OP monsters

[lxion]

Have you ever, both as player or as DM, had some monsters that were way too strong or stronger than expected?

On my very first DM session, the players (lvl 1) were exploring a crypt and met a group of zombies, with two ghouls (or ghasts, i don't remember). I thought I was already being mild for not using the multi-attack. They managed to kill them all, but if one of the players didn't roll a natural crit on his death roll, the entire party would have been wiped out.

As a player, it was my own hubris that got me down. First campaign, playing a bearbarian, slashing through all. I think I was level 4 or 5 and I was getting cocky. "Is this all we face? Pff, easy." Well now, said the DM. As we opened a hidden room, we suddenly faced a Mind Flayer. Let's say I will not storm head first into one now. Although the attack wasn't performed correctly (he didn't ask me for a saving roll), he sucked out the brain of my character. My party managed to take him down though. Guess I had that coming. He made me create a sidequest for retrieving the brain though, which was fun as well.

Tell me you stories of the foes that were tougher than expected, with backhand spells you didn't see coming or that were just too tough for the party to manage.

[Waazraath]

Low level, anything with pack tactics. Bloody, bloody lethal. Edit: ah, and lycantropes, when no silver / magic weapon. A party might be tempted to take on one and damage it with spells, magic weapons and the like, but at the end of an adventuring day, with a few failed con saves ('oops, magic weapon is down, and out of slots'), all the martials are borderline useless and it's plinking with cantrips.

[Dualswinger]

Once had a level 1 fight last about 6 rounds extra and almost result in a tpk because three regular zombies would just REFUSE to fail their con saves

[KillingTime]

At low levels ALL fights tend to be pretty swingy just because a single crit will probably down the average character.
The stats don't really start to balance until about lvl4 imo.

[lxion]

Yeah that's true. I sorta like that, especially if you encounter those enemies more in later sessions. The first sessions often were fight, long rest, fight, long rest against goblins. It felt so satisfying afterwards to one-hit them.

[Sage Tellah]

Quicklings are strong for being CR 1. If a level 1 party fights one, and can't cast Sleep for whatever reason, either because nobody has the spell or the person capable of casting it doesn't get a turn before being shanked to death, the PCs can end up losing people or outright TPKing really easily.

120 speed easily lets them outpace the melee, and 3 attacks at +8 for average 8 (1d4+6) damage each basically guarantees they knock over a PC every turn, two with good rolls against particularly squishy targets. 16 AC and a feature giving all attacks against it disadvantage make it really hard to hit at that level, and 10 hp tends to be just enough to survive one lucky hit.

[Fire Tarrasque]

Less OP monsters, and more living disaster. But a more serious story first.

Group of level four characters have a fully rested fight with a Gelatinous cube.
One is knocked out, and no one is at more than half health.

Now, the most beautiful story ever.

The party: A full, well composed party of 8. Level 7.

The enemies: Four velociraptors. Yes. From Volo's Guide, CR 1/2.

First round: One of the velociraptors is just blasted to death by cantrips, but not before assisting it's three comrades in KOing a wizard.
Second round: The Kenku runs for his life. The Rogue refuses to stop taking a rest. Two party members are within reach to fight them. The other two are out in the wilderness, hunting, or have been separated from the group.
The velociraptors all roll crits. Now no one opposes them. In the party, there has been one death, and two are unconscious.
The raptors chase the fleeing Kenku. The Kenku climbs a tree to get away. The Velociraptors follow. The Kenku is unconscious.
The Rogue still refuses to wake up. The Velociraptors surprise and kill him in the first round.
The Cleric, who had been separated from the group, returns. After getting one attack off, he is also killed.
One party member remains. A Dragonborn Fighter.

The Fighter comes out of the woods. Throws a net at one of the Raptors. Catches him.
Other two raptors charge. One hit.
Fighter murders them in one hit each.
Fighter walks up to last Velociraptor. Stabs it to death.

Tl;dr: The 8 person level 7 party I was DMing almost got TPKed by four CR 1/2 creatures.

[MilkmanDanimal]

Quicklings are strong for being CR 1. If a level 1 party fights one, and can't cast Sleep for whatever reason, either because nobody has the spell or the person capable of casting it doesn't get a turn before being shanked to death, the PCs can end up losing people or outright TPKing really easily.

