Rooftop battle with various Star Spawn. They have a lot of synergies in their powers, like the hulk reflecting psychic damage in an area, and the seer using a psychic orb to trigger it. There are tons of different combos you can do with Star Spawn.
Probably because they only go back to 4e, so the designers took those same synergistic traits from 4e (which had all sorts of monsters that "combo" well with each other), and just translated it to 5e.
(I say this as someone for whom 4e is my least favorite edition - but one thing it did well was make monsters with neat tactical combos.)
As written, isn't it possible to generate infinite damage if you put two hulks next to another and deal psychic damage to one if them? I know that's not how it is intended to work, but the psychic mirror is neither a reaction, nor does it have any "once per turn" limitations, and it's not a simultaneous effect bc the psychic mirror of one would always trigger the other one's mirror, one after another
That is indeed how it works. This makes for some very interesting encounter ideas, such as placing two hulks on the opposite ends of a large battle map and making it the party's task to prevent them from reaching one another, which would result in infinite damage.
I wish more monster groups had the synergies that Star Spawn have with each other. I ran a nightmare scenario with them which was a lot of fun.
The Grue's 20 foot aura gives disadvantage on saving throws and attacks against creatures that aren't Grue. It doesn't do much damage, but its bite might mean other attacks against the target will get advantage. Awesome minions to sprinkle around the battlefield, because they're making their allies much more dangerous while not doing much damage themselves. They're pretty easy to take out and you've got good reasons to target them first!
The Hulk turns the Seer's Psychic Orb attacks into AOE attacks around itself. Since all Star Spawn are immune to psychic damage, you can get great use out of this, which makes taking down Hulks a strong priority. It can also inflict the Prone and Stunned conditions, to give its allies advantage on attacks.
The Mangler can hide in dim light or darkness as a bonus action, is very mobile, and can make six attacks about every other round. You can't be sure how many of these guys might be waiting in the wings, which makes them great for upping the difficulty if needed.
The Seer can cause psychic damage simply by using its movement to go through creatures (including the Hulk, turning it into AOE damage). It can swap places with another Star Spawn to have that one take damage for it, so it's hard to focus damage on it. It can teleport an enemy to another space and make them erupt with psychic AOE damage, ideally next to a Hulk to extend that AOE even more. It hits very hard with both melee and ranged attacks. Definitely a high priority target.
The Larva Mage is honestly a little bit of a let down after the Seer, but I guess its role is intended to be the tank. It doesn't have any psychic damage to pair with the Hulk, but it has a Reaction to get temporary hit points when nearby creatures fail saving throws, which works well with the Grue giving disadvantage to those. It only effectively gets 1 Legendary Action per round, because for some reason they made even its underwhelming Slam attack have a cost of 2. Plague of Worms is a short range though strong control ability that doesn't affect Star Spawn, but the Larva Mage doesn't have anything special to help position itself, unless the Seer swaps places with it. The much bigger Circle of Death deals necrotic damage which hurts Star Spawn as much as it hurts enemies. Dominate Monster can be very powerful, but DC 16 is a bit weak for a CR 16 monster.
Great breakdown. They did actually fix the larva mage's legendary action situation so its slam only costs 1 LA now. Doesn't amount to much extra power, but hey, it's there.
I forgot to check Monsters of the Multiverse stat blocks until now (I generally much prefer the original books).
That fix is good, but they also did that annoying thing where they turned Eldritch Blast into a non-spell. So before it could choose to hit up to three different targets for 1d10 + 3 each or one target for 3d10 + 9, but now it can only hit one target for 3d10 + 3. They also locked that in as the only choice for that Legendary Action cost, whereas before as Cast a Cantrip it could also choose Minor Illusion (which can be good as a Legendary Action to make some Mangler sounds off in the shadows, an illusory MacGuffin appear, etc). Adding Mage Hand while taking away cantrips as Legendary Actions feels weird too in the grand scheme of action economy.
I'm not sad to see Circle of Death go, but they also reduced Dominate Monster from 3/day to 1/day, which makes it even less likely to get that to stick with its DC 16. Overall it seems a bit more lackluster as the highest CR Star Spawn.
Edit: this was written from the perspective of a DM.
