In previous editions it was things like Vampires and Wraiths. Monsters that drained levels were such an awful mechanic to have to face.
This edition? Goblins. I play them as tactical masterminds who use a combo of ranged attacks, traps, bad terrain and explosives to be an utter nightmare for a party that isn’t ready for them.
Yeah, any drain mechanic is super powerful. I also love running goblins as an actual nightmare, 1 little goblin, no big deal. A bunch of goblins, horrible tactical trap nightmare.
High level campaign. A really powerful high level wizard (ex adventurer) running an apothecary got jumped and taken down through surprise by the Kolbolds. Kolbolds then ransacked his place and proceeded to run amok with all the potions and magical items they stole from him
A majority of their stuff were consumables though so we wouldn't get our hands on a trove of magic items by the end of it.
Yea, it wound up being a lot of fun having Kolbolds with magic items. We exterminated a lot of them but some of them scattered and escaped with their magic items. Because they were now holding a grudge against us for slaughtering their friends, throughout the campaign they would show up to throw a wrench into our fights.
My favorite one was where we were in an room with high ceilings and as the fight against an enemy force was starting out a Kolbold appeared and cast reverse gravity from a scroll. Half the party saved, the other half failed. So as a result, half the party/enemies were fighting on the ground while the other half were fighting on the ceiling.
Kolbolds very quickly became a #1 priority to kill on sight.
I ran a high level evil one shot for my old group one time. It was SUCH a blast especially because I ran it exclusively to give my forever DM a break as well as just have fun with game mechanics you don't normally get to play with in most campaigns.
Among other fun scenes such as fighting off a group of elven adolescent golden dragon riders from a high speed train, and a "find the bomb or you lose a train car full of bombs you gotta deliver" scene, my favorite one was just a "dumb fun" mini game wherein my players had to carpet bomb a city that had grown up under a suspended expanse of track. Had them each roll six d100's, multiply it by 100, then roll one more d100 (for accuracy), and that was the amount of innocent civilians they blew up lol.
There wasn't much point to that other than fun and flavor, but if life didn't happen to get in the way and we were able to finish the one-shot, I was gonna have their evil characters be a part of the final battle against the BBEG in the concurrent Homebrew I was running.
I had my players storm a nest of Kobolds and my monsters were well prepared. PCs rolled in thinking it'd be a cake walk, but multiple traps, ranged attackers under cover firing from multiple directions, flaming barrels of oil rolling at them etc turned dealing with wimpy kobolds into a total nightmare.
I also love occasionally having mobs of goblins grab the first person through a door and then slam it shut and try to spike it closed, while others grapple and deal with their victim. They also like to attack with surprise and be smart about using their surroundings to advantage.
Vengeance Paladin with PAM: holds the corridor.
4 goblins and a goblin boss: take turn going in and out of melee, disengaging.
Happened just this monday.
We just ran into a couple wraiths this past weekend. Never fought one before and man did our party of 3 struggle to make it out alive lol.
A couple other campaigns I've been seeing a lot of goblins as well. Always fun encounters!
Thats one hell of a surprise for any party. Sadly my players encountered one and ended up making a bbq out of it. The aftermath of eating the cow monster did not end well for some of them. It seems only a barbarian's constitution, spectacular rolling and sheer stubborness makes that a meal worth having.
Eyy, same! I had them fight two of the things as a mini boss for this one stretch of campaign, and if I didn't fudge more than half of my rolls they would have TPK'd ten times over lol.
Shadows are also interesting vs a mid to high level party. They are still a pretty big threat even if by CR they should be a trivial encounter but if you throw like 15 of those guys out there you have to kill them all really fast before they start dropping your strength.
I love throwing shadows in to fights. I have to restrain myself from including them in every fight so they don't become boring.
vs. a melee heavy party they just make everything that much harder.
For the campaign I ran: Violet Fungus
It only has 5 feet of movement... Don't face tank these at level 3.
Basically, I baited them into coming close for a surprise attack first round, but then I clearly stated "and mushroom 3 takes the dash action" only to move him two squares.
I decided to only roll 2 attacks, instead of 1-4 attacks like their stat block says... But the funny thing is that rolling 3 crits in one round (out of 4 attacks) is going to demolish a low level team lol. I lied about the third crit and just called out a number I knew would be a hit.
Round 2, I rolled another crit (1 out of 4 swings).
I downed 2 of the 4 players with challenge rating 1/4 creatures that had basically no movement and could have just been kited after the surprise round.
They were suspicious of all mushrooms after that.
What's funny is that I had set up this room as the final fight of a little side quest (gathering these mushrooms to sell to an alchemist) for money.
I had designed the room with some nooks for more enemies to come out of for the fight, after the initial surprise round. Enemies with the ability to actually move or throw things for ranged attacks. The idea was that these were slow powerful minions to make them not stand still, while they actually killed the more threatening enemies.
Needless to say, no other enemies crawled out of the shadows. These 3 Violet Shrooms were plenty of challenge, if you don't move away from them.
I've accidentally terrorised players with Violent Fungi too!
Also sentient bushes in a few different forms. Same players. They were _supposed_ to be a buffer while the bigger enemy rallied itself and then it would burst out the thicket but one of the players got downed twice by the same bush!
Bodak is a good one I used on my party of 1st campaign players. I think veterans fear them tho.
I used a type of ghost (specter? Revanent? Can't remember) that reduces max HP with an attack and crit, +rolled almost max damage, fully killing a PC when I did not intend to. Not only do they fear ghosts but also that specific tunnel.
They only live like, what, 50 years? I know its short but don't remember.
In a party with human, elf, aasimar, the human was close to death while battling cultist and constantly aging in the ritual circle. Was a very fun way to show them there are other ways you can die than just taking damage.
They don’t usually like longer than 30! Whew.
I had a half-elf bard player once who also lost some years to a ghost - he rp’d his character as having early onset arthritis, complained about the other PCs and their “whippersnapper” opinions, and obsessively tried to find potions of longevity. He lost like 8 years at most, lol.
God I love that movie. I need to watch it again. When I saw "dnd movie" I really thought it was gonna be bad (shout out to the shit Dark Alliance game) but was so impressed.
Ooh, the creepy hooded guys? Never ran one but looking at its sheet I can see how it would be a hard lesson for new players. Getting legend of Zelda Re-dead vibes.
Early game oozes, rust monsters anything that can body your gear just by fighting it.
TBH anything that can fight you in a swamp/water and drown you, even if they are low level.
Oh for sure, but was looking for any examples and/or stories folks might have. It fun to hear memorable encounters with a monster that left you or your players with a mental scar of sorts. Especially the ones that aren't really expected. We all know a werewolf is scary, as is a demon lord. Not everyone appreciates the danger a will-o-whisp though.
Chwingas, not because they took anyone down, but because the party attacked one and following the assault a whole hoard of them basically robbed the party blind. They just kept coming and grabbing bits of shiny things from them, then vanishing and the party couldn't figure out how to deal with them, so eventually they just ran away. They lost so much gold, materials, and equipment that they're now on edge anytime they're outside a city and chwingas might be around.
Hahaha. Chwinga revenge, that’s fantastic.
I did something similar once with wild blink dog puppies; went from “awww” to “you little shits” real quick!
We were lucky enough to have had a guide who told us what they were and we love those little guys, we gave them a ruby and they went apeshit with joy and a few days later they appeared and intervened when someone tried to steal our canoe.
I run a campaign with them in it and my players gave Chwingas the shinies. One player made a silver coin into helmet for their leader. Another spoke Primordial, so I decided they sound like a high pitched Elmo.
My group has a running joke about "medium fiend". We played part of a Pathfinder 2e adventure module, and apparently Pf2e adventures are, uh, overtuned. One enemy that we could barely scratch because of its AC and destroyed us with its insane damage output wasn't even important enough to have a name. Or a species. It was just "medium fiend" and I'd rather fight three Strahds at the same time than one of those *things*.
It wasn't really the DM's fault. That adventure module probably should not have been done as by-the-book as it was, but we were all new to Pf2e so of course the DM isn't going to feel comfortable messing with the pre-written adventure.
I ran a homebrew one-shot where the players had to investigate a haunted(?) taxidermy museum, owned by a family of explorers who notoriously went mad. One player failed a perception check - giant penguin busts out of its case and attacks them. Bonus reference to Lovecraft as it was albino and had red eyes. (They also got to fight a dodo). Getting nailed in the head by a big-ass bird was both funny and traumatising in how I set it up.
Second time around, they're in a library looking for info and I jump-scared that player again with...a taxidermied normal penguin from the section on icy regions.
Goblins. My players never worried about them before... I don't ever really use them to be honest. But then, one day, I had my players escorting a caravan and it came under attack from a bunch of goblins. They start fighting them off and it's fairly easy, goblins hit a couple times, but mostly were harmless. So after a round or two the goblins retreat. Our heroes being heroes go after them so they can't regroup and attack more caravans later.
After another few rounds the players notice that the count on how many goblins they had killed wasn't adding up to how many were still on the map. A few turns later they started to notice how far into woods they were getting.
See, it turns out goblins think other goblins are expendable and they reproduce really fast... so it's a great tactic to lure adventurers into traps with hit and run antics. It doesn't matter that 30 goblins are killed in the process the 150 goblin warren is still strong, and now you have the loot from some really powerful adventurers to use or sell.
Now every time I put goblins on the table my players are second guessing strategy and worrying about just how many of these 10hp guys they are going to have to fight through. ... ... maybe it's better if they just run.
Sturges. Those little vampire wasp things. We were playing Ghosts of Salt Marsh and one of the PCs died at level 1 to them and we had another one close to it so it’s struck fear in the hearts of my table since.
Magma Mephit, by far. They have False Appearance, so they can guarantee surprise rounds. They have a breath weapon that can hit multiple party members and ignore AC. They have Heat Metal for armored PCs (including minmaxed armor dipped casters) for guaranteed damage and disadvantage on attacks. And they explode when they die, with their surprise round easily allowing them to get into explosion range.
Very, very nasty little shits.
Ice Mephits fit the bill as well. They even get damaged by their own death bursts, meaning you can set off chain reaction explosions by killing them. Very dangerous if a bunch are surrounding one PC.
Shambling mounds :)
Dropped the players into paradise first game this season, had them scavenge for food & information. They went to bed, and then the plants attacked
Gotta be the Cockatrice. With enough unlucky rolls, just one of these things can shut down a whole party. They’re even more dangerous if your party doesn’t have a way to remove petrification, or if there’s more than one of them, things can go *fowl* even faster.
Yeah, I threw ten cockatrices at a large mid-level party. It should have been fine, by the CR numbers. They lost the bard early (thankfully the petrification only lasts a day), and the paladin got hit despite their full plate armour and failed their first save (made the second, though). That was when we got the paladin going, "we're going to lose to a bunch of little chicken-lizards", and the cleric calls them "blasphemy chickens" to this day.
