A while ago, D&Dn Beyond featured articles titled six ways to use [name of monster]. I plan to post, here on the forum, six ways for each monster in the Monster Manual, doing one monster a week. Anyone that wants to help contribute is welcome.

6 Ways to use… Aaracockra

• Given that they fly, they can keep the players updated with what's going on the in the world, letting your quest have proper scale.
• The enemies have an army. Can the PCs hold them off long enough for the aaracockra to complete the ritual?
• The enemy at the top is too powerful for the aaracokra. It also has ranged capabilities. Can the aaracockra help the players reach the top, where they can fight it, without exposing themselves suicidally.
• The enemy in the dungeon is too powerful for the players. The aaracockra won't fight indoors. Lure the enemy outside to claim victory. You'll still have to stop it from retreating, of course.
• The aaracockra are hostile. If you don't want to climb the mountain while being sniped, you'll have to do it while the aaracockra are grounded on account of a storm. Of course, storms aren't exactly ideal climbing weather.
• Yan-C-Bin [prince of elemental evil. Air] has corrupted the ritual. Stop the aaracockra before they summon a corrupted air elemental that will lay waste to the entire area.

alright, you're on.

6 ways to use Aboleth

1. Aboleths are the oldest creatures in existance. imagine what secrets they hold
2. they live underwater, imagine the turf wars between Aboleths, Krakens, Merrow, Shaugin, and Merfolk
3. the thing with Aboleths is that they can do mind control. an aboleth under the city, slowly but surely controlling those above to suit its ends. the perfect dungeon crawl to interupt yor intrigue campaign
4. the Aboleth is friendly, or so it seems. it trurns out the Aboleth was controlling the villain the entire time!
5. Aboleths can create duplicates of themselves in their lair, imagine a labrynthine sea cave with numerous fake Aboleths in numerous fake boss rooms
6. it dosent say the duplicate aboleths die when the main one does. perhaps a very old Aboleth has died and lived on in illusory duplicates multiple times, and now the latest copy is but a shadow of the Aboleth's former glory

Thanks to Capatin Crunch for joining in:

Next: 

13 ways to use… Angels

1) One to the classic questions is why, if there are angels, don’t they handle all the problems. I would suggest that, as most beings are a combination of good and evil, they have trouble distinguishing. Either that, or higher access to the mortal plane by celestials makes access for fiends easier.

2) Trouble distinguishing between shades of grey will also explain why celestial being living on the mortal plane prefer to live in the middle of nowhere. Virually all being have too much evil in them for comfort.

3) Angels are too proud, and too honest, to use invisibility to fight. Instead, they’ll use it to give the impression that they’re all knowing. Too use this, have the players be talking among themselves, and suddenly they realize that the angel was behind them, and they have no idea how he got there. (Deva’s will use change shape to achieve the same effect.)

4) Use an angel’s healing touch to provide small, min-quest rewards. If you want to annoy your players, have the angel decide who to heal based not on need, but on virtue [how pious they are.]

Deva

5) The deva will use its shapechanging ability to test whether they deserve to be helped. If you want to make it challenging, provide reasons for them not to help. (Example: An old lady needs help crossing a bridge, but they’re late for an appointment.)

6) The deva likes to give advice in the guise of kind old elderly people. This can lead to interesting circumstances, when such a person who is not the deva say something to the players. This can be either coincidence, or a villain taking advantage of it.

7) When evil [fallen], the deva will use its shape change ability to lead them into terrain that favors the deva. For example, a narrow path where they’ll have trouble using their numbers, with ample foliage to mess up ranged.

(I hope to provide the last 6 ways, 3 each for the planatar and the solar, later this week.)

Planetar

 8. When asking the planetar for help, have him grill them about their past deeds and/or hypothetical situations, to see if they’re worthy. He can tell if they try to lie. (Winning is spinning the answer to their advantage without outright lying.)

