Oh yeah! An Ancient Dragon is scary, sure, but watch players sweat when a group of low-level monsters start using tactics. I can speak from experience. *Story time!* My group was in a cave and fighting a bunch of kobolds. Early on in the fight, the Druid used Moonbeam to take out a good number of them, and the rest seemed to be cornered by the spell. That's when the DM said the kobolds all don't move. When it got back to the Druid's turn, as she began moving the Moonbeam forward, the DM said the kobolds all used their Ready action to dash through the opening just created and surround the Druid while also separating us from her. Thus, our unfortunate Druid was soon downed in a single round _and_ the kobolds then forced the rest of us to surrender or else she'd be killed.
I love The Monsters Know. Unfortunately, my players routinely fail to fight at any level above "bar brawl," so I've yet to need more than 3 or 4 marksmen to start picking off the weaker ones. Fighting with advanced tactics (read: with any intelligence at all) has started to feel cruel.
Homunculus are a favorite of mine. Basically a goblin replacement, but the fact that *they are created by something* hints a bigger force playing with taboo magic.
Speaking of Tinkerbell Remember that in the movie, she tried to get Wendy killed by the Lost Boys and sold her out to Captain Hook. Even in Return to Neverland, she was still acting like a mean girl to Jane.
I once used Bullywugs That set up ambushes near patches of Vampiric Moss. The Bullywugs would wait until the moss affected a couple of PCs and then attack!
Foiled again!!! But seriously. I write the whole title, I double check it. Then somewhere in the process, this happens. No idea what’s causing it. Been trying to figure it out for months. If anyone has any idea what would cause an editing program to remove all but the first letter of a title for no reason, I’d love to hear it.
Our DM started our campaign with Kobolds and Skraelings attacking a village. We just finished off a Wizard who instead of necromancy focused on undead, decided to go for constructs made of sand and clay.
Mephits are my absolute favorite low level enemies. I gave one of my players a smoking pipe that let's him cast summon lesser elemental but it's always ash mephits.
Stealing this and placing it literally in the next encounter my players are gonna have. They're gonna face a space pirate and I wanted him to have a magic pipe. This is perfect.
Ref the sponsor part and "small critters that follow you" My campaign's Wizard captured a tiny mimic that was disguised as a jewelry box. i gave him the option to use it as his familiar, so now we have "Jewelry Box" running around as their trusted familiar :D
My chaotic good life cleric befriended a quasit during a trip to Helheim to retrieve our sorcerer’s soul (long story, but we use the Norse pantheon for that campaign). The party was shocked that I allowed a telepathic bond with it because they can be pretty evil. It’s probably a good thing that it got killed two sessions later by an oni but still the funniest thing to happen to my cleric.
Heh i like that my warlock in our buddy’s first campaign ended up getting followed around by a baby mimic that at the very end bonded with him and now hangs out disguised as his top hat
@@piens51 well none but thats only because it was the very end of rise of the dragon queen and he was “retired” to be his Alice in wonderland fey queens primary agent and train the few hundred kobolds they um “converted”
Good point about Disney Fairies, don't forget that Tinkerbell sent Wendy to the Mermaids so they would kill her and that was after she tried to get her killed by the lost boys.
Dungeon Dudes: Goblins are more of a playable race these days, Faeries are more interesting. WOTC, same day: Here's a UA where Faeries are now a playable race.
I absolutely love Lizardfolk. They have a really unique dynamic, potential for a lot of good roleplaying if you want, a very different style of fighting, and are very easily scalable(pun intended) to higher levels. I ran a whole months-long lizardfolk arc recently.
"I'll do it...I'll murder humans! Won't even be hard look...pffft..he died in many pieces..and now he's food...I don't get the problem" said my lizardfolk character.
I like the idea of Pixies and other Fey critters as low level encounters. I've sicced them on a level 3 Party of 3 in the past and they were a lot of fun. Their abilities are more about mischief rather than outright damage, which invites Players to come up with creative, non-violent, solutions. In an already dangerous location, a handful of Pixies COULD kill the entire Party, or they can be used as a nuisance and comic relief in a safer environment. Given their capricious nature, something as simple as a mirror or a song can flip the entire encounter from antagonistic to benign. A few Fairy Dragons can be a major headache for even a mid-level Party.