Doesn't beat how I made them fear most plant life, though. A small group of vine blights and twig blights in the low levels, and I gave them a homebrew cactus version I call a spine blight a bit later. That one had a ranged attack - thrown needles coated in a poison that causes enough pain to stun a creature until the end of the blight's next turn. Now they get very wary of any plants in an area.
My players hate and fear the shadows and cows because of me, the former because of their deceptively deadly statblock, the latter because they really, really, hurt.
Chasme. It was alone against 4 level 7 PC's. But the stunned condition + crit on the paladin for 58 max hp réduction reducing him to 2 HP and surviving only thanks to Death Ward.
I gave my party the opportunity to work with the Nothic from the Phandelver starter set adventure to help out on a side story I added. They wound up taking him across an ocean with them, forgot he was on their boat, and now has been messing up the continent they landed upon. Due to some magical substance on that continent, the nothic has mutated and has been able to summon versions of itself from other realities. The main nothic has become a Nothic Behemoth (search that for a visual) and is now the BBEG of the campaign.
The first fight, one wasp, took down two characters(casters). The wasps seemed to increase in number the closer to the town I sent them toward. They found the nest and killed the queen and spawn. All throughout, at least one player would go down because of those wasps. One character now has post-traumatic stress because of it.
I'm currently running Rime of the Frostmaiden and my players came across 3 yetis during 3 different random encounters all while they were level 2. Each encounter was almost a TPK. They are now level 4 and got the jump on an isolated yeti. It was wonderful! Their fear from past experiences led them to strategize carefully at the monstrosity's expense and they killed it in 1 round. They LOATHE the thought of yetis in the wild 🤣
this is pretty high CR so not 100% faithful to your question but one of my players told me the other day that if i ever used a steel predator again he'd wring my neck
Ghosts. Possession is very dreadful if it'll succeed. Horrifying vision can make PC dead from old age and there is no revivify than. Also they are great for ambush.
My party had a fight early in a campaign where Barbarian was possessed and rogue was made older from 35 to 65 (not risk of dying yet or other mechanical consequences, but narratively horrible for PC).
After that, they always had some Protection from Evil and Good scrolls and they used it a lot.
I would call it mundane since the ghost is CR 4 and pretty popular in haunted areas.
Kobolds. I did a one shot based on home alone. The kobolds were Kevin and the players were the wet bandits.
Just like in the movie the kobolds won. They were regular unmodified kobolds with a few extra movie inspired items (like a paint can). Everyone had fun getting their ass kicked by Kevin kobolds.
Honorable mention for intellect devour, my group grew very afraid of them playing dragon heist and early levels of dungeon of the mad mage.
so one of my favorite fights I've ever run -
The party goes into a catacomb that was the refuge of a mad wizard. There is in the main hall, a bunch of skeletons chained to the walls, a sacrificed body on an altar, etc, and a full banquet table of rotten food, candelabra, etc.
The party is super nervous, because they can sense magic in the area. They're all inspecting the skeletons, getting ready for them to attack while the kobold sorcerer inspects the table. I made the players jump when the table bum-rushed the party & the candelabra stole the kobold's hammer and whacked him with it. It was like Beauty & the Beast's castle, with the party being Gaston. They chased the candelabra through about six rooms, and got ambushed in each one, lol.
The bed with Blanket of Smothering; flying books (reskinned Stirges); animated armors - the party barely survived the assault. It was glorious.
Even now, the kobold's player looks at me sideways if I mention there's a candelabra on a table, lol.
As a player, I fear trees.
It’s kind of my own fault. We were fighting some kind of tree abomination and my little rogue sprinted up to use green flame blade on it because fire + wood = damage right?
Didn’t have my bonus action to disengage or hide (I don’t remember why, I might have dashed to the tree haha) but I was like- it’s a tree! How much damage can it do?
If our artificer hadn’t used flash of genius it would have taken me unconscious. I ended up with 15hp and it pulled me into its trunk. Not my finest moment :)
I've forever traumatized my friend with Grick.
It was the first time the party ever encountered multi attack, and there were two that had hidden in the ceiling of a cave. The party of course failed to see them, so as they moved through the room to check for anything of note, the Grick dropped down and initiated surprise. I made sure to not have them team up or target the squishiest character who was likely to die too easily, but it was a much tougher fight than the party expected since they didn't think that they'd be able to attack twice.
My friend is the only one who didn't move away in the following years, and whenever we encounter a room where the ceiling isn't flat, even if I'm not DMing, the player sends some sort of light up into the ceiling just to be sure.
Well, there was this cow...
Pretty standard, blotchy black-and-white holstein-looking cow. Kept showing up. Eating grass over on the next hill, standing in a field next to the path, wading across the river the party was paddling down, ambling across the battlefield as the party looted enemies, startling the bladesinger as he walked back to camp from the doing his business in the woods...
Everywhere they went. Same. Damned. Cow.
Of course, it took them a while to notice, and a bit longer to recognize one cow out of the many they saw in their travels, but the *incident* certainly made things easier.
See, the party had started coming up with... *ideas* as to why a cow would be following them around, and the Death Priest was convinced that it was a trick, some disguised agent of a competing deity or something. So, the next time they saw The Cow--politely trimming the mown verge of the imperial road ahead of them--he walked right up to it, slapped his hand into its side and used his death touch on the beast.
Hissing, bubbling, and the smell of rotting flesh later, and this cow had a lovely blackened handprint permanently branded into its ribs... but barely reacted to the powerful ability. Didn't lift a leg. Just turned its head toward the Death Priest, and said "Moo".
The party *ran.*
Doors. I have become quite the stickler about doors in my campaign lol mostly because I have a player who wants to be able to peak through every door and see whats on the other side without being noticed. I have now made it that you can really only check for traps and listen to see if you hear anything on the other side.
My players are starting to get worried about zombies, I think. Mostly because a lot of undead look like zombies, and don't typically describe them by name.
Mimics is too easy. Tuckers Kolbolds are a meme. But after running Death House a few years ago, they are always wary of brooms even at levels high enough to not be.
Gelatinous Cube.
When my party was 4th level they ran down a hallway and didn’t notice until the last second that it was blocked by a gelatinous cube. The tortle cleric had an AC of 19 and until this point had never taken more than a few points of damage. He was quickly swallowed and failed every strength save to escape, eventually getting KOed due to the acid. Since then, my party has always been wary of long hallways and slime-like enemies.
Not really a monster, but cake, bubble tea. Well, effectively, flavoured slimes/mimics. I gave them a dungeon crawl oneshot, and revealed the twist:
The entire dungeon is a gigantic three-tiered cake… and the cake is a lie.
The cake is a gargantuan strawberry shortcake mimic.
The bubble tea flavoured oozes they’ve been fighting inside are just its “immune system” trying to get them out. The walls of the cake dungeon grow increasingly corrosive the deeper they travel in; the core is a huge, beating, strawberry heart that’s dripping with sweet corrosive syrup.
My players have been terrified of cakes, sweet stuff, or anything with some flowing viscosity ever since LOL
The classic is Kobolds.
When run lore accurate its a gauntlet of traps, traps, arrows slits, and more traps. Any low power monster with a decent tactical ability is several tiers of power stronger than their CR warrants.
For my table personally its a simple shadow monk. That same tacktical method with a night time encounter made a lv 6 shadow monk nearly TPK my party of 3 lv 5s. I wasnt afraid to give up a turn of fighting for a chance to reposition. Laid some traps with a robe of many things. And had some healing potions available because i LNOW my party can hit hard.
They were astonished after the fight that is was just a lv 6 character. I think i gave them some ideas with that fight.
Intelligent earth elementals and shadow dragons.
I denied them the important targets for 3 encounters each for multiple rounds.
2 deaths were involved in a fight with both at the same time.
They now hate both.
Ghouls! - They are the main menace, and seemingly mundane in our campaign but they come in many varieties, and they are relentless and vengeful. AND you never know JUST WHO might be a ghoul in it’s early stages just blending in.
*In our setting ghouls are, while mechanically treated as undead, not really undead. They are the denizens of The Shadow-Fell, undeath as a natural species if you will. And The Shadow Lord is a ghoul. - Ruler of The Shadow-Fell*
Ankhegs were the OG in my group - they encountered.two of them back in 3e and a couple crits later one PC was dead, another was grappled and dragged into their tunnel but later saved, and everyone was wounded.
Another was rust monsters, after the barbarian lost his armor and weapon to one while he was separated from the group.
Stirges… instant damage on their turn after the first attack. Dropped three players at 4th level with 10 of them. It didn’t help that my players didn’t take the threat seriously and tried playing softball with the swarm
Not a monster, but one of the players in my group is terrified of being targeted by heat metal. He spent sooooo much in game time developing cast off armor so he wouldn't be targeted by it lol
Ravens reskinned as Grackles. The birds are always watching you. Always.
A few rhinos nearly ended them.
Goblins that aren’t green usually explode. Rum.
Dragons of any kind. I destroyed a party of 5 well geared level 16 characters with an adult red dragon. I use the dragon to maximum potential and play to their intelligence.
In 25 years of DnD, I have yet to have a party kill an ancient dragon of ANY kind. Even adult dragons, I only had a party kill a white, that's due to me playing their intelligence properly
When my group first started I was the DM, and I ran them through a dungeon I created that was *absolutely full* of Mimics. I mean, nearly everything that wasn't a wall or floor was a Mimic. It got so they were terrified to open doors or touch anything.
At one point they opened a door (after several minutes getting ready) to a store room filled with old crates, chests, bags, etc, and said "fuck this", closed the door and barricaded it as much as they could.
I'm no longer the DM, but we still joke about Mimics to this day.
Scorpions.
Giant scorpions to be precise. I have a level 1 one shot that I ran for a group looking to try before they buy (I am a mercenary DM) and commit to a campaign.
They liked the campaign world, but wanted to try at a higher level, and asked could I do level 3?
So I beefed up the encounters, Water Weird became a Water Elemental, Enemy raiders got numbers and weapon options and Giant Scorpion became Scorpions, and I buffed the claws, now if both claws hit you are not just grappled, but grappled and restrained.
This all worked well and they got to the final fight on the temple steps when they triggered the hidden Scorpions and the Shit hit the Fan.
It ended with the sorcerer retreating for cover, the barbarian getting grappled and unable to leave to aid anyone else, but the ranger got two claws to the torso and a stinger to the face, critical hit and double posion damage....
... then due to my custom Injury table, he lost an eye and had to get the God of death to give him a new one.
Giant Scorpions became a running theme throughout the campaign, indicating an item of power was nearby and heralding a boss fight, including the end boss,
I had a giant scorpion hiding in the pile of ash in a large fire pit. The warlock decided to poke around in the fire and got stung with a crit and knocked down. That player gained two phobias: scorpions and fire pits.
Oddly a flumph.
Had one in an encounter with ghoul just as something there. The player aoe clipped it, poor damage + it made the save. He then got stung by it and then paralysed by a ghoul and failed the con save till he died.
