Top 15 D&D 5e Lethal Low CR Monsters | Nerd Immersion
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- Опубликовано: 14 июл 2024
- Since last week's Patreon vote for Top 10 was a tie, I figured I'd do the other winner this week. So I present my Top 15 lethal low CR monsters. Lethal is a relative term, but any of these monsters could spell disaster for a low level party, even more so in larger numbers. What is your number one lethal low Challenge Rating Monster?
00:00 Introduction
01:53 Bloodhawk
03:00 Skeletal Giant Owl
04:54 Giant Elk
06:33 Peryton
08:28 Werewolf
10:32 Husk Zombie Burster
13:46 Cockatrice
15:18 Black Pudding
18:12 Yellow Musk Creeper
19:52 Will-o'-Wisp
21:44 Banshee
23:25 Ghost
27:05 Assassin Bug
29:54 Zorbo
33:13 Intellect Devourer
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Игры
"I know its weird that I'm dealing with a lot of animals-"
Me, a druid player: nono keep going
Yeah man, Moon Druid level 6 for the Giant Elk. Holy crap!
boi! What about the sneck 🐍
@@chrisbolducrowan5110 technically not, the maximum is CR1
@@Jackesfox Circle of the Moon Druid is Druid level divided by 3.
I will never forget, how I was playing a barbarian that only fought with his fist and was wrestling with a werewolf. I won by drowning her, it worked
I had an intellect devourer as the BBEG of a campaign once.
Every time it consumed a new brain, it learned everything that the creature knew. He gained more people he could interact with through his victim's contacts and sending letters. He learned new spells constantly, as well as new skills. Each body hop made him more and more powerful as he was carrying on a sort of asymmetrical advancement alongside the party of players. While they'd do side quests and things, he'd go around looking for new victims that he could learn the most useful info from or new skills.
It avoided fighting the party at every opportunity, using 100% of its abilities to flee each and every time and it never traveled alone so that it always had people to cover its escape. If the party even lost track of it for a minute or less, it could leave its body, incapacitate and consume the brain of some random passerby and they'd have no way of knowing that stranger was now their arch nemesis as it calmly walked by them. It escaped into crowds multiple times by blending in. It used to be really terrible at faking being human, but it realized this weakness and specifically went after and "consumed" a theater troupe to learn acting skills. ;)
Though it couldn't "keep" any of its sorcerer spells after its host body died as those were specific to the host, it DID keep its wizard spells it was acquiring over time as it was a skill/knowledge based form of magic.
His actual body's statistics never changed, aside from its intellect, Wisdom, and Charisma that were increasing over time. It otherwise remained the same little CR 2 critter with the same hit points and so on, though it often took possession of beefy guys who had a lot of physical strength and hit points. Having a big beefy body with strength and constitution as well as its own innate mental scores, skills, and spells made it a powerful adversary. But unlike a lot of villains, it didn't use any gm fiat or special powers to be stronger than the party and instead relied on true cunning and planning.
was this supposed to be a rogue intellect devourer or something because I really doubt that the illithids that created it would of been happy with it learning a bunch of wizard spells (it's a really cool idea though which I will now proceed to steal for my campaign)
@@Eclipsed_Embers The long and short of it is one of the first quests for the party was to clear out some rust monsters that had taken to nesting in the hematite mines. After clearing them out (and adopting one of them as a pet), the party found the crack where the miners had breached into the Underdark.
Rather than simply head back, report this, and collect the reward, the party went into the breach and investigated to see what they could find. They had one of the miners accompanying them so they wouldn't get lost in the mines and convinced this poor guy to follow them into the underdark with the reasoning that he'd be safer with them that alone in the mines if something else had come through.
During their brief stint exploring, they happened upon a group of Troglodytes.
Unbeknownst to them, one of them had the intellect devourer inside of it and it was leading that group of Trogs to a mind flayer ambush. The group killed the trogs, but the infected one had ran out of their line of sight while bleeding out and left the body. The party didn't pursue it because it happened pretty early in the fight, but it lept out of the wounded body and stealthed back into the fray hiding in the rocks. During the fight, their miner companion was knocked unconscious by a trog and the devourer bolted over and ate his brains. It only took a single action as the dwarf was already incapacitated at the time and no one saw it happen during the battle.
So after the fight, they stabilized their dwarf friend but had no healing to bring him back (or else he would've attempted to lure the party into that same mind flayer ambush), so they decided to abandon their exploration to save the dwarf miner and carry him out of there while he was unconscious.
They dropped him off at the surface, said what happened, collected money and left. But unknown to them, that dwarf body finally woke up and the intellect devourer took stock of its situation, now above ground. It couldn't get back to the underdark because the mines were sealed off after the report of a breach to the underdark being discovered, so it was stranded on the surface. It hopped bodies to feed itself as needed, but kept becoming more intelligent. Mostly attacking people in their sleep because it didn't have to risk failure if they were already unconscious, so it would just hide under the bed till they went to sleep like a classic horror monster.
