Favorite/Worst Monsters

[Tegannie]

I recently found my DM looking at the Tarrasque in the Monster Manual (3.5e), and it got me to thinking about what would be the worst monsters for my party to encounter (that we actually had a chance to beat). This also made wonder what other people thought. Excluding the obvoius, high-level epic monsters, what would be the scariest monsters for a party to face?


I concluded that the rust monster might be really bad for my party, which includes a wizard, a druid, a rogue, and a paladin. Why? Because, while 3/4th of our party uses very little or no metal, our paladin (who is the tank and the one who is supposed to take all the damage) is a warforged, made mostly of metal.

[johnroth]

I like monkey bees. A swarm of them is pretty damn scary. I changed them a bit so that the different classes of bees were different monkeys/apes. I think the Queen was an orangutang. He bodyguards were apes and the soldiers were just regular chimps. The PC's got Monkey Honey from them.

[Dr Bwaa]

Like you said, the rust monster is certainly the classic best & worst monster in core. For more exotic things, I like to turn to the Fiend Folio, where you find thins like:

Lesser Aoa: flying blobs of mercurial goop that feed on magical energy. They have reflective/absorptive spell resistance 20ish and DR10/+1, IIRC, and can also emit a magic-nullifying pulse that functions like a Dispel Magic. They're also horribly under-CRed (I think they're like CR3?), like a lot of Fiend Folio things. They're such a cool monster, but when I threw a couple at my party early in my DMing career, I very quickly had to throw them a bone in the form of the wizard happening to spot a wand of Magic Weapon nearby to avoid a really embarassing TPK.

Flail Snail: Okay, you can't hope to beat the flail snail in an awkward/adorable monster-off. It is simply the best there is.Not really, but come on.

It's a Large blind snail with four massive tentacles instead of a head, which it uses as maces to bludgeon its foes/prey to death. It has Light Blindness, which is nice, but it also has Blindsight, so... yeah. Oh, and also magic cast on it has a chance to instead produce some other random effects. Make sure your PCs encounter it in a dungeon with lots of twisty passages, and make sure the party bard/wizard makes the check to realize how insanely valuable the thing's shell apparently is. Watch with amusement as the party tries to get the shell out of the dungeon intact.

[awa]

shadows
they go through walls, they have a touch attack, they deal ability damge and worst of all they make spawn. a couple of them could rush through a town killing commoners and increasing their numbers exponentially and there's not a lot low level pcs can do to stop them if their more interested in attacking commoners then the pcs.

[dsmiles]

Disenchanters. Love 'em to death. (Same with Rust Monsters.)

[Starscream]

The Clockwork Horrors are well known game breakers, with the Adamantine Horror possessing Implosion and Disjunction. At will. At CR 9.

[ScubaGoomba]

In Pathfinder, definitely the Pugwampi Gremlins. My players rolled so many natural 20s that were just brushed aside.

[nedz]

Kobalds/Kobalds depending upon how they are run.

[Dimers]

The worst monsters are the ones with class levels, of course. Take anything nasty, add healing and/or buffs and/or feat-based shenanigans, and boom, it becomes EVEN NASTIER.

I recently gave my D&D 3.5 group a hell of a time with a fer-gawd's-sake moose, because it got enough buffs from items and its druid to do about 40 damage to three people every turn, with a Reflex save too high to succeed. The greater air elemental, the treant and the druid weren't especially effective. The moose drove the party right to the brink. It did better than a recent encounter with a dragon and a couple beholders.

More completely on-topic: watch out for anything with Rend.

[Calinar]

A group of shocker lizards can be great fun, especially if your party thinks they are weak and relatively harmless.

[Marlowe]

A Destrachion (sic?) is horrible if nobody has a silence spell. If you do then it's free xp.

[Jay R]

When I was a child, I was watching a bad science fiction about giant insects. Dad suggested that twenty-foot tall insects weren't all that scary - the scary ones would be a nest of a hundred six-inch-long wasps. Fast and hard to hit, but with much more poison than a normal one.

