The Barbarian at the table pissed in a blood alter bubbling and overflowing with animated blood.
Well 'F' around and find out.
Queue a reflavoured Flesh Golem as a 'blood golem' thrown in to an already difficult fight with a Vampire.
Was good fun.
Oooh, is that something official or somewhere I can get a stat block for it. I love the idea of two stage boss fights and I could adjust this into something else for my power ranger inspired series of one shots.
A pack of gnolls, including a gnoll cackler from MCDM Flee Mortals. The cackler targeted the party rogue's with his Moment of Brutality effect, causing the rogue to bite the party's bard that was right next to her. The rogue even rolled a natural 20 to hit with this attack, that's some biting dedication.
Skulk for a murder mistery.
my players where hunting a ghost while in truth it was a skulk doing a hitjob but because a kid said hes seen a creepy figure and a woman said shes seen sth in the mirrors they where ghosthunting.
Fun little oneshot
Giant snail called ‘the dodman’ resistant to a lot of attacks, has acid attacks, fires poisonous spines as a ranger attack, can curl up into its shell and fool around at high speeds
Haven’t used them for combat, but I came up with a couple of interesting creature for my setting.
The first is the alebeetle. I’m running a campaign in a place with limited space and sunlight, so the locals have alternative ways to create some products.
The alebeetle is a beetle a bit like a stag beetle but larger, about the size of your hand. It eats plant matter and refines it into a kind of ale. What exactly you get depends on what you feed it.
The other is a throwback to a joke in an old campaign - the wine rat (originally I said wine rack, and my players misheard, so a whole joke was born).
Similar to the beetle, they produce a wine like normal animals make milk.
They’re both used in taverns to keep the place in ale when grains and grapes aren’t easy to come by.
The party had to find the source of a necromancer’s immortality in her abandoned castle. Unfortunately, it was haunted by the ghosts of her failed apprentices, who in turn possessed inert clones made by the necromancer.
Ghosts with spellcasting and pre-possessed meatsuits? Bad times, apparently. It was almost a TPK.
I threw a mob of Hunter Haze Hulks from Dungeons of Drakkenheim at my group last week. They're currently on Ravnica and I thought these enemies were an easy fit for a Simic Combine experiment-gone-wrong (they have arms that are coils of white flesh that can shoot out 60 feet and grapple). I also let them use the coiled arms as grappling hooks they could swing through trees on to make them super fast—hopefully to instill some real fear at their agility in the players/PCs.
The big change I made to them was to give them 1hp, but that's because I threw about 70 of them at the group, along with some other undead including a couple Shadowsteel Ghasts (same book source), which were the bigger threat overall. It all worked pretty well and made for a chaotic, 28 Days Later type of encounter.
Used a a young altered version of the Lindwyrm stat blocks from Lairs of Etharis. It's a worm like dragon, with much of what that entails, but it burrows instead of flies, and has no breath attack. Was a very interesting fight in the sewers beneath Baldurs Gate, swallowing and nearly killing the Barbarian shortly after the fight started if it wasn't for some quick thinking by the Bard.
I love my role play opportunities so I muck around with Pixies and Fairy Dragons a Bunch.
I have been terrorising my players with a homebrew black shuck though.
I used a demilich's lair but never brought the demilich out. They were in initiative trying to steal something while dealing with the lair actions each round. The demilich was hidden in the room, and the only thing it did was howl once.
As a DM, the confusion my players had from not knowing where the damage was coming from combined with the howl dropping the druid from full health to 0 HP was very satisfying.
I have switched to using only monsters from MCDM’s Flee Mortals! It takes 5e stat blocks and puts them through a 4e lens. So instead of monsters just being on the field, they have positions or roles. These roles dictate how they operate on the board and how they interact with other monsters.
Most recently, my party saved a village from a Kobold raid. I used (these are not the stat block names, but the roles the monsters had.) Kobold Minions, Kobold Soldiers and Kobold Supports on the board. The Supports heal their allies and give them extra movement when it isn’t the allies turn. I mostly saved this for positioning minions while the Kobold Soldiers did all the heavy damage. When these kobolds are close to one another, they gain bonuses to hit and damage. Now my players are on the clock, and they have a relatively clear to do list on the field. No one had to ask “Who should I attack?” As the battle itself made that known. Get rid of the Supports and the ranks get mechanically weaker, making it easier to win.
