D&D: Haunt Your Players With These Five Spooky Monsters
It’s spooky season and that means it’s time for all the creepies and crawlies to creep and crawl out of the shadows and into your encounters.
Nothing says “October in a D&D game” like spooky monsters. Terrifying monsters that haunt your characters’ dreams and nightmares are baked into the D&DNA of the game, if you will. And there’s something about this month that lends itself extra well to spookables.
Whether you’re breaking out the ghosts or the living embodiments of darkness, these spooky monsters are sure to be a nail biting hit as we head towards the shortest, darkest days of the year.
Ghost
Let’s start with a classic. Ghosts in D&D are a classic creepy encounter. And there are a couple of reasons for this. If your players know nothing about Ghosts, then the fact that they can possess players and cause one party member to turn against the others is bad enough.
But add to that the fact that they are so scary you might literally age 10-40 years in a single glance, and Ghosts have a great way of unnerving players at the table, so long as they know it’s a possibility. And you could even play with this consequence if you don’t want to age characters with shorter lifespans. Instead of aging 1d4x10 years, you could have them experience visions of the ghost’s demise. Or some other less permanent effect that’s still quite creepy.
Nightwalker
The Negative Plane is a place of death. It is anathema to all living things. And it is this place of enmity to life that creates some of the most terrifying creatures in the Monster Manual.
Nightwalkers are found lurking in the depths of the Shadowfell, where the barrier between planes is weaker. But they hide a terrible secret. If you encounter one in the material world, it is because someone has gone into the Negative Plane.
That’s right. For every creature entering the Negative Plane, one of these terrors is released to take its place in the waking world. And the only way for someone to return is to lure the Nightwalker back to the Negative Plane with offerings of life—should the Nightwalker be destroyed, the captive creature has no hope of escaping the Negative Energy plane. But even being near one of these monstrous undead creatures can be fatal to unprotected characters.
Nosferatu
Taken straight out of folklore, Nosferatu in D&D are a little more tragically spooky. These powerful undead feast upon anything with blood with an almost mindless hunger. They regenerate, can disgorge blood offensively, and anyone they slay with their terrifying bite, riss again as a Nosferatu.
These creatures possess the thirst of vampires, but none of their grace. Only in the moments when a nosferatu has recently fed, do they regain lucidity and memory, recalling glimpses of who they were: when they had pride and ambition. But these creatures quickly fade into the forgotten monsters they once were, doomed to create more in their wake.
Oblex
Oblexes are another hauntingly good spooky monster. These are intelligent oozes that feed upon memories, absorbing personalities to create replicas of their victims which they use to find more prey.
These aberrant oozes hunger for memory, and without it they will be empty, devoid of purpose and drive. But when an Oblex finds a suitable mind and devours it, their memories become part of the Oblex. They become saturated with their victims’ memories and personalities until they must split to avoid storing too much knowledge. These monsters take who you are and use it against your closest friends.
Necrichor
Finally, we have the Necrichor. These are beings of living blood, formed from the ichor of evil gods or from the sludge of failed liches. But do not mistake their lack of a physical form, or their “failure” status as a weakness. These malevolent creatures retain their towering intellects and megalomaniacal goals.
Ageless and immortal, a Necrichor can inhabit a body, turning a victim’s blood against it. In this way, it can work its will upon the world once more. But this blood puppeteering isn’t horrific enough. Necrichors are more resilient—any creature they touch carries a trace of their essence within their veins. And from that tainted essence, they will be reborn until the last creature that carries a trace passes from the world.
Many mystical orders try to imprison them, but as time passes and memories fade, few remember what these beings were in the first place, and one day, an imprisoned Necrichor might escape once more…
What are your favorite spooky monsters?
