The Five Weakest Epic Level Monsters in Dungeons & Dragons 5e

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favorite material and they're shipped right to your door you can start creating the perfect miniature for your next character at heroforge.com and you can get five dollars off your first premium plastic miniature with the discount code dungeon dudes and now on to this week's episode greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything dungeons and dragons including advice for players and guys for dungeon masters we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are taking a look at five of the weakest epic level monsters in dungeons and dragons fifth edition in dungeons and dragons there are so many monsters that can punch well above their weight class but there are a few who when you get into combat with them you might be surprised at how little impact they have against a well-prepared party when looking at high-level monsters it's very easy to be flipping through the monster manual and see all the dice beside their attacks and their massive attack bonuses and there are huge pools of hit points and think wow this challenge rating 30 monster is really really impressive but when we actually stack those monsters up against player characters of a level that they are supposed to provide challenges for not ones that they will simply destroy outright we find that these monsters are a little bit like that schoolyard bully all pomp circumstance and hot air but with not a lot of substance and very little actual strength when a true fighter shows up to meet their match there's a lot to discuss so let's get rolling now for this episode we are looking at monsters of challenge rating 21 and higher and we've chosen them from the monster manual modern kindness tomafoes and volo's guide to monsters we also are not going to count any monster that is a named villain these monsters might make a great end game boss battle for a party that is levels 10 to 15 but once they get up to 17 and 18 and 19 or 20 these monsters are supposed to be able to stand up toe to toe to them but might just end up getting punished over the past several months i've been running some online games for charity with our local adventurers league groups and i've had the opportunity to run several high-level games of dungeons and dragons with fully loaded parties of 20th level characters and many of the monsters on this list just got wrecked by those groups some of those groups were very finely tuned combat machines others of them were not and in many cases these monsters still did not pose an adequate threat and challenge and i think you got to do a lot of home brewing work if you're going to use these as a high level threat in your games the first monster that we are going to talk about today is actually one of the most iconic monsters in the world of dungeons and dragons and has been around since the very origins of the game and that is the lich the challenge rating 21 lich possibly even higher if it's encountered in its lair is a legendary monster that on paper looks terrifying it is immune to non-magical damage it's has ninth level spells including power word kill it has layer actions to regenerate spell slots but then it also has only 135 hit points now let's not mince words here liches are schemers they are smart intelligent beings that should always play the battlefield to their benefit but if push comes to shove and they end up in a situation where the party is able to catch up to them and just dish out damage they might go down in less than a round considering that liches are often cast in the role of the big bad evil guy they might have been the adversary the party's been facing for the entire campaign if you're going to use the stock lich in the monster manual it's just going to get wrecked up against 20th level characters so if your goal is to use the lich up against your 20th level party you got to get into the homebrew workshop there you're going to have to really increase its hit points and the number one thing to do with the with the lich is you gotta change its spell list where's force cage where's wall of force and power word kill looks great on paper but against the 20th level party it's not actually going to do what you think it's going to do if you're running this as the main villain the lich might make a great henchman to the main villain or a great battlefield commander for an undead army but at 20th level play it's just not adding up i run a combat encounter of a lich backed up by four cr-12 archmages and dozens and dozens of beholder zombies coming in as reinforcements and the lich can't survive that because with only 135 hit points the party b-lines it and destroys them i i have had some success giving the stock monster manual lich a spell like prismatic wall or meteor swarm to really put down that gigantic powerful ninth level spell right away but you also have to be aware of that the first spell the lich is gonna cast is also gonna have to go up against a wall of counter spells from the rest of the party not to mention a lich is an undead creature so if you have a paladin in the party it's there's no chance if that paladin can get up to the lich see you later well the paladin's aura alone is going to boost the entire party's saving throws to the point where the lich's spells are going to have trouble getting through this is definitely a monster that yeah you can use