The Five Scariest Monsters in D&D
Dungeons & Dragons is a game full of powerful monsters of varying strengths. But these ones are the scariest.
In all of Dungeons & Dragons, there is an entire manual full of monsters and fearsome foes. Each one has claws and fangs enough for a whole catalog of components. Some have deadly poison. Others wield powerful magic.
But for our money, these are five of the most frightening monsters in Dungeons & Dragons. Not necessarily the deadliest. You won’t find Tarrasques here, necessarily. But rather monsters that make for those intense moments where the whole course of your character might change in a heartbeat. And fate itself teeters on the roll of the die.
Ghost
This one’s pretty simple because it’s literally frightening. Ghosts are pretty difficult foes to fight because they’re incorporeal and resistant to most damage. In addition, they can possess your allies, turning them into ablative armor while wielding your hit points.
But what really makes them terrifying is their ability horrifying visage, which can literally scare you to death. A single failed save can age you 10-40 years in a single instant.
If you’re most characters (who only live to be 100 or so), that’s anywhere from around 1/10th to 1/3rd of your lifespan. And that’s assuming you only face one ghost that day. You might literally be scared to death with a poor saving throw.
Intellect Devourer
These are the adorable brain dog pets of Mind Flayers. But don’t let their cute cerebral countenance fool you. An Intellect Devourer can make you absolutely rue the day that you dumped Intelligence. These cunning little creatures can stalk their prey, and when they find an incapacitated humanoid, they can teleport into their skull, magically devouring their brain and taking over the body and personality of their unwilling host.
They gain access to their target’s memories and motivations. And can adapt the target’s tactics, but now it has control and can use the body for the nefarious end. But on top of that, they can render anyone incapacitated, they don’t need to wait for you to fall asleep. A special attack can reduce a creature’s Intelligence to 0, stunning them until they can regain that lost Intelligence, allowing the Intellect Devourer to create a host in the middle of a fight.
Death Tyrant
If you ever want to watch a party of adventurers start to fret, throw a Death Tyrant at them. These undead beholders are powerful foes who retain most of the power of their living kin. They have 10 eye rays, each more deadly than the last. Chief among them are the Disintegration Ray and Death Ray, which outright kill characters whose hit points they reduce to 0.
But what makes Death Tyrants so particularly terrifying is their Negative Energy Cone. This is a 150-foot cone of negative energy that enervates any creature inside. Any creature caught in its blast cannot regain hit points. Any humanoid that dies while inside becomes a zombie under the Death Tyrant’s command.
Suddenly players whose characters drop to 0 hit points can’t just bounce back up again with a healing word. And if you die outright, you become a zombie helping the Death Tyrant. Worse yet, even if you manage to defeat the Death Tyrant, your friend is now a zombie. So no Revivify or Resurrection will bring them back. They’ve become undead. And weirdly enough, if you kill them, Revivify returns them to life as a Zombie.
Nightwalker
We’ve talked about the terrifying Nightwalker before, These creatures not only paralyze and enervate foes, they deal scads of damage. And any creature whose hit points they reduce to 0 dies outright. Creatures slain by a Nightwalker have their life devoured, and cannot be revived except by a wish spell.
Making Nightwalkers one of the very few monsters whose threat can’t be overcome with a 300gp diamond.
Players Having Complex Lives With More Responsibilities Making it Hard to Meet Regularly
To date, this monster has defeated more parties of adventurers than anything in the Monster Manual.
Happy adventuring!
