D&D 5E Monstrous Disappointments.

[Benjamin Olson]

One thing I'll say about 5e monsters is that their Perception scores are universally easily outpaced by a player making a Stealth-focused PC. That may be design working as intended – i.e. playing up the trope of heroes sneaking past without raising but it's something I've noticed.

I think it is definitely a design choice, at least to an extent, as it accommodates a playstyle of often circumventing encounters in various ways which many people like. And it is more than fair in many dungeons since they are a) taking a calculated risk that whatever they sneak past won't come to gang up on them when they eventually trigger a general alarm, and b) making investing in stealth.

 

[Nebulous]

There is only so many old school mindflayers you could face before they killed you. They had 90% magic resistance, which made them immune to magic of 9th level or below and as a practical matter throwing spells at them was never likely to work. They had an attack that insta-killed you in 1d4 rounds, and psychic blast in 1e AD&D was no joke with an array of possible consequences that included catatonia, insanity, and death. If you faced them in fair combat enough, you'd die.

On paper, the 5e Mindflayer doesn't even have enough mind flaying goodness to justify it's own established canon.

I'd hardly say the 5e mind flayer is easy though. I don't think many parties of any low to mid level are going to withstand an onslaught of 3 to 6 mind blasts at once. They still have magic resistance (not as cool as the old school percentage resistance) and can still extract your brain for whopping damage. And still retains dominate monster, levitate and plane shift, so they escape practically any pinch they get into with the latter and come back later.

The mind flayer arcanist casts up to 5th level spells, and I'm not sure why the base monster is CR 7 and the spellcaster is CR8, that doesn't seem right.

 

[NotAYakk]

I'd hardly say the 5e mind flayer is easy though. I don't think many parties of any low to mid level are going to withstand an onslaught of 3 to 6 mind blasts at once. They still have magic resistance (not as cool as the old school percentage resistance) and can still extract your brain for whopping damage. And still retains dominate monster, levitate and plane shift, so they escape practically any pinch they get into with the latter and come back later.

The mind flayer arcanist casts up to 5th level spells, and I'm not sure why the base monster is CR 7 and the spellcaster is CR8, that doesn't seem right.

CR determines proficiency bonus, but not the spells you have access to.

The basic bit of CR is that you add up the ability to deal damage over 3 rounds (including expected spell tactics) and the ability to soak damage. Then you through in fudge factors for things that aren't damage or HP based (AC, accuracy, saves, etc).

This is why the Diviner is a CR 8 monster 15th level spellcaster with 8th level spells, and the evoker is a CR 9 monster with 6th level spells and a 12th level spellcaster.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I know that I like to harp on how pathetic all monsters are in 5E, including the Tarrasque, since they are incapable of inflicting any wound that persists through a nap. If I had to pick my biggest disappointment with monsters, though, it would definitely be Life Drain undead.

Seriously, a wight's Life Drain ability does less damage than its standard attack, and offers an easy saving throw to avoid a meaningless rider effect that evaporates overnight regardless. That's the opposite of terrifying. It's pointless and tedious.

 

[Zaukrie]

This is my least favorite thing about 5e. The monsters are largely boring bags of hitpoints. Few reactions, few interesting effects.

I'm working on three pdfs I hope to sell that address some of this, actually. Hoping for December, but it might be January.....

 

[jayoungr]

Yeah, I posted a thread on that a couple weeks ago. Good book (and blog).

I must have missed it--have a link?

That's kind of a bad way to look at it.

It's like the reverse grognard. "What, you liked the past? Why? Because everything was save or die? That's it, huh? You're just a save or die fan????"

Apologies if my question came off as snarky. I didn't mean it that way; I was just groping for a possible thing that isn't in 5E, and since save-or-die was being discussed on another thread, it popped into my head.

 

[Nebulous]

I must have missed it--have a link?

D&D 5E - The Monsters Know What They're Doing (5e)

Book adapted from Keith Ammann's blog, it is a breakdown of the monsters from the 5e monster manual and how they would react strategically in combat. https://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Know-What-Theyre-Doing-ebook/dp/B07P5F89LJ/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= A lot of this...

www.enworld.org

 

[Arilyn]

The mummy. Just not all that scary or interesting anymore.
I've been using Kobold Press' monster books to spice things up. There's a lot of interesting monster abilities in those books.

 

[Weiley31]

Remember to give the Ogre Mage rival the Eldritch Blast Cantrip and modify his CHA so that way he can utilize Agonizing Blast with it.


Also give him the Fighter's Second Wind with two uses. Just cuz he got hit by a nasty Crit Roll DOESNT mean hes the sort fellow to lie there and just take it.

As for the Dragon that got locked down by Hold Monster? The second half of the boss fight has its Draconic Rage kicking in. It's SUPER PEEVED and auto-denies all disabling attempts due to it's berserk fury.so mad that even the dice has probs locking it down.

Also, DON'T FORGET you still have to take out its heart to really kill the dragon in that boss fight. Otherwise it keeps healing back to half health.

But then, that's what happens at that point of the story in that Crit moment.

 

[ad_hoc]

Terrifying monsters for me?

The most common attributes which are scary:

1. Intelligence
2. Movement
3. Numbers