the stock monster manual lich as written against a low level party to really terrify them but if you're gonna put your 20th level parties up against a lich you gotta home brew this monster to give it some real teeth so you might want to do what i did at one point which is pair the lich with the next monster that we're putting on our list in the same combat encounter which is the ancient dragon of any stripe now the ancient dragon is also one of the most iconic monsters in dungeons and dragons it is literally in the name of the game so it is quite sad to see that the ancient dragon makes our list because at the end of the day all of their cool breath weapon attacks and their abilities to have legendary actions and fly and things like that don't really have that much of an impact against a party that can outmatch it and live out through a breath weapon attack no problem now that dragon's flying around hoping it gets its breath weapon attack and guess what the party's pretty much fine it can handle that much hit points and keep swinging with minimal effort to take down an ancient dragon high level player characters are tripping over sources of fire resistance so that ancient red dragon with its super impressive 90 damage breath weapon attack is immediately getting cut down to half that's assuming that the party members don't have high level abilities like evasion or just great dexterity saving throws to make their saving throws and even turn that damage down to zero after its breath weapon attack a dragon is basically just a flying brick it's got some great attacks and the high level ancient dragons have hundreds and hundreds of points of hit points upwards of 600 hit points so they're gonna survive a couple rounds of combat but they're also really susceptible to things like getting trapped in force cages having their legendary resistances burned through by stunning strikes banishments and hold monsters and eventually they just get crowd controlled and ganged up on by the party and they're just another trophy on the wall not to mention one of the best assets of the dragons is their ability to fly and stay out of the way of melee combatants but at this high level of play there are a lot of ways to undo the flight of a dragon or the party's just going to be flying themselves at this point in the game flight is not as great of an asset for an end for a villain as it was at lower levels of play i have two quick ways to address the problems with ancient dragons first of all take a page out of the guild master's guide to ravnica and make your ancient dragon a 20th level spellcaster and give it lots of nice juicy spells or the innate spell casting variant from the monster manual you might want to homebrew them with some additional abilities and resistances as well or when in doubt use two or three of them two other things that you can always do to an ancient dragon to just help out a little is turn it into a dracolich or a shadow dragon give it a little bit more bang for its buck and make it a true threat to the party you could even have another great villain riding on top of the dragon and now you have double the trouble and it's going to be a much more fun combat encounter the engine of destruction presented by an ancient dragon can still be a fantastic plot device or tool to use against a mid-level party but once they get toe-to-toe with it the higher level players are just going to destroy them so the next monster we're looking at is actually one of my favorite monsters from lauren mythology in general ranking in a challenge rating 23 this is the kraken who roams the seas threatening seafaring adventuring parties i myself have pitted a kraken up against a mid-ranged party i believe they were level 11 and they went up against the kraken and i said to myself here comes a great combat encounter the warlock and the party quickly banished the kraken and they sailed away because the kraken doesn't have magic resistance or legendary resistances which immediately made me realize the flaws of this amazing beast the kraken is the poster child for why legendary resistance is so necessary for high level solo monsters it's also vulnerable to other spells like hold monster and other crowd control spells really badly because it can't rely on its legendary resistance to save it so if it's a challenge rating 23 monster it's supposed to be able to stand toe-to-toe against a level 23 party level 20 parties would easily mop the floor and this wouldn't even pose a threat because there's no way that a high-level party doesn't have a number of spells that can just undo this combat encounter instantly of course the kraken is still a great monster to have come along destroy the ship of your low-level party so they can get shipwrecked and lost at sea in the adventure hook that you've created but if you're actually going to have it go toe-to-toe with them it doesn't really deal a lot of damage it can do all this bite and swallow stuff and it can do cool combat tricks like pull people underwater but again high level characters have flight teleportation ranged attacks and ubiquitous access to magic items and the water breathing spell which unfortunately means it's susceptible to all the exact same problems of ancient dragons which is even worse because it doesn't have a breath weapon attack like dragons do and it also doesn't have legendary resistance so it's super vulnerable to high level abilities i do