Hardest Monster for its Listed CR?

[Xrposiedon]

I was thinking back on my days as a player...

What is the hardest monster for the CR that you have come across ...or ...at least read up on?

I think mine would go in one of two votes.

Intellect Devourer CR 2
Something that low CR....going against a general dump stat....is Devastating to unsuspecting parties.


OR

Troglodyte CR 1/2
30 speed, 3 attacks, and solid damage

[Trask]

Depending on the environment, piercer.

In a high dungeon cave that thing could fall down on a 1st level character for 4d6-6d6 damage. Easily within one shot territory. Theyre basically useless once they land though.

[Trask]

For a more conventional enemy my vote goes to the gibbering mouthers, who have a 5d6 bite attack, blinding attack, huge hp, and an annoying ability to disable people. Their main flaw is their low low ac an super low speed. But in a situation where the players cant easily escape, like falling in a pit or a portcullis dropping behind them, that thing could be serious trouble. One nat 20 and someone is getting eaten.

[Regius]

My vote goes to multiple Intellect Devourers (a favourite of mine for terryfying the party at any level)

the encounter math really doesn't do these guys justice, especially with (an) illithid(s) commanding them
their devour intellect is like feeblemind for everyone but the wizard, and once they drop someone with it they can begin attempting to hijack them (killing them instantly). now the party has to face one of their own, when you consider that as their number increases the number of saves a player has to make increases and eventually, due to statistics, they will fail, the best bit is that they are only CR 2 so you can start fielding them against level two parties, to whom the feeble mind may as well be an instant kill as they have no access to GR or any otherways of gaining intelligence. they can't be blinded, they know where players are within 300 ft, it all binds to gether to make them into little seeker packs of death.

alternatively you could also say that a Rakshasa is horrific for Its CR of 13, a level 13 party has access to one or two 7th level spells, essentially rendering spell casters useless, that and even then they have advantage on those saving throws, then considering that their attacks can render rests moot for the martials, and their suite of control, escaspe, and evasion spells. they can be pretty horrifying as a BBEG who hit's the party over a series of encounters. give him a class and suddenly you have a creature that is ungodly strong.

[fbelanger]

Any monster that get a surprise round.

[great maw]

I propose to you the ultimate being, the low level party killer, the Quadrone !



Quadrone
Medium construct, construct
Armor Class 16 (natural armor)
Hit Points 22 (4d8+4)
Speed 30 ft., fly 30 ft. Actions
Multiattack.

The quadrone makes two fist attacks or FOUR shortbow attacks.
Fist. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 3 (1d4 + 1) bludgeoning damage.

Shortbow.Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, range 80/320 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) piercing damage.
The dude is so strong that instead of attacking versus a low level party, you could decide to directly roll a 1d4-1 dice to declare how many victims he has made during his turn.

[Gastronomie]

The Tarrasque. It's the strongest monster for its listed CR.

Apart from that, Shadows are pretty menacing, especially when in large numbers. Their CR is only 1/2, but they have 40ft/round movement, resistance to almost all damage low-level adventurers can hurl, and a Strength drain attack (no save required if it hits) that can potentially kill the party mage in 2 to 3 hits, or alternatively, cripple the frontline warriors. Sure, they have Sunlight Weakness, but I'd picture these guys attacking at midnight rather than in the day, so...

[Unoriginal]

The Tarrasque. It's the strongest monster for its listed CR.

Tiamat is way stronger than the Tarrasque.

[Regius]

Tiamat is way stronger than the Tarrasque.

Heck solars are stronger than the terrasque

[Tanarii]

The Tarrasque. It's the strongest monster for its listed CR.


Tiamat is way stronger than the Tarrasque.


Heck solars are stronger than the terrasque
I dunno about Tiamat, but Solars only have Str 26. *ba dum tish*

I'll let myself out now.

[hymer]

The lowly goblin should be mentioned. The ability to hide as a bonus action at decent competency and a fight at range can make them surprisingly difficult to handle.

[MrStabby]

Well a lot depends on the circumstances where the party meets them.

Most of the standard ones of the list have been mentioned, other than flameskull.

