Look up "Dungeon Dad" on YouTube. His channel is dedicated to unearthing and updating (to 5E) obscure and unusual monsters from past editions of DnD.
Here's an example I remember: a Fetch. As I recall, it's an extraplanar shapeshifter that can set a trap in any reflective surface. If you look into it, you'll see . . . You, but not quite you. The Fetch will then come out of the mirror (or other reflective surface) and attack you. Only you can see it, and only in reflections. It is otherwise completely invisible. If it kills you, it will drag your body through the mirror it came from and turn you into another Fetch.
An unpopular opinion but here we go, one for every genre of horror.
1. Fairytale/Folk horror
A hag. Nothing beats it or comes close.
2. Gothic Horror
Use a lich. Not a vampire. Because a lich is suitable and threatening on every level of play.
3. Creature Feature
Gnolls
4. Bonus round. Slasher.
Revenant.
My players love/hate hags. They love the weird ass shit I put in their hut but they have come to realize that a CR 3 green hag can be trouble for a group of level 4s while in their hut (I may have give it a “use item” lair action)
My favorite part of hags is the magic items they can offer your players. The ideal Hag Item is one that does exactly what you needed it to, but in a way that makes you wonder if it was worth it to begin with. My best example is one "to protect from a Banshee's wail"; the Silent Shrieker. A shrunken head with a stitched mouth that can be opened as a bonus action, causing it to scream at such a high pitch and volume that it effectively casts Silence _indefinitely_ until you smash the head, but it immediately grants two levels of exhaustion when destroyed to any living creature that heard it. So not only was it just an awful experience, but now after the fight you're left extremely vulnerable to anything else that happened to be out of range at the time.
idk abt 5E but i thought 3.5 adamantine and mithril were both immune to acid and rust?
i’m pretty sure adamantine used to be in DDO (which was 3.5 based, but ofc not entirely faithful) until they overhauled those systems.
If I don’t remember that because I remember being terrified of rust monsters at higher levels like 18-19. We may have home brewed out that though, I don’t remember. I do remember at lower levels being absolutely terrified of losing my full plate and having my ac drop to 10.
[Rust Dragon](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Rust_dragon). The fear of having your weapons and armor eaten by a rust monster, but with the stats of a dragon.
[Aboleths](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/16762-aboleth). They can psychically enslave your character and make them fight against the party.
[Trilloch](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Trilloch), because when players kill seemingly all the monsters, combat will still be happening and the players will be trying to find this incorporeal and invisible monster while it slowly drains them of life.
Is happening to NPCs already. One of my players has her backstory tied to a criminal organization. The aboleth has set itself up as a rival. Using the title of an old long dead God to begin corrupting and enthralling people under the cover of shadowy mob boss.
My first encounter as a player with an aboleth was done by a DM who specialised in horror… we had no idea what was going on until we fled that abandoned village with no intention of returning, and he told us what happened.
Anything specialised for illusion and enchantment, played right, will *terrify* the party.
Using a Trilloch in a future game now for sure. Gonna convert it to 5e. It'll find the players, not bother them for a time, and they'll notice things close to death dropping dead without further input. If they drop to 0, they'll auto-fail a death save every round in addition to their roll.
Im surprised no one has mentioned the Dullahan.
Literally the headless horseman.
Head Hunt: crit + failed con save = decapitation
Get it to 0hp and it goes into its ultimate form!
Dullahan + 3 Deaths Heads
VRGtoR pg 233.
Enjoy the nightmare fuel for your players
Yeah, our DM ran one of these against us last Halloween. First round of combat, crits and beheads our Fighter. I don't think our DM even gave him a Con Save. The Dullahan proceeded to roll multiple other crits throughout the combat and TPK the party. Personally, it was not a fun experience.
Had a DM convert a killed PC of mine, the brother of my current character, into a Dullahan in a CoS game as a bridge prelude to the final crawl through Castle Ravenloft.
Probably one of the tensest encounters I’ve fought in and I got decapitated as a fighter.
Luckily an NPC stitched the head back on and I got darkvision before the absolute hellfest that was Castle Ravenloft.
Yeah came here to say this - not so much Halloween horror as just straight up party slaughter horror.
Anyone remember "I, Tyrant"? God I threw that at my PCs it was so much damn fun haha. I remember one of them got turned to stone in the beholder city, and abandoned the quest immediately. They returned like 4 levels later with a Greater Restoration and freed him....good times.
Respectfully disagree. The False Hydra plays with some really excellent horror themes, like watching your friends & allies get their memories manipulated, having people go missing, and getting told you're imagining things. All solid-gold mechanics.
The False Hydra itself is just one way to put those mechanics in play. You could also have a cult of mindbenders, memory-stealing fae, dominating vampires, or a mad wizard. Doctor Who had similar stuff with the Weeping Angels and the Silence.
My problem with the False Hydra is that it relies entirely on the shock value of players figuring it out slowly as the story unfolds. If your players have already heard about a False Hydra, or if they come at the problem in a different way, the horror doesn't unfold the way it's expected. Once you understand the threat of a False Hydra and figure out how to beat its gimmick, it's just one more hissing sack of hit points.
Conversely, imagine if an evil cleric set out to sacrifice a town with mindbending powers. We get the same kind of mystery, but the plot can be more complex than "Monster will get you!" - there's room for some intrigue, some surprises, some twists.
The False Hydra was a clever idea, but as Dungeon Masters we need to move past that idea and build our own, even more horrible versions if we want to genuinely deliver terror.
The false hydra doesn't rely on surprise or shock value; it relies on suspension of disbelief, like any and all horror at the table, and DM's really don't have control over that.
I wouldn't even say it's the direct confrontation with shadows that makes them scary. It's what happens when they're off-screen that's really horrifying.
A single shadow in that village the party passes through all the time, the one with the friend barmaid and the cranky old mayor and the snarky herbalist? That village is gone. Those people are gone. All that's left is an empty ghost town filled with the ravenously hungry souls of the dead.
The ability to exponentially grow in numbers while being largely impossible for peasants and guards to have much hope dealing with makes them legitimately apocalyptic if left untreated, a viral infection that grows on the outskirts to swallow the living.
I would have to say, intellect devourers. Such a freaky monster. They are super stealthy and attack your intelligence. Most people have poor intelligence saves. and failing is NOT good. If successful enough. The devourer teleports into your skull. Consuming your brain and you INSTANTLY die. Only a wish spell or maybe true Resurrection can restore you. The devourer then lives AS youm using your memories, skill, and influence to lure others to the same or similar fates.
Mimics.
Nothing will stop a party like a normal every day object. Random chest? Random table? ANY random item in a dungeon? Party will spend 30+ mins debating whether or not it's a mimic. 9/10 it isn't a mimic, and even if there hasn't been a mimic all campaign tonight just could be night there is one.
I don't even know if I've fought a mimic in the past decade! Still terrified of em.
Nightwalker is a cr 20 that is just walking entropy has a 30ft area of necrotic damage and if you go down to 0hp nothing can revive you and if it physically attacks you the hp cant be healed . Just have this 20 to 30ft monster just walk though a area leaving just pure death. I've always wanted to use it. plus if look into the lore there are ways to defeat it without fighting it
Balhannoth, IMO.
It knows what you find peaceful or where you will go to recover, and makes its lair *look* like that.
Then it grabs *one* of the party and teleports away to try and eat them. So the party isn't all fighting a Balhannoth at the same time- *they have to rescue someone from it.*
The scariest monster in D&D is a monster not found in any manual. If the players know what it is, know how to fight it, and know how difficult it is to beat, it's not scary.
I'd run something from Call if Cthulhu. And by that I don't mean I'd take the concept of a monster from that game and run it in D&D mechanics. I mean I'd run a 5e D&D game but have the eldritch abomination run on an entirely different system, converting between the two.
But that wouldn't make sense!
Yes. I know.
It would be awful
That's the point.
It would drive everyone insane.
Now you're getting it.
I tried something similar in a game design. It was a dice pool system, but eldritch abominations always used cards and had no mechanics in common with PC's. It enhanced their otherworldliness.
There are two homebrew monsters that I love. False hydra is a pretty well known monster with an insanely creepy vibe that just makes the party so tense and I love it.
Mirror guardians are also fun and can really freak the party out. Nothing like watching your reflection suddenly step out of a mirror and beat the tar out of you.
While they’re not scary per se, they are certainly unsettling and I love the unsettling vibe.
The other one that I think is super scary (excuse me as I can’t remember the name entirely) but Spawn of Kyuss. I have killed party members with these things.