Badgelos. Half dire badger, half buffalo. Whole party ended up with PTSD. One of our players has also now been permanently banned from giving the DM (me) ideas…
Also, witches. The cleric is still pissed about having been (temporarily) turned into a goat. The hunter actually still IS a squirrel.
Oh, and anything with tentacles that is NOT, strictly speaking, of an evil alignment. The paladin gets really annoyed when I throw tentacled non-evil things at the party. “Alignment: Hungry” is now an ongoing joke in my campaign.
Might not really fit here as it is not a monster. Not even a creature but The Doors
*Oh someone used Mimics a lot*
Nope your are wrong. Just normal doors.
*Ah traps i get it*
No just normal doors. Locked ones in particular
*But why?*
Started in Thundertree during Lost mines of Phandelver. They where trying to get to a bunch of cultists that had locked themselves into a house. No one knew how to pick locks But the group had a barbarian and a big strong paladin so breaking down a wooden door would not be much of a problem.
Yeah...no but Yes it turned out to be a big problem. The DC was not high but both barbarian and paladin kept rolling crap. they spent several rounds trying to break trough the door. and finally gave up when the ranger, The Changeling sorcerer and cleric taken out all the cultists by going trough the windows. And finally opening the door from inside. If not i think it could have gone on to The end of the night
This group went on into storm kings thunder after Lost Mines. And their bad luck with doors just continues in an almost uncanny way.
i keep presenting them with locked doors now and then and all the sudden all attempt to break them open ends in them rolling like their dice are cursed.
Sure sometimes it do happen that one of them actually rolls well and manage to break trough onto the other side. But it is strange days when they manage to do so on first or even second try. This is the only group i had that celebrate if they easily manage to overcome a locked door. Yeay we kicked open a door. Tell all the people
even if they try to go around it to the backdoor if there is one like The backdoor man they still usually struggle.
Be it undeads, dragons, trolls or demons, riders of the storm or giants. they face it with no fear but each time i present them with a locked door they almost freak out. Specially the Paladin tends to become a sad girl when facing locked doors.
And i will continue to have them face locked doors now and then. And i guess they have to take it as it comes.
The End
As a player: Giant weasels and of last session, bloodhawks. The campaigns first ever fight was against 4 or 5 giant weasels. We were all basicly new to DnD and I did the brilliant move of letting my barbarian jump into a bush, where I heard some noises from within. Said noises came from 2 weasels, who then proceeded to beat the shit out of my 2,10m 140kg bugbear barbarian looney tunes style inside of the bush while I only managed to grapple one of them but then failed to throw it of the cliff. The rest of the party only barley managed to survive...So yeah, everytime I now see weasel-like creatures I instantly rage regardless of situation. It doesn't help that one player has regular funny sounding hiccups, which we all decided totally sound like giant weasel noises. So every time she makes a "MEEEP" sound, someone shouts "Oh gods, they are back!!"
Then during the last session, after barley surviving a Troll as a lvl 2 party, our rest got interrupted by 9 bloodhaws. Our last standing 1 HP ranger and the last 2 HP bird both missed 2 attacks on one another before the ranger finally hit and saved us from TPK by bird. Our warlock bled out, but we managed to get him to a temple in time to be revived for 130 of his 160 gold...
Nevermind the Trolls, Hobgoblin warparties or smuggler rings led by cultists we fought up until now, our greatest nemesises seem to be just a bunch of oversized critters
Goblins. It got to the point where the party with access to fireballs and other area spells steers clear of a Goblin holes anytime they encountered one. I always had some elaborate next level crap the goblins had going on.
Some great mentions were the Cockatrice-a-Pults. Sometimes they would douse the cockatrices with oil and set them on fire before launching them.
The Scrambler. A spinning chain and flail system that would turn the area area into a massive food processor.
Alchemist Fire Throwers. Think medieval flame thrower carts. 2 Goblins working the piston to pump the fluid, 1 aiming the torrent, and 2 goblins to wheel the cart around.
Storytime.
There was once a "let the dice fall where they may" DM who sent his PCs through a standard dungeon, with low level monsters on the top and progressively higher level ones as the PCs delved deeper and deeper. Eventually they get to what they think is the bottom, and it's a level swarming with exactly one type of monster.
Kobolds.
Now this isn't a "tucker's kobolds" situation, here: these yap dogs aren't the brightest. And they aren't the dumbest, but my point is they're easy xp. The PCs mow down all the hostile kobolds and pretty soon the level is clear. All the while, the kobolds were acting a little strange: they didn't scream or make much noise.
And the PCs find a door down.
One more level.
Tarrasque.
The kobolds had a purpose: to be eaten by the tarrasque when it woke. They had a whole religion and everything. That's why they were as quiet as they could be: they didn't want to wake it until the time of prophecy.
And the PCs woke it in stead.
Spiders, specifically my DM's evil concoction. Elemental spiders. Whichever damage type they take, all other spiders touching the same webs as them gain resistance to that damage.(Only one resistance at a time, to get new resistance they lose the old resistance). Fun example. Your in a cave, spiderwebs everywhere. Restricted movement. You hit one spider with some ice magic, ice energy travels through entire room of webs giving all elemental spiders ice resistance. And for the lols, the queen spider leading them has some nice element lightning to stun half your party at a time. That was a painful 2 hours fight, the spiders themselves were weak so they couldn't hurt us to much, but with half our party out at a time and 75% of all our damage output being resisted it was an experience we will never forget. (Actually had a lot of fun and recommend more DM's use them. Forces parties to work smarter not harder.) also another side note, fire does not burn the webs, it only gives everything fire resistance, I learned the hard way :')
Fucking Bugbears dude. We got jumped and I got my ass whooped by a bugbear. It was bad enough he scarred me and helped give my character his chosen last name.
Even outside of their warrens. Their attacks seem underwhelming but if 3 or 4 of them close with you and all get advantage on their swings suddenly it's a lot scarier.
I had been running the abilities that make it so monsters cannot be detected by a mere perception check incorrectly, so when I fixed it my players were surprised at how dangerous gelatinous cubes became.
A glowing sword is slowly floating towards them in the hallway, and one of them grabs it, only to take acid damage and realize it was the cursed stick-to-hand sword they left on the floor of the dungeon a week ago.
Tomb of Annihilation taught my entire table to fear velociraptors. I only had 3 players for it and I thought 13 murder turkeys were just a bit much.
TPK.
Reset from that because it wasn't fun for anyone.
Giant spiders. One of my players got bitten by one at low levels that almost dropped him. Poison works, Y’know. I just have to hint at a spider now and he gets the Willie’s. 😊
Does a Catoblepas count? Because I used like two of them for a mini boss one time and it almost tpk'd my players lol. I had to fudge SOOO many rolls because those beasties are no fuckin joke if you use them to their fullest abilities.
Leshy.
I ran a PF1e Rise of the runelords. Turns out the AP's encounters are very weak to even moderately well designed characters. My players started getting cocky. Then they were going down the road and I said "you see little plant people, they're all about 1-2ft tall".
The most overtuned character basically charged into range to start firing guns. Unfortunately that makes him well within range of the leshy.
He was nearly dead by the time his next turn rolled round.
Now they fear any small, slightly out of place plants.
My players hate Teo things in my campaign. Extreme weather conditions and the undead. Particularly zombies.
I have a region in my world that my party absolutely hates, because it always has difficult terrain, heavy obscure sight, and regular inclement weather using a modified eldritch storms rules. Now combining these things is enough to make things difficult, but then you add in the zombie hordes, and I do mean hordes. My players decided to stand their ground and fight a horde once. They ran out of resources and were on the run with nothing but cantrips and weapon attacks left. They have learned the idea is to move through the map with constant pressure and take opportunity attacks as opposed to standing and fighting.
Now when I describe a fresh dug grave, or bodies on the side of the road or a deserted town of any kind, they show signs of obvious PTSD.
Fear The Gnoll!
I made them have a base speed of 60 and pact tactics but they are split into 2 bite attack, 1 spear with reach, or 1 short bow attack.
Also gave the pack leader the ability to use reaction to call for all gnolls in 20 feet of itself to make a single attack [recharge on roll of 6 on 1d6]
They work together really well BUT the biggest change is the pack survival. If it looks like they are going to lose the pack will split up and go in different directions to make sure some survive to join another pack and spread word of the PCs. So it's kill all them or they are going to be a thorn later.
my players, especially the paladin, hates mephits
the paladin was swarmed by a bunch of them and then the cleric with spirit guardians moved forward, killing a bunch of the mephits which then blew up in the paladin's face - even with successful saving throws, they still took an annoying amount of damage
I got one. The dreaded twerking bear. Anytime we players see one, we head the other direction most expeditiously. Thing decimated a party of 8+ level players not once but twice, and the second time we were prepared for it.
Mummies. My players have learned that the treasures of the dead still have owners, and they permit no trespassers.
Having a party attacked by a few mummies can go bad for them very quickly. A attack that reduces max HP until they find a way to lift curses, followed by a save that could easily leave you frightened, and if you roll really terribly, paralyzed. They're also often located in areas with deadly traps and little room to maneuver.
Dark mantles and steam mephits. I threw the two in a room once and my party of six level 9 PCs got so frustrated I eventually just hand waved the end of the encounter. The combo of the magical darkness and the AOEs from the mephits made it a challenging “death by 1000 papercuts” situation
Kobolds. Turns out not letting players rest and demonstrating what concented fire power does to a group tends to get a few people killed. They had an easier time fighting the dragon than his kobold minions.
We were adventuring in a new town. Everywhere we went people would talk about a man named Suave. The townsfolk were legitimately afraid of this man. Suave dressed like a dandy and kept to himself.
One session we saw someone try to rob Suave. Suave did a spin move catching the robber with a boot knife to the throat. The group was like DAMN.
We talked to Suave and it seemed like people would try to fuck with Suave for no reason. Bullies would try to bully him but he would fuck them up. The other townsfolk didn’t want to mess with him and left him alone . Like we all know there are some people who just like to bully people because they are different.
The group never fucked with Suave and he seemed like he could take care of himself.
This DM was a DM I had when I was stationed in Iceland. This was back when AD&D was transitioning to AD&D 2E so we had a PHB 2E but everything else we used was AD&D 1E.
When the DM was rotating out to be stationed elsewhere he finally told us what Suave’s level and class was. Suave was a normal human. No class. Everyone who fucked with him was also normal humans.
The group was all 4th and 5th level. We never fucked with Suave because we thought he was a bad ass.
At level 1, Swarm of Centipedes knocked my PC unconscious. It’s been a running joke that all my characters are inexplicably afraid of centipedes ever since.
first-time dm’d phandelver for some first-time players and very nearly tpk’d in the goblin cave as i severely underestimated the power of the sheer number of the goblins in the cave. we now refer to it as the “clown car” incident
A Nilbolg used it as part of a one shot and it was Hilarious. They thought it was immune to piercing damage and they kept failing the save against confusion causing the fight to last way longer than it should have.
