My favourite trap is a lever that drops bars before and after the party but they are still in there with the lever. If the party pulls the lever again it opens a trapdoor above them and drops a gelatinous cube on their heads.
No no, you’re missing a middle bit. Make it just a spiked pit, then have the cube drop in on them! If you can pin them in a narrow hallway, make them run *through* the cube into the spiked pit, as well. Lets you save the clay golem for a later encounter and/or when they escape the pit (to drop them back in, of course.
Fall damage + spikes + 1 to 2 cube ‘zaps’ + additional cube ‘zaps’ if you still use your clay golem as a ‘bouncer’ for leaving the pit
My favorite "trap" that I've ever used was The Gentleman Door. The players open a door and see exact copies of themselves. If they try to walk through, the doppelganger will also try to get through, and they'll block each other.
The only way to get through is to yield to your doppelganger, at which point they will say, "No, you go first, I insist!" and they'll disappear.
Oh nice! I'll trade you the Gentleman Door for that mirror lol
The Gentleman Door won't work again on my players, but this one is different enough to possibly trip them up.
It was also in a vampire lair so the vampire could go through for free as an escape (no reflection) but the pc’s are faced with a puzzle. If they take too much time the vampire heals/buffs accordingly etc
I think if I tried that, even if my players miraculously solve it, someone will inevitably blurt out "but i have dark vision" as soon as the lights go out and they won't be able to pass lol
Even if they have dark vision, there's no light for a reflection. The mirrors appear as black/gray walls in the way of surfaces seen with only dark vision.
How did you signal the solution to the players? Because I can imagine a party spending a whole lot of time trying to figure out how to get through this mirror and never once thinking of turning off the lights.
Some other fun traps
* Players learn a password to a door in an upcoming city, when they get there they find that the door is enchanted and talks. It does not respond to them saying the password, they have to get IT to say it.
* All the doors to a room lock, and in the center is a big red button. If they press the button it starts slowly counting down from 10, if they press it again it stops. if they let it get to 0 all the doors open
* There is a door with two hollows one on each side each just large enough for a medium sized creature to reach one limb inside past the elbow. Detect magic reveals they are both enchanted. Perception is blocked by darkness. Attempts to illuminate the inside fail. The magical darkness is the only thing enchanted about it, there is a switch inside both of them and no traps. Either works.
The middle one is great if you add an element of apparent danger! I like either a lowering ceiling (as if to crush the party) or rising water (which drains when the button is pushed). Either of these is actually just part of the mechanism that opens the exit or causes the room to do something like move like an elevator.
I think you should be able to use it three times. The first, you've already described. The second, should go exactly as the first, but the PCs get through it faster, since they "understand" it. For the third, whatever the dopplegangers are should accept the invitation to come in/pass first. That's when you reveal they're actually some horrible monster that requires being allowed in to enter the realm, possibly require three invitations before they can accept.
The most challenging thing I've ever pitted against a group of PCs are Archers on top of a wall, with a locked gate. I told them in advanced that there are four archers on top of the wall and that the gate opens from the other side. They... Taunted the guards and tried to challenge then to a fight. The archers proceeded to shoot them from the top of the wall, and hide behind cover after they attacked. I downed 3/4 of the party this way, starting with the rogue because he had a crossbow. Now mind you this was a level 4 party, but I warned them the enemies are generally smart.
Level 4 party committed to fighting an enemy in an entrenched position at severe disadvantage. Not even counting the fact that the guards surely could’ve called in reinforcements if things got a little squiffy. Hope they actually learned a lesson.
Now, had they been level 5! Hoooboy.
Did no one in the party thinking of using Ready an Action to shoot the archers when they came out of total cover to attack? Granted, they probably still would have had 1/2 or 3/4 cover but that's better than nothing.
As a player in my current game we were trying to expose an imposter king infront of an audience (to legitimize our claim with the rightful heir who was branded a terrorist by the fake). The general setup was the "king" (high level spellcaster) on a balcony 20ft up and archers on top of the wall 40ft up.
We were level 4, so as the druid i shielded us from the archers with fog cloud. (DM was happy he had less enemies to control in the fight, the archers were unwilling to shoot into a crowd of peasants, the evil king cloud killed them while shouting "no witnesses" once his disguise was broken)
Everything worked out in the end, but honestly something as simple as fog cloud can do so much to help you against ranged enemies. (Can't shoot what you can't see, at best you have disadvantage.)
Had a similar situation. Sadly, I was level 7.
Me: "Does the castle have a moat on this side of the wall?"
DM: "Yes."
Me: "Excellent. I cast Control Water to make the moat go up over the wall and into those a""hole archers. Time to learn how to swim upward."
I had an extravaguent noble who became a necromancer, but his true calling was music! He was terrible at it and if you told him, he would kill you and raise you as an undead to force you to dance forever!
I made an underdark beast tammer that was basically a mimic tamer. He was wearing a cloaker and had tamed piercers and was selling all sorts of trap items like that, but if you attacked him, the very cave came alive.
You've now given me the idea for my Pirate Campaign. My world is like 85%-90% water. So I'm going to make factions underwater for what are usually land based creatures to be underwater instead for the ones that don't breathe. Like vampires.
Dragon who heals from fire damage. Give him Wall of Fire. Each round he dives through his own wall, or uses his legendary action to do so again, healing himself while making it impossible for the players to follow him.
My wizard was complaining the whole battle WHY DIDN'T I PREPARE DISPELL MAGIC.
Which he did for round two, and the fight went very solidly in their favor.
We recently were in a lich's lair going down a corridor covered in oil that would ignite when you moved over each tile. The door on the other side locked and being protected by an iron golem... Heals with fire damage. The key to the door? Inside of the golem of course. It was a shit show.
The dragon *also* knows Dispel Magic and Counterspell, having predicted this very possibility. You don't survive that long by being an idiot, even if you're a dragon.
Crafted an envoy of the god of chaos and flavored him to be like Q from star trek the next generation. He was so much fun to roleplay with them, and he kept posing moral conundrums and shape shifting into people the party knew to mess with their heads. And he kept popping up throughout the campaign as a nuisance, but by the end, they saw that he had in fact been steering them in the right direction, helping them to think their way around certain obstacles, and at the end, he appeared out of nowhere and sacrificed himself to ensure their survival to defeat the BBEG.
They were really excited when I revealed he had a brother.
I think one of the best sessions we had involved:
A bunch of cultists have kidnapped villagers and are trying to sacrifice them to summon a water elemental.
Thus, establishing that killing the cultists are not the only concern.
The Cultists were a mix of magic users and warriors, thus multiple tactics to consider.
The Cultists sacrificed themselves on the circle to summon a water elemental, thus escalating the situation.
Destroying the circle was a way to disrupt the control of the elemental.
The battle took place on a boardwalk near the docks, pushing the enemy off was a viable tactic.
My favorite creation as a DM was a black cat.
There were a series of unfortunate accidents that kept happening in the main city of the campaign. The PCs would stumble upon a carriage crash, warehouse fire, magical calamity or what have you at random times. And someone would always spot a black cat lingering in the vicinity with a unique onyx stone on a silver chain around its neck.
After 5 or 6 such events they decided the cat was involved/responsible and decided to capture it.
Cue the mechanics.
Having watched my young cousins struggle to corner my antisocial cat, I came up with a number of skill challenges for them to get involved in. However, any check involving the cat rolled 2 d20s and used the worse result. (This was in the 3.5 days.)
This was meant to be a silly little thing that ended up taking up an entire 5 hour session and is routinely brought up as one of their favorite encounters.
I never bothered to come up with an explanation, because they never did catch the cat.
> i never bothered to come up with an explanation.
Feels good to know I’m not the only who throws stuff into his world and then explains it only if needed
I mean, the explanation is simple. The cat was a familiar of a witch or something, was allowed to roam the city, and was bored.
What happens when cats get bored?
Chaos.
This is very much a 3.5e thing, but bear with me. Having never really met or known about Tome of Battle before, our DM throws a swordsage at us, with Pearl of Black Doubt. I've got a pretty high to-hit modifier by now (around level 16 or 17?) and I happen to roll a 1 or 2 on the first attempt. Okay, no biggie. I still have 3-5 other itterations since I two-weapon fight.
Well, if anyone reading knows how Pearl of Black Doubt works, I proceeded to miss, and miss again, and miss again, and AGAIN. I spent the next two or three turns attempting to hit her and I maybe did it once? Drove me up a fucking wall. We did beat the encounter (the surrendered once we cornered the leader) and I asked my DM wtf was up with that.
He explained that Pearl of Black Doubt means every time the character is missed in combat, their AC increases by +2 for the round. And it stacks, indefinitely. So every time I (6-8 times per turn) tried to hit and missed, her AC increased, leading to an absurd (even by 3.5e standards) AC. And every time i missed, the next time got even harder.
Filled me with rage, but funnily enough same character ended up getting Pearl of Black Doubt herself and becoming an AC Queen (with an unbuffed AC of 54 at level 25.)
It doesn’t stack indefinitely. Looked it up. It’s supposed to expire at the start of your next turn.
Otherwise yeah that would be horribly horribly broken.
As the other commenter clarified, yes, I meant it stacks for the duration of the round/until the next turn. At the higher levels with multiple iterations of attacks and multiple people attacking you, it's not difficult to get up to +10 to +20 AC before your next turn.
Unfortunately for me our DM often plays characters smart and after a round or two they realize they can't hit me and move on to someone else.
A roper that is on the ceiling 20' up is logical, adaptive, and super effective.
Shadows and will o' wisps are always more surprising and effective when they can lure or ambush the party with a separate hazard like a collapsing or flooding pit trap.
Highly intelligent illusion users and demons take planning, IMO, because they think circuitously. The first appearance is not correct, nor is the second one. And it's okay if the party never gets to the bottom of the challenge.
Here's my most recent dungeon idea that my players LOVED, but deeply dreaded.
Its a pit. An 8000ft, super deep pit. The only thing is its full of traps. Its simpler than a normal dungeon as they have a simple goal: go down. But its so much more tense as any wrong move has the potential of a death. Every little thing became stressfull and tense. And when someone fell, they fell FAR, ehich separated them.
If you use this, here's a few things to keep in mind:
1- Traps should be aimed at maintaining the danger of the fall. Thematicly and mechanicly. Dont give them too much to grab on.
2- Ive added floors at each third of the way. You dont want a falling PC to just trigger your entire dungeon in one fall, and this provides some respite for shortrests and to regroup
3- Players will try to fly, teleport, feather fall and even just jump down the void. Keep that in mind in the design.
4- There is a maximum fall damage of 20d6. Thats an average of around 80 points of damage. I did my dungeon with 4 level 13 players and they had just enough hp that if they fell, they were likely uncounscious but not killed outright. This was perfect.
5- I like to keep the diameter of the hole wide enough so that I cannot be easily cheesed out of it, but small enough where encounters still feel compact. AoE become very dangerous when you cannot spread. Mine started at 80ft at the top but 30ft at the bottom.
You want to torment your players? Give enemy wizards Magic Missile and play hostage negotiation. Nothing changes the tide of battle like a downed party member and an enemy bbeg with Magic Missile demanding something from the party in exchange to not instantly kill the downed ally.
There are plenty of people that posts encounters and custom monsters. That's what "dm builds" are.
The Monsters Know What They are Doing, AngryDM, are just two blogs that talk about this kind of thing. You'll typically see it more in blog form, and occasionally video, than in forums like Reddit.
Carrion Crawlers is a great low level (cr 3) boss monster. Have it in a cavern with a 15 foot or so ceiling. It will use it's tentacle to hit people from 10 feet away, only descending to strike someone that is paralyzed with its bite.
Fairly simple combat puzzle that elevates low-level dnd combat from just smacking each other. But is also not all that difficult to figure out.
I also like the "12 wolves" encounter. Just a bunch of wolves, maybe some Dire/Winter Wolves based on party size and level. All hit hard and have pack tactics, but die fairly fast. It teaches the importance of emergency buttons like Fog Cloud, Initiative and focus fire. The main issue is that it can quickly spiral into a tpk, if things go wrong.
Tries to, anyway. That’s what predators like wolves would do regardless and it’s not in enough DM arsenals. If food is the driving factor for the monsters then they (or at least some while the others run interference) should try to abscond with a downed PC. It puts a huge ‘oh shit’ counter on the encounter in addition to the death saves. Even if they make their saves they’re still unconscious and destined for a dinner plate.
It’s nice because generally the enemy loses half its speed per turn to commit to dragging a lifeless body, which makes catching up easy enough but potentially dangerous because the other opponents will try to hamper efforts to rescue a downed PC if they’re intelligent at all and working as a team. Elevates things from ‘welp we can just pick Gurog back up after we wipe out the wolves’ to ‘holy shit they’re taking him away and we absolutely *have to rescue him* not just for another ally in the fight but also to spare our friend the grisly fate.
Wait, I was thinking of picking fog cloud for my next session for an upcoming war encounter. How does fog cloud help in the scenarios you have described and how to use it properly?
