What is the most terrifying creature you've made for a campaign?

[Prince_Vorrel]

Was wondering what is the creepiest/most vile/most pant filling-ly and terrifyingly powerful?

My personal abomination was basically a what if scenario I came up in my head when trying to decide the kinda big bad theme i wanted for my campaign. Aberrations or Demons. I as i was looking at them i realized both monsters were (almost always) CHAOTIC EVIL. and thus sharing an alignment and some similar traits in how hard they can be to kill corruption/madness I came up with the idea to make some sorta baby/unborn/fetus old god that somehow got tossed into the abyss and started mucking up the place.

Having little cults in the material plain slowly sprout among various species. certain demons who just so happened to all be from one layer of the abyss seemingly FLEEING that layer in any way possible, even servitude. (freaked my players out proper to hear that and it was wonderful to watch the blood drain out of some of the more experienced players faces).

And near the end got some old god/Lovecraftion corrupted demons appearing and the new fully corrupted baby old god slowly growing in power trying to become a demon lord of a layer of the abyss.

It was a pretty good 7-ish month campaign and ended with the party level 16 having slain the baby demon god and ironically helped demon kind reestablish control and domination of the abyss (much to my paladins righteous anger). Was a damn good campaign and ended very well with only 2 players dying in the very difficult last 3 or so weeks I had to cap of the campaign (one of which at the final boss)

[sir_argo]

I made a giant mass of darkness (size of a football field) that creeped along the ground. It could lash out with pseudopods and on a hit corrupted the character. Over the next few turns, the characters body would be converted into the same living darkness. At the end of the transformation, the character would be a disgusting darkness abomination under the control of the giant boss. The darkness could also spawn spider like creatures, created from his own substance. The number and size of these creations was only limited by the size of the boss. He would get smaller as he spawned more creatures. He could reabsorb their dead corpses to replenish his size. He couldn't really be defeated, but he could be hurt and driven away by spells that mimic daylight.

[Squibsallotl]

Caiphon, the Dream Whisperer.

A Far Realm deity that invaded the Astral Sea and began killing the pantheon. But not only did it kill the gods, it then usurped their domains and began answering prayers on their behalf. Each divine spell cast by a member of the gods' faithful tainted them with Caiphon's influence, who began whispering into their minds the urge to betray all the values they (and their former gods) held dear.

Midway through the campaign, Clerics of Pelor were murdering people, Paladins of Bahamut were looting and burning, etc.

The campaign's name was Whispers of the Muse :)

Edit: Although Caiphon was the most twisted (and most powerful) creature I've created, I should note that I did make a custom version of Demogorgon for a 4e game as well that was stupidly powerful, as my party at the time were all epic level and highly optimized.

[Kane0]

My favourite was the Helmed Hunter, a variant of the Headless Helmed Horror.

It started off fairly innocuously, it was a pawn sent by the BBEG (a mage and inventor at heart) to kill off things that needed killing off. It was sent to kill the PCs but they trashed it and left it a pile of scrap in the town it found them in.
But it's remains were located by other lackeys and brought back to the BBEG who promptly reconstructed him, tweaking the spell immunity to suit those that felled him and sending him on his merry way again with a modified alarm spell that would tell him if it was destroyed again.
He caught up with the PCs in a dungeon and this time it was much tougher, being ready for them and them being worn out from half a days worth of advanturing already. But again they bested him and took his helm as a trophy. Meanwhile the BBEG got his alert and promptly scried his enforcer, getting a good look at the party. As soon as they left he dispatched someone to fetch what was left and set about fixing him up again.
Third time's the charm, this time he bulit in three very deliberate improvements. Firstly a reconstruction spell that brought the Helmed Horror back up to full HP after 24 hours if not destroyed entirely (eg disintegrate, thrown into lava, etc). Second a magical ranged attack since the poor guy had been lacking one (lightning ray with poor damage but Wis save or stun) and finally an area effect ability should he get swarmed (like thunderwave, but force damage). He tested it on a minion to double check everything and rechristened it his helmless hunter, with strict orders to instigate the downfall and death of the PCs.
This set off about two weeks of in game harassment as the HHH tracked down the PCs wherever they went and always popped up to attack at the worst times. He singlehandedly changed the course of the story arc as they frantically searched for a way to permanently end this thing menacing them, and he garnered far more hatred than his creator did through the entire campaign. They eventually found a sufficient amount of acid powerful enough to end him and submerged him in it for much longer than was necessary, though it cost them a lot of time and effort to get to that point.

