We have all encountered countless monsters and NPS's that have been truly the stuff of nightmares. There are a few that stand out to me that truly make me which makes me want to make my PC's run away. I have created a top five list of the most terrifying monsters to encounter.
This list is going to be focused on the fantasy genre of monsters and does not include situations, NPCs, and monsters or characters from World of Darkness or other games.
1. The Illithid - A.K.A. Mind Flayer
The Illithid is an very intelligent foe that posses various mental powers and has a complex society in the Underdark and other places. They are rarely if ever encountered by accident and they always are flanked by various slaves and mind controlled monsters for brute strength.
Their true horror is in their own natural abilities. The main being they can stun a foe and then extract its brain with their tentacled mouth and eat it. Though to be honest, it an encounter you either want try to appeal to their intellect (as they are hyper intelligent), win the fight, or retreat. My first encounter with Illithid's ended up with the party being captures and forced into their slave ranks. The party spent a lot of time planning their escape and creating allies (even with one of the Illithids) before a mostly successful escape was possible (there was one causality and the rest of the party was in bad shape). With that being said, that RP experience was a lot of fun. The Illithid have a pretty evocative ecology and sociology, I would highly recommend getting a copy of Lords of Madness.
2. The Gelatinous Cube
This list is going to be focused on the fantasy genre of monsters and does not include situations, NPCs, and monsters or characters from World of Darkness or other games.
1. The Illithid - A.K.A. Mind Flayer
Their true horror is in their own natural abilities. The main being they can stun a foe and then extract its brain with their tentacled mouth and eat it. Though to be honest, it an encounter you either want try to appeal to their intellect (as they are hyper intelligent), win the fight, or retreat. My first encounter with Illithid's ended up with the party being captures and forced into their slave ranks. The party spent a lot of time planning their escape and creating allies (even with one of the Illithids) before a mostly successful escape was possible (there was one causality and the rest of the party was in bad shape). With that being said, that RP experience was a lot of fun. The Illithid have a pretty evocative ecology and sociology, I would highly recommend getting a copy of Lords of Madness.
2. The Gelatinous Cube
The cube has caused my TPK's then any other monster I have ever come across. It is basically invisible, does a solid amount of acid damage, and engulfs those who fight it. Once engulfed the victim can't breath, is considered restrained, and takes acid damage every turn as they are basically being digested. Others can attempt to pull the person out but they are subject to damage when doing this. The 3.x and older versions had a paralysis effect to make them even more deadly. In 5th edition of Dungeons an Dragons they lost their paralysis ability but it does not make them any less deadly. This is a great breakdown of the Gelatinous Cube through the ages.
3. The Rust Monster
The Rust Monsters ability to eat any metal is more terrifying then its bite. With a mere touch of its feelers it can turn armor, weapons, etc. to rust which it will then devour. Even enchanted metals are not safe. I have lost some great weapons and armor to this scourge of the realms.
4. The Carrion Crawler
The stench of death follows this monster around and that alone in the dark is enough to set anyone on edge. If that was not enough alone, they possess the ability to climb and are perfect ambush predators. What makes them truly horrifying is their poisonous bite that causes paralysis and the purpose for this makes it worse as they want bodies to lay their eggs in. For me, what adds the additional "nope" factor is that they remind me of the creatures in Star Wars that negate and eat the force around them (I cannot remember what they are called but they are in the book Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter for sure.
These are not a specific creature but a DM named Tucker ran an encounter with a tribe of Kobolds the took up resident on the first level of a dungeon. This tribe was not the usual cannon fodder of monsters just standing there waiting to be murdered, they were actually prepared! This made them a living and breathing aspect of the dungeon which gave the dungeon and the kobolds personality with dimension (because lets face it, all kinds of things happen in the dark places of the world when the players are not around). These kobolds laid traps, snipped them with crossbows through murder holes with planned escaped routes, through molotav cocktails over burning barricades that they pushed around with pikes, they wore armor, used gorilla warfare tactics, locked doors, etc. The level of preparedness can cause sheer panic in players who fear for their characters life and who have never encountered monsters that used terrain to their advantage (and other tactics).
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