I feel that the primary lesson for the creatures that have these "I have an ability that can insta-kill you" is more that you should not use them *casually*. When you are thinking about using a Catoblepas, you should warn the party about them beforehand, and about the death gaze. The swamp that the Catoblepas lives in should be considered an impassable geographic feature. Casually walking through it should be the equivalent of trying to swim across the caldera of an active volcano. When a monster has an ability that you don't even want to go off, then that's a challenge for a party that essentially reads as "the party has essentially lost something as soon as they roll initiative against this creature; they should have done something to avoid this fight" which is tied to the idea of making sure that they're aware of it beforehand.
This! I want to challenge my players and I love it if they feel like they're going to die if they mess up, basically I want to scare them. I do not, however, actually want to kill all their characters. It's a fine line to walk, though if they do all die there's always the option of "Now you are all in (cool inner/outer plane). Welcome to "Escape from Avernus" or something like that, depending on what killed them. Or actually having an ally come by and resurrect them, but after the villains won and left the area. Sure, this was a "prevent the X campaign", but ya'll got krumped and evil won. So... time to free the land from its new demon lord ruler, or something like that. Or you got raised to work for your evil overlord, congratulations you're now vampires, lycanthropes, or some other monster. Or, you know, run a 1-shot and feel free to murder everyone at the end by throwing a scary monster at them that they only have a slim chance to defeat, because the goal was "do the thing that means we don't unleash death on us".
It's a great example of a monster that's great to adapt or use in a more witchery style game. Give it weaknesses overwhelming strengths and make figuring out those things part of the puzzle.
This is a legit perspective and it's one that I think is more common among people who have been playing since the days of AD&D -- less so newer editions, though not unheard of. It really depends on the goals of the game and the world-building and the group you're running for. In a way, one could say that the Catoplebas was designed perfectly... because it's an "oldschool" era monster for oldschool players, so it has that sort of asymmetrical deadliness / imbalance by design, where even encountering it is a sort of fail-state, and the monster may have been designed that way as a response to those who may lamented the overall reduced lethality of 5th Edition compared to other editions.
Making players aware of a deadly monster beforehand is great. I've put the players up against monsters with CRs very high for their level--like a CR6 monster against three level 3 characters (with plenty of warnings for the players and a little bit of prep time). As a DM, I expect to get this information from the CR, though. Not just needing to have prior knowledge that the monster is way more risky than the CR suggests.
Minor spoilers, but anyone notice that a fair chunk of these made their way into the starter campaign? Chunked the poor life cleric halfway through session 1.
Was about to say the same thing. SPOILERS. What's the first boss in LMoP? A bugbear with a good chance of surprise, with goblins and a wolf as allies. At level 1. Think the black spider is the final boss? Nope, flameskull and wraith are both far more deadly. That's not even mentioning the green dragon that can easily tpk the whole party with one breath attack much earlier in the adventure.
@@drz0b That dragon managed to wipe two of my party out and insta-gibed our 'friendly' Goblin. Swallowed the Halfling Whole as they lay on the ground gasping for breath, and tore the wizard bodily in half as he tried to fly away.
@@drz0b I was about to say the same. Lmop is designed as a tutorial for DMs as much as players and the book gives no warning of all these insta kill hazards.
My halfling ranger almost died to a shadow with like 1 or 2 strength remaining. It was actually the result of a huge swarm of them that came upon the party after opening a chest. Now that I think on it he almost became the third in a chain of the DMs homebrew dungeons that each killed a character one after the other (there were official material dungeons interspersing them that killed nobody despite being challenging). That particular dungeon did go on to make the bard the 3rd in the chain resulting from another gimmicky trap encounter. We ribbed our DM on killing us off after we noticed the trend. Moral of the story is don’t be careless with what you throw at the party.
Rot grubs were the first monster I've ever faced, so I had 0 experience (quite literally). While everyone else was retreating I got closer to attack it (I was a fighter) and died. I have been playing for 10 minutes. Good thing I didn't give up on Dnd, It's a good hobby.
The ghost has pretty much had that ability since 1st ed. AD&D, and I'm surprised it's still there. Must be a legacy thing? One of the only things that distinguishes it from other noncorporeal undead? Except it also has possession...
I've found that when played properly, even a level 13 party dreads trying to clear out a Kobold Warren, between their varieties of traps and pack tactics, it'd be easier to just cast Earthquake on their home and call it good.
I'm surprised the Beholder Zombie isn't on here. I ran one against a 5th level party once. I just looked at it's CR without looking at it's abilities. It gets to the Beholder Zombie's turn and I'm like "Okay, sweet, it uses a random eye ray on the barbarian." *rolls dice* "Okay, the Beholder uses it's..... DISINTIGRATION RAY!? WTF!?" The barbarian was disintegrated. Good list, tho!
@@antongrigoryev6381 but the zombie beholder is a CR 5 creature, the standard beholder is CR 13/14! I had to fight a zombie beholder with a lvl 4 fighter with max health (got REALLY lucky with HP rolls), and after a single hit, my character was disintegrated... that hurts!
Definitely a creature that needs some caution. It deals an average of 45 damage in a failed save with a CR of 5. A 5th level fighter has 49 hp (with a 16 con). Any pre-existing damage or an above average damage roll and most 5th level characters are dusted on a failed dc 14 dex save.
"The Flameskull has a decent initiative score, and on round one it's going to be fireballing the party" For some reason, that made me laugh. It's 100% true of course.
I had the same impression. Remember when level 1 wizard had 1d4 hit points and surviving early game felt more like a horror style adventure where everything is deadly rather than epic fantasy.
@@jakubkucharczyk5255 I miss the d4 HD. Sometimes I feel like 5e characters have way too many HP. Then there are all of the death saves, lack of instant death, no negative HP. It's really hard ton kill a 5e character. A sucker punch sucks, but a good heroic death to save the day was always awesome. Like Treantmonk, I specialize in Wizards (since the 80's). I'm in not a wizard, then a halforc warrior is great. There is nothing like looking a monster in the eye and saying "Today is a good day to die!" Yes. My orcs are Klingon.
@@cp1cupcake I took advantage of the broken crits in 3.0 and a vorporal sword. It was amazing downing several monsters in one round. Shenanigans ensued.
@@99zxk I'm an old ad&d/2nd edition player who started playing 5e a few years ago and DMing. We use negative hitpoints equal to the characters Constitution score. Once you go past that you make a death save. Failure means death, success means you last another round. They also don't go unconscious automatically at zero hitpoints. Once they hit zero they make a Constitution save DC=10+however negative their hitpoints are. Success means they remain conscious but bleed out 1 hitpoint. Failure means they go unconscious and bleed out 2 hitpoints. They continue to make these Constitution saves as long as they are at zero hitpoints or less. The bleeding effect can be stopped by any magical healing or an action to stabilize them. One of the effects is increased drama because you don't know when someone is going down. Martial characters tend to be able to dig deeper with the Constitution saves. I've seen wizards go negative and retreat before passing out and fighter be near death and making the killing blow on the bad guy before passing out. It all adds drama. It also makes low level characters less squishy and actually puts higher level characters closer to "instadeath" simply because their negative buffer doesn't change.
As a DM I LOVE Vargouilles. If one of your players is infected they have some time to stop the transformation so make it possible. Like the drama but not big on killing off PCs.
What he is describing is the fundamental legacy of OSR D&D every dungeon master discovers sooner or later. The earliest additions were designed with the expectation that you would die quite often and early, and getting out of low levels alive was a rare thing. The meta has shifted, and players no longer are tolerant of that expectation. However I personally liked that play style, and I think there's a lot of us that do. Some more bugbears.
I'm kind of surprised the catoblepas keeps coming back edition after edition. It's not particularly interesting or even cool-looking, just this ugly buffalo/giraffe looking monstrosity that kills you by looking at you. It must be one of the bones they throw to the grognards. ☺️
@@digitaljanus It's probably because greybeards like myself go back across each edition and compare iterations while raging on continuity errors. You know we are going to show up on the panels and say shit like "monster X has appeared in four editions to date and you suck for dropping my favorite monster because of story___." They don't have time for that, no one does. So put it in. Edit: I'm guessing that's the very definition of a grognard. Your statement doesn't make sense otherwise.
Players much prefer to get to higher level to enjoy the power leveling. I do think there's a miss opportunity. There are times we jam loads of good spells/ abilities through spell scrolls, equipment or blessing onto low level characters. (i.e: We start with lv.5 and cap at lv.10) There is certain fun in the madness of loot rolling and no one is very offended when their characters die.
@@AllThingsFascinate It's a fair opinion. I personally disagree, because I believe the driving cause of mortality (past one-shot crit dead levels) in OSR is poor planning. Emphasizing flash over evasion or detection, reckless playstyles. It's all well and good to charge in against a known quantity and quality of inferior opponents, but the moronic Jon Snow rush at Bastard Battle is not. Think of it like Darkest Dungeon. The risk is the draw, and people still clear the game, they just do it carefully.
Can confirm, gave my first low level party a group of bugbears to fight. Everything went smoothly, until the bugbear landed one crit and nearly outright killed the tankiest member of the team. Bugbears are spooky
I'd introduce Bugbears as a way to keep the party on their toes in a dungeon to disincentivise "I look for loot" since if your perception is focused on loot you'll have disadvantage on passive perception to notice a bugbear sneaking up on you. If you don't want to be snuck up on then you need to say "I stay on guard watching each entrance" to get advantage on passive perception. I like games which are less about luck of the die rolls but reward adaptation. So every new room you enter barricade the door behind you or set sound alarms.
I was in a party of 15 - 17 level characters. A single banshee dropped half the party. The others were able to kill her, but the adventure was over. The downed party members had to be carted out and saved.
I forgot to mention that we play 1st Edition Greyhawk. If the cleric goes down, you are just out of luck. They were high level though, so they had the gold for cleric services - but the adventure was over.