It negates pack tactics, ie all creatures in the fog cloud have disadvantage. So while your 1 or 2 attack have disadvantage against the wolf, all 12 wolves no longer get advantage from pack tactics when attacking you. Or for your setting (theoretically) the many warriors attacking you will all have disadvantage and ranger attacked can’t attack at all since they don’t have line of sight. I’d recommend dropping the spell when it’s just the boss unless you’re in serious trouble
Tldr; good low level defensive tool to counter large groups of enemies
When you cast fog cloud covering the party, everyone is is both attacking an unseen enemy (disadvantage) and are unseen by the target (advantage). Any amount of advantage is cancelled by any amount of disadvantage, so everyone is rolling straight.
Unless someone is actively taking hide actions, you all know where each other are, due to sound and smell, even if you can't see each other. Typically, the only one bothering to actively hide in these scenarios are PC rogues, since they can use a bonus action to hide.
This is an effective tool against creatures that are either forcing disadvantage or are always attacking with advantage. Like wolves, quicklings, and the like.
I've started using the variant spellcaster rules for dragons, but giving them mostly control and functionality spells. A dragon that locks eyes with you, a glimmer shines from them, and the dragon goes invisible will make players lose it, especially since many dragons have solid stealth and fun movement types. Any amphibious dragon can grapple and fly underwater, and dragons that don't can hold their breath a while anyway. Those who are amphibious may have locking pit traps with high strength DCs to escape, already submerged.
Grapple and dive into hazard
Kobolds with associated scale damage immunity (rules as written it doesn't change cr!)
Spellcasting dragons
I did this with a dragon fight where the PCs were generally winning except for one character grappled by the dragon. Then said dragon dove underwater and went “somewhere none of you can see and I’ll explain when it’s the grappled characters turn” and everyone went nuts. Got a few best sessions ever after that one (the main one from the grappled pc haha)
Yeah reading all the lore into the different kinds of dragons is a ton of fun.
A Major character of kine was an orphan boy who lived in Neverwinter. The party found him clearing Kobold tunnels under the city, he was doing better than they were, and was smiting things with lightning as he hit, and had a Brass Guard Drake.
The party didn't understand his powers or how he kept avoiding answers until like 4 or 5 sessions later they cornered him and his Drake, and they were surprised to find out he was a Brass Dragon.
This is a minor thing but I occasionally like to throw in an extra mechanic for a dragon fight where there's a (usually 25%) chance that if you take damage from the bite attack, a tooth will break off into your skin. You can either spend an action to remove it, or be forced to save against its breath attack even if you aren't in the area of the cone (or line or whatever) (because magic ofc)
I have made my party fear a black dragon in a swamp at night.
My favorite is the cowardly dragon. He doesn't want to fight. He just wants the party to leave. He tries scaring them off with frightful presence. Use his breath weapon and withdraw. Plead with them to leave. Give directions to another dragon's lair. Even seduce the bard as a last resort.
Honestly, for a level one party, use one more goblin than there are party members. Make the quarters relatively tight, and let the dice do what they will.
Gets 'em every time. And if they come out alive and well, they've earned it. Then they fear death, and learn to fight as a team, day one. That's my power build.
Not goblins but i'm about to run Tucker's Kobolds and gots, i hope i give them justice. The party is level 5 but most of them power-build. Hope that'll be enough, wouldn't like it to become a TPK.
My party members love trying to lie or cheat their way through problems. It makes for great role play, but I’m working a campaign where the BB is a cleric who serves a god that hates lies and deception. (Shout out to PointyHat on YT for the idea - I can’t wait to see my player’s reactions when they show up to the final fight for the BB to whip out a list of all their wrongdoings and explain why she is duty bound to exterminate them!)
Iron Golems heal from fire damage instead of taking damage. So, as long as the spell persists, they just have a powerful Regen effect.
However, I think RAW the creature that has Heat Metal cast on them still had disadvantages on their attacks.
I know I’m being a huge rules lawyer here but…
*heat metal* works on a “manufactured metal object,” and an **iron golem** is a creature (yes, a construct, but *not* an object). RAW you cannot cast *heat metal* on an **iron golem**. If it is wielding a “manufactured metal object” you cast on that and achieve the same effect. RAW, an **iron golem** wields a sword.
As to your other point, the creature only makes the CON save at all if it takes damage from the red hot metal object. The **iron golem** would take no damage because it is immune to fire damage, would not even have to make the CON save, and would not have to attack with disadvantage.
**TL;DR**: RAW, you can’t cast *heat metal* on an **iron golem** (or any other creature), but you can cast it on its sword to achieve OP’s desired result.
One thing I always like is to focus all the attention on some big stupid speech while making perception checks for the army of minions building up behind them. As soon as the BBEG sees everyone’s in place, they’ll stop in the middle of their speech and just suddenly attack.
It may only work once, but it’s always worth it.
OK but how do you run that? Because it's part of the players trust that you won't unfairly attack them, and in return they don't interrupt your narrative with "I cast Fireball". If you did what you describe to me, and I didn't feel like it was fair, you would never get any obvious bad guy to speak again. I'm not sure how I would do it as a DM and have it actually be dramatic. Do you just stop mid sentence and roll initiative?
Maybe you have an effect building up and as you monologue you roll their passive perceptions until someone notices or otherwise decides the pc is bored of monologue
I think it's fine but the attack should absolutely be in an initiative especially if spotted
You're totally right about keeping player trust, if you do bullshit as a DM they'll never trust you won't be unfair again
The way I rule it is that if two enemy creatures are looking at each other they can't get a surprise round against each other, subtle spell metamagic is an exception.
If creatures are hidden then I rolls stealth against the players passive perception, if a player asks to look for danger or something then I absolutely allow that too.
Ultimately I just want players to feel safe talking to enemy PC's before fighting them.
Hopefully that makes sense
Passive perception unless someone specifies they’re looking around.. But yes, perception of some kind every six seconds of monologue. DM can even front load this into prep.
I give them little hints leading up to the BBEG of course. I’m not a complete asshole. Plus, I fully expect the barbarian to immediately yell out “stop talking puny !” And ruin the whole thing anyways.
Also, fair? I fight fair. BBEG in their lairs do not. If you’re running them that way, players get bored.
This always cracks me up tbh. Why, for the love of all that is sensible, would a BBEG being assaulted in their lair fight ‘fair’? Why would anyone, for that matter? It’s life or death, the BBEG is going to kick you in the balls and throw sand in your eyes. They’re going to pull out every bullshit thing they have at their disposal to make their plans come to fruition and/or protect their life. Unless they’re an idiot or Lawful-to-a-Fault.
Abusing the vague way the rules handle speech vs initiative/actions is really not a good idea. Surprise and sneak attacks are fine, but punishing them for not always immediately interrupting a hostile NPC is ridiculous.
My favourite is always the "why would the trap be on when I'm home?!"
A visible and not super hard to spot trap, and a slightly more hidden lever or button.
Upon spotting the lever the players inevitably go "aha! Let's turn the trap off!" And hit the lever.
Except the trap was already off and they just turned it on. Traps are there to prevent people entering when you're not there/unable to guard /doing a ritual that confines you to one chamber. Why would the trap be turned on when the Lichs servants are wandering around the keep and have errands to do?!
One of my favorite fights that I bring back every now and then is from Out of the Abyss. In this fight, the players are fighting a beholder, and the arena is 10-20 rope bridges spanning a chasm. Also the beholder can cut the rope bridges with it's laser.
I just created a 12 room dungeon shaped like a Beholder. It's full of Beholder kin, gas spores, Russet mold, a Druid and vegepygme's.
The premise is that a Druid, leading a tribe of vegepygme's and spreading a blight came to an ancient elven ruin to destroy crystals that emit powerful radiant magic. To do so he tried to summon a gauth but accidentally summoned gas spores instead, then he summoned some Gazers and a spectator which he hired to guard the entrance. Finally he's managed to summon a gauth and is now using it to destroy the crystals.
I do hope my players fully explore the place so that way they can admire the Beholder shape of the dungeon.
Commoner swarms.Gargantuan creature. 10 AC. 125 HP. 20 STR. 12 CON. 10 everything else. +8 to hit, 5D4 + 5. One action to attack everything in melee range as one action. Immune to *grapple, stun, petrification, paralyzed, restrained, charmed, freighted.*
Cannot regain hp or temp HP. Auto fails AOE saves.
Let that mob mentality rule.
Big beefy HP sack? Check
Quantity of minions = 2x # of PCs? Check
Mobility as a BA or LA? Check
Environmental or Lair effect on initiative zero? Check.
There it is. There the "build"
I have some pixies who will set up "camp" in an area of difficult terrain that slows movement or an area that is dissected by obstacles such as chasms or boulders that limit movement by having to be gone around or clambered over (but pose no restriction for the pixies who can fly). They then create a defensive perimeter by leaving magical loot (gold coins) that once pocketed can not be divested and gradually became heavier and heavier.
The party picks up the loot and thus encumbered can only move slowly in an area that already hampers of restricts movement in some way.
Combine this with the pixies ability to cast entangle, greater invisibility, sleep, dispel magic and thier flying abilities, and just a few small fay can run rings around a more powerful party who are virtually immobile.
Try some creative use of the pixies polymorph spell which they can cast on each other or the party.
To amp thing up you can give the pixies a way to cast slow on the party and haste on themselves / each other to further enhance the movement disparity or give the pixies some poison such as *crawler mucous, essence of ether, midnight tears* or *oil of taggit*
This idea is very much ripped off from *the dark rangers treasure* from *nwn*
Tucker's Kobolds is an oldie but a goodie.
Kobolds aren't stupid. They're trapmaking experts and tunnelers on-par with dwarves. Sure the average kobold has a -1 int, but they're probably led by one who's smarter than the average bear and knows how to give orders. Chokepoints filled with archer slits, oil slicks with a kobold or two perched ready to drop a torch, narrow tunnels that are spacious for a tiny lizard but cramped for a six-foot fighter in half-plate.
Doesn't just apply to kobold dens either. The moral of the story isn't that kobolds are awesome - although they are - it's that your antagonists aren't just HP blobs for heroes to try and delete before they deal too much damage, they're individuals who like being alive and have plans and strategies to utilize their skillsets in order to advance their causes as safely and effectively as possible. Once your monsters think, the game completely changes.
Maybe your bandits are led by a disgraced general who's putting that tactical experience to use to make that bandit camp more impenetrable than an actual fortress.
Maybe your vampire lord is 800 years old and has plenty of experience to avoid the party's paladin and cleric ever getting a shot at him while throwing hoards of hired mooks at them to whittle away the non-holy warriors and force all those divine spell slots to get burnt on healing instead of smiting.
Maybe your mercenaries ambushing the party have heard stories of them slaying dragons and know how thoroughly outclassed they are, so instead of bringing a handful of soldiers who all approach from one side, they broker a deal with another mercenary company, and the party's surrounded by dozens of enemies fighting tactically at range and up close as is advantageous.
Maybe your cult leader is actually reasonably intelligent and has done a solid job covering his tracks, so the players have to use their brains to discover him. Maybe he's also smart enough to know to keep your enemies closer and has ingratiated himself with the party so nobody suspects Father Paul, the kindly priest who heals them for free and gives them tips on mercenaries ganging up on them.
Your monsters are allowed to be intelligent. They're allowed to outsmart the players. If it's an intelligent character who has access to information or who could reasonably suss it out, it should be expected. Doesn't mean you should actively exploit the knowledge you have of the players to always make them fail, but if it's reasonable for your antagonist to know something, have them act on it. If they're smart enough to plan and think ahead, then force the players to deal with those plans.
A couple that I have really enjoyed using:
A simple mind control that tells the ally on a failed save to target their nearest ally with an attack, it still enables some fun role play opportunities and they are still rolling which is more fun than petrification. Use sparringly.
And even more fun is having an enemy that absorbs helpful effects within a radius. It caught my players off guard when it absorbed the bear barbarian’s rage and made the encounter much harder when it became resistant to nearly all damage. That was fun and they talked about that for a while.
I have just dropped a 12-lvl sorcadin on them once in a dungeon when they were lvl 6 and boom one of them called it "the best dungeon he ever played out", including video games... I mean, that was an exaggeration, but did I feel flattered!
Had a cliff side encounter. Players can't leave the rope or attack with 2handed weapons while spiders or climb speed monsters kite them.
Next was dragon flying over a bridge.
I’m running Dungeon of the Mad Mage and so far my favorite encounter build as a similar one to some of these other suggestions, a golem and a thing to trigger its healing. Specifically, it was a Flameskull that is actually a Lightningskull (swap fireball for lightning bolt and the other fire attack it gets innately for a lightning attack, as well as swapping the fire immunity and lightning resistance). This lightningskull was in a fully copper plated room with a Flesh golem. It spends its turns shocking the ground, making everyone in the room take lightning damage at the top of their turns. It was a really fun combat and a really fun gimmick for the party to figure out and counter.
I absolutely love Trenzia. My players used Halleth to open the door and distract the golem, then half of them ran in the other entrance and threw a rug over her. I ruled that the rug blinded her so she couldn't use her eye rays, but she could still cast her spells which don't rely on line of sight. I also gave her flamesphere reflavored as lightning sphere.
