As a player, what monster/opponent is the most frustrating to fight?

[Voodoo]

Golems for me, Immune to 99% of spells and if you dont have an adamantine weapon you cant deal them significant damage, you cant even hope for a lucky crit or sneak attack.

I agree energy drain is really annoying for the spell casters, one scroll of restoration get you fighter running back fine, but the poor wizard has lost his best 2d4 spells and cant get them back, meaning hes not going to be doing anything significant for the rest of the day.

 

[Klaus]

Incorporeal monsters. The matter of hitting or missing is out of the player's hands, and a very good roll that gets the player all worked up and excited can turn out to be a miss, which fizzles the excitement and feeds frustration.

Regenerating monsters. Unless you know what causes lethal damage, regenerating monsters are very frustrating. Specially if the DM places no clues so that a player can know about them. Spending the first combat rounds "trying out" what can cause real damage can lead to 1) despair and 2) TPK.

Spell Resistance monsters. Spells, unlike a fighter's attacks, are a very limited resource. Imagine a player who spent the entire session saving up on that very powerful spell of the highest level her character can cast. The party faces the "boss monsters" and the player gleefully casts the spell she's been saving all this time, only to have the DM roll a d20 and proclaim that her big, flashy spell faded to nothing. Frustrating, to say the least.

These are the kind of things that can turn a player off the game, all the build-up and excitement turning to a complete letdown...

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I don't think I've ever been as frustrated with any monster as I was with the Steel Predators in Lord of the Iron Fortress.

Something like DR30, could grapple, trip, and SUNDER, and a DM who ruled that blindsight meant, "Can't be snuck up on even with a +30 Hide skill."

Wulf

 

[Henry]

Lessee, what have I done to my players lately...

1) Darkmantles. The group of players I play with have a natural nemesis, known as the piddly little 1 hit die Darkmantle. In 3.0, back when darkness was, well, DARK, I'd spring a swarm of these on the party, and NO ONE EVER carried anything more powerful than a sunrod or a light spell; as a result, you have a bunch of adventurers stumbling around in the dark, guessing where the enemy was, missing concealment rolls, etc. ALL the while the blindsensing darkmantles were grabbing and constricting. Then the well-meaning PC's would keep hitting one another with missed strikes while trying to get the creatures off of the grappled members of the party. I could challenge them with groups of 4 or 5 darkmantles well into 8th level.

Nowadays, the weakening of darkness has put the Darkmantles squarely back at CR 1 or 1/2.

2) Energy Draining. Eric reminded me that energy draining undead, even with weakening of energy drain, can still scare a party. I had a party of 7 8th level PCs somewhat nerve-wracked because of a group of wights they faced. A few people got hit for about 3 negative levels each, and until the artificer could get his infusions back the next morning, they were on pins and needles, watching the clock tick down to 24 hours! Fortunately, the artificer fixed them up in time, but it taught one particularly brash cleric to be more careful stirring up trouble when the party is otherwise occupied.

(There's also nothing more amusing than watching a cleric beg an artificer for healing.)

 

[atom crash]

in my last game session, an Umber Hulk (CR 7) nearly decimated a party of four 6th and 7th level PCs and their 5th level cohort and two 6th level NPCs with its confusion gaze attack.

everyone in the group except the cleric got confused (you gotta love it when a fighter has to make a Will save DC 15), and technically they nearly decimated each other. the group now is fairly fighter and rogue heavy, and they were critting the heck out of each other.

 

[johnsemlak]

Incorporeal monsters. The matter of hitting or missing is out of the player's hands, and a very good roll that gets the player all worked up and excited can turn out to be a miss, which fizzles the excitement and feeds frustration.

THis is the problem to me, the feeling that it is out of the players hands. There seem to be very few ways for fighter-types to get around this, as well.

 

[diaglo]

THis is the problem to me, the feeling that it is out of the players hands. There seem to be very few ways for fighter-types to get around this, as well.

what is frustrating is the fact that the incorporeals don't have to roll to miss solids.

the blade should cut both ways.