For CR 4 the flameskull does a lot of damage, flies and unless you know how to finish it off and can access its place of death it is going to come back.

[Naanomi]

Pixies get a lot of discussion as a summon anyways

[JellyPooga]

.Most of the standard ones of the list have been mentioned, other than flameskull.

For CR 4 the flameskull does a lot of damage, flies and unless you know how to finish it off and can access its place of death it is going to come back.

Yeah, the Flameskull definitely deserves a mention. It can and will wreck CR appropriate parties with Fireball and it has some decent resistances/immunities that can be hard to overcome at that level.

[Ralanr]

Animated armor.

Seriously, 18 AC is really hard for a group of level 1's to hit.

[CursedRhubarb]

Hobgoblin were a nightmare for a previous group I had. CR 1/2 with 18AC but only 11HP. They go down easy enough if you can beat or get around the armor, but their racial of doing an extra 2d6 once per turn if they have an ally next to their target is the kicker. This works for their bow attacks as well as sword attacks, so having them attack from range after sending dogs or wolves after the party is scary.

[Spiritchaser]

Any monster that get a surprise round.

I'm going to dogpile on this one

burst damage on a surprised party, particularly when focussed on a particular target can really make a mess of things

[Unoriginal]

I propose to you the ultimate being, the low level party killer, the Quadrone !


The dude is so strong that instead of attacking versus a low level party, you could decide to directly roll a 1d4-1 dice to declare how many victims he has made during his turn.

Err, not saying th Quadrone is weak, but even at lvl 2 most parties would handle one with little to no problem. Unless the dude focus on one PC, but in that case it's Death Throw galore for one while the others kill the Quadrone

[Xrposiedon]

Oh I almost forgot ...

ROPER...

Stupidly High AC....sure its not mobile, but it also ambushes people with its natural ability to hide. Then...if it gets lucky, it starts reeling people in....its not fun.

[Trask]

Another really tough one is the Efreeti. That thing is a beast, 2 attacks, 4d6+6 scimitar attacks with a +10 to hit and conjuring a fire elemental or wall of fire. Wall of fire right in the middle of the party to separate the beefy melee characters from the vulnerable casters and rip them to pieces.

[NecroDancer]

Any dragon with variant spellcasting is my vote. A beholder in it's layer is also pretty darn powerful.

[lperkins2]

Hm, I think the Eagle is worth mentioning. Alone, and against a single eagle, they're not much threat, but as CR 0s, a level 1 party of 4 can fight up to 13 of them and still only be a hard encounter. 1d6 hp, and only AC 12, so they go down easy, but with a fly speed of 60, they can pretty reliably kill the party mage or maybe the rogue and then withdraw. If the mage or rogue is a halfling, they can even fly off with him.

Assume the party goes first, and everything goes perfectly for them, on the first round, the fighter, rogue, and cleric each kill one, the mage gets 3 via magic missile. That leaves 7 attacks against the rogue, he can eliminate 1 with his reaction, when it goes to fly away, but he'll be taking 7 attacks at +4 for 1d4+2 damage. If we assume the rogue has AC 14 and 10 HP, he'll be hit about 3 times, maybe 4. If he is hit 3 times, he has a 6% chance of not going down. If he is hit 4 times, he cannot stay on his feet. To make it truly terrifying, keep hitting him when he goes down. If it doesn't go so well for the party, there may be enough of them to finish/carry off the wizard and the rogue.

For reference, they are similar to a kobold in power (+4, 1d4+2 damage), except they can fly. Yeah, they don't get to hide as a bonus action, they don't have pack tactics, and they have 2 fewer HP (1d6 or 3 vs 2d6-2 or 5), but they can outfly even the winged kobolds (speed 60 vs speed 30).

[mephnick]

There's a lot of tough stuff at CR 9 but I'm going to throw the Ulitharid (Volo's) in there.

Can auto-sense any creature with an INT of 4+ within 2 miles. Resistance on all magic. Huge cone AoE that does good damage and stuns. Strong physical attacks that can lead to auto-stun and brain eating. Innate Spellcasting with Dominate Monster. Oh yeah, and the saves for all this damage, stunning and Dominate? DC 17 INT. Guess how many characters are going to pass those saves? The ones that do will probably die to the primary attack anyway.