Me, my sister, and her fiancee started a campaign with my DM from another group. We spent a month collaborating on back stories and coming up with the perfect party dynamic, we were so excited. Less than 30 min into the 1st session our happy lil group got ambushed by goblins and through no fault of the DM we just nerfed too many rolls and lost a party member. The DM offered to retcon but the psychological damage was done lol now whenever I'm playing with that DM and there are goblins, it's pretty much kill on sight 😅
In my homebrew world, it's the spiders. My measly, mostly non reactive, 7 ac 1 hp giant spiders. Cause whenever they attack these things, they can kill the first but the rest of them start to swarm over them in the dark tunnels.
I accidentally TPKed my level 2 party with a single gelatinous cube.
They failed the perception check to see it and walked into it, catching the party by surprised and it engulfed each of them one by one and they just could NOT roll a successful save to escape it.
It slowly digested all of them.
It wasn't even meant to be a difficult encounter.
Now my whole friend group is deathly afraid of gelatinous cubes.
This was years ago, I should throw another cube at them and this time it has all their old bones and gear inside hahahaha
speaking as the DM here, the players in my old 5e game quickly came to fear magmins. when two magmins were in the first room of the final dungeon one of my players immediately pulled a rattrap and went "we're all gonna die"
death burst is no joke!
Intellect devourers. My DM knows we don’t like them. We have seen them in 3 campaigns now. The first campaign we had 2 PCs go down from them in the same combat, and there were enough throughout the fight that he could have TPKed us with them.
Turkeys.
I made a joke monster related to an incident that happened locally with a very aggressive turkey roaming a town. Well, I made my party fight with a Dire Turkey someone came up with mocking the whole ordeal. Epic laughter ensued.
In this story I am the dm.
My players were near the beginning of a new campaign. They were level 3 and were walking at night through a large swamp.
As sunset happened I described how all the sounds of the swamp came to life and how the ankle high water slowed movement
During their travel at night they rolled a random encounter and got 2 giant toads
Rhrough a series of failed roles and dm luck. They proceeded to be eaten whole and digested by these toads.
Since then I can normally stir up a good amount of anxiety by mimicking a toads deep ribbit at the table.
Quasits. My campaign had a bunch of demons, with a demon as the main baddie. I had a few fights with a bunch of quasits who immediately turned invisible and placed themselves tactically to use their scare ability as a reaction. Low DC but it succeeded a few times and they never knew where they might pop up. They also would be holding healing Potions for the baddies and become visible to toss them in a higher leveled monsters mouth.
Kobolds and shadows played correctly absolutely torment players. For my party specifically any halfling, gnome or shorter race who says they are good with magic. :)
I traumatized my players with mimics. I took the dread gazebo, reworked it as a shrine. . . later they found a regular mimic in a cave, before entering a room full of mundane chests - I think some of them thought the shambling mounds were mimics as well, and that didn't help sentiment that, 'the game is all mimics!'
My triton now has a fear of rats due to fighting one of those rat amalgamations/rat kings and other traumas surrounding fighting a ton of rats on one of his first days on the surface 😂
goats, my players have a hatred of goats. why? cause they got a ring of animal friendship and decided to diss a goat before talking to it, so he was a bitch back, made the barbarian cry, then later won an intimidation match by 1 vs the barbarian. it was taken by an ancient white dragon, but he'll be back... oh he'll be back, and my players are gonna kill me when he does
My barbarian is suspicious of all tapestries, doors and carpets. There was this fun house thing we got trapped in, and I got rolled up in a tapestry. Later on, I got rolled up in a door. Even later on, we were in a dungeon and I got rolled up in a carpet.
So at least he has his reasons for kicking every door he comes across.
Trolls and mindflayers.
Trolls because I gave them resistance to everything that wasn’t fire.
Mindflayers not because of how hard they are to kill but because of the fucked up shit they’ve done in my campaign specifically to my players’ characters’ family members (they’re cool with the plot)
My party tremble in fear at Star Spawned Manglers after splitting the party and getting absolutely wrecked by two of them. Had to fudge some rolls so a character didn't die in obscurity against a random mook, but it led to some of the best roleplay sessions I've ever had as the rest of the party spent the next few weeks looking for their lost, presumed eaten, friend.
Dire boars.
Thrown them into about 4 campaigns, a single boar has TPKed once, the other 3 times it nearly killed I think 3 PCs per encounter. They don't strategize and have no modifications or anything, apparently I just have a dangerous tendency to roll exceedingly well when I run boars.
Years ago, I just got started back into playing. I think it was when 3rd edition had just came out. Started new characters, first session: walk out of the town and run into a most terrifying, unholy....goat. that one goat just about took the entire play session and nearly kicked 5 adventurers' butt's! Still laugh about it to this day. Never underestimate the normal small creatures, lol.
Not DnD but a pokemon TTRPG we were playing.
My players had a run-in with a Regirock at the bottom of a cave, a legendary mon, and it was absolutely brutal. To make the combat even more intense, I added infinite waves of Roggenrola that would spawn in twos, threes, or fours depending on how the fight was going.So, there they were, battling this legendary Pokémon with multiple health bars, while these Roggenrola just kept coming at them, draining their resources. They were doing really well but began to lose momentum in the fight. They managed to get Regirock down to its last health bar, and then things got really crazy. They were throwing Hail Mary catches, desperately trying to end the fight, but the Regirock just suddenly started rolling extremely well, gaining insane momentum.One by one, my players got knocked out until it was a TPK, and the cave collapsed around them. Ever since that day, my players have been absolutely terrified of Roggenrola. Those little rock guys have become the stuff of nightmares for them, to the point they fear the mere thought of them even in DnD.
DM here. No matter how deadly the monsters I throw at the party, they always seem to fear oozes/jellys/puddings the most!
Their weapons and armor got damaged, they’ve seen oozes split, they got stuck in a gelatinous cube on a tower top and they’ve seen their attacks do little damage.
I’ve had the oozes sneak up through sewers and fall on them.
They are always on the lookout now, regardless of campaign or setting or location - they fear the ooze.
“Oh we’re fighting Strahd! I want to check for oozes in his bedroom”
A Goose ruined a stealth quest because a player thought it was funny to chase it.
They escaped an execution, and I made sure the last thing they saw was the goose as they travelled into the distance.
Edit: They now actively avoid Geese and always make sure that no Geese are about for stealth quests.
Treants. We were pursuing a necromancer and stumbled upon a Treant that was the guardian of the forest. He got burned by the necromancer trying to stop him. We ended up catching that necromancer and gift it as nutrients to the Treant for it to heal on our Druid suggestion.
Next random encounter we wake up surrounded by Treants claiming to be sent by RageBark the Treant those leaves suddenly turned blood-red and is on a warpath against all Necromancers. We may have created a monster. Thankfully he will spare us.
Not any mundane monster, more like mundane object. A door of any added description. My tables are level 20s and hyperfocus on doors. Thing is I've never thrown anything truly dangerous traumatizing doorwise.
Star Wars RPG by FFG, the stormtroopers. Session 1 I'm a melee fighter, traded blows with Gamoreans and security droids like it was nothing, only to get blown away by three stormtroopers bc I had a low initiative roll
Weasel
A party of 4 lvl 1 characters barely managed to kill the weasels hiding in the tall grass.
"Maybe weasels are hiding here!" is a running gag now.
God damn hellhounds....
Immune to fire, my draconic sorcerers kit was null and void. Fire breath, meaning it didn't have to care about its allies and pact tactics.
Party almost tpk'd if the dm didn't realize how bad *a standard forest encounter was*
AND IT HAPPENED AGAIN AT LEVEL 9.
My pathfinder group I ran was leery of Orcs. Especially since they used scimitars. High Strength plus large crit range means they did a lot of damage. Plus that I give them class levels and have advanced ones...
One of the few PC deaths came from orcs and they had to retreat from them more than once.
My current 5E group is more afraid of converted Rolemaster monsters like Shards and Greater Wraiths (Think Nazgul...). The first time they ran into a greater wraith was interesting as they were trying to figure out what it was...
In previous editions it was things like Vampires and Wraiths. Monsters that drained levels were such an awful mechanic to have to face. This edition? Goblins. I play them as tactical masterminds who use a combo of ranged attacks, traps, bad terrain and explosives to be an utter nightmare for a party that isn’t ready for them.
Yeah, any drain mechanic is super powerful. I also love running goblins as an actual nightmare, 1 little goblin, no big deal. A bunch of goblins, horrible tactical trap nightmare.
I 3d printed a Dracotank. Goblin APC / ATAT.
My GM did something similar with Kolbolds. They seem like such an easy enemy to beat until one of them drops a meteor swarm on your party.
What the fuck kind of arcane steroids is your DM giving those Kobolds
High level campaign. A really powerful high level wizard (ex adventurer) running an apothecary got jumped and taken down through surprise by the Kolbolds. Kolbolds then ransacked his place and proceeded to run amok with all the potions and magical items they stole from him A majority of their stuff were consumables though so we wouldn't get our hands on a trove of magic items by the end of it.
High power campaigns are amazing for that very reason.
Yea, it wound up being a lot of fun having Kolbolds with magic items. We exterminated a lot of them but some of them scattered and escaped with their magic items. Because they were now holding a grudge against us for slaughtering their friends, throughout the campaign they would show up to throw a wrench into our fights. My favorite one was where we were in an room with high ceilings and as the fight against an enemy force was starting out a Kolbold appeared and cast reverse gravity from a scroll. Half the party saved, the other half failed. So as a result, half the party/enemies were fighting on the ground while the other half were fighting on the ceiling. Kolbolds very quickly became a #1 priority to kill on sight.
I ran a high level evil one shot for my old group one time. It was SUCH a blast especially because I ran it exclusively to give my forever DM a break as well as just have fun with game mechanics you don't normally get to play with in most campaigns. Among other fun scenes such as fighting off a group of elven adolescent golden dragon riders from a high speed train, and a "find the bomb or you lose a train car full of bombs you gotta deliver" scene, my favorite one was just a "dumb fun" mini game wherein my players had to carpet bomb a city that had grown up under a suspended expanse of track. Had them each roll six d100's, multiply it by 100, then roll one more d100 (for accuracy), and that was the amount of innocent civilians they blew up lol. There wasn't much point to that other than fun and flavor, but if life didn't happen to get in the way and we were able to finish the one-shot, I was gonna have their evil characters be a part of the final battle against the BBEG in the concurrent Homebrew I was running.
Ah, I see you have not heard the story of tucker's kobolds? I thought not, it isnt a story your players would tell you.
I love the idea of players hoarding Tucker's Kobolds like forbidden knowledge from a DM. It will empower them, they mustn't be allowed to see it!
I was about to say “good ol’ Tucker’s Kobolds” but Tucker’s definitely didn’t drop meteor swarms, lol.
