D&D: Five Monsters That Put A Sense Of Dread In Every Encounter
Dungeons & Dragons monsters are meant to inspire fear in the characters. But there are a rare few that inspire dread at the table.
Encounters in D&D tend to be full of things that would make a regular person quake with terror. Shambling hordes of the undead. A big square blob monster made of acid that suffocates you and dissolves you alive. Nothing you would want to run into on your way home from the park. But ultimately, player characters face these things all the time without hesitation. Sometimes they’re even blase about it!
What is a DM to do? Well, as luck would have it, there are certain monsters out there that tend to carry a certain aura of dread with them. And that’s because of what they can do. Every now and then in the Monster Manual you’ll find a monster that hits a little different. Monsters like these.
Beholder
First of all, Beholders are a D&D icon. One of the few monsters that were really weird back in the day – just a big floating eyeball with lots of other eyeballs and a mouth. Awful. Love them. But what makes them inspire dread in D&D of the modern day is not so much their concept, but the consequences of fighting them.
Because a classic Beholder has 10 different eye rays that it can fire at you in three round bursts. Yeah, each time it decides to gaze at you, it’s a different effect – but you had better watch out. First of all, there’s the Petrification Ray. Fail three saves after getting hit with and you become transformed into stone until someone figures out how to save you. Not bad. But then there’s the Death Ray, which deals 10d10 points of necrotic damage (average of 55), and if it reduces you to 0 hit points, you die immediately, no saving throw.
Now we’re talking. No yo-yo healing, no getting back up – you just die. And worse, is the Disintegration Ray. If it reduces you to 0 hit points, whether you succeed or fail on your saving throw, it instantly disintegrates you into dust, putting you beyond the reach of all but the most powerful spells. And that’s not taking into account its antimagic aura which can shut down spellcasters and magical effects in an area.
Nightwalker
Nightwalkers are terrifying creatures that are the embodiment of death itself. They hail from the Negative Plane, and indeed are ocreated whenever a creature steps inside that entropic zone. Nightwalkers are unleashed upon the world, taking its place – and creatures cannot escape the Negative Plane unless the Nightwalker returns. If one is slain, the trapped creature has no hope of escape.
Nightwalkers have many terrifying abilities. But perhaps the most deadly thing about them is that creatures they slay stay dead. They devour a creature’s life essence – nothing short of a Wish spell can bring back a creature reduced to 0 hit points by a Nightwalker. And the second they kill their first victim, a sense of dread begins to set in. Especially if you’re trying to rescue someone – slaying a Nightwalker won’t help you.
Aboleth
Aboleths are elder evils, amphibious imortals who have been around longer than almost any thing else. They scheme in millennia. They dream of dead empires. And they are immortal. When killed, an Aboleth simply regains a new body in 5d10 days, reviving either in the Far Realm or another location chosen by the DM.
But what makes them inspire Dread is the way they can take over a player’s character. Aboleths are all about transforming, reshaping, and dominating their foes. Twice per day, an Aboleth can dominate someone’s mind. If they fail a save they act as an ally of the Aboleth and are under its direct control when within 60 feet.
Suddenly your ally becomes an enemy. But on top of that, Aboleths can also consume your memories. Against a creature grappled by their tentacles, an Aboleth can devour their mind, gaining their memories so that it can better ingratiate itself into human society. And even if you are brought back to life, there’s no guarantee your memories are intact.
Slaad
Slaad are one of those monsters that only become terrifying if you know how they work. At first brush, they’re just evil frog/chaos monsters. But when they hit you, you are cursed. And every slaad has a different curse.
Red slaad curse you without you even being aware that you’ve been cursed. You have a few days to carry a slaad egg, and after 2d4 x 10 days, the curse manifests. For 24 hours, you have disadvantage on d20 tests and your speed is halved. And at the end of that 24 hours of gestation, a slaad tadpole chews its way out of your body and kills you, Alien style.
Blue slaad will mutate you as they attack you. Their claws will curse you to be unable to regain hit points as well as decrease your hit point maximum by 3d6 every hit – and if your hit point maximum is reduced to 0 hit points you instantly permanently transform into either a red slaad or green slaad.
Vampire
Finally vampires. They’re goth, they’re sexy, we know all about their secret vulnerabilities. But vampires are insidious. There’s a reason Curse of Strahd remains one of the best loved adventures out there. But in addition to all the powerful abilities that vampires have, they can also transform characters permanently into vampire spawn. Those who become their spawn are doomed to suffer an Astarion-like fate.
Happy adventuring!
