[Any] Nightmare Fuel Encounter

[ghost_warlock]

Quick and easy; what creatures/encounters do you dread running up against? Which things make hope dwindle (and/or die) when you realize just what it is that the GM has put you up against? What monsters make you genuinely fear for your character's life (or soul)?

For me, it's golems. I typically play characters that rely on mind-affecting effects or a good, old-fashioned beat down (preferrably against something I can score a critically hit against) so constructs in general are usually bad enough. But, golems (especially the bigger ones) are even worse, since they have so many immunities that usually come along with weird status effects when exposed to certain attacks; I can never remember all those special modifiers and effects (and my characters are usually clueless, too).

I mean, with undead you can just let the cleric (or whoever) nuke them with positive energy (and they tend to be sort of frail hp-wise), but when I'm up against a golem, I know the GM means business.

[Scintillatus]

The classic, Rust Monsters.

[jcsw]

Anything where the DM insists has "technically appropriate CR"

[JackMage666]

DM's pet monster, who he merely guessed the CR and did no math.

Nevermind it has a x6 criticals, that only hits 5% of the time, right? A level 5 party should have no problem with it! Better boost the AC to 30 just to make it a challenge.

[Eldariel]

Any of the more obscure tentacle monsters. They aren't called Aberrations for nothing.

[Oslecamo]

Anything with good/super stealth capacities that the party doesn't spot and proceeds to snipe us down from a distance, then runs away as soon as we get a glimpse of it.

We know it will return as soon as we turn our backs again. Better start spamming some Aoes...

[Grail]

The classic, Rust Monsters.

Funny thing happened the other week when running my epic FR apocalyptic game. The characters came across a room in a tower where there were 5 large Rust Monsters. The Fighter and the Half-Ogre Favoured Soul (Tempus) stripped off all their arms and armour, and went in, swining their fists.

"We do this for low-level fighters everywhere!" they cried, and then proceeded to take out 2 of them with their non-lethal fists until they grew bored.

As to what I fear.... well, I don't get to play often, but when I do, it's Dragon's run by smart DM's.

[JeminiZero]

I suppose it depends partly on what character/build I am playing. Say if I'm a warlock, I live in dread of monsters with both high SR and acid immunity (like Black Dragons). If I'm using something that has to get up close (and which isn't an Unarmed Swordsage), Rust Monsters would rank pretty high.

And of course there's the Emerald Legion.

[afroakuma]

Some people now wince when they hear "Polytrotos." I like that fact. It makes me grin.

[Aron Times]

Have your players fight an atropal or two. Then show them its 3E illustration (it's an epic-level floating undead fetus).

Guaranteed nightmare fuel!

[Llama231]

For 4e, a razorfang swarm can do wonders.

[sonofzeal]

Kobolds. Just..... kobolds.

[Starscream]

I tend to play characters who either rely on mind effecting spells, or on precision damage, so either way constructs tend to make me pretty useless in a fight.

But as for monsters that I truly HATE facing, there is nothing worse in my book than Aboleths. If I see one I know I'm going to be dealing with underwater combat (argh), mind controlling psionics (arghargh) and that awful slime and mucous (argharghargh).

To me, mind flayers are the right way to do creepy, Lovecraftian, mind controlling aberrations. Aboleths are the wrong way.

[Fax Celestis]

Advanced kythons (not kytons, but kythons). That Damn Crab. Seemingly-weak humanoids who suddenly display amazing power. Advanced rukanyr. Anything with the Apocalyptic, Paragon, or Pseudonatural templates. Mixtures of the above (Apocalyptic Paragon Advanced Kythons and Pseudonatural Voidmind Advanced Rukanyr are scary things indeed).

[Oracle_Hunter]

I've found that you can train your PCs to be terrified of anything.

For instance, in 2E my players would run in terror when faced with a Vampiric Mist - a type of blood-drinking cloud that did little damage, died easily, but was hard to hit.

In 4E, my Heroic players are terrified of Goblin Hexers. Between Vexing Cloud and Blinding Hex, they can amp up the lethality of even Goblin Cutters into TPK territory. And Lead From the Rear just makes the party's Warlock swear constantly.

[Aron Times]

Goblin skullcleavers supported by goblin hexers are pretty lethal. We almost got TPK'd in an LFR adventure when we encountered such a force. The hexer's massive debuff cloud (-4 to the party's attacks) makes it really hard to take out the skullcleavers before they cleave a party member or two.

Oh, and needlefang swarms are way too powerful for level 2 creatures. They can easily take out an unprepared party.

And I just remembered... We encountered an orc bombardier in one LFR module. He had three grenades with him which hurt really bad (about half the party almost died). We also had a close call when he lobbed a grenade at the party members tending to the damsel in distress. Fortunately, his attack roll against the damsel missed, so she lived.

[sebsmith]

Insane sword lady, just insane sword lady.