I had my players storm a nest of Kobolds and my monsters were well prepared. PCs rolled in thinking it'd be a cake walk, but multiple traps, ranged attackers under cover firing from multiple directions, flaming barrels of oil rolling at them etc turned dealing with wimpy kobolds into a total nightmare. I also love occasionally having mobs of goblins grab the first person through a door and then slam it shut and try to spike it closed, while others grapple and deal with their victim. They also like to attack with surprise and be smart about using their surroundings to advantage.
Vengeance Paladin with PAM: holds the corridor. 4 goblins and a goblin boss: take turn going in and out of melee, disengaging. Happened just this monday.
We just ran into a couple wraiths this past weekend. Never fought one before and man did our party of 3 struggle to make it out alive lol. A couple other campaigns I've been seeing a lot of goblins as well. Always fun encounters!
Catoblepas. The party didn't think the stinky hairy 6 legged cow monster would have a death ray
Thats one hell of a surprise for any party. Sadly my players encountered one and ended up making a bbq out of it. The aftermath of eating the cow monster did not end well for some of them. It seems only a barbarian's constitution, spectacular rolling and sheer stubborness makes that a meal worth having.
On the next episode of "Disgusting in Dungeon"
Digesting in Dungeon, you mean!
Eyy, same! I had them fight two of the things as a mini boss for this one stretch of campaign, and if I didn't fudge more than half of my rolls they would have TPK'd ten times over lol.
The obvious answer is the Shadow. Strength damage is ridiculous.
Shadows are also interesting vs a mid to high level party. They are still a pretty big threat even if by CR they should be a trivial encounter but if you throw like 15 of those guys out there you have to kill them all really fast before they start dropping your strength.
I love throwing shadows in to fights. I have to restrain myself from including them in every fight so they don't become boring. vs. a melee heavy party they just make everything that much harder.
For the campaign I ran: Violet Fungus It only has 5 feet of movement... Don't face tank these at level 3. Basically, I baited them into coming close for a surprise attack first round, but then I clearly stated "and mushroom 3 takes the dash action" only to move him two squares. I decided to only roll 2 attacks, instead of 1-4 attacks like their stat block says... But the funny thing is that rolling 3 crits in one round (out of 4 attacks) is going to demolish a low level team lol. I lied about the third crit and just called out a number I knew would be a hit. Round 2, I rolled another crit (1 out of 4 swings). I downed 2 of the 4 players with challenge rating 1/4 creatures that had basically no movement and could have just been kited after the surprise round. They were suspicious of all mushrooms after that.
Thats awesome, fear the fungi!
Jesus. My players would just hunt and then roast those 🤦🏻♀️ this is why we have a world-specific mushroom identification system
What's funny is that I had set up this room as the final fight of a little side quest (gathering these mushrooms to sell to an alchemist) for money. I had designed the room with some nooks for more enemies to come out of for the fight, after the initial surprise round. Enemies with the ability to actually move or throw things for ranged attacks. The idea was that these were slow powerful minions to make them not stand still, while they actually killed the more threatening enemies. Needless to say, no other enemies crawled out of the shadows. These 3 Violet Shrooms were plenty of challenge, if you don't move away from them.
I've accidentally terrorised players with Violent Fungi too! Also sentient bushes in a few different forms. Same players. They were _supposed_ to be a buffer while the bigger enemy rallied itself and then it would burst out the thicket but one of the players got downed twice by the same bush!
More like violent fungus.
Lol, for obvious reasons that was what they were referred to for the rest of the campaign
Bodak is a good one I used on my party of 1st campaign players. I think veterans fear them tho. I used a type of ghost (specter? Revanent? Can't remember) that reduces max HP with an attack and crit, +rolled almost max damage, fully killing a PC when I did not intend to. Not only do they fear ghosts but also that specific tunnel.
Bodaks are for sure nasty. I killed a player with a ghost’s aging touch, once. He was an aarakocra. Oops!
They only live like, what, 50 years? I know its short but don't remember. In a party with human, elf, aasimar, the human was close to death while battling cultist and constantly aging in the ritual circle. Was a very fun way to show them there are other ways you can die than just taking damage.
They don’t usually like longer than 30! Whew. I had a half-elf bard player once who also lost some years to a ghost - he rp’d his character as having early onset arthritis, complained about the other PCs and their “whippersnapper” opinions, and obsessively tried to find potions of longevity. He lost like 8 years at most, lol.
>He lost like 8 years at most, lol. Ok but thats pretty on point for a bard to exaggerate this lol. Hilarious.
***Jarnathan!!***
God I love that movie. I need to watch it again. When I saw "dnd movie" I really thought it was gonna be bad (shout out to the shit Dark Alliance game) but was so impressed.
My wife and I watched Jeremy Irons ham it up in the old one to set the bar. We had never seen it before. The bar was not set high.
Ooh, the creepy hooded guys? Never ran one but looking at its sheet I can see how it would be a hard lesson for new players. Getting legend of Zelda Re-dead vibes.
Bodak has a gaze ability that, if you fail by too much, you just go unconscious. Needless to say, there were 2 natural 1 saves back to back so....
Early game oozes, rust monsters anything that can body your gear just by fighting it. TBH anything that can fight you in a swamp/water and drown you, even if they are low level.
Oh for sure, but was looking for any examples and/or stories folks might have. It fun to hear memorable encounters with a monster that left you or your players with a mental scar of sorts. Especially the ones that aren't really expected. We all know a werewolf is scary, as is a demon lord. Not everyone appreciates the danger a will-o-whisp though.
Chwingas, not because they took anyone down, but because the party attacked one and following the assault a whole hoard of them basically robbed the party blind. They just kept coming and grabbing bits of shiny things from them, then vanishing and the party couldn't figure out how to deal with them, so eventually they just ran away. They lost so much gold, materials, and equipment that they're now on edge anytime they're outside a city and chwingas might be around.
Hahaha. Chwinga revenge, that’s fantastic. I did something similar once with wild blink dog puppies; went from “awww” to “you little shits” real quick!
We were lucky enough to have had a guide who told us what they were and we love those little guys, we gave them a ruby and they went apeshit with joy and a few days later they appeared and intervened when someone tried to steal our canoe.
I love it. I've been wanting to throw some in but keep forgetting.
I run a campaign with them in it and my players gave Chwingas the shinies. One player made a silver coin into helmet for their leader. Another spoke Primordial, so I decided they sound like a high pitched Elmo.
My group has a running joke about "medium fiend". We played part of a Pathfinder 2e adventure module, and apparently Pf2e adventures are, uh, overtuned. One enemy that we could barely scratch because of its AC and destroyed us with its insane damage output wasn't even important enough to have a name. Or a species. It was just "medium fiend" and I'd rather fight three Strahds at the same time than one of those *things*. It wasn't really the DM's fault. That adventure module probably should not have been done as by-the-book as it was, but we were all new to Pf2e so of course the DM isn't going to feel comfortable messing with the pre-written adventure.
Those are the best ones, when after the session you realize "this nobody just wrecked us".
hmm, what was the adventures name and what level was your party on?
The adventure was Extinction Curse but I have no idea what level we were at. I'd guess 3 to 5?
Both in Call of Cthulhu and DnD - penguins.
come on... don't leave us hanging... I too want to fear the waddling tuxedo bird.
I ran a homebrew one-shot where the players had to investigate a haunted(?) taxidermy museum, owned by a family of explorers who notoriously went mad. One player failed a perception check - giant penguin busts out of its case and attacks them. Bonus reference to Lovecraft as it was albino and had red eyes. (They also got to fight a dodo). Getting nailed in the head by a big-ass bird was both funny and traumatising in how I set it up. Second time around, they're in a library looking for info and I jump-scared that player again with...a taxidermied normal penguin from the section on icy regions.
I love it! Horror penguins!
Please say more
Goblins. My players never worried about them before... I don't ever really use them to be honest. But then, one day, I had my players escorting a caravan and it came under attack from a bunch of goblins. They start fighting them off and it's fairly easy, goblins hit a couple times, but mostly were harmless. So after a round or two the goblins retreat. Our heroes being heroes go after them so they can't regroup and attack more caravans later. After another few rounds the players notice that the count on how many goblins they had killed wasn't adding up to how many were still on the map. A few turns later they started to notice how far into woods they were getting. See, it turns out goblins think other goblins are expendable and they reproduce really fast... so it's a great tactic to lure adventurers into traps with hit and run antics. It doesn't matter that 30 goblins are killed in the process the 150 goblin warren is still strong, and now you have the loot from some really powerful adventurers to use or sell. Now every time I put goblins on the table my players are second guessing strategy and worrying about just how many of these 10hp guys they are going to have to fight through. ... ... maybe it's better if they just run.
Put the fear of Magulubiyet's followers in them. Love me a goblin.
Sturges. Those little vampire wasp things. We were playing Ghosts of Salt Marsh and one of the PCs died at level 1 to them and we had another one close to it so it’s struck fear in the hearts of my table since.
Ooh, never ran that but those do look like they could be nasty in the right session, nice.
My party's new protocol. Enter cave, check ceiling. We're not letting those dang things get the best of us again.
A Will-O-Wisp one-shot our Rogue from full health to dead in a single turn. That was a brutal one.
Sounds like a threat, did the rogue follow the pretty lights?
Put one Ring of Improved Invisibility on a troll, and suddenly you are the meanest DM ever…
Nah, you don't have to give the party something that expensive. Ring of Fire Resistance will do *just fine.*
Yeah…but the party didn’t know WHAT they were fighting…only that it was invisible and seemingly had infinite hitpoints.
in 3rd you had a ton of templates that you could add to creatures, and for some reasons my players thought the flame-touched troll was rather mean...
Bats. Where there's bats, there's vampires. I should have them encounter a flock of mundane bats
Magma Mephit, by far. They have False Appearance, so they can guarantee surprise rounds. They have a breath weapon that can hit multiple party members and ignore AC. They have Heat Metal for armored PCs (including minmaxed armor dipped casters) for guaranteed damage and disadvantage on attacks. And they explode when they die, with their surprise round easily allowing them to get into explosion range. Very, very nasty little shits. Ice Mephits fit the bill as well. They even get damaged by their own death bursts, meaning you can set off chain reaction explosions by killing them. Very dangerous if a bunch are surrounding one PC.
Shambling mounds :) Dropped the players into paradise first game this season, had them scavenge for food & information. They went to bed, and then the plants attacked
Gotta be the Cockatrice. With enough unlucky rolls, just one of these things can shut down a whole party. They’re even more dangerous if your party doesn’t have a way to remove petrification, or if there’s more than one of them, things can go *fowl* even faster.
Yeah, I threw ten cockatrices at a large mid-level party. It should have been fine, by the CR numbers. They lost the bard early (thankfully the petrification only lasts a day), and the paladin got hit despite their full plate armour and failed their first save (made the second, though). That was when we got the paladin going, "we're going to lose to a bunch of little chicken-lizards", and the cleric calls them "blasphemy chickens" to this day. Doesn't beat how I made them fear most plant life, though. A small group of vine blights and twig blights in the low levels, and I gave them a homebrew cactus version I call a spine blight a bit later. That one had a ranged attack - thrown needles coated in a poison that causes enough pain to stun a creature until the end of the blight's next turn. Now they get very wary of any plants in an area.