Eventually it developed a taste for arcane magic once it had acquired it for practical reasons more than anything. If you HAVE that potential ability, why not use it to your advantage? It became ever more intelligent, learned more skills, etc. By the time it had the means to return to the underdark, it no longer wanted to. It had no desire to go back there and be a simple pet when it had tasted so much power on the surface.
It was never intended to be the main villain, it just sort of developed that way as it was growing in power at more or less the same rate as the player party. It easily infiltrated and took over the thieves guild because it only needed to brain-suck one person who knew where the hideout was then brain-suck the leader. Easy as pie. Once it had more resources and manpower, it began expanding its operations, growing ever more deadly. It kept the identity of this thieves guild leader even after swapping bodies by using the Alter Self spell to look like that guy whenever it was required.
Anyway, thats the short version.
Lots of other things were going on but this was just something kind of happening in the background. The players would occasionally bump into that thieves' guild members and even the devourer itself now and then. It had a sort of love/hate relationship with the party because it felt partially grateful to them for "setting it free" so to speak but at the same time, it was a cruel predator that always felt like they were its prey that slipped through its little claws so it didn't like the idea of them outsmarting it.
They worked with it some, then worked against one another in an almost gentleman's sherlock holmes vs moriarty kind of dynamic, and ultimately when they finally realized what it was and what it was doing, they decided to go all in on trying to stop this thing and it led to a whole lot of other things, but this post is too long already and I wanted to keep it short. :x
@@TheDrexxus yep. that sure was a long post. I'd be interested in hearing more (like what the "whole lot of other things) were)
I am interested too. That's one more creative *mindset* for me to collect... for a game of course. Please continue.
Final battle: it finds a very dumb ancient dragon.
I am very surprised that the shadow did not make this list. It is on par with the intellect Devourer except that it goes after people with low strength
Can confirm, had a wizard who was like... 17th or 18th level, and he died because his strength was 7. Its CR is ONE HALF.
Yeah I was expecting it to be top 5 at least. It can wreck a str based attacker's day and straight up destroy anyone who dumped strength. Played Death House for CoS where the person accidentally summoned 7 of them at level 2. He got hit twice and they rolled low danage to where he was still up but rolled 7 total for str drain killing him.
Another proof that channel owner is noob
A clever way my characters got a ghost to stop possessing someone: They cast blindness on the person being possessed and the ghost was forced to leave in order to see again
That's super cool!
Clever
That is smart, but why would it leave? just take the disadvantage attacks and then it’s still in a body,and does the possessed creature make the save or the ghost? and if the creature does it, then do they get to choose to fail or because they’re under the control of the ghost, they stil have to make a saving throw?
@@FruitH. I agree for the most part, but unless specified you cannot just choose to fail a saving throw.
@@IllegalBard you can I think
but not for death saves
My fighter almost got eaten by a swarm of intellect devourer but my allies dropped all the area damage they had on top of me (2 fireballs, volley and a Dragonborn breath weapon) killing me and the intellect devourers and then used revifivy on me. Never been so thankful to be the target of a fireball
I'll never forget the fateful day when my group was doing our first session of Tomb of Annihilation and got a Zorbo encounter in the jungle which resulted in a TPK. Those koalas from hell haunt my dreams.
Why must they have such adorable names when they're so deadly!?
Real life drop bears
Hey, so there's one low CR monster that seems to have gone forgotten. The CR 1/2 Swarm of Rot Grubs from Volo's Guide. I personally consider it to be the single most lethal monster for its CR.
Ezekiel Freidin I’ve lost more characters to rot grubs than to anything else
Yeah, they are ridiculous. Especially condsidering that at lower levels with up to 4 of the grubs infesting a person, along with the fact that they only have until the end of their turn to burn themselves to get rid of them (I personally rule it as each individual grub requiring its own burn to get rid of it), they are brutal. I literally made a high-level boss monster just by upping its hp, upping its speed to 20 feet, and giving it slightly higher stats so that it has an attack bonus, and two players ended up dying. Ridiculous
@@Unknown_Eldritch Yeah, those things are scary.
Well he did have assasin bug in the list though which has the exact same ability.
We lost a party member at level 3 to rot grubs because no one had any way to make fire. Then he got resurrected as a zombie by our wizard. It was a little depressing honestly
I’ve watched a party slowly die from Rot Grubs, CR 1/4 creatures, maggots that usually infest corpses, also in this instance being weaponized by a kobold throwing a pot of these things at the party and pretty much everyone got a grub or two to bite them and infest them. They didn’t know to use fire and had no means to cure disease so they all just slowly died in a kobold den. Usually they aren’t much of a problem unless how they are weaponized by Kobolds or the party is just looting rotting corpses because they are that greedy.
What I DIDN'T know is there is a creature out there that are basically Rot Grubs but AGGRESSIVE! Assassin bugs are scary.
a single wail from a Banshee once TPKed my party. They still hold it against me. It was a random encounter rolled and I thought "oh well, it's gonna be easy since it is only cr4 against 5 level 5 PCs" I was never so wrong in my life.