I'm not on the same page with you in this TM, I love killer monsters. What you should never do is randomly drop them at the party. Foreshow them, give clues on how to defeat them, let the party interact with them without fighting. Well presented these encounters are tense and thrilling, as high stakes are involved. Medusas, Shadows, Bodaks, Ghosts are some of my favorite monsters because the players can't go straight into fighting them. The second point: don't mind too much about CR, you know that pretty well.
The issue is a dm might not know how deadly these are. You're right about how to use them correctly. If forewarned and properly hyped up they're great as a high stakes fight. But a newer dm especially and published adventures treat them like ordinary encounters because they're not flagged as anything special.
12:06 Pedantry incoming: There is the remote possibility that a (probably meta-gaming) player that happens to be next to you has prepared an action to cure wounds (Healing Word is out because you can't prepare bonus action spells) or feed you a healing potion or goodberry the moment you go down, before the end of your turn. You would also need another (probably meta-gaming) player to burn you with their action later in the turn order, because no one will have lesser restoration at level 1 (though a Paladin who had the forethought and meta-knowledge to not spend a single point of Lay on Hands healing would be able to cure the disease). And if you happened to be saved by a prepared Goodberry, that will drop you back down to zero (unless your saviour was a Mark of Healing Halfling Life Cleric), ready to be easily infested again. This is so unlikely to occur organically that yes, it essentially means instant death.
Three of these monsters exist in Lost Mine of Phandelver, which also has a number of encounters that would be fine if the party was a higher level - the Goblin ambush/lair would be comfortably doable for a Level 2-3 party (you should be level 1 instead) and Venomfang can be done at Level 5-6 (where you're expected to be Level 3). No portion of this module even alludes to this extreme difficulty; any encounter is just put into the room and expected to be fought as any other. And Venomfang retreating at half health isn't an issue because it'll most likely TPK the party with its opening Breath Weapon.
Succubus: a CR2 with a really high Persuade that can kiss you for 5d10 damage, and if you drop to 0 you die...that's...a lot of potential to wipe out a party far before they burn through her very decent HP pool.
It's not "if you drop to 0 you die", it's "if your max hp drops to 0 you die". So unless you got to 0 from full hp, you don't outright die. Though yeah, 5d10 is a lot for 4th lvl and totally can be enough. Not to mention very nasty resistances Succubus has.
@@antongrigoryev6381 that's true - though, related, since it's a CR2, this could technically come as early as 1st level, definitely be present by 2nd level, and...that's a metric ton of damage (on average over 25) at those levels. That...is basically enough to outright kill, on average, anyone at those levels. Even by 4th level you're not looking great against those, and even if you don't die outright you're probably not going to last long after it. Super scary, definitely not a monster to use for a casual game
Jeez, these are pretty fearsome! I don't know jack about the MM so always fun to hear about crazy good monsters... looking forward to my next campaign to encounter new ones! (my last one was an Underdark campaign)
Just discovered that reading through the adventure! I mean, boy howdy; if that spectre rolls well for damage and the target rolls poorly on its save, it can kill a barbarian in one hit.
Aging could easily be fixed by making it advance one age category on a failed save and you slowly return to your real age by one step per hour of rest. Maybe change it to day if you want it harsher. Removing curse and similar fixes it instantly. Also if you get too old you simply fall unconscious instead of dying.
Yeah I'm okay with that. I don't think ghosts should just be dropped in just as encounters, spectres and wraiths are better for that. A ghost should be in an adventure for a narrative reason, and if PCs have to seek out a higher level spellcaster to get a remove curse or greater restoration afterwards, that's a good quest hook.
@@digitaljanus Yes. For example if the party gets attacked by an upset ghost which screams at them in a unknown language or something and it withdraws after either side starts winning because what it wants is its issue(s) fixed, not to just mindlessly slaughter. Then the party gets to figure out why the ghost is haunting and decide if they want to help it pass on.
I think there's a Pareto distribution for both parties and encounters. Something like an 80:20 rule. 80% of parties makes such bad decision that a single kobold is a threat. That other 20% is ready to take on a mindflayer at level 2. Likewise, with encounters, 80% of "level appropriate" encounters are a cakewalk. Then, you cross into that 20% and it's like, "Yeah, don't even bother with a saving throw. You're just dead."
A bit high on the CR side compared to the other monsters, but one monster I expected was the Nightwalker. The mix of very high health combined with high saves, including paralyzed and solid damage, makes it difficult for any party. Oh and if you die, only a Wish can get you back ofcourse. But when the high level min-maxed party asked for "an actual challenging encounter", they got their wish. 2 Nightwalkers with 2 Banshees is an interesting sight to behold.
I just did a combat test on D&D beyond this morning using their encounter builder and combat tracker to pit a custom-built party of 5 characters at level 5 (which were optimized to do as much damage as possible using all kinds of damage boosting features and spells) against a Catoblepas and 2 goblins. The Catoblepas went early in the round and killed one character right off the bat with its death ray. Thankfully I had just given the Cleric the spell Revivify when leveling it up from 4 to 5, and the cleric spent their turn casting Revivify then Healing Word to bring the dead character back and give him at least some health to work with. After that, I was kind of fearing every time the Catoblepas turn came up. Thankfully, it wasn't able to recharge its death ray in round 2 and it was dead by the time its turn came up in round 3. That test really showed how scary that creature is to even a big level 5 party.
I feel like he did a series of videos in that direction a little while ago, I’d have to look... though more DM content is always welcome!! Edit: here’s his link to making interesting encounters that I recall having some good tips for tactical encounters, which is the best way to challenge optimizers. Chris did a couple other DM-centric videos around the same time that are worth checking out. ruclips.net/video/Ynmj5FC49ZA/видео.html
I recently had a flame skull in my game that punched way above it’s weight. The party is all 10th level, and ran into a flame skull in a megadungeon from a random encounter roll. I assumed it would just be a minor encounter because of their level, but the flame skull beat everyone in initiative, and when I rolled for both of it’s eye rays, both of them were crits. One of the wildest things I’ve ever seen. Ended up putting the already injured fighter at 2hp right off the bat.
Note about the flameskull, they revive after 1 hour and the only thing that can prevent this is holy water or dispel magic. A party below level 5 probably isn’t going to have either of these.
"Your strength doesn't usually increase as you level." Mhmm. Recently I killed a level 10 fighter (with a dex focus) in two highrolled shadow attacks. Party had revivify, so it wasn't a real problem, but I don't think I'm using shadows again too soon.
I'd say most of these monsters become more fun once the party is at higher levels, that way the monsters can be encountered in groups, or mixed with other monsters, or given some kind of terrain or circumstantial advantage. Solo at low levels, of course it often depends on the dice.
My DM recently put us in a fight against hordes of undead, with the goal being that they're all weak, but there are a lot of them to make things challenging. The banshee went first and knocked half of us out. The flameskull went second and finished the rest off. He literally had to have healing spells air-dropped on us by an NPC we had just met, just to avoid a round 1 TPK.
It seems the problem is low level characters encountering these creatures rather than these creatures in and as of themselves. Classic point, Banshees are great vs mid/high level parties. They have a terrifying wail but there's no follow up at all so even if half the party drops, the other half easily cleans them up. Now the party needs to rest/heal, draining the party of resources which is the point of an encounter.
Can confirm the terror that is a ghost. Fortunately, I was playing an elf so it didn't hurt TOO bad, but we had a goblin on the team who just barely escaped death that way. We all ran and made the guy playing a warforged deal with it.
One of the more memorable fights in out last long-running campaign was against 4 flameskulls XD The party wasn't doing well. They beat them, and left to rest. When they came back, they had regenerated XD This time they came with fire resistance and were ready in case of BS.
I may incorporate some of these into my ravenloft game... where there is no character death, dead pcs just wake up later with a new level of corruption & dark gift.
I love that the starter set contains 3 of these 10 ... loathe be the party that decides to attack Agatha the Banshee. All the LMoP advice I've ever read essentially warns the DM to pull their punches several times. In reality, it's hard to deal with this stuff. You want your monsters to be convincing and challenging, but you also want the players to win. Would Ghouls and Zombies give up on the rest of the party to start consuming the downed one? definitely... or so every zombie movie has taught us...
I've done the banshee that drops people to 1 that usually does it for low level parties. They get the fear without the unfair. Humorously the high level parties I've ran for like it when it feels like the monsters are cheating, they have all these tools to use and it's great to get to use them. A big lesson here is in discretion. I think an encounter with an intellect devourer can be really fun, even if it ends with a party member switching sides... The keys , as always is knowing your players. If you've got someone who might really like to harbor a secret against the party they might like the chance to roleplay an intellect d, and your players don't need to know what the monster manual says about fixing the problem. Maybe you can have their wizard find a special way to fix their friend but it's gonna be difficult and you take a session off to figure that problem out. Either way, try and make sure what ever mean thing the monsters are doing fun and cool for the players and you'll be alright.
In all the games *I* run, it's always the PC's that does something to kill themselves. Like a Mage being front line rather than the barb, or a rogue who thinks they are a fighter. I've ran most of the monsters you presented, and I have never had a TPK. Thanks for the video! *liked*
I usually go easy on any group lower than 5th level, but once I tpked a 3rd level party with a Basilisk, so nowadays I always try to find ways to have at least a mirror at arms reach (as DM or player). Fun story: I ruled that the Imp familiar of the party's Warlock didn't vanish when it's owner was petrified, so after all players where turned to stone the Imp was fighting solo against the big bad Basilisk - a couple of luck rolls later, the Imp actually won! So the group decided that somewhere there's this Imp, trying to convince a group of adventurers to save his master from his demise, in return for the treasures from the Basilisk's lair :)
Good observations. I do not think these creatures need changing, though. I need those creatures with extra UMPH to challenge my party..... did a Zerg-rush-style mega-encounter, where 3 lvl 17 characters had to break through a mind-flayer colony to find the elder brain... and the "walls" constantly spawned int devourers... fighting their way through halls of different encounter+encounters of mind-flayers and their allies... blasting intellect-devourers + to keep them at bay... with the doom-soundtrack playing in the background... they made it out alive!
