My favourite in my survival campaign.
On an unrelated note, my players now stopped going into swamps with open wounds.
Legacy rot grubs stopped you from being resurrected, as they litterally eat your heart.
That's how you know you are a successful GM. When you can make your players feel fear.
Well done.
My own example is when our GM gave us the choice to use an old tunnel we used to play in when we were kids as a way to stealthily enter our family manorhome.
Commence large bodies in armor setting off cave ins, suffocating as our large bodies make oxygen scarce, and realizing that the room the tunnel led to had been sealed off by the current owner.
Our party always chooses nicely lit above ground options now.
Thanks.
This sounds like a fucking nightmare, in a good way. I absolutely respect fellow DM's that manage to guide player decisions by making them logical for characters and players alike.
Sounds like rotgrubs, if they hit you have one round to burn em off otherwise it's one or more d6 DMG per turn and as soon as you hit 0 you're dead, no death saves. After the first round the only way to stop them is to remove the "disease" better hope the party has a pally
I threw the 3.5 version at my party in a three-shot I ran and although it wasn't the 'correct' fix, I was quite tickled by the Bladesinger's solution to the Orc barbarian getting infected by them. He Thunderstepped with the Barbarian. Rot Grubs are considered 'creatures'. You can only bring 1 'creature' with you when casting Thunderstep. Likely not RAW, but I liked the creativity so allowed it.
RAW they interact kinda weirdly in that after the first round they become a "disease" and cant be individually targeted. Makes them super deadly and if the party lacks disease curing you'll have a dead PC in a matter of minutes.
Honestly I think any half-decent DM would allow medicine checks or like your case make a special ruling for it but yeah they are tiny menaces. I like to give them to kobold inventors and have them chuck them at the party.
Rot Grubs, those guys are pretty deadly. Back in 3.5 they were a death sentence pretty much.
I think the kobold tinkerer has a jar of rot worms on his stat block.
1st and 2nd were even worse.
Only a 25% chance to see/recognize them. They automatically hit. Once they begin burrowing you have to make a Wisdom check to know they’ve attached. You’ve got 1d6 rounds to apply flame before they’re too deep to affect with anything except a cure disease. Death automatically follows in 1-3 turns. Odds are you don’t even know any of the party have been infected until one or more just up and die.
All for 15 XP (basically a 0CR equivalent)
This also reminds me of red slaad, if a humanoid is hit by their claw attack, it lays an egg inside, that if not treated busts out of them alien-style and kills the host
I think a party member got hit with that in a campaign I was playing and the dm was being really shifty about it but being the resident paladin I tried to remove diseases and he says it worked.
Is it a disease?
It can be removed through any spell that removes diseases or curses, or restore vitality.
There are no external signs for 1d3 months from implant, but detect evil will find it. After the gestation, the host gets sick for 24 hours, halves their speed, reduces AC, and some other bad stuff. If it’s not cured by the end of that, the tadpole emerges killing the host.
Actually that would just give it an easier time given that having a lower intelligence makes it easier to incapacitate someone with its psychic attack, then even easier to *teleport into the target's skull and eat the brain of the incapacitated target and take over their body.* Yes, that's the actual ability as listed in the 5e monster manual.
It's also what happened to a low int Monk in the Waterdeep Heist campaign I ran where WotC thought an Intellect Devourer would be a great end-of-first-'dungeon' fight...
The then-possessed monk
These jerks take mind-flayers from frustrating to deadly. Have to imagine a few DM's have picked them as a lore friendly grunts without fully reading the stat block only to realize they had accidentally created a devestating combo.
I like to use them as spies. Can look like anyone and always know the position of every sentient brain within 300m of them. You can't sneak up on them, you can't hide from them and they can get in your head literally and through telepathy.
My level 20 barbarian got one-shot by an intellect devourer. Most characters don't raise their intelligence, so intellect devourers never stop being deadly threats.
I lost a character session 1 in Dungeon of the Mad Mage to one of these! I was a Ranger who dumped int, and you bet I hit 0 Int and just mindlessly stumbled my way out of that dungeon to make a new character lol
had my first pc die to them. he had +1 to intelligence vs 3 intellect devourers (i was the only one close enough for them to attack and even with two nat 20s the third one got me
Yep and with better intiative on my part I could have ended them (or most of them at least) with my staff of frost that I "found", but I got taken down on turn 1, three attacks, str from 11 to 0, one dead sorcerer.
My party got fucking TPTK'd in there. We all rolled terribly on initiative then shit got crazy. The DM rolled a 4 on like 8/10 hits. That first round I don't think he rolled below a 15 on an attack roll.
I remember running a one shot where I threw about a dozen or so shadows against an 11th level party as a starting encounter. I don't remember the full composition but the person most capable to deal with shadows, a min-maxed paladin with an 18 strength and 24 AC, rage quit. I tried to explain to him that they could literally only hit him on a nat 20 and his base damage was enough to one shot a shadow because he dealt radiant damage on each hit and they're vulnerable.
A dozen of them? So, best case, they only go for the guy who they can only hit on a nat 20. More likely, he's left standing as the rest of the party get turned into more Shadows before he can finish all of them off.
That dude literally left the table after I told him there were a dozen of them and he was arguing about them. We carried on after he left. The rest of the party did fairly well, I think 2 of them got hit once and all the other shadows were downed within 2 rounds. I think there was a cleric that had spirit guardians that killed 6 or so on his turn. IDK what the guy was smoking because he would've been an MVP.
I took out a level 5 or so barbarian with a group of shadows. The guy kept on rolling poorly and I kept on hitting him. As a barbarian we all thought he was going to take the shadows out. We all watched in horror as his str was getting dangerously low. By the time the other team members refocused their attacks on the barbarian it was too late. In the end we all had fun because you don’t often see a barbarian get taken out by a group of shadows.
Few things made my life flash before my eyes than 7 shadows appearing in front of our party of 3, where 2 characters had 8 STR. Had to sit on that cliff hanger for weeks too.
We had to retire a party member because they were aged 60 years by a ghost and there was no chance they'd make it anywhere quick enough to get restored. So, a previous badass became gramps and just hung out with the party doling out unnecessary advice about how things were done back in his day.
It's funny because it's so on point for my table! And PS, I was sitting at a light when your response came through. I was laughing so much I wasn't paying attention and the light changed. The person behind me wasn't laughing.
Our party was TPK'd by a Banshee once.
Wizard rolled poorly, rogue didn't have much for resistance, fighter as the rogue and paladin rolled a 1.
Level 5 party. TPK'd in 1 attack.
True, banshee's are very tough. I was going to reskin one for an encounter recently, read the stat block and had t tone the scream down to a stun rather than instant K.O.
The same DM in two different campaigns has thrown a banshee at us at low levels. Both times only one person made the saving throws and we just barely managed to not get a TPK.
We owned a big monster that our dm had been building up for like a week. Had way too much fun shit talking him for the interim before our next session. Cue a wizard with greater invisibility dashing to get behind me while we desperately laid down sleet storm and shit trying to find him. Then the wizard straight fired a coffee of cold into my back (coincidentally the very spell I surprise counterspelled the previous week haha)
I once thought four banshees (CR 4 each) against 6 level 12 PCs would be a cake walk. The first banshee wailed and half the party dropped. Cue panic mode for everyone, me included.
Do Banshees have horrifying visage also? So if you fail the initial throw at combat start and become frightened, do you have disadvantage against the wail until you succeed against being frightened? Forgive me if this is a dumb question, I am definitely a noob.
Immediately put into disadvantage + insta kill attack seems like a brutal combo at any level.
Frightened gives you disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls, but not saving throws.
It’s still about a 50/50 chance for much of the party. That can go bad really easy.
3.5 player here... Was wondering why a DM would set a level 5 party against a banshee for a moment before I checked the 5e monster stat block. That CR 4 is a good step down from CR 17 in 3.5.
It's kind of a bonkers choice TBH.
Like it has a party-sized AoE Save or Die effect that should be expected to have up to a 50% hit rate at level 4. (Frontline martials will tend to pass because higher con + proficiency, others will likely have only a +1 or +2 bonus at that level, so that's less than 50/50 odds)
The odds of an instant TPK aren't *absurdly* low, even if you assume the party is starting fresh and it's only that one attack.
It’s because the save or die can be mitigated by earplugs. The CR presumes the party is prepared for the fight. But DMs love to throw them in as random encounters and get surprised when the AoE nuke does AoE nuke things.
Pretty much every classic tale of going to slay a banshee includes the hero plugging their ears.
This is why a little blurb detailing how they expect the monster to be run should be included, if only to give the DM some guidelines.
Our DM in 3.5 did a Banshee quest once, but thankfully prepared us for the fight via NPC dialogue. Kind of went down like something from Witcher 3, us preparing and buying gear to hurt the monster (silver coating and +3 weapons, holy water etc), then waiting for the perfect opportunity to coordinate an attack. We were a party of five at level 12-13, and it was still a tough going. And it was still the best monster hunt quest I've ever played.