120 speed easily lets them outpace the melee, and 3 attacks at +8 for average 8 (1d4+6) damage each basically guarantees they knock over a PC every turn, two with good rolls against particularly squishy targets. 16 AC and a feature giving all attacks against it disadvantage make it really hard to hit at that level, and 10 hp tends to be just enough to survive one lucky hit.

I threw two of those at a party a while back thinking it would just be a brief little interlude in the forest, and almost murdered the entire 4th level party. Any time the party attacked, they rolled like crap, and the Quicklings had a couple crits. Four characters, one out, three sub-10 hp, and months later they're still grumbling about it.

[Estrillian]

Once had a level 1 fight last about 6 rounds extra and almost result in a tpk because three regular zombies would just REFUSE to fail their con saves

Zombies are one of my favourites, that "not dying" mechanic is the best, and it can create real fear at low levels. Even at higher levels the mechanic is great, especially if you don't describe the creature as a zombie.

[JNAProductions]

The Martial Artist (I think is the name) from Volo's.

Three attacks a turn, all with Stunning Strike... They hurt.

[DeadMech]

My first 5e group did not enjoy it's fight with a specter. Expected to fight a level 1 party it deals 3d6 damage. Enough to easily KO anyone in one hit from full health. And that becomes instant death with a failed DC10 con save since it will reduce your max hp by the damage dealt. Add a crit and it's likely able to one shot people all throughout tier 1. It's only got 22 HP but being an incorporeal undead it has a boatload of resistances and immunities. If it was being played cleverly in a suitable environment it would have employed hit and run tactics, phasing through walls to ambush, kill, retreat over and over. It flies, has a speed of 50, and is typically irrationally aggressive so running away isn't going to happen. The sunlight sensitivity isn't likely to come up either. In our encounter it killed our rogue outright on it's first turn and if I wasn't playing a 2nd level paladin it probably would have lasted long enough to KO or kill more of us.

Basically anything with life drain runs this risk. Wraiths come to mind. We had another really troublesome encounter involving a ghost and a wraith in a different campaign. Either alone probably would have been challenging at our level. The wraith hits harder, the DC is higher, it's more accurate and it has more health than a specter. Luckily the rogue passed his con save when he got one shot by the wraith and we had focus fired it down pretty quickly. The ghost then proceeded to possess my flying wizard and the DM ignored the bit about it not being able to use class features to start nuking my own party with my own spells. Perhaps because I initially commented that the 7 strength wizard was the best person to have possessed out of all the options. I wasn't so happy after and the fact there is no follow up save after the first failed charisma save irks me. That would have been our first fight at level 5.

The revenent we fought the previous battle at level 4 was a breath away from a tpk. I can only imagine the DM was rolling it's bonus 4d6 vengence damage against us. Which I don't understand because we as a group didn't do anything to make anyone swear undying vengeance on us. We certainly didn't learn it's identity or mission either. But 6d6+4 damage twice is more than enough damage for it to go party member to party member dropping them like flies. Which it did. It grappled the paladin and hit him once which didn't seem too bad at first. But the following round it drop him, moved to the ranger, dropped the ranger in one turn, moved to the rogue, dropped the rogue in one turn. I'm a flying wizard so I thought I was save. The at will ranged paralysis gaze would prove that false. If I'd have failed either of it's attempts to do so i would have fallen to the ground and been executed quickly. Perhaps if my knowledge skills would have told me it was a 30' range I could have moved to safe range. It also would have been nice to know it had regeneration. I was mostly tossing out fire at it throughout but I did lose a turn or two of blasting to stabilize the first two fallen party members. I certainly don't know at this point that it will take a wish spell to get rid of the thing if it comes back to un-life and comes looking for us. CR 5 enemy takes a wish to permanently deal with, ridiculous. And it's not replicating a spell so I'll have a 1/3 chance of losing the ability to even cast wish again if I did, ridiculous.

Groups of sahuagin we encountered earlier yet in that campaign were no push over. The final two encounters each had a priestess with them and the final had a refluffed Merrow. At least I hope the DM threw a merrow at us and not a baron, we were only level 3 at the time. Sahuagin are deceptively nasty to fight because their blood frenzy give them guaranteed advantage on attacks as the fight progresses. Their two attacks a round 1d4+1 and 1d8+1 probably make them more dangerous than their 1/2 CR would have you believe. And once they scratch you blood frenzy kicks in and now they're doubling their chances to crit and are more accurate. The priestess was most of our group's first time fighting a caster or a healer. In the first battle with one she wasn't too much issue, getting focused down before we really knew what she could do. In the final battle I got a reminder of why I hate the hold person spell. Purpose made to be used against the party as often as possible but too situational to be abused by a party. The battlefield also prevented us easy access to her while she used healing word to yoyo her front line brute every time we knocked it out.