think that the kraken finds its home as a plot device rather than a scary end-game monster you can use it to block waterways or scare the party into going into a ship and sailing the seas however once the players reach 10th level they really have the means of withstanding its attacks which can be threatening to a lower level party but even by 10th level the damage output isn't that substantial that they couldn't survive yeah the fact that it has a plus 18 attack bonus on its on its tentacles and those tentacles deal about 20 points of damage when they hit automatically grapple and then the kraken can throw people 60 feet means that the kraken is kind of really good at coming up on the deck of a ship grabbing the important npc and throwing them into the sea or grabbing the players to throw them so that they get lost at sea and a party of 10th level maybe eighth level twelfth level characters they're probably going to survive that but they might not be able to necessarily defeat the kraken unless of course they whip a banishment so the kraken i think the way to save it is to not use it against a high level party and use it as that mid-level plot device obstacle environmental challenge that it's trying to be if i was trying to homebrew it for a higher level party i think you would need to give it a lot more attacks give it its magic resistance and legendary resistance and probably homebrew the environment and add like a bunch of aquatic creatures that accompany it in battle the next monster that we're looking at are the elder elementals presented in mordenkainen's tome of foes we are going to be focusing in on these serotonin but in general these creatures do not meet the requirements for the challenge rating that they've been given it's a real shame the zaratan conjures up the image of the massive earth turtle swimming through the seas or walking along the ground it's a huge beefy armored monstrous turtle what's not to love about this creature it just doesn't really pose much of a threat to high-level characters despite being a massive armored turtle it only has 21 ac and only about 300 hit points if they're going up against a level 20 party because this is a challenge rating 22 monster well they're going to be able to dish out 300 hit points of damage pretty quickly and most players at level 20 are going to be able to hit well above a 21 ac so this creature is going to die much faster than you would imagine a well-armored monster should its earth-shattering movement ability is a really cool and iconic power that destroys a lot of buildings and is very very damaging if you're a city but high-level player characters are going to be able to fly or teleport and avoid this ability fairly easily when it comes around to actually making attacks its stomp and bite abilities are pretty middling in terms of the amount of damage that they can deal now the zeratan does have the ability to spit rocks so it can attack flying enemies for a decent chuck and chunk of damage about 30 points of damage but it can only spit one rock per turn as a full-on action having a cr-22 monster spending its entire action to spit one rock to deal 30 damage is pathetic and it has legendary actions but spitting a rock also costs two legendary actions so if it's dealing ranged attacks it's only dealing 60 damage per turn which is just not enough for a monster cr while we're talking about its legendary actions on paper it has these really awesome sounding legendary actions it has a legendary action that lets it revert into its shell which gives it resistance to all damage types and this doesn't even this isn't even affected by magical attacks however this also restrains the creature meaning that everybody's gonna have advantage and can just wail on it anyway even if they're doing half damage they're going to still be able to dish out a lot of damage while it hides in its shell and for two actions it means that you cannot on the same turn use its other legendary action which allows it to regain 52 hit points while it is in its shell again that sounds cool on paper it goes into its shell and regains hit points but that's going to cost it two turns while the party gets to wail on it with advantage yeah and then it has to spend another legendary action that costs two actions to come out of the shell again it gets to use spit rock as part of this but it really ends up just being this thing that literally turtles up lets the party beat it up and it doesn't really pose much of a counter threat to them at all with all these tanky abilities if the zeratan was tied to some sort of environmental effect or some sort of artifact it could potentially survive a long time against a high-level party but it's not really going to be able to defeat them or damage them in any way so with the zeratin you're going to need to add something else to that battle that is actually the threat that the party has to deal with well this turtle is just turtling there as a turtle the final monster that we are discussing is not only one of the most iconic monsters in dungeons and dragons but it is emblematic in the fact that it sums up really all the things that we are saying about why the other monsters aren't going to work this monster is the one and only tarask a challenge rating 30 monster the highest challenge rating of any monster in any published source book the terrasque has a famous reputation as a living engine of destruction a herald of