I made this forum for people to complain about unpleasant encounters with monsters in their campaigns! Homebrew monsters do count, but it's advised to give at least a brief description of what they do that's so irritating. I'll go first:
My rogue and her three other allies (barbarian, sorcerer, and druid, all of us LV 2) were taking on our first dungeon, an overgrown tomb buried deep in the forest. Everything was going smoothly until the DM announced that the door behind us sealed shut: It's miniboss time. For the miniboss, we were squared up against a homebrew twist in an otherwise vanilla campaign: the Skeleton Vanguard. This guy was a tough fight, and with 15 AC and a decent chunk of HP, the fight took over three hours. As for abilities, the Vanguard was pretty much a skeleton with some levels in Fighter. Looks of frustration and fear flew across the room when they used Second Wind midway through the fight. My rogue and the barbarian both were knocked unconscious, and the druid died at the end. After the fight was over, the guy playing the druid rolled up a new character for after the dungeon, and we beat the main boss in one hour.
Now, it wouldn't be that bad if the Vanguard was a one-off, but the DM had other plans. Third Dungeon: Vangaurd shows up again as another miniboss, and my rogue dies. Fifth Dungeon: TWO Vanguards as the miniboss, and one at the entrance, to which the new sorcerer died. In the eighth dungeon, there were a total of SIX Vanguards stationed throughout, and no one survived the two before the main boss. I hate those Vanguards with a burning passion, now.
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Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
Terrasques are overrated. An adult dragon could wipe a terrasque any day. Its just a bunch of hit points! I don't like that the demon lords of the abyss, the astral dreadnoughts, and krakens are overshadowed by a big loud lizard
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my name is not Bryce
Actor
Certified Dark Sun enjoyer
usually on forum games and not contributing to conversations ¯\_ (ツ)_/
For every user who writes 5 paragraph essays as each of their posts: Remember to touch grass occasionally
Another monster that I despise is the Gelatinous Cube. I know, it's a D&D Classic and it doesn't do much that's difficult to work around, but I hate them for another reason: One dungeon, one campaign, one particularly sadistic DM.
The dungeon itself was crawling with Gelatinous Cubes, and they would patrol through the maze of corridors that made up most of the dungeon. These guys were almost impossible to avoid, as the corridors were exactly their shape and size. There wasn't any way around them that didn't involve combat, and our party got sandwiched between them more than I'd like to admit. But no, the real party-killer awaited towards the end of the dungeon: The Corridor of Invisible Death, as I call it.
The Corridor of Invisible Death is simple in concept: When the party enters, the door behind them closes, and a wall of Gelatinous Cubes shuffles to the opposite side of the hallway. How the DM expected us to survive was to run as fast as we could towards the end, but here's the kicker: The Cubes are hard to see, just like the ones in the maze. Therefore, we thought nothing was wrong until our Paladin got trapped in a Cube. By then, there was no escape, and the entire party was caught. We didn't have anywhere to go, so we could only watch in horror as our HP went into nosedives and our hopes dissolved along with our characters.
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Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
My dm created a series if homebrew monsters called “guardians” meant to enforce the “rules” of the campaign world (which the players often have to or simply choose to break). There is no inherent problem with these, they are often simply fun boss fights, but one is problematic. The “celestial guardian” is literally invincible. This is not an exaggeration. The dm placed it, let it attack the players that fought something else seconds before, and then later just had some other entity remove it.
Edit: It appeared again, and it’s much better this time. We acquired immunity to its main attacks. We still can’t do much to it, but it can’t do much to us, but we are playing on opposite sides. It ceased to be a monster and became a plot driver-forwarder.
Not edit: Also, giant scorpions. A cr3 monster should not one-shot a level 3 character. And greatwyrms are poorly designed, not balance wise or concept wise, just poorly made compared to ancient dragons. Compare the stat blocks to see what I mean.
Are party was made up of a ranger, bard, and two wizards (I know, right.) We had just survived a young white dragon attack and the DM was pissed that we had beat everything he threw at us, so he put us up against a vampire, long story short, one of the wizards lost half her hit point maximum, and the only thing that saved us was the vampire failing the WIS saving throw as our bard casted hold person.
Are party was made up of a ranger, bard, and two wizards (I know, right.) We had just survived a young white dragon attack and the DM was pissed that we had beat everything he threw at us, so he put us up against a vampire, long story short, one of the wizards lost half her hit point maximum, and the only thing that saved us was the vampire failing the WIS saving throw as our bard casted hold person.
I’m not even sure that’s supposed to work. Hold person targets humanoids, not undead.
Or that a dm should knowingly try to kill players with seemingly overleveled monsters. If your players beat the impossible encounter, just let them have the win and live to see another day instead of sending an even more impossible encounter.
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Royalty among the charge kingdom. All will fall before our glorious assault!