Ten years later, after D&D came out, I invented 6-inch yellowjackets. But I've never run a party of high enough level to use them.

[DaMullet]

In terms of actual fears brought to life? Giant insects, hands down, especially giant spiders. In terms of game mechanics bringing the party to its knees? Anything with a special ability they can't counter or reverse (Gorgons and Medusae before they have Break Enchantment or Stone to Flesh come to mind).

I once ran a session where they had to defend a town constructed entirely of discarded beehives from the giant bees that discarded them. Things were going well until the wizard lit them all on fire. That made things worse.

[Silus]

I love me some Shadows and the whole Nightwalker family (Walkers, Wings, Crawlers and Waves). Fluffed right in the proper setting can be more terrifying than any dragon or demon. One of my goals is to run a campaign/adventure path with JUST those monsters and make it utterly terrifying.

Maybe some refluffed oozes as well...

[Vizzerdrix]

Stirges. They terrify me after the WLD.

Spoiler

Show

I was the bandaid, but not high enough level to have lesser restoration yet when a swarm of these things hit us. I'd managed to keep the darn things away from the pack mule and our second beat stick for a while but before the fight was over their wasn't a single person with enough Con left to go on. we ended up holed up in a side room watching the DM roll the random encounters in the open (to make us sweat). Ended up going through about 60 gold worth of rations before everyone got their full con back

[Vknight]

My Players Worst fear at low levels.

Sand Runners
I use Kobolds and Silt Runners(Dark Sun) for the basic abilities available to these guys. Give them +25%damage. +1to all defenses and attack rolls. Boom Silt Runner
A group of these just nearby sends my players into high alert
At lower levels these things are terrifying.

Currently the worst thing for them to fight would be.
Any major official from Ivory. As that will lead to them having Ivory wanting to execute them again

[Jarrick]

The monster I'm most proud of is the "Troll-Eater". The PCs sought to bring peace between a small wilderness town and the local tribe of trolls. The trolls agreen to the peace, but only if the PCs could defeat their old enemy. The Troll-Eater was a huge hairy beast with massive jaws, an acidic bite attack, improved grab, swallow whole, scent to 180ft, and a 60ft land speed. I made it by applying the Horrid template (Eberron) to a dire shark, and then converting all of it's stuff to function on land without changing anything.

As far as published monsters, I have to go with Harpoon Spiders (MM3 pg.80). they get especially mean when pit traps are involved.

Vizz, you think regular stirges are bad.... My brother once played an artificer who specialized in constructs, taking the craft effigy feat. He made about a dozen or so loyal stirge effigies because they keep their blood drain. Since they were mechanical, we ruled that the blood they drained could be extracted later, which came in handy since we had a vampire in the party at the time. The hideous con damage helped too

[The Winter King]

Phase wasps. foot long wasps that cast MM at you, travel in swarms of 20, and eat spellbooks and scrolls.

I also like illithids and aboleths. They always seemed related to me.

And Gelatinous Cubes...Cuz Jell-O

[Eldan]

Arcanaloths. Also, Rakshasa, Succubi, Leanansidhe, Doppelgangers, Hengeyokai, Lycanthropes and mirror people.

What can I say, the best weapon in a DM's arsenal is the player's own paranoia.

[nedz]

The best weapon in a DM's arsenal are the PCs.

[Vknight]

The best weapon in the Dm's arsenal is the sound we only roll dice for the sound they make

[Morithias]

The scariest monster, that my players ALWAYS run from is the clay golem. How many monsters do you know that cause PERMANENT hp loss. A bad encounter with a clay golem can cripple your character for the rest of his life.

[awa]

clay golem damge its not permanent you just need a caster with a bare minimum caster level of 6.

[Morithias]

clay golem damge its not permanent you just need a caster with a bare minimum caster level of 6.

Okay I stand corrected. Then again the only healer in that campaign was the main villain.

(I'm not kidding the final boss was the DMPC Healer, Gates in a pit fiend and nearly killed them, they never saw it coming they thought she was just a cliche mary sue, turns out she was a villain with no sense of subtly)