D&D General Suggest to me a dangerous sea monster from any edition

[Paul Farquhar]

It's CR 14, and if the party can survive a few rounds, they could probably eat through its HP

A 5th level party? They will kill it in three rounds if it doesn’t kill them first. Even if you give it legendary resistance there is a good chance it will be mezzed. Kind of embarrassing if they take it out with hideous laughter! And it's only 15 ft long + 20 ft tentacles. (about the size of the real world colossal squid), so it doesn't look very impressive.

Also, you talk about the ship “outrunning” the sea monster. A kraken (and most other sea monsters) will approach from underneath, so they won’t know it’s coming until it attacks. And any sort of controlled movement is going to be difficult for a ship in a storm in any case, and require skill checks.

There are rules for various types of storms in Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

A 5th level party? They will kill it in three rounds if it doesn’t kill them first.

Also, you talk about the ship “outrunning” the sea monster. A kraken (and most other sea monsters) will approach from underneath, so they won’t know it’s coming until it attacks. And any sort of controlled movement is going to be difficult for a ship in a storm in any case, and require skill checks.

There are rules for various types of storms in Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

Yep, I'll be using some of those rules. They'll be making the checks before they get to the kraken, as well as taking 1d6 lightning bolts that deal 2d10 damage. By the time the kraken appears they will be near the edge of the storm and done with those checks.

I tend to give objects damage resistance by default, and with the damage threshold, and the lack of siege monster on the juvenile, I won't be able to have it start the attack by reaching up a tentacle on each side and tearing off some of the railings--which would be cool. Its bite and lightning will bypass the damage resistance and should deal enough damage to hit the threshold, so I'll have it start the fight with one of those instead. Combined with the potential for some storm/lightning damage, that should encourage them to keep the ship moving, but not deal enough damage to knock its hull below half (which is when penalties would start in my revised/custom ship rules).

I'm thinking this kraken really likes to play with its food. First it will attack the ship from below to evoke some terror, then start picking off a few crew with tentacles, before finally really showing itself. It will continue to target whoever it thinks looks weakest, so the PCs will see the crew keep getting whittled away instead of them. It moves at the same speed as their ship, but it can Dash and they can't. This means it won't have any trouble keeping up, but as long as they keep moving (which will require the 2 PCs who are the temp captain and first mate to dedicate either their actions or bonus action each round to running the ship, while the other 3 PCs are free to act normally) they will get out of the storm within a few rounds, and it won't follow more than a round out of the storm. It shouldn't have any problem surviving with all the issues the PCs have to deal with, and it having 25% more hp, 2 legendary resistances (I think all legendary creatures should have some), and the weaker mythic style ability to recover half its HP, 1 leg res, and get a new legendary action if dropped to 0 (probably its clue to submerge and leave if it goes that far).

The fighter with the helm of underwater action might decide to dive in and fight it, but hopefully will realize that's a bad idea before getting eaten. Flying won't work in the hurricane force winds.

Even if they do defeat it, who's to say (from their perspective) that there aren't more similarly dangerous critters in that magical storm that is hanging around in about the same place for a week? In fact, there might be a sea serpent swimming around in there with an elevated chance of showing up as a random encounter if they head back that way. So it should accomplish its job either way.

Just hoping that fighter isn't feeling foolishly brave.

I also might run a test of the fight myself and see if there are factors I missed. (Pretty easy to do with Foundry, and I can just use a copy of the world so I don't have to clean up afterwards.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The sea serpent is better. It runs along the surface, so you can do a chase sequence. It's impressively large. It has legendary residences as written, it's a siege monster, so it can actually do damage to the ship. It doesn't have many attacks, but they do enough damage to scare the players. It’s easy to remove its rime breath ability or just have it choose to not use it against the crew. Or you could stat out the crew so that they can survive a hit. Maybe they are goliaths or Dragonborn, or have evasion.

I would make it immune to spells like hideous laughter and hypnotic pattern though, proficiency in wisdom saves and spell resistance should do the trick, and give it max hp (275).

 

[GreyLord]

Haven't checked to see if they are still around in 5e, but there's always the gigantic Water Elementals you couldl use.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Haven't checked to see if they are still around in 5e, but there's always the gigantic Water Elementals you couldl use.

There are elemental titans in Monsters of the Multiverse, but they would make short work of the ship and crew.

 

[GreyLord]

There are elemental titans in Monsters of the Multiverse, but they would make short work of the ship and crew.

That's a little larger than what I was thinking. More along the lines of the Water Elemental in 2e AD&D but double the stats.

Quick conversion to 5e stats would show something like...

