D&D 5E Classic High Level Threats?

[dave2008]

Gargantuans were a fun creature from 2e and 3e that are basically kaiju. They'd be cool.

I agree, that was what I was thinking of when I said behemoth.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Also, it's a lot of fun to have your PCs fight 50 or 60 guys at a time. It doesn't take as long as you'd expect- just be sure to play it fast and loose when moving globs of monsters around on the map. Grab a cluster of tokens and plop them down "about" 12 spaces away from where they started. Roll 8 dice at a time when a PC is surrounded. If a monster has 3 attacks at +3 but the PC has 22 AC, just give the monster +6 and only roll once. Don't nitpick every detail (unless a PC's life depends on it) and the battle can be pretty smooth, even if running on a virtual tabletop (and especially if playing theater-of-the-mind)

Yeah, the single most important factor to running large combats quickly is owning lots of dice so you can roll all the attacks in parallel. Then just take average (MM) damage per hit instead of rolling.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Yeah, the single most important factor to running large combats quickly is owning lots of dice so you can roll all the attacks in parallel.

The "mob attacks" rules from the DMG work well too.

Then just take average (MM) damage per hit instead of rolling.

That's a rule I suggest everybody try out in the general sense (not just for large numbers of monsters) - it's been very good for my group, keeping monster turns as brief as possible so the players more easily remain engaged at the table.