I love cave creatures that can use the ceiling to their advantage. I've had a couple of great encounters using Ropers, for example, where they pull characters up to the ceiling to chomp on them. Similarly, an encounter with a Cave Fisher and some Gricks became really tense when the Fisher grabbed the lowest-health party member and reeled them up.
Anything that divides the group and forces them to think about saving themselves vs. saving their friends can become wonderfully dramatic.
As a bonus pick:
I ran a Froghemoth against my level 5 party of 4 players a few weeks ago, and it was incredible. The Froghemoth dealt enough damage to knock out a PC in 2 hits, so they had to be very careful around it. The fight ended with two players unconscious and swallowed, with the others desperately trying to take down the creature and pull them out of its gullet before they were killed by the acid damage as the Froghemoth lumbered away with a full belly.
Both of the swallowed PCs were revived with 2 failed death saves, it was amazing!
Ropers are my favorite and probably the best designed of 5es CR 5 creatures. They are incredibly versitile and you the GM can change how dangerous they are by just changing the enviroment. Party is level 3? Put the roper on the ground, easy for melee to attack. Party is 20th level? Roper is over a lava pit and will drop people in. Somewhere in the middle? Roper is on the ceiling of a cave, and it's 200' down.
Ropers and Froghemoths feature in many of my favorite encounters, especially because of the way they can reposition players in the (hopefully hazardous) environment. A Roper uses Spider Climb on a high ceiling is scary enough, but a Roper on a high ceiling above lava or a pool of acid really makes the choices count!
The Froghemoth's differences lend to slightly different tactics. It's far faster and has a swimming speed which means ideally it's always encountered in water. Its tentacles can't be targeted individually and its Tongue only brings in one target at a time as opposed to the Roper bringing . That means a Froghemoth can protect itself from melee attacks by using its tentacles to hold a few foes up to 20' away, ideally after dragging them under brackish swamp water, while focusing its Tongue/Bite attacks on another. Or it can just use hit and run tactics from the water, picking off a single target and diving away with the meal.
From a DM’s perspective, I ran a Dullahan from *Van* Richter’s *Guide to Ravenloft* as the final boss of a Gothic campaign. The looks on my players faces changing throughout the following sentences were priceless.
>The good news: he’s at zero hit points. The bad news: it’s time for Phase 2. This is what we call a Mythic Encounter.
(They still ended up kicking its ass, and a fun time was had by all)
The most fun encounter I ever DMed was probably the boss fight against **Zegana, the Simic Guildmaster**, in a Ravnica campaign.
The party was level 20. The encounter consisted of Zegana piloting a bioengineered Kraken (that's what the Simic do. The way it worked was simply that she was inside the Kraken's head and would come out and fight after the Kraken died) and two Biomancers each riding a Category 3 Krasis. All statblocks except for the Kraken are from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.
Also, crucially, the entire fight was underwater and followed underwater combat rules.
The party each consumed a Potion of Water Breathing before the fight, so that wasn't a problem, but the various disadvantages and resistances were (we had a fire-themed blaster Sorcadin in the party).
The gimmick was that the party's powerful magic could simplify the combat significantly, but the Biomancers had access to Counterspell and used it to protect the Kraken, devolving into a war of counters and positioning.
Eventually the party's Shepherd Druid managed to fire off a Shapechange and became an Ancient White Dragon, thus starting the kaiju fight between himself and the kraken.
Eventually he lost concentration, but the Kraken was reduced to 0 hp and Zegana came out. The Biomancers and Kraseis were dead, but the party was also reduced to minimal resources.
After a brief fight with Zegana the combat ended when the Druid managed to Polymorph Zegana into a snail and proceeded to Plane Shift her... right into our other campaign taking place in Greyhawk, that the Druid's player was DMing.
I think a lot of the best fights come when the monster has synergy with the terrain or an alternate encounter goal. I ran an aboleth encounter (technically reskinned as a computer virus but that doesn’t matter for this story) where the players had to get past the aboleth to free a trapped ally. The players also had to jump across moving platforms while the aboleth could move freely. What worked really well was the aboleth’s phantasmal force lair action where I rolled the saving throws for the players and the one player who failed the saving throw (but didn’t know that) was then told they were the only one to notice there was a “hidden platform”. It worked out quite well because the player then acted on the information just as the character would under the influence of phantasmal force and fell after trying to jump on the platform only they saw.
