Grells and Other Monster Related Horror Stories

[tanderson11]

I was running Ruins of Greyhawk module, as a pretty newbie DM and everything was going pretty smoothly until at one point in the dungeon the PCs free a trapped Grell (its HD have been advanced by about 3-5, yet it should only be a CR 4 according to the book).

I had not prepped this part overly much and had only glanced at the grell and not understood the extent of its power level.

The PCs get to bargaining with it and it agrees to help them kill the blackguard who had trapped the grell.

In next two encounters the grell single handedly one rounds every enemy. At this point everyone is in a state of shock that the grell is this powerful. The blackguard that I had revamped and was worried might kill the entire party was dispatched in a matter of rounds as well.

The party assassin at this point was as terrified as I was by the grell and managed to study it for a death attack during the combat. Fortunately all went according to plan and the grell died, but for a while there I was terrified the party might some how dominate the grell and ride the campaign to an easy conclusion.


Does anyone else have horror stories about monsters they grossly under-estimated they'd like to share?

[AslanCross]

The Greater Barghest.

It has three very powerful spell-like abilities that it only needs to use one per day: Invisibility Sphere, Mass Bull's Strength, and Mass Enlarge Person. It can cast as a 9th-level caster. It's CR 5. Don't forget it also has Blink and Charm Monster.

In my Red Hand of Doom campaign, I was shocked to discover how powerful it was---the encounter was really an ambush, meant to show the PCs how serious the enemies were in wanting them dead, and they very nearly succeeded. The party of five got really mashed up: Four blackspawn raiders, each not very strong on its own, plus two Greater Barghests, were hiding in the trees on either side of the path.

Mass Bull's Strength. Mass Enlarge Person. Invisibility Sphere. The PCs pass by and suddenly, huge falchions come slicing at them from out of the trees. The PC crusader gets charmed and begins to grapple the PC psion, dragging her off into the trees, where the Barghests were waiting.

While the PCs eventually managed to survive this encounter without any deaths, it really. Freaked. Them. Out.

[rayne_dragon]

I've been pretty lucky, I usually don't overestimate monsters too much. There were a few close calls though. Both of these come from a 4e Aberration campaign I was running (one where the PCs encounter lots of aberrations, they declined my offer to play as aberrations )

The first was when a three person party had to fight a wraith with skeletons encounter that had been designed for more people. I was really worried that I was going to kill the entire party by draining all their healing surges. Fortunately, they were quite tough so they survived although they were almost out of surges. I was quite pleased that the encounter gave them a good run for their money since I was originally worried the dungeon would be too easy.

The other happened with the same party when they were trying to clear out a myconid colony. They made the mistake of trying to be diplomatic so they ended up surrounded by twice as many as they were supposed to be fighting at the time and I was wondering how I would manage to not kill them. Plus some myconids do a lot of damage when they manage to hit. It all worked out alright, although I think my decision to have them fight conservatively (as in back off when at low hp) might have helped.