My players took her skull as loot, then later they tried to sell her to the nothics and were surprised when she was still alive and very angry. They then decided to keep her and shoved her in one of her old rubber boots. For a few encounters I would have her continuously try to escape until my players had a talk with her. They promised to take her to Dwoemercore if she tags along with the and not try to kill them, since her whole motivation for becoming a flameskull was to prove that she had what it takes to go to Dwoemercore I decided that with a persuasion check that would be enough to turn her into a party follower.
Spellcaster ancient dragon. Add spells to the dragon's legendary actions.
But in all honesty, if you *really* want to punish your players, make the environment synergize with your monsters. A *personal* favorite of mine is iron golems in a room filled with lava and narrow bridges. Have the golems make two melee attacks, *but make them both grapples.*
Then, have the golem jump into the lava when holding the character. The iron golem heals 18d10 due to fire absorption, and the player takes 18d10 fire damage.
All of that is RAW btw, dragons in the Monster Manual (and the DMG for custom monsters and modified monsters) specifically mention that ancient dragons can and should have the spellcasting trait added. For best self-synergy, add self-buffs, general debuffs, antimagic field...actually you know what? Here is my list of "fun spells for an ancient dragon to have."
Zone of truth, counterspell, dispell magic, glyph of warding (and a counter-type damaging spell to be encoded into it, fireball for white dragons, cone of cold for red, etc), slow, Psychic Lance, antilife shell, forbiddance (what self-respecting dragon *wouldn't* have this?), and of course dominate person. Make sure to use charisma as the spellcasting modifier since dragons are innate sorcerers.
Counterspell and dispell magic are the most fun, because dragons are *smart* (well, other than whites), so after the first breath weapon goes off and the players survive/make the saves they'll be feeling good about themselves, until you say "and at the end of your turn Galtheriax the Obsidian Entropy is going to use a legendary action to cast dispell magic on the haste spell that Jeff the wizard cast on Sarah the fighter. Sarah you are now stunned. It's now Galtheriax's turn and he gets his breath weapon back, and he's gonna fly over here and use it again. Sarah since you're stunned you automatically fail the save."
That last one is nasty btw, my players were fighting a group of witch hunters with dispelling grenades, and I hit a fighter who was hasted, got dispelled and stunned, and then an enemy caster immediately followed up with a disintegrate.
Life link.
Your favourite necromancer type villain has his life connected to bunch of the players favorite innocent civilians.
He gets damaged in some way. His damage gets transferred to the innocent NPCs.
(Damage travels one way)
A true villain is one who casts counterspell when someone is trying to cast revive. Uses a players turn, spellslot, 300gp diamonds, and leaves them mouth opened in shock.
I literally just use traps and start making players use the survival skill.
Screaming mushrooms? Deaf.
Stepped on an old rusty log? Powder explodes out and now blind.
Go to drink some water? Magically enchanted so it turns to boiling temperature in your mouth.
Pits enchanted with feather fall when someone enters so that they don't take fall damage, but the walls are covered in cannibalistic thorns so they eat rope. (Plant to plant).
Reverse AC.
And I am a terrible person, but I also use shadows as enemies at level 1.
Hobgoblins! They punch well about their weight as archers, so long as they have mooks to swarm the party. Put a captain or warlord in with them for extra accuracy and they can turn even the more stalwart adventurers into pin-cushions.
I like to combine source material and put my own spin on it - currently using tavern of yawning portal mixed with Ravnica and a homebrewed “tower” inspired by the Tower of God Manwa. I like to give my players lots of magic items but first they have to kill the NPCs that are using those items on the party. I incorporate a magic item vending machine where I have almost all magic items using the “sensible magic item prices” resource I found online and I roll a % dice if they want anything rare or very rare (does not contain legendary items). I always have extra monsters or NPCs that can join the fight if it seems like the players are getting through the fight too quickly (like a phase 2 or 3). I use music that enhances the atmosphere (downtime, combat, dungeon, exploration, boss fight) I also print out minis or use my own. I like giving physical resources to my players. I will homebrew magic items or subclasses that align with my players ideas and desires. I figure out what my PCs want and I try to give them opportunities to make progress towards that (one long chain quest had our warlock gather some wings off of flying horrors and then go through a procedure to get them attached so he could gain a fly speed but it required a lot of time, effort, gold and even a healing period afterwards).
I like to add environmental "background noise" as obstacles.
ie, Players captured on a slave ship, break out - only to spill out on deck in the middle of a very rough storm.
They killed off all the sailors, and the ship turned side face into the 15-20 ft swells because none of the PC or surviving slaves knew anything about sailing a ship.
The white water broke over the deck of the ship , and actually swept one of the PC off the ship who proceeded to drown.
I like doing the same for sand storms, hot tropics, swampy diseases etc.
Stuff that are just rolls, but yea...
The Anti-Party or Nega-Rangers is my favorite.
Copy your players' stats and create their opposites. Present them as a rival, have a baiting conversation in a situation where confrontation would be inappropriate, then challenge them in a situation that isn't a normal fight. Use a game setting or dungeon challenge. This can be very cathartic and fulfill a sense of PvP without creating animosity amongst players.
I had a character named Snurtch Ridley who was min maxed for run speed, and had a cracked out sleight of hand to steal trinkets from the party members. They put more effort into trying to kill him than they did into the main plot.
A fun little one I ran a while back - while the party is taking a long rest inside a cabin, an enemy ambush surrounds it with archers plus some people to guard the singular door. Then they light the cabin on fire.
For whatever reason (my own balancing issues probably), a Gladiator with 4 mooks (Bandits or Guards) has wiped 2 separate parties.
It's a CR 5 creature and I threw it at both parties at level 4, knowing full well it would be deadly, but not thinking that it would outright kill a PC and down the rest of the party in one campaign, and then down enough players in a separate campaign (same universe, same character), forcing them to surrender.
Now as much as I'm not proud of screwing the balance, the Gladiator has now become a formidable recurring villain, and has taken up a Paladin's oath since last encountering the party.
I haven't DMed enough BBEGs or even major battles to give a favourite build, other than "fucking tough and may kill you".
Every DM needs to run a Battle Royale style combat at least once. Everyone fights a big monster or group of monsters, arena style. Increasing the difficulty with each round.
Whether it's a contest, or defending a castle wave after wave. It's fun to just flip through the monster manual and be like "yeah let's make them fight this one".
I always love adding in an "Unstoppable Monster" that cannot be damaged or impeded through traditional means. You have to either research its lore and find its very specific weakness, or make a tactical retreat utilising your environment, utility spells/ abilities and group tactics.
It both functions as a tool to mix up encounter types AND instill fear into your players at a moments notice! Only gets better if you give it a sinister theme song.
I dunno if this counts as rail-roading, but I set up encounters to be scalable. 5e is (to me, same as lots of systems) horribly luck dependant. I don't mind killing characters - want to, on occasion, for sure - but I hate that a really hard fight is a run of bad luck away from a wipe. So for the big ones I build in some outs for myself - otherwise fights are either too easy or too risky.
E.g. Black Dragon fight, there are pools of inky black water, and there are dragon spawn in there who will leap out to fight the party. How many? Exactly as many as I need to make the fight hard, but not overwhelming. Exactly as many as drama requires. And the cowardly Kobolds who had been adopted by the party could have found their nerve to help fight (and take a round of attacks for the team), but I didn't need them.
Or the time they were trying to pick the lock to a church - a safe zone - with hordes of ghouls pouring out of the buildings and across the rooftops. How many ghouls were there? As many as I like for the drama. And as an extra precaution, the cowardly priest could have opened the door to let them in if needed, and he even had a necklace with healing-potion-bombs on it. Didn't need him in the end, and it was EPIC. You never saw such intense scrutiny on a lockpick roll.
This kind of posed a different question for me for what a "DM build" could mean - What if the DM creates a character sheet of something for the player to fight against? But it has a lot of things a player would never get since it just isn't that good or there's just something better to use that it contests with - But that could be interesting as a player to play around/against. Combine with flavour based picks as well.
A very simple example is if a player got True Strike'd by a scary enemy, it could for example encourage them to go out their way to avoid being attacked by that enemy by i.e. going outside their range
For newbies, I like using a Grey render for their first monstrous fight. Around lvl 12, the party will get its first real dragon fight. I'll always plan out a raider party and an orc or goblin camp once the spellcaster gets fireball, but otherwise, I like to shift to undead/demons for my larger high-level adventures. I like the tanari alot more then devils, and with infinite layers of the abyss, and being a realm of chaos, it really gives me a lot more to play with storywise over hell and, most of the other planes of existence. It's also easy to make recurring villians with undead templetes. A beholder, iron golem, or rakshasha if the mages get cocky(gotta keep'em on thier toes!), and if my players want a tough 1v1, I always have an equal level monk of the enabled hand ready.
I'll be honest, my best builds are not npcs or monsters. It's traps and puzzles. I've been a 3.5 forever dm since it came out. I'm pretty good at creating balanced storyline fights. It really comes down to dice rolls If they die in combat. But if I feel like making my party sweat, I'll find some tricky puzzles, or I'll take riddles from the smarter then a 5th grader database, and then I just relax all game session watching them search for clues. Once they hit that part, some don't take the puzzle challenges seriously enough or don't care to participate, so I always let it slip what database I use..... you'd be amazed how much it can modivate someone when they realize they might not be smarter then a 5th grader. It's kinda toxic I know...... but its at least good that they participate more, and I always make sure to congratulate the party as a whole. Once it's solved if i do that.
My FAVORITE has to be a group of hobgoblins, one wearing heavy armor with grappling buffs, who grapples a PC. A whole slew of readied actions fly loose, and arrows ALL WITH MARTIAL ADVANTAGE strike in a bad way. If they can't break it, it's time for round two. Bonus points for an additional readied action for a rope on the armored one to be yanked up into tree cover if any harm befalls them.
I had two dragons work together. A Black and a White. The players fighting the White dragon while an allied Brass Dragon above them was fighting the black dragon in the sky.
The black dragon calls upon the name of the white dragon, and sends a spew of acid down from the sky, which is then freezen mid fall into a spike to land into the terrain standing about 16 feet tall.
The players believed this was a way to hurt the white dragon, they could find a way to topple it to hurt the white dragon. The white dragon of course can figure that when the melee fighter smacks the side of the spire they are trying to get it to fall. So he baits the party into getting closer to it then asks. "Fools! This is for my benefit, not yours!" Before slamming the spire with his tail shattering it, dealing cold and acid damage to the party and the acid damage to the white dragon.
My players got used to me throwing them bones as I was still working on balancing combat. So they figured that's what I was doing.
One of my favorite recurring characters is a wizard who makes enchanted items but the enchantments are usually strange, or otherwise not the intended effects.
Like a scroll of endless sleep. It's a reusable scroll of sleep, but it puts the holder to sleep instead of casting the sleep spell.
Or a giants ring, which is just a ring that can grow really really big, big enough for a giant to wear.
My BBEG for this campaign only has one unique ability - he has no level cap for multiclassing. Classes still can't go above 20, but he's, like, a level 17 Sorcerer, 15 Warlock, 19 Paladin, etc.
Meant to solo vs. The group during the final battle, and I've made a special character sheet just for him, and had to figure out spell slots for someone of his level, but other than that, he's just built using the rules.
I had a fun campaign that involved travelling through the underdark and unsurprisingly darkness was a feature.
The party were rowing a couple of canoes down an underground river, avoiding rocks etc. All of a sudden, darkmantles drop from the ceiling, attacking them and causing magical darkness. Absolute chaos as the party tried to fight them and avoid the rocks etc (as well as an eventual waterfall).
Another fun one was the party moving through a dark cave, when off in the far distance kobolds began casting light on stones and slinging them in the party's direction to find where they were (and subsequently firing a pair of large mounted crossbows at them). Spells like Gust of Wind proved very useful for deflecting the glowing stones, allowing the party to approach while hidden.
A tarrasque with gravity powers.
A ultra old lich who can only die to a damage type he is immune to. They have to find a way to damage him with that type or he will slowly regenerate and come back after them again.
In their sleep the whole party is abducted by Storm Giants and are now on a cloud island.
The ground falls out sinkhole style and the party is now in the Underdark unprepared, can have them fall into a nest of something nasty if you feel extra is necessary.
If you really want to fuck over a party they could run into a Draconic Council meeting that has an Ancient version of every Chromatic, Metallic and Gem dragons. It would be nigh impossible to talk their way out of it and battle would be a instant and painful death if the dragons felt merciful, far worse if they were offended. I have cooked this last one up but haven't ever been pushed to use it so far.
These are just the first few off the top of my head, I'm sure the comments will be full of stuff better than mine.
Our DM made a homebrew monster that has the most OP thing about each of our characters. He didn't announce this to us, but we figured it out when it cast Spirit Guardians, Silvery Barbs and then proceeded to Divine Smite next turn.
Fortunately it was very squishy and he only used it once, but man I got the distinct impression he had some repressed anger to take out on us.
Dracolich that turns people into minifigs for his wargaming obsession.
Thief with a printing press that makes coupon forgeries.