This video could also be called: „The CR system is unbalanced.“
Yup
Higher CRs are even worse too.
@@DaDunge That's true, but a baseline for monster abilities could at least be established. The problem is that monsters in the same challenge rating are wildly different in difficulty. It's absolutely doable to make all monsters of a given tier beatable for an average party of that level.
Good vid. 👍👍
@@NerdImmersion @24:45 RE:The aging aspect
One way you can get around the imbalance of racial differences in life span is to forgo aging in years and just add levels of exhaustion due to aging.
After all, the characters are being energy drained, not aging naturally.
I used Intellect Devourers in a game. The party knew they were up against Illithids, so they could have guessed those things would show up. They dropped and possesed some of the NPC helpers in the first turn. They also dropped one of the party, but another player had started placing protection spells on people as soon as they dropped to stop the brain-eating. It was a really intense fight.
4 level 3 characters in a dungeon. 3 of them had INT as a dumpstat. Didn't even need to attack for damage, the Intellect Devourer went straight for the body snatching against the Paladin and won. Party took out the Paladin, which then it went straight into the Barbarian. It was then a TPK from there.
Delightfully devilish
That's the kinda thing id only do to my party if they ignored obvious signs there was one where they were going and there was another way.
I would love to see an encounter with Intellect Devourers in one of my campaigns, where only one of six characters dumped intelligence... :D
@@astridstarr2787 I honestly left it up to the roll. It was intended to be a trap before the party even got together. And, they had to literally stick their nose where it didn't belong.
So, the players come upon a room. In this room there are spiders and whatnot, they take them out. There is also a giant fountain in the middle of the room, and the water in the fountain seems to glow, and there is a stature of what looks like a brain with legs. The Paladin walks up to the front of the fountain where the statue is, and goes to cup some of the water to taste it. Now, if you have ever cupped water in your hand, you know that some always dribbles out, so I had him make a DEX check. He rolled a 3. +2, that makes a 5. He failed, so the fountain of literally Potion of Great Restoration that he just drank from, to no effect as he had nothing to cure, got splashed onto the petrified Intellect Devourer, curing it. At that point I ask for an INT contest. He rolls a 9, -1 for 8. I roll an 11, +1 = 12. He lost the contest.
I take him into a private conversation where I let him know what happened and still let him control the Intellect Devourer, and feed him information to lead the other players into a trap with 2 Skeleton Minotaurs.
This is not the first time my party has TPK'd either. The other time they blew themselves up for over 1.5 million damage by underestimating home explosive an entire barrels can be, and so stacked about a dozen of them and lit them up. Goodbye city.
Edit: Clarified what was in the fountain.
@@AceMcCrank you realize that's absolutely not how intelligent devourers work right?
They can only devour on an incapacitated player
I used the Intellect Devourer in Dragon Heist, but I didn't give it the "Devour Intellect" ability, since the party was only level one...
When the Intellect Devourer can't devour intellect.
For low CR deadly monster I would add the Flying Snake. It has 14 AC, very low hitpoints, but a fly speed of 60, flyby (no advantage on leaving area while flying) and deal a 1 piercing + 3d6 poison damage with a +5 to hit. 4 of these took over 30 hp of a lvl 6 player of mine in one turn. They are brutal.
As for the Intellect Devourer, I've heard a story on r/DnD of a DM that used and actually devoured the brain of one player. The DM let the player keep on going, but working behind the scenes with him because he was being controlled by a Intellect Devourer. Not sure if I would use it tough... maybe with a more mature and experienced party that would not take it too badly if it happened with them.
It's 3d4 poison damage. But yea they are very scary!
I think you meant not attack of opportunity, not no advantage when leaving melee range, for flyby
wait, the DM actually devoured the brain of one player?? #cannibal ;)
Luke Heart youtube channel The DMs Lair. He starts his videos playings a rogue, wizard, barbarien
Turn it into a pvp encounter
While you were discussing the Black Pudding I just imagined a fort/castle that instead of pouring burning oil down on the Attackers, would pour Black Puddings down on them.
That is terrifying
I can't wait to throw 8 Bloodhawks at a level one party and see how it goes.
Bloodhawks are even more effective when quicklings use them for mounts.
While 8 of them would = cr of 1 technically. Keep in mine the action economy, that’s 8 attacks against how many attacks your level 1 players have
What annoys me with the bloodhawk is that in real life hawks tend to be solitary birds.. But in the monster manual the bloodhawk is described as a flock animal. I know it's fiction but still.. They should have used a flock bird IMO. :)
Get ready to not have a party
John athan actually, 8 CR 1/8 monsters would be CR 2.5. With 7-10 monsters you multiply the sum of the CR values by 2.5.
Expected to see the Shadow on here. They are beastly against wizards and sorcerers
Yep, level 4 party, wiped on the first Banshee's turn.