I love this whole list. The only thing I do to fix them is instead of surprise attacking the PCs, I let them learn about the creatures in advance. Make them scared as hell and have to plan around them. I've had players planning and scheming and arguing for hours about how to deal with a deadly monster or situation and have a blast doing it. I run pretty unforgiving combats but we only usually have 1 PC death per campaign. And to be fair, it is almost always the same guy, if that tells you anything.
Thank you for this video. Auto death game mechanics are fine as long as the PC are aware that their character might die in your campaign. Actually these monsters help the dm to build tension and the players to come with creative solutions in an otherwise very very easy game. Characrer killing monsters are even better if players have a way to face them again after their first defeat, through res or another character.
I miss the housecat from 3.5e. A time honored way to unite a team of strangers at my table, was walking home at night, when the soon to be party, and a couple commoners are jumped by a gang of especially ornery cats. The PTSD fueled, quiet campfire stories about watching full grown men ripped apart in seconds when the cat got ahold of them, watching a fighter in full armor get grappled to the ground by a handful and executed, or one of the foul beasts dodging full rounds of attacks focused on it would punctuate the rest of the campaign. Darwinian character meetings. The weak just don't make it.
One deadly encounter I suffered was the very first mission from Dragon of the Icespire Peak with a Manticore that deals one bite (1d8+3) and two claw attacks (1d6+3) per turn or instead she can fly and attack with 3 spikes (1d8+3 each) per turn. Against a Lv.1 party... it was one KO per turn. The DM had one NPC bringing us some Healing Potions for avoiding the TPK.
Easy rotgrub fix: round 1, you can use fire to burn the rotgrubs. Round 2 and beyond you can still do that, but you split the damage 50/50 between the grubs and the victim.
The most messed up thing about the quickling in particular is that it can make its 3 attacks per turn AT RANGE, oh and by the way? It has a 120 FOOT movement speed. You're basically restricted to trying to snipe it with other ranged attacks, but it also makes all attacks against it have disadvantage at a 16 armor class unless it has a speed of 0. Well, grappling it could give it a speed of 0, right? Too bad the quickling has a +8 to its acrobatics check, probably much higher than the fighter relying on his basic proficiency athletics check, pretty much only the barbarian would even have a chance.
Best case scenario (HP wise) at Level 1 would probably be the Hill Dwarf Barbarian that rolled 18 to their Con (with a +2 racial bonus, bringing it to 20). Their Starting HP would be 12 (Class Hit Dice) + 5 (Con Bonus) + 1 (Subrace HP bonus) bringing you to 18HP OR equally the Variant Human Barbarian with 19 in Con, and taking the Tough Feat. (12+4+2, also being 18HP). So even the tankiest level 1 character could not survive a slightly-below-average crit from the Bugbear; it can shut down Beefy McMeatwall's entire build in one round.
Maybe you should also do a video on best practice party tactics vs. certain monster types? For instance, in case of the rot grubs swarm, they can only move at a speed of 5ft. So it's easy in most cases to keep a safe distance and use ranged attacks (unless you fall into a pit with them). Same thing with the gray ooze - best to keep out of its range and attack from a distance. For the banshee, I think if the players knew in advance that they'd risk encountering such a creature (perhaps they were warned by others or saw destroyed mirrors all over the place) the best they could do is to plug their ears with wax.
Star spawn manglers are a fun one to deal with... Let me just dash in and make an ungodly number of attacks at advantage that all have additional psychic damage attached to them, ignore attacks of opportunity, oh and... recharges on 4-6.
I've been running Dungeon of the Mad Mage for the past year-and-a-bit, and it's ridiculous-bordering-unfair how many Intellect Devourers are in the upper three levels. I hate the things, both as a player and as a DM. I ended up allowing the players to use Detect Evil and Good to see which creatures are possessed by them, as well as making characters protected by Protection from Evil and Good completely immune to them.
The one I always think of for surprisingly deadly monsters is the humble Flying Snake. CR 1/8 so but with +6 to hit for 3d4+1 damage and then 60 ft move, and fly by attack. On offense they're hitting AC 16/17 on a coin flip so if you have 4 of these against 4 level 1's (a moderate encounter by CR) 2 hits are probably getting through most characters for on average 17 damage (mostly poison, so you need a racial defense to survive generally). On Defense they're easy enough to kill, but their mobility means that a lot of early level AOE is out of the question and melee characters may be as well, if the snakes are scattering, or using verticality to their advantage.
I was really specting the Alhoon here. If you fail the saving agains the mind blast in the first round, you automatically fail the save against a desintegrate spell in the next round
Oh man, so many of these monsters I'm familiar with. My first ever session, in which we were all level one, ended with fighting a bugbear, luckily no crits against us. Quicklings I love to use at higher levels, because a group of them can be so annoying to deal with. As a DM, I did once throw a flameskull at a level 3 party, and the fireball was tough for them, but two were tieflings so had fire resistance and another was a bear barbarian, so it wasn't too bad for them. I remember reading the swarm of rot grubs when Volos first came out, and being like, wait this is so dangerous! And as for shadows, my current DnD is level 12, and we're all agreed shadows would be very bad for us, as we have a wizard, sorcerer, and bard, all with negative strength modifiers. Only our paladin would really hold out for very long if hit. A good video for everyone I think, CR can be so misleading! Check the abilities people! Also second the person in the comments who said Zombie Beholders, they're another one that's crazy easy to kill people with, as I've seen, luckily again, the barbarian took the damage and lived (at a higher level than 3 by that point).
We're playing Dungeon of the Mad Mage with a variant rule that all additional dice rolled for crits are maximum value. On the first level of the dungeon we ran into a bunch of shades who surprised us, a banshee which surprised us and dropped 3 of us, and a bunch of bugbears who, upon killing them, have intellect devourers jump out of their heads. We hobbled further down, battered but alive, with a level up and a bunch of lessons learned. Now we're wrapping up the third dungeon level and we're developing PTSD
I think drow deserve an honourable mention because, even though they won't insta-kill your characters, if a player rolls badly on their Con save, they're effectively taken out of the fight. Also, they're definitely stronger than most other CR 1/4 creatures, so the XP guidelines for encounters underestimate how hard they are. The one time my group TPK'd in a one-shot I was DMing, it was against drow.
Agree on many of the choices, especially since Intellect Devourer's ability drain recovery feels like an oversight. Edit: My personal fix was to let the drain be recovered with a short rest. A long rest would also be in line with other drains, but I figured a short rest made sense for a CR2. Star Spawn Mangler stands out to me. It is likely the PCs will be surprised by it with its stealth skill and ability. It then gets advantage and additional psychic damage on six attacks. That is already very dangerous. If it wins initiative, a character is probably dead. If it gets even one recharge on Flurry of Claws, it could lead to another KO or death. If you decide to play it as an ambush predator, as it seems to be designed and flavored, it has 40 speed and a climb speed to escape, hides with Shadow Stealth, and skirmishes the party effectively. One of these has almost wiped out a three member lvl 7 party of mine in a straight fight with one recharge. If it used hit and run, they would all have been dead.
Banshees man. The most obvious GM fudge I ever saw was when we were facing off against Strahd. Round 1, our DM had Strahd raise his mother as a Banshee. That Banshee won initiative, and shrieked. Like, 5/7 players failed their saving throws. Including me, the Cleric. I could see the gears turning in the DM's head. Then he said, "Oh, did I say Wisdom? I meant a constitution save!" We rerolled and most of us managed to save that time, but Banshees man. Oh, and honorable mention: spectres can go screw themselves. I've seen too many 1st level adventures with spectres.
Intellect Devourer is terrifying, but I've never seen a DM rule that the Intelligence drain doesn't only last until the next long rest. Afaik all drains that don't otherwise specify are gone after a long rest. Also you can save a brain-possessed character without a Wish spell. You just... need a replacement brain... to pop in within a round of forcing the Devourer out. Could be solved with Regeneration or Resurrection, or possibly finding a replacement and using a Raise Dead (or even Revivify if quick). Still very high level but at least not Wish lol
Shadows are terrifying. They were terrifying in 3.5, they were terrifying in Pathfinder, and they're terrifying in 5e. They make great minions for bosses and BBEGS, but I wouldn't dare make an encounter out of just shadows
I hear ya monk man but I wouldn’t change a thing about these monsters. Only advice I’d give it try to drop in world hits as to how deadly they are or hits as how to avoid their devising attacks. Ie. ear plugs for banshee lowers the con save and damage, rubbing wax on yourself makes the Grubbs not want to burrow you, throw salt at the ghost to make it vanish for a few mins. I believe in keeping this game deadly worst that can happen is they win a new character.
Hilariously, my last adventure put the party up against a banshee and two shadows. 😈 I did give them plenty of warning though, and they went in fairly well prepared. Two characters went down but they'd put all the save buffs on the martial characters with magic weapons, which was the smart move--other than radiant, magic weapons are the best approach for most noncorporeal undead.
Ghost possession is also a decent way to auto drop a character to zero regardless of HP unless the party has Pro G&E prepped. I'd suggest creatures like basilisk, cockatrice, medusa, and zombie beholder might also make it to this list.
Ye olde Bulette, the land shark, is a PC killing machine. It's an ambush predator with enough raw damage on that pounce attack to drop half the party, maybe even insta-kill a wizard.
For quicklings, I like to avoid them completely for lower levels parties, but one interesting encounter is to use a couple of quicklings with three levels of rogue (thief or swashbuckler, depending on if you want to harrass their loot or the PCs proper.) Gives them a bit more hp, a sneak atrack, and most importantly, cunning action. Then send them against mid to high level parties, but not enough quicklings that they pose a serious threat of death. Instead, they harrass, and are an absolute pain to pin down. It makes for a different sort of encounter than a straight up brawl, adds some variety, and usually forces players to get creative to deal with them, given how easy it is for these suckers to pop in and out of a fight. Note that your players will get very, very irritated with them, so make sure there is a very nice payoff for dealing with them. Maybe they are minions during the BBEG fight, or maybe they know some information or secrets the players want. But definitely give the players some nice reward for dealing with these little critters.