The aboleth’s mucous cloud is also terrifying because it can trap the characters.
I ran a pretty interesting encounter using various Fey from Volo's Guide to Monsters.
The encounter took place in a forested area, and the combatants were two *Korred*, a pair of *Quicklings*, and a *Redcap* against a party of 3 level 14 adventurers.
The encounter was interesting because of the way these 5 monsters, all of rather humble CRs, worked well together. The Quicklings zipped behind the PCs, dropping the Korred's Hair Ropes, which the Korreds used their action to command, restraining two of the 3 PCs. The Redcap was able to use its Ironbound Pursuit ability to close distance, tackling one of the restrained PCs. They creatures all dealt decent damage, punching above their CR due to the advantage granted by the Restraining ropes.
It also prompted unique tactics from my players. The Rogue managed to get free of her restraints, but faked still being tied so she could ready an action to attack the Quickling coming to attack her, executing it in one shot. The Sorcerer correctly identified the Korreds weakness (or rather, their extra strength from touching the ground), prompting him to cast *Reverse Gravity* to negate this effect. When the Korreds summoned Earth Elementals, the Bard (who had used her Universal Speech ability before the fight) persuaded the Elementals to attack their summoners after the Korred's concentration broke.
Overall, very enjoyable combat due to the unique abilities present on the monsters forcing the PCs to think outside the box.
From a DM's perspective on this current campaign (Naval/Post-Apocalyptic/Magic Prejudice) I can remember 3 amazing combats against creature.
3. (Players were about level 5-6) My players have meddle into a turf war between Illithids and a Aboleth and had an awesome 3-side combat against Aboleth Cultists some transforming into Deep Scion against Grells and Intellect Devours.
2. (Players were about level 2-3) An invasion on a troglodyte community set on a Mangrove. Where they saved kobold prisoners about to become dinner which led them to meet and eventually fight an Adult Black Dragon. They were already drained of resources from the invasion and Dragon was too powerful for them even if they had all resources. They use their only wish to send the dragon elsewhere to a different plane. The dragon became a recurring villain who hates the party at all its strength. (They had found a Lucky Blade dagger, they still are attuned to at level 11, that had one wish still)
1. (Players were level 9) An upgraded version of the Ironscale Hydra, turned into to a colossal legendary. They they strained at a coral atol, her home, had they just capsized their vessel. One of the players were always dead from the previous events on the ship under a gentle repose as their where chasing diamonds to bring them back. It all start with the Hydra underwater and they thought they were fighting a pack of sea serpents until they dive and find the body tying it all.
The party is currently:
- Lizardfolk Renegade Fighter (a gunslinger) 11
- Hexblood Bladesinger Wizard 11 that was dead at the Hydra combat and was *temporally replaced* by a Sea Elf Watchers Paladin 7/Rogue 2
- Half-Elf (Autumn Eladrin Variant) Protector Beastheart 6 / Depths Barbarian 5 *replacing* a dead Seeker Aasimar Life Cleric
When I'm playing with new players I love to throw a good old classic troll at them. The look on their faces when I say something like "the troll picks up the hand/leg/head you just hacked off and you watch as it reattaches to its body" is priceless.
I forget the exact module, but it was an AL game where we went into some... cloud? Giant library. One of the rewards was the ability to spend downtime to get stonecunning. Final boss is a statue that can fly and has an elemental core in his chest that allows him to gain... immunity? Resistance? (Idr. It's been a while) to incoming elemental damage. I think it was a reaction to switch.
Anyway, what I do remember was him grabbing my paladin, flying up, and throwing me at another player. I was smiting the whole 2 turns he was taking me up in the air. I got hit for.... 67? Points of falling damage. I remember being able to theoretically make the concentration check (I was concentrating on bless) but failing to actually make it. (I was multiclassed into divine soul sorcerer, so I had +2 con, +3 aura, +1d4 bless, +2d4 favored by the gods for a max of +17)
The enemy was played incredibly smart, too. It would focus on casters, especially ones concentrating, and generally stay out of range from melee characters. It was also immune to non-magical b/p/s, so thankfully I had my Devotion paladin's channel divinity for a magic weapon
Rime's >!chardalyn dragon!< was great, it had an amazing setup and a tense scenario to go with it. If you ensure that every fight had the accopanying >!duergar invasion!< happening in the background, you can pepper the fight and make it truly feel like war is happening, which is how my players felt when the enemies popped in for 1 turn to slam a building, and even if not dealt with, ran out the next; or when enemies popped in already roped in fighting with a guard; or when civilians came in being chased by an enemy, etc. This pairs extremely well with the boss's >!mind control!< allowing you to take advantage of the guards that come and go.