[Zejety]

Seconding the Specter. The CR probably works out at higher levels so it's just a level 1 issue. So it wouldn't bother me so much if these things didn't continue to show up in various level 1 adventures, both official and on DM's Guild.

One of three level 1 adventures I saw them in had the sense of removing the HP drain (with an in-universe explanation). Another one had the party fight two (!) of them in a trapped room that explicitly doesn't hurt the specters. Yikes!

[noob]

I did see the description of the archmage and it seems very op for a cr12 creature.
I mean they consider that a level 18 character is cr 12.

[MrStabby]

Fire elementals can come as a bit of a shock.

I put a party of 5 level 10 characters up against 3 of them and it was tough.

A lot of the party was used to using armour or the shield spell for defense so being set on fire with no attack roll needed caused some problems. They managed to keep most of the party ablaze for the fight, and being on fire cast the casters concentration a couple of times. The encounter was late day and the party didn't have the resources to finish it quickly and the elementals have a solid number of HP and what turned out to be some annoying resistances/immunities. Light cleric had only 3rd level spells and lower left and only 3rd level spell prepared was fireball. Wizard had firebolt and poison spray as cantrips

When a character went down they NEEDED to be healed that turn as they would take damage from being on fire and so were well placed to be finished off by an elemental. As the fight wore on and resources and HP got limited more and more actions were spent on in combat healing and putting out party members who were on 2HP and on fire. The last third of elemental HP seemed to drop at well under half the speed of the first third. At the end two of the five were dead, one other was on 0 HP and the party pas pretty much entirely out of resources.

[Amdy_vill]

Have you ever, both as player or as DM, had some monsters that were way too strong or stronger than expected?

On my very first DM session, the players (lvl 1) were exploring a crypt and met a group of zombies, with two ghouls (or ghasts, i don't remember). I thought I was already being mild for not using the multi-attack. They managed to kill them all, but if one of the players didn't roll a natural crit on his death roll, the entire party would have been wiped out.

As a player, it was my own hubris that got me down. First campaign, playing a bearbarian, slashing through all. I think I was level 4 or 5 and I was getting cocky. "Is this all we face? Pff, easy." Well now, said the DM. As we opened a hidden room, we suddenly faced a Mind Flayer. Let's say I will not storm head first into one now. Although the attack wasn't performed correctly (he didn't ask me for a saving roll), he sucked out the brain of my character. My party managed to take him down though. Guess I had that coming. He made me create a sidequest for retrieving the brain though, which was fun as well.

Tell me you stories of the foes that were tougher than expected, with backhand spells you didn't see coming or that were just too tough for the party to manage.

we were playing 2e and were fighting some silver draconians. the fight was properly made for our level but we rolled bad and failed to strategies well. one of use got himself trapped in a corner with half of them and died in one round. we had to blow up the ship we were on to escape and we still all almost died from failing checks. That fight gave use all ptsd and now we don't just trust people unless they are important to the world and we know they are good.

[Pex]

Any creature that attacks Intelligence. It's not really overpowered, but it is more powerful than you expect because except for wizards everyone dumps Intelligence. You'll get the occasional non-wizard player who doesn't, but for the most part everyone does because of Point Buy and lack of Intelligence doing anything useful.

[DragonLord7]

My group is playing TOA and we are currently level 5. A few sessions ago we were going down and a river and saw some weird shadow monkey things. I don’t remember what they were called. We were going to go around when they suddenly all decided to psychic crunch the bard. Even if he made every single save he told us he still would have been knocked unconscious. Instead they just killed him out right. I am pretty sure it was five CR 1 creatures.

[strangebloke]

The Bastard

He was a primordial shapechanger who had forgotten his original name and purpose. He was an optional boss in that the PCs could have allied with him, so he was designed to be harder than normal. The dungeon was optional and intended for the late game when they'd be level 10 or so, and I designed the dungeon (once they decided to enter it) for a level 10 party. They were level 8. In my defense, I warned them.