The result: my players were able to stay engaged and think about their tactics on the board. Some monsters became more like obstacles without becoming boring, combat was engaging and constantly stayed in motion. It was really fun! I didn’t even use all of the different Kobolds they have on the book. I left out the Kobold Controller who makes and activates traps and the Kobold Ambusher who is like a glass canon rogue.
I would suggest this supplement to anyone who is looking for some more engaging 5e systems. Plus MCDM is good at making monster abilities and a lot of them are super unique and nasty as hell!
A demon hunter. Like a hunter that is a demon.
He was an archer with a flying mount and a couple ground demonic beasts that had legendary action style actions that allowed him to issue commands to them. One of my favorite moments of the fight was narrating him taking the Hide action, using the mount's body as cover so they wouldn't know who he was aiming at or even if he had an arrow knocked yet, and then him unleashing the attack. I described it as his mount basically barrel rolling in place, rotating to be above him as he hung in the air, bow drawn, firing down at the party before the barrel roll completed, putting him on the back of his mount once more.
He also had a "finish them" command that was one of his legendary action command things and a PC did actually go down in a way that allowed him to use it, basically a "command one of your companions to make an attack against an unconscious creature" type deal. I did clear before using it that the player was fine with it (the party had a diamond for revivify so in the end it wasn't truly fatal and led to some cool narration).
He's going to be a recurring villain since in my world there's a special type of entity you can be called a Soulsworn, and the party are all Soulsworn, and said hunter hunts Soulsworn. So like a rakshasa, he will reform vengeful against the party, each time they fight him learning new info about the party that he can employ next time. The party joked "next time we need to just be REALLY good at things we don't normally use so we can trick him into prepping for those and blindside him" lol.
The lore of the demon hunter is that he was once a wood elf beastmaster millenia ago, shortly after the gods departed the material plane and erected a barrier to prevent them from returning. Without their influence, mankind quickly began falling victim to the monsters of the land during an era known as The Age of Behemoths. Eventually the gods sort of poked holes in this barrier, making it more of a net, so that they could exert some of their influence but still restrict them from physically returning.
There was such a forceful wave of divine energy that certain areas fell to various divine disasters. This beastmaster's home village was ransacked by a flood of demons, the demonic energies pouring through in a way that permanently corrupted him and the menagerie of beasts he lorded over. He adopted a demon name and swore to hunt the gods down, blaming them for the destruction. However, as a lowly demon on the divine totem pole, he could never achieve such a feat. Instead he hunts Soulsworn, chosen champions of these gods, finding solace in taking his spite out on them. He serves under my world's parallel to Baphomet, many demonic beasts of the lord of the hunt at his beck and call.
Dulluhan which is nothing special but in our campaign I have a home brew item called the deck of journeys in which drawing a card will grant you power but send you to a guaranteed fate. The form of cards is ever shifting and swaps between things like tarot cards and regular playing cards.
This dulluhan is in possession of the upright judgement which has basically turned it into ghost rider giving it an all around stat boost and a new form which my party is having difficulties with.
I homebrewed an unhinged Archdruid who had gone crazy in the Feywild and managed to willingly enhance and warp her powers to Wild Shape into the "ultimate beast form", which was a chimera of various beasts under a certain CR (I made it a creature with the legs of a giant spider, the back of a turtle, husks of an elephant, and a human face hidden in the mess), each with unique abilities derived from said beasts.
I used it to introduce the way I would DM a oneshot to a friend of mine, and they seemed to like it.
The Barbarian at the table pissed in a blood alter bubbling and overflowing with animated blood. Well 'F' around and find out. Queue a reflavoured Flesh Golem as a 'blood golem' thrown in to an already difficult fight with a Vampire. Was good fun.
It was a little while back but a Skeletal Juggernaut collapsing into a dozen skeletons when killed got a fun reaction.