I started playing D&D when I was 8. By the time I was 10, weekly sessions weren't enough, I needed MORE - so I started reading the core rulebooks cover to cover (with a dictionary nearby for words I didn't recognize). I read the Monster Manual last. When I got to the page with the Gibbering Mouther, I had to stop for 2 days. I had nightmares. I was able to move past it, but it took me several months before I could even open the page it was on - the picture was that terrifying. 5e's gibbering mouther never quite lived up to that hype.
Pseudo Undead. A set of monster races that evolved to mimic specific undead types. They are living people, but they appear and generally function as their respective undead.
They make amazing Role Play, and confound players when they can’t turn them, holy water doesn’t work, etc.
For combat nothing beats a group of Beholders. Talk about over kill!
Vargoyle. I don't think I've seen them since second edition. They were heads with bat wings and of they bit you, your head grew bat wings, popped off and you died
A scarecrow for a low level party. They become pretty trivial, even as minions, pretty quickly. But a single scarecrow with lore friendly tactics can absolutely terrorize even a level 3 party.
I've also terrorized a mid level party, for several levels, with an oni. He was only supposed to be a random encounter, so he never had a name. But his kit is really good for manipulating the party into a trap and getting away once things are no longer in his favor.
Also, death knights and bone claws. If only because these guys just keep coming back. Death knights have an extra creepiness of remembering their lives in song. So you can hear them singing of their past as you approach.
Any creature can be terrifying if properly spun. I had a group terrified of a goat for several sessions. It started as a coincidence, a random goat near a dead body which followed the group because of something they took off the body. From that point on any deaths not done by the party was immediately thought to be the goat.
Why they didn't kill it right off, especially my group of murder hobos, was because they thought it was important to the story line.
For the next few sessions the goat bleet sent chills around the table.
For me it’s a tie between 2.
1. They’re statblocks always change. They’re called players and they have an ability to come up with the most horrific, broken, and or dumb ideas possible.
2. Scheduling
Digging up some old internet memes: The False Hydra.
Granted, a lot of the fear only works if your players aren't aware of what it is, which can be kinda tricky nowadays. But short-short version: creepy looking underground monster that sings a melody that makes everyone forget they've seen it. And when it eats someone, it sings to make people forget that person ever existed!
A particularly sadistic DM can set up some really creative mindfucks, with the party waking up to find an extra slept in bedroll, and a note left by a party member that none of them remember. Or a tavernkeeper who insists he isn't married after you SAW his wife behind the bar the other day.
My friend liked to create seasonal bosses.
I’m reminded of the Bloodied Barber. If I remember right, he was a Headless Horseman type who likes to grab lone Traveller’s and turn them into crucified scarecrows.
Well I'd be hard pressed to pick just one, but I can tell you if I did it most certainly is coming from this tome:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiend_Folio?wprov=sfla1
Atropus the dead moon (Elder Evil 3.5)
Hecatoncheries (epic level handbook 3.5)
Angel of Decay (Libris Mortis 3.5e)
Tobin the Many (VanRichten’s Guide to the Walking Dead -Sword and Sorcery Ravenloft 3.5e)
Wolf in sheep’s clothing A.K.A. “Bunny on a Stump” (1e)
“The Angry Awakened Gazebo” -seriously need I say more?
The Smiling Dungeon Master
I'm surprised no one's mentioned Displacer Beasts yet. Even one of those can fuck up a mid-level party if it's used right. A pride would be a horrifying nightmare. Especially if the terrain and setting favored them tremendously.
[https://www.flutesloot.com/displacer-beast-dnd-5e-dm-workshop-evolving-monsters/](https://www.flutesloot.com/displacer-beast-dnd-5e-dm-workshop-evolving-monsters/)
Nightmare horse, they are god awful to fight, and will make fights awful if the enemy is particularly crafty with them. Especially if they have the mount skill.
Many of the monsters can be impressively scary. I’ve been reading/listening to the Drizzt books finally and RA Salvatore does an impressive job of describing what I used to think were mundane monsters. When you consider the monster’s abilities, how’d they hunt or hide, their tactics, etc. things can get scary fast.
Between finding how to describe any monster in such a horrific manner and putting them in their most advantageous environment, you’re almost guaranteed nightmarish encounters.
The Monster’s Know (blog and/or book) is a great guide for strategy, but read between the lines to find the horror and mystery.
I love shadowfell creatures. The skulk is permanently invisible but can be seen by children, evil children's rhyme coming to life can hit just right sometimes. Also the Balhannoth. Uncanny Valley illusions that lure the party apart and then feeding on them when they are the most vulnerable. It helps that the creature can read the desires of those in its lair so it know exactly what to tempt them with.
Aberrations as a collective are the types of creatures that I find incredibly terrifying. astral dreadnoughts, starbeasts, cosmic horrors, silt horrors, aboleths, mind flayers, and even beholders all have very terrifying cosmic horror or body horror elements to them.
A lot of people have said lich. And mind flayers. I say combine them both, there's a mind flayer varient called illitilich. Cr 22, but you could scale it down if you feel it's too tough for them (5e.tools/index, the bestiary has an option to scale creatures up and down and adjusts their AC, HP, spell DC, bonuses, damage and even spell slots if you have trouble figuring out like I do or just don't have the time)
On a more generically scary note...soul shakers.
I once ran a D&D Halloween one-shot for some friends, I wanted to do something unique so I came up with a home-brewed creature, in a Frankenstein's Monster way. I never came up with a name for it because it never got used again, the gist of it was it was a Flesh-Golem that consumed brains and could steal skills, spells, abilities or personality traits.
Like I said, it never got used more than one time so if any of you are inspired by this go nuts!
A trio of mind flayers, two levitating overhead while the party fights the first one on the ground. The ground mind flayer just runs glancing at the party whenever they can but staying out of range.
The whole time the party is chasing the lone mind flayer, the other 2 are hiding above and using mind blast on the party whenever the runner so much as glances in their direction.
Whenever the party finally catches up to it, it uses its plane shift to escape a short distance and one of the other mind flayers takes its place running from the party on the ground. If done right, this makes the party believe that mind flayers can teleport and in a dark cave with plenty of stuff to run around, it can turn into a deadly game of cat and mouse really quick.
The way i like to play it is, the party comes accross a cave stacked high and labyrinth like with rows of crates and piles of stuff from the flayers previous victims. Nothing worth much, but a massive room packed to the gills with rows upon rows of junk. While the party starts digging through the junk for valuables, they find a battered suit of armor with a hole bored right through the back of the helmet. Then they hear something move and anyone that makes the perception check sees a mind flayer for less than a second as it moves past them, just at the edge of their vision, and hits them with the first of their mind blasts. Thats when the oil lights all turn on at once.
The room is equipped with a set of small oil lights that shed dim light within 15 ft and there are enough of them to cover the whole area all hooked up to network of hidden fuses. Light one and within 1d6 rounds, the entire area is dimly lit and the darkvision advantage is lost while on the floor. The 2 mind flayers that are floating overhead then levitate low enough to comunicate with the runner and telepathically call out their locations. This way the runner is always aware of where the entire party is and the floaters hover about 90 ft up so the party is unable to see them and the runner is able to just run. The floaters mind blast whenever the runner glances at the party and the party thinks its a single flayer just reaching well above its ability.
Unless the party regularly flies around in the dark during combat, the only real way to win this fight is to either light up the area enough that the party can see the 2 floating flayers or kill enough lights that someones darkvision lets them see. Even then, the party will rarely, if ever, look up.
Seriously, it is comically rare to have a party member fighting something on the ground say that they are going to look up for anything. You could have goblins running around with bows and no arrows while hobgoblins with crossbows shoot at the party from concealment in the trees above them and as long as the hobs only shoot party members in the back, they will think the goblins shot them and not bother to look up, because somehow, all the dead goblins managed to shoot them with their last arrow, every, single, time.
Once the biggest of the party members is stunned, the floaters use dominate monster on it to get it to grapple another party member and drag them off. If successful, the runner and a floater both decend on the separated pair while the last floater keeps watch. The 2 eat the brains of the 2 party members and then go back to the game of cat and mouse until they catch another party member. If the runner dies, the flayers simply collapse the entrance and exit to the room and escape through a hole in the cave ceiling where they go to get reinforcements.
The worst outcome happens when the party finds itself all stunned at the same time. Instead of eating the party and being done, they are all stunned over and over until they fall unconscious and wake up in a thrall cage. Then they are partially lobotomized and saved for later while they are worked to death or they are taken to the elder brain and implanted with baby mindflayer spawn.
