D&D 5E What Are Your Favorite D&D Monsters (MM Edition)?

What are your favorite D&D monsters? The ones you go back to time and time again? The ones you love to use to terrify your players, or the ones you love to slay with wild abandon? They don't have to be the biggest, or the most awe-inspiring; they might just be something you find incredibly useful, thematic, or which appeals to you directly. Perhaps they've been the ones you use from every edition. Perhaps you used one recently and just had so much fun with it.

NOTE: YOU NEED TO BE LOGGED IN TO VOTE

This is a poll. You can choose as many monsters as you like. Let's find out what are D&D's most popular monsters! We'll be using the D&D 5E Monster Manual for this list, more specifically the main monsters section of that book (not the animals or NPC sections).

Will dragons, demons, and devils rule the roost as expected? Or might there be some surprises in there?

 

[Tonguez]

I was introduced to D&D by two bullywugs and a carrion crawler, so they retain a special place in my affections.

I also use lots of insectoid goblins and like Ettercaps as a nice bugbear replacement for the theme.

I also use lots of Fae including Pixies, sprites, grig, gnomes, Faerie dragons, Willowisp, Hags and Trolls, plus some unique Fae Lords.
Galeb Duhr, Blights, Treants and Shambling mounds (and Battlebriars) round out my Fae Sylvan realms

The windswept moors are haunted by wraiths and spectres, ghouls, Shadows, skeletons, hellhounds, scarecrows, lycanthropes, cultist and Hags.

sahuagin are the Orcs of my Island setting, along with Merrow-oni sea-gods and The Kraken and Sekolah.

the Sphinx, the Roc, the Gorgon are all unique Boss monsters.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I voted for a heap and realised I still left several off. Going through the list made me realise that I voted for mainly the classic D&D monsters, maybe because that’s what I think of when I think of D&D.

 

[ad_hoc]

I'd like to write-in Giant Spiders.

 

[JEB]

I picked a bunch, but my top 10 (in no particular order):

• flumph
• slaadi
• yugoloths
• modrons
• death knight
• beholder
• helmed horror
• flameskull
• nothic
• mephits

Runners-up include kenku, gith, hobgoblins, lizardfolk, and golems.

That said, there aren't really any monsters in the 5E Monster Manual I dislike...

 

[Sacrosanct]

I wish I could downvote beholders. I think they've become so overused. So much, they should change the name of the game to Dungeons and Beholders.

Then again, I guess I voted for a lot that aren't super popular. The only monster I voted for that also got a lot of votes was the owlbear.

 

[sevenbastard]

I'd like to write-in Giant Spiders.

Especially as the picture with the article is a Giant Spider.

 

[TerraDave]

I voted for multiple best monsters, but really there is the owlbear, and then all the rest.

 

[John R Davis]

My bag is:
Ogre Magi.(Fly, invisible, cone of cold, regenerate), what's not to love

Mephits ( wrote a 4 part AP for AAW full of the buggers and variants). They are so dumb and easy to manipulate and have silly big noses.

Centipedes. There just great from ultra low level and can be made into many variants.

Slaad. Just very cool and chaotic

 

[overgeeked]

I picked a bunch of them. But they're old favorites. Nothing special about them in 5E makes them stand out.

For some reason, undead, animal-people hybrids (especially snake people), sentient stuff (oozes, animated objects, mushroom people, etc), and elementals all top my list.

 

[JEB]

I will call out a few not-top-10s I still voted for that had new twists I liked in 5E, specifically:

• Tying aarakocra to the Wind Dukes and the Rod of Seven Parts
• Gargoyles and aarakocra being enemies
• Merrow being demonically corrupted merfolk, instead of just aquatic ogres
• Quaggoths having a tragic backstory of being driven underground by the elves