9. When hostile, have the planetar use Blade Barrier to isolate one PC, so it can duel and kill him. In mountains, Blade Barrier is especially nasty, as it will sever ropes and impose disadvantage on climb skill checks.

10. Control Weather is also a powerful spell to use in battle. You just need to set it up in advance. Bring down strong winds when climbing mountains, or a flash flood in a canyon. In addition, the planetar can send Flame Strikes against them as they try to reach safety.

Solar

 11. For a plot complication, have the solar (or any other angel) insist on taking out a certain, less important villain. The players know that doing so would be a mistake (morally or strategically), but the angel won’t listen. If the PCs won’t do it, he’ll send someone else. What do they do?

12. In combat, the solar will use Control weather to fill the sky with scattered clouds. (With 25 INT, it’s not caught by surprise). It its turn, it will shoot, make a flying sword attack, and go back up. In between turns, it will teleport around, so they won’t know where to send area spells.

13. For an absolutely deadly battle, have the players be trying to beat the clock in a trap dungeon while fighting a solar. The solar can teleport to always be in the way, it can avoid many trap effect by flying, and it can blind them. Use for really powerful players only.

Ai'ght, my turn

6 13 Ways to use: Animated Objects

1. use them to stock your scooby doo dungeon
2. imagine an animated objects that believes itself to be its creator
3. the reason why whoever killed the dragon didn't take their hoard, or return
4. a swarm of them

Animated Armor

1. some of them can hold a conversation, imagine a message from the past, held in an animated armor
2. the reason no one has ever seen or heard one of the city guards talk
3. the reason the black knight doesn't notice when his limbs are chopped off (Monty Python, anyone?)

Flying Sword

1. it turns out the maguffin sword was alive and murderous the whole time!
2. a master swordsman taking on one of these as an apprentice (wholesome times)
3. a war god or similar being just summoning LOADS of these things

Rug Of Smothering

1. it wasn't a flying carpet at all! roll initative
2. a wizard using these things as props or servents
3. a rug wrapped corpse being controlled by these things

6 Ways to Use… Ankhegs

1) Tactics: The ankheg will stay below the surface except when its acid is ready to be fired, then it will emerge, fire, and burrow back that same turn. It will also surface to attack someone standing in soil, but it will burrow back that same turn.

2) You can increase difficulty by not letting the players know how many ankhegs they’re facing. For this reason, I would suggest starting the fight with their acid awaiting recharge. You can say that they only start building it up when they sense prey.

3) Because a fight where the enemy is constantly out of reach is very frustrating, I would give the players a different goal rather than defeating the ankhegs. For example, have there be a heavy treasure chest in the middle of their soil that the players need ot obtain.

Interesting Encounters:

4) When the villain sees he’s had it, have him run for it over ankheg land. For an even harder battle, through a tunnel that goes through ankheg land. (The villain himself is wearing ankheg repellent.)

5) For a lethal pit trap, have falling in to the trap also trigger the release of ankhegs, who will immiediatly burrow into the trap. The players are surrounded by earth on all sides.

6) The players see the villains that they are after, but there is ankheg land in the middle, and no easy way to go around in a hurry. The villains don’t know about the PCs, and may or may not know about the ankhegs. The villains should have at least some ranged attacks.

6 ways to use… azer

Offense

 1) The azer are lawful. They fight well together. This gives rise to several basic strategies, such as all swarming the same target, and changing postion so that the target PC blocks the most wounded from ranged attacks.

2) Being grappled by an azer is worth 1d10 damage a turn, from touching it. This is almost half of an attack’s damage. I’d say they still need more reason to grapple. One way is to have one of them knock a PC prone, and another grapple to keep him that way.

3) When fighting, have them run through bushes and anything else flammable when possible. Not only will this create obstacles that will only hurt the other side, it will also limit visibility. Plus, fire spreads.