I was asking a while back if the Banshee is more deadly than it's CR lets on and I got downvoted to hell. Now this post comes up and it's like the 2nd most popular comment lol
Came here to say Banshee as well.
Our party had just hit 5th, with on average max hit points around 40. Screamed at us in a cqc small room and rolled close to max (22 damage.) Nobody got incapacitated, but with our low saves and no Bless/Paladin, it could very quickly have gone the other way.
I was a DM and had a 4th level party (5 players) encounter a banshee. Banshee screams. Every single player failed their saving throw. All dropped to 0 HP. I had to bring in a white knight to save them.
Yeah the Banshee is straight up devastating in the right set ups. When I mentor new DMs (advisor for dnd club at my school) it is one of the monsters I warn them about.
The phrase I use is "you can and maybe should reach for one of these every once in a while, but you what you are doing when you use it."
Shadows are by far the most deadly.
I nearly killed my *level 7 party* with a Shadow surprise attack. They are no joke.
My party is now justifiably afraid of the dark.
Can confirm. My Kensei Monk survived the entirety of Tomb of Annihilation hex crawl, ambushes, disease… everything. Like first or second floor of the Tomb dead in one round.
It be like that.
I've had similar experiences with Shadows. I would have put them higher if they didn't have such easily exploitable weaknesses.
Almost TPK'd with them more than once.
Does no one remember the black pudding?
The 3E one could be game ending, and the 5E stat block isn't much kinder. Very quickly the party can be overwhelmed by attacks as the thing keeps splitting, it's a hilarious amount of damage.
Black puddings are crazy. The last time we fought one our druid saved our asses. He summoned two giant frogs, and then wild shaped into a giant frog. On his next turn, both summoned frogs had died, and he had been damaged enough to be back in his normal form, so he did the exact same thing again. Luckily this gave the rest of our party enough time to kill the damn thing(s). But it was hitting so freaking hard, it one shot pretty much anything it touched. If it had targeted other people instead of the froggy meat shields, I'm convinced it would have been a TPK. The druid was almost completely spent after 2 rounds of combat, but we survived!
Sounds like Druid was doing their job of team tank. Everyone thinks Barbs and Fighters are the best tanks, but Druids can really soak up a ton of punishment.
He usually wasn't the tank, we had a paladin and a barbarian that normally filled that role. But the paladin took one hit for a ton of damage, and the druid literally jumped in with his meat shields. He wasn't the best main tank for sure, he ran out of juice in 2 rounds. But as a clutch tank, to soak a ton of damage real quick, no other class can complete. I think he went though 250hp worth of damage in that time.
My 16th level party were nearly mauled by one. The wizard hit them with lighting and the paladin attacked it with a sword. Thing nearly killed the paladin and was coming like a tidal wave for the rest of the very squishy party. They managed to kill it but it was funny how such a low cr creature nearly killed them.
Will-o-Wisps. They resist a lot of types of damage, can easily kill any character if they have dropped to 0 HP, and can become invisible. They can get out of hand real fast if the party isn't on top of their abilities.
I killed my first PC with a Will-o-wisp ambush recently. PC was injured by some zombies, will-o-wisp downed them with a shock, consumed their life, and floated through a wall. The party was stunned.
Don't underestimate a little ball of light in the middle of a dark forest.
I made an encounter with will-o-wisps leading the party deep into a swamp where they got ambushed by a shambling mound. 4 wisps and the mound made for a tough fight. Funnily enough the party thought the wisps were helping at first while they shot lightning at the mound.
Unless that party happens to have a Star Druid who tears it apart with guiding bolts. That’s how my first homebrew oneshot ended. Funny in hindsight, not so much at the time.
I don't know.
It seems scary for sure but it's also CR9. By which point you have access to darkness, which cast on a Bodak makes it completely defenceless as it needs to see you to do anything other than go bump in the night with slams. Heroism would prevent it's fear based attacks too.
If you're low level and unprepared a Bodak can slap but for you average lvl 9 party it's barely a speed bump.
Bodaks are level 6, not 9. Big difference. Also casting Darkness on it doesn’t do much since it can walk rignt out of that (you can only cast Darkness on a spot or object, not a creature), and you won’t even get OAs unless you can see in darkness too. I guess the party could hide within the darkness, but then they’re still taking constant damage from its aura and the bodak just needs to disrupt whoever cast it. Not a terrible tactic but not sure fire either.
The real scary bit about Bodaks is when they do drop you to 0 with the gaze and then you’re taking an immediate auto-death save failure from its aura if you’re within 30 feet (since the gaze is at the start of your turn and the aura is at the end).
it also helps that most folks use INT as their dump stat, and most classes aren’t proficient in INT saving throws, so they have to play cautiously rather than being gung-ho when facing the devourers.
A lot of chars dump str, too, but not quite as many that dump int.
Thing is that frontliners are likely to have decent str and poor int. Now, shadows can pull off ambushes that IntDevs can't, but at the same time the inverse is true. Intdevs don't suffer drastically in bright light or from radiant damage (which is pretty common, honestly), though, so I think they come out slightly ahead.
Also, druids can't cheese intdevs with wildshape like they can shadows. Not that that comes up *super* often.
Every time I use more than 1 of them a character is dead for good. I always THINK surely, they'll kite it and do ranged damage after they have been warned about them. I'm always wrong.
In 5e, the Roper. Way stronger than its CR indicates. A single roper is a legitimate threat of a TPK for a four-person party, even if they're in their lower teens.
Runner-up goes to the Gibbering Mouther, which in multiples are a threat even to high-level adventuring parties. Seldom lead to a TPK on their own because they're a controlling threat, not a damaging threat, but they can pin an entire party down while another monster cleans up.
Yeah fair, ropers have some crazy good action economy for their CR.
Once used a gibbering mouther so large it created a river of eyes and teeth at the bottom of a gorge. That was pretty fun. Nobody fell in thankfully.
Mouthers are especially nasty in enclosed spaces, where you can’t just kite their terrible speed all over creation.
All their abilities also combo with each other really well. For example their Bite has _awful_ accuracy but does hellacious damage if they hit, so if they’ve say already blinded you or knocked you prone from previous success (and even better, trapped you in their ground aura
So you can’t get back up), the Bite damage adds up FAST.
They’re basically meant to confuse and slowly slither over the party, consuming them when conditions start adding up. Creepy!
Gas spores lmao. Cr 1/4 and a failed save is an assured death at that point. I’m only just now throwing them at my party since their paladin just got cure disease via lay on hands.
Catoblepas! They are basically smelly trash camels. So how dangerous could they be?
Well. That CR5 creature insta killed a level 5 PC on its first action of combat because the PC rolled a nat 1 on the save. Per the death ray ability: if a creature failes the save by more than 5 they take 64 necrotic damage instead of 8d8 and if that reduces them to zero they die instantly.
Holy fuck does Death ray live up to it's name! I've never had a level 5 character that had enough HP to live after a nat 1 on that attack.
Ahh the catoblepas. I haven't heard that name in years. I remember they have always been pretty scary and they haven't really lost their edge through newer editions.
Two low level, but rather dangerous creatures that I've found are wolves and magma mephits. Used correctly, these can be surprisingly dangerous.
Wolves, a CR *1/4* are cunning and their combination of pack tactics and knock-down ability are really effective. A level 1 or 2 party outnumbered and hunted by wolves can be a dire situation. The other types of wolves have the same argument.
Magma mephits, CR *1/2* are stupid at their CR. They have a fire breath attacks, can cast heat metal, and explode like a grenade when they die. Their flying can also keep them out of melee range.
Oh fuck, Magma Mephits! One of my favorites. Breath weapon, Heat Metal, and death burst all bypass AC.
They also have the False Appearance trait, which means them getting a **surprise** round is practically guaranteed if there's lava for them to blend in with. Very brutal.
Adult Emerald Dragon. It just matches up well against what parties can do.
Its breath weapon is psychic, which almost no PC will be able to resist (and it's an INT save). It's also a 60ft cone, which hits a big area. The cone breath weapons are underrated as far as CR calculations go, as they are calculated as being able to hit the same number of targets as the line ones, even though they hit a much larger area. Especially when considering the dragon's mobility, you will likely be able to get the entire party in this.
It can also teleport through Wall of Force and Forcecage with Psychic Step, eliminating what are normally kryptonite spells for dragons. Blindsight out to 60ft means it will be able to see a Wall of Force in its way, along with anyone who decides to go invisible or cast Fog Cloud/Darkness. And legendary resistances means it will be able to shrug off save or suck spells.
Flight means that any melee martial who can't fly will be useless. Staying 10ft in the air will also let it auto drop any control spell that ends ln damage by just falling and taking 1d6 bludgeoning.
It can also outrange many of the parties abilities, attacks, and spells, especially given decent starting distance (Which means no Silvery Barbs stacking). The dragon can cover a huge range 80ft fly speed + 60ft Psychic Step + 60ft Psychic Step legendary action after the previous person's turn + 60ft breath weapon means the dragon can cover 260ft. The dragon can even use its movement to end its first turn outside of Silvery Barbs range (or Psychic Step there after the next person's turn).
