D&D 4E Worst Monsters in 4e

[pemerton]

Black Dragons are equally as bad. Terrible damage output and they can give themselves total concealment, makes for a long and very boring combat.

black dragons, wraiths

Another vote for wraiths. I mean, thematically, all of their abilities make sense and sound cool on paper, but in actual play they are annoying and grindy.

I can completely see the logic of this - yet, the only dragon encounter I've used so far was with a black dragon, and it played out really well. And I've used wraiths two or three times - always mixed with other monsters - and I think have kept things on the side of "will we make it though this?" rather than "what a boring grind!"

With the wraiths, it's helped that the party has multiple sources of radiant damage, so often the challenge has been to find a way to bring that to bear in order to end the regen/aura.

With the dragon, it helped that the party was carrying a statue of the Queen of the Summer Courts, and decided to use it to try and negate the dragon's darkness aura (succeeded twice with escalating Arcana DCs, failed the third time round).

I like the flying zombie that gets -5 to its attacks whenever it flies. Did I mention it has a special flying attack? What a well-planned monster!

I did use these once, in a setup where I thought they might be able to get CA to help alleviate the -4 clumsy penalty. Didn't really work, though . . .

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I used those flying zombies once. They worked OK. The trick is (as with any clumsy flier) to just drop into battle on the ground ASAP unless the enemy is totally incompetent at ranged combat. You get the Flying Charge damage bonus on your first round of attacks (which of course are all on the squishies since you just flew right past the defender). You aren't likely to HIT, but if you do 2d6+1d8+2 damage isn't too bad. Honestly I thought the 1d8+2 slam damage was actually the main problem with the monster. If I ran it again I'd double it to 2d8+4 or something. After all, these things aren't going to live long (and didn't when I used them).

 

[holywhitetrash]

kas the betrayer seems like the worst fight ever
he essentially has has over 2ooo hit points with regen 20 and and a recharging dominate

 

[OchreJelly]

With the wraiths, it's helped that the party has multiple sources of radiant damage, so often the challenge has been to find a way to bring that to bear in order to end the regen/aura..

I agree with you. The problem is when a certain published adventure that shall not be named has four of them in at least one encounter. I wrote about it in another thread summing that it was pretty much the worst 4E encounter we played to date. Individually they aren't horrible, but I really dislike halving-math mechanics, and I understand it's probably just my personal bugbear.

Interesting thread... I can see a poll coming. Worst of the worst?

btw - I have nothing against bugbears.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree with you. The problem is when a certain published adventure that shall not be named has four of them in at least one encounter. I wrote about it in another thread summing that it was pretty much the worst 4E encounter we played to date. Individually they aren't horrible, but I really dislike halving-math mechanics, and I understand it's probably just my personal bugbear.

Interesting thread... I can see a poll coming. Worst of the worst?

btw - I have nothing against bugbears.

Its funny, see, while I agree wraiths rank right up there as monsters that can cause horrible encounters it really is pretty situational. I had 4 wraiths and a mad wraith in one encounter. It was TOUGH, but it wasn't grindy. The party did have a good amount of radiant damage since they had a sun/life/etc focused cleric, and the encounter had some features that let the players unleash extra radiant damage etc. Worked out well. I agree though if you drop a few wraiths into an encounter and just expect any old random party to blow through them its likely going to get ugly. I guess the real question is are highly situational monsters like this really bad monsters? They're definitely going to mean you have to plan encounters well, but it seems like a sort of different 'bad' than the Dracolich or Purple Worm that just suck.

 

[keterys]

Depends - was there any real reason the wraiths fighting against the radiant party couldn't just fade away and come back a few rounds later?

A lot of monsters only approach their true levels of suck when play optimally. Like bloodfire harpies that are content to hang out at 20 squares away.

 

[Aegeri]

To be honest a lot of monsters that are really bad are only bad if you dump five of them into one encounter (or just a lot of them).

That some of the WotC modules have managed to do that is a bit sad.

 

[Evilhalfling]

more votes for wraiths, esp if teamed up with a mad wraith, as if the grind was't dull enough, now everybodies dazed! Prple worms are just awful as well - I tried putting one in a early lets start EPIC! game - it failed quickly.

A lot of paragon monsters in MM1 can be fixed by doubling the fixed damage bonus (x3 for brutes) - one of the designers suggested (andy collins?) suggested this. ie cyclopes should do 1d12+14

 

[Obryn]

To be honest a lot of monsters that are really bad are only bad if you dump five of them into one encounter (or just a lot of them).

That some of the WotC modules have managed to do that is a bit sad.

Honestly? I blame it on the fact that all non-custom monsters in the first adventure path are from MM1. Really, if you want an "undead lurker around level 17" your pickings are slim.

-O

 

[avin]

Wotc should release a new book revising MM1 monsters. Or just revise them on errata or DDI.