I was going to say ghouls but that's just my example of monsters that are low challenge enough to field in groups but each prompt saves whenever they hit.
I thought a rot grub hazard was unforgiving already, but apparently giving the party time to treat the rotgrubs without magic was just too easy to deal with.
Rot grubs are trivial if you are a paladin or someone prepared Lesser Restoration. But these are impossibilities below level 3. So many buff HP and hit bonus of this swarm and call it CR3. Because as you say, The only chance a level one or two party has is to know to pick them off with fire within one round. And being new adventurers, how the heck would they know that unless the party druid rolls high on a nature check or something.
The fixes for these are great. Personally I might keep the drop to zero for the banshee but only if they fail their save by more than 5. If that's too harsh maybe if they roll a nat 1 on their save.
I don't think any of the monsters in 5E are particularly well designed as it is. They usually feel flat lack bags of hitpoints. However, there is at least one defense that WoTC could claim for certain challenges and that's the fact that CR does not mean "thing to fight at this level". So an Intellect Devourer could easily have a big asterisk section that says "to be used at high levels only."
I quite like the low level humanoids who have little abilities to make them distinct ... but other than that yup, lots of sacks o' HP. Or high level casters with more spells than you ever need-> endless fireballs.
I remember as a third level party, we came up against two bugbears. One of the three PCs couldn’t join the fight, do to being stuck up higher with a rope for us to climb up. The second was a swash buckler who died from one critical hit and one max damage hit
I used a ghost specifically for the possession ability to tease a rough combat and actually offer a strange social encounter. If the party had gotten offended at the possession, cast the ghost out, and gotten her combat abilities going, then yes someone might have died
18:20 Maybe a Katobleepas adds two levels of exhaustion to creatures it makes unconscious. That way instead of instant kill it will kill them if it takes them out three times.
Geez I’m looking back on one of our biggest cluster fuck encounters… two flaming skulls and a banshee… yeah. The only reason that one went ok was because we allowed bonus action potion use and my fighter, who had built up a stockpile of them, was beasting the encounter alone in the end while chugging potions and the bard rolled a 20 on a death save and came back up. The rest of the party just happened to stabilize on their saves and no deaths incurred.
I’m running Waterdeep Dragon Heist for a group of first time players and the first major boss fight involves an intellect devourer. Of course, they have no clue what this thing can do and it almost kills the fighter instantly on round 1, so I have decided it can’t do the *eats your brain and possesses your body* thing until you’re fully dead already. I might change that once they get stronger and more capable of killing these things quicker, but for now absolutely not, thanks
Honourable mention to the Trap Soul variant demilich. Death effects are rare in 5th edition, and thus so is the means of protecting yourself against them. Additionally, your weak saves do not scale with level, so protection is *even more* important. Unfortunately, this means the party is basically never prepared for them when they do come up. I can say from experience that even if you party members rescue you, sitting out of a whole encounter because you failed a save before your first turn is not fun.
All good choices, although I think ghouls should be on here too. I'm pretty sure I've killed more players with ghouls than any other creature (in multiple editions too). A hit with paralysis then an auto crit next turn is pretty likely to kill any 1st level PC. They're even worse around level 4 or so, where a few ghouls can quickly paralyze the most of the party.
It's easy to get carried away with giant spiders. I almost tpk'd my friends because it's really easy to accidentally use too many spiders at once. Luckily I had a narrative reason for them to get bailed out if necessary, but be aware that those weak spiders can really add up (They can also fail 4 ambush attacks in a row on an npc you're trying to kill, but the dice do as they please).
To the topic of metagaming the rotgrubs or suffer death: I think for something like that we have the nature skill and the ability to demand checks from our players. The DM should at that point demand a roll from the players and see if their characters actually DO know this. There would then be no requirement to metagame and it would be more than fair. We let the DM secretly roll our perception (or take the passive) and it is an unspoken agreement that we do this to specifically not metagame, since if our characters know more than we do, the DM would let us surely know . Why shouldn't we do or even expect that for other skills as well? At least at my table, this is the case. I also constantly hear about how animal handling, nature and survival are mostly obsolete because they all are in the same ballpark and overlap too much. But honestly it makes no sense to roll survival or animal handling on this. It is pretty clear one would have to know the specific behaviour of these worms to guard against their hunting methods. Survival does not entail encyclopedia knowledge about animals, nor does animal handling. Only nature covers that spot.
I don't think it's quite strong enough to displace Bugbear on the list, but I'd suggest Wisp for Honorable Mention. It's very likely to go first on initiative and there's a reasonable chance it will have advantage on its opening attack due to invisibility. If it crits and drops a character, or even happens to be in proximity to a character who gets dropped by another monster, it can Consume Life and end their career young. On top of that, with its AC and resistances and fly speed, it can be frustrating for a low-level party to deal with and it only takes one PC drop for things to get ugly.
CR 1/2 Hobgoblin's have the same issues as bugbears (minus the sneak attack) in that with an ally they deal 1d8+2d6+1 which can kill a pc on a crit or just lucky damage. Jackalwere's are Immune to non magic/silver weapons which can be deadly depending on party compositions. Skulks have effectivly greater invisibility and deal 1d4+2d6+4 if they have advantage to hit. CR 1 Quadrones get 4 shortbow attacks at +4 of 1d6+2. Not as immediatly deadly but a couple lucky rounds and you can wipe out a party, especially with more than one. Specter deals 3d6 damage and on a failed con save reduces the max hp by that amount, if reduced to 0 they just die. Scarecrows have a gaze attack that can paralyze on a wisdom save DC 11. Not as deadly by themselves but with any other creatures can quickly become deadly. CR 2 Gelatinous cube can swallow a person for 6d6 acid damage a turn and can hit multiple people at once, but you get two checks to escape. Pentadrone gets five attacks and has an area of effect paralysis. A few bad rolls by a party can let one wipe them out
Almost harmless alone...but truly deadly with other monsters of low CR... Guardian Portrait (CR 1): Counterspell x 3 and Hypnotic Pattern × 3 = the monsters can easily pick you off one at a time.
I had 2 Ghosts fight against a groupe of five Lvl.7 players they got released as part of a trap and I thought they would be interesting but they got almost defeated by their own Rogue before she got knocked out and they finally defeated the ghosts and healed the Rogue it was very intense. Really good list I would also mention the Succubus and the Oni as being really strong and deadly creatures
Dragonclaws. Multiattack (2 attacks) Pack Tactics, Fanatical Advantage (advantage plus bonus damage) and Dragon Fanatic. Very scary. They can easily drop a pc at lvl 1 with 1 or 2 attacks which are likely to hit due to advantage. If a lvl 2 party is facing 2, good luck. CR1 btw.
I feel that flameskull one, level 3 party get's surprised by flameskulls. I almost die from a fireball before I get a turn. Dm didn't realize they had a fireball till he used it and then chose to not use the other flameskulls fireball...
Ok so my dm is a sadist :D except the quickling we encountered every other monster on this list :D But he handled it well, with the banshee we all failed our death saves, buuut conveniently the NPCs which were by our side didnt fail. So we took control over them and fought out the battle with them, sadly one PC didnt make it because he rolled a 1 on the first save and under a 10 on the second. The flameskull really did instakill a player with a fireball. But we didn't tpk and luckily we were already lvl 4 so i had shield master which protected me from the fireballs. I guess those monsters are horrifying if the dm doesnt talk to the player and explains how deadly he wants to run the game and only if every player is ok with that, than those monsters become fun even if a character or two dies. We cheesed every encounter because even if we didn't had any knowledge of the monster we just assumed that its deadly, which was super fun, at least for us. BTW i come from D&D: O great collab :)
So, I watched several of his videos where he shows you how to cheese multiclassing to make 'broken' builds and pick the best spells. Then I watch this video showing how to nerf the few monsters that actually would scare a character he tells you to make. Man I miss AD&D.
I feel that the primary lesson for the creatures that have these "I have an ability that can insta-kill you" is more that you should not use them *casually*. When you are thinking about using a Catoblepas, you should warn the party about them beforehand, and about the death gaze. The swamp that the Catoblepas lives in should be considered an impassable geographic feature. Casually walking through it should be the equivalent of trying to swim across the caldera of an active volcano. When a monster has an ability that you don't even want to go off, then that's a challenge for a party that essentially reads as "the party has essentially lost something as soon as they roll initiative against this creature; they should have done something to avoid this fight" which is tied to the idea of making sure that they're aware of it beforehand.
This! I want to challenge my players and I love it if they feel like they're going to die if they mess up, basically I want to scare them. I do not, however, actually want to kill all their characters. It's a fine line to walk, though if they do all die there's always the option of "Now you are all in (cool inner/outer plane). Welcome to "Escape from Avernus" or something like that, depending on what killed them.
Or actually having an ally come by and resurrect them, but after the villains won and left the area. Sure, this was a "prevent the X campaign", but ya'll got krumped and evil won. So... time to free the land from its new demon lord ruler, or something like that. Or you got raised to work for your evil overlord, congratulations you're now vampires, lycanthropes, or some other monster.
Or, you know, run a 1-shot and feel free to murder everyone at the end by throwing a scary monster at them that they only have a slim chance to defeat, because the goal was "do the thing that means we don't unleash death on us".
It's a great example of a monster that's great to adapt or use in a more witchery style game. Give it weaknesses overwhelming strengths and make figuring out those things part of the puzzle.
Definitely this!
This is a legit perspective and it's one that I think is more common among people who have been playing since the days of AD&D -- less so newer editions, though not unheard of. It really depends on the goals of the game and the world-building and the group you're running for. In a way, one could say that the Catoplebas was designed perfectly... because it's an "oldschool" era monster for oldschool players, so it has that sort of asymmetrical deadliness / imbalance by design, where even encountering it is a sort of fail-state, and the monster may have been designed that way as a response to those who may lamented the overall reduced lethality of 5th Edition compared to other editions.
Making players aware of a deadly monster beforehand is great. I've put the players up against monsters with CRs very high for their level--like a CR6 monster against three level 3 characters (with plenty of warnings for the players and a little bit of prep time).