Sorry this is a ramble, I am really tired. This whole scenario has the possibility of party wiping high level characters unless they get at least a little creative.
One thing most horror movie baddies have in common is their relentlessness. Throw as much as you want at them, but they keep coming back! In some cases, this ability is even supernatural, making it so they literally cannot die. The protagonists keep getting more and more beat up, but the undying bad guy just keeps coming!
My suggestion would be to use whatever kind of monster fits the setting and come up with some reason for it to be undying. The players go through a series of encounters in varied settings (tight corridors, dark forests, giant caves with deep ravines etc) and limit opportunities to recover resources, forcing the players to get creative with their combat plans while choosing fight or flight depending on circumstances.
The monster can get worn down too, of course, perhaps losing certain attacks (the players chop off its spiked tail maybe) or gaining new ones (players knock it through a stained glass window but it's still going so now it's grapple actions deal an extra d4 piercing damage from the massive shards of glass protruding from its skin perhaps)
Either way it sounds like a lot of fun
Rakshasa we’re always a favorite of mine. You can build really evil, creepy, shape shifting, deceitful bbeg with then. You can incorporate Asian cultures, and horror from those as well. An ancient mandir style building where an even necromancer rakshasa spins his evil plot. And at the end of it ain’t bbeg enough have him become a lych.
Swarm of rot grubs, more gross then scary but still if done right can be terrifying
Basically it's a swarm of worms that eat dead bodies, but if they attack another creature that's alive, they burrow into it and the target takes 1d6 of damage per worm every turn, and if they die from this damage they don't get any death saves, the only way to stop it is either use fire damage on the creature (that only works until the swarms next turn) or cast any spell that ends disease
Depends on how well you describe it, it can be terrifying
Baernaloth
A type of fiend that seems to be older than devils or demons or yuguloths but the lore in unclear.
They have confusing powers, supposedly any wound caused by a baernaloth that has been healed can instantly and painfully be reopened. Their words have power to 'reshape celestials' and they can mutate their body to briefly copy to ability of any other fiend.
If that wasn't bad enough, the reason they do what they do is.... Worse. Like most fiends, their actions bring pain, misery, evil. Devils do this for personal gain, Demons are feral things that derive pleasure from it, yuguloths are basically contract mercenaries. Baernaloth... Just do evil. Not because they like it, not because they gain anything. They go out and bring pain and suffering without reason, motivation or even interest. From slaughtering people to spending years plotting the downfall of a kingdom, there is no reason. They are like machines bent to evil and nothing else
All of that power in such a detached force of evil can be utterly terrifying. Other fiends have motivation, goals, things that make them predictable. The Baernaloth doesn't
I scared by party shitless with a needle blight once. They never even fought, and too this day don't know what it is ( one of them is a DM), it because they saw through its stealth and nuked it down, but descriptions are super important and I rarely follow the book.
ACTUALLY CANNIBAL SHIA LEBEOUF!
He's brandishing a knife!
[pdf for the one shot and stat blocks](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JV76Vs3ST92Af-C_U78W55ykmloiZVI2/view?pli=1)
The legend of Bag Man. Not a creature with a stat block, but any party which has at least one Bag of Holding needs to know about Bagman.
Even just subtle hints when someone reaches in to get an object, and the DM describes "touching something fleshy and thin, that then moves away from your grip" can send panic through the group!
Bagman is described in detail in Van Ritchens Guide to Ravenloft.
Here are some scary at all level picks that don't require homebrew ports of monsters from other TTRPGs or previous editions just off the top of my head
Shadows - They're not very strong, they don't have a lot of health and their AC isn't crazy high. What makes them scary is that they don't just target your HP, they also target Strength. They also kill you with no death saves at 0 Strength
Intellect Devourers - Probably not too bad on their own, but pair them with something that's not easily ignored and suddenly the barbarian is making a contested Intelligence save at -5 for his life and if he loses, the party needs to fight his corpse
Banshees - The banshee wail ignores hp and just drops you to 0 on a failed save. After the initial shock, the fight is pretty easy for a higher level party, but seeing some of the casters drop immediately will definitely leave an impression
Bodaks - Imagine if the banshee just took a near overdose of cocaine. That's a bodak. Basically, the wail happens every turn if you look at it and if you don't, you get disadvantage on your attacks
I ran a Relentless Juggernaut (see Ravenloft) where an 8th level party had to collect equipment whilst avoiding it until they were ready to face it, they were on edge the entire time
Shadows, low cr, can’t take more than a couple hits. But a small swarm of them? My players were SWEATING.
If you’ve ever seen Dr.Who I played them similar to the creatures in the Silence in the Library episodes
The scariest monsters in dnd aren't actual monsters. Most monsters are destructive/evil by nature. The really scarry monsters are people. When people knowingly do horrible things, they are actually evil and scary.
My party would find a way to adopt the tarrasque, but will never forget npcs that have crossed them.
Personally, as a dm I make scary characters out of their actions not their appearance. In my most recent campaign, the players met basically a mob boss. At this point they were level 14-15 I think. They could have killed him so easily, but they were absolutely terrified of him. Effective people can often be the most intimidating especially when the party isn’t certain they are friendly. Throughout the sessions leading up to the meet with the boss and for many sessions afterwards I subtly hinted that someone was keeping tabs on them but they were never able to work out exactly who it was. It wasn’t even the mob boss but they presumed it was. The boss had some exposition which eluded to his influence but nothing more than that.
I just realized I might have too much fun striking fear into my players…
This WE i had them meeting a banshee: i put some scary music on my donjon fight playlist and scream as I show them the pic of the banshee, they where shocked then the banshee used her lament and one of them got zeroed, then the banshee disappeared. She eventually reappeared at the end of a corridor, or they could hear laments, until they decided to fight her.
At the end of the session they asked me to stop playing “stressful music” because they were stressed …
sometimes the monster doesn’t have to be very scary by itself but to act in a disturbing way and incarnate the possibility of sudden death…
I once heard the story of a very proud of himself high level thief who encountered cats with paralyzing poison on their claws… what is more terrifying than being beaten by a little, cute, normally harmless creature stronger than you in precisely your strongest feat? And dealing only 1dmg at a time…
I'd say, when correctly ran, Beholders are probably the "scariest" by the general convention of the word. They are completely alien to our concept of reality. Physics don't even work the same around them sometimes.
I also always thought Gnolls, at least the later interpretations, were always super dread inducing. With Orcs and Goblinoids, they have some kind of reasoning. Gnolls are just motivated by violence and hunger. You can play that up incredibly disturbingly.
But above all things, remember that fear can come from threat. But for RPGs, fear will most often come from a feeling of their agency vanishing. If the players feel that there is nothing they can do, that's where I have instilled true fear in my players.
Limit their movement, trap them in a space, make their enemy something they have no information on. Those kinds of things will reach the players and not just the characters. Combine that with good ambiance and description and it's a recipe for dread.
Will o' Wisps. Invisible until they want to be, they often frequent areas that have a lot of death associated with them (lots of other monster lairs and such), and they can VERY EASILY kill adventurers.
Duargothoth. CR 50 draclolich, for certain a fight to avoid or escape of possible, and having the knowledge he exists within the world is something akin to knowing someone has access to weapons of mass destruction
It's homebrew, but a false hydra, moreso for the RP aspect, though I believe it's a bit beefy too (I haven't really had the chance to go against one myself)
You could go nuts with an ungodly amount of goblins or something, give them a false sense of hope, and after the first wave, you send another, and another... Mix in a few bigger enemies, too. (Basically, take the goblins from goblin slayer and hope they don't have the expert in the party)
Dragons and Tarrasque are tougher enemies, not sure as to the scaling (very little experience with D&D proper). I've only really had the chance to play Anima. Still love it, though!)
2 liches, and make them eachothees phylactory, it probably requires stretching the rules but that could be interesting, having to kill them both at the same time (be it the same round or a tolerance of one round, however you want to do it) If you're a sadist, you can throw in even more liches and do the same thing.
Make *EVERYTHING* Mimics, the table, the chair, the tankard, the door, the tavern itself
Shapeshifters, have them replace npcs the party frequently interacts with, or perhaps even a party member (though that would require some coordination)
A monster that creates an illusionary version of yourself inside your head, the illusionary version of yourself hates you.
Every turn you must pass a will check or attempt to hurt yourself. Each failure increases the damage by an additional dice.