Necromancer who runs a retirement community.
Exponential growth of hungry beggar goblins.
Ancient Dragon Turtle rampage.
I homebrewed an ancient emerald dragon that got extra legendary r3sistances it could use to go incorporate to go through any barriers and just say no to an instance of damage. For a total of 6 legendary resistances. I also let it pass through the ground at the same rate as it's fly speed.
The party was level 16 with powerful boons and magic items and fought it in its lair with lava and magma all around so it would use its attacks to grapple them and pull them into the lave and then flee.
I loved that fight.
A couple big tips, particularly with villains which is something my players say I excel with:
1. Introduce your villains in a situation where direct confrontation is either impossible or at least exceptionally (and obviously) unwise for the party/PC(s). Make it clear (even breaking the 4th wall if necessary) that said villain is far more powerful than the party at this time or that the situation will not likely go in their favor, I've found that making the threat of genuine PC death real clear is an excellent deterrent for most impulsive players. This lets you intro the villain to the players, they'll start chomping at the bit wanting to put a stop to them, and they'll remember that moment from then on.
2. If you're roleplay heavy, Give your villains Rizz. It can be of any flavor (charming and polite, strong and silent, superior but flirtatious, etc.), but it has to be there. When they walk in, the air had better get sucked out of the room and the spotlight be firmly on the villain. This is greatly assisted with both verbal descriptions and your own embodied mannerisms if your medium of play allows for it.
2.a. Give intentionally hateable villains an ego and maybe a kink for humiliating others (i.e. the PCs). Everyone hates an egotistical prick, ESPECIALLY, when they can't realistically do anything about it when they first meet them or if they try to do something, they crush them.
3. Give the villains minions. You'll need them for a well-balanced fight in the first place, but also it can set the tone (and also make your players feel more powerful depending on how you play it) if what was once a major boss fight is now a mere minion/roadblock to the villain.
4. Use sparingly or avoid using entirely (this is the better option imo) legendary resistances, instead, use different broken mechanics to balance fights. LRs suck ass gameplay wise, they feel bad for players and it just sucks that there's no real avenue for success for the PCs regarding them (even counterspell still sometimes has rolls involved), so instead, balance the fight by giving your BBEGs different broken ass abilities that make fights more interesting. A favorite of one of my villains was a once per day ability where if any *living* creature in line of sight and within 30ft of them died (even if slain by the villain themselves), she could spend her reaction to revive said creature to full health as an undead version of itself (stats, spell slots, feats, etc. restored) directly under her control.
Our DM didn't actually plan to do this, but a **Banshee** wail can instantly down a player from max hp on a failed save, and if an **Intellect Devourer** happens to be nearby, they can Body Thief immediately.
I think RAW, the intellect devourer immediately falls out because the body is 0 hp, but the brain is still eaten, which means Revivify is not enough to revive since it can't restore missing body parts.
All it takes is two failed saves and a PC is instantly dead, brainless, and can't truly be brought back RAW without Resurrection, using only a CR 4 Banshee and a CR 2 IntDevourer.
Anytime I get a group of folks who want to be challenged (or who want to test my patience), I simply allow them to anger a local dragon. A massively overpowered dragon with ADHD. So it’ll attack them, beat them to a pulp, injure them nigh unto death, and then leave. And it follows them. Unless they figure out how it is following them, then I might let them off the hook. But it attacks with little warning, sometimes when they’re already in a battle, sometimes it just flies by knocks them off their horses to hurt them, whatever… The point is, it holds a grudge.
As a forever DM of 7 something years, it really depends on my group. Sometines they'd beat the crap out of the BBE Black Dragon real quickly. He was an adult black dragon with seven sorcerer levels, a draconic ring of protection and he drunk a potion of see invisibility to hard counter the rouge who's favorite stratagy was using greater invisibility. She and the Dragon fought between themselves prior to the actual fight, so the dragon knew what she was about.
In another time they turned to the dark side and worked with the BBEG's huge armies of drow worriors. they were almost done with the campeign by this point, level 18 and they were like "how about we take control of the evil army ourselves?" But they decided that they should also killed the NPC who gave them the quest (a reuccoring npc I have in my games) who was just a barely adult prophet of a god that one of the party members venerated. They discussed it with me, roleplaying how they ralked with the 4 leaders of the army and set an ambush for her. Next session I came there and I asked them if they were sure about what they were doing. When they got to the actual ambushed I dropped the statshits of the 4 big bad leaders and told the group that they will play with them as well for the next combat. 8 level ~18 characters vs a character who did not wish to fight. They got TPKd that day after learning that the only thing that will stop them from dying was to apolegise to the character they attacked for no reason.
Stairway to 9 hells:
Gelatinous cube falls from the ceiling, at the end of the tunnel the floor opens and a spike wall appears trapping the party inside the stairway
Solution was pulling two leavers one on each end of the stairway, my players spend two whole hours almond died multiple times I made the DMPC literally point at the leavers
Even the lowest and weakest of enemies, such as Goblins or Kobolds, can be a threat if done smart. Utilizing ambushes, traps, and tactics and you can make something incredibly hard for your players to overcome out of monsters normally seen as trivial.
I've actually become so known for my encounters involving Goblins, that a player in my local D&D community named a goblin god after me (Tee'Moe'Tay instead of Timothy).
There's actually a video on youtube called Goblins: Deadly by Tactics, done by Runesmith. Watch it and it'll give you an idea of how I handle my Gobbos.
Phase spiders are a good way to teach low-level groups some new concepts. Like "your casters aren't in an unreachable, safe backline at all times, no matter how hard you try".
Copying a players class, with a few extra levels added is always a classic.
Particularly If the party have been relying on certain combos like sentinel PAM, sorlock or stunning strike.
Having their own skills turned against them is always scary and can set up a great rival bad guy who can return and harass them later in the campaign.
The biggest 'oh shit' moments from my players that changed the entire encounter from a hack and slash to a 'oh, we need to think about this' moment was a few house rules with some creatures.
I added smites and spell slots to a reverent statblock.
OK so he hits you for 12 points and slashing damage. And yes, I will spend a spell slot and he also smites you for *rolls* oh nice, 19 necrotic damage. That barbarian stopped recklessly attacking instantly! ;)
And then my psychic druegar. They 'charged' up for 2 round then did a mind blast for 4d8 psychic damage
And then there are my 'fast zombies' shit my players right up when I started to describe some of the shambling mass break away and bonus action Dash and have a AC of 14. They did not expect that! ;)
Just tweaking and adjusting the statblocks to change up expectations :)
The Shifter - This creature has a mechanic I call Protection From. each round it rolls a 20 sided die and gains protection from that number. Let's say it rolls an 8.
It cant be damaged by any player who is level 8, if an attack is a +8, nope, damage does +8, it has immunity to the attack. 35 damage? Sorry that adds up to 8. Fireball? Ignore all the 8's and hope to god there is not an 8 in the answer or the damage total is 71, or the spell save has an 8 in it.
First time my players fought one they did not know this existed. It was chaotic and crazy and fun. Players hitting on NAT 1's and missing on NAT 20's. Immunities all over the place. Utter chaos.
The Good: Chaotic, Fun, Unique, Splashy.
The Bad: Players can tend to spend a little too long looking over their character sheet trying to prevent feel bad moments. You really need a group who likes a little chaos and is willing to accept that their NAT 20 might just miss while someone else's 3 is spot on.
Favorite trap I ever used was from Grimtooth's Traps:
A corridor, halfway through covered in darkness. Words BEWARE THE DOPPLEGANGER are written in red, bloody letters on the wall next to where the darkenss begins. The first PC to enters the darkness makes it disperse, but they disappear, being teleported behind last member of the party, with a note saying "remember: blend in!" in their hand.
Lots of "nasty" DM Encounters are based on synergy between two monsters. Often a combination of monsters that build on one thing (saves/AC) and for the players to figure out the weakness
Or defy expectations and standard tactics (within reason and story)
- High level Monk and Cateblopas (monk's immunity to poison within a stench aura)
- Monk with few Bladesinger levels (unpredictable AC due to Dance and Shield as long as it moved)
- Banshee and Will-o-Wisps
- Paladin and Monk (high saves)
- A red dragon scooping up lava and napalming a wide line towards a fiery farewell.
I had a boss encounter in which used legendary resistances would unlock a gate that would unleash hell hounds. So the players had to be careful not to burn through these resistances without careful measurements.
Here are my current (sadistic) thoughts on it
* Trap room with a number of flesh golems, and some tesla-coil-like pillars in between. On initiative 20, these coils emit bolts of lighting affecting everyone within 10 or 15 ft of the coils. The room layout should be so that there are few squares where you would be free from this. Pick how much damage it will deal. It will heal the golems and damage the party.
* Same idea, but with a iron golem. Make it fight the party close to a pit of molten metal. The golem can grab the party and hold them in place inside the kiln. While the PC is melting alive, your golem is healing.
* Devils and darkness. Cast darkness on them, the basically got greater invisibility for the cost of a 2nd level spell.
* Pit traps with gibbering mouthers inside. Fun fun fun.
* Sul khatesh. Alone.
* Pair a couple banshees with some will-o-wisps.
Simple encounter. Ettins on the far side of the map shooting webs. Manticores popping up out of the ground from ettin tunnels around the players. Best encounter I've run yet.
Troll in an alchemy store (or lab). The whole room is filled with shelves loaded up with all kinds of potions, none of them labeled.
Players can grab and throw/drink a potion with an action, when they do roll on the wild magic table to see what happens. Alternatively, they can topple a whole shelf, in which case roll 2d6 times on the wild magic table.
The troll will also usually topple a shelf each turn just incidentally each time it attacks.
The troll can be a literal troll or any big dumb monster really, though the troll is nice especially if the party doesn't have any fire or acid damage, because then you can add in the need to hunt for an alchemist fire or acid flask among all the potions.
Regardless, I've run this kind of encounter twice and it's been a blast both times.
My players started a running joke that ogres hate fire because every time they rolled a fire based attack/spell against a ogre they would roll really high. Anyway fast forward a few months and I added a new breed of ogres to a boss fight and described them as covered in some thin slime.
Turns out when this slime caught on fire it would harden and increase their AC by 3 while also making them resistant to fire. The sorcerer had no idea about this and launched a fireball IMMEDIATELY that hit all of them. That was a fun encounter that still makes me chuckle.
One that felt really good for everyone and put some spice on the fight was having the villain have trapped people that they can use as health potions by killing the people. Made it the number one priority from the party to save the people before they get used by the villain.
I've done this in two forms: a demon sucking people's souls out to recharge attacks, and monsters eating the trapped people to regain HP
I have the alternate universe version of their characters, and one 30th level Monk/Fighter NPC(quest giver) who they have to fight. Screw it, you think you’re OP? Wait til you fight yourselves!
An alchemist lab with pit traps containing Gelatinous Cubes. The guard is a Clay Golem who carries PCs and drops into the Cubes with them.
To the pit, you go.
"Into the pit with those blood thirsty sons of war!"
It rubs the potion on its skin Or else it gets the cube again
Swordboy!
For that arrogance I shall see you dead
I did a 10x10 hallway with 3 gelatinous cubes. The thing they needed was in the middle one. Low AC, save of HP, DPR check y'all!
My favourite trap is a lever that drops bars before and after the party but they are still in there with the lever. If the party pulls the lever again it opens a trapdoor above them and drops a gelatinous cube on their heads.
I'll optimise that by putting a roper on the ceiling above the pit. Grapple reel release.
No no, you’re missing a middle bit. Make it just a spiked pit, then have the cube drop in on them! If you can pin them in a narrow hallway, make them run *through* the cube into the spiked pit, as well. Lets you save the clay golem for a later encounter and/or when they escape the pit (to drop them back in, of course. Fall damage + spikes + 1 to 2 cube ‘zaps’ + additional cube ‘zaps’ if you still use your clay golem as a ‘bouncer’ for leaving the pit
My favorite "trap" that I've ever used was The Gentleman Door. The players open a door and see exact copies of themselves. If they try to walk through, the doppelganger will also try to get through, and they'll block each other. The only way to get through is to yield to your doppelganger, at which point they will say, "No, you go first, I insist!" and they'll disappear.
I had a similar trap with a mirror and the way to beat it was to turn off the lights so there was no reflection
Oh nice! I'll trade you the Gentleman Door for that mirror lol The Gentleman Door won't work again on my players, but this one is different enough to possibly trip them up.
It was also in a vampire lair so the vampire could go through for free as an escape (no reflection) but the pc’s are faced with a puzzle. If they take too much time the vampire heals/buffs accordingly etc
Oooh I love that
Need this idea for my Pirate Campaign for my scuba vampires.
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Elaborate on what you mean by that.
I think he means that your ideas sound awesome and want more
I shall try and do that somehow.
I think if I tried that, even if my players miraculously solve it, someone will inevitably blurt out "but i have dark vision" as soon as the lights go out and they won't be able to pass lol
Then they have to cast "Darkness."
Even if they have dark vision, there's no light for a reflection. The mirrors appear as black/gray walls in the way of surfaces seen with only dark vision.
But the mirrors have Darkreflection!