[LoneStarNorth]

Well, I've been the DM a lot more often than the player, so I haven't had time to get scared of anything. I guess if I were playing and the DM said that a certain encounter was 'revenge' for something I'd done in the past, I'd get kinda scared...

As for my players, I've made them terrified of toads. All toads. Forever. Ants and teddy bears are next on the list.

[Zenos]

Non-D&D here, in a Dark Heresy campaign I'm DMing, I am hoping to make the players suitably scared by some 'nid gribblies I've cooked up. Just enough that when they see snake-like, multi-armed creatures darting towards them at high speed they will be scared.

[Prometheus]

My players are irrationally afraid of bison. Early on, I was describing a monster and they interrupted me to ask how big it was. I replied "Larger than a bison, if it stood up on it back legs" apparently they took that to mean "It is a large bison, except that it is standing on its back legs" and proceeded to get mopped down with it. They had been sufficiently warned of the danger, and were supposed to complete their objective without getting near it. Now however, bison are the archenemy.

[Mushroom Ninja]

That Damn Crab.

*shiver*

Every time I get killed by one of those, it haunts my dreams for weeks...

[Shpadoinkle]

Anything that destroys equipment. Like Rust Monsters. Or Shadow Giants.

[Graymayre]

The creepiest encounter I had ever faced was a lack of one

My group was playing a modern campaign (zombie apocolypse). Our truck of survivors stopped outside of a texas town to resupply and find more survivors (we were awarded xp each day for our survivors... surviving).
You know what we found there? NOTHING! No zombies, no survivors. Newspapers littered the streets, noting maybe a day after the outbreak and no later. Every door in town was boarded shut. We broke into a few and found that they were completely devoid of supplies and people.

We held up in a cathedral for the night, at 9:00pm the Church bells went off.

Moments later, secret doors from an underground complex unleashed zombies into the town.

I can still hear the bowel movements of our group setting off like some well orchestrated carpet bombing.

[FinalJustice]

AMF. Seriously. Every. Single. Damn. One-Shot. An. Annoying. AMF.

It's either a beholder with some brute friend, or a giant with lots of spellcasting or some dude with a bulwark of antimagic. Anyway, it's really annoying. Even if I'm meleeing, because I don't have my magic goodies.

Anything that destroys equipment. [2]

[Recaiden]

Constructs in general, golems especially, and cadaver collectors in particular. I sent some against the party once, just a level appropriate encounter. It ended badly.

They're immune to a lot.
Our blaster mage's strongest spells? Immune. Did the fighter have an adamantium sword? Too bad, no damage for you. Arrows? Hah! Mind affecting spells from the telepath? Mindless.

And the fact that they are covered in corpses and body parts, and impale people on their spikes to use as human shield? Creepy.


Shadows and other incorporeal creatures. Coming out of the floor and walls and ceiling, draining away your strength/life force.


Any of those monsters that destroy your bones.

[MCerberus]

One of my DMs had the nasty habit of giving class levels to a whole lot of stuff.

Yah. Kobold Clericzilla...

backed up by a kobold druid.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

For me, it's elephants. Our halfling treehugger led my human paladin and our kobold werewolf sorcerer to a herd of about 17 elephants, and tried to make friends with the matriarch. She didn't understand him, so she put him in her mouth for some reason. After he wriggled out, he jumped on her back and got her angry. He jumped off, but was hit with an AoO on the way down, and then the matriarch charged and trampled him, killing him instantly. The other elephants did the same and almost killed the kobold (activating his lycanthropy) and me. We decided to drop on the ground and surrender.

If our other druid hadn't showed up and convinced the elephants to leave we'd have probably been killed as well.

[AslanCross]

I've never really seen my players terrified by anything that I've thrown at them, probably with the exception of the first and only Huge monster they ever fought (A Bluespawn Godslayer; I didn't have a mini so I made one out of my brother's Zoids. It was the right size and towered over the players' minis.).

On the other hand, there's the metagamer (Asphenfox I'm looking at you >:E) who is terrified by EVERYTHING. One time a cleric bad guy cast summon undead IV. The party was Level 6.

<Me> A large, winged, skeletal figure bursts out of the ground.
<Players> !!! *knowledge checks*
<Asphefox> WHAT??!?! WE CAN'T POSSIBLY FIGHT A DRACOLICH NOW!!! *verge of tears*
<Other PCs> Uh...it's a wyvern zombie.

[FoE]

The creepiest encounter I had ever faced was a lack of one

My group was playing a modern campaign (zombie apocolypse). Our truck of survivors stopped outside of a texas town to resupply and find more survivors (we were awarded xp each day for our survivors... surviving).
You know what we found there? NOTHING! No zombies, no survivors. Newspapers littered the streets, noting maybe a day after the outbreak and no later. Every door in town was boarded shut. We broke into a few and found that they were completely devoid of supplies and people.

Nothing is scarier.

[Samakain]

Death

Giants


That is all.
Thank you.