was caused by unrequited love. That bit of tragedy and twisted romance is what makes Vampires so enduring and sets them apart from a lot of other horror monsters.
All Vampires are also chained to a location, where they rest in the day. It is often a coffin or a crypt; but 5.5E notes that other locations could be a suit of armour, a stagnant pool, the roots of a great tree, a space accessible by shapeshifting… something that connects it to its nature of undeath. I love the little description of how some Vampires have set up multiple resting places by just… moving huge chunks of their grave dirt to new locations. That’s fun.
Vampires, of course, are one of those powerful monsters with a ‘Lair’, which tends to be a grand-but-well-defensible location. It’s a castle or a manor, it’s always a castle or manor. Around a Vampire’s lair, there is an increase in the populations of bats, rats and wolves. Plants become twisted and thorny, shadows are unnaturally gaunt, and there is an unnatural fog around it. In other words, it becomes the setting of Dracula.
What can a Vampire do? Full Vampires still have the weaknesses of their Spawn, but they have a much more significant power boost. In addition to the classic vampire bite, they are able to shape-shift into either bats or mist, particularly using the latter to escape. They can also summon swarms of bats or rats, which isn’t very useful in actual gameplay but the vibes are definitely awesome. Vampires regenerate health while not in sunlight, and are able to temporarily charm their enemies to fight for them.
5E has a little sidebar that I completely forgot about talking about ‘Warrior Vampire’ and ‘Spellcaster Vampire’. Which is fair enough; some Vampires are formed out of powerful individuals in life. But this sidebar was fully translated to a proper statblock, the CR 15 Vampire Umbral Lord, which adapts the spellcaster variant. Umbral Lords are able to cast powerful spells like Sickening Ray and Hunger of Hadar, only requiring no spell slots or components.
A bit more dangerously, similar to Liches and Mummy Lords, Vampire Umbral Lords will teleport to their resting place instantly upon being reduced to zero where it can recuperate. It’s basically the climax of Dracula, isn’t it? So you need to either trap the Vampire Umbral Lord in sunlight or running water, or get ready to hunt down the coffin and be ready to take down the Umbral Lord permanently there.
I really like Vampires. I loved the parts of Witcher III that deals with Vampires, and Innistrad is my all-time favourite Magic: The Gathering setting. I really like that the expansion to vampires has catered quite a bit to various tropes of Vampires in fantasy... cool, badass, immortal covens of vampire nobles are as valid of a vampire story to tell as the ones of a feral vampire who lurks and picks off prey like a beast. Quite happy to talk about them, as you can see from the length of this Vampire segment.
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Water Weird
- 5.5E/5E: Large Elemental; Neutral; CR 3
Water Weirds are bound to a specific watery location such as pools and fountains (and I love the koi fish and lilypads being drawn into the Water Weird's body in its 5E art). It's invisible when it's immersed in water... probably because... it is water? But when someone tries to come and disturb it, the Water Weird rises up, coils around the unfortunate interloper and tries to crush and/or drown them. Water Weirds are then essentially a more limited and weaker version of the Water Elemental, having a lot less tricks and are used mostly for ambush purposes, like a wet, serpentine guard dog.
How sentient these Weirds are vary from edition to edition. 5.5E mentions that they are 'nature spirits' that protect a site for generations and are sentient/sapient enough to learn from their surroundings; and can even be respected as oracles... even though they can't speak and communicate through pantomimes or water tricks. 5E seems to focus on Weirds more as beings summoned by wizards, and notes that Water Weirds often adopt the alignment of the source of water it's bound to, whether it's good or evil. Hilariously the Monster Manual sees the need to emphasize that 'Purify Food and Water' works to purify the evil of a corrupted Water Weird.
I would like to note that 3E briefly reimagines 'Weird' as just a classification of all four basic elementals who take the form of naked women made up of the corresponding element. This feels utterly redundant since these editions also already have beings like Nereids and Sylphs, who are also women made up of the elements... 2E's Water Weird, actually, poses alongside the 2E Nereid, both known as part of the 'elemental water-kin'.