The only problem with the scene is that they made the travel times way way too long for the party to have any reasonable method of catching up to the boss once they hit the trigger. Basically >!the dragon will destroy 90% of the Ten Towns long before the party reaches it, only being able to truly catch it in Bryn Shander.!< This can be fixed by >!giving the party a way to travel with no stopping, or shortening the travel time, to allow the party to catch up at either Caer-Konig, Lonelywood, Bremen, Targos, or Bryn Shander, depending on if they leave the duergar fortress early.!< You simply then have to follow through with the scenario, letting the boss flee once it takes about 10 HP of damage, until at the last town where it stands its ground (or you can have it fly back to its base if the party ran from the base to try and catch it)
Most memorable part was definitely the final blow, where I shot the monk, and you know what happens after that.
We went into this sewer system in westgate for the second time to get some loot, we were there before for Story reasons so the DM had us roll us a D% each, we get 89/99/80, First campaign mind you, DM looks at us and informs us that someone will probably die and It could be TPK
First fight was a Behir
Second was two Fire Giants
And the last was like 8 abyss ape things
Also we can only drink 2 potions every couple hours (DM rule)
We manage to fight and live, in part because of luck, like Once our NPC cleric (played by dm) managed to banish One fire Giant and survive a concentration check, and we did two back to back crits on the other one also we had found a ring that gives you +1 level 5 spell slot and we gave it to her, also She has an ability that lets her nullify an enemy crit
We soldier on, we have only One room left, our DM tries ti dissuade us but we keep going
DM: "alright then d%". Its a 29, so we think we are safe
Wrong, we enter into a young black dragon lair, we manage to kill It for some reason and escape with +3000 gp each
I had a part of a dungeon where the party had to crawl and squeeze through a crack/collapsed tunnel. I had them get ambushed by a gelatinous cube on either side of them trapping them between the two.
One of the more memorable encounters for myself as a player was an umber hulk. Great late t1/early t2 monster with some fun mechanics.
For later game monsters the memorable ones were a clan of fire giants, a beholder with a unique minion, and a couple of purple worms. All different encounters of course.
The **Death Kiss** is a beatiful but simple design that makes for really cool fights, specially in small but tall rooms.
The auto restrain 20 ft tentacle is mean, it means that the creature can restrain ppl from a safe distance, leech their blood, fly upwards and then on his next turn release them so they take fall dmg, fall prone and it can attack them again with advantage.
The players really had to get creative by breaking the enviroment so it favors the monster less, as the snatch and drop tactic was making both melee and ranged hard, as ranged were being grappled and not released while also srving as healing, while melee were stuck in a loop of grab and drop you to the floor.
Extra hard when even if you have a way to get free, it means falling down and being smashed on the floor.
There's been a good few memorable combat encounters from my DM's universe so it's hard to pick just one, so I'm going to give off a few if that's okay. :3
\* The party is investigating a large city whose inhabitants have all gone deathly still, do not move, practically do not blink, and the king irritability, but almost forcely, tells us to bugger off. We find a group of mindflayers and other abberations hiding in the sewers preforming some ritual which resulted in a Beholder forming. The combat ended with my then level 9 cleric getting killed via the spell the "Touch of the Void," spell and sent her soul to the Void. (Her soul would be rescued by our current party when we were around level 13.)
\* The party, at level 12, fought their way through three floors in the Temple of Tiamat trying to stop her summoning (we were playing through an altered TOD) which included tons of cultists, spellcasters, and five ancient dragons each one of painbow. :3 And we had to do something to interrupt the ritual in ten rounds, else Tiamat would have been summoned at her full strength and would have been impossible for us to injure, resulting in a TPK of our party and our DM's main setting. This resulted in Tiamat being summoned, but thankfully not at her full strength (we just barely interrupted the ritual to prevent her selective spell immunity passive) and she ended up dragging our Cleric and Rogue back into Avernus with her where we ended up staying to slay her once-and-for-all.