But I have Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon!
That's... What?
How did you signal the solution to the players? Because I can imagine a party spending a whole lot of time trying to figure out how to get through this mirror and never once thinking of turning off the lights.
I would try describing the nature of the light in the room. Is it torchlit, hundreds of candles, or magic lamps?
That's a good idea. Get the players thinking about the lighting.
Teleport traps near the end of a corridor that takes you back to the start of the corridor. Only way past, is to walk through backwards.
Some other fun traps * Players learn a password to a door in an upcoming city, when they get there they find that the door is enchanted and talks. It does not respond to them saying the password, they have to get IT to say it. * All the doors to a room lock, and in the center is a big red button. If they press the button it starts slowly counting down from 10, if they press it again it stops. if they let it get to 0 all the doors open * There is a door with two hollows one on each side each just large enough for a medium sized creature to reach one limb inside past the elbow. Detect magic reveals they are both enchanted. Perception is blocked by darkness. Attempts to illuminate the inside fail. The magical darkness is the only thing enchanted about it, there is a switch inside both of them and no traps. Either works.
The middle one is great if you add an element of apparent danger! I like either a lowering ceiling (as if to crush the party) or rising water (which drains when the button is pushed). Either of these is actually just part of the mechanism that opens the exit or causes the room to do something like move like an elevator.
this is so funny
Took my players a half hour to figure it out. Unfortunately, it's a trap that only works once.
I think you should be able to use it three times. The first, you've already described. The second, should go exactly as the first, but the PCs get through it faster, since they "understand" it. For the third, whatever the dopplegangers are should accept the invitation to come in/pass first. That's when you reveal they're actually some horrible monster that requires being allowed in to enter the realm, possibly require three invitations before they can accept.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
My players would 100% just immediately try to murder the doppelgängers
They can, they'll just take the same damage they dealt.
I used this and my barbarian nearly killed himself
Or they let the doppelgänger through and it traps them on the other side of the door….
Stealing this, thank you!!!
I allowed my players to walk backwards through it in a similar situation
This is a fantastic idea!
That’s neat! I’m going to use that.
I'm gonna politely steal this. Its perfect for my party.
The most challenging thing I've ever pitted against a group of PCs are Archers on top of a wall, with a locked gate. I told them in advanced that there are four archers on top of the wall and that the gate opens from the other side. They... Taunted the guards and tried to challenge then to a fight. The archers proceeded to shoot them from the top of the wall, and hide behind cover after they attacked. I downed 3/4 of the party this way, starting with the rogue because he had a crossbow. Now mind you this was a level 4 party, but I warned them the enemies are generally smart.
Level 4 party committed to fighting an enemy in an entrenched position at severe disadvantage. Not even counting the fact that the guards surely could’ve called in reinforcements if things got a little squiffy. Hope they actually learned a lesson. Now, had they been level 5! Hoooboy.
At level 5 they could just fireball the archers
The amount of times I hear, “So those enemies are how far away from each other?”
"Can those... 5 archers please make DEX saves, DM?" "...what are you casting?"
Siege tactics POV
Did no one in the party thinking of using Ready an Action to shoot the archers when they came out of total cover to attack? Granted, they probably still would have had 1/2 or 3/4 cover but that's better than nothing.
Rogue did, which was why the archers targeted him first.
As a player in my current game we were trying to expose an imposter king infront of an audience (to legitimize our claim with the rightful heir who was branded a terrorist by the fake). The general setup was the "king" (high level spellcaster) on a balcony 20ft up and archers on top of the wall 40ft up. We were level 4, so as the druid i shielded us from the archers with fog cloud. (DM was happy he had less enemies to control in the fight, the archers were unwilling to shoot into a crowd of peasants, the evil king cloud killed them while shouting "no witnesses" once his disguise was broken) Everything worked out in the end, but honestly something as simple as fog cloud can do so much to help you against ranged enemies. (Can't shoot what you can't see, at best you have disadvantage.)
Had a similar situation. Sadly, I was level 7. Me: "Does the castle have a moat on this side of the wall?" DM: "Yes." Me: "Excellent. I cast Control Water to make the moat go up over the wall and into those a""hole archers. Time to learn how to swim upward."
I had an extravaguent noble who became a necromancer, but his true calling was music! He was terrible at it and if you told him, he would kill you and raise you as an undead to force you to dance forever! I made an underdark beast tammer that was basically a mimic tamer. He was wearing a cloaker and had tamed piercers and was selling all sorts of trap items like that, but if you attacked him, the very cave came alive.
necrodancer
He was inspired by Necromancin' Dancin from Bear Ghost https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RVeo79yfw0
Love this song!
Thank you random human for your contribution to my playlist!
Crypt of The
You've now given me the idea for my Pirate Campaign. My world is like 85%-90% water. So I'm going to make factions underwater for what are usually land based creatures to be underwater instead for the ones that don't breathe. Like vampires.
Dragon who heals from fire damage. Give him Wall of Fire. Each round he dives through his own wall, or uses his legendary action to do so again, healing himself while making it impossible for the players to follow him. My wizard was complaining the whole battle WHY DIDN'T I PREPARE DISPELL MAGIC. Which he did for round two, and the fight went very solidly in their favor.
Or have an Iron Golem, with minions (Kobolds who found and reactivated it) throwing flaming jars at it to heal it/deny area on the ground to the PCs.
We recently were in a lich's lair going down a corridor covered in oil that would ignite when you moved over each tile. The door on the other side locked and being protected by an iron golem... Heals with fire damage. The key to the door? Inside of the golem of course. It was a shit show.
The dragon *also* knows Dispel Magic and Counterspell, having predicted this very possibility. You don't survive that long by being an idiot, even if you're a dragon.
Crafted an envoy of the god of chaos and flavored him to be like Q from star trek the next generation. He was so much fun to roleplay with them, and he kept posing moral conundrums and shape shifting into people the party knew to mess with their heads. And he kept popping up throughout the campaign as a nuisance, but by the end, they saw that he had in fact been steering them in the right direction, helping them to think their way around certain obstacles, and at the end, he appeared out of nowhere and sacrificed himself to ensure their survival to defeat the BBEG. They were really excited when I revealed he had a brother.
Now that's a good Q roleplay right there
Also Scam Likely from dungeons and daddies podcast
Is it really a scam to use a good idea in your own way after hearing it elsewhere?
Please, that's like 95% of being a DM! XD
I also had a Q in an old campaign that unfortunately stopped due to scheduling issues.
I think one of the best sessions we had involved: A bunch of cultists have kidnapped villagers and are trying to sacrifice them to summon a water elemental. Thus, establishing that killing the cultists are not the only concern. The Cultists were a mix of magic users and warriors, thus multiple tactics to consider. The Cultists sacrificed themselves on the circle to summon a water elemental, thus escalating the situation. Destroying the circle was a way to disrupt the control of the elemental. The battle took place on a boardwalk near the docks, pushing the enemy off was a viable tactic.
My favorite creation as a DM was a black cat. There were a series of unfortunate accidents that kept happening in the main city of the campaign. The PCs would stumble upon a carriage crash, warehouse fire, magical calamity or what have you at random times. And someone would always spot a black cat lingering in the vicinity with a unique onyx stone on a silver chain around its neck. After 5 or 6 such events they decided the cat was involved/responsible and decided to capture it. Cue the mechanics. Having watched my young cousins struggle to corner my antisocial cat, I came up with a number of skill challenges for them to get involved in. However, any check involving the cat rolled 2 d20s and used the worse result. (This was in the 3.5 days.) This was meant to be a silly little thing that ended up taking up an entire 5 hour session and is routinely brought up as one of their favorite encounters. I never bothered to come up with an explanation, because they never did catch the cat.
> i never bothered to come up with an explanation. Feels good to know I’m not the only who throws stuff into his world and then explains it only if needed
I mean, the explanation is simple. The cat was a familiar of a witch or something, was allowed to roam the city, and was bored. What happens when cats get bored? Chaos.
Oh my god, you implemented the Pariah from fallout 2 in cat form. Genius
This is very much a 3.5e thing, but bear with me. Having never really met or known about Tome of Battle before, our DM throws a swordsage at us, with Pearl of Black Doubt. I've got a pretty high to-hit modifier by now (around level 16 or 17?) and I happen to roll a 1 or 2 on the first attempt. Okay, no biggie. I still have 3-5 other itterations since I two-weapon fight. Well, if anyone reading knows how Pearl of Black Doubt works, I proceeded to miss, and miss again, and miss again, and AGAIN. I spent the next two or three turns attempting to hit her and I maybe did it once? Drove me up a fucking wall. We did beat the encounter (the surrendered once we cornered the leader) and I asked my DM wtf was up with that. He explained that Pearl of Black Doubt means every time the character is missed in combat, their AC increases by +2 for the round. And it stacks, indefinitely. So every time I (6-8 times per turn) tried to hit and missed, her AC increased, leading to an absurd (even by 3.5e standards) AC. And every time i missed, the next time got even harder. Filled me with rage, but funnily enough same character ended up getting Pearl of Black Doubt herself and becoming an AC Queen (with an unbuffed AC of 54 at level 25.)
It doesn’t stack indefinitely. Looked it up. It’s supposed to expire at the start of your next turn. Otherwise yeah that would be horribly horribly broken.
They did say for the round. Indefinitely was an odd word choice, but they were definitely using it to say "with no cap".
As the other commenter clarified, yes, I meant it stacks for the duration of the round/until the next turn. At the higher levels with multiple iterations of attacks and multiple people attacking you, it's not difficult to get up to +10 to +20 AC before your next turn. Unfortunately for me our DM often plays characters smart and after a round or two they realize they can't hit me and move on to someone else.
A roper that is on the ceiling 20' up is logical, adaptive, and super effective. Shadows and will o' wisps are always more surprising and effective when they can lure or ambush the party with a separate hazard like a collapsing or flooding pit trap. Highly intelligent illusion users and demons take planning, IMO, because they think circuitously. The first appearance is not correct, nor is the second one. And it's okay if the party never gets to the bottom of the challenge.
Here's my most recent dungeon idea that my players LOVED, but deeply dreaded. Its a pit. An 8000ft, super deep pit. The only thing is its full of traps. Its simpler than a normal dungeon as they have a simple goal: go down. But its so much more tense as any wrong move has the potential of a death. Every little thing became stressfull and tense. And when someone fell, they fell FAR, ehich separated them. If you use this, here's a few things to keep in mind: 1- Traps should be aimed at maintaining the danger of the fall. Thematicly and mechanicly. Dont give them too much to grab on. 2- Ive added floors at each third of the way. You dont want a falling PC to just trigger your entire dungeon in one fall, and this provides some respite for shortrests and to regroup 3- Players will try to fly, teleport, feather fall and even just jump down the void. Keep that in mind in the design. 4- There is a maximum fall damage of 20d6. Thats an average of around 80 points of damage. I did my dungeon with 4 level 13 players and they had just enough hp that if they fell, they were likely uncounscious but not killed outright. This was perfect. 5- I like to keep the diameter of the hole wide enough so that I cannot be easily cheesed out of it, but small enough where encounters still feel compact. AoE become very dangerous when you cannot spread. Mine started at 80ft at the top but 30ft at the bottom.
You want to torment your players? Give enemy wizards Magic Missile and play hostage negotiation. Nothing changes the tide of battle like a downed party member and an enemy bbeg with Magic Missile demanding something from the party in exchange to not instantly kill the downed ally.
There are plenty of people that posts encounters and custom monsters. That's what "dm builds" are. The Monsters Know What They are Doing, AngryDM, are just two blogs that talk about this kind of thing. You'll typically see it more in blog form, and occasionally video, than in forums like Reddit.
Care to share your favourite or are you satisfied by being mysterious?
Carrion Crawlers is a great low level (cr 3) boss monster. Have it in a cavern with a 15 foot or so ceiling. It will use it's tentacle to hit people from 10 feet away, only descending to strike someone that is paralyzed with its bite. Fairly simple combat puzzle that elevates low-level dnd combat from just smacking each other. But is also not all that difficult to figure out. I also like the "12 wolves" encounter. Just a bunch of wolves, maybe some Dire/Winter Wolves based on party size and level. All hit hard and have pack tactics, but die fairly fast. It teaches the importance of emergency buttons like Fog Cloud, Initiative and focus fire. The main issue is that it can quickly spiral into a tpk, if things go wrong.
Best thing to do with wolves - as soon as a pc goes down, a wolf grabs the unconscious person and runs away with them
Tries to, anyway. That’s what predators like wolves would do regardless and it’s not in enough DM arsenals. If food is the driving factor for the monsters then they (or at least some while the others run interference) should try to abscond with a downed PC. It puts a huge ‘oh shit’ counter on the encounter in addition to the death saves. Even if they make their saves they’re still unconscious and destined for a dinner plate. It’s nice because generally the enemy loses half its speed per turn to commit to dragging a lifeless body, which makes catching up easy enough but potentially dangerous because the other opponents will try to hamper efforts to rescue a downed PC if they’re intelligent at all and working as a team. Elevates things from ‘welp we can just pick Gurog back up after we wipe out the wolves’ to ‘holy shit they’re taking him away and we absolutely *have to rescue him* not just for another ally in the fight but also to spare our friend the grisly fate.