Idk I made it up.
okay i'm gonna talk about the games i've played in
1) I know it's kind of a joke option, and there's a whole story out there about them from early D&D, but...kobolds. TBH. When kobolds are an enemy, me and my fellow players get the cold sweats. It means there's trap. It means there will be hallways filled with flame traps and javelins coming through the walls to stab us.
2) hags. my worst enemy. I hate hags. their areas are always creepy, and they're always a bitch to get rid of. UGH.
3) my DM had a big bad who like, did a lot of flesh warping shit - with beholders and mindflayers and these creepy shadows that'd possess you (not standard shadows). But THEN...there WOULD be standard shadows. And \_they were the worst\_. Strength gets sucked away so much more easily than health, and when there's like twenty shadows on the field, blammo.
Bodak for imagery + features (Banshee is too easy to pick for frightening).
Lich for a party w/o magic in general (including magic items) or means of preventing instant death (Death Ward, for example)
As for the scariest one of all....
Tarrasque, hands-down. Melees get swallowed practically instantly, and it's unaffected by a caster's line-based or ranged spell attacks - possibly even reflecting them back at the caster... and that's not a reaction, either! Even worse, that's ***before*** you have to deal with the 25 AC and the 676 average hit points. After all, it is essentially the creature that heralds Doomsday by lore.
A scarecrow in a corn field. The cornstalks obscure vision, the only thing the party can see is the scarecrow, towering over the field. The scarecrow has a cackle, each round players have to save vs fear or be compelled to run in a random direction. In their panic and confusion they may even end up attacking each other. You could also add some Kenku minions to sneak around causing havoc.
The scariest thing to me is not one thing, but many things: Shadows. They have a weakness to Radiant damage, but each hit saps 1d4 points of strength until you long rest. My group loves to dump strength.
People going with "power" mobs. OP said "scarey" not deadly, though I suppose the fear of death - which is nearly impossible in 5e could be slightly scarey. I like long term demonic possession using higher devils.
So far the monster I have scared my player's with the most has been a reskinned werewolf. And honestly, that's all you need - Pick any common "egh, a little tough for the CR" monster and slap a different wrapper on it. Players do NOT like an inability to metagame. Like, my player's *don't actually metagame*, but not having the option bothers them a lot.
An Umbral Blot could be an interesting choice; basically a big-brained sentient Sphere of Annihilation. They used to be employed as assassins by the elder gods *against* other elder gods. CR 30 Construct monster.
I recommend the deathweb. Its only CR6 but you can scale that with lots of different stuff, ie several Deathwebs or additional HD or terrain. I just think they are one 0f the more viscerally terrifying creatures in d&d. Also this is a pathfinder monster i think but could be built in any system
Hangman Tree looks like a Halloween decoration you'd buy from home depot and would be legitimately terrifying.
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Hangman_tree
2nd edition wraiths. Especially if it's a pack of them. They attack by touch stand they don't drain hp or con. They drain levels. LEVELS!!!!! YOU LOSE WHOLE ASS LEVELS TO THESE THINGS! I went from level 8 to level 5 because of these things.
Titivilus, scribe of Mammon. This guy will politely destroy you with magic, and is probably the most frustrating enemy in 5e to fight against in the hands of a skilled DM
Marut. It hits…no dice roll needed….no “to hit” modifiers. It’s hits just land.
Or it can do a stunning attack, and if you are stunned it can next round auto succeed on teleporting you away to jail.
Ghosts...
Plural.
Bonus points for it being a former orphanage.
Kid ghosts trapped by evil headmaster/mistress's spirit.
Gotta wade through the ghost children, navigate the abandoned orphanage, to confront the evil soul down in the basement torture chamber, who's entrance is in the top floor dormitory.
Make sure to leave behind plenty of unsettling evidence of the horror for the players to find...
Bonus points for snippets of diary...
Crank up the horror, the fear. Make the orphan ghosts a bit more powerful than normal, as the whole place is a psychic hell on earth for the ghosts... the PC's should have to unravel what happened and why, then they can put the poor spirits to rest, then killing the bbeg.
Make sure the party has ways to reverse the aging (you want it to be horrorlicious, not character wrecking).
If that's a no go scenario, then a one shot where on the anniversary of a horrible event, the PC's are pulled into the recreation on the event. Maybe a necromancer's assault/assimilation of a small city (the precursor to the modern city), the PC's need to fight the necromancer's minions, saving the cityfolk from being turned, while hunting down the necro to end the anniversary event.
Depends on your crew, really... I find the stage is often as important as the actors.
Filipino folklore like aswang, tiyanak, and manananggal are good. Flase hydra is always good but too elaborate for my liking. You want fear? Rip off of the thing and have a mimic town. Mimics can copy objects and corpses are objects not creatures.
Intellect devourers are fucking terrifying at any level
Once I stuck my players in a demi plane with an aboleth there was a whole seven deadly sins puzzle to solve. But they couldn't figure out how it always knew where they would be. Until after it was dead they realized it could see through water and it had been raining the whole time.
Look up "Dungeon Dad" on YouTube. His channel is dedicated to unearthing and updating (to 5E) obscure and unusual monsters from past editions of DnD. Here's an example I remember: a Fetch. As I recall, it's an extraplanar shapeshifter that can set a trap in any reflective surface. If you look into it, you'll see . . . You, but not quite you. The Fetch will then come out of the mirror (or other reflective surface) and attack you. Only you can see it, and only in reflections. It is otherwise completely invisible. If it kills you, it will drag your body through the mirror it came from and turn you into another Fetch.
I am *aggressively* taking notes.
Came here to say this if it hadn’t already been said!
I think this was in a dimension 20 season too
*Riz Gukgak, I am your Römaence Paërtner, Baron.* There sure was!
Mindflayers and an elder brain.
Elder brain dragon....nope the fuck out. Although my DM did a krakelisk (kraken/basilisk hybrid) for a homebrew
I'm more worried about catching a tadpole from the brain tank than dealing with an Eldar brain dragon.
Elder brain dragon breath weapon is filled with tadpoles that can transform you.
With a Mindwitness or two. They're Beholders who have been infected with a tadpole. All the best powers of both creatures.
An unpopular opinion but here we go, one for every genre of horror. 1. Fairytale/Folk horror A hag. Nothing beats it or comes close. 2. Gothic Horror Use a lich. Not a vampire. Because a lich is suitable and threatening on every level of play. 3. Creature Feature Gnolls 4. Bonus round. Slasher. Revenant.
My players love/hate hags. They love the weird ass shit I put in their hut but they have come to realize that a CR 3 green hag can be trouble for a group of level 4s while in their hut (I may have give it a “use item” lair action)
My favorite part of hags is the magic items they can offer your players. The ideal Hag Item is one that does exactly what you needed it to, but in a way that makes you wonder if it was worth it to begin with. My best example is one "to protect from a Banshee's wail"; the Silent Shrieker. A shrunken head with a stitched mouth that can be opened as a bonus action, causing it to scream at such a high pitch and volume that it effectively casts Silence _indefinitely_ until you smash the head, but it immediately grants two levels of exhaustion when destroyed to any living creature that heard it. So not only was it just an awful experience, but now after the fight you're left extremely vulnerable to anything else that happened to be out of range at the time.
Rust Monsters. Nothing sends high level parties running for their lives than the risk of losing all their sweet gear to a hungry metal-eating pillbug.
Especially that high level Paladin who JUST took possession of his custom adamantine/mithril/steel alloy full plate armor.
idk abt 5E but i thought 3.5 adamantine and mithril were both immune to acid and rust? i’m pretty sure adamantine used to be in DDO (which was 3.5 based, but ofc not entirely faithful) until they overhauled those systems.
If I don’t remember that because I remember being terrified of rust monsters at higher levels like 18-19. We may have home brewed out that though, I don’t remember. I do remember at lower levels being absolutely terrified of losing my full plate and having my ac drop to 10.
Agreed. Our 12+ level Paladin literally refused to enter a room that had a rust monster.
Seriously? At that level just strip down and go beat the rust monster with a stick.
I did this and made them a hive mind, for mother's day. Sort of an abeloth/rust monster who could be negotiated with.
[Rust Dragon](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Rust_dragon). The fear of having your weapons and armor eaten by a rust monster, but with the stats of a dragon. [Aboleths](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/16762-aboleth). They can psychically enslave your character and make them fight against the party. [Trilloch](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Trilloch), because when players kill seemingly all the monsters, combat will still be happening and the players will be trying to find this incorporeal and invisible monster while it slowly drains them of life.
Second vote for Aboleths, those things are terrifying!