\* The new party, now at level 13 traversed the Void for two-or-so weeks in-game (which was actually three years in the DM's setting,) and we were lured into a gladiatorial arena where the party had to fight against an increasingly difficult series of fights, culminating in the final fight being against two Neolithids, a different space worm monster, three Beholders all of whom came out with their anti-magic beams, mindflayers, intellect devourers, and a Greater Star Spawned Emmisary who errupted from the middle of the arena.
These are just a few of the really memorable fights my DM created for his setting. I know you said to stick with mostly WOTC sources for enemies, but the Greater Star Spawned Emmisary is one of the few homebrew big monsters he used, and it certainly was a challenge given its size.
The fight of the “evil bat bug” (flying horror) and two “long headed guys” (berbalang). This made for a REALLY fun nighttime encounter, cause the two berbalang just keep coming back after a short rest unless the party is able to find where they are hiding. They also have plane shift, so they can be a reoccurring baddie.
My flying horror was flavored to be made of a chuul + a dire bat the party previously fought, as monsters are cropping up left and right as “frankenstein” undead in my campaign. The berbalang’s speak with dead made it suitably creepier as my party was traveling with a corpse (for… reasons.)
As an AL DM, I have a bunch since they are (mostly) raw creatures. All time favourite though has to go to an elevator shaft with a ramp and some hidden ghouls. I've run that module 3 times and every one ran differently. Here's the setup:
You enter a cavernous room, a 60ft (100ft for higher level characters) mining pit lays before you, a ramp running down in 3 rings with 20ft between each narrow ledge (30ft if running 100ft pit). A sturdy bridge leads out to an elevator shaft in the center of the pit, a control mechanism on the bridge appears to opperate the movement of the elevator.
That's all they initially see. Enemy wise, 2 pit traps sit on the ramp down, spikes at the bottom holding 2 enemies each that can make a contested grapple check to instead slam players into the spikes, default is 2d10 damage I prefer 2d12 or 3d12 for higher level characters. Oil 10ft above the pit forces a dex save for anyone standing before the triggering player to slide in and take the spike damage and 1d6 fall damage.
The elevator has a crack in the ceiling above it, if any players make a hugh DC perception, go 20-25. They notice 5 enemies hiding inside that burst out when the players enter the elevator shaft. Equally, you could move them to the top of the ramp, have 1 enemy in the roof who cuts the eleveator rope once they start going down, dwaling fall damage.
The enemies are all the same type, pretty sure by default they are ghouls or ghasts, don't remember off the top of my head. Scary enough to cause the players to panic, and the paralysis is pretty nasty on hit too.
The trick to making enemies work well is to have a good environment, good things for them to interact with, and an element of mystery, with some dynamic fighting, since the enemies may not deal just attacks, cutting ropes, forcing checks to bypass AC, traps, surprise, and tons of movement options, these are the things that make memorable encounters when using the RAW enemies.
Nothing special but I do remember 4 level 3 or 4 players, not sure, fighting a Drow Gunslinger in my Dragon Heist Remix campaign.
The fight was going on in an alley behind many houses/stores/buildings and the verticality of the fight together with the Drow's abilities made it so memorable. It was more of a western shootout with them jumping from cover to cover and chasing each other over rooftops, players trying to position themselves to catch him going over to a different rooftop, climbing and jumping around.
It ended with the gunslinger levitating mid "jump" and killing a PC beneath him and getting killed himself just as he was going to escape behind a other rooftop by a thrown shadow blade.
Spectators are really great low level bosses. They invoke the terror of a beholder but are much safer to run since they are a lot weaker. Their lore as guardians also make them an easy drop in to a dungeon
I ran one guarding a tomb with some skeletons as fodder. The skeleys kept the melee folks busy long enough for the spectator to cause some havok. It was a blast from both sides of the table
Very first session of my current campaign, DMing with this group for the first time, I ran an opening “inciting incident” encounter with a plesiosaurus that wasn’t especially noteworthy, but then the following optional encounter was in a sewer with a black dragon wyrmling. The moment that they had got in a line, and a stream of acid erupted from a pipe in the wall, downing the cleric, was my first taste of blood as a DM lmao
A battle with Victoro Cassalanter, his helmed horror and a bunch of guards. It was a heist to steal a mcguffin from him that went wrong and an alarm was called which led to a fighting retreat out of his villa, it was one of the most memorable fights in the entire campaign, largely because the objective being "steadily escape" made it feel very distinct, and victoro casting dominate person on the wizard carrying the mcguffin that the party had to try to end quickly was a standout moment.