Defense

 4) When in their base, the best think they can do is dump a lot of coal onto the fire, and fight defensivly. If the players don’t take them down fast, the heat will become a deadly weapon. (Have them be holding a key, or some such, to give the players motivation.)

5) Outside, they’ll run through bushes and anything else flammable. Try catching a fleeing foe when he’s leaving burning obstacles in his wake.

6) If they can reach a human dwelling, have them jam the door and start setting everything on fire. When the PCs force the door open, the sudden influx of fresh air will cause the fire to flare up in their faces.

6 Ways to use… Banshee

1) Incorporeal movement and fear don’t combine (fear requires eyesight). My solution – have the banshee draw out the melee, move past them through the floor, then use fear to keep the melee away while attacking the mages.

2) The temptation is to start with the banshee’s wail, as that’s it’s strangest attack. If you wait until mid-combat, though, then it can feel like the final blow to players who are already struggling, and it will be a lot harder to heal PCs not unconscious.

3) Evil creatures, or bandits, can ply to banshee with gifts and compliments, getting permission for themselves to share her domain. If you were wondering who to work a banshee into your story.

4) Banshees can come from any elves, which means you can have drow who became banshee’s, which in turn means that your haunted house can have spiders (swarms, giant, or phase spider). Plus, they fit a haunted house perfectly.

5) When a banshee has been defeated, that is a good time for her to disappear through the floor, only to harry them again later. She can hide on the other side of a wall, and use life sense to know exactly when to pop out.

6) Old castles, of the type that it’s fun to make haunted, have long twisting staircases. Knock out a PC there, or even trip him, and he might fall all the way to the bottom. If there are PCs below him, they might fall also. (Although there’s a chance them might catch him.)

you thought you got rid of me didn't you! *evil laugh* its showtime

6 ways to use... basilisk

1. they live in the underdark.  what it drow used them as living torture devices, slowly turning you to stone until you give them what they want

2. a Medusa keeping one as a pet

3. how long do basilisks live? imagine an eons old basilisk who is nearly immobile, but whose mere presence can petrify you

4. they eat rocks. what is they ate adamantine or mithril?

5. bet you didn't know that alchemists can prosses basilisk bodies to make a cure for petrification

6. a drow, mind flayer, or other intelligent underdark being capitalizing on the basilisks fearsome reputation by carving statues of humanoids themselves and breaking off peices to make it look like a basilisk lairs there

Welcome back. It's good to see you again.

6 ways to use… behir

 1) The behir, when on its own, is a hit and run enemy. Not because it doesn’t have the HP for a long battle (the more typical reason), but because once it’s swallowed an enemy, it has no reason to continue the battle.

2) Hit and run tactics provide a good way to get the PCs together into a narrow area (tunnel). The perfect setup for lightning breath.

3) When chased into a tunnel, the behir is smart enough to hide in a hole, (which can be in the walls or ceiling, thanks to spider climb) and then come out after the PCs passed and return the other way. This also lets it ambush the squishy back ranks, if it’s still hungry.

4) Beware chasing the behir onto ledges. It will instinctively avoid the weak spots, going back and forth between the wall and the ledge (via spider climb) so it doesn’t fall. The PCs will step onto a weak spot, and plummet down as the ledge breaks under them.

5) To shake things up more, place a tunnel behind a pile of rubble, or loose boulders. The behir will wait there in order to ambush the PCs, and will end up sending the stones falling onto them as it lunges out.

6) In a stalactite cave, the behir will move/jump from stalactite to stalactite for increased mobility. While it won’t step anywhere that will cause a collapse, the PC spellcasters might not be that careful, which will add falling columns to the battle.

aww thanks

6 ways to use Beholders

1. beholder dreams can warp reality. weird stuff happening can be chalked up to a beholder having wild dreams
2. building off the last point, imagine if a beholder could do lucid dreaming?
3. any self respecting beholder will have their house(lair) rigged up like home alone
4. speaking of lairs, creatures feel like their being watched while in the area. time to break out the tinfoil hats, because the all seeing eye is watching you
5. building off that what if a beholder was openly in charge of the city, and seemed to know everything that went on there. not because it seems everything, but because of gazer spies
6. beholders see themselves as the epitomie of beholderkind. you thinking what I'm thinking? BEHOLDER BEAUTY CONTESTS (beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all) (also apirl fools)

(This time, I'm letting myself do beholders even thought they've already been done. They are one of D&D's most famous monsters, and I kind of want to do them myself as well.)

