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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7856065" data-attributes="member: 6775031">The most terrifying thing about any monster is uncertainty. Monsters represent an uncertain possibility for the future, where things are not going as well for you as you might hope.The two major factors are: 1) how bad things could go; and 2) how likely they are to go that badly.Monsters in 5E can theoretically kill you and everyone you care about, but the chance of that actually happening is remote. Anything else that they might do to you can be overcome within three days (game time). And even if it is a TPK, you (the player) don't get to spend much time dwelling on it, because you're all going to make new characters for the next session. As far as potential bad things go, it's really not that bad.Contrast with previous editions, where the worst thing that could happen is that you're set back multiple years of play experience, and continuing to play the game means that the next few years (real time) are reserved for getting back up to normal. Likewise, if it's possible to lose a limb, then that's something which will actually affect your quality of life for as long as you keep playing the character, until you might eventually hope to find someone capable of fixing it in the distant future. Those are pretty dramatic stakes to put on the line, regardless of how unlikely they are to happen. There's also the meta-uncertainty factor, of unknown unknowns. If a monster shows up and you've never seen it before, then you don't know what kind of possibilities it might represent. That's a whole other level of terrifying.</blockquote>

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