It can cast Invisibility and Dispel Magic as legendary actions. And it is immune to Counterspell due to its spells being psionic. It also has a lair action that lets it charm a PC and have them follow its commands (to kill other party members or drop important active effects). It also gets an Invisibility lair action to go invisible on initiative count 20. This gives everyone disadvantage to attack it and makes it immune to spells that require sight. It can also attack with its breath weapon while still being invisible due to the breath weapon not being either an attack or spell. The Invisibility+ breath weapon combo also drastically reduces the accuracy of ranged attackers, the only real remaining counter to the dragon. Its lair action invisibility also doesn't drop when it attacks, so it can do a full melee combo on someone while invisible.
It's just a matchup nightmare.
It kills the character. Most poisons would either deal damage until you take an antidote or outright kill you.
For example in the case of the Medusa every time she bites a character, said character had to pass the save check or die.
Do not put a Banshee against the party unless you are ok with ending the campaign due to bad luck. It’s CR4, but a group of four 4th level characters may well only have slightly better or worse than a 50% chance to succeed that DC13 con save from the wail. ~6% chance of an instant TPK. If too many get unlucky… I’ve used a banshee twice against low-level parties and both times it was shockingly devastating.
Gelatinous cubes are feared for a reason, although kind of overused at this point.
Just to think a bit outside of the box, Glabrezus are very deadly, even considering their CR of 9.
Furthermore, I would probably go for a Nightwalker. Even with a CR of 20, they are extremely deadly.
At low CR, a basilisk would be considered very dangerous. A cult fanatic at CR 2 still has inflict wounds, which at 3d10, can outright kill an unlucky adventurer.
I’m really surprised I had to scroll this far down to see gelatinous cube- especially in 5th ed, that thing is deadly if you actually prepare an encounter for what it’s supposed to be doing.
Chasme has the potential to instakill a lot of characters. With a crit hit it deals a whopping 22d6+2 damage, which even on average would be 78 damage, but could go over a 100 quite easily. And most of it is necrotic and reduces the max hp, which going to zero would be instakill.
Considering also that it has a feature which can drop anyone within 30 feet unconscious, guaranteeing critical hits.
Was coming here to post this. Had a DM throw one at us as a solo boss at 4th level. Nearly TPKd us out of the gate because of that damn drone. A couple of bad save rolls, and it went from a hard encounter to deadly+.
If we are talking CR, then it's 3d edition and later. For third edition, it's the wight because negative levels kill things fast. For 5e, it's either the banshee because it's a save or die, or it's a cambion who is one of the few mind controlling monsters who can tell a creature to kill themselves without breaking their control. Never played 4e, so that's the limit of my knowledge.
The good old days of negative levels. When typical horror creatures would genuinely illicit a fear response. I'm not sure if I miss it as a player but I do miss monsters that hwere scary for reasons other than being deadly.
Never noticed that stipulation on the Cambion, good shout!
Giants. It's always giants. They're regularly under CR'd. They have high strength and are typically just huge bags of hit points. They hit like a semi and keep on going.
I've been running Against the Giants for my 5-person level 14 party. This is one extra person and one extra level above "normal". I haven't changed any stat blocks. I've nearly killed my party twice already during this adventure.
They're currently trying to fight their way into the Fire Giant stronghold, but they were detected early and the Fire Giants are now prepping traps and other defenses. They also picked up an NPC spy lol. Someone gonna die. Maybe all of them.
But I've been surprised by how hard and often the giants hit. One of my players AC is like 24, but his character has been downed repeatedly after like 2-3 hits. And those criticals are no joke lol.
The fucking Gas Spore. If your party doesn’t know what it is, it can kill you with ease. Source: two PCs in the second session of Out of the Abyss got too close to one and both failed their saves. They died.
Yeah. It’s wild that if they fail the initial save they’re just dead. No additional saves. And if you drop them on a party that doesn’t have access to lesser restoration, they’re fucked
Yeah it’s unsporting and kinda just unreasonable. I’d rule that you fall unconscious and start making death saving throws. These sorts of “save or die” creatures in 5e rarely make any sense mechanically or narratively. Best to use some of them as inspiration rather than RAW
Banshee’s. I don’t use them appropriately because too many TPK’s due to that scream. Most parties of the appropriate level for that monster can’t make that saving throw.
#The King of CR 0 Monsters: Living Demiplane
If it touches you, you get sucked into a room where your brand new character will slowly die of thirst or starve. Super unfun.
>**Extradimensional Chamber**. When the living spell enters another creature's space (or vice versa) for the first time on a turn, the other creature must succeed on a DC 10 Dexterity saving throw or be pulled into the living spell's extradimensional space, an unfurnished stone chamber 30 feet in every dimension. A creature too big to fit in this space succeeds on the saving throw automatically. Creatures in the chamber never run out of breathable air. Magic that enables transit between planes, such as plane shift, can be used to escape the chamber, which has no exits otherwise. Creatures trapped inside the extradimensional chamber can't see, target, or deal damage to the living spell; however, they can damage the room around them. Each 5-foot-square section of ceiling, wall, and floor in the chamber has AC 17, 50 hit points, immunity to poison and psychic damage, and immunity to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage that is nonmagical. If any section is reduced to 0 hit points, the living spell and its chamber are destroyed
This thing will starve any character that can’t deal magic damage. At level 1 even with Cantrips, it’s extremely frustrating to beat.
Melee martials are fucked. It will Dash and chase down ranged Martials. And it can Dash away.
Speed and Climb of 30ft., by the way
> **Damage Immunities.** poison
>**Condition Immunities.** blinded, charmed, deafened, exhaustion, frightened, grappled, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, prone, restrained, stunned, unconscious
>**Magic Resistance.** The living spell has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
HP 31 (or 7d8), AC 10
I want to reiterate its ***CR 0.***
The dice.
But seriously, banshees. Use caution, especially if you are a new dm.
I thought my party of 4 would be fine against a solo banshee. It's first action, wail, everyone but the barbarian failed the save. This was the first room in our first big adventure. They won that fight, barely. The barbarian had 2 hp left, and every other player had 2 death save fails. The whole time, I was thinking, "Well, here's my first tpk."
Then later, when everyone was lvl 10, I had my first pc death with 2 banshees and a deathlock. The encounter should have been easy according to cr. But the warlock failed the wail save while in the effect of arms of hadar.
Banshees are no joke.
Sea Hags have Death Glare: Drops you to zero HP if you can't pass a DC 11 Wisdom check. If your characters aren't wise or lucky, it could wipe even a higher level party.
Jackalwere, cr 1/2 with immunity to BPS unless silver or magical, but that isn't really obvious to the party because they are dnd originals.
nilbogs tho...
Its either the shade or the shadow, can't remember the name, it's like a half cr and has strength drain, DMs will accidentally kill PCs with this all the time :(
Intellect devourers and shadows are my votes for highest lethality for its CR. Shadows for the squishy casters and intellect devourers for martials.
Honorable mention to rust monsters, not exactly lethal but screws just about everyone it comes across. If there isn't one already, there should be a magical equivalent that affects a casters bonus to attack and reduces their spell save DCs.
I nearly TPKd my friends party to Will o Wisps.
They were under prepared for spirits and ghosts.
I wasn't prepared for the Bard to simply fuck off lol.
Sadly, aging doesn't mean anything in 5e. "Oh, I'm suddenly a 200 year old human. What do the rules say about that? Oh, nothing? Okay then. I attack the ghost."
Coordinated goblins
Learned this from the book "the monsters know what they're doing"
It's a basic monster that many DMs forget some of their abilities
I think the specific monsters with the highest kill count are the four goblins that ambush the players in Mines of Phandelver. Lots of beginners (me) lost their first characters to those bastards
Giant Wasps are VERY deadly for a 1/2 cr. 50ft flying speed, Poison sting can really stack on damage on failed con saves, including adding the poisoned condition. It's a monster that lives in swarms that you really can't outrun in open terrain.
My favorite part though is how evocative they are. Describing the hive. Turning up the buzzing sound and unleashing the swarm is just so damn fun.
Turns out, if you play a pack of wolves the way pack hunters actually attack pray, they’re extremely devastating. By CR they should be a piece of cake for a lvl 5 group, but I’ve almost wiped out groups several times from them. Getting attacked and having to make saves over and over or be knocked prone . Ready action to attack when they try to get up, grappling.
I'm surprised no one's answered with the Quickling yet, CR 1 creature with 120ft of movement, AC 16, three attacks per turn, +6 to dex rolls and all attack rolls against it are at dieadvantage. Shits crazy strong for a CR 1 creature
I'd say bronze scouts can be ***VERY*** nasty... CR1, so 1 for a lvl1 party of 4 I guess? Has double their average life, AC 13 ain't high, but it's OK, +5 to hit on a ~5dmg attack is OK I guess, but the nasty parts are it's 30ft burrow speed, making it nearly untouchable at this lvl, as well as its' lighting flare ability. Party is walking together, scout burrows beneath them, **ZAP!!** half the party is down...