9 ways to use… Beholder

 1( Before running a beholder, make a chart of which PCs are the best choice of target’s for eye ray 1, which are okay targets, and which are last option targets. Do it for each eye ray. It might not seem complex, but it will speed up the battle a lot.

2) Beholders are from the class of villains who talk/brag through the entire battle. Prepare a list of prepared remarks. Don’t worry about them being cheesy. Don’t respond when the players make fun of them, just go on to the next one.

3) A beholder battle consists of seeing whether the PCs can reach the beholder before it slaughters them. Once they reach it, the battle’s won. Accordingly, set up traps, obstacles, minions, or anything else to stop them getting near. Don’t run the beholder by itself.

4) Beholders are going to be especially fond of pit traps. They can float right over them, so the traps reinforce its feelings of superiority, and provide an obstacle that doesn’t hinder it at all.

5) An ideal situation for the beholder, and a very challenging one for the players, is if they’re stuck in an area (such as a pit) where they can’t avoid the main eye ray, and with ongoing damage (acid, at the bottom of the pit.) It the beholder keeps them there, it wins.

6) You can’t choose which eye rays will fire, so any plan requires the ability to work with multiple eye rays. I used barrels of slippery oil, which it can spill with teleport, destroy with disintegrate, or unbalance (and make fall) by petrifying the right part of them.

7) If you want a trap, the beholder could have crossbows with their strings drawn back magically, or weights handing magically from the ceiling. As soon as the beholder looks at them, the crossbows fire and the weights drop.

8) City invasion scenario: There are monsters attacking from multiple directions, and the players have to get past them to reach the palace. Every so often, the beholder will zap their magic for a round, then hit them with eye rays as it moves elsewhere.

9) Idea for players: To defeat a beholder, shine a bright light. If forced to close its eyes, the beholder is totally helpless.

that's fair.

6 ways to use Spectators (I figured that your reasons above also apply to death tyrants)

1. the patron of the party needs a spectator to guard a magic item, but needs beholder stalks

2. building on that, the BBEG is using a spectator to guard the maguffin

3. using the spectator as a food factory.

4. building on THAT idea, using the spectators infinite food glich to put several inns out of buissness

5. bricking up innumerable spectators into the walls of your evil walking castle. they don't starve to death, and reflect any and all spells directed against your evil walking castle

6. a spectator sealed in a vault beneath the earth, protecting a vast library. it has the bit of information the PCs need

11 ways to use… Blights

 1) Blights make ideal horror monsters. They’re vaguely humoniod and yet different enough to be scary, they make the forests around them so overgown that the terrain provideds appropriate background, and unlike undead, they haven’t already been done to death.

2) I would suggest that blights instinctively remain together somewhat. Either that, or haunt the same type of places. Also that they hide during the day, unless they sense prey. Having a number of them suddenly emerging out of nowhere is definitely the coolest way to use them.

Needle blights

 3) The only type of blight that can’t disguise itself, it makes up for it with sixty feet of range and blindsight, which allows it to shoot through thick vegetation. The PCs shouldn’t be able to see more than 20-30 feet through the vegetation, and even that imperfectly.

4) It goes without saying that the needle blight won’t move closer, but if it also retreats after shooting, the players are going to be in trouble. They can’t see where it is, and it might retreat to the sides. (Retreating has to be instinct, as they have no intelligence.)