So it would have 32 HD with around a 20 AC, doing anywhere from 5-30 damage (normal would probably be something like 10-60 HP damage, but the OP wants the characters to survive) per attack. They would need at least a +2 Weapon to even damage it.

So, roughly double what the Water Elemental is in the Monstrous Manual.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's a little larger than what I was thinking. More along the lines of the Water Elemental in 2e AD&D but double the stats.

Quick conversion to 5e stats would show something like...

So it would have 32 HD with around a 20 AC, doing anywhere from 5-30 damage (normal would probably be something like 10-60 HP damage, but the OP wants the characters to survive) per attack. They would need at least a +2 Weapon to even damage it.

This isn't a thing in 5e. The closest any monster gets is resistance to S/P/B and a big sack of hp. But elementals scale in damage, so any elemental tough enough that the party feels the need to flee from rather than kill is going to kill party members.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh has magical storms in which elementals continuously spawn, which would work much better mechanically. But the OP wants a single powerful creature, which as we know don't work very well in 5e without minions.

 

[GreyLord]

This isn't a thing in 5e. The closest any monster gets is resistance to S/P/B and a big sack of hp. But elementals scale in damage, so any elemental tough enough that the party feels the need to flee from rather than kill is going to kill party members.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh has magical storms in which elementals continuously spawn, which would work much better mechanically. But the OP wants a single powerful creature, which as we know don't work very well in 5e without minions.

I think the OP said he could convert to what he wanted, so, making something similar to the 2e version with lesser damage should do something similar to what he wanted.

Making something immune to damage unless it is hit by a specific weapon or item may not be something done normally in 5e, but in a situation like this I think it could be very useful (using a DM's perogative) where you limit how much damage the creature does (so it doesn't kill the party), but at the same time make it so the party doesn't just outright slaughter the creature either for a situation like what the OP wants (or, making it immune to what party can do to it, 5e has had immunities to damage types in 5e, this is just the DM modifying it to a degree to fit the situation).

 

[Richards]

I was going to suggest a fiendish elasmosaurus. I picked up a Jurassic Park elasmosaurus toy for use in my own D&D game, and while it's much larger than it should be per the 3.5 D&D stats, it looks awesome on the game table. (I advanced my stats by quite a bit to account for its much larger than normal size, but this was in a fairly high-level campaign.)

Johnathan

 

[Li Shenron]

I have a specific scenario that's coming up soon in my campaign, and I need to pick a monster from D&D's lore. It's a 5e (2014) game, but I can convert the monster myself if it doesn't exist in 5e. Our lore favors 2e, which has a zillion monsters, but I couldn't find exactly what I'm looking for from a real quick search. Here's the scenario.

Through very powerful magic, an NPC is going to conjure up a massive storm at sea, and a terrible monster is going to arise from the depths, and threaten a ship that the PCs are captaining.

Desired results:
-The monster is escapable (and will not pursue)
-The monster will do some damage to the ship before being escaped (could be a risk of destruction, or just a bit of damage before they escape)
-The 5th-level characters can survive a round or two of combat
-Does not create a massive wave that damages everyone on the ship, since some NPCs should survive (see below)
-The monster isn't something you can negotiate with, and makes sense being summoned by the spell
-The monster will hang around for a week or two along with the storm it's summoned in, to deter going back that direction
-CR probably mid to upper teens, should be something the party knows is beyond them rather than something they think they can take on

I looked at the monsters that already exist in 5e that might fulfill the roles, and am not truly happy with any of them. A dragon turtle shouldn't really be summoned from the depths. A typical sea serpent might be, if I want to create a more powerful version. Giants and such are too easy to negotiate with. A kraken seems too dangerous, and I'm still not sure the "young kraken" idea works for the kraken lore I'm leaning towards. The 2e (whale) leviathan is a good guy that shouldn't behave in this manner.

The best I came up with so far is the 5e (elder elemental) leviathan. It seemed like a pretty good fit, except for its tidal wave ability (I like the 2014 better than 2024). The only way I can make it not too deadly (especially to the NPC crew) is to have it start the wave conveniently a round or two behind the ship, so the ship can just continue away from it (this ship is particularly fast, and with the same speed as the wave it should be able to stay above it). But the whole way I have to handle it is too complicated and contrived, and if it doesn't go right everyone dies, which isn't how I want it to go down. I'd rather the PCs have more than exactly one way to get themselves, the relevant NPCs, and at least some of the crew to safety.

So, what dread sea monster that would make sense with these parameters can you think of from any edition of D&D?

Would Dagon be an overkill? Maybe a somewhat lessened aspect of it?