Top 10 D&D 5E Monsters Most Likely to Cause a TPK

a tpk or a total party kill is what happens when your entire dnd party is wiped out means we're starting over new player characters maybe even a whole new campaign and while any party can find themselves in a situation where a tpk inevitably happens there are some monsters in the game that are just really good at killing the whole gang so i have taken my top 10 monsters that i think are most likely to cause a tpk and organize them into an internet friendly list something i do want to mention before we get into it here is that these monsters aren't necessarily the most dangerous stat wise this is not a list of the monsters with the biggest damage potential per turn this is a list of monsters that are most likely to cause a tpk meaning that at the appropriate level for a group of characters to encounter these monsters in a so-called balanced fight these creatures are much more likely than average in my opinion to cause the whole party to give up the ghost so with that said let's get into it number 10 and the first monster on our list is the black pudding coming in at a humble cr4 these creatures are much more dangerous than your average ooze or slime not that the gelatinous cube hasn't taken out a few characters in its day but the black pudding is just on another level for starters they're immune to a bunch of different damage conditions and like all oozes of course they can climb and squeeze through thin spaces as narrow as an inch wide but one factor that's extremely dangerous about these creatures is that a they can eat through two inches of wood or metal in a single round also doing damage to it with a melee attack is gonna cause you to take 1d8 acid damage also the more you attack this thing with physical weapons the more those weapons degrade getting a cumulative negative 1 penalty and if they reach a negative 5 the weapon is just completely dissolved it also applies that same effect to armor and it deals an average of 24 damage per turn with its slam attack which is just gonna be literally making you easier to hit every time it connects these guys are also used as ambush monsters most of the time and because of their large size it gives them a pretty commanding presence on the battlefield but the most dangerous thing about this creature is going to be for those who don't know how it works your new players also known as the most vulnerable bracket of characters see if it takes slashing or lightning damage not only is it immune to those damage types but it splits in half creating two medium-sized black puddings that each one having half the amount of hit points as the full-sized large one did even if your party is well equipped one of these things can quickly become two and then those two can quickly become four if they're not careful and while that is extremely dangerous it also relies on lack of player knowledge and them making the same mistake more than once to get extremely deadly so that's why they come in at the very bottom of our list next up at number nine is the banshee also coming in at cr4 which is kind of laughable considering the most notorious ability these creatures have these guys are on the list for a very obvious reason i mean they've got a 40 foot fly speed they can zip around and they have all the same qualities that ghosts have so they can move through solid objects and all that stuff but their damage output is kind of mediocre and without this one ability they would be kind of nothing monsters but just like in mythology the banshee is most famous for its whale and whale it does this thing can unleash a cry that causes every creature within 30 feet of it to make a constitution save it's a dc 13 con save which is medium difficulty especially for a cr4 creature but if you fail that saving throw you drop to zero hit points and if you pass it you take 3d6 necrotic damage which ain't nothing but just by virtue of the fact that this creature has the potential to literally wipe the entire party immediately with a single move automatically lands at a spot on this list fortunately you can only use that whale once per day so any of the surviving members will be able to get everyone else up right coming in at number eight on our list is the draco lich i feel like it's pretty obvious why this monster is here but i will explain my thought process dragons are known to be one of the biggest baddest monsters in the game and the drako lich is basically just a dragon with more abilities stacked on top of it the draco lich in the 5e monster manual is based on assuming that the dragon in question was an adult blue dragon so that means this creature comes in at cr17 but technically dracolich is a template which can be applied to any dragon and what does that dragon get if it becomes a draco lich well it doesn't need air food or sleep which means ambush tactics while the dragon sleeping are out of the question it resists necrotic damage on top of whatever other resistances it had it's now immune to poison it also can't be charmed frightened paralyzed or poisoned of course and it also can't be exhausted because it's undead now also it gains magic resistance which means on top of those three legendary resistance triggers it gets every day it also just has advantage to resist any effect from any spell so basically what you're doing by creating a draco lich is taking an apex predator and making it even harder to take down and for that reason