5) When moving toward a needle blight, have them get cut by thorns, tripped by vines, and stumble on hidden, overgrown holes. If you like, you could also have them suddenly get hit from the side by more needle blights, arriving once they heard the sound of the fight.

(to be continued)

Twig blights

 6) Twig blights rest inside the ground. When do they emerge? If the smell of blood, have a bunch of them suddenly emerge mid-battle, from anywhere on the battlefield. If it’s sensing vibrations, the players had better think twice when they step on bare earth during a battle.

7) Have the players be on a jutting out piece of land that’s next to a cliff. T=Suddenly the twig blights emerge…. And the land gives way, causing everyone t fall. Whoops!

8) Twig blights are flammable. Why should they not keep burning after being killed by fire? Prest, mini walls of fire clogging up the battlefield. (I don’t they’d burn for more than a round, but that’s enough to be trouble.)

Vine Blights

 9) The Monster Manual tells us that sometimes blights are occupying a village they recently ruined. If you break out of a tangle of plants inside a house, and the floor’s already weakened from vegetation, this could cause the floor to give way entirely.

10) The classic way to use entangle: have there be some danger that the PCs have to keep moving to avoid. This could be a fire, a pursuing swarm, or an onslaught of ranged attacks (see needle blights).

11) Have the PC slip off a cliff, and a vine blight catches him with its vine whip. How does he get free without killing himself? (The vine blight made a mistake. They’re unintelligent, anyway. Mechanically, it did it via a readied action.)

8 Ways to use… Bugbears 

Bugbear

The bugbear’s stat block gives them extra damage when making a surprise attack. This suggests a species that favors attacking from ambush to be a favorite fighting method. I’m going to supply different ways they might achieve that.

 1) The players approach an old castle in which the bugbears have their lair, and have to force open the door. This gives the bugbears time to climb down from the windows, and attack the players from behind as they enter.

2) When the bugbears see that they’re losing the fight, they break and run. If the players pursue, they’ll suddenly get clobbered from behind from bugbears hiding behind taperstires, or inside enourmous cooking pots, or the like.

3) When the players clear one room, and return past where they fought the bugbears before, mention in passing the number of dead and see if they notice that it increased. If they don’t, they’ll be clobbered from behind when they start to leave, by bugbears who were playing dead.

4) The bugbears fight from an advantegous position. When the players overcome them, they scatter. If the players split up to pursue, it becomes easier to ambush. If they don’t, most of the bugbears escape, to return again later.

5) When chasing a bugbear into a room, an open window or wardrobe door left ajar make great decoys. They might prevent players from checking behind the door or under the bed until too late.

6) Rig a staircase to collapse be removing its supports. When they fall, not only to the take falling damage, but the bugbears are waiting at the side to pounce.

Bugbear Chief

 7) The chief is immune to most conditions. This means if they come into a room with him about to trigger a trap, or bring down a chandeler, they have one turn to stop it, and few good options.

8) Have the bugbear chief wait on top of a narrow tunnel leading out, with an action readied to clobber them in and when they follow. Even if they know he’s there, it won’t be easy to deal with. For extra challenge, he’s covering for someone who’s fleeing, giving a time limit.

6 ways to use... bulette

 1) The bulette is likely to arrive in the middle of a different battle, drawn by the noise. When he does, the effect of knocking several PCs prone will be as singinficant as the fact that there is now a new enemy.

2) Bulettes are drawn to halflings, so if there is a halfling PC, the players will have to deal with a high CR enemy that is relentlessly attacking the same PC. On the other hand, the halfling’s most likely classes are perfect for surviving it.

3) The bulette is a chaotic monster. In a fight, he might attack the other enemies as readily as he attacks the PCs, letting you adjust how the battle is going, or just make stuff wild. Have fun.

4) The bulette can grapple a PC [probably a halfling], and then jump with that PC down a mountain or across a river. (Jumping doesn’t take an action if not used to attack.) The PC has to struggle to survive, while the others struggle to reach him.