The Bastard had three forms, all CR 11, all with a third the HP of the original form. When a form "died," he changed into the next form, any overflow damage being ignored. The forms were:

Behir
Gynosphinx
Horned Devil

The party was already pretty gassed at that point, and the bastard had set himself up at the mouth of a narrow corridor. He initially looked human, so they bunched up in the corridor. (throughout the rest of the dungeon, similar corridors had seperated the players if they didn't group up.) He hit the whole party with lightning breath. The wizard went down instantly, causing the haste spell on the paladin to abruptly end. Th paladin eventually gets back up, runs to the Behir and blows his last big smite on the monster.... dealing an effective two damage as his form reverted to a Gynosphinx. (flight removed, refluffed as a massive spider)

I'll let you guess who it went from there.

[SirGraystone]

I had a group of 3th level too, and its a very annoying creature to face for players if done right. First it got 120' movement so you can move 60', attack 3 time with its dagger then run off for another 60' which mean in a forest that its out of sight. Of course you get Attack of Opportunity on it but with disavantage because its speed make it blurry.

[nickl_2000]

A group of Velociraptor at the 1/4 tier.

They get 2 attacks each with advantage when they are withing 5 feet of an ally. They can drop some serious damage to people in a single round.

[GlenSmash!]

The Bastard

He was a primordial shapechanger who had forgotten his original name and purpose. He was an optional boss in that the PCs could have allied with him, so he was designed to be harder than normal. The dungeon was optional and intended for the late game when they'd be level 10 or so, and I designed the dungeon (once they decided to enter it) for a level 10 party. They were level 8. In my defense, I warned them.

The Bastard had three forms, all CR 11, all with a third the HP of the original form. When a form "died," he changed into the next form, any overflow damage being ignored. The forms were:

Behir
Gynosphinx
Horned Devil

The party was already pretty gassed at that point, and the bastard had set himself up at the mouth of a narrow corridor. He initially looked human, so they bunched up in the corridor. (throughout the rest of the dungeon, similar corridors had seperated the players if they didn't group up.) He hit the whole party with lightning breath. The wizard went down instantly, causing the haste spell on the paladin to abruptly end. Th paladin eventually gets back up, runs to the Behir and blows his last big smite on the monster.... dealing an effective two damage as his form reverted to a Gynosphinx. (flight removed, refluffed as a massive spider)

I'll let you guess who it went from there.

The Bastard? Was he Nameless? Was he a King?

Seems suspicious to me.

[strangebloke]

The Bastard? Was he Nameless? Was he a King?

Seems suspicious to me.

I prefer to think of him more as a sneaky mage.

[Platypusbill]

Quicklings are strong for being CR 1. If a level 1 party fights one, and can't cast Sleep for whatever reason, either because nobody has the spell or the person capable of casting it doesn't get a turn before being shanked to death, the PCs can end up losing people or outright TPKing really easily.

120 speed easily lets them outpace the melee, and 3 attacks at +8 for average 8 (1d4+6) damage each basically guarantees they knock over a PC every turn, two with good rolls against particularly squishy targets. 16 AC and a feature giving all attacks against it disadvantage make it really hard to hit at that level, and 10 hp tends to be just enough to survive one lucky hit.

I actually came to this thread to make a post about Quicklings. I intended to use them for an encounter (another monster was supposed to summon them, but ended up not doing it), and I actually had to nerf them to a lower CR to not make them overwhelmingly powerful.

Attack rolls against them have near-constant disadvantage, and thus their AC16 is effectively AC21 against an attacker with +5 to hit (with crits being nearly impossible). Combined with their huge damage and hit bonuses, they are actually CR 3 or CR 4 according to the DMG guidelines (defensive CR 2, offensive CR 5). Spells with Dex saves are also weak against them due their huge Dex and Evasion.

However, against spells that target their weaker saving throws (especially Strength, e.g. Entangle) or hit automatically (e.g. Magic Missile or Sleep), they are very vulnerable due to their low HP.

[SirGraystone]

I actually came to this thread to make a post about Quicklings. I intended to use them for an encounter (another monster was supposed to summon them, but ended up not doing it), and I actually had to nerf them to a lower CR to not make them overwhelmingly powerful.

Attack rolls against them have near-constant disadvantage, and thus their AC16 is effectively AC21 against an attacker with +5 to hit (with crits being nearly impossible). Combined with their huge damage and hit bonuses, they are actually CR 3 or CR 4 according to the DMG guidelines (defensive CR 2, offensive CR 5). Spells with Dex saves are also weak against them due their huge Dex and Evasion.