As a DM, I expect to get this information from the CR, though. Not just needing to have prior knowledge that the monster is way more risky than the CR suggests.
I saw the title and I knew Bugbear would be on here. I'm convinced Bugbears are where Monk's damage got placed by accident.
Bugbears with monk levels? :D
@@poilboiler No, I think the primogenitor bugbear mugged the first monk and stole their damage dice.
@@danielbeshers1689 Their lunch too.
@@vernonhampton5863 I bet monk lunch is so bland.
Lmaooo nice one hahaha
Minor spoilers, but anyone notice that a fair chunk of these made their way into the starter campaign? Chunked the poor life cleric halfway through session 1.
Thought the same. Waterdeep heist and avernus say hello. Also the AL dragon something comes to mind.
Was about to say the same thing. SPOILERS. What's the first boss in LMoP? A bugbear with a good chance of surprise, with goblins and a wolf as allies. At level 1. Think the black spider is the final boss? Nope, flameskull and wraith are both far more deadly. That's not even mentioning the green dragon that can easily tpk the whole party with one breath attack much earlier in the adventure.
@@drz0b That dragon managed to wipe two of my party out and insta-gibed our 'friendly' Goblin. Swallowed the Halfling Whole as they lay on the ground gasping for breath, and tore the wizard bodily in half as he tried to fly away.
@@drz0b I was about to say the same. Lmop is designed as a tutorial for DMs as much as players and the book gives no warning of all these insta kill hazards.
our warlock died to a shadow. Had 8 strenght, 2 attacks hit, both rolled a 4 on teh strenght drain.
My halfling ranger almost died to a shadow with like 1 or 2 strength remaining. It was actually the result of a huge swarm of them that came upon the party after opening a chest. Now that I think on it he almost became the third in a chain of the DMs homebrew dungeons that each killed a character one after the other (there were official material dungeons interspersing them that killed nobody despite being challenging). That particular dungeon did go on to make the bard the 3rd in the chain resulting from another gimmicky trap encounter. We ribbed our DM on killing us off after we noticed the trend. Moral of the story is don’t be careless with what you throw at the party.
Rot grubs were the first monster I've ever faced, so I had 0 experience (quite literally). While everyone else was retreating I got closer to attack it (I was a fighter) and died. I have been playing for 10 minutes. Good thing I didn't give up on Dnd, It's a good hobby.
what kind of DM did u have back then throwing rot grubs at a completely new player as their very first fight??!!?!??!??!! I call heresy!!!!
Wow, I never even considered a character's age as a means of death.
Welcome to why I love warforged. xD
Elves ftw? lol
@@archmagemc3561 I actually love aaracroks for a simular reason. The are the shortest lived of race and there is a real possibility for them to die
My hobgoblin war wizard aged 40 years and is now known as Old Man Trunch😂 63 years old and still kicking ass
The ghost has pretty much had that ability since 1st ed. AD&D, and I'm surprised it's still there. Must be a legacy thing? One of the only things that distinguishes it from other noncorporeal undead? Except it also has possession...
As always, the best content from the best dnd channel
I've found that when played properly, even a level 13 party dreads trying to clear out a Kobold Warren, between their varieties of traps and pack tactics, it'd be easier to just cast Earthquake on their home and call it good.
I'm surprised the Beholder Zombie isn't on here. I ran one against a 5th level party once. I just looked at it's CR without looking at it's abilities. It gets to the Beholder Zombie's turn and I'm like "Okay, sweet, it uses a random eye ray on the barbarian." *rolls dice* "Okay, the Beholder uses it's..... DISINTIGRATION RAY!? WTF!?" The barbarian was disintegrated. Good list, tho!
@@antongrigoryev6381 but the zombie beholder is a CR 5 creature, the standard beholder is CR 13/14!
I had to fight a zombie beholder with a lvl 4 fighter with max health (got REALLY lucky with HP rolls), and after a single hit, my character was disintegrated... that hurts!
Definitely a creature that needs some caution. It deals an average of 45 damage in a failed save with a CR of 5. A 5th level fighter has 49 hp (with a 16 con). Any pre-existing damage or an above average damage roll and most 5th level characters are dusted on a failed dc 14 dex save.
"The Flameskull has a decent initiative score, and on round one it's going to be fireballing the party"
For some reason, that made me laugh.
It's 100% true of course.
How about putting a gray ooze in front of a 1st level party, and an intellect devourer in the next room? Looking at you here, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
Out of the Abyss was pretty hectic trying to get a jailbreak going.
These instant death abilities reminds me of old school D&D. Rogue has a 13% to disarm the trap, and 30% chance to save vs the instant death poison.
I had the same impression. Remember when level 1 wizard had 1d4 hit points and surviving early game felt more like a horror style adventure where everything is deadly rather than epic fantasy.
Even in 3.x, I though regular monsters like orcs had a decent change of killing a player on a hit. CR 1/2 and deals 3d12+12 damage on a crit.
@@jakubkucharczyk5255 I miss the d4 HD. Sometimes I feel like 5e characters have way too many HP. Then there are all of the death saves, lack of instant death, no negative HP. It's really hard ton kill a 5e character. A sucker punch sucks, but a good heroic death to save the day was always awesome. Like Treantmonk, I specialize in Wizards (since the 80's). I'm in not a wizard, then a halforc warrior is great. There is nothing like looking a monster in the eye and saying "Today is a good day to die!"
Yes. My orcs are Klingon.
@@cp1cupcake I took advantage of the broken crits in 3.0 and a vorporal sword. It was amazing downing several monsters in one round. Shenanigans ensued.
@@99zxk I'm an old ad&d/2nd edition player who started playing 5e a few years ago and DMing. We use negative hitpoints equal to the characters Constitution score. Once you go past that you make a death save. Failure means death, success means you last another round. They also don't go unconscious automatically at zero hitpoints. Once they hit zero they make a Constitution save DC=10+however negative their hitpoints are. Success means they remain conscious but bleed out 1 hitpoint. Failure means they go unconscious and bleed out 2 hitpoints. They continue to make these Constitution saves as long as they are at zero hitpoints or less. The bleeding effect can be stopped by any magical healing or an action to stabilize them.
One of the effects is increased drama because you don't know when someone is going down. Martial characters tend to be able to dig deeper with the Constitution saves. I've seen wizards go negative and retreat before passing out and fighter be near death and making the killing blow on the bad guy before passing out. It all adds drama.
It also makes low level characters less squishy and actually puts higher level characters closer to "instadeath" simply because their negative buffer doesn't change.
Volo's as a whole is the worst offender: Catoblepas, Rot Grubs, Spawn of Kyuss, Vargouilles.
I've never used vargouilles but I should.
Vargouilles were in other editions too and just as bad so at least it isn't ENTIRLY 5e's fault.
@@ilik3pi32 Very few creatures are 5E originals. Basically the only things I can think of are Chwingas, and Ooblexes.
As a DM I LOVE Vargouilles. If one of your players is infected they have some time to stop the transformation so make it possible. Like the drama but not big on killing off PCs.
What he is describing is the fundamental legacy of OSR D&D every dungeon master discovers sooner or later. The earliest additions were designed with the expectation that you would die quite often and early, and getting out of low levels alive was a rare thing.
The meta has shifted, and players no longer are tolerant of that expectation. However I personally liked that play style, and I think there's a lot of us that do. Some more bugbears.
I'm kind of surprised the catoblepas keeps coming back edition after edition. It's not particularly interesting or even cool-looking, just this ugly buffalo/giraffe looking monstrosity that kills you by looking at you. It must be one of the bones they throw to the grognards. ☺️
@@digitaljanus It's probably because greybeards like myself go back across each edition and compare iterations while raging on continuity errors. You know we are going to show up on the panels and say shit like "monster X has appeared in four editions to date and you suck for dropping my favorite monster because of story___."
They don't have time for that, no one does. So put it in.
Edit: I'm guessing that's the very definition of a grognard. Your statement doesn't make sense otherwise.
Players much prefer to get to higher level to enjoy the power leveling. I do think there's a miss opportunity. There are times we jam loads of good spells/ abilities through spell scrolls, equipment or blessing onto low level characters. (i.e: We start with lv.5 and cap at lv.10)
There is certain fun in the madness of loot rolling and no one is very offended when their characters die.
This style is ok at best for war-gaming (I'd still enjoy strategic fun at higher levels?), but it's awful for long-term story. In my opinion anyway.
@@AllThingsFascinate It's a fair opinion. I personally disagree, because I believe the driving cause of mortality (past one-shot crit dead levels) in OSR is poor planning. Emphasizing flash over evasion or detection, reckless playstyles. It's all well and good to charge in against a known quantity and quality of inferior opponents, but the moronic Jon Snow rush at Bastard Battle is not.
Think of it like Darkest Dungeon. The risk is the draw, and people still clear the game, they just do it carefully.
Can confirm, gave my first low level party a group of bugbears to fight. Everything went smoothly, until the bugbear landed one crit and nearly outright killed the tankiest member of the team. Bugbears are spooky
I'd introduce Bugbears as a way to keep the party on their toes in a dungeon to disincentivise "I look for loot" since if your perception is focused on loot you'll have disadvantage on passive perception to notice a bugbear sneaking up on you. If you don't want to be snuck up on then you need to say "I stay on guard watching each entrance" to get advantage on passive perception.
I like games which are less about luck of the die rolls but reward adaptation. So every new room you enter barricade the door behind you or set sound alarms.
@@ArchangelLion When you have disadvantage on a passive check you take a -5 penalty, +5 bonus for advantage.
I was in a party of 15 - 17 level characters. A single banshee dropped half the party. The others were able to kill her, but the adventure was over. The downed party members had to be carted out and saved.
I forgot to mention that we play 1st Edition Greyhawk. If the cleric goes down, you are just out of luck. They were high level though, so they had the gold for cleric services - but the adventure was over.