apocalypses and an unstoppable force that destroys cities and brings upon the ruin and death of empires and also just gets utterly destroyed by 20th level characters if they actually show up to fight it the tarrasque has an ac of 25 it has almost 700 hit points and it can dish out almost up to 150 hit points worth of damage per turn so it isn't something to be laughed at until you realize the fact that it is slow it can't fly and it has no ranged attacks whatsoever when we imagine a 20th level party most of them are going to have mobility options far beyond just running around the battlefield with teleportation and flight being key components of a level party with magic items being able to dish out incredible damage and ways to just out run out maneuver and outsmart the tarasque it's actually quite easy to just pick away at it until it dies now the tarasque does have one potent defense of power reflective care pace any time the trask is targeted by magic missile a line spell like lightning bolt or a spell that requires a ranged attack roll you roll a d6 on a one to six the tarask is unaffected by the spell and on a six the tarasque is unaffected but then the spell is reflected back against the caster this basically makes the tarasque immune to eldritch blast and other spells like scorching ray lightning bolt and spells that require attack rolls but it can still be affected by spells that require saving throws although you have to get through its legendary and magic resistance this doesn't protect it from a ranged attacker like an archer at all who if an archer can fly they can just run circles around it in the air pinging it to death what does the trouse do if it gets trapped in a barred version of force cage what does it do against any modicum of battlefield control what does it do against fl it is nothing like how can you justify this being challenge rating 30 when it has no answers to high-level abilities if you have a flying wizard and somebody else who has a magic carpet or a broom of flying or boots of flying you have archers you have spells you have all of these ways of attacking the turresque well staying out of any sort of range that the trash could even hope to hurt you at that point it's like shooting fish in a barrel i think that in order to make the turrasque even close to a reasonable threat it needs to like those horns should shoot lasers like let's get a mad scientist and make like a mecha turrasque cyborg zombie that has like lasers and rocket launchers on the back of it and has some sort of crazy truly insane abilities that feel more at home out of a science fiction b movie than anything else it's gonna need that kind of treatment to deliver on the promise of this um the amazing lore of this monster but on its own it just doesn't measure up again a lot of these monsters work really well as set pieces and i could see maybe a tarasque storming into a city and the party having to fight it while trying to save the people of the city who are falling prey to this huge monster rampaging through it a cool setting might be a great way to implement the terrasque but if they're just finding it out in the wild and fighting it it's not going to really pose any threat when we look at all the monsters we discussed today these are in fact some of our favorite monsters from the dnd canon and really they do pose a great and interesting threat against a lower level party or mid-level party when used in intelligent ways or as set piece battles but for the challenge ratings that they've been given a lot of people will look at these and think this is gonna be my end game big boss battle and they just won't stand up to a party that has reached level 17 or higher and can dish out the type of damage and use the battlefield tactics that can just completely undo these amazing monsters if you are going to use these as your end game boss for your high level party you're going to need to do some work to homebrew them fix them up give them new abilities more hit points and better defenses and a lot of minions and other environmental effects to augment them using them as written in the monster manual is not going to provide the experience that you want at your game table to be the adequate and memorable climax to your campaign so break out the toolkit start home brewing because that's the way to fix these monsters so this has been a look at the five weakest epic level monsters in dungeons and dragons fifth edition if you have any amazing battles with monsters that ended up much shorter than you expected tell us about those in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the amazing generosity of our patreon supporters if you're enjoying the work please consider checking us out on patreon by following the links in the description below or at patreon.com dungeon underscore dudes don't forget to check out our live play in the worlds of dragonheim which airs tuesday nights at 6pm eastern at twitch.tv dungeon underscore dudes you can find all of the previous episodes of those shows right up over here and if you're looking for a deadly threat for your player characters check out our series on monsters and dungeons and dragons 5th edition right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we will see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 150,144

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: rL4M3NU9xRY

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020