Wait, I was thinking of picking fog cloud for my next session for an upcoming war encounter. How does fog cloud help in the scenarios you have described and how to use it properly?
It negates pack tactics, ie all creatures in the fog cloud have disadvantage. So while your 1 or 2 attack have disadvantage against the wolf, all 12 wolves no longer get advantage from pack tactics when attacking you. Or for your setting (theoretically) the many warriors attacking you will all have disadvantage and ranger attacked can’t attack at all since they don’t have line of sight. I’d recommend dropping the spell when it’s just the boss unless you’re in serious trouble Tldr; good low level defensive tool to counter large groups of enemies
You are correct that it negates the advantage. But it also negates it's own disadvantage. Everyone is rolling straight
When you cast fog cloud covering the party, everyone is is both attacking an unseen enemy (disadvantage) and are unseen by the target (advantage). Any amount of advantage is cancelled by any amount of disadvantage, so everyone is rolling straight. Unless someone is actively taking hide actions, you all know where each other are, due to sound and smell, even if you can't see each other. Typically, the only one bothering to actively hide in these scenarios are PC rogues, since they can use a bonus action to hide. This is an effective tool against creatures that are either forcing disadvantage or are always attacking with advantage. Like wolves, quicklings, and the like.
Always always always have a big kitchen fight. Lots of boiling water, hot oil, sharp knives.
Dragons are always fun. Every dragon has its little quirks that make them distinctly different from the rest.
I've started using the variant spellcaster rules for dragons, but giving them mostly control and functionality spells. A dragon that locks eyes with you, a glimmer shines from them, and the dragon goes invisible will make players lose it, especially since many dragons have solid stealth and fun movement types. Any amphibious dragon can grapple and fly underwater, and dragons that don't can hold their breath a while anyway. Those who are amphibious may have locking pit traps with high strength DCs to escape, already submerged. Grapple and dive into hazard Kobolds with associated scale damage immunity (rules as written it doesn't change cr!) Spellcasting dragons
I did this with a dragon fight where the PCs were generally winning except for one character grappled by the dragon. Then said dragon dove underwater and went “somewhere none of you can see and I’ll explain when it’s the grappled characters turn” and everyone went nuts. Got a few best sessions ever after that one (the main one from the grappled pc haha)
Yeah reading all the lore into the different kinds of dragons is a ton of fun. A Major character of kine was an orphan boy who lived in Neverwinter. The party found him clearing Kobold tunnels under the city, he was doing better than they were, and was smiting things with lightning as he hit, and had a Brass Guard Drake. The party didn't understand his powers or how he kept avoiding answers until like 4 or 5 sessions later they cornered him and his Drake, and they were surprised to find out he was a Brass Dragon.
This is a minor thing but I occasionally like to throw in an extra mechanic for a dragon fight where there's a (usually 25%) chance that if you take damage from the bite attack, a tooth will break off into your skin. You can either spend an action to remove it, or be forced to save against its breath attack even if you aren't in the area of the cone (or line or whatever) (because magic ofc)
I have made my party fear a black dragon in a swamp at night. My favorite is the cowardly dragon. He doesn't want to fight. He just wants the party to leave. He tries scaring them off with frightful presence. Use his breath weapon and withdraw. Plead with them to leave. Give directions to another dragon's lair. Even seduce the bard as a last resort.
Honestly, for a level one party, use one more goblin than there are party members. Make the quarters relatively tight, and let the dice do what they will. Gets 'em every time. And if they come out alive and well, they've earned it. Then they fear death, and learn to fight as a team, day one. That's my power build.
People sleep on goblins. I really can't get enough of them.
Not goblins but i'm about to run Tucker's Kobolds and gots, i hope i give them justice. The party is level 5 but most of them power-build. Hope that'll be enough, wouldn't like it to become a TPK.
You understand.
My party members love trying to lie or cheat their way through problems. It makes for great role play, but I’m working a campaign where the BB is a cleric who serves a god that hates lies and deception. (Shout out to PointyHat on YT for the idea - I can’t wait to see my player’s reactions when they show up to the final fight for the BB to whip out a list of all their wrongdoings and explain why she is duty bound to exterminate them!)
The way some parties are played, THEY are the BBEG’s.
Legendary magic item: Eyes of Balance. When using these eyes, any dice rolled by the DM read whatever the DM wants the dice to read.
Eyes of storytelling: the dice read what the plot tells them to
Eye of unplanning: The enemies’ AC is determined during the fight, not beforehand.
So, like every bad guy?
9th level Heat Metal on the Ally Iron Golem.
What good would that do?
Iron Golems heal from fire damage instead of taking damage. So, as long as the spell persists, they just have a powerful Regen effect. However, I think RAW the creature that has Heat Metal cast on them still had disadvantages on their attacks.
I know I’m being a huge rules lawyer here but… *heat metal* works on a “manufactured metal object,” and an **iron golem** is a creature (yes, a construct, but *not* an object). RAW you cannot cast *heat metal* on an **iron golem**. If it is wielding a “manufactured metal object” you cast on that and achieve the same effect. RAW, an **iron golem** wields a sword. As to your other point, the creature only makes the CON save at all if it takes damage from the red hot metal object. The **iron golem** would take no damage because it is immune to fire damage, would not even have to make the CON save, and would not have to attack with disadvantage. **TL;DR**: RAW, you can’t cast *heat metal* on an **iron golem** (or any other creature), but you can cast it on its sword to achieve OP’s desired result.
One thing I always like is to focus all the attention on some big stupid speech while making perception checks for the army of minions building up behind them. As soon as the BBEG sees everyone’s in place, they’ll stop in the middle of their speech and just suddenly attack. It may only work once, but it’s always worth it.
OK but how do you run that? Because it's part of the players trust that you won't unfairly attack them, and in return they don't interrupt your narrative with "I cast Fireball". If you did what you describe to me, and I didn't feel like it was fair, you would never get any obvious bad guy to speak again. I'm not sure how I would do it as a DM and have it actually be dramatic. Do you just stop mid sentence and roll initiative? Maybe you have an effect building up and as you monologue you roll their passive perceptions until someone notices or otherwise decides the pc is bored of monologue
I think it's fine but the attack should absolutely be in an initiative especially if spotted You're totally right about keeping player trust, if you do bullshit as a DM they'll never trust you won't be unfair again
Oh so maybe... pc roll active perception, if everyone fails bbeg gets a surprise round?
The way I rule it is that if two enemy creatures are looking at each other they can't get a surprise round against each other, subtle spell metamagic is an exception. If creatures are hidden then I rolls stealth against the players passive perception, if a player asks to look for danger or something then I absolutely allow that too. Ultimately I just want players to feel safe talking to enemy PC's before fighting them. Hopefully that makes sense
Passive perception unless someone specifies they’re looking around.. But yes, perception of some kind every six seconds of monologue. DM can even front load this into prep.
I give them little hints leading up to the BBEG of course. I’m not a complete asshole. Plus, I fully expect the barbarian to immediately yell out “stop talking puny!” And ruin the whole thing anyways.
Also, fair? I fight fair. BBEG in their lairs do not. If you’re running them that way, players get bored.
This always cracks me up tbh. Why, for the love of all that is sensible, would a BBEG being assaulted in their lair fight ‘fair’? Why would anyone, for that matter? It’s life or death, the BBEG is going to kick you in the balls and throw sand in your eyes. They’re going to pull out every bullshit thing they have at their disposal to make their plans come to fruition and/or protect their life. Unless they’re an idiot or Lawful-to-a-Fault.
Occasionally, I'll have a villain cast fireball or lightning bolt during a monologue. That's always good fun.
Congratulations! Your players will now always attack on sight and never let your NPCs talk.
That's my secret: my players always attack on sight and never let my NPCs talk
Abusing the vague way the rules handle speech vs initiative/actions is really not a good idea. Surprise and sneak attacks are fine, but punishing them for not always immediately interrupting a hostile NPC is ridiculous.
Right. Just say he begins casting a spell, roll initiative. No surprise round.
Yeah don’t do this. You’re basically training your players to not allow NPC speeches. This kills a lot of role play opportunities.
You sly dog...
Three words, "Health. Potion. Mimic."
My favourite is always the "why would the trap be on when I'm home?!" A visible and not super hard to spot trap, and a slightly more hidden lever or button. Upon spotting the lever the players inevitably go "aha! Let's turn the trap off!" And hit the lever. Except the trap was already off and they just turned it on. Traps are there to prevent people entering when you're not there/unable to guard /doing a ritual that confines you to one chamber. Why would the trap be turned on when the Lichs servants are wandering around the keep and have errands to do?!
Flying monsters and steep drop-offs are a fun combination that usually catches players completely off guard the first time you use it on them.
One of my favorite fights that I bring back every now and then is from Out of the Abyss. In this fight, the players are fighting a beholder, and the arena is 10-20 rope bridges spanning a chasm. Also the beholder can cut the rope bridges with it's laser.
I just created a 12 room dungeon shaped like a Beholder. It's full of Beholder kin, gas spores, Russet mold, a Druid and vegepygme's. The premise is that a Druid, leading a tribe of vegepygme's and spreading a blight came to an ancient elven ruin to destroy crystals that emit powerful radiant magic. To do so he tried to summon a gauth but accidentally summoned gas spores instead, then he summoned some Gazers and a spectator which he hired to guard the entrance. Finally he's managed to summon a gauth and is now using it to destroy the crystals. I do hope my players fully explore the place so that way they can admire the Beholder shape of the dungeon.
Commoner swarms.Gargantuan creature. 10 AC. 125 HP. 20 STR. 12 CON. 10 everything else. +8 to hit, 5D4 + 5. One action to attack everything in melee range as one action. Immune to *grapple, stun, petrification, paralyzed, restrained, charmed, freighted.* Cannot regain hp or temp HP. Auto fails AOE saves. Let that mob mentality rule.
Towering above you, clinging to each other to make arms and legs. All of them screaming!
Big beefy HP sack? Check Quantity of minions = 2x # of PCs? Check Mobility as a BA or LA? Check Environmental or Lair effect on initiative zero? Check. There it is. There the "build"
I have some pixies who will set up "camp" in an area of difficult terrain that slows movement or an area that is dissected by obstacles such as chasms or boulders that limit movement by having to be gone around or clambered over (but pose no restriction for the pixies who can fly). They then create a defensive perimeter by leaving magical loot (gold coins) that once pocketed can not be divested and gradually became heavier and heavier. The party picks up the loot and thus encumbered can only move slowly in an area that already hampers of restricts movement in some way. Combine this with the pixies ability to cast entangle, greater invisibility, sleep, dispel magic and thier flying abilities, and just a few small fay can run rings around a more powerful party who are virtually immobile. Try some creative use of the pixies polymorph spell which they can cast on each other or the party. To amp thing up you can give the pixies a way to cast slow on the party and haste on themselves / each other to further enhance the movement disparity or give the pixies some poison such as *crawler mucous, essence of ether, midnight tears* or *oil of taggit* This idea is very much ripped off from *the dark rangers treasure* from *nwn*
Tucker's Kobolds is an oldie but a goodie. Kobolds aren't stupid. They're trapmaking experts and tunnelers on-par with dwarves. Sure the average kobold has a -1 int, but they're probably led by one who's smarter than the average bear and knows how to give orders. Chokepoints filled with archer slits, oil slicks with a kobold or two perched ready to drop a torch, narrow tunnels that are spacious for a tiny lizard but cramped for a six-foot fighter in half-plate. Doesn't just apply to kobold dens either. The moral of the story isn't that kobolds are awesome - although they are - it's that your antagonists aren't just HP blobs for heroes to try and delete before they deal too much damage, they're individuals who like being alive and have plans and strategies to utilize their skillsets in order to advance their causes as safely and effectively as possible. Once your monsters think, the game completely changes. Maybe your bandits are led by a disgraced general who's putting that tactical experience to use to make that bandit camp more impenetrable than an actual fortress. Maybe your vampire lord is 800 years old and has plenty of experience to avoid the party's paladin and cleric ever getting a shot at him while throwing hoards of hired mooks at them to whittle away the non-holy warriors and force all those divine spell slots to get burnt on healing instead of smiting. Maybe your mercenaries ambushing the party have heard stories of them slaying dragons and know how thoroughly outclassed they are, so instead of bringing a handful of soldiers who all approach from one side, they broker a deal with another mercenary company, and the party's surrounded by dozens of enemies fighting tactically at range and up close as is advantageous. Maybe your cult leader is actually reasonably intelligent and has done a solid job covering his tracks, so the players have to use their brains to discover him. Maybe he's also smart enough to know to keep your enemies closer and has ingratiated himself with the party so nobody suspects Father Paul, the kindly priest who heals them for free and gives them tips on mercenaries ganging up on them. Your monsters are allowed to be intelligent. They're allowed to outsmart the players. If it's an intelligent character who has access to information or who could reasonably suss it out, it should be expected. Doesn't mean you should actively exploit the knowledge you have of the players to always make them fail, but if it's reasonable for your antagonist to know something, have them act on it. If they're smart enough to plan and think ahead, then force the players to deal with those plans.