[Gastronomie]

Tiamat is way stronger than the Tarrasque.Didn't know about Tiamat. I guess she wins then.

[Arkhios]

Giant Centipede is quite horrible at low levels.
I just had one 4th level PC killed by them.

[Easy_Lee]

Tucker's Kobolds.

In general, the worst kind of monster is an irritated DM. He'll throw at the party whatever they don't know how to fight.

[Kurt Kurageous]

I dunno for sure, all good proposals here. So here's mine as a bad riddle.

What has

a 1/4 CR

but with a +5 to hit!!!

and flies

with a decent AC14

gets an auto-hit

and has darkvision

making it likely to ambush

and can be put in almost any setting

and make a neat controlled monster capable of taking out the 1-4 level caster in two rounds or less in quantity

and always leaves the PCs feeling icky-violated?

Stirge

[Trask]

I dunno for sure, all good proposals here. So here's mine as a bad riddle.

What has

a 1/4 CR

but with a +5 to hit!!!

and flies

with a decent AC14

gets an auto-hit

and has darkvision

making it likely to ambush

and can be put in almost any setting

and make a neat controlled monster capable of taking out the 1-4 level caster in two rounds or less in quantity

and always leaves the PCs feeling icky-violated?

Stirge

Not only that but they're likely to keep on sucking blood after the PC falls down, making death likely.

[lperkins2]

+5 to hit isn't that unusual for 1/4 CR. What makes the stirge so dangerous is the auto-hit on subsequent rounds, combined with the fact that it will keep hitting a downed creature until it dies.


I dunno for sure, all good proposals here. So here's mine as a bad riddle.

What has

a 1/4 CR

but with a +5 to hit!!!

and flies

with a decent AC14

gets an auto-hit

and has darkvision

making it likely to ambush

and can be put in almost any setting

and make a neat controlled monster capable of taking out the 1-4 level caster in two rounds or less in quantity

and always leaves the PCs feeling icky-violated?

Stirge

[Jama7301]

This could almost turn into a fun list showing the worst monsters-per-CR.

Then I'd have a handy list of mon-I mean.. only someone really mean would throw the absolute worst at their players all the time.

[ProsecutorGodot]

The lowly goblin should be mentioned. The ability to hide as a bonus action at decent competency and a fight at range can make them surprisingly difficult to handle.

A pack of goblins almost tpk'd my party of first level adventurers. I'd calculated a proper encounter according to the book and ended up having to deus ex machina the party into a victory because I felt like it would be completely ridiculous to have them dead within 20 minutes of starting the campaign.

I've since learned not to follow the DMG strictly on encounter strength.

[Unoriginal]

A pack of goblins almost tpk'd my party of first level adventurers. I'd calculated a proper encounter according to the book and ended up having to deus ex machina the party into a victory because I felt like it would be completely ridiculous to have them dead within 20 minutes of starting the campaign.

I've since learned not to follow the DMG strictly on encounter strength.

Errr... A pack of goblin has a CR way too high for a lvl 1 group.

Like, one goblin alone can take on a lvl 1 character.

How many goblins did you have?

[ProsecutorGodot]

Errr... A pack of goblin has a CR way too high for a lvl 1 group.

Like, one goblin alone can take on a lvl 1 character.

How many goblins did you have?
4 goblins to 5 party members. According to the dmg this is a hard encounter for a level 1 party. I thought it would go better for them considering that I'd allowed a free feat at level 1.

What it really had boiled down to was that I'd rolled two nat 20, the fight had been going alright until then.

[hymer]

Errr... A pack of goblin has a CR way too high for a lvl 1 group.

Like, one goblin alone can take on a lvl 1 character.

How many goblins did you have?

What's your definition of 'pack' for this purpose? Is it a game term for one of the multipliers?

[Unoriginal]

4 goblins to 5 party members. According to the dmg this is a hard encounter for a level 1 party. I thought it would go better for them considering that I'd allowed a free feat at level 1.

What it really had boiled down to was that I'd rolled two nat 20, the fight had been going alright until then.