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Wight
- 5.5E/5E: Medium Undead; Neutral Evil; CR 3
Wights fully possess all the memories they had in life, although they will also serve whatever dark god or powerful necromancer that brought them to life. They are, in a sense, the perfect place to be a 'smarter minion', independent enough to not be driven merely by base instincts, but also without grand ambitions as to fight its masters. 5.5E gives a bunch of other potential Wight motivations that caused them to rise from the dead, including obeying the cult it served in life, seeking its stolen treasure, prove that it's the greatest warrior, continue the crimes it was executed for... all nice little variations of the theme.
Visually, Wights have been inconsistent over the various editions, being portrayed as essentially 'ghouls with clothes' in older editions, with constantly wild hair. 5E gives the Wight a redesign that keeps it more in line with the 'elite zombie/elite skeleton', with 5E seemingly having a thin skin stretched over the skull; while 5.5E just has it be a glowing skull with hair. They are always armoured and clothed, however, able to fight better than the lesser, brainless undead zombies and skeletons. Either way, I feel like 'Wight' is defined more by the circumstances of its undeath more than anything.
In combat, Wights are driven by a 'hunger for the spark of life', being able to drain life and restore itself with its attacks. More importantly, humanoids killed by a Wight will actually be transformed into Zombies! This is where the zombie plague is... but the transformation takes 24 hours, and so isn't actually that useful in the middle of a fight. It would be a fun twist for role-play, though, where a Wight attacks some random townsfolk and retreats, for them to rise from the cemetery as zombies the following night to sow chaos. Wights are also sensitive to sunlight, another mark as to why they can't hang out with the truly powerful undead like the Mummy Lords, Liches and Death Knights.
As a side-note, the 5E entry opens with a note that says that 'wight' used to mean 'person' in the olden days. That is true for real life, by the way. Wight used to just mean an unfortunate person in old English, but then Tolkien used 'Barrow-Wight' to describe his version of undead, and the term stuck – and more recently Game of Thrones used it for its own version of undead. I've grown to appreciate Wights quite a bit after dismissing them as 'yet another undead' in my original monster reviews; I really do appreciate the need for different 'tropes' of undead horror being represented.
Will-o'-Wisp
- 5.5E/5E: Tiny Undead; Chaotic Evil; CR 2
I love the Will-O'-Wisps. Part of European mythology, real-life Will-O'-Wisps are essentially just a natural phenomenon caused by swamp gas, but are associated with evil spirits or fey that lead people to their doom. In the real world, of course, these Will-O'-the-Wisps being located in swamps probably caused curious, jumpy travelers to pay less attention to their surroundings as they rush to investigate or flee the creepy shining light, and fall to the hazards of your average swamp.
This is D&D, though, so the Will-O'-Wisps are actually undead spirits. Will-O'-Wisps are portrayed to be balls of light, and it's only until 5.5E that we get a little twists of faces either crude or fully-formed appearing within the wispy smoky light. Will-O'-Wisps are noted to haunt lonely places and former battlefields, and are able to become invisible or turn into light at a whim. Hey, it's a friendly light, after all! Perhaps it's a friendly fairy, offering hope and safety. But Will-O'-Wisps lure fools to hazardous locations. Quicksand, monster lairs, a cursed ruin, patches of hazardous fungi... all to feed.
See, Will-O'-Wisps feed on suffering and death screams as whatever hazard they bring you to causes you to die. The Will-O'-Wisp itself can't really fight back that well, with a minor 'shock' attack and being able to slowly drain life... but it's not there to kill you. It's there to bring you to the things that will kill you, like a pack of ghouls or the nest of an owlbear or the ruins haunted by a banshee.
The 5E Manual notes that Will-O'-Wisps are fully sentient, they just prefer not to speak, probably to maintain that illusion that they are just floating cute light blobs. When they do, their voices sound like distant whispers. The Will-O'-Wisps form symbiotic relationships with stronger, intelligent beings like hags, oni or black dragons, happily bringing these victims to their partners because all the Will-O'-Wisp needs is to drain the suffering and pain from their tormented victim.
All of this, by the way, is fun and fascinating to me. Most undead creatures either run the gamut of 'mindless being', 'being driven by a single obsession' or 'intelligent powerful person, just dead'. And that's fine, since all undead by definition are raised unnaturally from living things. But Will-O'-Wisps behave in a manner that reminds me of some strange animal that lives through a weird, dependent symbiosis with larger, more powerful partners; wholly dependent. It's similar to how some clownfish would draw larger fish to swim into the deadly stingers of its anemone partner. I really have grown to like them in this regard.