I often use Xvarts against first-level parties, specially if I have first-time players. Xvarts are CR 1/8, goblin-like humanoids that are spawned by a hideous demigod across the multiverse. They tame bats and rats and are fanatically devoted to their creator. There is a wonderful lore behind their existence, which DMs out there can exploit in their campaigns.
thank you, exactly what i needed to get the gears turning. running a game for a buch of first timers at level 1. you just gave me a neat starter questline that i wouldve never thought of before.
I'll never understand how anyone thought the Catoblepas is a CR5 monster. I've had the misfortune of having a brand new player invited to an ongoing game, encountering a Catoblepas, and then failing a single CON save and dying to its death ray.
@@charger1369 Sadly no. It was pretty awful. They spent time working out their character with the GM and tying them into the story only to die within minutes of the game starting.
Well I mean CR is a good basic idea of a monster, but if something's got a death ray, maybe don't put it against a party with low CON. Unless you're a Murder DM.
@@abadidea5984 Honestly seems like a situation where the dm might want to just avoid shooting death rays at a new player. Really begging for them to not want to play
I love how all the DnD channels just keep sponsoring each other as they release new content. On week it's nerarchy, the next something from runesmith with a bit of world anvil and heroforge sprinkled in throughout. Plus the hundreds of dice companies and what not.
Dolgrim. In Eberron, these are aberrations that are essentially two goblins stitched together by the daelkyr and their fleshwarping magics. Three attacks and advantage on a lot of saving throws with decent AC can take down a lot of PCs before their turn starts.
In my sea faring campaign I've used Koa toa, Saguian, as goblin and kobold substitutes , with sea hags/harpies and others being the other harder enemies
I used kua toa and some really cool abilities but found I had to reduce their hp. They weren't that hard to kill, just took forever so instead would reduce them all by 10 hp and have an extra couple join the battle half way.
Yooooo I've never made it to a video so early. I literally just started a 3rd level campaign yesterday, how'd you guys know? My players won't thank you, but I certainly will. After watching the video, I gotta say, I absolutely adore the idea of using Kruthics in a similar vein to Xenomorphs. There's definitely something there to explore.
That might get weird for the Goblin player-character who gets suddenly vulnerable to fey-focusing magics. In D&D at least, the fae have usually been reserved as an otherworldly and mysterious force, alien to the PCs. I like the idea, but it would just have to be implemented with some care.
@@lordzaboem It's simple, just don't allow goblin PCs for that particular campaign. Any player that isn't a whiny baby will understand and save their PC for another campaign.
An interesting "random" encounter in any kind of facility that has(/had) access to some magic (this is stolen from an module, but I really loved it) - a metal contraption that supplies the facility with water. Players see this metal globe, connected with pipes that go into the ground beneath it, try to move it they hear slushing sounds. If they open it two mephits burst forward - a steam and a cold mephit (they were bound into the contraption to be an infinite supply of water -> the steam mephits steam breath melting the ice mephits cold breath). They attack whoever open their prison (thinking they are acting on behalf of whoever bound the mephits to the place), but won't fight to their death, ultimately they just want out. As a reward the party can find a handful of precious gems inside the contraption, which were used as a material component for the binding (though if the facility is still in use monsters/enemies might notice the sudden lack of fresh water)
Funny enough, I used Mephits against my new, 2nd campaign I'm running for my level 1 players. There were some close calls by they've made it to level 3 now and enjoying their characters. I also had a combination of skeletons and blights in an alt night for my main campaign players (I have two groups right now) via a 1-page quest I ran about one month ago. It was fun using the blights and them basically having them act as the Grunts from Halo.
I love modrons but I like your homebrew interpretation of what happens when one breaks. Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought from the description text (at least in 5e) for modrons is that they level up to fill the gap. Aka if a pentadrone is killed then a singular quadradrone becomes a pentadrone and so forth...