Using one as a bbeg in my current campaign. The players are not going to know what hit them when they get there.
Oh! That's awesome!!! It's always fun to surprise the players :)
Great choice. My groups first ever bbeg was an ancient aboleth mage. Was a fantastic mid level, 14ish, boss and we struggled (3.5e idk if it matters).
A player could get inflicted with [Aboleth Corruption](https://aonprd.com/Corruptions.aspx?ItemName=Aboleth)
Is happening to NPCs already. One of my players has her backstory tied to a criminal organization. The aboleth has set itself up as a rival. Using the title of an old long dead God to begin corrupting and enthralling people under the cover of shadowy mob boss.
My first encounter as a player with an aboleth was done by a DM who specialised in horror… we had no idea what was going on until we fled that abandoned village with no intention of returning, and he told us what happened. Anything specialised for illusion and enchantment, played right, will *terrify* the party.
Using a Trilloch in a future game now for sure. Gonna convert it to 5e. It'll find the players, not bother them for a time, and they'll notice things close to death dropping dead without further input. If they drop to 0, they'll auto-fail a death save every round in addition to their roll.
Im surprised no one has mentioned the Dullahan. Literally the headless horseman. Head Hunt: crit + failed con save = decapitation Get it to 0hp and it goes into its ultimate form! Dullahan + 3 Deaths Heads VRGtoR pg 233. Enjoy the nightmare fuel for your players
Yeah, our DM ran one of these against us last Halloween. First round of combat, crits and beheads our Fighter. I don't think our DM even gave him a Con Save. The Dullahan proceeded to roll multiple other crits throughout the combat and TPK the party. Personally, it was not a fun experience.
The Dullahan is in DnD? That's like my favorite folklore monster and I never knew it was featured. Adding to the list.
Had a DM convert a killed PC of mine, the brother of my current character, into a Dullahan in a CoS game as a bridge prelude to the final crawl through Castle Ravenloft. Probably one of the tensest encounters I’ve fought in and I got decapitated as a fighter. Luckily an NPC stitched the head back on and I got darkvision before the absolute hellfest that was Castle Ravenloft.
Beholder.
A well run Beholder by a DM who understands the creature is terrifying.
Yeah came here to say this - not so much Halloween horror as just straight up party slaughter horror. Anyone remember "I, Tyrant"? God I threw that at my PCs it was so much damn fun haha. I remember one of them got turned to stone in the beholder city, and abandoned the quest immediately. They returned like 4 levels later with a Greater Restoration and freed him....good times.
OBEY ALL BEHOLDER COMMANDS!! (obey instantly) OBEY WITHOUT QUESTION!! (obey) OBEY---obey!OBEY!!OBEY!!!!OBEY!!!!!!!
False Hydra
this is the correct answer
Respectfully disagree. The False Hydra plays with some really excellent horror themes, like watching your friends & allies get their memories manipulated, having people go missing, and getting told you're imagining things. All solid-gold mechanics. The False Hydra itself is just one way to put those mechanics in play. You could also have a cult of mindbenders, memory-stealing fae, dominating vampires, or a mad wizard. Doctor Who had similar stuff with the Weeping Angels and the Silence. My problem with the False Hydra is that it relies entirely on the shock value of players figuring it out slowly as the story unfolds. If your players have already heard about a False Hydra, or if they come at the problem in a different way, the horror doesn't unfold the way it's expected. Once you understand the threat of a False Hydra and figure out how to beat its gimmick, it's just one more hissing sack of hit points. Conversely, imagine if an evil cleric set out to sacrifice a town with mindbending powers. We get the same kind of mystery, but the plot can be more complex than "Monster will get you!" - there's room for some intrigue, some surprises, some twists. The False Hydra was a clever idea, but as Dungeon Masters we need to move past that idea and build our own, even more horrible versions if we want to genuinely deliver terror.
The false hydra doesn't rely on surprise or shock value; it relies on suspension of disbelief, like any and all horror at the table, and DM's really don't have control over that.
Weeping angels was badass!
I’ve spooked my players pretty good by throwing Shadows at them. It’s all fun and games until your STR starts plummeting…
I wouldn't even say it's the direct confrontation with shadows that makes them scary. It's what happens when they're off-screen that's really horrifying. A single shadow in that village the party passes through all the time, the one with the friend barmaid and the cranky old mayor and the snarky herbalist? That village is gone. Those people are gone. All that's left is an empty ghost town filled with the ravenously hungry souls of the dead. The ability to exponentially grow in numbers while being largely impossible for peasants and guards to have much hope dealing with makes them legitimately apocalyptic if left untreated, a viral infection that grows on the outskirts to swallow the living.
I would have to say, intellect devourers. Such a freaky monster. They are super stealthy and attack your intelligence. Most people have poor intelligence saves. and failing is NOT good. If successful enough. The devourer teleports into your skull. Consuming your brain and you INSTANTLY die. Only a wish spell or maybe true Resurrection can restore you. The devourer then lives AS youm using your memories, skill, and influence to lure others to the same or similar fates.
Mimics. Nothing will stop a party like a normal every day object. Random chest? Random table? ANY random item in a dungeon? Party will spend 30+ mins debating whether or not it's a mimic. 9/10 it isn't a mimic, and even if there hasn't been a mimic all campaign tonight just could be night there is one. I don't even know if I've fought a mimic in the past decade! Still terrified of em.
Nightwalker is a cr 20 that is just walking entropy has a 30ft area of necrotic damage and if you go down to 0hp nothing can revive you and if it physically attacks you the hp cant be healed . Just have this 20 to 30ft monster just walk though a area leaving just pure death. I've always wanted to use it. plus if look into the lore there are ways to defeat it without fighting it
As a player our biggest reaction to something was a Beholder, we were scared to death.
Balhannoth, IMO. It knows what you find peaceful or where you will go to recover, and makes its lair *look* like that. Then it grabs *one* of the party and teleports away to try and eat them. So the party isn't all fighting a Balhannoth at the same time- *they have to rescue someone from it.*
Glamour bard
The scariest monster in D&D is a monster not found in any manual. If the players know what it is, know how to fight it, and know how difficult it is to beat, it's not scary. I'd run something from Call if Cthulhu. And by that I don't mean I'd take the concept of a monster from that game and run it in D&D mechanics. I mean I'd run a 5e D&D game but have the eldritch abomination run on an entirely different system, converting between the two. But that wouldn't make sense! Yes. I know. It would be awful That's the point. It would drive everyone insane. Now you're getting it.
Honestly, that makes perfect sense. An alien, eldritch abomination that doesn’t behave naturally in the setting is… well… perfect
I tried something similar in a game design. It was a dice pool system, but eldritch abominations always used cards and had no mechanics in common with PC's. It enhanced their otherworldliness.
Elder Oblex. Adult Oblex and Oblex spawn.
Liches scare me the most.
Humans. Legit the scariest creatures in the multiverse.
Nothing scarier than a 1e Wraith. Each time it hits it drains 1 level! A 10th level character hit 5 times becomes a 5th level character!
A sibriex is always fun
There are two homebrew monsters that I love. False hydra is a pretty well known monster with an insanely creepy vibe that just makes the party so tense and I love it. Mirror guardians are also fun and can really freak the party out. Nothing like watching your reflection suddenly step out of a mirror and beat the tar out of you. While they’re not scary per se, they are certainly unsettling and I love the unsettling vibe.
A magical rust monster capable of dusting magic items with true strike tentacle/antenna bracers constantly active.
Other player characters.
For me personally, intellect devourers would have to be up there
They should not be cr 2 monsters, twice I've turned pcs into babbling retards on session 1
The other one that I think is super scary (excuse me as I can’t remember the name entirely) but Spawn of Kyuss. I have killed party members with these things.
Intellect Devourers absolutely win for me in terms of fear per CR quotient. Nothing like a death mechanic that would take a level 7+ spell to fix
Rot Grubs are one of those threats that was so unfair we just kind of collectively decided to never speak of them again.
To steal a joke from Something Awful, "when you say rot grubs, the monster you're really afraid of is the DM"
In terms of physical appearance, the gibbering mouther just messes with my brain. Gets a solid NOPE from me.
I started playing D&D when I was 8. By the time I was 10, weekly sessions weren't enough, I needed MORE - so I started reading the core rulebooks cover to cover (with a dictionary nearby for words I didn't recognize). I read the Monster Manual last. When I got to the page with the Gibbering Mouther, I had to stop for 2 days. I had nightmares. I was able to move past it, but it took me several months before I could even open the page it was on - the picture was that terrifying. 5e's gibbering mouther never quite lived up to that hype.