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- 5.5E/5E: Large Monstrosity; Neutral Evil; CR 3
The Winter Wolf is another creature that was previously stuffed onto the appendix of the original 2014 5th Edition Monster Manual, but was given a full page now. Winter Wolves are horse-sized supernatural predators with... well, general Ice-type Pokemon abilities, to be blunt. Immunities to cold, an aura of frost from their mouth, and they live in the icy terrains of the world. Older editions have just drawn white wolves, but 4th Edition onwards have really emphasized the difference in size of the Winter Wolf, and 5E gave it increasingly supernatural ice features such as an ice mist, glowing blue eyes and ice fangs. It makes them feel a lot less boring, as compared to the many, many 'just a regular animal but big and maybe an extra attack' dire beasts that older editions like so much.
Also, not instantly apparent but very much highlighted in 5.5E is that Winter Wolves are intelligent enough to speak. They still only have an intelligence score of 7, lower than all humanoids (which tend to be around 10) but that's enough for adventurers to try and negotiate with them. Winter Wolves also know the Giant tongue and some of them serve Frost Giants.
And... that's it, really. There's not much to note with this one, it's just a beast with some extra features to make them fantastical. Not much more you need than that, but it sure is a bit more interesting than just a pack of regular wolves.
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Worg
- 5.5E/5E: Large Monstrosity (5E), Fey (5.5E); Neutral Evil; CR 1/2 (Worg)
- 5.5E: Huge Fey; Neutral Evil; CR 10 (Dire Worg)
The Worg are, of course, the copyright-friendly versions of Lord of the Rings' Wargs, the giant demon wolves ridden by the orcs of the setting. The Worgs take a lot from the Wargs, including the fact that they are fully sentient and can talk with prey, taunting the weaklings they hunt and coordinating attacks with their goblin or orc riders. The appearance of the Worg across D&D's history has thus changed quite a bit, from looking like just weird, malformed wolves in the first couple of editions (with a dash of that 'disturbingly human features on a beast face' in 1E)... but 5E decided to take a page out of the Lord of the Rings movies and tried to take the idea of a 'monstrous, larger wolf' and give it a somewhat unique design.
Like the Winter Wolf and Death Dog, the Worg was just stuffed with most of the animals and humanoid stat blocks in the appendix of the original 5EMonster Manual, but was given a full page for itself, as well as the more powerful 'Dire Worg' variant who gets a frightened-inducing howl and a teleportation ability.
5E's basic Worg has the main body of a wolf, but the face that I think can be most charitably described as a skinless, elongated feral baboon. 5.5E then gives both its Worg and the new Dire Worg stat block a bit of a revamp, making the fur spikier but also concentrating it on the front end of the beast, giving it a lion-like mane. I do like the weird, sinister faces of the original 5E Worg, though, which marks it as something a bit different from 'just' a talking wolf.
Rather interestingly, while classified as monstrosities before, 5.5E also retcons the Worg into being Fey, probably to tie-in with their slow moving of the goblinoids towards being Fey-oriented as well. I'm still of conflicting opinions about this; while I can see the goblinoids having Fey descent, I'm not quite feeling it for their sentient talking wolf-companions.
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Wraith
- 5.5E/5E: Medium Undead; Neutral Evil; CR 5
This is turning into an undead-heavy segment, yeah? Whereas the Wight is the 'middle of the road' smarter cousin of the Zombie, the Wraith fills in that slot for the incorporeal undead like the Specter. The various versions of the game have never been consistent with what the Wraith looks like, other than 'dark ghostly figure' and 'glowing eyes'. I am particularly a fan of the 3rd Edition's more wretched-looking affair, looking like ragged, animated clothes. 5E and 5.5E goes for beings made up of shadow, their lower bodies and arms trailing into smoke while they have aspects of the crowns and armours they wear in life still present.