A banshee can wipe a level 20 party with bad enough rolls
The bardlock with -3 wisdom in my party was the only one who made the save 😂😂😂
Level 5 party for me. One out of six players succeeded the save technically, so it was really a wipe on the third turn
Where is the shadow? those things are devastating
A monster I would recommend from a 3rd Party (Kobold Press) is the Flesh Reaver (CR 1/2). Its found in the Creature Codex. Basically, they are undead that can leap over party members and knock them over. They also have pact tactics and blindsight (60 feet). So they can quickly, strategically, take out party members.
Ah the Giant Elk, one of my favorite Wildshape options. Loved it when I shifted into one against a squad of Goblins and just went ham on them. There were no survivors
As a druid player, I am well aware that the giant elk is WAY overpowered, to the point that just yelling 'moose' is a meme. My druid was a powerhouse, wrecking everything hostile in sight and when I thought I couldn't ruin them I would cast the spell 'summon bestial spirit' at 4th level and then beast shape into the elk, on a good round I would deal 6d8 + 20 damage.
I've used intellect devourers, sure.
I had the party walk down hallways with the occasional crate. The first one didn't manage to stun the barbarian who went to investigate.
And then the wizard used Mage Hand to rattle every crate to remove the intellect devourer. I had thought they'd use fire spells, so half the crates were full of gunpowder.
This same session they one-rounded a mind flayer and totally forfeited their right to me going easy on them.
A friend of mine told me about a game he was in once where the party was facing a werewolf. They didn't have any real way of hurting it, so his character took some silver coins in his hand and held it in the fire to melt them, then proceeded to beat the werewolf to death with silvered unarmed strikes - all while taking damage each round from, you know, _sticking his hand in a fire and melting silver in his fist_ .
We had a party member have their brain eaten as a level 15 Druid. The DM forgot that matching a DC passes so technically he should have passed, but the DM also forgot the brain is destroyed and allowed it to be reinserted by hand and resurrect the PC.
I now want to play as an intellect devourer, or more accurately as "the devoured". That could be some pretty fun RP, maybe go with the sleeper agent style where I just roll up with a normal character and sometime around level 9 or so it's revealed that "Tod the barbarian" was merely the meatsuit I've been controlling the whole time!
I think the husk zombie is great for an escort mission where they multiply if they get to the commoners.
The humble kobalt and their love of traps has been the bane of many a low level party.
I think the meanest combination possible would be a spellcaster that casts Hypnotic Pattern on the party, combined with a few intellect devourers, who then can instantly use their Body Thief ability, without having to do a Devour Intellect first.
surprised shadows didnt make the cut
Stone Cursed from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes p240 is a rather deadly low level monster with petrifying and quite adept at ambushing.
But good list, I didn't know of the assassin bug, that's a horror.
Something I did with the Intellect Devourer is that's inside a monster.
I love using Intellect Devourers. Used them in Mad Mage with the bugbear and various goblins that were taken under the control of Xanathar.
Eventually got the paladin's brain who turned around and smite crit the party cleric who was preparing the Protection from Good and Evil.
Two party of Five lost and a constant fear of the monsters going further. Would occasionally allude to a monsters death and the sight of a devourer scuttling away.
the most fun thing with the intellect devourer is that it can steal bodies to impersonate people or infiltrate places, since it takes the memories of the victim, and it can be very difficult to figure out that's happening unless it chooses to attack you, and you drive it out of the host body (usually by killing it), or chooses to take a new body after incapacitating another creature
So fun story about an Intellect Devourer...
I was running a Beholder Lair, and he had a couple of these as pets. The party's sorceror thought that it couldn't be too harmful.. after all it was just a brain with legs. I rolled 15 for the stun, his Intelligence was 12. Stunned. Freaked out the entire party, but they were dealing with the last remaining Nothic. The devourer actually did get to eat his brain and everyone's jaws dropped, but the cleric runs over and attempts his Divine Intervention to get his patron to restore that which was lost, and SUCCEEDED! It was so crazy there were so many ups and downs. The cleric ended up being petrified by the beholder as everyone was attempting to escape as he was covering the escape, the barbarian tried to carry his body out and got railed in the back with a disintegration ray... but the rest of the party made it out!
No love for the Gas Spore? I love throwing that gentle fungus at my noobparties.
Blood hawks are actually a cool way to beef up that classic low level goblin encounter nearly ever campaign has. Add a couple golbins that have trained them or even some goblins with booyahg. A couple of them found a piece of an old tome that has find familiar and they use it to attack.
I used an Intellect Devourer as the first BBEG of a campaign, it had taken over a trusted lieutenant on an airship and caused a mutiny using him, the party finally caught up to their mutineer-ed ship at level 7 and had to take on body then the Devourer itself. Was very fun to describe the decapitated head bursting open as this brain wriggled free and the boss fight continued for a very short moment afterwards. Sadly it died before it could take anyone down, but it had done a lot of political damage already.
Cockatrice petrification doesn't kill, you turn back to normal after 24 hours.
When it kicks your statue over and shatters you.....
I had five level 5 pcs fight some CR 2 and CR 1/4's that turned DEADLY.
Each of the 5 PCs by this point had 2-3 attunement items.