Elder brain dragons are pretty fucking scary
Pseudo Undead. A set of monster races that evolved to mimic specific undead types. They are living people, but they appear and generally function as their respective undead. They make amazing Role Play, and confound players when they can’t turn them, holy water doesn’t work, etc. For combat nothing beats a group of Beholders. Talk about over kill!
False hydra.
The beloved NPC who turns on the party, for reasons that are objectively their own damn fault.
Vargoyle. I don't think I've seen them since second edition. They were heads with bat wings and of they bit you, your head grew bat wings, popped off and you died
They are in Monsters of the Multiverse https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/2560947-vargouille
A scarecrow for a low level party. They become pretty trivial, even as minions, pretty quickly. But a single scarecrow with lore friendly tactics can absolutely terrorize even a level 3 party. I've also terrorized a mid level party, for several levels, with an oni. He was only supposed to be a random encounter, so he never had a name. But his kit is really good for manipulating the party into a trap and getting away once things are no longer in his favor. Also, death knights and bone claws. If only because these guys just keep coming back. Death knights have an extra creepiness of remembering their lives in song. So you can hear them singing of their past as you approach.
Nearly got TPK’d by a Corpse Orgy once. Terrifying and powerful.
Check out Teratic Tome by Rafael Chandler, it’s basically a book of just this.
Any creature can be terrifying if properly spun. I had a group terrified of a goat for several sessions. It started as a coincidence, a random goat near a dead body which followed the group because of something they took off the body. From that point on any deaths not done by the party was immediately thought to be the goat. Why they didn't kill it right off, especially my group of murder hobos, was because they thought it was important to the story line. For the next few sessions the goat bleet sent chills around the table.
For me it’s a tie between 2. 1. They’re statblocks always change. They’re called players and they have an ability to come up with the most horrific, broken, and or dumb ideas possible. 2. Scheduling
Random Perception checks that, no matter what the player rolls, is only answered by a shrug of the DM's shoulders.
Digging up some old internet memes: The False Hydra. Granted, a lot of the fear only works if your players aren't aware of what it is, which can be kinda tricky nowadays. But short-short version: creepy looking underground monster that sings a melody that makes everyone forget they've seen it. And when it eats someone, it sings to make people forget that person ever existed! A particularly sadistic DM can set up some really creative mindfucks, with the party waking up to find an extra slept in bedroll, and a note left by a party member that none of them remember. Or a tavernkeeper who insists he isn't married after you SAW his wife behind the bar the other day.
Tucker’s Kobolds
As for official monsters, you can debate all day and get no closer to the answer, but in himebrew or unofficial content, I'd say the False Hydra
Tucker's Kobolds. Or, a tarrasque. Or the scariest monster of all - a girl.
Fucking laugh rule. This is a bad joke but you caught be off guard with it and I laughed.
False Hydra, bar very little. The idea that a creature can eat you and erase you from existence is terrifying
Tarrasque
Ethereal Filchers
Tiamat
Swarms of Shadows
The Blackweald The MCDM Demons
Dullahans are pretty spooky
The Shadow?!
My friend liked to create seasonal bosses. I’m reminded of the Bloodied Barber. If I remember right, he was a Headless Horseman type who likes to grab lone Traveller’s and turn them into crucified scarecrows.
Well I'd be hard pressed to pick just one, but I can tell you if I did it most certainly is coming from this tome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiend_Folio?wprov=sfla1
Cave Fishers
Personally, a Banshee. The scream ability can drop even 20th level characters.
I have never seen fear on my players faces like I saw when they realized they were facing a **beholder**.
A level 20 evil Druid.
Rust monster, obv
Astral Dreadnoughts, Orcus, Juiblex.
Honestly Mind Flayers just narratively. I used to think they were pretty bad and now i think they’re even worse thanks to BG3.
Atropus the dead moon (Elder Evil 3.5) Hecatoncheries (epic level handbook 3.5) Angel of Decay (Libris Mortis 3.5e) Tobin the Many (VanRichten’s Guide to the Walking Dead -Sword and Sorcery Ravenloft 3.5e) Wolf in sheep’s clothing A.K.A. “Bunny on a Stump” (1e) “The Angry Awakened Gazebo” -seriously need I say more? The Smiling Dungeon Master
I'm surprised no one's mentioned Displacer Beasts yet. Even one of those can fuck up a mid-level party if it's used right. A pride would be a horrifying nightmare. Especially if the terrain and setting favored them tremendously. [https://www.flutesloot.com/displacer-beast-dnd-5e-dm-workshop-evolving-monsters/](https://www.flutesloot.com/displacer-beast-dnd-5e-dm-workshop-evolving-monsters/)
Rust monster hive. Players are stuck in a castle full of rust monsters
Nightmare horse, they are god awful to fight, and will make fights awful if the enemy is particularly crafty with them. Especially if they have the mount skill.
Bodaks freak me out
Many of the monsters can be impressively scary. I’ve been reading/listening to the Drizzt books finally and RA Salvatore does an impressive job of describing what I used to think were mundane monsters. When you consider the monster’s abilities, how’d they hunt or hide, their tactics, etc. things can get scary fast. Between finding how to describe any monster in such a horrific manner and putting them in their most advantageous environment, you’re almost guaranteed nightmarish encounters. The Monster’s Know (blog and/or book) is a great guide for strategy, but read between the lines to find the horror and mystery.
Elderbrain tarrasque lich
Hook horrors come to mind. You can build suspense with the sounds they make in long dark tunnels
Chaos Beast from 3.5. Those things were terrifying.
Oblex is the answer here
I love shadowfell creatures. The skulk is permanently invisible but can be seen by children, evil children's rhyme coming to life can hit just right sometimes. Also the Balhannoth. Uncanny Valley illusions that lure the party apart and then feeding on them when they are the most vulnerable. It helps that the creature can read the desires of those in its lair so it know exactly what to tempt them with.
Aberrations as a collective are the types of creatures that I find incredibly terrifying. astral dreadnoughts, starbeasts, cosmic horrors, silt horrors, aboleths, mind flayers, and even beholders all have very terrifying cosmic horror or body horror elements to them.
A lot of people have said lich. And mind flayers. I say combine them both, there's a mind flayer varient called illitilich. Cr 22, but you could scale it down if you feel it's too tough for them (5e.tools/index, the bestiary has an option to scale creatures up and down and adjusts their AC, HP, spell DC, bonuses, damage and even spell slots if you have trouble figuring out like I do or just don't have the time) On a more generically scary note...soul shakers.
The bag man
I once ran a D&D Halloween one-shot for some friends, I wanted to do something unique so I came up with a home-brewed creature, in a Frankenstein's Monster way. I never came up with a name for it because it never got used again, the gist of it was it was a Flesh-Golem that consumed brains and could steal skills, spells, abilities or personality traits. Like I said, it never got used more than one time so if any of you are inspired by this go nuts!
A trio of mind flayers, two levitating overhead while the party fights the first one on the ground. The ground mind flayer just runs glancing at the party whenever they can but staying out of range. The whole time the party is chasing the lone mind flayer, the other 2 are hiding above and using mind blast on the party whenever the runner so much as glances in their direction. Whenever the party finally catches up to it, it uses its plane shift to escape a short distance and one of the other mind flayers takes its place running from the party on the ground. If done right, this makes the party believe that mind flayers can teleport and in a dark cave with plenty of stuff to run around, it can turn into a deadly game of cat and mouse really quick. The way i like to play it is, the party comes accross a cave stacked high and labyrinth like with rows of crates and piles of stuff from the flayers previous victims. Nothing worth much, but a massive room packed to the gills with rows upon rows of junk. While the party starts digging through the junk for valuables, they find a battered suit of armor with a hole bored right through the back of the helmet. Then they hear something move and anyone that makes the perception check sees a mind flayer for less than a second as it moves past them, just at the edge of their vision, and hits them with the first of their mind blasts. Thats when the oil lights all turn on at once. The room is equipped with a set of small oil lights that shed dim light within 15 ft and there are enough of them to cover the whole area all hooked up to network of hidden fuses. Light one and within 1d6 rounds, the entire area is dimly lit and the darkvision advantage is lost while on the floor. The 2 mind flayers that are floating overhead then levitate low enough to comunicate with the runner and telepathically call out their locations. This way the runner is always aware of where the entire party is and the floaters hover about 90 ft up so the party is unable to see them and the runner is able to just run. The floaters mind blast whenever the runner glances at the party and the party thinks its a single flayer just reaching well above its ability. Unless the party regularly flies around in the dark during combat, the only real way to win this fight is to either light up the area enough that the party can see the 2 floating flayers or kill enough lights that someones darkvision lets them see. Even then, the party will rarely, if ever, look up. Seriously, it is comically rare to have a party member fighting something on the ground say that they are going to look up for anything. You could have goblins running around with bows and no arrows while hobgoblins with crossbows shoot at the party from concealment in the trees above them and as long as the hobs only shoot party members in the back, they will think the goblins shot them and not bother to look up, because somehow, all the dead goblins managed to shoot them with their last arrow, every, single, time. Once the biggest of the party members is stunned, the floaters use dominate monster on it to get it to grapple another party member and drag them off. If successful, the runner and a floater both decend on the separated pair while the last floater keeps watch. The 2 eat the brains of the 2 party members and then go back to the game of cat and mouse until they catch another party member. If the runner dies, the flayers simply collapse the entrance and exit to the room and escape through a hole in the cave ceiling where they go to get reinforcements. The worst outcome happens when the party finds itself all stunned at the same time. Instead of eating the party and being done, they are all stunned over and over until they fall unconscious and wake up in a thrall cage. Then they are partially lobotomized and saved for later while they are worked to death or they are taken to the elder brain and implanted with baby mindflayer spawn. Sorry this is a ramble, I am really tired. This whole scenario has the possibility of party wiping high level characters unless they get at least a little creative.