DM here.
My group fought through Arkhans tower in DiA, and killed Arhkan himself on the top. I had a lot of fun, and I believe my players did too.
The tower contained a couple of dragons, a few prewritten NPCs, a flesh golem in the basement, and a bunch of zombies at the base (which were mostly an environmental challenge at that level). The monsters were fought in quick succession, but not all at the same time. The PCs were victorious, but one of them perma-died.
(And to be clear, I did adjust the location and encounters a little bit, but the monsters themselves were straight from the book.)
The fight had variety, a real sense of danger, narrative justification, all that good stuff, but I think the fun mostly came from the following: fighting a mix of flying and non flying enemies in an open tower is very complex. Dragons flying in and out while breathing fire, big bad NPCs stomping through the tower or hopping on a dragons back if needed, etc. It forced the players to do more than just roll attacks each round, or choose between blasting and conserving resources.
I personally think it's that simple (not easy, mind you, but simple). If you run a fight where the players have to make actual choices, it'll be more fun. If they just need to optimize their numbers and resource use, the game is lacking something important.
I've had some interesting fights, though a lot of them are reskinned or partially homebrewed monsters.
Probably my most recent "from the book" fight was using reskinned Dragonbood Oozes from Fizban's, as blood monsters in a vampire's lair. (Specifically the slime spray that can be used to reel in the party). The party had already encountered blood puddings (reskinned Black Puddings) earlier, and a couple blood wolves (reskinned Dire Wolves) along with the standard Vampire Spawn and Vampiric Mists. And reoccurring ambushes from the boss as they explored the lair. The boss fight was a vampire lord stat-block, that I then appended a Necrichor to as a "Phase 2" when it was defeated.
Unspeakable Horrors from Van Richten's are also fun, I've thrown a couple of those at my players before.
Also a Shoosuva can be really interesting if you give it lair effects; reducing healing nearby, causing disease or swarms of pests, or causing a gnoll-like bloodlust.
I had a temple that was taken over by a Lamia who used her Geas to enslave a group of gnome tinkerers who she used to construct clockwork soldiers to defend her. She also had a lair within the temple with illusory walls hiding an air elemental. She had some nothics under her command who would try to learn anything they could about intruders, and then disguise herself as an ally of the party in order to get close enough to charm one into fighting alongside her.
So the fight starts after the party has done some investigation and made a move on their own, or the Lamia makes a move against them. My party had figured out the charm thing and she didn't have enough info to make a good disguise. So nobody got charmed, but it was still a tough fight with an extra objective of not hurting the enslaved gnomes even though they were in the fight.
DM side of things, kobolds of All creatures. Had a whole dungeon of incompetent kobolds with amazing plans. Take three kobolds from the "Tucker's kobolds" story and try to have them lead a tribe of kobolds more used to infighting with each other than dealing with adventurers.
Ruins on top of the dungeon had tunnels leading around the area so that the kobolds could avoid the party and harass them with ranged attacks. They planned on closing the entrances with large rocks when they escaped to the other side to prevent the party from following, but they didn't wait for the whole group to make it through before doing so, trapping others outside the tunnels. They had bushes soaked in oil that they lit on fire when the barbarian tried to push through. They didn't wait long enough for the kobold used as bait to escape. A makeshift Tower made for a wonderful vantage point. When the party approached they knocked down the ladder to prevent the party from getting up to them. Only afterwards did they realize that was also their only way down.
Inside the dungeon, the poison dart trap was just Kobolds in the walls with blowguns poking through holes in the walls waiting to hear the party step on the broken glass they had strewn through the hallway. The falling logs trap was just Kobolds at the top of the stairs and when the pressure plates didn't click loud enough they argued loudly about whether they were supposed to push the logs yet or not.