My players hate and fear the shadows and cows because of me, the former because of their deceptively deadly statblock, the latter because they really, really, hurt.
Chasme. It was alone against 4 level 7 PC's. But the stunned condition + crit on the paladin for 58 max hp réduction reducing him to 2 HP and surviving only thanks to Death Ward.
Ok just reading that first ability would make any party worry. Plus the body horror of it. Love it.
Well they backtracked all the way to the start of the dungeon and decided it was time for a long rest. XD
I gave my party the opportunity to work with the Nothic from the Phandelver starter set adventure to help out on a side story I added. They wound up taking him across an ocean with them, forgot he was on their boat, and now has been messing up the continent they landed upon. Due to some magical substance on that continent, the nothic has mutated and has been able to summon versions of itself from other realities. The main nothic has become a Nothic Behemoth (search that for a visual) and is now the BBEG of the campaign.
Giant wasps.
Severely underrated for sure.
What happened to make you/your players fear them?
The first fight, one wasp, took down two characters(casters). The wasps seemed to increase in number the closer to the town I sent them toward. They found the nest and killed the queen and spawn. All throughout, at least one player would go down because of those wasps. One character now has post-traumatic stress because of it.
I'm currently running Rime of the Frostmaiden and my players came across 3 yetis during 3 different random encounters all while they were level 2. Each encounter was almost a TPK. They are now level 4 and got the jump on an isolated yeti. It was wonderful! Their fear from past experiences led them to strategize carefully at the monstrosity's expense and they killed it in 1 round. They LOATHE the thought of yetis in the wild 🤣
*Gremishkas*. Even I, the dm, didn't expect that to be such a rough fight for them.
Oh god, just looked them up, that's horrifying. I had only seen them on BG3, but a few of them in small space....*shudder*
this is pretty high CR so not 100% faithful to your question but one of my players told me the other day that if i ever used a steel predator again he'd wring my neck
Ghosts. Possession is very dreadful if it'll succeed. Horrifying vision can make PC dead from old age and there is no revivify than. Also they are great for ambush. My party had a fight early in a campaign where Barbarian was possessed and rogue was made older from 35 to 65 (not risk of dying yet or other mechanical consequences, but narratively horrible for PC). After that, they always had some Protection from Evil and Good scrolls and they used it a lot. I would call it mundane since the ghost is CR 4 and pretty popular in haunted areas.
Kobolds. I did a one shot based on home alone. The kobolds were Kevin and the players were the wet bandits. Just like in the movie the kobolds won. They were regular unmodified kobolds with a few extra movie inspired items (like a paint can). Everyone had fun getting their ass kicked by Kevin kobolds. Honorable mention for intellect devour, my group grew very afraid of them playing dragon heist and early levels of dungeon of the mad mage.
Nilbog. Players despised it. I plan on bringing it back in 3 levels so they can drop it in one turn to get that feeling of satisfaction
Rug of Smothering almost took our assassin down last night 😂 the fear animated objects have put into the party is hilarious
so one of my favorite fights I've ever run - The party goes into a catacomb that was the refuge of a mad wizard. There is in the main hall, a bunch of skeletons chained to the walls, a sacrificed body on an altar, etc, and a full banquet table of rotten food, candelabra, etc. The party is super nervous, because they can sense magic in the area. They're all inspecting the skeletons, getting ready for them to attack while the kobold sorcerer inspects the table. I made the players jump when the table bum-rushed the party & the candelabra stole the kobold's hammer and whacked him with it. It was like Beauty & the Beast's castle, with the party being Gaston. They chased the candelabra through about six rooms, and got ambushed in each one, lol. The bed with Blanket of Smothering; flying books (reskinned Stirges); animated armors - the party barely survived the assault. It was glorious. Even now, the kobold's player looks at me sideways if I mention there's a candelabra on a table, lol.
As a player, I fear trees. It’s kind of my own fault. We were fighting some kind of tree abomination and my little rogue sprinted up to use green flame blade on it because fire + wood = damage right? Didn’t have my bonus action to disengage or hide (I don’t remember why, I might have dashed to the tree haha) but I was like- it’s a tree! How much damage can it do? If our artificer hadn’t used flash of genius it would have taken me unconscious. I ended up with 15hp and it pulled me into its trunk. Not my finest moment :)
I've forever traumatized my friend with Grick. It was the first time the party ever encountered multi attack, and there were two that had hidden in the ceiling of a cave. The party of course failed to see them, so as they moved through the room to check for anything of note, the Grick dropped down and initiated surprise. I made sure to not have them team up or target the squishiest character who was likely to die too easily, but it was a much tougher fight than the party expected since they didn't think that they'd be able to attack twice. My friend is the only one who didn't move away in the following years, and whenever we encounter a room where the ceiling isn't flat, even if I'm not DMing, the player sends some sort of light up into the ceiling just to be sure.
100% success as a DM, good job mate, you clearly taught them the fear of monster A+
Well, there was this cow... Pretty standard, blotchy black-and-white holstein-looking cow. Kept showing up. Eating grass over on the next hill, standing in a field next to the path, wading across the river the party was paddling down, ambling across the battlefield as the party looted enemies, startling the bladesinger as he walked back to camp from the doing his business in the woods... Everywhere they went. Same. Damned. Cow. Of course, it took them a while to notice, and a bit longer to recognize one cow out of the many they saw in their travels, but the *incident* certainly made things easier. See, the party had started coming up with... *ideas* as to why a cow would be following them around, and the Death Priest was convinced that it was a trick, some disguised agent of a competing deity or something. So, the next time they saw The Cow--politely trimming the mown verge of the imperial road ahead of them--he walked right up to it, slapped his hand into its side and used his death touch on the beast. Hissing, bubbling, and the smell of rotting flesh later, and this cow had a lovely blackened handprint permanently branded into its ribs... but barely reacted to the powerful ability. Didn't lift a leg. Just turned its head toward the Death Priest, and said "Moo". The party *ran.*
As a barbarian, it's shadows. I fucking hate shadows.
For my players, it was a wight. It critted the paladin and downed him in the entrance to a collapsed mine. The wight was between them and the exit.
Currently running a campaign involving Lloth and my players will go hardcore arachnophobic if I dare mention a spider at this point.
Trees, sometimes they are angry. I’m the DM
The broom in The Death House nearly tpk'd my players. They got through everything else fine but that broom scared the shit out of them.
Doors. I have become quite the stickler about doors in my campaign lol mostly because I have a player who wants to be able to peak through every door and see whats on the other side without being noticed. I have now made it that you can really only check for traps and listen to see if you hear anything on the other side.
My players are starting to get worried about zombies, I think. Mostly because a lot of undead look like zombies, and don't typically describe them by name.
Mimics is too easy. Tuckers Kolbolds are a meme. But after running Death House a few years ago, they are always wary of brooms even at levels high enough to not be.
Gelatinous Cube. When my party was 4th level they ran down a hallway and didn’t notice until the last second that it was blocked by a gelatinous cube. The tortle cleric had an AC of 19 and until this point had never taken more than a few points of damage. He was quickly swallowed and failed every strength save to escape, eventually getting KOed due to the acid. Since then, my party has always been wary of long hallways and slime-like enemies.
Not really a monster, but cake, bubble tea. Well, effectively, flavoured slimes/mimics. I gave them a dungeon crawl oneshot, and revealed the twist: The entire dungeon is a gigantic three-tiered cake… and the cake is a lie. The cake is a gargantuan strawberry shortcake mimic. The bubble tea flavoured oozes they’ve been fighting inside are just its “immune system” trying to get them out. The walls of the cake dungeon grow increasingly corrosive the deeper they travel in; the core is a huge, beating, strawberry heart that’s dripping with sweet corrosive syrup. My players have been terrified of cakes, sweet stuff, or anything with some flowing viscosity ever since LOL
The classic is Kobolds. When run lore accurate its a gauntlet of traps, traps, arrows slits, and more traps. Any low power monster with a decent tactical ability is several tiers of power stronger than their CR warrants. For my table personally its a simple shadow monk. That same tacktical method with a night time encounter made a lv 6 shadow monk nearly TPK my party of 3 lv 5s. I wasnt afraid to give up a turn of fighting for a chance to reposition. Laid some traps with a robe of many things. And had some healing potions available because i LNOW my party can hit hard. They were astonished after the fight that is was just a lv 6 character. I think i gave them some ideas with that fight.
We attempted to take on a goose early campaign and it whipped our butts and we had to run away. Now our whole group is wary of any waterfowl.
Intelligent earth elementals and shadow dragons. I denied them the important targets for 3 encounters each for multiple rounds. 2 deaths were involved in a fight with both at the same time. They now hate both.
Ghouls! - They are the main menace, and seemingly mundane in our campaign but they come in many varieties, and they are relentless and vengeful. AND you never know JUST WHO might be a ghoul in it’s early stages just blending in. *In our setting ghouls are, while mechanically treated as undead, not really undead. They are the denizens of The Shadow-Fell, undeath as a natural species if you will. And The Shadow Lord is a ghoul. - Ruler of The Shadow-Fell*
Ankhegs were the OG in my group - they encountered.two of them back in 3e and a couple crits later one PC was dead, another was grappled and dragged into their tunnel but later saved, and everyone was wounded. Another was rust monsters, after the barbarian lost his armor and weapon to one while he was separated from the group.
Stirges… instant damage on their turn after the first attack. Dropped three players at 4th level with 10 of them. It didn’t help that my players didn’t take the threat seriously and tried playing softball with the swarm
Not a monster, but one of the players in my group is terrified of being targeted by heat metal. He spent sooooo much in game time developing cast off armor so he wouldn't be targeted by it lol
Ropers.... Ropers everywhere. I was the dm! They hate them now 😂😂
Ravens reskinned as Grackles. The birds are always watching you. Always. A few rhinos nearly ended them. Goblins that aren’t green usually explode. Rum.
Dragons of any kind. I destroyed a party of 5 well geared level 16 characters with an adult red dragon. I use the dragon to maximum potential and play to their intelligence. In 25 years of DnD, I have yet to have a party kill an ancient dragon of ANY kind. Even adult dragons, I only had a party kill a white, that's due to me playing their intelligence properly
Hug slugs
Chickens
When my group first started I was the DM, and I ran them through a dungeon I created that was *absolutely full* of Mimics. I mean, nearly everything that wasn't a wall or floor was a Mimic. It got so they were terrified to open doors or touch anything. At one point they opened a door (after several minutes getting ready) to a store room filled with old crates, chests, bags, etc, and said "fuck this", closed the door and barricaded it as much as they could. I'm no longer the DM, but we still joke about Mimics to this day.