I'm not on the same page with you in this TM, I love killer monsters. What you should never do is randomly drop them at the party. Foreshow them, give clues on how to defeat them, let the party interact with them without fighting. Well presented these encounters are tense and thrilling, as high stakes are involved. Medusas, Shadows, Bodaks, Ghosts are some of my favorite monsters because the players can't go straight into fighting them. The second point: don't mind too much about CR, you know that pretty well.
The issue is a dm might not know how deadly these are. You're right about how to use them correctly. If forewarned and properly hyped up they're great as a high stakes fight. But a newer dm especially and published adventures treat them like ordinary encounters because they're not flagged as anything special.
12:06
Pedantry incoming:
There is the remote possibility that a (probably meta-gaming) player that happens to be next to you has prepared an action to cure wounds (Healing Word is out because you can't prepare bonus action spells) or feed you a healing potion or goodberry the moment you go down, before the end of your turn. You would also need another (probably meta-gaming) player to burn you with their action later in the turn order, because no one will have lesser restoration at level 1 (though a Paladin who had the forethought and meta-knowledge to not spend a single point of Lay on Hands healing would be able to cure the disease). And if you happened to be saved by a prepared Goodberry, that will drop you back down to zero (unless your saviour was a Mark of Healing Halfling Life Cleric), ready to be easily infested again.
This is so unlikely to occur organically that yes, it essentially means instant death.
Three of these monsters exist in Lost Mine of Phandelver, which also has a number of encounters that would be fine if the party was a higher level - the Goblin ambush/lair would be comfortably doable for a Level 2-3 party (you should be level 1 instead) and Venomfang can be done at Level 5-6 (where you're expected to be Level 3). No portion of this module even alludes to this extreme difficulty; any encounter is just put into the room and expected to be fought as any other. And Venomfang retreating at half health isn't an issue because it'll most likely TPK the party with its opening Breath Weapon.
"now if you're a sadist," I think you meant to say: "a long-lost relative of Chris Perkins"
Succubus: a CR2 with a really high Persuade that can kiss you for 5d10 damage, and if you drop to 0 you die...that's...a lot of potential to wipe out a party far before they burn through her very decent HP pool.
Worse is if you do not know they are a Succubus, and they charm you, and you then get commanded to surprise attack your party.
It's not "if you drop to 0 you die", it's "if your max hp drops to 0 you die". So unless you got to 0 from full hp, you don't outright die. Though yeah, 5d10 is a lot for 4th lvl and totally can be enough. Not to mention very nasty resistances Succubus has.
@@antongrigoryev6381 that's true - though, related, since it's a CR2, this could technically come as early as 1st level, definitely be present by 2nd level, and...that's a metric ton of damage (on average over 25) at those levels. That...is basically enough to outright kill, on average, anyone at those levels. Even by 4th level you're not looking great against those, and even if you don't die outright you're probably not going to last long after it.
Super scary, definitely not a monster to use for a casual game
@@Centaur255 They're CR4, no?
@@antongrigoryev6381 They indeed are
Jeez, these are pretty fearsome! I don't know jack about the MM so always fun to hear about crazy good monsters... looking forward to my next campaign to encounter new ones! (my last one was an Underdark campaign)
The spectre that appears as basically the second monster in the Death House module has basically killed a PC every time I run the module.
Just discovered that reading through the adventure! I mean, boy howdy; if that spectre rolls well for damage and the target rolls poorly on its save, it can kill a barbarian in one hit.
You had me rolling on the bugbear explanation:
...And usually the bugbear is finished off within the next round. That's how it goes, 95% of the time.
Aging could easily be fixed by making it advance one age category on a failed save and you slowly return to your real age by one step per hour of rest. Maybe change it to day if you want it harsher. Removing curse and similar fixes it instantly. Also if you get too old you simply fall unconscious instead of dying.
Yeah I'm okay with that. I don't think ghosts should just be dropped in just as encounters, spectres and wraiths are better for that. A ghost should be in an adventure for a narrative reason, and if PCs have to seek out a higher level spellcaster to get a remove curse or greater restoration afterwards, that's a good quest hook.
@@digitaljanus Yes. For example if the party gets attacked by an upset ghost which screams at them in a unknown language or something and it withdraws after either side starts winning because what it wants is its issue(s) fixed, not to just mindlessly slaughter. Then the party gets to figure out why the ghost is haunting and decide if they want to help it pass on.
Last week my 40 year old bard failed his save against a ghost and aged 10 years. Now he’s my real age.
I think there's a Pareto distribution for both parties and encounters. Something like an 80:20 rule. 80% of parties makes such bad decision that a single kobold is a threat. That other 20% is ready to take on a mindflayer at level 2.
Likewise, with encounters, 80% of "level appropriate" encounters are a cakewalk. Then, you cross into that 20% and it's like, "Yeah, don't even bother with a saving throw. You're just dead."
A bit high on the CR side compared to the other monsters, but one monster I expected was the Nightwalker. The mix of very high health combined with high saves, including paralyzed and solid damage, makes it difficult for any party. Oh and if you die, only a Wish can get you back ofcourse.
But when the high level min-maxed party asked for "an actual challenging encounter", they got their wish. 2 Nightwalkers with 2 Banshees is an interesting sight to behold.
I just did a combat test on D&D beyond this morning using their encounter builder and combat tracker to pit a custom-built party of 5 characters at level 5 (which were optimized to do as much damage as possible using all kinds of damage boosting features and spells) against a Catoblepas and 2 goblins. The Catoblepas went early in the round and killed one character right off the bat with its death ray. Thankfully I had just given the Cleric the spell Revivify when leveling it up from 4 to 5, and the cleric spent their turn casting Revivify then Healing Word to bring the dead character back and give him at least some health to work with. After that, I was kind of fearing every time the Catoblepas turn came up. Thankfully, it wasn't able to recharge its death ray in round 2 and it was dead by the time its turn came up in round 3. That test really showed how scary that creature is to even a big level 5 party.
Ah yes, my favorite encounter: one Banshee and one invisible Will o' Wisp, Adjusted XP: 3100
omg yes! the will'o's!!! best monster to go along with banshees!!!
*heresy intensifies*
Great detail showing a picture of a laptop at the end when referencing "PCs". Love it.
Agree with all of them, some honourable mentions are not mentioned but their images were shown at the beginning.
Hey Chris, can you make a video on how to challenge optimized characters without going too far in the other direction?
It would be a pretty good video, coming from a guy who knows the system inside out
I feel like he did a series of videos in that direction a little while ago, I’d have to look... though more DM content is always welcome!!
Edit: here’s his link to making interesting encounters that I recall having some good tips for tactical encounters, which is the best way to challenge optimizers. Chris did a couple other DM-centric videos around the same time that are worth checking out.
ruclips.net/video/Ynmj5FC49ZA/видео.html
This might be what you are looking for: ruclips.net/video/r__S8KsI6F0/видео.html
I recently had a flame skull in my game that punched way above it’s weight. The party is all 10th level, and ran into a flame skull in a megadungeon from a random encounter roll. I assumed it would just be a minor encounter because of their level, but the flame skull beat everyone in initiative, and when I rolled for both of it’s eye rays, both of them were crits. One of the wildest things I’ve ever seen. Ended up putting the already injured fighter at 2hp right off the bat.
Note about the flameskull, they revive after 1 hour and the only thing that can prevent this is holy water or dispel magic. A party below level 5 probably isn’t going to have either of these.
We had an Artificer in our LMoP campaign, we put the flameskull dust in a jar then into our bag of holding to be used later.
"Your strength doesn't usually increase as you level." Mhmm. Recently I killed a level 10 fighter (with a dex focus) in two highrolled shadow attacks. Party had revivify, so it wasn't a real problem, but I don't think I'm using shadows again too soon.
I'd say most of these monsters become more fun once the party is at higher levels, that way the monsters can be encountered in groups, or mixed with other monsters, or given some kind of terrain or circumstantial advantage. Solo at low levels, of course it often depends on the dice.
A lot of the eyes, but all the instant death honest are just bad design and will fell bad to use evn against level 20 PCs
No love for the Vargouille? (Spelling) A swarm of them can demolish a high level party if they don't have good Wisdom saves.
My DM recently put us in a fight against hordes of undead, with the goal being that they're all weak, but there are a lot of them to make things challenging.
The banshee went first and knocked half of us out. The flameskull went second and finished the rest off.
He literally had to have healing spells air-dropped on us by an NPC we had just met, just to avoid a round 1 TPK.
It seems the problem is low level characters encountering these creatures rather than these creatures in and as of themselves. Classic point, Banshees are great vs mid/high level parties. They have a terrifying wail but there's no follow up at all so even if half the party drops, the other half easily cleans them up. Now the party needs to rest/heal, draining the party of resources which is the point of an encounter.
Can confirm the terror that is a ghost. Fortunately, I was playing an elf so it didn't hurt TOO bad, but we had a goblin on the team who just barely escaped death that way. We all ran and made the guy playing a warforged deal with it.
One of the more memorable fights in out last long-running campaign was against 4 flameskulls XD The party wasn't doing well. They beat them, and left to rest. When they came back, they had regenerated XD This time they came with fire resistance and were ready in case of BS.
I may incorporate some of these into my ravenloft game... where there is no character death, dead pcs just wake up later with a new level of corruption & dark gift.
I love that the starter set contains 3 of these 10 ... loathe be the party that decides to attack Agatha the Banshee. All the LMoP advice I've ever read essentially warns the DM to pull their punches several times.
In reality, it's hard to deal with this stuff. You want your monsters to be convincing and challenging, but you also want the players to win.
Would Ghouls and Zombies give up on the rest of the party to start consuming the downed one? definitely... or so every zombie movie has taught us...
I've done the banshee that drops people to 1 that usually does it for low level parties. They get the fear without the unfair.
Humorously the high level parties I've ran for like it when it feels like the monsters are cheating, they have all these tools to use and it's great to get to use them.
A big lesson here is in discretion. I think an encounter with an intellect devourer can be really fun, even if it ends with a party member switching sides... The keys , as always is knowing your players. If you've got someone who might really like to harbor a secret against the party they might like the chance to roleplay an intellect d, and your players don't need to know what the monster manual says about fixing the problem. Maybe you can have their wizard find a special way to fix their friend but it's gonna be difficult and you take a session off to figure that problem out. Either way, try and make sure what ever mean thing the monsters are doing fun and cool for the players and you'll be alright.