The first Fighter had adamantine half plate armor with an animated shield that could double its +2 AC 3 times per day, a Bag of Fireballs (3 left in the bag, doesnt regenerate, its pretty much a Fireball spell grenade) and a Fullsword that did 2d8+5 slashing 1d8 lightning damage.
The second fighter had dwarven plate armor, belt of dwarvenkind and ring of the ram.
The Rogue used Bracers of Flying Daggers, Dagger of Venom, a +1 Bow (no attunement needed) and Luckstone.
The Divine Soul Sorcerer had a Spell Gem that could cast Prayer of Healing as a bonus action once per day and a +1 Staff that could bonus action turn into a constrictor snake.
Finally there was an Aaracokra Gloom Stalker Ranger who had the Quiver of Elhonna, Whisper Bow and Oathbow.
Those aren't even all the items they had, but Ive probably went deeper then I needed to already. All PCs had taken feats at level 1 instead of level 4 (so the fighter got his bonus health from Tough much sooner..ect) and were pretty good at beating the scenarios I dealt them.
So it was MUCH to my suprise when they were in The Court of Ice and Steel looking for a macguffin that they had A LOT of trouble defeating six CR 1/4 Flying Swords and four CR 2 Rugs of Smothering. So much trouble that the Divine Soul Sorcerer and the AARACOKRA RANGER both died from the Rugs of Smothering.
They were in a grand hall with so many areas to move (we play on a battle map) but they stayed bottled in by the entrance. The Sorcerer grabbed rug to see if there was anything under it. That was the first move they made. He got caught and never escaped.
Even though there was 40 feet of flying space, ceilings high like a cathedral, the Aaracokra Ranger WHO WAS AWAY AND HIS CHARACTER WAS BEING CONTROLLED BY HIS BEST FRIEND never flew more than 10 feet off the ground. He was caught by the Rugs even though he was much quicker and couldnt get free so he was crushed.
The group during combat never went more then 1/8 of the way into this big room. The Fighters kept trying to free the tapped but kept failing the check as they got poisoned in the room prior, the Rogue would bounce back and forth attacking and trying to free the trapped PCs.
We usually play for about 5-6 hours every saturday night. That week we only played 2. I had to call the player whose character died the next morning and tell him.... dude, you character got killed by a rug. Seeing as he had been that character for 6 months and hadnt got to be there for the end, it bummed him out.
But now at least they are a Wizard and Cleric respectively and the party is much better for it.
One of my favorite lethal low CR monsters that are the Stoned Cursed...
Armor Class 17 (natural armor)
Hit Points 19 (3d8 + 4)
Speed 10 ft
Damage Vulnerabilities bludgeoning
Damage Immunities poison
Condition Immunities charmed, exhaustion, frightened,
petrified, poisoned
Senses passive Perception 9
La nguages the languages it knew in life
Challenge 1 (200 XP)
Cunning Opportunist. The sto ne cursed has advantage on the
attack rolls ofopportunity attacks.
False Appearance. While the stone cursed remains motionless,
it is indistinguishable from a normal statue.
ACTIONS
Petrifying Claws. Me/ee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft.,
one target. Hit: 8 (ldl O+ 3) slashing damage, or 14 (2d10 + 3)
slashing damage ifthe attack roll had advantage. If the target
is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving
throw, or it begins to turn to stone and is restrained until the
end ofits next turn, when it must repeat the saving throw. The
effect ends ifthe second save is successful; otherwise the target is petrified for 24 hours.
I had a couple intellect devourers thrown at my party. The party made quick work of it, and our bard got the killing blow with a viscous mockery. Seemed poetic.
I as a DM used an intellect devourer that was the pet of an Observer. One of the players did get devoured and they had to convince the Observer to make the Devourer leave its body. They ended up beating the Observer into submission and then killed both and reviving their fallen team mate. Two of the players were absolutely terrified of the Intellect Devourer. Was a great session.
In my current game, one of the enemy factions is a cult dedicated to reviving the Tarrasque secretly run by an unholy alliance of Mind Flayers and Aboleths (who each see the advantage of unleashing the Tarrasque on the mortal world in their own individual long-term goals - hence the unusual alliance). The party has learned this slowly, first encountering a bandit of unusual intelligence who had an intellect devourer pop out of his skull upon his death at low level. This first one they dealt with pretty quickly, by managing to push it into an Otyugh's refuse pit. They've encountered them a few times since then, sometimes being summoned by Mind Flayers and sometimes as a surprise "this guy was being controlled by an intellect devourer all along!" twist during combat. So far nobody has died, but even now at level 6 they still dread going up against them and there's a lot of held breath around the table when I make that 3d6 roll.
I haven’t ran a intellect devourer, but I sure have fought one. In my first every game in an adventures league my whole party was downed in the “boss room” of some point in dragon heist. I was out of spells since it was a long dungeon run. Eventually i decided to get a little creative. I used mage hand to pick up and hold the little bastard to an open flame and ended up saving the party. Basically, mage hand is and always will be the best cantrip.