Good times.

[Sir cryosin]

Gelatinous dragon
A Gelatinous cube slowly ate a wounded dragon. As the cube break down the dragon. The cube grew in size and started to take a form similar to the dragon using the dragon bones for a skeletal structure.
It has half the fly speed of the dragon it ate.
It breath weapon it spits out Globs of gelatinous goo. Half of the damage is acid. The other half is bludgeoning. And the creature is restrain and at the end of its turn you can make a strength saving through to get its way out when starts it turn in the goo it takes acid damage. I haven't stat blocked it out yet this is just a creature I'm working on.

[Prince_Vorrel]

Gelatinous dragon
A Gelatinous cube slowly ate a wounded dragon. As the cube break down the dragon. The cube grew in size and started to take a form similar to the dragon using the dragon bones for a skeletal structure.
It has half the fly speed of the dragon it ate.
It breath weapon it spits out Globs of gelatinous goo. Half of the damage is acid. The other half is bludgeoning. And the creature is restrain and at the end of its turn you can make a strength saving through to get its way out when starts it turn in the goo it takes acid damage. I haven't stat blocked it out yet this is just a creature I'm working on.

Oooh I like this one! Could also have it just be a nasty spawn of tiamat and throw it in in a campaign involving her. Maybe make it the big boss of a series of caverns and the story would be that the slime ate the weakened sleeping dragon and took that form and the kobolds just kept feeding and worshiping it.

[Sariel Vailo]

Wild magic goblin,nilblog the immortal

[Drackolus]

...I came up with the idea to make some sorta baby/unborn/fetus old god that somehow got tossed into the abyss and started mucking up the place.

You mean... Giygas?

[Mr. Crowbar]

My DM has come up with some really good ones.

First was the Lump of Swine. We were investigating a criminal group that were mass producing these creepy franken-zombie pigs, and cornered a necromancer guy in a walk-in freezer full of pig corpses. And of course the guy necromancied them - the carcasses, some sawn in half, wriggled and writhed, their screeching reverberated in the enclosed space, and they just melted off the meat hooks and melded to form a morass of fused pig bodies, the Lump of Swine. Over the course of the battle it would detach little deformed piggies and reabsorb the corpses when we picked them off. Some of the little piggies would explode, too. Our Wizard got run over, so to say, by the Lump and was stuck in its flesh, slowly sinking into it over the course of a few turns... our Ranger's tiny little bird companion dealt the final blow to the Lump before the Wizard was completely consumed.

Later we had a horror-themed session and it included an emaciated laughing horse with a parasitic mouth melded to its back, a mutant baby whose head & body opened up into a giant maw and nearly KO'd my bard, and the Curious One, an eldritch abomination sort that was in the process of predigesting a whole village so it could suck up their fluids and return to its home. Like, everything in the village - people, food, buildings, were all being distorted and decayed by this thing. And we helped it escape.

[Hathorym]

Valera, the Goddess of Love was attracted to Orthar, the God of Hatred. One day, as was in her purview, she went to Orthar's realm to tell him how she felt. He laughed and her and brutally raped her to teach her about futility of her existence.

Soon, she was discovered to be pregnant and despite warnings from Kol, the Goddess of Fate, she decided to keep the child to show it what true love was.