In all the games *I* run, it's always the PC's that does something to kill themselves. Like a Mage being front line rather than the barb, or a rogue who thinks they are a fighter. I've ran most of the monsters you presented, and I have never had a TPK. Thanks for the video! *liked*
I usually go easy on any group lower than 5th level, but once I tpked a 3rd level party with a Basilisk, so nowadays I always try to find ways to have at least a mirror at arms reach (as DM or player). Fun story: I ruled that the Imp familiar of the party's Warlock didn't vanish when it's owner was petrified, so after all players where turned to stone the Imp was fighting solo against the big bad Basilisk - a couple of luck rolls later, the Imp actually won! So the group decided that somewhere there's this Imp, trying to convince a group of adventurers to save his master from his demise, in return for the treasures from the Basilisk's lair :)
Good observations. I do not think these creatures need changing, though. I need those creatures with extra UMPH to challenge my party..... did a Zerg-rush-style mega-encounter, where 3 lvl 17 characters had to break through a mind-flayer colony to find the elder brain... and the "walls" constantly spawned int devourers... fighting their way through halls of different encounter+encounters of mind-flayers and their allies... blasting intellect-devourers + to keep them at bay... with the doom-soundtrack playing in the background... they made it out alive!
I love this whole list. The only thing I do to fix them is instead of surprise attacking the PCs, I let them learn about the creatures in advance. Make them scared as hell and have to plan around them. I've had players planning and scheming and arguing for hours about how to deal with a deadly monster or situation and have a blast doing it. I run pretty unforgiving combats but we only usually have 1 PC death per campaign. And to be fair, it is almost always the same guy, if that tells you anything.
Thank you for this video. Auto death game mechanics are fine as long as the PC are aware that their character might die in your campaign. Actually these monsters help the dm to build tension and the players to come with creative solutions in an otherwise very very easy game. Characrer killing monsters are even better if players have a way to face them again after their first defeat, through res or another character.
I miss the housecat from 3.5e.
A time honored way to unite a team of strangers at my table, was walking home at night, when the soon to be party, and a couple commoners are jumped by a gang of especially ornery cats.
The PTSD fueled, quiet campfire stories about watching full grown men ripped apart in seconds when the cat got ahold of them, watching a fighter in full armor get grappled to the ground by a handful and executed, or one of the foul beasts dodging full rounds of attacks focused on it would punctuate the rest of the campaign. Darwinian character meetings. The weak just don't make it.
Showing this to my DM, there are a few he's used and didn't know any better.
One deadly encounter I suffered was the very first mission from Dragon of the Icespire Peak with a Manticore that deals one bite (1d8+3) and two claw attacks (1d6+3) per turn or instead she can fly and attack with 3 spikes (1d8+3 each) per turn. Against a Lv.1 party... it was one KO per turn. The DM had one NPC bringing us some Healing Potions for avoiding the TPK.
Easy rotgrub fix: round 1, you can use fire to burn the rotgrubs. Round 2 and beyond you can still do that, but you split the damage 50/50 between the grubs and the victim.
The most messed up thing about the quickling in particular is that it can make its 3 attacks per turn AT RANGE, oh and by the way? It has a 120 FOOT movement speed. You're basically restricted to trying to snipe it with other ranged attacks, but it also makes all attacks against it have disadvantage at a 16 armor class unless it has a speed of 0. Well, grappling it could give it a speed of 0, right? Too bad the quickling has a +8 to its acrobatics check, probably much higher than the fighter relying on his basic proficiency athletics check, pretty much only the barbarian would even have a chance.
Idk what you mean Chris I personally love when my game system has been simplified down so simple monsters can wreck parties anyway great video Chris!
Best case scenario (HP wise) at Level 1 would probably be the Hill Dwarf Barbarian that rolled 18 to their Con (with a +2 racial bonus, bringing it to 20). Their Starting HP would be 12 (Class Hit Dice) + 5 (Con Bonus) + 1 (Subrace HP bonus) bringing you to 18HP OR equally the Variant Human Barbarian with 19 in Con, and taking the Tough Feat. (12+4+2, also being 18HP). So even the tankiest level 1 character could not survive a slightly-below-average crit from the Bugbear; it can shut down Beefy McMeatwall's entire build in one round.
Maybe you should also do a video on best practice party tactics vs. certain monster types?
For instance, in case of the rot grubs swarm, they can only move at a speed of 5ft. So it's easy in most cases to keep a safe distance and use ranged attacks (unless you fall into a pit with them).
Same thing with the gray ooze - best to keep out of its range and attack from a distance.
For the banshee, I think if the players knew in advance that they'd risk encountering such a creature (perhaps they were warned by others or saw destroyed mirrors all over the place) the best they could do is to plug their ears with wax.
Star spawn manglers are a fun one to deal with... Let me just dash in and make an ungodly number of attacks at advantage that all have additional psychic damage attached to them, ignore attacks of opportunity, oh and... recharges on 4-6.
I've been running Dungeon of the Mad Mage for the past year-and-a-bit, and it's ridiculous-bordering-unfair how many Intellect Devourers are in the upper three levels. I hate the things, both as a player and as a DM.
I ended up allowing the players to use Detect Evil and Good to see which creatures are possessed by them, as well as making characters protected by Protection from Evil and Good completely immune to them.
The one I always think of for surprisingly deadly monsters is the humble Flying Snake. CR 1/8 so but with +6 to hit for 3d4+1 damage and then 60 ft move, and fly by attack. On offense they're hitting AC 16/17 on a coin flip so if you have 4 of these against 4 level 1's (a moderate encounter by CR) 2 hits are probably getting through most characters for on average 17 damage (mostly poison, so you need a racial defense to survive generally). On Defense they're easy enough to kill, but their mobility means that a lot of early level AOE is out of the question and melee characters may be as well, if the snakes are scattering, or using verticality to their advantage.
I was really specting the Alhoon here. If you fail the saving agains the mind blast in the first round, you automatically fail the save against a desintegrate spell in the next round
Oh man, so many of these monsters I'm familiar with. My first ever session, in which we were all level one, ended with fighting a bugbear, luckily no crits against us. Quicklings I love to use at higher levels, because a group of them can be so annoying to deal with. As a DM, I did once throw a flameskull at a level 3 party, and the fireball was tough for them, but two were tieflings so had fire resistance and another was a bear barbarian, so it wasn't too bad for them. I remember reading the swarm of rot grubs when Volos first came out, and being like, wait this is so dangerous! And as for shadows, my current DnD is level 12, and we're all agreed shadows would be very bad for us, as we have a wizard, sorcerer, and bard, all with negative strength modifiers. Only our paladin would really hold out for very long if hit. A good video for everyone I think, CR can be so misleading! Check the abilities people! Also second the person in the comments who said Zombie Beholders, they're another one that's crazy easy to kill people with, as I've seen, luckily again, the barbarian took the damage and lived (at a higher level than 3 by that point).
We're playing Dungeon of the Mad Mage with a variant rule that all additional dice rolled for crits are maximum value. On the first level of the dungeon we ran into a bunch of shades who surprised us, a banshee which surprised us and dropped 3 of us, and a bunch of bugbears who, upon killing them, have intellect devourers jump out of their heads. We hobbled further down, battered but alive, with a level up and a bunch of lessons learned. Now we're wrapping up the third dungeon level and we're developing PTSD
I think drow deserve an honourable mention because, even though they won't insta-kill your characters, if a player rolls badly on their Con save, they're effectively taken out of the fight. Also, they're definitely stronger than most other CR 1/4 creatures, so the XP guidelines for encounters underestimate how hard they are. The one time my group TPK'd in a one-shot I was DMing, it was against drow.
Agree on many of the choices, especially since Intellect Devourer's ability drain recovery feels like an oversight. Edit: My personal fix was to let the drain be recovered with a short rest. A long rest would also be in line with other drains, but I figured a short rest made sense for a CR2.
Star Spawn Mangler stands out to me. It is likely the PCs will be surprised by it with its stealth skill and ability. It then gets advantage and additional psychic damage on six attacks. That is already very dangerous. If it wins initiative, a character is probably dead. If it gets even one recharge on Flurry of Claws, it could lead to another KO or death. If you decide to play it as an ambush predator, as it seems to be designed and flavored, it has 40 speed and a climb speed to escape, hides with Shadow Stealth, and skirmishes the party effectively. One of these has almost wiped out a three member lvl 7 party of mine in a straight fight with one recharge. If it used hit and run, they would all have been dead.
Banshees man. The most obvious GM fudge I ever saw was when we were facing off against Strahd. Round 1, our DM had Strahd raise his mother as a Banshee. That Banshee won initiative, and shrieked. Like, 5/7 players failed their saving throws. Including me, the Cleric.
I could see the gears turning in the DM's head. Then he said, "Oh, did I say Wisdom? I meant a constitution save!" We rerolled and most of us managed to save that time, but Banshees man.
Oh, and honorable mention: spectres can go screw themselves. I've seen too many 1st level adventures with spectres.
Intellect Devourer is terrifying, but I've never seen a DM rule that the Intelligence drain doesn't only last until the next long rest. Afaik all drains that don't otherwise specify are gone after a long rest. Also you can save a brain-possessed character without a Wish spell. You just... need a replacement brain... to pop in within a round of forcing the Devourer out. Could be solved with Regeneration or Resurrection, or possibly finding a replacement and using a Raise Dead (or even Revivify if quick). Still very high level but at least not Wish lol
Shadows are terrifying. They were terrifying in 3.5, they were terrifying in Pathfinder, and they're terrifying in 5e.
They make great minions for bosses and BBEGS, but I wouldn't dare make an encounter out of just shadows
I hear ya monk man but I wouldn’t change a thing about these monsters. Only advice I’d give it try to drop in world hits as to how deadly they are or hits as how to avoid their devising attacks. Ie. ear plugs for banshee lowers the con save and damage, rubbing wax on yourself makes the Grubbs not want to burrow you, throw salt at the ghost to make it vanish for a few mins. I believe in keeping this game deadly worst that can happen is they win a new character.
