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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SlyFlourish" data-source="post: 4599295" data-attributes="member: 54840">First off, let me assure you that I am a huge fan of 4th edition. I think it's the best thing to happen to me as a DM. My players love it and I love it.One thing has bothered me for over a year now. Monsters just aren't scary enough.About a year ago we saw the 4th edition Pit Fiend and there was great drama discussing his apparent lack of power. For weeks I walked around muttering "poor gimpy pit fiend" until long after my wife stopped laughing. The scale is different, people said, and I believed them. Life moved ahead, we started playing 4e and all was grand but something bothered me. Monsters just didn't appear to be that scary.Today I saw this picture over on a Wizards article:<a href="http://wizards.com/dnd/images/excerpt_og4.jpg" target="_blank">http://wizards.com/dnd/images/excerpt_og4.jpg</a>Man, what a great picture. Scary. Who wouldn't wet themselves seeing a lich bursting out of a door right in the middle of your relaxing day of adventure. But when I take the monster manual off the shelf and look at the 24th level Eladrin Lich, I see 3d8+7 damage. That's not going to scare anyone. What happened to a Lich casting Weird and having half the party fail the save? What about those nasty 20d6 Delayed Blast fireballs? 3d8+7 just isn't going to scare any 24th level party.I know, if you want to scare them, run it a few levels higher but even a 20th level party isn't going to be scared by a single target 3d8+7 blast. That lich isn't going to kill anyone. Not even close.Skip forward to Orcus, the big baddie in the whole monster manual. Short of his death touch (which isn't likely to recharge in the fight) he dishes out about 3d12+12 damage a hit. Now like the rest of you I'm not a fan of the save or die but aside from that one death touch, he isn't going to be knocking anyone on his or her ass. He just isn't that scary. Annoying maybe, with the 10 / 20 necrotic damage and the dread wraiths, but not really scary.There are more creatures like this, creatures that used to scare the hell out of people like red great wyrms and beholders that now just dish out a little damage before a powerful party beats them down.So what do you do to make these iconic monsters more scary?</blockquote>

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