My DM through 9 Intellect Devourers at us in one fight, even at level 6 with two clerics we almost wiped it was scary
"-a Giant Elk is super dangerous!"
Just like in real life. XD
Also, PHASE SPIDERS!!!
There are no giant elks in real life. We only have the regular ones... Now imagine a giant version of them, THAT is what the monster is.
@@bjornseine2342 A giant elk is basically as deadly as a Moose
@@fishyfishyfishy500akabs8 Okay, so apparently this is another case of language confusion. What the north americans call a moose, the british call an elk... And the germans (my mother tongue) call an "Elch".
So you are probably correct and the elk in "Giant Elk" means wapiti.
@@bjornseine2342 That it very confusing, also the american version of elk refers to a species of deer that looks nothing like the moose
The Blistercoil Weird from the Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica. It’s a CR 4 that’s fast and hardy and can ignite the whole party by playing tag with it’s Form of Fire and Water ability. Thing is scary OP
The worst part of that husk zombie is that if it drops you and you turn, you're screwed until the party can cast True Resurrection.
Something you missed on the giant elk is that the hooves attack need them to be prone
The Zorbo sounds like something you want to pin down with a Barbarian + Monk combo.
I love Yellow Musk Creepers.
Especially if you take a Circle of Spores clan and have them be cultivators of the plant.
Two of my campaign ideas was:
1:
To create a "Ancient Yellow Musk Creeper" using the Corpse Flower (CR8) stat block, swapping out the Stench of Death with the Yellow Musk action (after adjusting the DC due to CR), and swapping its poison damage with psychic. The clan worshipped this plant.
2:
By creating a "White Musk Creeper" variant. The stat block is the same, but it has one added action.
"Symbioses:
As an action, an incapacitated or a willing humanoid creature can have the White Musk Creeper burrow its bulb into the host's chest cavity. A creature that is affected by this effect has its maximum hit points reduced by half, it gains the White Musk Creeper's Regeneration trait, is treated as a plant instead of a humanoid or undead, and it can use the Yellow Musk action once per long rest.
While a creature has the White Musk Creeper Bulb inside them, the creature has a red colored White Musk flower on their chest as their blood flows through the petals. An undead creature with the bulb will have a white flower instead.
A creature can remove this bulb by using a remove curse spell on the host.
If the affected creature is reduced to 0 hit points and can't regenerate on its turn, the creature dies and becomes a White Musk Zombie."
Core spawn crawlers from wildemount. Tremor sense out to 60 feet, with blindsight within 30 feet. Pack tactics so they will roll with advantage a good chunk of the time on 3-4 of their attacks depending on if you use all 15 feet of reach their claws and tail provides you, and their bite causes a Wis Save or becoming frightened until that crawler’s next turn. For a CR 1 monster and minion mob they can deal out 3d4 +1d6 +8 potential damage, 19 damage on average, within melee range or harass from up to 15 feet out with an average of 16.5 damage. A small pack of these things can absolutely shred low level parties or harass even higher level ones with the added boost from pack tactics. To boot they’re only CR 1.
“A lot of my players are only carrying slashing weapons, or piercing weapons”
>Me standing over here with a large Goliath Great Hammer
In one of my recent online Adventurers League games, the character of one of my fellow players died to to the little goblin pirate's brain being devoured by an intellect devourer. It definitely can - and in this case did - happen.
I know I still have ptsd from stirges. I found out later that the dm had some homebrewed rules that made them much more brutal than they should have been. Like, to detach a stirge from yourself or another, it’s with disadvantage because you’re in such close range. He almost tpk’d our party. And this was with me playing a life cleric.
I DM a group of players who are in blue alley, they came upon the box on the table in room 9, opened it and the will o wisp damn near one shotted a warlock. I quickly realized how dangerous this thing was and decided a captured will o wisp would just bounce from the encounter. They did manage to hit it twice before it got away.
Zorbos seem so cool. I’ve never seen those, as I’ve not played ToA, but I can see my party, which has two pet loving players in it, underestimating this a lot.
Husk zombie burster is VERY dangerous. Brutal. These are all ‘above CR’ monsters. I always remember which certain monsters are ‘deadly’ despite apparent CR. Be careful when using any of these. Also despite the level of the characters be very cautious of intellect devourer’s and shadows. After watching very surprised shadow was not on this list.
I use the Intellect Devourer in a dungeon I designed; it not only murdered the party member, but I told them that was the case only when it decided to actually spring the trap on the party. Mind you, the party had also looted a magic ring from a Mindflayer Lab without fully identifying it, thus didn't know it was a ring of Mind Feebleness that worked a bit like a +2 ring of protection. So, in the boss fight, I told those two players that they had switched teams; it was a very entertaining fight, and I honestly enjoy this dungeon just because of how subversive it is. Not hard, just gets players to respect Mind Flayers and how evil they really are.
