D&D 5E Intelligent monster tactics

[snickersnax]

Anyone have any interesting monster tactics. I'll start with a couple

1) Goblins: Horde Tactics: Because goblins can disengage as a bonus action they can partial move, attack, disengage, and finish their move away from their victim(s) This allow huge numbers of goblins to attack small numbers of enemies for deadly effect without suffering OA. A 20' radius ring of 24 goblins can all attack a single enemy standing in the center in the same round. In their lair, small gated tunnels leading into a room of trapped enemies can be even more deadly because the goblins can retreat to full cover between attacks and PCs will not be able to follow or attack them back.

2)Bugbears: Bugbear Blanket Party: Usually a group of 4-6 bugbears for a single target. Attacking from surprise, the first bugbear throws a blanket (like a net , so successful attack means the victim is restrained and blind), the remaining 3-5 bugbears attack with advantage with brute and surprise attack. Repeat on the second round if necessary with no surprise.

 

[Imaculata]

3) Zombies: Zombies can emerge from the ground, or from the wall of a crypt, and surprise the players. They don't need to breath, so you can have them claw their way out of a grave, and suddenly surround the players. They can also be lying in ambush in murky water, suddenly rising to their feet as the players venture into the water. One trick I once pulled on my players, is to have a bunch of zombies burst through a clay wall on both sides of the party simultaniously.

 

[Voi_D_ragon]

4) Fake walls- I once had my party walk through a corridoer that had fake walls with armoured kobolds waiting behind them. once the whole group was in, they slid their fake walls up (think a sliding door that move vertically) and swarmed them

5) Caltrops, ball bearings & grease: any one of the three, or all three together, or any combination. I used this again with kobolds: there was a room covered with grease and caltrops, with kobolds on the far side firing crossbows from a raised platform. They would fire and duck into cover, while the PCs had to choose between moving slowly to avoid the caltrops (and have an easier time navigating the grease), but taking more crossbow fire, or move quickly and risk halving their speed (which would then leave them even more vulnerable to crossbows) along with having a harder time staying up due to the grease, which made them take a bunch of damage if they fell (what with the floor being all pointy and whatnot).

 

[Eltab]

6) Lizardfolk (or any other swamp dweller):
Using Hold Breath, swim underwater to approach PCs in boat. Charge upwards breaking surface and take one attack vs whoever is closest. Fall back into water and stay under.
This basically means the PCs have no way to retaliate, unless they ready an action for when you do it again.

I've used a variant of this where the Lizardfolk fell prone in shallow water (for cover against ranged attacks), and enticed the Fighter out to melee in the mud. Evil DM trick: the Lizardfolk know where submerged quicksand or deep mud pits are, and try to lure the Heavy Armor guys into that.

 

[Imaculata]

7) Any huge sea creature that can swallow whole
Can dive underneath the boat of the PC's, emerge on the other side, and jump across the deck to scoop up several players in one leap. The creature makes an attack against each player that it hits in a line. It then plunges back into the sea on the other side of the ship.

 

[Oofta]

8) Small creatures use tiny tunnels.
Kobolds, goblins and so on know that they can't win in a straight up fight so they attack from tunnels sized for small creatures. These tunnels have choke points where they narrow down so that even a small size creature needs to squeeze. If medium creatures are dumb enough to follow them, the little folk wait until they are in the tunnel and hit a choke point before they collapse the tunnel around the fool.

 

[snickersnax]

9) Advanced Horde Tactics:

Attackers use their attack action to knock prone until successful. Even better with creatures with a free knock prone ability like wolf, or multi-attack for multiple knock prone attempts.

Next attackers use grapple until successful to prevent enemy from standing back up.

The rest of the attackers get advantage to attack on prone creature.

Smart monsters may have one or several of the attackers ready an action to attack any obvious spell casting (with the intent to interrupt the spell by causing damage).

 

[Eltab]

10) Any intelligent creature with a lair:
Do you know the PCs are coming? Cover your front lawn with traps - trip wires to hastily-mounted weapons in cover, dig and conceal a few pit traps to keep the attackers busy, cast Alarm on something at the far edge of your defended zone to let you know they're here, post scouts and sentinels at your front door.

 

[lowkey13]

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