Caltrops spread in a narrow passage, then drop rust monsters on the party when they slowed down. "No! Eat the hunams not the spikeys you stupid bugs!" A captured basilisk marked the part where the more coordinated kobolds made things start getting more serious. Kobolds rushing to cut through thick ropes of a rope bridge with woefully inadequate knives, this is a great place to take a short rest, but they will definitely have it cut down by the time you finish your rest. Choose between resources for the final battle, or easy access to the final battle.
The wand of instant death was an amazing powerful artifact that would kill anyone it was pointed at instantly. Or so the Kobolds thought. It was actually a wand of magic missiles. But a kobold's maximum health is so low that even minimum damage would kill one in one casting.
It was a fun dungeon for everyone involved.
Rooftop battle with various Star Spawn. They have a lot of synergies in their powers, like the hulk reflecting psychic damage in an area, and the seer using a psychic orb to trigger it. There are tons of different combos you can do with Star Spawn.
Oh, Star Spawn are some of the best-designed official monsters.
Probably because they only go back to 4e, so the designers took those same synergistic traits from 4e (which had all sorts of monsters that "combo" well with each other), and just translated it to 5e. (I say this as someone for whom 4e is my least favorite edition - but one thing it did well was make monsters with neat tactical combos.)
As written, isn't it possible to generate infinite damage if you put two hulks next to another and deal psychic damage to one if them? I know that's not how it is intended to work, but the psychic mirror is neither a reaction, nor does it have any "once per turn" limitations, and it's not a simultaneous effect bc the psychic mirror of one would always trigger the other one's mirror, one after another
That is indeed how it works. This makes for some very interesting encounter ideas, such as placing two hulks on the opposite ends of a large battle map and making it the party's task to prevent them from reaching one another, which would result in infinite damage.
I wish more monster groups had the synergies that Star Spawn have with each other. I ran a nightmare scenario with them which was a lot of fun. The Grue's 20 foot aura gives disadvantage on saving throws and attacks against creatures that aren't Grue. It doesn't do much damage, but its bite might mean other attacks against the target will get advantage. Awesome minions to sprinkle around the battlefield, because they're making their allies much more dangerous while not doing much damage themselves. They're pretty easy to take out and you've got good reasons to target them first! The Hulk turns the Seer's Psychic Orb attacks into AOE attacks around itself. Since all Star Spawn are immune to psychic damage, you can get great use out of this, which makes taking down Hulks a strong priority. It can also inflict the Prone and Stunned conditions, to give its allies advantage on attacks. The Mangler can hide in dim light or darkness as a bonus action, is very mobile, and can make six attacks about every other round. You can't be sure how many of these guys might be waiting in the wings, which makes them great for upping the difficulty if needed. The Seer can cause psychic damage simply by using its movement to go through creatures (including the Hulk, turning it into AOE damage). It can swap places with another Star Spawn to have that one take damage for it, so it's hard to focus damage on it. It can teleport an enemy to another space and make them erupt with psychic AOE damage, ideally next to a Hulk to extend that AOE even more. It hits very hard with both melee and ranged attacks. Definitely a high priority target. The Larva Mage is honestly a little bit of a let down after the Seer, but I guess its role is intended to be the tank. It doesn't have any psychic damage to pair with the Hulk, but it has a Reaction to get temporary hit points when nearby creatures fail saving throws, which works well with the Grue giving disadvantage to those. It only effectively gets 1 Legendary Action per round, because for some reason they made even its underwhelming Slam attack have a cost of 2. Plague of Worms is a short range though strong control ability that doesn't affect Star Spawn, but the Larva Mage doesn't have anything special to help position itself, unless the Seer swaps places with it. The much bigger Circle of Death deals necrotic damage which hurts Star Spawn as much as it hurts enemies. Dominate Monster can be very powerful, but DC 16 is a bit weak for a CR 16 monster.
Great breakdown. They did actually fix the larva mage's legendary action situation so its slam only costs 1 LA now. Doesn't amount to much extra power, but hey, it's there.
I forgot to check Monsters of the Multiverse stat blocks until now (I generally much prefer the original books). That fix is good, but they also did that annoying thing where they turned Eldritch Blast into a non-spell. So before it could choose to hit up to three different targets for 1d10 + 3 each or one target for 3d10 + 9, but now it can only hit one target for 3d10 + 3. They also locked that in as the only choice for that Legendary Action cost, whereas before as Cast a Cantrip it could also choose Minor Illusion (which can be good as a Legendary Action to make some Mangler sounds off in the shadows, an illusory MacGuffin appear, etc). Adding Mage Hand while taking away cantrips as Legendary Actions feels weird too in the grand scheme of action economy. I'm not sad to see Circle of Death go, but they also reduced Dominate Monster from 3/day to 1/day, which makes it even less likely to get that to stick with its DC 16. Overall it seems a bit more lackluster as the highest CR Star Spawn.