I have used a group of Intellect Devourers as "surprises" possessing a group of malnourished villagers that suddenly attacked the party when they got too close to the house that was being used as an entrance to the underdark. The party was informed of strange disappearances occurring in a nearby city and went to investigate, finding the town guard wary of new faces and suspecting them of being the culprits. The party manages to find out that most of the disappearances were occurring in and around the slums of the city. It turned out that a Illithid was attempting to start a new Elder Brain / tadpole pool to feed on the inhabitants of the city and had replaced a group of the inhabitants of the slums to be guards for the entrance leading down to the new lair. The party initially attempted to reason with what was realistically a party of unarmed "murder hobos" only to be surprised by intellect devourers popping out of the skulls of the hobos upon death. It made for a memorable encounter and the group did not trust dead bodies for quite some time after that.
Level 6 party encountered 4 banshees together with the BBEG in the final encounter of our one-shot. I went first in initiative (playing a bladesinger wizard), cast Haste on myself and went after the BBEG, leaving the banshees' wail range. Then the banshees wailed and dropped everyone but me to 0. I had to run back, took a healing potion off the ranger's belt and poured it down his throat, bringing him back up, so that he could heal the others with his Healing Spirit - and so, the party was saved and we could win the encounter...
Taking notes for wild shape and animal companions over here
I've fought a ghost before. It possessed an ally in front of us. The rest of the party dogpiled that ally with grapples until they pinned the ally.
The party barbarian looked the ally/ghost in the face and said "NOW WHAT?" Ghost ejected itself from the ally and we fought to win.
I swear, the whole table was laughing for ten minutes straight after that battle was over. Good times, man, good times.
Number 7 the yellow musk creeper, having that with a shambling mound as it's host could be an amazing boss fight for a tier 2 or 3 party.
My favorite low CR monster: the Guardian Portraits from Curse of Strahd. CR 1 creature that can hide in plain sight, immune to almost every condition, and has access to Counterspell, Crown of Madness, Hypnotic Pattern, and Telekinesis each 3/Day. These supporting any like CR 2 monster could screw a low-level party completely.
I didn't know the Yellow Musk Creeper was as deadly as it is. Last campaign it wrecked my party harder than anything else.
A few years ago, my adventuring party suffered a near TPK thanks to an intellect devourer which picked us off one by one.
It brain-ate a low-intelligence fighter, who then lured another party member away so a second intellect devourer could feast on his brain, and so on.
Ultimately, only my Modron cleric was left, and it deduced that retreat was the only logical option, so that’s what he did.
I once used an intellect devourer in a completely ad-libbed one-shot. It took over the dragon wizard (homebrew), but the loxodon knowledge cleric managed to successfully perform brain surgery, saving the wizard.
It should be noted that Cockatrices can’t actually kill with their petrification. I’ve mused about how entertaining it’d be to have a party encounter a stampede of them, and for all of them to end up petrified, only to wake up a day later wondering what happened.
I would like to point out that the husk zombie bursted only explodes as an ACTION. It’s not that the party kills it and it suddenly explodes. It has to actively choose to explode itself. It’s a self destruct button, which considering the undead fortitude, can still be really deadly, but it’s not just a free action.
I love best the Flying Horror from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. It deals great damage, decent AC and HP for the CR, flies, can terrify party members and it just looks freaky. I made my level 5 party crap themselves with a few of these in a one-shot.
Fun fact, the Assassin bug's infest ability. If your character/class is immune to disease, that attack doesn't work as that effect is considered a disease. So Warforge and Paladins are safe from it.
I have used an intellect devourer. It was run along side a hired coatl NPC (they pulled some weird favors). No one got their brain eaten, but it was close.
The werewolf and similar creatures were always more terrifying in my group, because we misread the stat block. We thought that to harm a lycanthrope, you needed magical AND silvered weapons to harm them.
Yeah... Curse of Strahd was bad for us.
In a recent session, my level 9 character was put down by the banshee wail. Not a big deal because no one else went down and next round we got rid of it with Turn Undead, but I had *just* burnt a bunch of resources to get myself back up to max HP. Stopped our party's momentum like a brick wall in one turn of combat.
I'm going to use an intellect devourer in my campaign session next week and I'm nervous to see what happens
a piece of advice from someone who has run them multiple times before. don't just send the intellect devourer itself, have it start the fight inside the head of some other poor creature that has had it's brain consumed (the first time I used intellect devourers I had 2 of them inside trolls, according to my party it's still the most memorable encounter I've thrown at them)
I have used an Intellect Devourer. I killed half of the party with that little bastard. The Cleric and the Fighter got their brains eaten, the Warlock went down, and the Barbarian saved the day by cutting it in half
The sorcerer in my campaign decided to hunt a giant elk one day at around 4th level. He was very luck to not get gored to death after being knocked prone.
also session one of Dungeon of the mad mage my character got intellect devoured just this sunday so thanks for rubbing salt in that wound lol
Husk Zombies are nasty in general. Doing much like Matt Mercer did when he introduced them in Campaign 2 and dropping just one in the middle of a crowd of commoners can turn a low level encounter into a full-scale Mid-tier Zombie Outbreak encounter.