I made this forum for people to complain about unpleasant encounters with monsters in their campaigns! Homebrew monsters do count, but it's advised to give at least a brief description of what they do that's so irritating. I'll go first:
My rogue and her three other allies (barbarian, sorcerer, and druid, all of us LV 2) were taking on our first dungeon, an overgrown tomb buried deep in the forest. Everything was going smoothly until the DM announced that the door behind us sealed shut: It's miniboss time. For the miniboss, we were squared up against a homebrew twist in an otherwise vanilla campaign: the Skeleton Vanguard. This guy was a tough fight, and with 15 AC and a decent chunk of HP, the fight took over three hours. As for abilities, the Vanguard was pretty much a skeleton with some levels in Fighter. Looks of frustration and fear flew across the room when they used Second Wind midway through the fight. My rogue and the barbarian both were knocked unconscious, and the druid died at the end. After the fight was over, the guy playing the druid rolled up a new character for after the dungeon, and we beat the main boss in one hour.
Now, it wouldn't be that bad if the Vanguard was a one-off, but the DM had other plans. Third Dungeon: Vangaurd shows up again as another miniboss, and my rogue dies. Fifth Dungeon: TWO Vanguards as the miniboss, and one at the entrance, to which the new sorcerer died. In the eighth dungeon, there were a total of SIX Vanguards stationed throughout, and no one survived the two before the main boss. I hate those Vanguards with a burning passion, now.
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
Terrasques are overrated. An adult dragon could wipe a terrasque any day. Its just a bunch of hit points! I don't like that the demon lords of the abyss, the astral dreadnoughts, and krakens are overshadowed by a big loud lizard
my name is not Bryce
Actor
Certified Dark Sun enjoyer
usually on forum games and not contributing to conversations ¯\_ (ツ)_/
For every user who writes 5 paragraph essays as each of their posts: Remember to touch grass occasionally
Another monster that I despise is the Gelatinous Cube. I know, it's a D&D Classic and it doesn't do much that's difficult to work around, but I hate them for another reason: One dungeon, one campaign, one particularly sadistic DM.
The dungeon itself was crawling with Gelatinous Cubes, and they would patrol through the maze of corridors that made up most of the dungeon. These guys were almost impossible to avoid, as the corridors were exactly their shape and size. There wasn't any way around them that didn't involve combat, and our party got sandwiched between them more than I'd like to admit. But no, the real party-killer awaited towards the end of the dungeon: The Corridor of Invisible Death, as I call it.
The Corridor of Invisible Death is simple in concept: When the party enters, the door behind them closes, and a wall of Gelatinous Cubes shuffles to the opposite side of the hallway. How the DM expected us to survive was to run as fast as we could towards the end, but here's the kicker: The Cubes are hard to see, just like the ones in the maze. Therefore, we thought nothing was wrong until our Paladin got trapped in a Cube. By then, there was no escape, and the entire party was caught. We didn't have anywhere to go, so we could only watch in horror as our HP went into nosedives and our hopes dissolved along with our characters.
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
My dm created a series if homebrew monsters called “guardians” meant to enforce the “rules” of the campaign world (which the players often have to or simply choose to break). There is no inherent problem with these, they are often simply fun boss fights, but one is problematic. The “celestial guardian” is literally invincible. This is not an exaggeration. The dm placed it, let it attack the players that fought something else seconds before, and then later just had some other entity remove it.
Edit: It appeared again, and it’s much better this time. We acquired immunity to its main attacks. We still can’t do much to it, but it can’t do much to us, but we are playing on opposite sides. It ceased to be a monster and became a plot driver-forwarder.
Not edit: Also, giant scorpions. A cr3 monster should not one-shot a level 3 character. And greatwyrms are poorly designed, not balance wise or concept wise, just poorly made compared to ancient dragons. Compare the stat blocks to see what I mean.
Royalty among the charge kingdom. All will fall before our glorious assault!
Quest offer! Enter the deep dungeon here
Ctg’s blood is on the spam filter’s hands
Vampires aren't horrible, but they can be...
Are party was made up of a ranger, bard, and two wizards (I know, right.) We had just survived a young white dragon attack and the DM was pissed that we had beat everything he threw at us, so he put us up against a vampire, long story short, one of the wizards lost half her hit point maximum, and the only thing that saved us was the vampire failing the WIS saving throw as our bard casted hold person.
I’m not even sure that’s supposed to work. Hold person targets humanoids, not undead.
Or that a dm should knowingly try to kill players with seemingly overleveled monsters. If your players beat the impossible encounter, just let them have the win and live to see another day instead of sending an even more impossible encounter.
Royalty among the charge kingdom. All will fall before our glorious assault!
Quest offer! Enter the deep dungeon here
Ctg’s blood is on the spam filter’s hands