it is coming in at number eight at number seven coming in at a whopping cr-25 we have the marut or marut i don't know either way this monster is pretty wild it's definitely the highest cr creature on the list because by the time your party is going up against cr-25 monsters they have a lot of tools at their disposal but there's good reason for it to be here of course it's got the type of things you'd expect a creature of this level to have it has legendary resistances magic resistances that's fine it also can't be polymorph which i mean that's a big takeaway for most high-level parties you know who you are but what's truly unique about this monster is as an enforcer of cosmic law and binding contracts they're the only creature that i'm aware of in 5th edition that doesn't make an attack role to hit things they're from a cast of constructs called inevitables which means everything that they do is inevitable to happen with their slam attack which they can do twice per round it just hits if they make this attack it just hits you there's nothing you can do about it you get hit it also doesn't roll damage whenever it hits with this attack which is literally always you take 60 force damage force damage of course being one of the only damage types in the game that is nearly impossible to resist that's easy math for us it gets two slam attacks that always hit and it does 60 damage whenever it hits so it does 120 force damage per round yikes it also has the ability to output a 60 foot cube of 45 radiant damage which again it's just 45 damage and all creatures have to make a dc 20 wisdom save or they're stunned until the end of the marut's next turn dc 20 is not an easy save to make even for characters of that high level especially for those that don't have proficiency but what really lands this creature on the list is another ability it has called justify it can force someone to make a dc20 charisma check and if they fail it teleports that creature along with itself to a teleportation circle in the hall of concordance on sigil it literally takes them away to a different plane and occupies a space where just the creature who failed their saving throw and the maroot are to be completely fair if you are using a root in your game it's likely for plot reasons and not as a random combat encounter because these creatures are just so specific with their lore and theming but in a vacuum this basically means that the giant murder robot has a chance to take a stolen party member to a place where it can 1v1 them no items roots only i do feel like this is only gonna result in a tpk if the party chooses to resist and try to fight this thing even after it whisks one of their members away and for that reason alone it's not higher up on the list but again just looking at stats and abilities this thing can be incredibly nasty coming in at number six is the willow wisp if anyone out there has had an encounter with this thing you know exactly where i'm going with this they are only cr2 they don't have a ton of hit points however they are resistant to a bunch of different damage types and conditions also they have an ac of 19 due to their ridiculously high dexterity score which at cr2 is pretty crazy they also have the ability to become invisible as an action and they don't become re-visible until they use an action of their own meaning that this creature is almost always going to have the drop on whatever it's trying to attack and if things start to get a little bit intense it can just poof disappear and again cr2 at this point in the game it's very unlikely that your players are going to have too many tools at their disposal to deal with invisible creatures much like the banshee they've also got that ghostly incorporeal movement so they can pretty much be wherever they want whenever they want especially considering that they can just always be invisible and the real reason that they are on this list is they have an ability called consume life this can only target an unconscious creature but if that creature fails a dc10 constitution check which again isn't super high but if they fail it they instantly die oh and the willow wisp regains a bunch of hit points a creature with an instant death effect like this you'd think would be higher on the list but the only reason they're not is because it does require the target to be unconscious but even one of these things paired up with almost any other monster is extremely dangerous and you know they'll be attracted to places where it's likely people are gonna fall in battle because then they can just feed on their life force for free but again this list is based on just the monster specifically so in a vacuum there are more dangerous things speaking of more dangerous things coming in at number five is the mind flare these guys are one of d's most notorious monsters and they have a reputation for a reason many people feel that they're a little bit underseared coming in at cr7 because stacked up against every other cr7 creature in the game there's just no contest they're proficient in a ton of skills they can cast plane shift once a day for free they can also cast dominate monster once per day for free they have that pesky magic resistance so they get advantage on all those saving throws and you might notice a running theme as we get higher up the list they have an instant kill move the thing mind flayers are most famous for is their ability to extract a creature's brain this brain