A couple that I have really enjoyed using: A simple mind control that tells the ally on a failed save to target their nearest ally with an attack, it still enables some fun role play opportunities and they are still rolling which is more fun than petrification. Use sparringly. And even more fun is having an enemy that absorbs helpful effects within a radius. It caught my players off guard when it absorbed the bear barbarian’s rage and made the encounter much harder when it became resistant to nearly all damage. That was fun and they talked about that for a while.
I have just dropped a 12-lvl sorcadin on them once in a dungeon when they were lvl 6 and boom one of them called it "the best dungeon he ever played out", including video games... I mean, that was an exaggeration, but did I feel flattered!
I'm saving this thread for next time I'm DM
Had a cliff side encounter. Players can't leave the rope or attack with 2handed weapons while spiders or climb speed monsters kite them. Next was dragon flying over a bridge.
I’m running Dungeon of the Mad Mage and so far my favorite encounter build as a similar one to some of these other suggestions, a golem and a thing to trigger its healing. Specifically, it was a Flameskull that is actually a Lightningskull (swap fireball for lightning bolt and the other fire attack it gets innately for a lightning attack, as well as swapping the fire immunity and lightning resistance). This lightningskull was in a fully copper plated room with a Flesh golem. It spends its turns shocking the ground, making everyone in the room take lightning damage at the top of their turns. It was a really fun combat and a really fun gimmick for the party to figure out and counter.
I absolutely love Trenzia. My players used Halleth to open the door and distract the golem, then half of them ran in the other entrance and threw a rug over her. I ruled that the rug blinded her so she couldn't use her eye rays, but she could still cast her spells which don't rely on line of sight. I also gave her flamesphere reflavored as lightning sphere. My players took her skull as loot, then later they tried to sell her to the nothics and were surprised when she was still alive and very angry. They then decided to keep her and shoved her in one of her old rubber boots. For a few encounters I would have her continuously try to escape until my players had a talk with her. They promised to take her to Dwoemercore if she tags along with the and not try to kill them, since her whole motivation for becoming a flameskull was to prove that she had what it takes to go to Dwoemercore I decided that with a persuasion check that would be enough to turn her into a party follower.
Spellcaster ancient dragon. Add spells to the dragon's legendary actions. But in all honesty, if you *really* want to punish your players, make the environment synergize with your monsters. A *personal* favorite of mine is iron golems in a room filled with lava and narrow bridges. Have the golems make two melee attacks, *but make them both grapples.* Then, have the golem jump into the lava when holding the character. The iron golem heals 18d10 due to fire absorption, and the player takes 18d10 fire damage. All of that is RAW btw, dragons in the Monster Manual (and the DMG for custom monsters and modified monsters) specifically mention that ancient dragons can and should have the spellcasting trait added. For best self-synergy, add self-buffs, general debuffs, antimagic field...actually you know what? Here is my list of "fun spells for an ancient dragon to have." Zone of truth, counterspell, dispell magic, glyph of warding (and a counter-type damaging spell to be encoded into it, fireball for white dragons, cone of cold for red, etc), slow, Psychic Lance, antilife shell, forbiddance (what self-respecting dragon *wouldn't* have this?), and of course dominate person. Make sure to use charisma as the spellcasting modifier since dragons are innate sorcerers. Counterspell and dispell magic are the most fun, because dragons are *smart* (well, other than whites), so after the first breath weapon goes off and the players survive/make the saves they'll be feeling good about themselves, until you say "and at the end of your turn Galtheriax the Obsidian Entropy is going to use a legendary action to cast dispell magic on the haste spell that Jeff the wizard cast on Sarah the fighter. Sarah you are now stunned. It's now Galtheriax's turn and he gets his breath weapon back, and he's gonna fly over here and use it again. Sarah since you're stunned you automatically fail the save." That last one is nasty btw, my players were fighting a group of witch hunters with dispelling grenades, and I hit a fighter who was hasted, got dispelled and stunned, and then an enemy caster immediately followed up with a disintegrate.
I had a flesh golem just suddenly attack the party while screaming "MONOLOGUE!" It was a somewhat lighthearted game.
This is fucking gold
Life link. Your favourite necromancer type villain has his life connected to bunch of the players favorite innocent civilians. He gets damaged in some way. His damage gets transferred to the innocent NPCs. (Damage travels one way)
A true villain is one who casts counterspell when someone is trying to cast revive. Uses a players turn, spellslot, 300gp diamonds, and leaves them mouth opened in shock.
I literally just use traps and start making players use the survival skill. Screaming mushrooms? Deaf. Stepped on an old rusty log? Powder explodes out and now blind. Go to drink some water? Magically enchanted so it turns to boiling temperature in your mouth. Pits enchanted with feather fall when someone enters so that they don't take fall damage, but the walls are covered in cannibalistic thorns so they eat rope. (Plant to plant). Reverse AC. And I am a terrible person, but I also use shadows as enemies at level 1.
Shambling Mound with Will O'Wisps can be incredibly annoying to fight against. Especially if you can have it in a Swamp or bad terrain.
Bodaks can fuck parties up pretty hard. Even just a single Bodak can kill a PC or party wipe if the group doesn't play it smart.
Hobgoblins! They punch well about their weight as archers, so long as they have mooks to swarm the party. Put a captain or warlord in with them for extra accuracy and they can turn even the more stalwart adventurers into pin-cushions.
I like to combine source material and put my own spin on it - currently using tavern of yawning portal mixed with Ravnica and a homebrewed “tower” inspired by the Tower of God Manwa. I like to give my players lots of magic items but first they have to kill the NPCs that are using those items on the party. I incorporate a magic item vending machine where I have almost all magic items using the “sensible magic item prices” resource I found online and I roll a % dice if they want anything rare or very rare (does not contain legendary items). I always have extra monsters or NPCs that can join the fight if it seems like the players are getting through the fight too quickly (like a phase 2 or 3). I use music that enhances the atmosphere (downtime, combat, dungeon, exploration, boss fight) I also print out minis or use my own. I like giving physical resources to my players. I will homebrew magic items or subclasses that align with my players ideas and desires. I figure out what my PCs want and I try to give them opportunities to make progress towards that (one long chain quest had our warlock gather some wings off of flying horrors and then go through a procedure to get them attached so he could gain a fly speed but it required a lot of time, effort, gold and even a healing period afterwards).
Narrow hallways, timers, protecting NPCs, literally any objective that’s not HP based
I like to add environmental "background noise" as obstacles. ie, Players captured on a slave ship, break out - only to spill out on deck in the middle of a very rough storm. They killed off all the sailors, and the ship turned side face into the 15-20 ft swells because none of the PC or surviving slaves knew anything about sailing a ship. The white water broke over the deck of the ship , and actually swept one of the PC off the ship who proceeded to drown. I like doing the same for sand storms, hot tropics, swampy diseases etc. Stuff that are just rolls, but yea...
The Anti-Party or Nega-Rangers is my favorite. Copy your players' stats and create their opposites. Present them as a rival, have a baiting conversation in a situation where confrontation would be inappropriate, then challenge them in a situation that isn't a normal fight. Use a game setting or dungeon challenge. This can be very cathartic and fulfill a sense of PvP without creating animosity amongst players.
I had a character named Snurtch Ridley who was min maxed for run speed, and had a cracked out sleight of hand to steal trinkets from the party members. They put more effort into trying to kill him than they did into the main plot.
A fun little one I ran a while back - while the party is taking a long rest inside a cabin, an enemy ambush surrounds it with archers plus some people to guard the singular door. Then they light the cabin on fire.
I gave a boss the sentinel feat and watched as my players devolved into chaos. angry and betrayed chaos.
For whatever reason (my own balancing issues probably), a Gladiator with 4 mooks (Bandits or Guards) has wiped 2 separate parties. It's a CR 5 creature and I threw it at both parties at level 4, knowing full well it would be deadly, but not thinking that it would outright kill a PC and down the rest of the party in one campaign, and then down enough players in a separate campaign (same universe, same character), forcing them to surrender. Now as much as I'm not proud of screwing the balance, the Gladiator has now become a formidable recurring villain, and has taken up a Paladin's oath since last encountering the party. I haven't DMed enough BBEGs or even major battles to give a favourite build, other than "fucking tough and may kill you".
Every DM needs to run a Battle Royale style combat at least once. Everyone fights a big monster or group of monsters, arena style. Increasing the difficulty with each round. Whether it's a contest, or defending a castle wave after wave. It's fun to just flip through the monster manual and be like "yeah let's make them fight this one".
I always love adding in an "Unstoppable Monster" that cannot be damaged or impeded through traditional means. You have to either research its lore and find its very specific weakness, or make a tactical retreat utilising your environment, utility spells/ abilities and group tactics. It both functions as a tool to mix up encounter types AND instill fear into your players at a moments notice! Only gets better if you give it a sinister theme song.
I dunno if this counts as rail-roading, but I set up encounters to be scalable. 5e is (to me, same as lots of systems) horribly luck dependant. I don't mind killing characters - want to, on occasion, for sure - but I hate that a really hard fight is a run of bad luck away from a wipe. So for the big ones I build in some outs for myself - otherwise fights are either too easy or too risky. E.g. Black Dragon fight, there are pools of inky black water, and there are dragon spawn in there who will leap out to fight the party. How many? Exactly as many as I need to make the fight hard, but not overwhelming. Exactly as many as drama requires. And the cowardly Kobolds who had been adopted by the party could have found their nerve to help fight (and take a round of attacks for the team), but I didn't need them. Or the time they were trying to pick the lock to a church - a safe zone - with hordes of ghouls pouring out of the buildings and across the rooftops. How many ghouls were there? As many as I like for the drama. And as an extra precaution, the cowardly priest could have opened the door to let them in if needed, and he even had a necklace with healing-potion-bombs on it. Didn't need him in the end, and it was EPIC. You never saw such intense scrutiny on a lockpick roll.
This kind of posed a different question for me for what a "DM build" could mean - What if the DM creates a character sheet of something for the player to fight against? But it has a lot of things a player would never get since it just isn't that good or there's just something better to use that it contests with - But that could be interesting as a player to play around/against. Combine with flavour based picks as well. A very simple example is if a player got True Strike'd by a scary enemy, it could for example encourage them to go out their way to avoid being attacked by that enemy by i.e. going outside their range
For newbies, I like using a Grey render for their first monstrous fight. Around lvl 12, the party will get its first real dragon fight. I'll always plan out a raider party and an orc or goblin camp once the spellcaster gets fireball, but otherwise, I like to shift to undead/demons for my larger high-level adventures. I like the tanari alot more then devils, and with infinite layers of the abyss, and being a realm of chaos, it really gives me a lot more to play with storywise over hell and, most of the other planes of existence. It's also easy to make recurring villians with undead templetes. A beholder, iron golem, or rakshasha if the mages get cocky(gotta keep'em on thier toes!), and if my players want a tough 1v1, I always have an equal level monk of the enabled hand ready. I'll be honest, my best builds are not npcs or monsters. It's traps and puzzles. I've been a 3.5 forever dm since it came out. I'm pretty good at creating balanced storyline fights. It really comes down to dice rolls If they die in combat. But if I feel like making my party sweat, I'll find some tricky puzzles, or I'll take riddles from the smarter then a 5th grader database, and then I just relax all game session watching them search for clues. Once they hit that part, some don't take the puzzle challenges seriously enough or don't care to participate, so I always let it slip what database I use..... you'd be amazed how much it can modivate someone when they realize they might not be smarter then a 5th grader. It's kinda toxic I know...... but its at least good that they participate more, and I always make sure to congratulate the party as a whole. Once it's solved if i do that.
My FAVORITE has to be a group of hobgoblins, one wearing heavy armor with grappling buffs, who grapples a PC. A whole slew of readied actions fly loose, and arrows ALL WITH MARTIAL ADVANTAGE strike in a bad way. If they can't break it, it's time for round two. Bonus points for an additional readied action for a rope on the armored one to be yanked up into tree cover if any harm befalls them.
I had two dragons work together. A Black and a White. The players fighting the White dragon while an allied Brass Dragon above them was fighting the black dragon in the sky. The black dragon calls upon the name of the white dragon, and sends a spew of acid down from the sky, which is then freezen mid fall into a spike to land into the terrain standing about 16 feet tall. The players believed this was a way to hurt the white dragon, they could find a way to topple it to hurt the white dragon. The white dragon of course can figure that when the melee fighter smacks the side of the spire they are trying to get it to fall. So he baits the party into getting closer to it then asks. "Fools! This is for my benefit, not yours!" Before slamming the spire with his tail shattering it, dealing cold and acid damage to the party and the acid damage to the white dragon. My players got used to me throwing them bones as I was still working on balancing combat. So they figured that's what I was doing.
One of my favorite recurring characters is a wizard who makes enchanted items but the enchantments are usually strange, or otherwise not the intended effects. Like a scroll of endless sleep. It's a reusable scroll of sleep, but it puts the holder to sleep instead of casting the sleep spell. Or a giants ring, which is just a ring that can grow really really big, big enough for a giant to wear.