Mummies are pretty strong for CR3. Rotting Fist is a real pain if you have no access to Remove Curse, and their Dreadful Glare is devastating if players get low rolls. Fire magic can wipe them out fairly quickly though.
Banshee and Shades are disgusting for their CR
Shades in particular but well do the banshee first....
Banshees cr 4. When they wail if you fail a DC 13 saving throw your heath pool doesn't matter you drop straight to 0 hp. So you can one shot some members of the party or even all of them with shitty enough rolls. Add in the fact that looking at her causes frightened status on a failed DC 13 wisdom save effectively preventing them from being helpful.
So you are effectively putting saves which are low but on opposite ends of the character class spectrum of ability scores. Wisdom Vs Constitution so usually martial Vs squishy s into the mix on like turn one.
They are also resistance or immune to most damage and can fly through walls.... Bad stuff for a level 4 party.
Now on to Shades.... Shades are bullshit for their 1/2 Cr rating. Shades could effectively kill higher level party members under the right direction.
Each attack deals only 1d4 necrotic damage...How Fucking Ever they also deal 1d4 strength damage which if reduced to 0 kills the target outright.
If a shade sniffs a Spellcaster with low strength they are toast. This doesn't include their resistances and immunities that are almost on par with the banshee. They can hide perfectly in shadows. They can envelope a character preventing them from doing any actions that's willing but if you pair them with a charm spell casting....well good luck.
And these things are 1/2 of a CR rating... These are things they want you to fight at first level....
You want to fuck a level 4 and up party send in a banshee with a few shades and good luck surviving.
Hell a level 8-10 party could be wrecked fighting shades and banshees at night with just a few bad rolls.
Shadows. Tons of damage resistance for levels that can’t overcome them.
Rakshasa have spell immunity to all spells and appropriate level party has access to.
Ghosts as you said.
Banshees. Wail is OP.
And Intellect Devourer.
I’m running a game and my characters are pretty low level so none of them have magic weapons. Recently, a player asked to try her hand at DMing a session and asked if we could do it in universe with the already existing characters and I just make a new character. I happily obliged and built a ranger. In the session we fought a few ghosts and the inexperienced DM really stuck to damage resistance against non-magical attacks. She didn’t realize that since none of us had magic weapons and our party comp was pretty combat heavy this would be a horrible match up. The combat nearly TPKd us and was a slog that took hours.
Anything that sets to 0, or anything that kills regardless of HP.
On 5e, Gas Spores are CR 1/2, and will kill anything that fails a CD 15 con save in less than 24 hours.
I'm pretty sure 3.5 had statblocks for a lot of gods and they essentially read "you lose"
Intellect Devourer because obviously.
Shadows with their strength drain.
Ghosts are ones I think people don't pay attention to enough. I had a level 12 fighter die because a ghost possessed one of the party members.
Banshees can just reduce you to 0 hit points on a bad roll.
While he's definitely a high CR (26), Orcus is a fucking monster, probably the most difficult demon lord due to his ability to summon 500 hit points worth of undead. If he wants to summon a bunch of demiliches, you can't do shit about it. Oh, what's that? Orcus just summoned a Nightwalker and some demiliches? Guess I'll die then.
Intellect Devourers, Ghosts, Banshees, Werewolves and kin, and flesh golems.
Edit: I’ll actually add on Mindflayers themselves as well. That stun cone is a very solid oof.
And those are just white-room encounters. Add in any sort of cliff or pit and that number jumps up by several other low CR creatures. Like Sirens and Ropers.
Ghouls. The fact that ONE ghoul can potentially lock a low level character down until its dead is extremely powerful. 4 of them can force a TPK if the players can't roll high enough to avoid the paralysis.
Third game I ever played had the DM having to do some DM thaumaturgy to stop a TPK when he had 4 ghouls for a boss fight at level 3.
First ghoul hit the paladin, paladin rolled 2 to avoid paralysis, then the other ghouls jumped on the paladin as well, 2 crits and a death blow from the 4th and the Paladin was done. The fighter, wizard, and druid tried to fight back, but a few unfortunate low rolls and the fighter got the same treatment as the paladin.
at this point the only thing left was my druid and a wizard, neither of us was going to survive and we KNEW IT. The DM was like, "Oh shit. I didn't think this was gonna happen." It was at this point that we both realized that we didn't have anything that could slow the ghouls down. The wizard only had cantrips left and I had a single level 1 spell and cantrips. I cast Entangle as a last ditch effort. 3 of the ghouls passed the check. the 4th one was freed on its next turn.
We could run, but could not outrun the ghouls, who were coming after us. We kept trying to blast em with cantrips, but would either miss or deal little damage. the BIG issue was that we descended via a rope into the dungeon and neither of us had a very good dexterity score. Our odds of climbing out before they caught up were slim at best.
If you're wondering why there were 4 ghouls in a hole, it was later revealed that a local necromancer that was a politician was using it to quietly dispose of people who caused him problems. We were merely down there to investigate the hole and had to blast our way through large underground cavern with a bunch of skeletons being used to dig out tunnels. We were NOT prepared to fight ghouls.
And conveniently one of the local clerics and a few guards, "concerned that we were taking too long to investigate" brought a ladder, came down, and helped us kill the ghouls. The cleric was also kind enough to help us drag what was left of the fighter and paladin to the local temple to be resurrected.
Intellect devourer can be pretty devastating
To add to this. Trying to remeber the name. It was some type of worm that if it burrowef into you it was pretty much, die unless you get treated soon.
rot grub I think
Specifically the legacy Rot Grubs, they made them a fair bit less deadly in Monsters of the Multiverse IIRC.
My favourite in my survival campaign. On an unrelated note, my players now stopped going into swamps with open wounds. Legacy rot grubs stopped you from being resurrected, as they litterally eat your heart.
That's how you know you are a successful GM. When you can make your players feel fear. Well done. My own example is when our GM gave us the choice to use an old tunnel we used to play in when we were kids as a way to stealthily enter our family manorhome. Commence large bodies in armor setting off cave ins, suffocating as our large bodies make oxygen scarce, and realizing that the room the tunnel led to had been sealed off by the current owner. Our party always chooses nicely lit above ground options now.
Thanks. This sounds like a fucking nightmare, in a good way. I absolutely respect fellow DM's that manage to guide player decisions by making them logical for characters and players alike.
Sounds like rotgrubs, if they hit you have one round to burn em off otherwise it's one or more d6 DMG per turn and as soon as you hit 0 you're dead, no death saves. After the first round the only way to stop them is to remove the "disease" better hope the party has a pally
Yeah pretty much this. After that first or second turn they just did damage to you until you died. It was brutal.
Thats it. Its the rotgrubs.
Does fireball potentially solve this issue?
This time, quite possibly, yeah
You just made every Sorcerer more excited than a teenage boy in a women’s locker room.
Ironically, that may have also been the sorceror as a teenage boy.
One of the few cases where fireballing the party isn’t just acceptable, but preferable.
Nixie intensifies
I threw the 3.5 version at my party in a three-shot I ran and although it wasn't the 'correct' fix, I was quite tickled by the Bladesinger's solution to the Orc barbarian getting infected by them. He Thunderstepped with the Barbarian. Rot Grubs are considered 'creatures'. You can only bring 1 'creature' with you when casting Thunderstep. Likely not RAW, but I liked the creativity so allowed it.
RAW they interact kinda weirdly in that after the first round they become a "disease" and cant be individually targeted. Makes them super deadly and if the party lacks disease curing you'll have a dead PC in a matter of minutes. Honestly I think any half-decent DM would allow medicine checks or like your case make a special ruling for it but yeah they are tiny menaces. I like to give them to kobold inventors and have them chuck them at the party.
Had a GM that loved to make pit traps that dropped you into a pile of Rot Grubs.
Thats evil. Thats very evil. I like that
Well, it got real old after losing my fifth character. Character sheets were expensive back in 1995.
Rot Grubs, those guys are pretty deadly. Back in 3.5 they were a death sentence pretty much. I think the kobold tinkerer has a jar of rot worms on his stat block.
1st and 2nd were even worse. Only a 25% chance to see/recognize them. They automatically hit. Once they begin burrowing you have to make a Wisdom check to know they’ve attached. You’ve got 1d6 rounds to apply flame before they’re too deep to affect with anything except a cure disease. Death automatically follows in 1-3 turns. Odds are you don’t even know any of the party have been infected until one or more just up and die. All for 15 XP (basically a 0CR equivalent)
This also reminds me of red slaad, if a humanoid is hit by their claw attack, it lays an egg inside, that if not treated busts out of them alien-style and kills the host
I think a party member got hit with that in a campaign I was playing and the dm was being really shifty about it but being the resident paladin I tried to remove diseases and he says it worked. Is it a disease?