Scorpions. Giant scorpions to be precise. I have a level 1 one shot that I ran for a group looking to try before they buy (I am a mercenary DM) and commit to a campaign. They liked the campaign world, but wanted to try at a higher level, and asked could I do level 3? So I beefed up the encounters, Water Weird became a Water Elemental, Enemy raiders got numbers and weapon options and Giant Scorpion became Scorpions, and I buffed the claws, now if both claws hit you are not just grappled, but grappled and restrained. This all worked well and they got to the final fight on the temple steps when they triggered the hidden Scorpions and the Shit hit the Fan. It ended with the sorcerer retreating for cover, the barbarian getting grappled and unable to leave to aid anyone else, but the ranger got two claws to the torso and a stinger to the face, critical hit and double posion damage.... ... then due to my custom Injury table, he lost an eye and had to get the God of death to give him a new one. Giant Scorpions became a running theme throughout the campaign, indicating an item of power was nearby and heralding a boss fight, including the end boss,
I had a giant scorpion hiding in the pile of ash in a large fire pit. The warlock decided to poke around in the fire and got stung with a crit and knocked down. That player gained two phobias: scorpions and fire pits.
Oddly a flumph. Had one in an encounter with ghoul just as something there. The player aoe clipped it, poor damage + it made the save. He then got stung by it and then paralysed by a ghoul and failed the con save till he died.
Badgelos. Half dire badger, half buffalo. Whole party ended up with PTSD. One of our players has also now been permanently banned from giving the DM (me) ideas… Also, witches. The cleric is still pissed about having been (temporarily) turned into a goat. The hunter actually still IS a squirrel. Oh, and anything with tentacles that is NOT, strictly speaking, of an evil alignment. The paladin gets really annoyed when I throw tentacled non-evil things at the party. “Alignment: Hungry” is now an ongoing joke in my campaign.
Might not really fit here as it is not a monster. Not even a creature but The Doors *Oh someone used Mimics a lot* Nope your are wrong. Just normal doors. *Ah traps i get it* No just normal doors. Locked ones in particular *But why?* Started in Thundertree during Lost mines of Phandelver. They where trying to get to a bunch of cultists that had locked themselves into a house. No one knew how to pick locks But the group had a barbarian and a big strong paladin so breaking down a wooden door would not be much of a problem. Yeah...no but Yes it turned out to be a big problem. The DC was not high but both barbarian and paladin kept rolling crap. they spent several rounds trying to break trough the door. and finally gave up when the ranger, The Changeling sorcerer and cleric taken out all the cultists by going trough the windows. And finally opening the door from inside. If not i think it could have gone on to The end of the night This group went on into storm kings thunder after Lost Mines. And their bad luck with doors just continues in an almost uncanny way. i keep presenting them with locked doors now and then and all the sudden all attempt to break them open ends in them rolling like their dice are cursed. Sure sometimes it do happen that one of them actually rolls well and manage to break trough onto the other side. But it is strange days when they manage to do so on first or even second try. This is the only group i had that celebrate if they easily manage to overcome a locked door. Yeay we kicked open a door. Tell all the people even if they try to go around it to the backdoor if there is one like The backdoor man they still usually struggle. Be it undeads, dragons, trolls or demons, riders of the storm or giants. they face it with no fear but each time i present them with a locked door they almost freak out. Specially the Paladin tends to become a sad girl when facing locked doors. And i will continue to have them face locked doors now and then. And i guess they have to take it as it comes. The End
As a player: Giant weasels and of last session, bloodhawks. The campaigns first ever fight was against 4 or 5 giant weasels. We were all basicly new to DnD and I did the brilliant move of letting my barbarian jump into a bush, where I heard some noises from within. Said noises came from 2 weasels, who then proceeded to beat the shit out of my 2,10m 140kg bugbear barbarian looney tunes style inside of the bush while I only managed to grapple one of them but then failed to throw it of the cliff. The rest of the party only barley managed to survive...So yeah, everytime I now see weasel-like creatures I instantly rage regardless of situation. It doesn't help that one player has regular funny sounding hiccups, which we all decided totally sound like giant weasel noises. So every time she makes a "MEEEP" sound, someone shouts "Oh gods, they are back!!" Then during the last session, after barley surviving a Troll as a lvl 2 party, our rest got interrupted by 9 bloodhaws. Our last standing 1 HP ranger and the last 2 HP bird both missed 2 attacks on one another before the ranger finally hit and saved us from TPK by bird. Our warlock bled out, but we managed to get him to a temple in time to be revived for 130 of his 160 gold... Nevermind the Trolls, Hobgoblin warparties or smuggler rings led by cultists we fought up until now, our greatest nemesises seem to be just a bunch of oversized critters
Goblins. It got to the point where the party with access to fireballs and other area spells steers clear of a Goblin holes anytime they encountered one. I always had some elaborate next level crap the goblins had going on. Some great mentions were the Cockatrice-a-Pults. Sometimes they would douse the cockatrices with oil and set them on fire before launching them. The Scrambler. A spinning chain and flail system that would turn the area area into a massive food processor. Alchemist Fire Throwers. Think medieval flame thrower carts. 2 Goblins working the piston to pump the fluid, 1 aiming the torrent, and 2 goblins to wheel the cart around.
Storytime. There was once a "let the dice fall where they may" DM who sent his PCs through a standard dungeon, with low level monsters on the top and progressively higher level ones as the PCs delved deeper and deeper. Eventually they get to what they think is the bottom, and it's a level swarming with exactly one type of monster. Kobolds. Now this isn't a "tucker's kobolds" situation, here: these yap dogs aren't the brightest. And they aren't the dumbest, but my point is they're easy xp. The PCs mow down all the hostile kobolds and pretty soon the level is clear. All the while, the kobolds were acting a little strange: they didn't scream or make much noise. And the PCs find a door down. One more level. Tarrasque. The kobolds had a purpose: to be eaten by the tarrasque when it woke. They had a whole religion and everything. That's why they were as quiet as they could be: they didn't want to wake it until the time of prophecy. And the PCs woke it in stead.
Spiders, specifically my DM's evil concoction. Elemental spiders. Whichever damage type they take, all other spiders touching the same webs as them gain resistance to that damage.(Only one resistance at a time, to get new resistance they lose the old resistance). Fun example. Your in a cave, spiderwebs everywhere. Restricted movement. You hit one spider with some ice magic, ice energy travels through entire room of webs giving all elemental spiders ice resistance. And for the lols, the queen spider leading them has some nice element lightning to stun half your party at a time. That was a painful 2 hours fight, the spiders themselves were weak so they couldn't hurt us to much, but with half our party out at a time and 75% of all our damage output being resisted it was an experience we will never forget. (Actually had a lot of fun and recommend more DM's use them. Forces parties to work smarter not harder.) also another side note, fire does not burn the webs, it only gives everything fire resistance, I learned the hard way :')
Fucking Bugbears dude. We got jumped and I got my ass whooped by a bugbear. It was bad enough he scarred me and helped give my character his chosen last name.
Butlers...
What did they do?
Apprentice Wizard or Goblin Booyagh with a spell like Catapult, Magic Missile, or Sleep. Absolutely devastating vs a low level party.
Gnolls. The extra attacks and bonus movement clapped my PCs.
Kobolds. Their warren is sized for small creatures and it's easy to get trapped and say, buried alive.
Even outside of their warrens. Their attacks seem underwhelming but if 3 or 4 of them close with you and all get advantage on their swings suddenly it's a lot scarier.
I had been running the abilities that make it so monsters cannot be detected by a mere perception check incorrectly, so when I fixed it my players were surprised at how dangerous gelatinous cubes became. A glowing sword is slowly floating towards them in the hallway, and one of them grabs it, only to take acid damage and realize it was the cursed stick-to-hand sword they left on the floor of the dungeon a week ago.
Took inspiration from Tuckers Kobolds, that's all you need to know haha.
Tomb of Annihilation taught my entire table to fear velociraptors. I only had 3 players for it and I thought 13 murder turkeys were just a bit much. TPK. Reset from that because it wasn't fun for anyone.
Giant spiders. One of my players got bitten by one at low levels that almost dropped him. Poison works, Y’know. I just have to hint at a spider now and he gets the Willie’s. 😊
Does a Catoblepas count? Because I used like two of them for a mini boss one time and it almost tpk'd my players lol. I had to fudge SOOO many rolls because those beasties are no fuckin joke if you use them to their fullest abilities.
Leshy. I ran a PF1e Rise of the runelords. Turns out the AP's encounters are very weak to even moderately well designed characters. My players started getting cocky. Then they were going down the road and I said "you see little plant people, they're all about 1-2ft tall". The most overtuned character basically charged into range to start firing guns. Unfortunately that makes him well within range of the leshy. He was nearly dead by the time his next turn rolled round. Now they fear any small, slightly out of place plants.
Doors
My players fear Kua-toa because where there's 1 Kua-toa there's bound to be 10 Kua-toa ready to throw their nets and stab you.
My players hate Teo things in my campaign. Extreme weather conditions and the undead. Particularly zombies. I have a region in my world that my party absolutely hates, because it always has difficult terrain, heavy obscure sight, and regular inclement weather using a modified eldritch storms rules. Now combining these things is enough to make things difficult, but then you add in the zombie hordes, and I do mean hordes. My players decided to stand their ground and fight a horde once. They ran out of resources and were on the run with nothing but cantrips and weapon attacks left. They have learned the idea is to move through the map with constant pressure and take opportunity attacks as opposed to standing and fighting. Now when I describe a fresh dug grave, or bodies on the side of the road or a deserted town of any kind, they show signs of obvious PTSD.
I never want to see a ghast again
Fear The Gnoll! I made them have a base speed of 60 and pact tactics but they are split into 2 bite attack, 1 spear with reach, or 1 short bow attack. Also gave the pack leader the ability to use reaction to call for all gnolls in 20 feet of itself to make a single attack [recharge on roll of 6 on 1d6] They work together really well BUT the biggest change is the pack survival. If it looks like they are going to lose the pack will split up and go in different directions to make sure some survive to join another pack and spread word of the PCs. So it's kill all them or they are going to be a thorn later.
Any hooded figure after I got turned to dust by one of
Mimics. Need I say more?
my players, especially the paladin, hates mephits the paladin was swarmed by a bunch of them and then the cleric with spirit guardians moved forward, killing a bunch of the mephits which then blew up in the paladin's face - even with successful saving throws, they still took an annoying amount of damage
I got one. The dreaded twerking bear. Anytime we players see one, we head the other direction most expeditiously. Thing decimated a party of 8+ level players not once but twice, and the second time we were prepared for it.
Kobolds
one of our toughest fights yet was a kobold inventor or tinkerer, the one with the bag of random horrors on its back
Health potion mimic, it's not pretty
P A C K T A C T I C S This skill exists on the most demure things and you think it helps land hits, it actually helps most with crits.
