4e Monsters that scare the crap out of characters

[Jack99]

My players wet their pants when they met shadow demons (they negate the use of healing surges under certain conditions).

 

[Tuft]

In order to properly scare the players, you have to threaten something they really care about, whether it is the characters themselves, certain NPCs, or a certain plot development.

First you have to create a connection, then you have to get the players to invest emotionally in that connection, and then you have to threaten it.

It's a narrow path to tread; if you press too hard on the threat, you risk breaking that connection and end up with the players stopping caring again. The most basic emotional tie is the one to your character, but press hard enough, and also that tie can break.

I had one campaign that went real sour on me. Conflicts with another player caused my DM to kill of my characters one my one. That's not the important part, what is important here is that after those character deaths I simply did not care what happened to my character at the end. Whatever opposition we met, however big and scary, did not faze me the slightest, nor did taking crazier and crazier risks.


Similarly, at the moment I am playing in a campaign that's supposedly a horror one, I think. We are at least meeting a lot of grotesque gross-out monsters with purportedly scary abilities. But, since every named thing we meet is something you are supposed to kill, without any NPCs to care about, no important plot development to protect, well, it gets curiously like just grinding for money in an MMO...

 

[Nightson]

Needlefang Drake Swarm!

I threw three at my players just to see what happened, the three nearly wiped the seven man party.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Artillery mixed with a strong frontline. They put the hurt on you, you know you need to take them down, but those frigging Soldiers and Brutes stand in your way.
Lurkers can work similar if they can easily get away (turn invisible, teleport, or both.).

Monsters that inflict ongoing damage with an at-will. You get tons of damage this way, and if you save, the next hit negates gives you it all back.
Non-damaging conditions can be similarly nasty, especially if they restrict your actions. Daze or Stun might be the worst, but standing around immobilized can suck a lot, too. A Defender can't defend if he can't get to the frontline, and a Striker can't strike if he stands amidst a bunch of brutes or soldiers.

 

[crash_beedo]

Chillborn Zombies

I've had a few tough encounters that featured them; the overlapping aura damage is absolutely brutal, especially if the group blunders into them (so the aura's don't just hit the front line).

 

[hailstop]

Could you expand on that, maybe with a few examples of what level classes you have and what specific encounters were so easy that they didn't even have to use their second wind? Because either you have some very gifted players, or something is definitely off. While combats are different from past editions, I find that I have had no problems downing players regularly.

They're 11th level and their classes are:

Wizard
Warlord
Warlock
Fighter
Swordmage
Ranger

One of the key features of these guys is that they're teleporting weanies from hell...but that probably doesn't have too much effect on grind/getting scared. Although it does very effectively eliminate any monster that can grab.

I suspect I'm probably not concentrating my fire enough (and ironically enough, this is a fault of the players too...which has led to some long combats).

My rolling recently hasn't been very good either. Fex, the last combat, involving a Feygrove Choker, Ogre Warhulk (I think...Elite Ogre anyways), Lamia and a Banshee was fairly slow, although admittedly the party started off by getting ambushed by the Lamia and resulting in all 5 being stunned right from the beginning.

And then I couldn't roll to hit with the Swarming attack from the Lamia to save my life.

The last time the PC's were really threatened involved a combat with 3 Battle Wights and a Battle Wight commander...dropped the rogue really quick (who then got killed by the Wizard because he included the dropped Rogue in the area of effect.)

Which does raise another issue...even in the event that the PC's do get dropped, it seems to me that death isn't that big of a deal.

 

[Iron Sky]

The last fight that I was involved in that really had me worried was when our 4-man party fought a Devourer(level 11 elite) while we were level 6. Missing on a 15 with Twin Strike then being swallowed whole. Nothing we've fought since has really worried me that much(that I can remember right now anyway).

I rebalanced and redesigned the monster creation rules a bit for my game I'm going to run - and I'm custom making all the enemies they face.

I haven't started it yet, but I custom-made a 4 encounter mini-adventure for one of my buddies in California and 8 custom Hobgoblin Spearmen and 2 Hobgoblin Assassins had his party of 7 level 10-11 PCs on the ropes and terrified (and that's the easiest fight of the 4!).

I've think that using the correct damage expressions from the DMG and the other miscellaneous tweaks I've made makes monsters far scarier.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Brain in a Jar along with Skeleton Archers, Warriors & Skinwalkers. The fight was just supposed to be a precusor to the main event but it was epic. The Brain kept taking people over and pushing the defenders around...it was great. We still talk about that one. Next time I'll use an Armoured Brain!

 

[Plane Sailing]

Groups of ghouls are particularly scary when I use them at the moment. If one ghoul immobilises and the remaining ghouls then get to chow down on the PC, doing nasty damage and stunning them... they'd better hope that their mates get in on the rescue act pretty darn quick. The warlock nearly got eaten alive tonight (twice).

They really don't like ghouls...

 

[Kwalish Kid]

This. If you want to see a player nearly wet themselves, get a bunch of skirmishers past a defender and have them flank a ranged striker or controller. Or, find ways to bunch up PC's with push pulls and slides, then start dropping AOEs on them. I've found that nearly any monster set can scare the stripes off a zebra if strong tactics are used.

A good example of this is Shadar-kai. They can always get at the squishies. The defenders have to work extra hard to keep them away.