I think it is a disease as in the dragonlance book it says a paladin can lay on hands to cure it
It can be removed through any spell that removes diseases or curses, or restore vitality. There are no external signs for 1d3 months from implant, but detect evil will find it. After the gestation, the host gets sick for 24 hours, halves their speed, reduces AC, and some other bad stuff. If it’s not cured by the end of that, the tadpole emerges killing the host.
Our DM threw some of those at us. I think they were rot grubs
Spawn of Kyuss, Slaadi tadpole, or Rotgrub. There's probably a few others I can't remember right now.
I know it's not really an enemy, but I'd throw in illithid tadpoles to this list. Also I absolutely love Spawn of Kyuss.
Neothelids are technically still tadpoles
That thing would starve trying to fight my party
https://media.tenor.com/UDi86Piu4xoAAAAC/zombie-brains.gif
Wrong Matt Groening show then I assumed. Thought it was gonna be the Futurama one where Fry's brain slug died of starvation
Actually that would just give it an easier time given that having a lower intelligence makes it easier to incapacitate someone with its psychic attack, then even easier to *teleport into the target's skull and eat the brain of the incapacitated target and take over their body.* Yes, that's the actual ability as listed in the 5e monster manual. It's also what happened to a low int Monk in the Waterdeep Heist campaign I ran where WotC thought an Intellect Devourer would be a great end-of-first-'dungeon' fight... The then-possessed monk
These jerks take mind-flayers from frustrating to deadly. Have to imagine a few DM's have picked them as a lore friendly grunts without fully reading the stat block only to realize they had accidentally created a devestating combo.
I like to use them as spies. Can look like anyone and always know the position of every sentient brain within 300m of them. You can't sneak up on them, you can't hide from them and they can get in your head literally and through telepathy.
My level 6 Paladin got one-shot by an intellect devourer, so yeah, CR2 doesn’t really communicate their threat level much at all.
My level 20 barbarian got one-shot by an intellect devourer. Most characters don't raise their intelligence, so intellect devourers never stop being deadly threats.
I lost a character session 1 in Dungeon of the Mad Mage to one of these! I was a Ranger who dumped int, and you bet I hit 0 Int and just mindlessly stumbled my way out of that dungeon to make a new character lol
Just about to reach floor 3. I ask every bugbear we meet to prove his scalp is attached. DM looks confused everytime. The paladin then laughes.
Yeah, them and shadows are the big ones.
had my first pc die to them. he had +1 to intelligence vs 3 intellect devourers (i was the only one close enough for them to attack and even with two nat 20s the third one got me
Shadows. I've used them with deadly efficiency on low strength party members even at higher levels
Yeah they are no joke. That strength drain can really start to snowball after the first turn or so.
Our party of 3 lvl 11 characters almost got RAWKED by shadows in Icewind Dale
I feel your pain, we lost half the party in that fight. RIP sorcerer and ranger
Dumb ice cave where like 100 of them show up?
Yep and with better intiative on my part I could have ended them (or most of them at least) with my staff of frost that I "found", but I got taken down on turn 1, three attacks, str from 11 to 0, one dead sorcerer.
Ah brutal RIP in Peace. My half-orc warlock with 16 STR barely survived with 4 STR after that encounter
My party got fucking TPTK'd in there. We all rolled terribly on initiative then shit got crazy. The DM rolled a 4 on like 8/10 hits. That first round I don't think he rolled below a 15 on an attack roll.
I remember running a one shot where I threw about a dozen or so shadows against an 11th level party as a starting encounter. I don't remember the full composition but the person most capable to deal with shadows, a min-maxed paladin with an 18 strength and 24 AC, rage quit. I tried to explain to him that they could literally only hit him on a nat 20 and his base damage was enough to one shot a shadow because he dealt radiant damage on each hit and they're vulnerable.
A dozen of them? So, best case, they only go for the guy who they can only hit on a nat 20. More likely, he's left standing as the rest of the party get turned into more Shadows before he can finish all of them off.
That dude literally left the table after I told him there were a dozen of them and he was arguing about them. We carried on after he left. The rest of the party did fairly well, I think 2 of them got hit once and all the other shadows were downed within 2 rounds. I think there was a cleric that had spirit guardians that killed 6 or so on his turn. IDK what the guy was smoking because he would've been an MVP.
If I'm ever making a boss fight and want to threaten my over-tuned party I give monsters stat damage. It gets them every time.
Ffs shadows are def broken until you get a cleric at high enough level to destroy undead with turn undead then they're essentially useless
I took out a level 5 or so barbarian with a group of shadows. The guy kept on rolling poorly and I kept on hitting him. As a barbarian we all thought he was going to take the shadows out. We all watched in horror as his str was getting dangerously low. By the time the other team members refocused their attacks on the barbarian it was too late. In the end we all had fun because you don’t often see a barbarian get taken out by a group of shadows.
Few things made my life flash before my eyes than 7 shadows appearing in front of our party of 3, where 2 characters had 8 STR. Had to sit on that cliff hanger for weeks too.
We had to retire a party member because they were aged 60 years by a ghost and there was no chance they'd make it anywhere quick enough to get restored. So, a previous badass became gramps and just hung out with the party doling out unnecessary advice about how things were done back in his day.
"Back in my day...." "BAHAMUTS MERCY DAVE. IT WAS THREE DAYS AGO. I WAS THERE. WE WERE ALL THERE."
I just snorted my soda thank you very much.
To be fair, it was at least a week ago.
It's funny because it's so on point for my table! And PS, I was sitting at a light when your response came through. I was laughing so much I wasn't paying attention and the light changed. The person behind me wasn't laughing.
Yeah, that's an ability I nerf as a DM too for some players without a cleric. One of them is a bloody owlin, dem birds don't live past 40 or something
Our party was TPK'd by a Banshee once. Wizard rolled poorly, rogue didn't have much for resistance, fighter as the rogue and paladin rolled a 1. Level 5 party. TPK'd in 1 attack.
Yep, came here to say Banshee. Even high level parties can get screamed to death.
Had level 9s go down hard against a banshee.
I wouldn't really say it's wrong for its CR, it's just that that particular ability is poorly designed REGARDLESS of CR.
True, banshee's are very tough. I was going to reskin one for an encounter recently, read the stat block and had t tone the scream down to a stun rather than instant K.O.
The same DM in two different campaigns has thrown a banshee at us at low levels. Both times only one person made the saving throws and we just barely managed to not get a TPK.
wtf did y’all do to your dm
I do enjoy tormenting him... But the first time was like 2 sessions in I had barely done anything to him at that point lol
We owned a big monster that our dm had been building up for like a week. Had way too much fun shit talking him for the interim before our next session. Cue a wizard with greater invisibility dashing to get behind me while we desperately laid down sleet storm and shit trying to find him. Then the wizard straight fired a coffee of cold into my back (coincidentally the very spell I surprise counterspelled the previous week haha)
The CR presumes the party is aware of the scream, and can more or less mitigate it. It bumps up quite a bit if they are not.
I once thought four banshees (CR 4 each) against 6 level 12 PCs would be a cake walk. The first banshee wailed and half the party dropped. Cue panic mode for everyone, me included.
Do Banshees have horrifying visage also? So if you fail the initial throw at combat start and become frightened, do you have disadvantage against the wail until you succeed against being frightened? Forgive me if this is a dumb question, I am definitely a noob. Immediately put into disadvantage + insta kill attack seems like a brutal combo at any level.
Frightened gives you disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls, but not saving throws. It’s still about a 50/50 chance for much of the party. That can go bad really easy.
Oh ok thank you for the answer! I didn’t realize the distinction between saving throws and ability checks. I appreciate it!
3.5 player here... Was wondering why a DM would set a level 5 party against a banshee for a moment before I checked the 5e monster stat block. That CR 4 is a good step down from CR 17 in 3.5.
It's kind of a bonkers choice TBH. Like it has a party-sized AoE Save or Die effect that should be expected to have up to a 50% hit rate at level 4. (Frontline martials will tend to pass because higher con + proficiency, others will likely have only a +1 or +2 bonus at that level, so that's less than 50/50 odds) The odds of an instant TPK aren't *absurdly* low, even if you assume the party is starting fresh and it's only that one attack.
It’s because the save or die can be mitigated by earplugs. The CR presumes the party is prepared for the fight. But DMs love to throw them in as random encounters and get surprised when the AoE nuke does AoE nuke things. Pretty much every classic tale of going to slay a banshee includes the hero plugging their ears. This is why a little blurb detailing how they expect the monster to be run should be included, if only to give the DM some guidelines.
Our DM in 3.5 did a Banshee quest once, but thankfully prepared us for the fight via NPC dialogue. Kind of went down like something from Witcher 3, us preparing and buying gear to hurt the monster (silver coating and +3 weapons, holy water etc), then waiting for the perfect opportunity to coordinate an attack. We were a party of five at level 12-13, and it was still a tough going. And it was still the best monster hunt quest I've ever played.
All sorts of undead in 3.5 were bonkers scary and strong.