However, against spells that target their weaker saving throws (especially Strength, e.g. Entangle) or hit automatically (e.g. Magic Missile or Sleep), they are very vulnerable due to their low HP.

But spell have to be ready spell to cast as soon as you see the quickling, because he can easily end his turn out of sight

[Citan]

The Bastard

He was a primordial shapechanger who had forgotten his original name and purpose. He was an optional boss in that the PCs could have allied with him, so he was designed to be harder than normal. The dungeon was optional and intended for the late game when they'd be level 10 or so, and I designed the dungeon (once they decided to enter it) for a level 10 party. They were level 8. In my defense, I warned them.

The Bastard had three forms, all CR 11, all with a third the HP of the original form. When a form "died," he changed into the next form, any overflow damage being ignored. The forms were:

Behir
Gynosphinx
Horned Devil

The party was already pretty gassed at that point, and the bastard had set himself up at the mouth of a narrow corridor. He initially looked human, so they bunched up in the corridor. (throughout the rest of the dungeon, similar corridors had seperated the players if they didn't group up.) He hit the whole party with lightning breath. The wizard went down instantly, causing the haste spell on the paladin to abruptly end. Th paladin eventually gets back up, runs to the Behir and blows his last big smite on the monster.... dealing an effective two damage as his form reverted to a Gynosphinx. (flight removed, refluffed as a massive spider)

I'll let you guess who it went from there.
I'm sorry I'll have to say, I think it was still not a 'good' decision of not making damage overflow.
I suppose you had something specific in mind when designing that guy, but from memory any and every "polymorph" mechanic of any kind or source lets extra damage overflow from one form to the next.
So players could legitimately expect it...

With that said, it would probably have changed nothing, and it was indeed their own decision to face him instead of allying with him...
Players being players and all that... XD

I sadly have no great such story to share...
My worst experience so far was 4e one as a player, so it's out of bounds.

Thanks all for sharing thouhg. :smallsmile:

[Afrodactyl]

I will second fire elementals and ghouls. Being set on fire just for being near something is pretty brutal, and they hit fairly hard as a result.

And ghouls are all fine and good until you fail that save, and then you get minced.

[Cespenar]

Anything with fireball. Like a flameskull versus a level 3 party. Medium-to-hard, you say? Just drop a fireball and watch the TPK.

[Dr. Cliché]

A Banshee was concerning when we realise that it could have literally aged one of our party members to death (Aarakocra only live about 30 years). Thankfully, this didn't happen. Just came as something of a shock when we realised it was a distinct possibility.

Anyway, when I was last DMing, the enemy that caused the party most problems were Salamanders. The thing is, quite a few of the party were ranged and weren't carrying ranged/reach weapons (they were also light on caster support). Hence, they were basically killing themselves just by attacking the thing, even before it attacked them back. And there were several smaller ones as well, which were almost as bad.

[MrStabby]

I find that for character death to happen you need more than just a tough encounter with people knocked down (although obviously anything tough enough to possibly bring a TPK can simply due to it's raw power).

The big things that make a risk are all here:

1) Death rather than just 0 HP. Intellect devourers, mind flayers, gibbering mouthers, banshees and so on

2) Damage over time such that unconscious PCs automatically fail some death saving throws.

3) Area of effect spells such that downed PCs take collateral damage.



There are other aspects to "OPness", just as there are other aspects to an encounter being tough beyond killing PCs. Some encounters are there to drain resources rather than be the challenge themselves - they make the following more threatening. In this role I think Rakshasa are very powerful as they prompt casters to use their highest level spell slots to have an effect. Their damage output isn't massive so there is little risk of actually killing most parties as the PCs can take control with appropriate resource expenditure (even if the party isn't level 11 they will still have spells like haste and healing to support the fight with).

[Tawmis]

Low level, anything with pack tactics.

This.

Doing the Horde of the Dragon Queen... party got to the kitchen with the kobolds... failed a bluff and a fight broke out.

The kobolds took down a level 4 Ranger and Level 4 Fighter, before the rest of the party even had a chance to react.

Because both players were new character (the one had changed his character to the ranger) and the other was new to D&D (the ranger's girlfriend), I rendered both of them unconscious rather than dead, to allow the rest of the party to try and save them. (Which, thankfully, they did).

[dreast]

Another vote for the specter. A level 3 bard got crit, and because they use a lot of dice in their attacks, that’s all she wrote when he failed his save. Dead from full health in one round.