5) The players need to kill the bulette for some reason, but don’t know where it is. How do you lure a bulette to you?

6) Just knowing a bulette is in the area will make it hard to cross rivers, climb mountains, and take out obstacles and enemies, as they’ll need to be on guard against a surprise attack at the worst time.

Plot devices

 7) The villain wants to get rid of the PCs, so he lures them into an area where he knows a bulette hunts. He can use constructs, elementals, and undead without them getting attacked, or he can sacrifice minions to do it.

8) The villain can place a portal or other item inside the bulette’s lands. Sure, travel to and from it will be a pain, but he’ll gain a guard and an early warning system. (Bulette’s aren’t quiet.)

9)Use an enchantment (mind magic) to persuade the bulette to hunt down a target.

6 ways to use… bullywugs (river ambushes)

The bullywug’s stat block builds them up as ambushers. Here are six ways to run a riverbank ambush, in an interesting manner.

1) Before carrying out a complex ambush, it’s a good idea to set a basic one. It lets your players know what to expect, and makes fighting the hard ones easier. (Give the bullywugs a piece of a plot item, if you need an excuse for multiple fights.)

2) What until the players have begun to cross, and then attack on both sides. They’ll have a hard time, with their party split up in a sub-optimal way.

3) The players are at a river, and movement in the reeds on the far side lets them know about waiting ambushers. It’s going to be difficulty to cross, as the first one across will face multiple attacks immediately.

4) The players are traveling by boat, when a bunch of bullywugs jump in. Not only do they have to fight them off, they have to stop them from capsizing it, as the bullywugs aren’t being careful of weight distribution.

5) After considerable searching, the player founds a [rickety] bridge and are crossing when they get attacked, with other bullywugs hacking at the supports. Do they abandon the bridge to reach safety, or dash for the far side?

6) An NPC they know has been tied up and is sinking into the swamp waters. It’s obviously a trap, but what are they supposed to do but enter it?

10 Ways to Use… Cambion

In the Material Plane

1) The cambion will use his alter self and fiendish charm to acquire a prominent position for himself. This will involve his enemies suffering strange misfortunes if he builds an identity, and his persona’s friends and relatives suffering misfortunes if he steals one.

2) When meeting the PCs, the cambion will do everything to be friendly to them and attach suspicion onto others. He’ll promise them anything reasonable, and try to send them on a quest that will get them killed to get rid of them.

3) Place the fight in a room thick with carpets, tapestries, couches, and the like. (The cambion’s private quarters). Any flame strike that misses will set the room alight. Eventually, the cambion will flee through a skylight or window. P.s Jam the door shut.

4) When exposed, he’ll disguise himself as someone else (provide 2-4 suspects), and will try to kill the PCs via laying traps and/or luring them into complex trap rooms that he set up before.

5) For a climax, have the cambion face the PCs in the company of a lot of guards. The guards are afraid of the cambion, not loyal. The PCs don’t have to kill the guards, they have to kill the cambion despite the guards, at which point the guards will happily change sides.

Lieutenant of Infernal Planes

 6) The first strategy of the cambion will be to lie to the PCs. Claim that he’s been sent after something they don’t care about, see if he can send them on a long quest, then do what he wants if they’ll take the bait.

7) Uses for fiendish charm: Order one of the PCs to go as far away as possible, the others can either run after him to break it, or let him go and face the cambion with one less party member. Or you can have the cambion reveal that he sent him into an ambush, and they’ll have no choice.

8) Order the PC to come into their midst and surrender. It’s not automatically suicidal, so it shouldn’t violate the rules, and it gains the cambion a hostage.

9) Sneak into the town before the battle with alter self, and order the mayor or guard captain to falsely accuse the PCs of something. Let’s see if they stay around after that.

10) Stealthily approach one of the PCs and give him exact instructions as to what he some things he should do or not do to throw the battle. Also, not to reveal that he was charmed. If the player is clever, he’ll figure out a way around the instructions.