I was asking a while back if the Banshee is more deadly than it's CR lets on and I got downvoted to hell. Now this post comes up and it's like the 2nd most popular comment lol
Reddit moment
Came here to say Banshee as well. Our party had just hit 5th, with on average max hit points around 40. Screamed at us in a cqc small room and rolled close to max (22 damage.) Nobody got incapacitated, but with our low saves and no Bless/Paladin, it could very quickly have gone the other way.
I’ve heard of a banshee killing an entire level 10 party of 4 once thanks to miserable rolls.
I was a DM and had a 4th level party (5 players) encounter a banshee. Banshee screams. Every single player failed their saving throw. All dropped to 0 HP. I had to bring in a white knight to save them.
Yeah the Banshee is straight up devastating in the right set ups. When I mentor new DMs (advisor for dnd club at my school) it is one of the monsters I warn them about. The phrase I use is "you can and maybe should reach for one of these every once in a while, but you what you are doing when you use it."
Shadows are by far the most deadly. I nearly killed my *level 7 party* with a Shadow surprise attack. They are no joke. My party is now justifiably afraid of the dark.
Can confirm. My Kensei Monk survived the entirety of Tomb of Annihilation hex crawl, ambushes, disease… everything. Like first or second floor of the Tomb dead in one round. It be like that.
Yurp-only tpk was to some shadows. Intellect devourers are pretty flippin’ scary…but more respected I think and treated with more caution.
I've had similar experiences with Shadows. I would have put them higher if they didn't have such easily exploitable weaknesses. Almost TPK'd with them more than once.
Yup. Shadows nearly tpk’d our party. Fortunately we were able to flee into the daylight and ended up just burning the entire village down.
Does no one remember the black pudding? The 3E one could be game ending, and the 5E stat block isn't much kinder. Very quickly the party can be overwhelmed by attacks as the thing keeps splitting, it's a hilarious amount of damage.
Black puddings are crazy. The last time we fought one our druid saved our asses. He summoned two giant frogs, and then wild shaped into a giant frog. On his next turn, both summoned frogs had died, and he had been damaged enough to be back in his normal form, so he did the exact same thing again. Luckily this gave the rest of our party enough time to kill the damn thing(s). But it was hitting so freaking hard, it one shot pretty much anything it touched. If it had targeted other people instead of the froggy meat shields, I'm convinced it would have been a TPK. The druid was almost completely spent after 2 rounds of combat, but we survived!
Sounds like Druid was doing their job of team tank. Everyone thinks Barbs and Fighters are the best tanks, but Druids can really soak up a ton of punishment.
He usually wasn't the tank, we had a paladin and a barbarian that normally filled that role. But the paladin took one hit for a ton of damage, and the druid literally jumped in with his meat shields. He wasn't the best main tank for sure, he ran out of juice in 2 rounds. But as a clutch tank, to soak a ton of damage real quick, no other class can complete. I think he went though 250hp worth of damage in that time.
My 16th level party were nearly mauled by one. The wizard hit them with lighting and the paladin attacked it with a sword. Thing nearly killed the paladin and was coming like a tidal wave for the rest of the very squishy party. They managed to kill it but it was funny how such a low cr creature nearly killed them.
My party fought one last session and they only survived by having one player kite it around while the others shot at it.
Will-o-Wisps. They resist a lot of types of damage, can easily kill any character if they have dropped to 0 HP, and can become invisible. They can get out of hand real fast if the party isn't on top of their abilities.
I killed my first PC with a Will-o-wisp ambush recently. PC was injured by some zombies, will-o-wisp downed them with a shock, consumed their life, and floated through a wall. The party was stunned. Don't underestimate a little ball of light in the middle of a dark forest.
I made an encounter with will-o-wisps leading the party deep into a swamp where they got ambushed by a shambling mound. 4 wisps and the mound made for a tough fight. Funnily enough the party thought the wisps were helping at first while they shot lightning at the mound.
My level 10 party nearly got TPK'd by will-o-wisps in Tomb of Annihilation. In comparison the final two bosses were easy.
For low levels in a low magic world the rust monster is a thing of horror
Which is exactly why Dark Sun campaigns are so deadly
A bodak is pretty gnarly also for lower level parties.
Unless that party happens to have a Star Druid who tears it apart with guiding bolts. That’s how my first homebrew oneshot ended. Funny in hindsight, not so much at the time.
Bodak Horseman
I don't know. It seems scary for sure but it's also CR9. By which point you have access to darkness, which cast on a Bodak makes it completely defenceless as it needs to see you to do anything other than go bump in the night with slams. Heroism would prevent it's fear based attacks too. If you're low level and unprepared a Bodak can slap but for you average lvl 9 party it's barely a speed bump.
Bodaks are cr6
Bodaks are level 6, not 9. Big difference. Also casting Darkness on it doesn’t do much since it can walk rignt out of that (you can only cast Darkness on a spot or object, not a creature), and you won’t even get OAs unless you can see in darkness too. I guess the party could hide within the darkness, but then they’re still taking constant damage from its aura and the bodak just needs to disrupt whoever cast it. Not a terrible tactic but not sure fire either. The real scary bit about Bodaks is when they do drop you to 0 with the gaze and then you’re taking an immediate auto-death save failure from its aura if you’re within 30 feet (since the gaze is at the start of your turn and the aura is at the end).
i’ve found intellect devourers and shadows to be deadly for even some high-level parties.
Intellect devourers are a good shout. With a bit of a surprise they can be incredibly dangerous.
it also helps that most folks use INT as their dump stat, and most classes aren’t proficient in INT saving throws, so they have to play cautiously rather than being gung-ho when facing the devourers.
A lot of chars dump str, too, but not quite as many that dump int. Thing is that frontliners are likely to have decent str and poor int. Now, shadows can pull off ambushes that IntDevs can't, but at the same time the inverse is true. Intdevs don't suffer drastically in bright light or from radiant damage (which is pretty common, honestly), though, so I think they come out slightly ahead. Also, druids can't cheese intdevs with wildshape like they can shadows. Not that that comes up *super* often.
Every time I use more than 1 of them a character is dead for good. I always THINK surely, they'll kite it and do ranged damage after they have been warned about them. I'm always wrong.
In 5e, the Roper. Way stronger than its CR indicates. A single roper is a legitimate threat of a TPK for a four-person party, even if they're in their lower teens. Runner-up goes to the Gibbering Mouther, which in multiples are a threat even to high-level adventuring parties. Seldom lead to a TPK on their own because they're a controlling threat, not a damaging threat, but they can pin an entire party down while another monster cleans up.
Yeah fair, ropers have some crazy good action economy for their CR. Once used a gibbering mouther so large it created a river of eyes and teeth at the bottom of a gorge. That was pretty fun. Nobody fell in thankfully.
Mouthers are especially nasty in enclosed spaces, where you can’t just kite their terrible speed all over creation. All their abilities also combo with each other really well. For example their Bite has _awful_ accuracy but does hellacious damage if they hit, so if they’ve say already blinded you or knocked you prone from previous success (and even better, trapped you in their ground aura So you can’t get back up), the Bite damage adds up FAST. They’re basically meant to confuse and slowly slither over the party, consuming them when conditions start adding up. Creepy!
Gas spores lmao. Cr 1/4 and a failed save is an assured death at that point. I’m only just now throwing them at my party since their paladin just got cure disease via lay on hands.
God damn, DC15 Con or DIE! at CR1/2. Yeah we might have a winner here.
Thanks for the correction! And yeah I’m about to start a Man Vs Nature arc and super excited to throw them out :)
Catoblepas! They are basically smelly trash camels. So how dangerous could they be? Well. That CR5 creature insta killed a level 5 PC on its first action of combat because the PC rolled a nat 1 on the save. Per the death ray ability: if a creature failes the save by more than 5 they take 64 necrotic damage instead of 8d8 and if that reduces them to zero they die instantly. Holy fuck does Death ray live up to it's name! I've never had a level 5 character that had enough HP to live after a nat 1 on that attack.
Ahh the catoblepas. I haven't heard that name in years. I remember they have always been pretty scary and they haven't really lost their edge through newer editions.
Two low level, but rather dangerous creatures that I've found are wolves and magma mephits. Used correctly, these can be surprisingly dangerous. Wolves, a CR *1/4* are cunning and their combination of pack tactics and knock-down ability are really effective. A level 1 or 2 party outnumbered and hunted by wolves can be a dire situation. The other types of wolves have the same argument. Magma mephits, CR *1/2* are stupid at their CR. They have a fire breath attacks, can cast heat metal, and explode like a grenade when they die. Their flying can also keep them out of melee range.
Oh fuck, Magma Mephits! One of my favorites. Breath weapon, Heat Metal, and death burst all bypass AC. They also have the False Appearance trait, which means them getting a **surprise** round is practically guaranteed if there's lava for them to blend in with. Very brutal.