That is definitely true on a societal level but they don't really say if that occurs on a squadron level. I am tempted both ways there, on the one hand doing that leads to a very strategic combat where the order of engagement is vital, on the other hand it kinda seems like a pain. On the whole I am inclined to think they do not do it since if that occurred the ability would most likely be listed under the combat abilities rather than under the general fluff.
@@tinkerer3399 however seeing how the MM was written in general, the descriptions are where most of the strategy and tactics and variant options are listed rather than in the stat blocks themselves. This is especially true for lair actions and regional effects for bigger badder creatures. I blame WotC for not including it as part of the Disintegration trait. Still, the argument could be made that the promotion is made anywhere in the various Planes of Existence however that makes me feel that the promotions happen with less Order and more Chaos or maybe it is by seniority and the “individual badge numbers” of the modrons.
This is full of good ideas. A note on the fey is that not only are they mischievous trouble makers in traditional tales but they're often outright villainous and cruel. From the modern perspective they could be boring or "one dimensional" because a fey being evil is literally just being evil for evil's sake or because they feel like it, but that gets into the idea of non-human psychology.
Funny enough, my newest campaign starts off with a bunch of pixies and sprites that are pressured by a mad quickling to kidnap humans. And since the quickling can easily flee, players will encounter it later, accompanied by 2 meenlocks and a lampad. Also quicklings are really deadly for low level characters, able to deal 30 damage a round
I definitely like how you guys couched the presentation as these being low level enemies that you can base your campaign around rather than 1 off encounters which most unusual monster highlight videos do. I think I may go through my monster selections and divy them up by theme rather than my usual methods.
I used pixies as a sort of temperture gauge in my homebrew. They had to travel through an enchanted forest in distress without knowing they were headed towards the path of that distress. As time passed and they marched further on the pixies went from playful and sweet to downright malevolent. I didn't even concider blights since they entered the forest at level 8 but now I'm kicking myself because it could have added to the tone of "somethings not right here"
I definitely get the whole "We don't want to kill humans" thing, and expanding on that, to intelligent creatures in general. Like, goblins are still for all intents and purposes, a humanoid race, and they are intelligent. And especially with WotC deciding to removing alignments, rather than "oh, the players don't want to kill goblins" being a hinderance for my campaigns, I found it opened up more options to the players. Do the players want to try to negotiate with them? Or bribe them? Or maybe they want to deal with them in non-lethal ways while still removing them as an obstacle. Or, depending on the group, maybe they just want to kill some goblins. But giving them the opportunity to reason with them, even if it's difficult or challenging, has made my low-level adventures more interesting and engaging, and sometimes that early game interaction leads to later game interactions that are similar. Maybe the lich CAN be reasoned or bargained with. Sure, they're evil, but maybe they're willing to terrorizing the city, but in exchange the players have to do something for them that is against their own moral code, so you set them up having to choose between the morality like the trolley problem, or do they just "kill the bad guy"? I wrote a 1st-level one off campaign to introduce my new players to the game where they're hired by a local duke to save his daughter who was kidnapped by goblins. And they can find the goblins, barge in, and slay them all and save the girl. Or if they talk to the goblins, they can discover that the duke had hired them to burn down his neighbours crops, so that he would be able to buy the land for a pittance, and then refused to pay them, so they took his daughter as payment until he paid. They haven't harmed the daughter, they just want their money. So, do the players kill the goblins anyway? Try intimidation? Do they offer to pay the goblins to save the girl and then deal with the duke? Do they offer to do something for the goblins to get her back (they have had a problem with a wolf pack nearby)? Do they just walk away from the whole thing? Do they go back to the duke and get the goblin's money, and theirs, to ensure her safety? Do they take the goblins back to the duke and let them loot his manor as repayment for a broken promise? Do they think of some other interesting way to resolve the issue? They have a lot of options for how they can deal with the problem and it gives them agency, and it can make what would be a basic "kill 5 goblins and save the girl" quest into something much more interesting. The same can obviously be true for some of the options you've provided, too, I just think that it shouldn't necessarily be a hinderance.
I’m definitely going to use mephits in my next campaign. I have a great idea for them already now. Love your channel. Fantastic work guys. You have turned DM'ing from a chore to a joy again.