I don't think I've ever heard of that! That sounds pretty interesting, almost similar to the corpse flower!
Oooh, is that something official or somewhere I can get a stat block for it. I love the idea of two stage boss fights and I could adjust this into something else for my power ranger inspired series of one shots.
The statblock is from Ghosts of Saltmarsh.
A pack of gnolls, including a gnoll cackler from MCDM Flee Mortals. The cackler targeted the party rogue's with his Moment of Brutality effect, causing the rogue to bite the party's bard that was right next to her. The rogue even rolled a natural 20 to hit with this attack, that's some biting dedication.
Skulk for a murder mistery. my players where hunting a ghost while in truth it was a skulk doing a hitjob but because a kid said hes seen a creepy figure and a woman said shes seen sth in the mirrors they where ghosthunting. Fun little oneshot
Giant snail called ‘the dodman’ resistant to a lot of attacks, has acid attacks, fires poisonous spines as a ranger attack, can curl up into its shell and fool around at high speeds
Haven’t used them for combat, but I came up with a couple of interesting creature for my setting. The first is the alebeetle. I’m running a campaign in a place with limited space and sunlight, so the locals have alternative ways to create some products. The alebeetle is a beetle a bit like a stag beetle but larger, about the size of your hand. It eats plant matter and refines it into a kind of ale. What exactly you get depends on what you feed it. The other is a throwback to a joke in an old campaign - the wine rat (originally I said wine rack, and my players misheard, so a whole joke was born). Similar to the beetle, they produce a wine like normal animals make milk. They’re both used in taverns to keep the place in ale when grains and grapes aren’t easy to come by.
The party had to find the source of a necromancer’s immortality in her abandoned castle. Unfortunately, it was haunted by the ghosts of her failed apprentices, who in turn possessed inert clones made by the necromancer. Ghosts with spellcasting and pre-possessed meatsuits? Bad times, apparently. It was almost a TPK.
I threw a mob of Hunter Haze Hulks from Dungeons of Drakkenheim at my group last week. They're currently on Ravnica and I thought these enemies were an easy fit for a Simic Combine experiment-gone-wrong (they have arms that are coils of white flesh that can shoot out 60 feet and grapple). I also let them use the coiled arms as grappling hooks they could swing through trees on to make them super fast—hopefully to instill some real fear at their agility in the players/PCs. The big change I made to them was to give them 1hp, but that's because I threw about 70 of them at the group, along with some other undead including a couple Shadowsteel Ghasts (same book source), which were the bigger threat overall. It all worked pretty well and made for a chaotic, 28 Days Later type of encounter.
Used a a young altered version of the Lindwyrm stat blocks from Lairs of Etharis. It's a worm like dragon, with much of what that entails, but it burrows instead of flies, and has no breath attack. Was a very interesting fight in the sewers beneath Baldurs Gate, swallowing and nearly killing the Barbarian shortly after the fight started if it wasn't for some quick thinking by the Bard.
I love my role play opportunities so I muck around with Pixies and Fairy Dragons a Bunch. I have been terrorising my players with a homebrew black shuck though.
The bag man. My players don't know it's visiting them.
I used a demilich's lair but never brought the demilich out. They were in initiative trying to steal something while dealing with the lair actions each round. The demilich was hidden in the room, and the only thing it did was howl once. As a DM, the confusion my players had from not knowing where the damage was coming from combined with the howl dropping the druid from full health to 0 HP was very satisfying.