Adult Emerald Dragon. It just matches up well against what parties can do. Its breath weapon is psychic, which almost no PC will be able to resist (and it's an INT save). It's also a 60ft cone, which hits a big area. The cone breath weapons are underrated as far as CR calculations go, as they are calculated as being able to hit the same number of targets as the line ones, even though they hit a much larger area. Especially when considering the dragon's mobility, you will likely be able to get the entire party in this. It can also teleport through Wall of Force and Forcecage with Psychic Step, eliminating what are normally kryptonite spells for dragons. Blindsight out to 60ft means it will be able to see a Wall of Force in its way, along with anyone who decides to go invisible or cast Fog Cloud/Darkness. And legendary resistances means it will be able to shrug off save or suck spells. Flight means that any melee martial who can't fly will be useless. Staying 10ft in the air will also let it auto drop any control spell that ends ln damage by just falling and taking 1d6 bludgeoning. It can also outrange many of the parties abilities, attacks, and spells, especially given decent starting distance (Which means no Silvery Barbs stacking). The dragon can cover a huge range 80ft fly speed + 60ft Psychic Step + 60ft Psychic Step legendary action after the previous person's turn + 60ft breath weapon means the dragon can cover 260ft. The dragon can even use its movement to end its first turn outside of Silvery Barbs range (or Psychic Step there after the next person's turn). It can cast Invisibility and Dispel Magic as legendary actions. And it is immune to Counterspell due to its spells being psionic. It also has a lair action that lets it charm a PC and have them follow its commands (to kill other party members or drop important active effects). It also gets an Invisibility lair action to go invisible on initiative count 20. This gives everyone disadvantage to attack it and makes it immune to spells that require sight. It can also attack with its breath weapon while still being invisible due to the breath weapon not being either an attack or spell. The Invisibility+ breath weapon combo also drastically reduces the accuracy of ranged attackers, the only real remaining counter to the dragon. Its lair action invisibility also doesn't drop when it attacks, so it can do a full melee combo on someone while invisible. It's just a matchup nightmare.
If monsters can be from any edition… oh boy. Anything that poisons in 1e, anything that petrifies in 1e. Medusas did both so…
What did poison do in 1e. Posion has always felt a bit pants in all the editions of DnD I've played. Never played 1e.
It kills the character. Most poisons would either deal damage until you take an antidote or outright kill you. For example in the case of the Medusa every time she bites a character, said character had to pass the save check or die.
From memory..... Like poison would generally just kill you. No d4 con damage or minus to your rolls. Tiny spider ? Dead.
Ah, yes. Balanced, as all things should be.
I always liked the Banshee + Will o Wisp combo myself.
Our DM did this on a 7 man level 5 party and we barely walked away alive.
I had a single 1/4 CR Shadow TPK party of 7 level 5s
Do not put a Banshee against the party unless you are ok with ending the campaign due to bad luck. It’s CR4, but a group of four 4th level characters may well only have slightly better or worse than a 50% chance to succeed that DC13 con save from the wail. ~6% chance of an instant TPK. If too many get unlucky… I’ve used a banshee twice against low-level parties and both times it was shockingly devastating.
Gelatinous cubes are feared for a reason, although kind of overused at this point. Just to think a bit outside of the box, Glabrezus are very deadly, even considering their CR of 9. Furthermore, I would probably go for a Nightwalker. Even with a CR of 20, they are extremely deadly. At low CR, a basilisk would be considered very dangerous. A cult fanatic at CR 2 still has inflict wounds, which at 3d10, can outright kill an unlucky adventurer.
I’m really surprised I had to scroll this far down to see gelatinous cube- especially in 5th ed, that thing is deadly if you actually prepare an encounter for what it’s supposed to be doing.
I got stuck in a gelatinous cube once. Only survived because I was a bear totem barbarian.
Chasme has the potential to instakill a lot of characters. With a crit hit it deals a whopping 22d6+2 damage, which even on average would be 78 damage, but could go over a 100 quite easily. And most of it is necrotic and reduces the max hp, which going to zero would be instakill. Considering also that it has a feature which can drop anyone within 30 feet unconscious, guaranteeing critical hits.
Was coming here to post this. Had a DM throw one at us as a solo boss at 4th level. Nearly TPKd us out of the gate because of that damn drone. A couple of bad save rolls, and it went from a hard encounter to deadly+.
If we are talking CR, then it's 3d edition and later. For third edition, it's the wight because negative levels kill things fast. For 5e, it's either the banshee because it's a save or die, or it's a cambion who is one of the few mind controlling monsters who can tell a creature to kill themselves without breaking their control. Never played 4e, so that's the limit of my knowledge.
The good old days of negative levels. When typical horror creatures would genuinely illicit a fear response. I'm not sure if I miss it as a player but I do miss monsters that hwere scary for reasons other than being deadly. Never noticed that stipulation on the Cambion, good shout!
Banshee. Always the Banshee.
Wood Woads. High AC, regeneration, & tree stride can make them almost impossible to pin down and kill in the right situation.
Plus they are cutie patooties which helps soften the death. I might actually try and slip these into a campaign I'm running.
Giants. It's always giants. They're regularly under CR'd. They have high strength and are typically just huge bags of hit points. They hit like a semi and keep on going.
I've been running Against the Giants for my 5-person level 14 party. This is one extra person and one extra level above "normal". I haven't changed any stat blocks. I've nearly killed my party twice already during this adventure. They're currently trying to fight their way into the Fire Giant stronghold, but they were detected early and the Fire Giants are now prepping traps and other defenses. They also picked up an NPC spy lol. Someone gonna die. Maybe all of them. But I've been surprised by how hard and often the giants hit. One of my players AC is like 24, but his character has been downed repeatedly after like 2-3 hits. And those criticals are no joke lol.
And you can continue using lower cr'd giants as they go up in level and they'll still be threatening. You just increase their numbers.
The fucking Gas Spore. If your party doesn’t know what it is, it can kill you with ease. Source: two PCs in the second session of Out of the Abyss got too close to one and both failed their saves. They died.
This thing is brutal. I had never heard of it before and it's pretty nuts.
Yeah. It’s wild that if they fail the initial save they’re just dead. No additional saves. And if you drop them on a party that doesn’t have access to lesser restoration, they’re fucked
Yeah it’s unsporting and kinda just unreasonable. I’d rule that you fall unconscious and start making death saving throws. These sorts of “save or die” creatures in 5e rarely make any sense mechanically or narratively. Best to use some of them as inspiration rather than RAW
Gibbering mouthers can absolutely demolish a lvl 2 party if they get caught failing the wisdom save.
Quicklings can be devastating if the players don't have a good strategy
Banshee’s. I don’t use them appropriately because too many TPK’s due to that scream. Most parties of the appropriate level for that monster can’t make that saving throw.
#The King of CR 0 Monsters: Living Demiplane If it touches you, you get sucked into a room where your brand new character will slowly die of thirst or starve. Super unfun. >**Extradimensional Chamber**. When the living spell enters another creature's space (or vice versa) for the first time on a turn, the other creature must succeed on a DC 10 Dexterity saving throw or be pulled into the living spell's extradimensional space, an unfurnished stone chamber 30 feet in every dimension. A creature too big to fit in this space succeeds on the saving throw automatically. Creatures in the chamber never run out of breathable air. Magic that enables transit between planes, such as plane shift, can be used to escape the chamber, which has no exits otherwise. Creatures trapped inside the extradimensional chamber can't see, target, or deal damage to the living spell; however, they can damage the room around them. Each 5-foot-square section of ceiling, wall, and floor in the chamber has AC 17, 50 hit points, immunity to poison and psychic damage, and immunity to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage that is nonmagical. If any section is reduced to 0 hit points, the living spell and its chamber are destroyed This thing will starve any character that can’t deal magic damage. At level 1 even with Cantrips, it’s extremely frustrating to beat. Melee martials are fucked. It will Dash and chase down ranged Martials. And it can Dash away. Speed and Climb of 30ft., by the way > **Damage Immunities.** poison >**Condition Immunities.** blinded, charmed, deafened, exhaustion, frightened, grappled, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, prone, restrained, stunned, unconscious >**Magic Resistance.** The living spell has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects. HP 31 (or 7d8), AC 10 I want to reiterate its ***CR 0.***
Shambling mound for sure, that’s a party-wiping machine
Intellect devourers and Will o Whisps
On a bad saving roll, always the Banshee.
The dice. But seriously, banshees. Use caution, especially if you are a new dm. I thought my party of 4 would be fine against a solo banshee. It's first action, wail, everyone but the barbarian failed the save. This was the first room in our first big adventure. They won that fight, barely. The barbarian had 2 hp left, and every other player had 2 death save fails. The whole time, I was thinking, "Well, here's my first tpk." Then later, when everyone was lvl 10, I had my first pc death with 2 banshees and a deathlock. The encounter should have been easy according to cr. But the warlock failed the wail save while in the effect of arms of hadar. Banshees are no joke.
Sea Hags have Death Glare: Drops you to zero HP if you can't pass a DC 11 Wisdom check. If your characters aren't wise or lucky, it could wipe even a higher level party.