The fact that husks "respawn" has no limit other than crit and radiant dmg lead to my group fighting a pack of 4 of those, which was meant as a simple side quest to give them a magic item, into a whole session of combat while they struggle to kill them
Oh I did bully my party of five level 6 character with eight perytons and the described tactic of abusing the dive attack-flyby combo and it still was fun. I also used Will-'o-Wisps to great effect =D
Why is the vargouille never on any of these lists? It's kiss can end a character in one shot in a horrific way.
It was definitely a runner up for sure
@@NerdImmersion hi! Do you realize that cockatrices only petrify for 24 hours so maybe you miss a deadline , but you'll still be able to stay in the campaign.
My group fought a slew of intellect devoures as well as 2 mindflayers
The dm was tricky though - after he had stunned us all, he targeted our druids awakened owlbear (its homebrew and he was our mascot)
None of us had any idea until really close to the end of the campaign when the druid had to kill her companion and we had to go to Dullurh (I think thats the dead place in ebberon) and bargain the raven queen for trinkets soul so we could resurrect him.
TLDR:
DM stunned us all and decided to target teams mascot
Towards end of campaign, Druid had to kill her best friend and we had to bargain the raven queen for his soul.
It’s funny about that Banshee. I was playing in a group of lvl 7 characters. It dropped all of us but one and it was the one that had no healing
The Low CR Monster I expected to see here but wasn't was the Flying Snake. CR 1/8, 14 AC, 60ft of flight with flyby, +6 to hit, and average of 8 damage (3d4+1). I've seen a TPK to them on a live-play game and have scared my own party pretty badly with them as well. Nasty little buggers in the early game, especially when used at any kind of Medium-to-Hard encounter scale.
Oh god, a black pudding. When I first started DMing Storm King's Thunder the first dungeon had one and I had to seriously tone it down on the fly and allow the craziest things from my players just for them to survive because I didn't want a TPK in like my 3rd session haha. I have since learned that campaign likes to kill characters, especially with, say, a crit giant attack.
Missed Shadow. CR 1/2. Has all the juicy undead resistances and immunities. It's super stealthy and can hide as a bonus. Its attack deals 2d6+2 which as mentioned is insane but also lowers your strength stat with no save. Oh and if you are reduced to 0 strength you DIE. instantly. No saves. OH and if the shadow kills someone they return as a shadow themselves. Nuts.
I remember getting my brain taken by an intellect devourer.
That's how I lost my first ever character. R.I.P. Christopher the Tiefling Warlock. You may have never made it to level 5, but you'll always be level 20 in our hearts.
I had the 2 characters have their brains devoured by 1 single Intellect Devourer in Dragon Heist, which led to a close to TPK, but the other two players had already left to transport Floon... so lucky them I guess xD
The Banshee thing happened to me on my last session; everyone on the party failed the saving throw and that's it
Quicklings. Absolutely god damn devastating. Insane dex (therefore initiative), 120 ft move speed, and 3 attacks per turn. Just a couple of these will down a low level party with relative ease, before they can even react. I know, it happened to my party once because the DM massively underestimated these little buggers.
36:15 I had an encounter with an intellect devourer, I failed the intelligence saving throw but the devour intellect roll my DM made was not 3D6, it was 9D6 and he didn't even give me a chance to perform the intelligence contest, he just has the thing swap out my brain and have my character killed off in my 3rd session. My character by the way was a ranger who's mentor was killed saving him from a mind flayer and had a hatred for aberrations, but my DM killed me off in my third session! He later revived me just to use my character as a punching bag so I left that campaign. He was nicknamed "Bully DM" by the way.
I once nearly TPKed a level 8 party with what my players loving refer to as "the Will O Wisp/Banshee Trap"
I learned the hard way why it's called the Assassin Vine as a DM.
Killed my first player that way.
me too, almost a TPK in my case
Mantrap ambush against 4 level 6 players almost ended in a TPK. It didn't help that my players always tried to escape from things by attacking instead of just trying to break free... I think they finally learned that lesson XD
Some personal choices which aren't from Modules:
Shadow: the longer the fight goes on, the deadlier they become, and their low AC and good ressistances play into that very much. Also great Stealth making it possibly get a suprise. Their true strength almost always comes in the amount of how much they hit a target.
Specter: Can Easily Instantly One-Shot Level 1 PCs or fragile Level 2 PCs, also great ressistances, the effect becomes even worse on a crit and stacks with other maximum hit point reduction, also leaving PCs weaker when they have to fight/walk around with less hit points.
Yall remember when Will O Wisp were immune to all spells but magic missile and mage.
Good times
I DM'd a game where a Intellect Devourer ate someones brain. The Totem Barbarian had 8 intelligence. A swarm of about 6 of them closed in. Rest of the party were busy killing Armored Minotaurs and a Mind Flayer. He thought he would wipe the floor with them. It was hilarious
great video. i was expecting the bugbear to be on here. it’s one shot countless first lvl PCs
Imagine a zorbo wearing steel toe boots