Wraiths are noted by the 5E Manual to be 'malice incarnate', negative energy and emotions concentrated into an incorporeal form that seeks to quench all life. Passing through the world causes fires to go out, animals to flee, and plants to be blackened. The original 5E origin for the Wratihs is metal as shit for a mere CR 5 monster. Sometimes, souls that are supposed to be consigned to hell 'is so suffused with negative energy that it collapses in on itself and ceases to exist the instant before it can shuffle off to some horrible afterlife'. You're so evil that you collapse into a singularity of negativeness in the shape of the form you had in life? How metal is that? And the description of their abilities are Wraiths leading entire legions of the dead, and even if they are forced to retreat, the lands they attempted to conquer would be so blasted and devoid of life. Awesome.
But as mentioned, the Wraith itself is ultimately a 'mere' CR 5 creature. A tough fight, to be sure, for lower-level adventurers, but not exactly deserving of the epic origin it has. 5.5E gives us a bunch more options on how Wraiths can be formed, although the 'single very powerful soul' origin is still there. Other options include some regular standbys like 'a cursed location' or 'a powerful necromancer', and of course the Lovecraftian 'the dreams of a vile slumbering god'. But I absolutely love some of these potential origins for wraiths. 'The exorcised soul of a redeemed villain', which sounds very anime, and fits with the origin of a whole mass of negative emotions that needed to go somewhere. 'The memory of tragedy', 'locals' fear of a superstition' and 'a profane piece of lore' also implies that Wraiths don't even need to be formed out of a soul, but just enough negative emotions to coalesce into a hideous smoky ghost-man. This ties to negative emotions really does help to differentiate the Wraith from the half-dozen other 'ghost made up of someone's soul'.
That said, other than being incorporeal, Wraiths are able to drain life from their prey, and their special ability is to create Specters, which we've covered before. I suppose being killed by a mass of negative emotions would count as a traumatic death!
But anyway, I do think that the writeup in the original 5E Monster Manual and even the tables of potential origins in the 5.5E Manual are terrific examples of how a monster can really feel a lot more impressive than they actually are. This is a similar problem I mentioned with the lesser Hags, where the description really does imply a much more powerful creature. I do find them a lot more interesting thanks to that writeup, even if stat-wise they aren't the most impressive.
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Wyvern
- 5.5E/5E: Large Dragon; Unaligned; CR 6
Speaking of monster tropes, there is always the trope of dragons as 'just' a large, monstrous beast without all of that intelligent, immortal spellcasting schemers that the 'true' Dragons are. And there are many words for Dragons throughout various mythology, and so some of them have been utilized in D&D to represent lesser dragons. Of those, 'Wyvern' has stood the test of time as the most enduring. Wyverns have the intelligence of beasts compared to the fully-sentient dragons, essentially being the 'chimpanzee' equivalent to a human.
In D&D, all Dragons have four legs and two wings (other than the excellent new redesign for the Gold Dragon), but Wyverns are always depicted with two wings, two legs, and a tail. It's somewhat similar to that of a bird, and media that needs technical sophistication to depict less-complex dragons (like Skyrim and Game of Thrones) moving like a natural beast tend to utilize this body plan as it's easier to model. But we're not talking about how dragons are depicted in other media, we're talking about Wyverns!
Wyverns are very simple fighters, with their resemblance to dragons honestly just being superficial. They fly and bite you, and D&D Wyverns have a scorpion-like stinger on its tail (a lot more obviously scorpion-like in older art) to deal poison. This is something that the Pseudodragon also has, and I really wonder what made the older D&D designers decide that scorpion tails are something that many lesser dragons just have? Again, notably Wyverns do not have the breath weapons that True Dragons are so famous for.
Wyvern behaviour is honestly quite typical of other large predators, where despite their might,, they tend to be opportunistic hunters that attack primarily livestock and undefended travelers, taking advantage of strafing attacks and their poison tail to finish off enemies. Notably, though, a Wyvern's venom is actually highly valuable for alchemists, making Wyvern-hunting a potential aspect of society in a setting. Wyverns are noted to be smart enough to take advantage of their flight when harassing prey, but are no more intelligent than that. It is kind of boring as other than the visual (or theater-of-the-mind 'visual') spectacle there's not much to a Wyvern other than being a wild animal, but I do appreciate its existence.
Gonna be honest, when reading the unicorn entry, upon reading "evil horses", my mknd went to a unicorn being chased by Nightmares.
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