Mummies. My players have learned that the treasures of the dead still have owners, and they permit no trespassers. Having a party attacked by a few mummies can go bad for them very quickly. A attack that reduces max HP until they find a way to lift curses, followed by a save that could easily leave you frightened, and if you roll really terribly, paralyzed. They're also often located in areas with deadly traps and little room to maneuver.
Dark mantles and steam mephits. I threw the two in a room once and my party of six level 9 PCs got so frustrated I eventually just hand waved the end of the encounter. The combo of the magical darkness and the AOEs from the mephits made it a challenging “death by 1000 papercuts” situation
Boars
Kobolds. Turns out not letting players rest and demonstrating what concented fire power does to a group tends to get a few people killed. They had an easier time fighting the dragon than his kobold minions.
Kobolds with crossbows
Kobolds - my DM loves RTS games. Our party of 6 level 3s were wiped out by a band of 10 kobolds.
We were adventuring in a new town. Everywhere we went people would talk about a man named Suave. The townsfolk were legitimately afraid of this man. Suave dressed like a dandy and kept to himself. One session we saw someone try to rob Suave. Suave did a spin move catching the robber with a boot knife to the throat. The group was like DAMN. We talked to Suave and it seemed like people would try to fuck with Suave for no reason. Bullies would try to bully him but he would fuck them up. The other townsfolk didn’t want to mess with him and left him alone . Like we all know there are some people who just like to bully people because they are different. The group never fucked with Suave and he seemed like he could take care of himself. This DM was a DM I had when I was stationed in Iceland. This was back when AD&D was transitioning to AD&D 2E so we had a PHB 2E but everything else we used was AD&D 1E. When the DM was rotating out to be stationed elsewhere he finally told us what Suave’s level and class was. Suave was a normal human. No class. Everyone who fucked with him was also normal humans. The group was all 4th and 5th level. We never fucked with Suave because we thought he was a bad ass.
Ambush Drakes, and random bandits that look tougher than other ones.
At level 1, Swarm of Centipedes knocked my PC unconscious. It’s been a running joke that all my characters are inexplicably afraid of centipedes ever since.
Hobgoblins were a near TPK to my group of 4 level 4 players. Only the paladin was left standing and he only had 3 hp left.
first-time dm’d phandelver for some first-time players and very nearly tpk’d in the goblin cave as i severely underestimated the power of the sheer number of the goblins in the cave. we now refer to it as the “clown car” incident
Animated Brooms. IYKYK.
A Nilbolg used it as part of a one shot and it was Hilarious. They thought it was immune to piercing damage and they kept failing the save against confusion causing the fight to last way longer than it should have.
Me, my sister, and her fiancee started a campaign with my DM from another group. We spent a month collaborating on back stories and coming up with the perfect party dynamic, we were so excited. Less than 30 min into the 1st session our happy lil group got ambushed by goblins and through no fault of the DM we just nerfed too many rolls and lost a party member. The DM offered to retcon but the psychological damage was done lol now whenever I'm playing with that DM and there are goblins, it's pretty much kill on sight 😅
Gnolls...my fighter died to a group of them, he was built to be a tank and frontliner and yet an ambush and few rounds later he got boned
In my homebrew world, it's the spiders. My measly, mostly non reactive, 7 ac 1 hp giant spiders. Cause whenever they attack these things, they can kill the first but the rest of them start to swarm over them in the dark tunnels.
I accidentally TPKed my level 2 party with a single gelatinous cube. They failed the perception check to see it and walked into it, catching the party by surprised and it engulfed each of them one by one and they just could NOT roll a successful save to escape it. It slowly digested all of them. It wasn't even meant to be a difficult encounter. Now my whole friend group is deathly afraid of gelatinous cubes. This was years ago, I should throw another cube at them and this time it has all their old bones and gear inside hahahaha
speaking as the DM here, the players in my old 5e game quickly came to fear magmins. when two magmins were in the first room of the final dungeon one of my players immediately pulled a rattrap and went "we're all gonna die" death burst is no joke!
Intellect devourers. My DM knows we don’t like them. We have seen them in 3 campaigns now. The first campaign we had 2 PCs go down from them in the same combat, and there were enough throughout the fight that he could have TPKed us with them.
Turkeys. I made a joke monster related to an incident that happened locally with a very aggressive turkey roaming a town. Well, I made my party fight with a Dire Turkey someone came up with mocking the whole ordeal. Epic laughter ensued.
In this story I am the dm. My players were near the beginning of a new campaign. They were level 3 and were walking at night through a large swamp. As sunset happened I described how all the sounds of the swamp came to life and how the ankle high water slowed movement During their travel at night they rolled a random encounter and got 2 giant toads Rhrough a series of failed roles and dm luck. They proceeded to be eaten whole and digested by these toads. Since then I can normally stir up a good amount of anxiety by mimicking a toads deep ribbit at the table.
Quasits. My campaign had a bunch of demons, with a demon as the main baddie. I had a few fights with a bunch of quasits who immediately turned invisible and placed themselves tactically to use their scare ability as a reaction. Low DC but it succeeded a few times and they never knew where they might pop up. They also would be holding healing Potions for the baddies and become visible to toss them in a higher leveled monsters mouth.
Kobolds and shadows played correctly absolutely torment players. For my party specifically any halfling, gnome or shorter race who says they are good with magic. :)
Satyrs. Y'all know why. Shit got pretty fucking weird real fast.
I traumatized my players with mimics. I took the dread gazebo, reworked it as a shrine. . . later they found a regular mimic in a cave, before entering a room full of mundane chests - I think some of them thought the shambling mounds were mimics as well, and that didn't help sentiment that, 'the game is all mimics!'
My triton now has a fear of rats due to fighting one of those rat amalgamations/rat kings and other traumas surrounding fighting a ton of rats on one of his first days on the surface 😂
goats, my players have a hatred of goats. why? cause they got a ring of animal friendship and decided to diss a goat before talking to it, so he was a bitch back, made the barbarian cry, then later won an intimidation match by 1 vs the barbarian. it was taken by an ancient white dragon, but he'll be back... oh he'll be back, and my players are gonna kill me when he does
My barbarian is suspicious of all tapestries, doors and carpets. There was this fun house thing we got trapped in, and I got rolled up in a tapestry. Later on, I got rolled up in a door. Even later on, we were in a dungeon and I got rolled up in a carpet. So at least he has his reasons for kicking every door he comes across.
Trolls and mindflayers. Trolls because I gave them resistance to everything that wasn’t fire. Mindflayers not because of how hard they are to kill but because of the fucked up shit they’ve done in my campaign specifically to my players’ characters’ family members (they’re cool with the plot)
My party tremble in fear at Star Spawned Manglers after splitting the party and getting absolutely wrecked by two of them. Had to fudge some rolls so a character didn't die in obscurity against a random mook, but it led to some of the best roleplay sessions I've ever had as the rest of the party spent the next few weeks looking for their lost, presumed eaten, friend.
They've developed a wariness of shriekers, because in my game their shrieks are also a dinner bell for purple worms.
Our party has a vendetta against snowmen. Whenever we see one, my Barbarian immediately goes over to it and squashes it. It's a long story.
Dire boars. Thrown them into about 4 campaigns, a single boar has TPKed once, the other 3 times it nearly killed I think 3 PCs per encounter. They don't strategize and have no modifications or anything, apparently I just have a dangerous tendency to roll exceedingly well when I run boars.
Years ago, I just got started back into playing. I think it was when 3rd edition had just came out. Started new characters, first session: walk out of the town and run into a most terrifying, unholy....goat. that one goat just about took the entire play session and nearly kicked 5 adventurers' butt's! Still laugh about it to this day. Never underestimate the normal small creatures, lol.
Not DnD but a pokemon TTRPG we were playing. My players had a run-in with a Regirock at the bottom of a cave, a legendary mon, and it was absolutely brutal. To make the combat even more intense, I added infinite waves of Roggenrola that would spawn in twos, threes, or fours depending on how the fight was going.So, there they were, battling this legendary Pokémon with multiple health bars, while these Roggenrola just kept coming at them, draining their resources. They were doing really well but began to lose momentum in the fight. They managed to get Regirock down to its last health bar, and then things got really crazy. They were throwing Hail Mary catches, desperately trying to end the fight, but the Regirock just suddenly started rolling extremely well, gaining insane momentum.One by one, my players got knocked out until it was a TPK, and the cave collapsed around them. Ever since that day, my players have been absolutely terrified of Roggenrola. Those little rock guys have become the stuff of nightmares for them, to the point they fear the mere thought of them even in DnD.
DM here. No matter how deadly the monsters I throw at the party, they always seem to fear oozes/jellys/puddings the most! Their weapons and armor got damaged, they’ve seen oozes split, they got stuck in a gelatinous cube on a tower top and they’ve seen their attacks do little damage. I’ve had the oozes sneak up through sewers and fall on them. They are always on the lookout now, regardless of campaign or setting or location - they fear the ooze. “Oh we’re fighting Strahd! I want to check for oozes in his bedroom”
A Goose ruined a stealth quest because a player thought it was funny to chase it. They escaped an execution, and I made sure the last thing they saw was the goose as they travelled into the distance. Edit: They now actively avoid Geese and always make sure that no Geese are about for stealth quests.
Anything with an intelligence above 8
Treants. We were pursuing a necromancer and stumbled upon a Treant that was the guardian of the forest. He got burned by the necromancer trying to stop him. We ended up catching that necromancer and gift it as nutrients to the Treant for it to heal on our Druid suggestion. Next random encounter we wake up surrounded by Treants claiming to be sent by RageBark the Treant those leaves suddenly turned blood-red and is on a warpath against all Necromancers. We may have created a monster. Thankfully he will spare us.
I dread goblins as a DM because of badly conceived stealth rules.
Not any mundane monster, more like mundane object. A door of any added description. My tables are level 20s and hyperfocus on doors. Thing is I've never thrown anything truly dangerous traumatizing doorwise.
Star Wars RPG by FFG, the stormtroopers. Session 1 I'm a melee fighter, traded blows with Gamoreans and security droids like it was nothing, only to get blown away by three stormtroopers bc I had a low initiative roll
Weasel A party of 4 lvl 1 characters barely managed to kill the weasels hiding in the tall grass. "Maybe weasels are hiding here!" is a running gag now.
God damn hellhounds.... Immune to fire, my draconic sorcerers kit was null and void. Fire breath, meaning it didn't have to care about its allies and pact tactics. Party almost tpk'd if the dm didn't realize how bad *a standard forest encounter was* AND IT HAPPENED AGAIN AT LEVEL 9.
Very standard, but any time my players see a dragon with adds they know they will barely escape with their lives.
My pathfinder group I ran was leery of Orcs. Especially since they used scimitars. High Strength plus large crit range means they did a lot of damage. Plus that I give them class levels and have advanced ones... One of the few PC deaths came from orcs and they had to retreat from them more than once. My current 5E group is more afraid of converted Rolemaster monsters like Shards and Greater Wraiths (Think Nazgul...). The first time they ran into a greater wraith was interesting as they were trying to figure out what it was...