"They have problems killing humans..." I can only imagine the look of utter bewilderment on the face of my (long past) twelve year old self. More importantly, what's the punch line of Kelly's shirt?
Fun D&D fact of the day - (The Great Modron March, is actually quite similar to the Hyakki Yagyõ or Night Parade of 100 Demons from Japanese folklore.)
Another great option for those somehow finding my comment 2 years later: A classic monster hunt for a nothic! Nothic's are creepy humanoid monsters with claws and a BIG green eye. Imagine your party going into a cave, or some abandoned ruins, or the catacombs of a wizard's guild/school/etc, wandering around in the dark, only to see a single glowing eye peering out at them from the darkness. Nothic's are scary for two reasons: they have a rotting gaze that does 5-10 damage as well as a claw multiattack, but more importantly, they can speak common AND peer into your soul, learning a secret about you on a failed save. Great for when one of your party members wants to be haunted by their past, but also wants to skip the "i'm dark and brooding and no one should know anything about me" cliche. Maybe it works for your BBEG, stealing secrets about local adventurers to take back to its boss, or maybe its hoarding ancient magical knowledge?
I have disliked a video once, and I felt compelled to write in the comments why I did as politely as possible. Having the option to "dislike" anything without providing constructive criticism helps no one.
This opens up some possibilities for me. I've typically just reflavored bandits and veterans with an opposing race, so if a small fishing village is irritating a sea elf, the little warband the elves send are sea elf variants. Thanks for the tips, gentlemen.
I changed up Kobolds to give them an additional variant that allows them to have a breath weapon. I also give them Basilisks to ride. And I use these as the go to encounters for my party instead of orcs and goblins
This is especially helpful for worlds like Eberron where many of the “monstrous” races are people with intelligence, feelings and civilization. Not all problems should be solved with a sword.
Making my first campaign and stumbled upon a "Slaad Tadpole" and its essentially a chest burster from aliens. Going to have them bust out of my cultists when they die I think and maybe even have some hiding around in the shadows since they have a bonus to stealth
I wanted to thank you guys, I recently had to jump into my homebrew setting quite a bit earlier than I intended because reasons. This video helped me amp up 1 encounter that I thought was kind of boring, and gave me some good direction for another that I only had a setting for. Keep up the good work.
I almost TPKed a level 5 party using just kruthics. They went in and just started unloading on them without thinking about positioning or funneling them. Worse part is that no one was really sure why they were having their asses kicked until we had a break. Even I didn't fully realize it until they were forced to retreat. Even with just a +5, having advantage and an AC of 18 is gonna wreck your day even if you're level 5 or higher.
Mephits are super cool too in that in much of the lore, they are known as living messages and that each type of mephit are bound to an emotional aspects like envy, trickery, sluggishness etc.
Started running a campaign for my family. We are all new. First couple of encounters were some bandits at the inn (just a typical bar room brawl), a shadow monster that came in the night, two skeletons and a scarecrow outside the inn the next morning. I have blights set in the adjacent forest. They did do the standard clear out rats in the basement trope. I have some thugs set up in places, then some cult members later. Even though we're new I tried to steer away from tropes.
Ah yes, the mephits. I remember that one lava pit spawning them by 3 and everytime one is killed, they damage the other mephits. To put it simply, *Stackable Chain reaction sticky bombs.*
I honestly love content like this! I think my favorite part of D&D is learning about cool, unique creatures like this and working them into games. One of your previous videos was actually my inspiration to start a homebrew game so that I could use the catoblepas (which you talked about) because of how interesting it seemed. Having a crazed alchemist tame one and use its necrotic stench as the base for his most potent poison ever was such a fun idea to play through.