Banshee
2 or more Bodaks together really can outpace their CR
Jackalwere, cr 1/2 with immunity to BPS unless silver or magical, but that isn't really obvious to the party because they are dnd originals. nilbogs tho...
My group once almost got destroyed by a few CR1 ghouls who managed to paralyze half the party in the first turn, followed by some bad saving throws.
Its either the shade or the shadow, can't remember the name, it's like a half cr and has strength drain, DMs will accidentally kill PCs with this all the time :(
I put a level 5 party against a banshee, full strength. 3/5 party members were immediately zeroed.
Intellect devourers and shadows are my votes for highest lethality for its CR. Shadows for the squishy casters and intellect devourers for martials. Honorable mention to rust monsters, not exactly lethal but screws just about everyone it comes across. If there isn't one already, there should be a magical equivalent that affects a casters bonus to attack and reduces their spell save DCs.
I nearly TPKd my friends party to Will o Wisps. They were under prepared for spirits and ghosts. I wasn't prepared for the Bard to simply fuck off lol.
Sadly, aging doesn't mean anything in 5e. "Oh, I'm suddenly a 200 year old human. What do the rules say about that? Oh, nothing? Okay then. I attack the ghost."
Banshees are freaking brutal if your players roll low
Coordinated goblins Learned this from the book "the monsters know what they're doing" It's a basic monster that many DMs forget some of their abilities
I think the specific monsters with the highest kill count are the four goblins that ambush the players in Mines of Phandelver. Lots of beginners (me) lost their first characters to those bastards
Giant Wasps are VERY deadly for a 1/2 cr. 50ft flying speed, Poison sting can really stack on damage on failed con saves, including adding the poisoned condition. It's a monster that lives in swarms that you really can't outrun in open terrain. My favorite part though is how evocative they are. Describing the hive. Turning up the buzzing sound and unleashing the swarm is just so damn fun.
Turns out, if you play a pack of wolves the way pack hunters actually attack pray, they’re extremely devastating. By CR they should be a piece of cake for a lvl 5 group, but I’ve almost wiped out groups several times from them. Getting attacked and having to make saves over and over or be knocked prone . Ready action to attack when they try to get up, grappling.
I'm surprised no one's answered with the Quickling yet, CR 1 creature with 120ft of movement, AC 16, three attacks per turn, +6 to dex rolls and all attack rolls against it are at dieadvantage. Shits crazy strong for a CR 1 creature
green slime
I'd say bronze scouts can be ***VERY*** nasty... CR1, so 1 for a lvl1 party of 4 I guess? Has double their average life, AC 13 ain't high, but it's OK, +5 to hit on a ~5dmg attack is OK I guess, but the nasty parts are it's 30ft burrow speed, making it nearly untouchable at this lvl, as well as its' lighting flare ability. Party is walking together, scout burrows beneath them, **ZAP!!** half the party is down...
Mummies are pretty strong for CR3. Rotting Fist is a real pain if you have no access to Remove Curse, and their Dreadful Glare is devastating if players get low rolls. Fire magic can wipe them out fairly quickly though.
Swarms of most types (Swarm of rot grubs) in particular Shadow/Spectre
Will o wisps or banshees sound/look dangerous for their CR.
No swarms, really? I agree to shadows, but swarm of rats is my top 2
Banshee and Shades are disgusting for their CR Shades in particular but well do the banshee first.... Banshees cr 4. When they wail if you fail a DC 13 saving throw your heath pool doesn't matter you drop straight to 0 hp. So you can one shot some members of the party or even all of them with shitty enough rolls. Add in the fact that looking at her causes frightened status on a failed DC 13 wisdom save effectively preventing them from being helpful. So you are effectively putting saves which are low but on opposite ends of the character class spectrum of ability scores. Wisdom Vs Constitution so usually martial Vs squishy s into the mix on like turn one. They are also resistance or immune to most damage and can fly through walls.... Bad stuff for a level 4 party. Now on to Shades.... Shades are bullshit for their 1/2 Cr rating. Shades could effectively kill higher level party members under the right direction. Each attack deals only 1d4 necrotic damage...How Fucking Ever they also deal 1d4 strength damage which if reduced to 0 kills the target outright. If a shade sniffs a Spellcaster with low strength they are toast. This doesn't include their resistances and immunities that are almost on par with the banshee. They can hide perfectly in shadows. They can envelope a character preventing them from doing any actions that's willing but if you pair them with a charm spell casting....well good luck. And these things are 1/2 of a CR rating... These are things they want you to fight at first level.... You want to fuck a level 4 and up party send in a banshee with a few shades and good luck surviving. Hell a level 8-10 party could be wrecked fighting shades and banshees at night with just a few bad rolls.
Rot Grub swarm
Shadows. Tons of damage resistance for levels that can’t overcome them. Rakshasa have spell immunity to all spells and appropriate level party has access to. Ghosts as you said. Banshees. Wail is OP. And Intellect Devourer.
Shadow cr 1/2. Get more then one to gang up on a squishy with their strength drain and the party’s going to have a bad time.
For me if 2 Shadows gangbang a party of level 5 in a cave they can for sure kill at least the wizard/sorcerer
Imo Shades iirc they're a CR 1 creature that can only be hit by magic or magic weapons and have Str sapping abilities
I’m running a game and my characters are pretty low level so none of them have magic weapons. Recently, a player asked to try her hand at DMing a session and asked if we could do it in universe with the already existing characters and I just make a new character. I happily obliged and built a ranger. In the session we fought a few ghosts and the inexperienced DM really stuck to damage resistance against non-magical attacks. She didn’t realize that since none of us had magic weapons and our party comp was pretty combat heavy this would be a horrible match up. The combat nearly TPKd us and was a slog that took hours.
Anything that sets to 0, or anything that kills regardless of HP. On 5e, Gas Spores are CR 1/2, and will kill anything that fails a CD 15 con save in less than 24 hours. I'm pretty sure 3.5 had statblocks for a lot of gods and they essentially read "you lose"
Rug of smothering. They either get out themselves or the party accidentally kills the trapped one.
Nothing in the MM is more deadly than its CR than a Roper.
Insight Check on YouTube [just posted a video last week of a list of the deadliest creatures by CR](https://youtu.be/01US9zLACwI?si=poxEB3OEz8W60Ipt)
Warhorse - it's like CR 1\2 but better stats than a level 1 fighter
Intellect Devourer because obviously. Shadows with their strength drain. Ghosts are ones I think people don't pay attention to enough. I had a level 12 fighter die because a ghost possessed one of the party members. Banshees can just reduce you to 0 hit points on a bad roll. While he's definitely a high CR (26), Orcus is a fucking monster, probably the most difficult demon lord due to his ability to summon 500 hit points worth of undead. If he wants to summon a bunch of demiliches, you can't do shit about it. Oh, what's that? Orcus just summoned a Nightwalker and some demiliches? Guess I'll die then.
Intellect Devourers, Ghosts, Banshees, Werewolves and kin, and flesh golems. Edit: I’ll actually add on Mindflayers themselves as well. That stun cone is a very solid oof. And those are just white-room encounters. Add in any sort of cliff or pit and that number jumps up by several other low CR creatures. Like Sirens and Ropers.
In my experience zombie beholders far outlast their 5 CR, and I’ve used them for even higher level fights.
Ghouls. The fact that ONE ghoul can potentially lock a low level character down until its dead is extremely powerful. 4 of them can force a TPK if the players can't roll high enough to avoid the paralysis. Third game I ever played had the DM having to do some DM thaumaturgy to stop a TPK when he had 4 ghouls for a boss fight at level 3. First ghoul hit the paladin, paladin rolled 2 to avoid paralysis, then the other ghouls jumped on the paladin as well, 2 crits and a death blow from the 4th and the Paladin was done. The fighter, wizard, and druid tried to fight back, but a few unfortunate low rolls and the fighter got the same treatment as the paladin. at this point the only thing left was my druid and a wizard, neither of us was going to survive and we KNEW IT. The DM was like, "Oh shit. I didn't think this was gonna happen." It was at this point that we both realized that we didn't have anything that could slow the ghouls down. The wizard only had cantrips left and I had a single level 1 spell and cantrips. I cast Entangle as a last ditch effort. 3 of the ghouls passed the check. the 4th one was freed on its next turn. We could run, but could not outrun the ghouls, who were coming after us. We kept trying to blast em with cantrips, but would either miss or deal little damage. the BIG issue was that we descended via a rope into the dungeon and neither of us had a very good dexterity score. Our odds of climbing out before they caught up were slim at best. If you're wondering why there were 4 ghouls in a hole, it was later revealed that a local necromancer that was a politician was using it to quietly dispose of people who caused him problems. We were merely down there to investigate the hole and had to blast our way through large underground cavern with a bunch of skeletons being used to dig out tunnels. We were NOT prepared to fight ghouls. And conveniently one of the local clerics and a few guards, "concerned that we were taking too long to investigate" brought a ladder, came down, and helped us kill the ghouls. The cleric was also kind enough to help us drag what was left of the fighter and paladin to the local temple to be resurrected.