Good Mid-level Monsters

[Mapleaxe]

Well, my players are solidly in the mid-levels now (7-9), but my last couple of adventures have been cakewalks because a) I've been throwing lower-level monsters at my players (cloakers, goblins w/ a couple levels, low-level dragons, owlbears, perytons, etc.), often with advances or in quantities, and b) my party is large (8+ PCs and NPCs). What are some better mid-level monsters that I could throw at them? I've been considering some things like giants and mindflayers, but I'm interested in other inputs.

 

[ForceUser]

Whoops

 

[ForceUser]

• Evil adventurers with the Vampire, Lich, or Lycanthrope templates.
• Leveled drow, duergar, githyanki, or any one of a host of other evil humanoids. Even orcs.
• CR 9 dragons.
• Medusas, gorgons, and basilisks.
• Advanced axiomatic half-fiendish kobolds.
• Formians.
• Orge barbarians.
• Feral trolls.
• Not just mindflayers; mindflayer liches.

With templates and monster advancement, even goblins can be scary at any level.

 

[ZSutherland]

This is exactly where my PCs are (I have 6), so here's some stuff I've been throwing at them.

Fighter3/Rogue3 Vampire & his 2 Vampire Spawn (despite dominating the dwarf barbarian, they cake-walked this one. *sigh* I just suddenly couldn't roll a double digit #)

2 Chaos beasts (technically below CR, but they were in a nasty room they couldn't escape at the moment which wasn't very large and their main tank (the barbarian was seperated from them & unable to participate). It allowed the Chaos beasts to really put their reach to use and minimize the PCs ranged attacks. Ranger is now a chaos beast. That'll teach her to use Cha as a dump stat.

Young adult black dragon in its swampy lair w/ mage armor and shield as spells.

I'm starting to find that the terrain of the fight is at least as important as the creatures CR.

This week (if you play with me stop reading now) they'll go up against an Ogre Mage/Fighter3 after they tackle his 2 Minotaur/Barbarian4's. That'll be near the end of the classed "parties" of kobold Sorcs, Bugbear Rogues, Hobgoblin Fighters, and Orcish Clerics they'll be dealing with.

Good luck.

Z

 

[Celebrim]

Wow. There is such a range of creatures I hardly could begin to cover it.

The big trick here is that because your party is large, you probably want to usually use multiples of creatures of CR 7-9, rather than one big large CR 10-13 creature. A hoard of CR 4-6 creature will work too, but it will slow down combat and is best as a change of pace or giving a chance for cleave or evocation spells to shine. Although the whole party can probably take a big CR 12+ critter, individual characters are likely to be overwhelmed by the ammount of damage a creature like that can generate in one attack. That's really going to up your PC kill count unnecessarily. For that reason, I wouldn't really consider giants except for the smaller ones. Giants are all about damage output. Your party could take them, but someone would probably get squashed.

Same thing applies to creatures that are all about the saving throw. Don't go for something designed to challenge parties with saving throws appropriate for 12th level characters. Too much risk of a total party kill. Wait until the party is one or two levels above the CR and then do multiples of them keeping in mind that creatures that each provoke a save are vicious when stacked. (If each character has a 60% chance of saving, then verus two only a third of the party will be uneffected, and even with a 75% chance of saving half the party is probably going down.)

I love templates. Almost everything I put out there is templated, or advanced, or has a few character class levels. Two of my favorite books are MotP and SavSp - just because of all the nifty template.

Some ideas:

An Elemental Fire Dire Lion.
A couple of advanced fiendish Gargoyles.
A mated pair of advanced Griffons.
A team of Weretigers fighters.
A sqaudron of armed Rutterkins mounted on Howlers.
A huge Carrion Crawler.
A multi-headed Medusa.
A team of Shade assassins.
A fiendish skeletal Balrog.
A coven of Huecava clerics.
A gang of advanced wights.
A platoon of armored Ogre fighter 4's.
A horde of Goblin fighter 2's riding Dire Wolves.
A flock of Doombats.
A legion of Trogoldyte barbarians.
A half-fiend Ooze Paraelemental of a well chosen size.
A maximally advanced fiendish Choker.
Gargantuan Scorpions
Greater Mummies
Invisible Stalkers
An Imp with a few levels of rogue and sorcerer.

PS: "Feral trolls" Ouch.