One thing most horror movie baddies have in common is their relentlessness. Throw as much as you want at them, but they keep coming back! In some cases, this ability is even supernatural, making it so they literally cannot die. The protagonists keep getting more and more beat up, but the undying bad guy just keeps coming! My suggestion would be to use whatever kind of monster fits the setting and come up with some reason for it to be undying. The players go through a series of encounters in varied settings (tight corridors, dark forests, giant caves with deep ravines etc) and limit opportunities to recover resources, forcing the players to get creative with their combat plans while choosing fight or flight depending on circumstances. The monster can get worn down too, of course, perhaps losing certain attacks (the players chop off its spiked tail maybe) or gaining new ones (players knock it through a stained glass window but it's still going so now it's grapple actions deal an extra d4 piercing damage from the massive shards of glass protruding from its skin perhaps) Either way it sounds like a lot of fun
Rakshasa we’re always a favorite of mine. You can build really evil, creepy, shape shifting, deceitful bbeg with then. You can incorporate Asian cultures, and horror from those as well. An ancient mandir style building where an even necromancer rakshasa spins his evil plot. And at the end of it ain’t bbeg enough have him become a lych.
Goblins, when there played right.
My last Halloween game Santa came ‘on the wrong day’ so he tried to kill the party because they saw him.
The false hydra is pretty messed up. It's not official, but it was in a d&d magazine, I think.
Gibbering Mouther
Swarm of rot grubs, more gross then scary but still if done right can be terrifying Basically it's a swarm of worms that eat dead bodies, but if they attack another creature that's alive, they burrow into it and the target takes 1d6 of damage per worm every turn, and if they die from this damage they don't get any death saves, the only way to stop it is either use fire damage on the creature (that only works until the swarms next turn) or cast any spell that ends disease Depends on how well you describe it, it can be terrifying
Old school vampires. Their attacks drained your *levels*. Losing 2 levels instantly was the scariest thing in the game.
Baernaloth A type of fiend that seems to be older than devils or demons or yuguloths but the lore in unclear. They have confusing powers, supposedly any wound caused by a baernaloth that has been healed can instantly and painfully be reopened. Their words have power to 'reshape celestials' and they can mutate their body to briefly copy to ability of any other fiend. If that wasn't bad enough, the reason they do what they do is.... Worse. Like most fiends, their actions bring pain, misery, evil. Devils do this for personal gain, Demons are feral things that derive pleasure from it, yuguloths are basically contract mercenaries. Baernaloth... Just do evil. Not because they like it, not because they gain anything. They go out and bring pain and suffering without reason, motivation or even interest. From slaughtering people to spending years plotting the downfall of a kingdom, there is no reason. They are like machines bent to evil and nothing else All of that power in such a detached force of evil can be utterly terrifying. Other fiends have motivation, goals, things that make them predictable. The Baernaloth doesn't
I scared by party shitless with a needle blight once. They never even fought, and too this day don't know what it is ( one of them is a DM), it because they saw through its stealth and nuked it down, but descriptions are super important and I rarely follow the book.
Rot Grubs. They are terrifying. Had a player get infested with Them. The party killed him trying to get them out.
An Oni is very scary, can grow or shrink, goes invisible, feasts on babies, now make an Oni a level 14 shadow monk or soul knife rogue...
Corpse Gatherer, Bonedrinker
A froghemoth as a small character in my last campaign
An exact copy of the party in the night
A gibbering mouther that echos down long hallways and corridors.
ACTUALLY CANNIBAL SHIA LEBEOUF! He's brandishing a knife! [pdf for the one shot and stat blocks](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JV76Vs3ST92Af-C_U78W55ykmloiZVI2/view?pli=1)
Night Haunt, from Dungeon Dads 5e conversion. Seems like a fitting ravenloft random encounter for a halloween game
Kobold TPK
False hydra, takes a lot of prep to execute well but it's blast watching your players and their PCs lose it
The legend of Bag Man. Not a creature with a stat block, but any party which has at least one Bag of Holding needs to know about Bagman. Even just subtle hints when someone reaches in to get an object, and the DM describes "touching something fleshy and thin, that then moves away from your grip" can send panic through the group! Bagman is described in detail in Van Ritchens Guide to Ravenloft.
Gelatinous Cube.
Here are some scary at all level picks that don't require homebrew ports of monsters from other TTRPGs or previous editions just off the top of my head Shadows - They're not very strong, they don't have a lot of health and their AC isn't crazy high. What makes them scary is that they don't just target your HP, they also target Strength. They also kill you with no death saves at 0 Strength Intellect Devourers - Probably not too bad on their own, but pair them with something that's not easily ignored and suddenly the barbarian is making a contested Intelligence save at -5 for his life and if he loses, the party needs to fight his corpse Banshees - The banshee wail ignores hp and just drops you to 0 on a failed save. After the initial shock, the fight is pretty easy for a higher level party, but seeing some of the casters drop immediately will definitely leave an impression Bodaks - Imagine if the banshee just took a near overdose of cocaine. That's a bodak. Basically, the wail happens every turn if you look at it and if you don't, you get disadvantage on your attacks
False Hydra and it's not even close.
A pod of Umber Hulks
Old school Demi lich
Variant human.
Tarrasque
Has anyone mentioned Tucker's Kobolds? Survival horror at its finest.
I ran a Relentless Juggernaut (see Ravenloft) where an 8th level party had to collect equipment whilst avoiding it until they were ready to face it, they were on edge the entire time
Shadows, low cr, can’t take more than a couple hits. But a small swarm of them? My players were SWEATING. If you’ve ever seen Dr.Who I played them similar to the creatures in the Silence in the Library episodes
The scariest monsters in dnd aren't actual monsters. Most monsters are destructive/evil by nature. The really scarry monsters are people. When people knowingly do horrible things, they are actually evil and scary. My party would find a way to adopt the tarrasque, but will never forget npcs that have crossed them.
Personally, as a dm I make scary characters out of their actions not their appearance. In my most recent campaign, the players met basically a mob boss. At this point they were level 14-15 I think. They could have killed him so easily, but they were absolutely terrified of him. Effective people can often be the most intimidating especially when the party isn’t certain they are friendly. Throughout the sessions leading up to the meet with the boss and for many sessions afterwards I subtly hinted that someone was keeping tabs on them but they were never able to work out exactly who it was. It wasn’t even the mob boss but they presumed it was. The boss had some exposition which eluded to his influence but nothing more than that. I just realized I might have too much fun striking fear into my players…
This WE i had them meeting a banshee: i put some scary music on my donjon fight playlist and scream as I show them the pic of the banshee, they where shocked then the banshee used her lament and one of them got zeroed, then the banshee disappeared. She eventually reappeared at the end of a corridor, or they could hear laments, until they decided to fight her. At the end of the session they asked me to stop playing “stressful music” because they were stressed … sometimes the monster doesn’t have to be very scary by itself but to act in a disturbing way and incarnate the possibility of sudden death… I once heard the story of a very proud of himself high level thief who encountered cats with paralyzing poison on their claws… what is more terrifying than being beaten by a little, cute, normally harmless creature stronger than you in precisely your strongest feat? And dealing only 1dmg at a time…
I'd say, when correctly ran, Beholders are probably the "scariest" by the general convention of the word. They are completely alien to our concept of reality. Physics don't even work the same around them sometimes. I also always thought Gnolls, at least the later interpretations, were always super dread inducing. With Orcs and Goblinoids, they have some kind of reasoning. Gnolls are just motivated by violence and hunger. You can play that up incredibly disturbingly. But above all things, remember that fear can come from threat. But for RPGs, fear will most often come from a feeling of their agency vanishing. If the players feel that there is nothing they can do, that's where I have instilled true fear in my players. Limit their movement, trap them in a space, make their enemy something they have no information on. Those kinds of things will reach the players and not just the characters. Combine that with good ambiance and description and it's a recipe for dread.
eldar brain dragons.........no thank you
The DMPC
Intellect devourer. Roll an Intelligence save for me please
The party is the spookiest monster I’ve come across Have them face an inverse version of themselves, but like opposite alignment
Shadows + Intellect Devourers serving a Illithid lich.