Before she could give birth, however, the child chewed through her uterus and stomach wall, attacking and killing Kol who was performing as midwife. The child, which called itself Djiriantheorthos, began to slaughter other Gods who came to stop him. In a last desperate move, with his power growing exponentially each hour, Sol Linaru, the God of Light sacrificed himself to strip away of the power of Djiri. This left the world to suffer the Long Dark, a period of three days without the sun.

While Djiri no longer had limitless power, he survived the attack and fell to the world with incredible, mortal abilities. He realized his mother, now the Goddess of Madness, and a few other Gods, were still alive and plotted to steal their power and regain his place in the stars.

He created curses that affected entire species, rolling black clouds of chaos which warped everything with which it came into contact, and perverted the World Dragon of Fire into the World Dragon of Entropy.

He was a six year old child who believed the world was his toy, determined to get his way. He knew his mother also gave birth to a twin sister and would stop at nothing to stop her from playing with his things.

He was finally defeated three and a half (real world) years later. Best villain I ever created.

[Laserlight]

Not the two most powerful, but the two which have been most terrifying to my party:


The campaign log: "Beyond the altar was a cenote, and beside it was a warlock, dipping his head down to eat the liver from a struggling victim. He cursed Aberthol, but his voice was not that of the old man he appeared to be, but the high pitched voice of a girl child. When Ixchel attacked him, he countered with a single blast of flame that felled her. Neither sword-clubs nor glaive nor pistol had much effect on him, and such wounds as he did take were all healed within seconds."

He was based on a Navajo skinwalker. A L10 warlock plus regeneration and resist all nonmagic weapons (and the party only had one magic weapon at that point). He KO'd the (wounded) druid with a great damage roll on Hellish Rebuke. What really unnerved them was that a withered 60 year old man laughed at them with a little girl voice.



The party (5 of L11) were exploring a sidewheel riverboat that had been trapped in ice when the city magically froze over. When two of the team fell into the forward cargo hold, they disturbed...something. I showed them a pic of a Necron Wraith, without any explanation, and both of the PCs immediately decided "That's a whole lotta Nope!" The cleric cast Banish and the paladin punched a hole in the hull in an attempt to escape. They made it back to the riverbank, the wraith followed them (raising eight CR2 or 3 zombies), and the party fled. They never attacked the thing at all, other than the Banish, and it never got close enough to attack them. It was actually CR8.

[Naanomi]

It was quite a while ago but...

We had this scenario where the party was invited to a creepy giant mansion/keep to meet a quest giver, but when they got there no one was there and they couldn't leave the house (that was suddenly full of incorporeal undead, animated furniture, etc). They explore for a while, and in the belltower find that the place was used by a cult to summon a demon, but only managed to 'partially' summon it... so they keep luring 'powerful souls' to the place to kill in order to 'jump start' the summoning with the soul energy. It hints that the only way to escape the house once trapped in it is to complete the summoning and kill the demon.

Fast forward to a demon summoning ritual and... they find that the cult was wrong about the whole thing. Yes, the ritual brought the demon into the world; but did so by *turning the house into its giant body*.

Cue the giant fight from the inside of a demon, with a desperate attempt to make their way down the bones and viscera interior to the 'basement' to find and destroy the heart and make their escape.

[Phoenix042]

So in my current campaign I've got a pretty good one, I think. They're lower level (aimed at CR 5-ish) and so they're not gods or archdemons or anything like that, but I like 'em.

So there's a lot of setup to explain why they exist and what they're up to, but basically, they're a small cabal of three wight, circle-of-the-moon druids, wild-shaping into terrible, wight-like versions of predators; one brown bear, one dire wolf, and one tiger. They hunt the player-characters, accompanied by packs of zombified wild animals, plus a few hunters who followed the wrong set of tracks.

The theme in this forest is nature-corrupted-with-undeath. The three fey spirits of the forest (dryads, originally) have been corrupted, turned into banshees with fey-like powers who haunt their desiccated trees and twist the surrounding forest into a place of rot and death.