Jackalwere is a great early level enemy to introduce damage immunity as all weapon attack do no damage unless silvered. Scarecrow is another fun enemy to face before magical weapons as it resists non-magical attacks but is vulnerable to fire. Hoards of Skeletons are great fun against a party that spec'd too much into slashing/piercing weapons and reward them swapping out a rapier for sling stones. Cackler can perfectly mimic sounds and can lure your heroes into a trap Flameskull: it feels like fighting a mini-Demi-Lich (Quasi-lich?) and as it's tiny and undead it can be found locked insider an iron chest for centuries them comes out mad as hell. Resistances are fun, flame based magical ranged attacks won't work, piercing based arrows won't won't be effective Gazer/Spectator: want a beholder fight but not quite so deadly? These are great for that.
: "I don't want to kill this Bandit; he's a human, full of hopes and dreams." : "Counterpoint, he's also full of MEAT." Speaking of planetary invasions, did they ever bring the Clockwork Horrors to 5E?
In my homebrew world Orcs and Goblinoids are part of society. The most common low level monsters are Gnolls, Sahuagin, Bullywugs and a lot of lizard-folk type of creatures, from small lizardman to big crocodileman. Looking foward to add blights and mephits, they fit with my world, ty. (But my blights are alien carnivorous plant)
I've got a potential topic for you, monsters that have become less deadly as the game has evolved, e.g gelatinous cubes, use to be party killers when dungeon geomorphs made every coridor 10 by 10, or rust monsters when the front line fighter in full plate was king, the rust monster was a killer, but now with classes using unarmoured defense, becoming prevalent in monks and barbaarian, the barbarian just borrows the wizards staff for a combat and saves his great axe for the kobolds to come. Mimics, now dark souls has made them a meme, no one is surprised by the chest with teeth anymore
I ran a homebrew campaign where the low level fodder were the attributes of the smallest, weakest dinosaur that there were stats for; applied to a custom description. I went with the naming convention in TTRPGs where larger, more monstrous versions of regular animals have "Dire" prepended to their name, and there's a flightless bird called a Rhea...
Kruthiks are cool for Dwarf cities. Instead of drow when they dig too deep, they hit a massive colony. Can be a fun side quest to just help secure parts of the city, have random kruthiks popping. Can also do a whole ass quest with it.
In my homebrew setting the Elves went to war against Humanity (drawing upon Hellboy 2 and Warhammer Fantasy for inspiration) and whereas Humans advanced technology to counter the Elve's magics, the Elves used said magic to create Monstrosities to serve as bioweapons. They also turned to summoning Fey creatures to fight for them and formed pacts Archfey and Hag covens to garner more power. In their desperation they accidentally unleashed the Curse of Undeath upon the world.
Tad Williams' portrayal of Fey and elves in his Memory Sorrow and Thorn series, and his Shadowmarch series is my inspiration for Fey and the Feywild in my game. So scary, so alien.
I'm very big on even Seelie fey having a dangerously alien understanding of the thinking and morality of humans. When done just right, you can hit an uncanny valley in mindset and ethics that makes even "benevolent" fey unforgettably unsettling.
Anhkeg are large burrowing insects that settle in rich soil and supplement their diet by hunting like a trapping spider. Theyre great since they're a major threat to farmers, and can be an easy low level quest or random encounter in mostly tamed areas. If you want somethibg from the older eras of dnd, they can be a fun enemy to use along with the kruthic.
I love that you guys pair up with a menagerie of sponsors as its very helpful in pointing me out in the direction of dnd resources and goodies. I just really wish you'd pair with more Canadian brands....
I just used Kruthiks and reflavored them as giant termites that lived in the root system of giant trees that was the home of a wood elf city. Worked great!
Hmm when you mentioned the kobalds in your speach about the kruthiks, it got me to thinking of when you told the story of Tucker's Kobolds, about your constant use of ratlings (not keeping them as starting enemies), and worgs. The dastardly idea I had was to have a nest of Kobolds control a colony of Kruthiks in a similar way Goblins use Worgs: given the Kruthik's hive mind, it would only take a Kobold Sorcerer to kill and reanimate the Kruthik Hive Lord, then the Youg Kruthiks can be used as guards when not used as burrowers and the adults can be used as mounts, allowing Kobolds more escape routes and means to set traps.
