4e Monsters that scare the crap out of characters

[Rechan]

Wik threw an encounter at our group recently that just wiped the floor with us. I believe it consisted of vine horrors in the controller, artillery, and soldier roles.

Of course, IIRC, he was treating an encounter power as an At-Will. That would do it.

 

[malraux]

I don't know that that so much scares me as irritates the hell out of me.

Brad

I gotta agree, stun (while it isn't quite in the 3e mold of go play some xbox for a while) is still rather unexciting. Daze, on the other hand, gives a lot of the scariness of stun, while keeping the player in the fight.

 

[blargney the second]

Of course, IIRC, he was treating an encounter power as an At-Will. That would do it.

True, that. It did suck to be on the receiving end, but it only really meant that they used it a couple times more than they were supposed to.

The main thing that was nasty about that fight was the combo of controller + artillery + blockers. Most of the party spent the majority of that fight suffering from blindness, immobilization, and ongoing damage. (In addition to free potshots at range.)

 

[Stalker0]

Monsters that uses focus fire or synergizes each other.

QFT, if you have all 5 monsters attack one pc, he's going to start dying fast.

 

[Piratecat]

Yup. Two games ago, the foe started yelling out "The warforged. Kill the warforged first." And every bad guy concentrated their fire on that PC until they dropped. "The dragonborn. Drop the dragonborn next." This scares the players, and makes for a fun tactical challenge: how do the defenders stop them from hitting a known target?

 

[LostSoul]

Sometimes I do that against the Fighter, just because the monsters get pissed off at him. Highlights his abilities.

I find that monsters who have abilities that work well together (anything that slows with a ghoul, for example) are scary.

 

[doctorhook]

Tiamat?

I've not yet seen her in play, but she looks damn scary on paper. Anybody use her Level-35-Solo-Brute-awesomeness and five separate initiative counts per round yet?

 

[chronoplasm]

It's all about the terrain.

Take Kobolds for example.
Kobolds aren't going to build their fortresses to human proportions; they are going to build their fortresses to kobold proportions.
Tight corridors that force medium creatures to squeeze.
Low ceilings that force medium creatures to drop prone and crawl.

Focusing fire can be especially scary if you do it right.
The paladin in my party got ripped to pieces by a mob of zombies that decided to gang up on him. Everybody was terrified by that.

 

[chriton227]

Our GM threw wights at us, with some artillery/leader support. Losing a healing surge every time you get hit gets painful in a hurry, especially when your primary defender is low-AC/high-HP.

 

[Hejdun]

Fire beetles. Especially when the DM keeps rolling 6s. And when they make up most of the encounter. 3d6 damage on a level 1 monster is just mean.