extraction ability can only be used on an incapacitated creature but if a creature is incapacitated they deal 10d 10 damage to them which is an average of 55 piercing damage for cr7 monster that's wild and if it is enough to knock them down to zero their brain is torn out of their head and they die this is heinous because not only does it just kill them it also consumes their brain meaning there's a whole bunch of resurrection magic that just doesn't work now because the body is incomplete but of course they can only target a creature that's incapacitated well they have a couple really easy ways to do that for starters they have a tentacle attack which just does a pretty normal amount of damage but it can also stun and grapple the creature meaning that on their next turn they're primed to eat that creature's brain and if that wasn't bad enough they also have a move which isn't even a once per day thing it's a recharge of five or six which means every turn after they've used it they roll a six sided dice and if it comes up as a five or six they get to use it again called psychic blast which is a 60-foot cone attack it does a bunch of damage and it can also stun every creature within the cone if they fail their saving throw for up to one minute what makes this especially brutal is that it's an intelligent save intelligent saves very rarely come up and intelligence is probably the most commonly dumped stat unless you're a wizard or an artificer you don't actually need it for anything so many players choose to disregard it meaning they're probably not gonna make their saves meaning they're gonna get stunned and this thing's just gonna go from person to person on a brain buffet even just one of these guys can be tpk material and if you're going up against a group of them you're only a bad role or two away from getting completely annihilated even as a high level party but now it's time to move on to our top four monsters and this is where things are gonna get truly ridiculous coming in at number four is a creature i'm sure many of you expected to be on this list and that creature is the shadow dragon again this is another dragon template so you're taking an already dangerous monster and adding even more abilities to it the reason i put the shadow dragon so much higher than the draco lich though is because its abilities aren't just focused on surviving it can do some crazy stuff for starters in darkness which if your players are fighting against this thing unless they somehow manage to really catch it off guard they're likely going to be in darkness it can hide as a bonus action that's incredibly annoying because it can just use hit and run tactics to come out do some damage and then hide in the shadows also as long as it's in darkness it can resist all damage that isn't force psychic or radiant that means for the majority of the time this creature's just taken half damage from everything except for those three specific damage types which also happen to be three of the most uncommon damage types and lastly of course it's breath weapon does a ton of necrotic damage and if it drops you to zero you don't get to get back up you just die not only do you just die you turn into a shadow which is a very dangerous type of undead creature so this is where we run into that problem of the monster not only taking out a party member but also adding someone to its side the second that a party member goes down in a fight against a shadow dragon as a result of its breath weapon the tables immediately start to turn on those players really fast so for being a potential apex predator amongst apex predators the shadow dragon lands an extremely justified spot at number four coming in at number three is the shadow not the shadow dragon but just the shadow i.e the monster that the shadow dragon creates if it kills someone although they're not limited to just that method of spawning shadows can exist in the wild in all different manner of creation and they are cr1 half that's right the shadow is the lowest sea yard creature on this list and cr one half is laughable when you look at what these guys are actually capable of for starters they have a 40 foot movement speed which is already putting them a leg up against most player characters and they are resistant to almost all types of damage they're even straight up immune to a couple of them they're immune to a whole bunch of different effects and the only thing that's going to cut through really and do a ton of damage to them is that they have a vulnerability to radiant damage fair enough they get a great bonus to stealth and they get an even bigger bonus of stealth if it's dark so they're almost always going to have the leg up and be able to ambush the party they come in dealing an average of 8 damage per turn which is wild considering they're only cr1 half that's a lot for its intended level and even at higher levels though the real danger with the shadow is that it causes 1d4 strength damage what that means is if this thing hits you your strength score is reduced by 1d4 if your strength score reaches zero you die the reason this is so dangerous is that strength much like intelligence is another one of those scores that gets dumped pretty frequently while not as commonly dumped as intelligence unless you're a barbarian or strength based fighter most people have average or bad strength and even if you've got pretty decent strength losing one to four of that can range from