 

[Voadam]

Incorporeal undead with lifesense, lots of flying speed, reach, and spring attack, Dreadwraith I'm looking at you.

We faced one who would sit in the floor sense us and then reach up to grab at us and retreat down into the cavern floor/wall/ceiling again.

We had a couple force spells and an undead bane ghost touch dagger in the party.

We had flying so we flew out into a cavern where he had to fly out to get us and expose himself. The paladin would ready a charge with the ghost touch dagger and I would ready an attack with my thunderlance spell while the arcane trickster would ready one with magic missile and we'd play slow death tag with it.

Finally it stopped attacking and hid in the wall when it was really wounded. This lead to one of my best combo action plans. The paladin detected evil to pinpoint it and pointed it out to me. I disintegrated the wall it was hiding in with a ready action triggered by the paladin pointing it out. The AT had a readied magic missile to hit it when the wall disintegrated around it. The MM was enough to finish it off. That was a satisfying execution of a plan. The At had gone from 75 hp to 1 from con drain and damage before the whole thing played out though.

Golems are also daunting if you don't have adamantite or the new massive damage no SR conjuration spells from mini handbook and complete arcane.

I found it frustrating to fight a vampire who has both DR and fast healing, so I'd hit him hard for just a little damage that would heal up by the next round. It was very frustrating for my eldritch knight who does not have power attack or a special quality weapon. And then tracking down the coffin and doing just the right execution ceremony is annoying.

 

[VirgilCaine]

I don't think I've ever been as frustrated with any monster as I was with the Steel Predators in Lord of the Iron Fortress.

Something like DR30, could grapple, trip, and SUNDER, and a DM who ruled that blindsight meant, "Can't be snuck up on even with a +30 Hide skill."

Wulf

It's not like you can dodge the sound waves or anything.

Lessee, what have I done to my players lately...

1) Darkmantles. The group of players I play with have a natural nemesis, known as the piddly little 1 hit die Darkmantle. In 3.0, back when darkness was, well, DARK, I'd spring a swarm of these on the party, and NO ONE EVER carried anything more powerful than a sunrod or a light spell; as a result, you have a bunch of adventurers stumbling around in the dark, guessing where the enemy was, missing concealment rolls, etc. ALL the while the blindsensing darkmantles were grabbing and constricting. Then the well-meaning PC's would keep hitting one another with missed strikes while trying to get the creatures off of the grappled members of the party. I could challenge them with groups of 4 or 5 darkmantles well into 8th level.

Nowadays, the weakening of darkness has put the Darkmantles squarely back at CR 1 or 1/2.

2) Energy Draining. Eric reminded me that energy draining undead, even with weakening of energy drain, can still scare a party. I had a party of 7 8th level PCs somewhat nerve-wracked because of a group of wights they faced. A few people got hit for about 3 negative levels each, and until the artificer could get his infusions back the next morning, they were on pins and needles, watching the clock tick down to 24 hours! Fortunately, the artificer fixed them up in time, but it taught one particularly brash cleric to be more careful stirring up trouble when the party is otherwise occupied.

(There's also nothing more amusing than watching a cleric beg an artificer for healing.)

Gee, how stupid are your players? They fight these things multiple times and don't learn?
And what kind of cleric player doesn't have Scribe Scroll?

 

[jmucchiello]

Does anybody actually use ability drain? Spectres use to be more dangerous than Wraiths but now wraiths do 1d6 Con drain unless you make a DC 14 Fort save. DC 14 saves for 5th level characters (the wraith's CR) are 50/50 for non-fighters/clerics. You miss that save, you might be down 1-6 Con permanently. That is far scarier to me than level drain. Especially since the loss of Con means the next time they hit, you even more likely to fail the Fort save.

I also don't like save or die gaze attacks (medusa, bodak, etc). Gaze attacks are annoying by themselves but have them cause insta-kill as well and that's a cruel combination.