Ah, I see. Well, the thing with lvl 1 is that it's pretty much a 1-hit-connect-you-drop thing for most classes. Would probably have been fine (or at least more fine) if you hadn't rolled two auto-hits.

Though I have to say that for 5 adventurers, an hard encounter would be 375 XP and a deadly one 500 XP, while 4 goblins are 400 XP. So while not exactly deadly is was harder than hard, making the difficulty your players encountered not surprising.


What's your definition of 'pack' for this purpose? Is it a game term for one of the multipliers?

I usually don't call a group of less than 6 a pack, but it's probably just me.

[Contrast]

Err, not saying th Quadrone is weak, but even at lvl 2 most parties would handle one with little to no problem. Unless the dude focus on one PC, but in that case it's Death Throw galore for one while the others kill the Quadrone

A single Quadrone is an easy encounter for 4 level 2 PCs. Having a very good chance of downing a character (of severly injuring several) seems pretty good for an easy encounter (at least following the descriptions this would fall under the 'hard' category). Having a flying speed is also a significant boon at low levels which might let it survive another turn against an unprepared party and if it gets a second or third turn you're in real trouble.

That said a lot of this is more low level encounters being super swingy and the quadrone maximising that.

A single intellect devourer is bad but not too bad in a straight up level appropriate fight - the issue is when you have them stalk the party and attack when someone is on their own or you throw one in with other enemies or a whole group.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Wererats can be pretty nasty, depending on party composition - a low level party is fairly unlikely to have picked up any silvered or magic weapons, so they can easily slaughter a party low on casters.

[ZB2017]

I was looking at the Banshee (challenge 4) the other day and I thought that it seemed like a fight could go south immediately if the banshee got the Wail attack off first.

The DC 13 con save throw isn't that high but if the entire party manages to roll poorly ... then everyone drops to 0 HP?!?! :xykon:

[Waterdeep Merch]

I was looking at the Banshee (challenge 4) the other day and I thought that it seemed like a fight could go south immediately if the banshee got the Wail attack off first.

The DC 13 con save throw isn't that high but if the entire party manages to roll poorly ... then everyone drops to 0 HP?!?! :xykon:
I was running a published adventure with one that almost led into a TPK thanks to the wail. If you really want to see dead players, obey the typical CR rules later and use multiple of them alongside high damage, low health backup. The next wail you hear is going to be from across the table, right before they drop your HP to 0, too.

[MrStabby]

I was running a published adventure with one that almost led into a TPK thanks to the wail. If you really want to see dead players, obey the typical CR rules later and use multiple of them alongside high damage, low health backup. The next wail you hear is going to be from across the table, right before they drop your HP to 0, too.

Multiple banshees can be brutal but even just one can eat of lot of party resources. If you are putting the party under time pressure so rests are not easy to come by then the healing needed to recover from 0hp can be quite taxing on top of a normal day of adventuring. In a party of 5, I would expect roughly 2 to fail on average.

One encounter I did used 2 banshees and a number of zombies against the party. The zombies bogged down the standing party members making it hard for them to help the others in the party and also dealt damage to the fallen pushing them closer to death. In the end the wizard fireballed the area with the unconscious PCs in to try and kill the zombies - leaving 3 part members hitting death on their next failed death save. One zombie survived but fluffed its (advantage) attack, saving one PC - who then made his save along with another. One got healed by the druid (the cleric). With both healers back up it was fine. We could have had 3 dead PCs in that encounter.

[Xrposiedon]

I guess after looking through the MM.....I also would find that Wil-O-Wisps could cause some issues for some adventurers trying to be the next Steve Irwin of the swamp.

[BurgerBeast]

Though I have to say that for 5 adventurers, an hard encounter would be 375 XP and a deadly one 500 XP, while 4 goblins are 400 XP. So while not exactly deadly is was harder than hard, making the difficulty your players encountered not surprising.

Nit pick: the hard and deadly numbers are thresholds, which means an encounter is not deadly until it reaches 500. So assuming your numbers are correct, a hypothetical 499 encounter is hard, not deadly.