Hilariously, my last adventure put the party up against a banshee and two shadows. 😈 I did give them plenty of warning though, and they went in fairly well prepared. Two characters went down but they'd put all the save buffs on the martial characters with magic weapons, which was the smart move--other than radiant, magic weapons are the best approach for most noncorporeal undead.
Ghost possession is also a decent way to auto drop a character to zero regardless of HP unless the party has Pro G&E prepped.
I'd suggest creatures like basilisk, cockatrice, medusa, and zombie beholder might also make it to this list.
Ye olde Bulette, the land shark, is a PC killing machine. It's an ambush predator with enough raw damage on that pounce attack to drop half the party, maybe even insta-kill a wizard.
For quicklings, I like to avoid them completely for lower levels parties, but one interesting encounter is to use a couple of quicklings with three levels of rogue (thief or swashbuckler, depending on if you want to harrass their loot or the PCs proper.) Gives them a bit more hp, a sneak atrack, and most importantly, cunning action. Then send them against mid to high level parties, but not enough quicklings that they pose a serious threat of death. Instead, they harrass, and are an absolute pain to pin down. It makes for a different sort of encounter than a straight up brawl, adds some variety, and usually forces players to get creative to deal with them, given how easy it is for these suckers to pop in and out of a fight. Note that your players will get very, very irritated with them, so make sure there is a very nice payoff for dealing with them. Maybe they are minions during the BBEG fight, or maybe they know some information or secrets the players want. But definitely give the players some nice reward for dealing with these little critters.
I was going to say ghouls but that's just my example of monsters that are low challenge enough to field in groups but each prompt saves whenever they hit.
I thought a rot grub hazard was unforgiving already, but apparently giving the party time to treat the rotgrubs without magic was just too easy to deal with.
Rot grubs are trivial if you are a paladin or someone prepared Lesser Restoration. But these are impossibilities below level 3. So many buff HP and hit bonus of this swarm and call it CR3. Because as you say, The only chance a level one or two party has is to know to pick them off with fire within one round. And being new adventurers, how the heck would they know that unless the party druid rolls high on a nature check or something.
The fixes for these are great. Personally I might keep the drop to zero for the banshee but only if they fail their save by more than 5. If that's too harsh maybe if they roll a nat 1 on their save.
I don't think any of the monsters in 5E are particularly well designed as it is. They usually feel flat lack bags of hitpoints. However, there is at least one defense that WoTC could claim for certain challenges and that's the fact that CR does not mean "thing to fight at this level". So an Intellect Devourer could easily have a big asterisk section that says "to be used at high levels only."
I quite like the low level humanoids who have little abilities to make them distinct ... but other than that yup, lots of sacks o' HP. Or high level casters with more spells than you ever need-> endless fireballs.
I remember as a third level party, we came up against two bugbears. One of the three PCs couldn’t join the fight, do to being stuck up higher with a rope for us to climb up. The second was a swash buckler who died from one critical hit and one max damage hit
I used a ghost specifically for the possession ability to tease a rough combat and actually offer a strange social encounter. If the party had gotten offended at the possession, cast the ghost out, and gotten her combat abilities going, then yes someone might have died
Good thing I watched this. My party is about to encounter a Catoblepas xD
18:20 Maybe a Katobleepas adds two levels of exhaustion to creatures it makes unconscious. That way instead of instant kill it will kill them if it takes them out three times.
Geez I’m looking back on one of our biggest cluster fuck encounters… two flaming skulls and a banshee… yeah. The only reason that one went ok was because we allowed bonus action potion use and my fighter, who had built up a stockpile of them, was beasting the encounter alone in the end while chugging potions and the bard rolled a 20 on a death save and came back up. The rest of the party just happened to stabilize on their saves and no deaths incurred.
I’m running Waterdeep Dragon Heist for a group of first time players and the first major boss fight involves an intellect devourer. Of course, they have no clue what this thing can do and it almost kills the fighter instantly on round 1, so I have decided it can’t do the *eats your brain and possesses your body* thing until you’re fully dead already. I might change that once they get stronger and more capable of killing these things quicker, but for now absolutely not, thanks
Honourable mention to the Trap Soul variant demilich.
Death effects are rare in 5th edition, and thus so is the means of protecting yourself against them. Additionally, your weak saves do not scale with level, so protection is *even more* important.
Unfortunately, this means the party is basically never prepared for them when they do come up.
I can say from experience that even if you party members rescue you, sitting out of a whole encounter because you failed a save before your first turn is not fun.
Great video. Only thing lacking was I was looking forward to the first edition intellect devourer, maybe my favorite illustration of the whole book.
All good choices, although I think ghouls should be on here too. I'm pretty sure I've killed more players with ghouls than any other creature (in multiple editions too). A hit with paralysis then an auto crit next turn is pretty likely to kill any 1st level PC. They're even worse around level 4 or so, where a few ghouls can quickly paralyze the most of the party.
It's easy to get carried away with giant spiders. I almost tpk'd my friends because it's really easy to accidentally use too many spiders at once.
Luckily I had a narrative reason for them to get bailed out if necessary, but be aware that those weak spiders can really add up (They can also fail 4 ambush attacks in a row on an npc you're trying to kill, but the dice do as they please).
To the topic of metagaming the rotgrubs or suffer death:
I think for something like that we have the nature skill and the ability to demand checks from our players. The DM should at that point demand a roll from the players and see if their characters actually DO know this. There would then be no requirement to metagame and it would be more than fair.
We let the DM secretly roll our perception (or take the passive) and it is an unspoken agreement that we do this to specifically not metagame, since if our characters know more than we do, the DM would let us surely know .
Why shouldn't we do or even expect that for other skills as well? At least at my table, this is the case.
I also constantly hear about how animal handling, nature and survival are mostly obsolete because they all are in the same ballpark and overlap too much.
But honestly it makes no sense to roll survival or animal handling on this. It is pretty clear one would have to know the specific behaviour of these worms to guard against their hunting methods. Survival does not entail encyclopedia knowledge about animals, nor does animal handling. Only nature covers that spot.
I don't think it's quite strong enough to displace Bugbear on the list, but I'd suggest Wisp for Honorable Mention. It's very likely to go first on initiative and there's a reasonable chance it will have advantage on its opening attack due to invisibility. If it crits and drops a character, or even happens to be in proximity to a character who gets dropped by another monster, it can Consume Life and end their career young. On top of that, with its AC and resistances and fly speed, it can be frustrating for a low-level party to deal with and it only takes one PC drop for things to get ugly.
CR 1/2
Hobgoblin's have the same issues as bugbears (minus the sneak attack) in that with an ally they deal 1d8+2d6+1 which can kill a pc on a crit or just lucky damage.
Jackalwere's are Immune to non magic/silver weapons which can be deadly depending on party compositions.
Skulks have effectivly greater invisibility and deal 1d4+2d6+4 if they have advantage to hit.
CR 1
Quadrones get 4 shortbow attacks at +4 of 1d6+2. Not as immediatly deadly but a couple lucky rounds and you can wipe out a party, especially with more than one.
Specter deals 3d6 damage and on a failed con save reduces the max hp by that amount, if reduced to 0 they just die.
Scarecrows have a gaze attack that can paralyze on a wisdom save DC 11. Not as deadly by themselves but with any other creatures can quickly become deadly.
CR 2
Gelatinous cube can swallow a person for 6d6 acid damage a turn and can hit multiple people at once, but you get two checks to escape.
Pentadrone gets five attacks and has an area of effect paralysis. A few bad rolls by a party can let one wipe them out
Every time I've used a giant crocodile, without fail, it has seriously messed up the party. Every single time.
Almost harmless alone...but truly deadly with other monsters of low CR... Guardian Portrait (CR 1): Counterspell x 3 and Hypnotic Pattern × 3 = the monsters can easily pick you off one at a time.
I had 2 Ghosts fight against a groupe of five Lvl.7 players they got released as part of a trap and I thought they would be interesting but they got almost defeated by their own Rogue before she got knocked out and they finally defeated the ghosts and healed the Rogue it was very intense.
Really good list I would also mention the Succubus and the Oni as being really strong and deadly creatures
Dragonclaws. Multiattack (2 attacks) Pack Tactics, Fanatical Advantage (advantage plus bonus damage) and Dragon Fanatic. Very scary.
They can easily drop a pc at lvl 1 with 1 or 2 attacks which are likely to hit due to advantage. If a lvl 2 party is facing 2, good luck. CR1 btw.
I feel that flameskull one, level 3 party get's surprised by flameskulls. I almost die from a fireball before I get a turn. Dm didn't realize they had a fireball till he used it and then chose to not use the other flameskulls fireball...
Missed a sea hag, who can drop characters to zero HP every turn with no recharge.
Commenting before watching, I'm expecting to see Bodaks and Intellect Devourers.
Why bodaks?
Ok so my dm is a sadist :D except the quickling we encountered every other monster on this list :D But he handled it well, with the banshee we all failed our death saves, buuut conveniently the NPCs which were by our side didnt fail. So we took control over them and fought out the battle with them, sadly one PC didnt make it because he rolled a 1 on the first save and under a 10 on the second. The flameskull really did instakill a player with a fireball. But we didn't tpk and luckily we were already lvl 4 so i had shield master which protected me from the fireballs. I guess those monsters are horrifying if the dm doesnt talk to the player and explains how deadly he wants to run the game and only if every player is ok with that, than those monsters become fun even if a character or two dies. We cheesed every encounter because even if we didn't had any knowledge of the monster we just assumed that its deadly, which was super fun, at least for us.
BTW i come from D&D: O great collab :)
So, I watched several of his videos where he shows you how to cheese multiclassing to make 'broken' builds and pick the best spells. Then I watch this video showing how to nerf the few monsters that actually would scare a character he tells you to make. Man I miss AD&D.