Hydra Variants/Hydra Lair Actions

[Stallrein]

Hi everyone,

I'm throwing a Hydra at my players for their upcoming session. A 5-person party of 7th level characters.

I have a feeling that this party might just steamroll the encounter so I wanted to beef him up a bit aside from increasing AC/HP.

Has anyone ever given the Hydra unique abilities or given it lair actions? I'm thinking of actions along the lines of suffocation similar to a crocodile spinning and and trying to drown its prey.

Any input would be wonderful, thanks!

[MrStabby]

Single melee monsters will tend to get steamrolled more than their CR will suggest.

Giving each head some kind of spit or breath attack means that they are less screwed by being pinned down.

A camouflaged ability to ambush the party could make a walk over encounter a bit more challenging.

A few effects might help, a fog cloud and blindsight for example.

Add these and a small bump to HP and attack rolls (+2 con, +2 Str, +1 proficiency) and you should have a tougher encounter.

[Calen]

Breath weapons as mentioned.

A cloud of mist, falling rocks, water wave or other effects that will happen in the hydras lair to push or prone or cause obscuring areas.

Hydra is allowed to attempt a grapple as part of its bite attack. A grappled creature grants advantage to the other heads. If there is water the hydra could also pull those creatures underwater, apply the underwater combat rules (disadvantage on most melee attacks etc.)

[stoutstien]

Hi everyone,

I'm throwing a Hydra at my players for their upcoming session. A 5-person party of 7th level characters.

I have a feeling that this party might just steamroll the encounter so I wanted to beef him up a bit aside from increasing AC/HP.

Has anyone ever given the Hydra unique abilities or given it lair actions? I'm thinking of actions along the lines of suffocation similar to a crocodile spinning and and trying to drown its prey.

Any input would be wonderful, thanks!

Put the body of the Hydra under murky water and use hit and run tactics. Could even be a whole series of caves that are halfway under the murky water.
Now the party have the dilemma of if they take out a few of the heads and it retreats it's going to get stronger.

It taken the hide action in the murky water and It gets off 5 AOO on the unsuspecting sap swimming by....

[J-H]

Obligatory link:
http://themonstersknow.com/hydra-tactics/

Points to make:
-25hp in a player's turn to kill a head. Monk did 24 damage? No head for you.
-Modification: Multiple sources of fire damage required to burn off multiple stumps. I treated AOE fire spells as being worth 1, +1 head per spell level - so Burning Hands could burn off 2 stumps, Fireball could burn off 4, etc.
-Modification: Each head had a breath weapon: 30' line, 5' wide, 2d6 poison damage, Con DC x half.

I ran a hydra as a boss monster for a group of 6 5th-level characters. I started it with 8 heads, based on the total party size+1 (1 player was missing). I basically ignored the monster's HP in favor of "kill all the heads," but gave it disadvantage on basically everything once it hit 0hp. Due to the way heads were handled, it took the party over 600 damage to actually kill it. Only one or two players actually managed to do 25 damage and score a head-kill.
The party sorcerer kept flinging fire at it, and so it kept breathing poison at him. He went down to 0 3 or 4 times during that fight!

Environment is important too. I had them fight the hydra as they were exiting a sunken city in a lake. They were in 10' deep water on a bunch of scattered pillars and platforms of ruins that they could hop or swim between, with only one party member having a Ring of Swimming. Their mobility was restricted, while the Hydra got to benefit from having a swim speed and a bit of fire resistance from having its body underwater. Edit: Shadow Monk'd. Environment is key in making this an awesome encounter.

[Sorinth]

I haven't used a hydra myself but one ideas would be to have some sort of grapple based attack/benefit.

Something like as a BA after a successful bite attack the hydra can start a grapple. If successful the target is then raised 20ft into the air. In subsequent rounds the Hydra can either throw the grappled creature taking a bunch of fall damage or continue to chew auto-hitting and dealing regular damage.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I wrote up a variant hydra (https://nailsofvecna.tumblr.com/post/184984958203/the-swamps-and-mangrove-forests-of-the-feywild) a while back. It's not particularly special, just wings, twice as many bites, some innate spellcasting and a fluffy breath weapon, but maybe you might find it useful. I feel like small buffs go a long way with a hydra!

[Lupine]

falling rocks

Rocks fall, everybody dies

[sleepyhead]

This is pretty exciting. (http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2015/08/hydration-weirder-hydras.html)