Guardian portrait

Guardian portraits were magically animated paintings that were commonly employed as traps. They attacked by casting spells at their victims.

Description
Those realistic portraits depicted a humanoid figure, usually someone important. The eyes of the figure gave the impression of watching and following people around but they were otherwise indistinguishable from ordinary paintings, except if inspected through magical detection.

While guardian portraits were made of both a painting and its frame, they were fused together by powerful magic and could not be taken apart.

Combat
Guardian portraits relied on their innate spellcasting abilities to attack their foes. While they could not move around, their painted figure could animate to perform somatic and verbal components of the spells they cast.

Those magical constructs were known to cast spells such as counterspell, crown of madness, hypnotic pattern and telekinesis. As with similar artificial creations, they were weak to magic-disrupting spells and effects such as dispel magic and antimagic field.

Appearances

 * Adventures:
 * Curse of Strahd
 * Organized Play & Licensed Adventures
 * The Map with No Names • Beneath the City of the Dead • The Marionette • The Horseman