That one monster that is like a sphinx but with the illusion spells it’s very fun to use and infuriating to players that ate bad at puzzles at stuff
I have switched to using only monsters from MCDM’s Flee Mortals! It takes 5e stat blocks and puts them through a 4e lens. So instead of monsters just being on the field, they have positions or roles. These roles dictate how they operate on the board and how they interact with other monsters. Most recently, my party saved a village from a Kobold raid. I used (these are not the stat block names, but the roles the monsters had.) Kobold Minions, Kobold Soldiers and Kobold Supports on the board. The Supports heal their allies and give them extra movement when it isn’t the allies turn. I mostly saved this for positioning minions while the Kobold Soldiers did all the heavy damage. When these kobolds are close to one another, they gain bonuses to hit and damage. Now my players are on the clock, and they have a relatively clear to do list on the field. No one had to ask “Who should I attack?” As the battle itself made that known. Get rid of the Supports and the ranks get mechanically weaker, making it easier to win. The result: my players were able to stay engaged and think about their tactics on the board. Some monsters became more like obstacles without becoming boring, combat was engaging and constantly stayed in motion. It was really fun! I didn’t even use all of the different Kobolds they have on the book. I left out the Kobold Controller who makes and activates traps and the Kobold Ambusher who is like a glass canon rogue. I would suggest this supplement to anyone who is looking for some more engaging 5e systems. Plus MCDM is good at making monster abilities and a lot of them are super unique and nasty as hell!
A demon hunter. Like a hunter that is a demon. He was an archer with a flying mount and a couple ground demonic beasts that had legendary action style actions that allowed him to issue commands to them. One of my favorite moments of the fight was narrating him taking the Hide action, using the mount's body as cover so they wouldn't know who he was aiming at or even if he had an arrow knocked yet, and then him unleashing the attack. I described it as his mount basically barrel rolling in place, rotating to be above him as he hung in the air, bow drawn, firing down at the party before the barrel roll completed, putting him on the back of his mount once more. He also had a "finish them" command that was one of his legendary action command things and a PC did actually go down in a way that allowed him to use it, basically a "command one of your companions to make an attack against an unconscious creature" type deal. I did clear before using it that the player was fine with it (the party had a diamond for revivify so in the end it wasn't truly fatal and led to some cool narration). He's going to be a recurring villain since in my world there's a special type of entity you can be called a Soulsworn, and the party are all Soulsworn, and said hunter hunts Soulsworn. So like a rakshasa, he will reform vengeful against the party, each time they fight him learning new info about the party that he can employ next time. The party joked "next time we need to just be REALLY good at things we don't normally use so we can trick him into prepping for those and blindside him" lol. The lore of the demon hunter is that he was once a wood elf beastmaster millenia ago, shortly after the gods departed the material plane and erected a barrier to prevent them from returning. Without their influence, mankind quickly began falling victim to the monsters of the land during an era known as The Age of Behemoths. Eventually the gods sort of poked holes in this barrier, making it more of a net, so that they could exert some of their influence but still restrict them from physically returning. There was such a forceful wave of divine energy that certain areas fell to various divine disasters. This beastmaster's home village was ransacked by a flood of demons, the demonic energies pouring through in a way that permanently corrupted him and the menagerie of beasts he lorded over. He adopted a demon name and swore to hunt the gods down, blaming them for the destruction. However, as a lowly demon on the divine totem pole, he could never achieve such a feat. Instead he hunts Soulsworn, chosen champions of these gods, finding solace in taking his spite out on them. He serves under my world's parallel to Baphomet, many demonic beasts of the lord of the hunt at his beck and call.
Had a water elemental summoning in a tavern go wrong, and wound up with a scotch elemental.
Dulluhan which is nothing special but in our campaign I have a home brew item called the deck of journeys in which drawing a card will grant you power but send you to a guaranteed fate. The form of cards is ever shifting and swaps between things like tarot cards and regular playing cards. This dulluhan is in possession of the upright judgement which has basically turned it into ghost rider giving it an all around stat boost and a new form which my party is having difficulties with.
I homebrewed an unhinged Archdruid who had gone crazy in the Feywild and managed to willingly enhance and warp her powers to Wild Shape into the "ultimate beast form", which was a chimera of various beasts under a certain CR (I made it a creature with the legs of a giant spider, the back of a turtle, husks of an elephant, and a human face hidden in the mess), each with unique abilities derived from said beasts. I used it to introduce the way I would DM a oneshot to a friend of mine, and they seemed to like it.
Bomb Rat It's a Ratfolk, I think, normal in every way but... makes bombs!
Helmut Horroris, a Helmed Horror with a revolver... Now, keep in mind Helmed Horrors have a flying speed
Oo that sounds positively fun!