an inconvenience to putting you near death almost every turn there's no saving throw against it if it hits you you just get your strength sap at lower levels killing this thing before it can drain all the strength from one of the weaker party members is very difficult and even at higher levels for an appropriately sea art encounter a pack of these things can wipe out a single level 10 or higher character in the first round this is not even a hypothetical i've seen this happen i've experienced a near tpk to a pack of six shadows of the group of level nine pcs truly i think they are one of the most dangerous monsters in the game considering what their challenge rating is but on the complete other end of the spectrum we have my number two pick for monsters most likely to cause a tpk the solar solars are cr-21 arc angels you should know immediately that if your party's fighting against the solar you've made a horrible mistake at some point along the way these things hit like a truck you're looking at an average of 147 damage per turn between their two great sword attacks granted your players are going to be high level 140 damage is a lot they get to attack twice with their greatsword and then using their bonus action they can command their greatsword to levitate and fly on its own and attack a third time just in a straight up toe-to-toe brawl that's ridiculous but if you use a solar the way that they're likely gonna fight the party will never have a chance as highly intelligent celestial beings they are likely to employ whatever tactics they can to take out whatever they're trying to kill and if that happens to be your party there's a couple things that we need to know here first off they have a 150 foot fly speed which is ridiculous they can be pretty much wherever they want whenever they want and if they're up to 150 feet away sure they can't attack with their sword but they can attack with their slaying longbow this is a bow and arrow which does an average of 43 damage per shot and granted because they're using their bow they only get one shot with it per round they don't get to make all those sword attacks but what's neat is if the target hit by the bow has less than 100 hit points they need to make a dc-15 constitution saving throw or die so the solar is extremely dangerous not because it can put out almost 150 damage per round in melee combat the solar is extremely dangerous because a long bow has a 600 foot range at disadvantage which means that it can be up to 600 feet away picking apart the party and slowly but surely even if they make those constitution saving throws the first few times it's a numbers game eventually they'll fail it one of these creatures used in an optimal way is enough to pick apart almost any party at almost any level and if the party starts to get close to it it can just move 150 feet away not to mention the fact that it has legendary actions one of which allows it to teleport so if it gets a little bit too close for comfort it can teleport away from the party via a misty step like ability and then fly 150 feet away the only reason that this creature is not number one on the list is because its cr is rightfully pretty high so the players will have a lot of tools at their disposal and a correctly kitted out party that makes some good decisions might be able to find a way out of a situation where a solar is picking them to pieces so on that note let's move along and talk about my number one pick the number one pick for the monster most likely to tpk a party in fifth edition is the intellect devourer the intellect devourer is a perfect example of a monster that is either going to delete the party that it's up against or be extremely underwhelming if used optimally a party has very little chance to do anything against this creature they come in at cr2 which is extraordinarily low for the things that this creature is able to do they only have 21 hit points and a pretty low armor class but they resist almost all non-magic damage it's got blind sight out to 60 feet which is great for it being able to stay in the fight regardless of what spells might be cast and it has a plus four to stealth which isn't amazing but at cr2 that's pretty good it's also got a fun little ability that allows it to detect any creature with an intelligence of three or more that is within 300 feet of it that might not seem like a huge deal but it does mean that if your party is sneaking around a dungeon where one of these things is present it knows they're there it knows the rogue who rolled a 35 casting pass without trace on it is there because that person is sentient it's actual claw attacks do very little damage but to anyone who's gone up against these things or even read the stat block before you know that it's physical damage is not what's dangerous about this creature much like the mind flare who we saw earlier it attacks the intelligence statistic which again is one of the most commonly dumped in underused stats in the game it's very true that intelligence is unlikely to come up as a save you're ever going to have to make in your typical dnd campaign and there are other saves like wisdom or constitution that are a lot more common but when you do have to make an intelligence save you better make it because you know something horrible is about to happen if you fail the intellect devourer has an ability which can force a dc-12 intelligence save if you fail it's 2d10 psychic damage also the