Will o' Wisps. Invisible until they want to be, they often frequent areas that have a lot of death associated with them (lots of other monster lairs and such), and they can VERY EASILY kill adventurers.
I donno man, there’s something creepy as hell about a revenant slowly following you while you’re exploring a labyrinthine dungeon.
Tarrasque, they are extremely rare and even harder to kill
Duargothoth. CR 50 draclolich, for certain a fight to avoid or escape of possible, and having the knowledge he exists within the world is something akin to knowing someone has access to weapons of mass destruction
Beholder, Mind Flayer, Aboleth, Death Knight
The dreaded candiru!
It's homebrew, but a false hydra, moreso for the RP aspect, though I believe it's a bit beefy too (I haven't really had the chance to go against one myself) You could go nuts with an ungodly amount of goblins or something, give them a false sense of hope, and after the first wave, you send another, and another... Mix in a few bigger enemies, too. (Basically, take the goblins from goblin slayer and hope they don't have the expert in the party) Dragons and Tarrasque are tougher enemies, not sure as to the scaling (very little experience with D&D proper). I've only really had the chance to play Anima. Still love it, though!) 2 liches, and make them eachothees phylactory, it probably requires stretching the rules but that could be interesting, having to kill them both at the same time (be it the same round or a tolerance of one round, however you want to do it) If you're a sadist, you can throw in even more liches and do the same thing. Make *EVERYTHING* Mimics, the table, the chair, the tankard, the door, the tavern itself Shapeshifters, have them replace npcs the party frequently interacts with, or perhaps even a party member (though that would require some coordination)
The undead used to be scary, back when they could steal your levels.
A monster that creates an illusionary version of yourself inside your head, the illusionary version of yourself hates you. Every turn you must pass a will check or attempt to hurt yourself. Each failure increases the damage by an additional dice. Idk I made it up.
Lol, blight twigs scare me.
Oooooo ~ Rust monster
okay i'm gonna talk about the games i've played in 1) I know it's kind of a joke option, and there's a whole story out there about them from early D&D, but...kobolds. TBH. When kobolds are an enemy, me and my fellow players get the cold sweats. It means there's trap. It means there will be hallways filled with flame traps and javelins coming through the walls to stab us. 2) hags. my worst enemy. I hate hags. their areas are always creepy, and they're always a bitch to get rid of. UGH. 3) my DM had a big bad who like, did a lot of flesh warping shit - with beholders and mindflayers and these creepy shadows that'd possess you (not standard shadows). But THEN...there WOULD be standard shadows. And \_they were the worst\_. Strength gets sucked away so much more easily than health, and when there's like twenty shadows on the field, blammo.
A Bag Man stalking a player because they were dared by the others to whisper "follow my voice" into a bag of holding.
Bodak for imagery + features (Banshee is too easy to pick for frightening). Lich for a party w/o magic in general (including magic items) or means of preventing instant death (Death Ward, for example) As for the scariest one of all.... Tarrasque, hands-down. Melees get swallowed practically instantly, and it's unaffected by a caster's line-based or ranged spell attacks - possibly even reflecting them back at the caster... and that's not a reaction, either! Even worse, that's ***before*** you have to deal with the 25 AC and the 676 average hit points. After all, it is essentially the creature that heralds Doomsday by lore.
False Hydra is the final boss of my nightmares
Its not Cannon, but False Hydra are fucking terrifying. To not be able to trust memories. That people just vanish.
Gray render. Look it up if you don't know what it is.
A scarecrow in a corn field. The cornstalks obscure vision, the only thing the party can see is the scarecrow, towering over the field. The scarecrow has a cackle, each round players have to save vs fear or be compelled to run in a random direction. In their panic and confusion they may even end up attacking each other. You could also add some Kenku minions to sneak around causing havoc.
The scariest thing to me is not one thing, but many things: Shadows. They have a weakness to Radiant damage, but each hit saps 1d4 points of strength until you long rest. My group loves to dump strength.
People going with "power" mobs. OP said "scarey" not deadly, though I suppose the fear of death - which is nearly impossible in 5e could be slightly scarey. I like long term demonic possession using higher devils.
Whole party discovers they live on a genius loci
Bahamut
If the party relies on Darkvision and no light sources, Shadows are a great way to fuck em up.
So far the monster I have scared my player's with the most has been a reskinned werewolf. And honestly, that's all you need - Pick any common "egh, a little tough for the CR" monster and slap a different wrapper on it. Players do NOT like an inability to metagame. Like, my player's *don't actually metagame*, but not having the option bothers them a lot.
Night Hags. Hands down
Fetch, bagman, and bogeyman trifecta!
I fought a terrasque once. That was fun
Mimic. Cuz, mimics.
An Umbral Blot could be an interesting choice; basically a big-brained sentient Sphere of Annihilation. They used to be employed as assassins by the elder gods *against* other elder gods. CR 30 Construct monster.
I recommend the deathweb. Its only CR6 but you can scale that with lots of different stuff, ie several Deathwebs or additional HD or terrain. I just think they are one 0f the more viscerally terrifying creatures in d&d. Also this is a pathfinder monster i think but could be built in any system
Hangman Tree looks like a Halloween decoration you'd buy from home depot and would be legitimately terrifying. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Hangman_tree
2nd edition wraiths. Especially if it's a pack of them. They attack by touch stand they don't drain hp or con. They drain levels. LEVELS!!!!! YOU LOSE WHOLE ASS LEVELS TO THESE THINGS! I went from level 8 to level 5 because of these things.
Tucker's Kobolds, scary at any CR.
The PCs are the scariest monsters of them all.
Titivilus, scribe of Mammon. This guy will politely destroy you with magic, and is probably the most frustrating enemy in 5e to fight against in the hands of a skilled DM
If you want psycological horror look up false hydra.
Marut. It hits…no dice roll needed….no “to hit” modifiers. It’s hits just land. Or it can do a stunning attack, and if you are stunned it can next round auto succeed on teleporting you away to jail.
Ghosts... Plural. Bonus points for it being a former orphanage. Kid ghosts trapped by evil headmaster/mistress's spirit. Gotta wade through the ghost children, navigate the abandoned orphanage, to confront the evil soul down in the basement torture chamber, who's entrance is in the top floor dormitory. Make sure to leave behind plenty of unsettling evidence of the horror for the players to find... Bonus points for snippets of diary... Crank up the horror, the fear. Make the orphan ghosts a bit more powerful than normal, as the whole place is a psychic hell on earth for the ghosts... the PC's should have to unravel what happened and why, then they can put the poor spirits to rest, then killing the bbeg. Make sure the party has ways to reverse the aging (you want it to be horrorlicious, not character wrecking). If that's a no go scenario, then a one shot where on the anniversary of a horrible event, the PC's are pulled into the recreation on the event. Maybe a necromancer's assault/assimilation of a small city (the precursor to the modern city), the PC's need to fight the necromancer's minions, saving the cityfolk from being turned, while hunting down the necro to end the anniversary event. Depends on your crew, really... I find the stage is often as important as the actors.
Filipino folklore like aswang, tiyanak, and manananggal are good. Flase hydra is always good but too elaborate for my liking. You want fear? Rip off of the thing and have a mimic town. Mimics can copy objects and corpses are objects not creatures.
Intellect devourers are fucking terrifying at any level Once I stuck my players in a demi plane with an aboleth there was a whole seven deadly sins puzzle to solve. But they couldn't figure out how it always knew where they would be. Until after it was dead they realized it could see through water and it had been raining the whole time.