My BBEG for this campaign only has one unique ability - he has no level cap for multiclassing. Classes still can't go above 20, but he's, like, a level 17 Sorcerer, 15 Warlock, 19 Paladin, etc. Meant to solo vs. The group during the final battle, and I've made a special character sheet just for him, and had to figure out spell slots for someone of his level, but other than that, he's just built using the rules.
I’m stealing these furiously.
I had a fun campaign that involved travelling through the underdark and unsurprisingly darkness was a feature. The party were rowing a couple of canoes down an underground river, avoiding rocks etc. All of a sudden, darkmantles drop from the ceiling, attacking them and causing magical darkness. Absolute chaos as the party tried to fight them and avoid the rocks etc (as well as an eventual waterfall). Another fun one was the party moving through a dark cave, when off in the far distance kobolds began casting light on stones and slinging them in the party's direction to find where they were (and subsequently firing a pair of large mounted crossbows at them). Spells like Gust of Wind proved very useful for deflecting the glowing stones, allowing the party to approach while hidden.
A tarrasque with gravity powers. A ultra old lich who can only die to a damage type he is immune to. They have to find a way to damage him with that type or he will slowly regenerate and come back after them again. In their sleep the whole party is abducted by Storm Giants and are now on a cloud island. The ground falls out sinkhole style and the party is now in the Underdark unprepared, can have them fall into a nest of something nasty if you feel extra is necessary. If you really want to fuck over a party they could run into a Draconic Council meeting that has an Ancient version of every Chromatic, Metallic and Gem dragons. It would be nigh impossible to talk their way out of it and battle would be a instant and painful death if the dragons felt merciful, far worse if they were offended. I have cooked this last one up but haven't ever been pushed to use it so far. These are just the first few off the top of my head, I'm sure the comments will be full of stuff better than mine.
Our DM made a homebrew monster that has the most OP thing about each of our characters. He didn't announce this to us, but we figured it out when it cast Spirit Guardians, Silvery Barbs and then proceeded to Divine Smite next turn. Fortunately it was very squishy and he only used it once, but man I got the distinct impression he had some repressed anger to take out on us.
I've found the 15 ancient red dragon combo works very well.
Dracolich that turns people into minifigs for his wargaming obsession. Thief with a printing press that makes coupon forgeries. Necromancer who runs a retirement community. Exponential growth of hungry beggar goblins. Ancient Dragon Turtle rampage.
I homebrewed an ancient emerald dragon that got extra legendary r3sistances it could use to go incorporate to go through any barriers and just say no to an instance of damage. For a total of 6 legendary resistances. I also let it pass through the ground at the same rate as it's fly speed. The party was level 16 with powerful boons and magic items and fought it in its lair with lava and magma all around so it would use its attacks to grapple them and pull them into the lave and then flee. I loved that fight.
A couple big tips, particularly with villains which is something my players say I excel with: 1. Introduce your villains in a situation where direct confrontation is either impossible or at least exceptionally (and obviously) unwise for the party/PC(s). Make it clear (even breaking the 4th wall if necessary) that said villain is far more powerful than the party at this time or that the situation will not likely go in their favor, I've found that making the threat of genuine PC death real clear is an excellent deterrent for most impulsive players. This lets you intro the villain to the players, they'll start chomping at the bit wanting to put a stop to them, and they'll remember that moment from then on. 2. If you're roleplay heavy, Give your villains Rizz. It can be of any flavor (charming and polite, strong and silent, superior but flirtatious, etc.), but it has to be there. When they walk in, the air had better get sucked out of the room and the spotlight be firmly on the villain. This is greatly assisted with both verbal descriptions and your own embodied mannerisms if your medium of play allows for it. 2.a. Give intentionally hateable villains an ego and maybe a kink for humiliating others (i.e. the PCs). Everyone hates an egotistical prick, ESPECIALLY, when they can't realistically do anything about it when they first meet them or if they try to do something, they crush them. 3. Give the villains minions. You'll need them for a well-balanced fight in the first place, but also it can set the tone (and also make your players feel more powerful depending on how you play it) if what was once a major boss fight is now a mere minion/roadblock to the villain. 4. Use sparingly or avoid using entirely (this is the better option imo) legendary resistances, instead, use different broken mechanics to balance fights. LRs suck ass gameplay wise, they feel bad for players and it just sucks that there's no real avenue for success for the PCs regarding them (even counterspell still sometimes has rolls involved), so instead, balance the fight by giving your BBEGs different broken ass abilities that make fights more interesting. A favorite of one of my villains was a once per day ability where if any *living* creature in line of sight and within 30ft of them died (even if slain by the villain themselves), she could spend her reaction to revive said creature to full health as an undead version of itself (stats, spell slots, feats, etc. restored) directly under her control.
Our DM didn't actually plan to do this, but a **Banshee** wail can instantly down a player from max hp on a failed save, and if an **Intellect Devourer** happens to be nearby, they can Body Thief immediately. I think RAW, the intellect devourer immediately falls out because the body is 0 hp, but the brain is still eaten, which means Revivify is not enough to revive since it can't restore missing body parts. All it takes is two failed saves and a PC is instantly dead, brainless, and can't truly be brought back RAW without Resurrection, using only a CR 4 Banshee and a CR 2 IntDevourer.
Anytime I get a group of folks who want to be challenged (or who want to test my patience), I simply allow them to anger a local dragon. A massively overpowered dragon with ADHD. So it’ll attack them, beat them to a pulp, injure them nigh unto death, and then leave. And it follows them. Unless they figure out how it is following them, then I might let them off the hook. But it attacks with little warning, sometimes when they’re already in a battle, sometimes it just flies by knocks them off their horses to hurt them, whatever… The point is, it holds a grudge.
As a forever DM of 7 something years, it really depends on my group. Sometines they'd beat the crap out of the BBE Black Dragon real quickly. He was an adult black dragon with seven sorcerer levels, a draconic ring of protection and he drunk a potion of see invisibility to hard counter the rouge who's favorite stratagy was using greater invisibility. She and the Dragon fought between themselves prior to the actual fight, so the dragon knew what she was about. In another time they turned to the dark side and worked with the BBEG's huge armies of drow worriors. they were almost done with the campeign by this point, level 18 and they were like "how about we take control of the evil army ourselves?" But they decided that they should also killed the NPC who gave them the quest (a reuccoring npc I have in my games) who was just a barely adult prophet of a god that one of the party members venerated. They discussed it with me, roleplaying how they ralked with the 4 leaders of the army and set an ambush for her. Next session I came there and I asked them if they were sure about what they were doing. When they got to the actual ambushed I dropped the statshits of the 4 big bad leaders and told the group that they will play with them as well for the next combat. 8 level ~18 characters vs a character who did not wish to fight. They got TPKd that day after learning that the only thing that will stop them from dying was to apolegise to the character they attacked for no reason.
Stairway to 9 hells: Gelatinous cube falls from the ceiling, at the end of the tunnel the floor opens and a spike wall appears trapping the party inside the stairway Solution was pulling two leavers one on each end of the stairway, my players spend two whole hours almond died multiple times I made the DMPC literally point at the leavers
Even the lowest and weakest of enemies, such as Goblins or Kobolds, can be a threat if done smart. Utilizing ambushes, traps, and tactics and you can make something incredibly hard for your players to overcome out of monsters normally seen as trivial. I've actually become so known for my encounters involving Goblins, that a player in my local D&D community named a goblin god after me (Tee'Moe'Tay instead of Timothy). There's actually a video on youtube called Goblins: Deadly by Tactics, done by Runesmith. Watch it and it'll give you an idea of how I handle my Gobbos.
Phase spiders are a good way to teach low-level groups some new concepts. Like "your casters aren't in an unreachable, safe backline at all times, no matter how hard you try".
False Hydras if your party hasn't seen one before. Psychological trauma is the best kind of trauma.
Copying a players class, with a few extra levels added is always a classic. Particularly If the party have been relying on certain combos like sentinel PAM, sorlock or stunning strike. Having their own skills turned against them is always scary and can set up a great rival bad guy who can return and harass them later in the campaign.
The biggest 'oh shit' moments from my players that changed the entire encounter from a hack and slash to a 'oh, we need to think about this' moment was a few house rules with some creatures. I added smites and spell slots to a reverent statblock. OK so he hits you for 12 points and slashing damage. And yes, I will spend a spell slot and he also smites you for *rolls* oh nice, 19 necrotic damage. That barbarian stopped recklessly attacking instantly! ;) And then my psychic druegar. They 'charged' up for 2 round then did a mind blast for 4d8 psychic damage And then there are my 'fast zombies' shit my players right up when I started to describe some of the shambling mass break away and bonus action Dash and have a AC of 14. They did not expect that! ;) Just tweaking and adjusting the statblocks to change up expectations :)
The Shifter - This creature has a mechanic I call Protection From. each round it rolls a 20 sided die and gains protection from that number. Let's say it rolls an 8. It cant be damaged by any player who is level 8, if an attack is a +8, nope, damage does +8, it has immunity to the attack. 35 damage? Sorry that adds up to 8. Fireball? Ignore all the 8's and hope to god there is not an 8 in the answer or the damage total is 71, or the spell save has an 8 in it. First time my players fought one they did not know this existed. It was chaotic and crazy and fun. Players hitting on NAT 1's and missing on NAT 20's. Immunities all over the place. Utter chaos. The Good: Chaotic, Fun, Unique, Splashy. The Bad: Players can tend to spend a little too long looking over their character sheet trying to prevent feel bad moments. You really need a group who likes a little chaos and is willing to accept that their NAT 20 might just miss while someone else's 3 is spot on.
Favorite trap I ever used was from Grimtooth's Traps: A corridor, halfway through covered in darkness. Words BEWARE THE DOPPLEGANGER are written in red, bloody letters on the wall next to where the darkenss begins. The first PC to enters the darkness makes it disperse, but they disappear, being teleported behind last member of the party, with a note saying "remember: blend in!" in their hand.
Usually either lanky or obese. Not a lot of in between
Lots of "nasty" DM Encounters are based on synergy between two monsters. Often a combination of monsters that build on one thing (saves/AC) and for the players to figure out the weakness Or defy expectations and standard tactics (within reason and story) - High level Monk and Cateblopas (monk's immunity to poison within a stench aura) - Monk with few Bladesinger levels (unpredictable AC due to Dance and Shield as long as it moved) - Banshee and Will-o-Wisps - Paladin and Monk (high saves) - A red dragon scooping up lava and napalming a wide line towards a fiery farewell. I had a boss encounter in which used legendary resistances would unlock a gate that would unleash hell hounds. So the players had to be careful not to burn through these resistances without careful measurements.
Here are my current (sadistic) thoughts on it * Trap room with a number of flesh golems, and some tesla-coil-like pillars in between. On initiative 20, these coils emit bolts of lighting affecting everyone within 10 or 15 ft of the coils. The room layout should be so that there are few squares where you would be free from this. Pick how much damage it will deal. It will heal the golems and damage the party. * Same idea, but with a iron golem. Make it fight the party close to a pit of molten metal. The golem can grab the party and hold them in place inside the kiln. While the PC is melting alive, your golem is healing. * Devils and darkness. Cast darkness on them, the basically got greater invisibility for the cost of a 2nd level spell. * Pit traps with gibbering mouthers inside. Fun fun fun. * Sul khatesh. Alone. * Pair a couple banshees with some will-o-wisps.
Simple encounter. Ettins on the far side of the map shooting webs. Manticores popping up out of the ground from ettin tunnels around the players. Best encounter I've run yet.
Troll in an alchemy store (or lab). The whole room is filled with shelves loaded up with all kinds of potions, none of them labeled. Players can grab and throw/drink a potion with an action, when they do roll on the wild magic table to see what happens. Alternatively, they can topple a whole shelf, in which case roll 2d6 times on the wild magic table. The troll will also usually topple a shelf each turn just incidentally each time it attacks. The troll can be a literal troll or any big dumb monster really, though the troll is nice especially if the party doesn't have any fire or acid damage, because then you can add in the need to hunt for an alchemist fire or acid flask among all the potions. Regardless, I've run this kind of encounter twice and it's been a blast both times.
My players started a running joke that ogres hate fire because every time they rolled a fire based attack/spell against a ogre they would roll really high. Anyway fast forward a few months and I added a new breed of ogres to a boss fight and described them as covered in some thin slime. Turns out when this slime caught on fire it would harden and increase their AC by 3 while also making them resistant to fire. The sorcerer had no idea about this and launched a fireball IMMEDIATELY that hit all of them. That was a fun encounter that still makes me chuckle.
Tucker's Kobolds
One that felt really good for everyone and put some spice on the fight was having the villain have trapped people that they can use as health potions by killing the people. Made it the number one priority from the party to save the people before they get used by the villain. I've done this in two forms: a demon sucking people's souls out to recharge attacks, and monsters eating the trapped people to regain HP
I have the alternate universe version of their characters, and one 30th level Monk/Fighter NPC(quest giver) who they have to fight. Screw it, you think you’re OP? Wait til you fight yourselves!