intellect devourer rolls 3d6 i.e the same dicey roll when you're rolling up stats for a character if its roll of 3d6 is higher than the target that it's targeting with its devour intellect ability they are stunned and their intelligence drops to zero making them completely incapacitated until magic is used to fix them something very important about this is most monster actions that attack an ability score like the shadow's ability to drain strength for example have text on them that specifically says this reduction lasts until that creature takes a long rest that text is not present here if this thing rolls 3d6 and it comes up with a 10 and you have a 9 in intelligence your intelligence is permanently set to 0 until magic is used to fix it that's pretty brutal but it doesn't even end there it has an ability to take over an incapacitated creature's body so on the first round if it's able to knock someone down to zero intelligence and they fall flat on their face it can then use its second ability which allows it to call for an intelligence contest this is a very rare role to see put into a monster stat block but an intelligence contest means it rolls its intelligence score versus the target's intelligence score if you have an intelligence of zero that means you're rolling at a negative five and this thing only has a plus one but all in all the math works out to it having a thirty percent more likely chance to succeed over the target it then magically consumes that creature's brain crawls into their head and takes over as the brain possessing that creature's body if even just one of these things targets an unprepared party and is able to ambush them it can be catastrophic it has this ability to detect intelligence so it knows who's the dumbest and most vulnerable amongst the party and usually that corresponds to the person who is the beefiest and tankiest barbarians i'm looking at you if this thing jumps out of the shadows and targets the barbarian or the fighter or whichever melee tanky character has the lowest intelligence and it makes the role that character immediately taken out of the fight if the party is unable to kill it by the second round it can then use its other ability to possess that creature's body which it's very likely to succeed at and now the party has to deal with this tanky body that it's possessing and also there's the ramifications of them not wanting to kill their friend even if they're able to drive the intellect devourer out of their friend's body with a spell like protection from good and evil they have one round to repair the brain in that previously possessed character's head or that character is dead and again these guys are cr2 at the appropriate level that a party would go up against them based on the cr system they're probably not going to have a casual scroll of true restoration kicking around and much like the mind flayer that person's brain is gone so a lot of the traditional lower level resurrection options are not viable and in a situation like that we're just talking about one of these things if this is an appropriately seared encounter and the party goes up against two or three of them that is so dangerous this is the closest you will ever get to a coin flip combat in dnd 5th edition if the monster rolls horribly and nothing happens the party will probably be able to take it out no problem but if it rolls well or even just averagely it's likely to just take someone out right away which as we know snowballs really fast the worst part about this is even if the party survives if one or two of the members have had their intellect devoured then they just have these limp bodies with them that they have to keep alive until they can find a way to repair their friends if they're in the middle of a dungeon or something like what do you do so for that reason the intellect devourer comes in at number one for me because there's just so little you can do against them if they manage to get off their abilities but i am really curious to know what you guys think do you agree with this list do you think i'm dead wrong do you think i'm a stupid dummy who doesn't know what they're talking about whatever your opinion on the matter i would love to hear it tell me in the comments below what monsters you've gone up against or been tpk'ed by or have enacted a tpk with as a dm that you feel should have been on the list and of course you gotta tell us how it happened not that i ever look in the comments section of this incredibly talented community and steal ideas but like you know stories are cool right but anyways thank you guys so much for watching and if you're new here and you like these videos you like what i'm doing please leave a like i guess that's why they call them that you know that makes sense and also consider subscribing uh monster of the week is always gonna be the bread and butter of this channel but i'm experimenting with some new video formats and on patreon the vote was that we wanted to see some top 10 videos so we'll probably make a few more of these and let me know what you think that's the benefit of having an up-and-coming community is you guys get to help me kind of craft what type of content i'm making so definitely let me know until the next one i'll see you then [Music] you

Channel: Dungeon Dad

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Id: ra0msju6SuE

Length: 26min 53sec (1613 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 24 2021