My best fun as a DM was when my party of mostly very players was in a rural town (their starting town in fact). They spent ages looking for wolves, bears etc. that could be responsible for all these killings that were taking place. I could barely hide my smirk when they decided to enter the farmer's fields at night - total surprise and panic ensued as the scarecrows came to life before their eyes and picked off two members of the six man party after having split up.
Blights were the first thing I had my characters fight in my wildemount campaign. They were created by a strange experiment and gave the party an introduction to the myriad which would play a greater role later on.
The Kruthick, I just watched it and I'm kinda sad that my plan for them was basically in this video lol. I was gonna have a merchant take them to the Arctic mountains as an "invasive species" to build tunnels for a mining operation.
Late to the party, but: Kruthiks, gooo! Had a group at level 5, used Mat Colville's rules for Minions on the small ones and changed the hive lord a bit with Colvilles villain actions (all are one time only: Summoning a bunch of kruthiks from eggs, making a stunning screech und finally making a souped up version of the acid spray) and it was a blast. The party fought through more then a hundred kruthiks, all going smoothly thanks to the minion rules, rescued a desperate scouting party from a somewhat rival faction from being overrun in the nest and finally took down the hive lord in its lair. All of it had really neat Alien/Zerg/Tyranid-vibes with the characteres fighting for every step forward through a sea of bodies in near total darkness. They were never in real danger (at least before the lord), but for them it felt tense all the way as I shoved them batches of 20 kruthiks repeatedly. And they were really freaked out when they closed in on the final lair and suddenly the pressure on them relented, all kruthiks suddenly, for the first time, disengaging to form a last line around the hive lord just out of their range of vision. And then came the angry roar and charge of the big monster.
I had an entire low level campaign centred around Moon Rats. It took the players a long time to catch on that the rats they encountered everywhere were the real BBEG of the campaign.
for fey, I think every world I write has a heavy fey influence somewhere, and the seelie/unseelie court. Seelie fey being good, Unseelie being evil. I really love writing out these courts, their constant battle for control which usually ends up with nighttime being unseelie time - hags, redcaps, madcaps and so on, but day being seelie fey. Fun part is, interactions with them are always sought out and yet always negative usually as even good fey are tricksters.
Shadows and similar ephemeral things, it's a good way to start out a horror game and flip things around. You can have them tied to an item or place that acts as the locus of a haunting meaning you don't need to rely on combat and your players can have an out by breaking that item or resolving what keeps them there while still dodging some genuinely intimidating things.
New dm here. I ran the cellar of death for a few level 2’s. The first battle is some skeletons. To mix it up I added a Minotaur skeleton. That really shook them up while keeping the battle manageable.
My players just came across a cache of black powder from a nation of esoteric mages. They don't know it yet, but I added a quirk to this stuff so that if a small amount of it comes into contact with a magically-produced flame, it blows up like normal but also produces a smoke mephit in its space. Larger amounts produce larger elementals if blown up all at once but I thought this was a great way to add a twist to a PC's desperate/bold move.
Ragamuffin is a living set of enchanted clothes that “posses” people by forcibly making them wear it and can even make them talk, they are sentient and can have goals and emotions it’s great
"The moral complications of killing humans" meanwhile in my campaign my guys are already plotting to kill the mayor they JUST met. Because they don't trust his smile.
I've used goblins, kobolds, kruthiks, blights, and skeletons. I've never tried Modrons or Mephits. I usually throw in the fey a little later. I tend to gear the starting baddies to illustrate the campaign type. If we're in the realms of dread or Barovia, then skeletons. I've I'm going monstrosities or aberrations, kruthiks are perfect. The campaign involves the corruption of nature and you have to save nature to save civilization, then blights are key. Next time I use The Temple of Elemental Evil / Princes of the Apocalypse, Mephits will rise.
Blights can pull off some really nasty ambushes. They are very hard to detect in the woods and parties can quickly find themselves baited into a fight that looked easy at first only to find themselves suddenly surrounded and tangled in vines. I actually had a Vine Blight manage to kill a Wizard, although he did roll a 1 on his death save.
Thank you so much for making this video! I was writing my campaign and was thinking of monsters to use but I didn’t want to use the bog standard because I find them boring. This is exactly what I needed
