D&D 5E (2014) Favourite Low Level Monsters

[Celtavian]

In 5E probably kobolds. They can be seriously annoying in a group and provide pretty effective support for a more powerful creature. Really, anything with Pack Tactics. I like using swarming creatures.

 

[Mephistopheles]

For me it's probably bullywugs, but this has nothing to do with 5E.

It goes back to a game session (maybe 2E or 3E, I don't quite recall) in which, after a series of misadventures, a party member went more than a little insane and set about building a temple to an unnamed bullywug god. Towards the end of the night we were singing the refrain from Lollipop, with "bullywug" substituted for "lollipop".

Alcohol was not involved. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Drow are not "low level" monsters. They are "high level" monsters that should strike fear into the hearts of adventurers of any level. .

I thought the question was about monsters with low CR. Agree that you can use them against any level of PC. It's more about what precautions the PCs take and not their raw power level. I've killed level 10ish PCs with drow; when the same PCs came back a few weeks later they used stealth and drow poison of their own to take a drow patrol out with minimal losses. Player smarts, not character abilities, are what improved.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I would totally ignore the CR 1/4 "soldier guys" [I guess?]. Your "basic/low level drow shmo" should be the CR 5 guys.

But it's so much more fun to kill PCs on a budget of 1000 XP. The mooks are almost as good as the elites if you use them right, and a whole lot cheaper.

 

[DaveDash]

CR 1/2 Gas Spores.

You're dead in 1d12+con score hours unless you can remove the disease. When you die you burst into 2d4 tiny gas spores. There's just something awesome about that.

Not only that, they resemble Beholders, so they're super scary against a low level party.

Minotaur Skeletons are also quite ridiculous for a CR2 monster.

 

[trentonjoe]

I like skeletons as well. Don't be afraid to give one or two better equiptment (heavy armor, 2handed sword, a net,etc), a level in cleric, the magic using feat, or an extra hit die. Variety is the spice of combat!

 

[Minigiant]

HOBGOBLINS!!!!!!


Because hobgoblins are smart, they do everything, and they encourage unique DM created monster.
Weapon, spells, magic items, traps, beasts, archers, infantry, cavalry, scouts, siege.

 

[Elric]

But it's so much more fun to kill PCs on a budget of 1000 XP. The mooks are almost as good as the elites if you use them right, and a whole lot cheaper.

An implication of the “encounter XP multiplier” used to determine encounter difficulty (but not XP rewards) is that monster power does not scale as quickly as XP does. So a “1,000 XP budget” will tend to result in a harder encounter when you use a lot of low XP opponents rather than one 1,000 XP opponent.

I recommend Gobelure's thread on how to modify the encounter design guidelines to fix this problem, so that you don't need an "encounter XP multiplier." http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?367697-Encounter-difficulty-how-to-fix-it The key is that in Gobelure's new tables PC and monster power scales more slowly with CR/levels, so that you don't need the "fudge factor" of a multiplier.

Among other flaws in the official system, players advance in level more quickly when they have equivalently hard combats against fewer foes as opposed to more foes.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Among other flaws in the official system, players advance in level more quickly when they have equivalently hard combats against fewer foes as opposed to more foes.

That will be true no matter which encounter building system you use. It's a feature of the XP by CR table, not the encounter building rules.

I just throw a variety of encounters at the PCs and expect that the easy-but-high-XP encounters like blue slaads and the hard-but- cheap encounters will roughly cancel out. And if they don't, it's on the players to take the initiative and go slaad-hunting on their own, if they want to get easy XP.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I like skeletons, zombies with the 13th Age "Brains!" trait (they keep attacking a PC reduced to zero hp, eating brains - makes them MUCH scarier!) and sneaky, sneaky ghouls with their paralyzing touch.