[quinron]

I'll throw quicklings onto the list. At CR 1, 16 AC isn't too bad, and 10 hp is genuinely pitiful, but

- It has +6 Dex, and therefore +8 to attack, Stealth, and Acrobatics
- It gets 3 attacks at 8 average damage
- All attacks against it have disadvantage unless it's restrained or incapacitated
- It has Evasion

There are a few easy counters - sleep comes to mind - but they depend on the party's spellcaster being able to spot it despite that juicy Stealth bonus and beat it in the initiative order; any other method of restraint requires at least 2 turns. A quickling can and is exactly the sort of creature that would risk an opportunity attack to go hit someone else, since it gets attacked at disadvantage. Literally the only 1st-level character it wouldn't knock unconscious in 2 hits is a barbarian who (miraculously and against AL rules) started with 20 Con.

The first time I threw a quickling at a group of 1st-levels, two of the three of them were knocked unconscious. The third knocked the quickling out in one hit.

[Zardnaar]

Flameskulls and Hobgoblins have been mentioned. Kobolds are also rough on low level PC's IMHO.

One my players are starting to hate is Umber Hulks and I plan on using 2-3 in future encounters. Basically every time a PC's initiative comes up is a DC 13 charisma save or be confused. They are being called Murder Beetles.

[SharkForce]

low CR is really hard to balance well. as noted, low level combat is always swingy, because one good hit can usually put *anything* down, which makes blind luck king for the most part.

for the higher CR stuff, though, i'm noticing a theme... saving throws that don't deal damage. i speculate that this is because WotC were completely insane when they figure out how to generate CR, and completely failed to account for what happens on a failed saving throw (apart from damaging effects). this is, of course, a terrible idea; a DC 13 instant death effect is rated exactly the same as a DC 13 knock prone effect, which i hope we can all agree are not equivalently challenging. a petrifying effect that takes multiple failed saves to do anything and probably only hits a single target is rated the same as an AoE stun or confusion effect if they have the same DC as well, which is again quite a different degree of challenge.

it also doesn't take into account relative difficulty of save attributes... so a DC 15 int save is supposed to be just as challenging as a DC 15 con save, in spite of the fact that one of those saves is consistently optimized against (that is, people dump int and prefer proficiency in almost any other save) while the other is consistently optimized for (that is, almost nobody dumps con, almost everyone i've ever seen play the game puts at least a decent attribute in there, and many people specifically aim to get con save proficiency).

granted, it can be hard to account for every single thing, but i think saving throws are the biggest blind spot in the method WotC uses to calculate CR. as a result, creatures that make heavy use of saving throw effects with severe negative outcomes will often be high difficulty for their CR.

edit: on a side note, in my opinion this does make most monsters with full-blown class-based spellcasting features more difficult than their CR would typically suggest. i mean, not just "innate spellcaster", but stuff like arcanoloths, liches, and archmages.

[Afrodactyl]

I would put trolls up there. Especially if for whatever reason the party doesn't have fire/acid damage.

[lperkins2]

Eh, I haven't found trolls to be particularly dangerous. Worst case one party member ends up attacking every round with a torch for 1 pt of fire damage. Their AC isn't that impressive and they don't have that many HP. Yeah they hit sorta hard, and will hit the frontliner about half the time, if he hasn't been buffed. Their mental saves suck, so the party wizard can often trivialize the encounter with them.

[MrStabby]

Eh, I haven't found trolls to be particularly dangerous. Worst case one party member ends up attacking every round with a torch for 1 pt of fire damage. Their AC isn't that impressive and they don't have that many HP. Yeah they hit sorta hard, and will hit the frontliner about half the time, if he hasn't been buffed. Their mental saves suck, so the party wizard can often trivialize the encounter with them.

This is pretty close to my experience most of the time.

On the other hand an aquatic troll fighting in water can make the fire damage that bit harder (depending on the source) and not every party will be bringing the acid. A troll that can pull back to water to recover can raise the difficulty. The same is also true for a lot of forms of universal disadvantage like fighting in heavily obscured areas. The more infrequent hits are the more regeneration the troll can do.

Now I want to run an encounter with two trolls in the fog using hit and run tactics. See how long it takes the PCs to work out there are in fact two of them... Of course a simple spell to clear the fog could make the encounter fairly trivial, but the PCs would have had to have had the forethought to have prepared it.