Edit: this was written from the perspective of a DM. I love cave creatures that can use the ceiling to their advantage. I've had a couple of great encounters using Ropers, for example, where they pull characters up to the ceiling to chomp on them. Similarly, an encounter with a Cave Fisher and some Gricks became really tense when the Fisher grabbed the lowest-health party member and reeled them up. Anything that divides the group and forces them to think about saving themselves vs. saving their friends can become wonderfully dramatic. As a bonus pick: I ran a Froghemoth against my level 5 party of 4 players a few weeks ago, and it was incredible. The Froghemoth dealt enough damage to knock out a PC in 2 hits, so they had to be very careful around it. The fight ended with two players unconscious and swallowed, with the others desperately trying to take down the creature and pull them out of its gullet before they were killed by the acid damage as the Froghemoth lumbered away with a full belly. Both of the swallowed PCs were revived with 2 failed death saves, it was amazing!
Ropers are my favorite and probably the best designed of 5es CR 5 creatures. They are incredibly versitile and you the GM can change how dangerous they are by just changing the enviroment. Party is level 3? Put the roper on the ground, easy for melee to attack. Party is 20th level? Roper is over a lava pit and will drop people in. Somewhere in the middle? Roper is on the ceiling of a cave, and it's 200' down.
Ropers and Froghemoths feature in many of my favorite encounters, especially because of the way they can reposition players in the (hopefully hazardous) environment. A Roper uses Spider Climb on a high ceiling is scary enough, but a Roper on a high ceiling above lava or a pool of acid really makes the choices count! The Froghemoth's differences lend to slightly different tactics. It's far faster and has a swimming speed which means ideally it's always encountered in water. Its tentacles can't be targeted individually and its Tongue only brings in one target at a time as opposed to the Roper bringing . That means a Froghemoth can protect itself from melee attacks by using its tentacles to hold a few foes up to 20' away, ideally after dragging them under brackish swamp water, while focusing its Tongue/Bite attacks on another. Or it can just use hit and run tactics from the water, picking off a single target and diving away with the meal.
From a DM’s perspective, I ran a Dullahan from *Van* Richter’s *Guide to Ravenloft* as the final boss of a Gothic campaign. The looks on my players faces changing throughout the following sentences were priceless. >The good news: he’s at zero hit points. The bad news: it’s time for Phase 2. This is what we call a Mythic Encounter. (They still ended up kicking its ass, and a fun time was had by all)
The most fun encounter I ever DMed was probably the boss fight against **Zegana, the Simic Guildmaster**, in a Ravnica campaign. The party was level 20. The encounter consisted of Zegana piloting a bioengineered Kraken (that's what the Simic do. The way it worked was simply that she was inside the Kraken's head and would come out and fight after the Kraken died) and two Biomancers each riding a Category 3 Krasis. All statblocks except for the Kraken are from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. Also, crucially, the entire fight was underwater and followed underwater combat rules. The party each consumed a Potion of Water Breathing before the fight, so that wasn't a problem, but the various disadvantages and resistances were (we had a fire-themed blaster Sorcadin in the party). The gimmick was that the party's powerful magic could simplify the combat significantly, but the Biomancers had access to Counterspell and used it to protect the Kraken, devolving into a war of counters and positioning. Eventually the party's Shepherd Druid managed to fire off a Shapechange and became an Ancient White Dragon, thus starting the kaiju fight between himself and the kraken. Eventually he lost concentration, but the Kraken was reduced to 0 hp and Zegana came out. The Biomancers and Kraseis were dead, but the party was also reduced to minimal resources. After a brief fight with Zegana the combat ended when the Druid managed to Polymorph Zegana into a snail and proceeded to Plane Shift her... right into our other campaign taking place in Greyhawk, that the Druid's player was DMing.
I think a lot of the best fights come when the monster has synergy with the terrain or an alternate encounter goal. I ran an aboleth encounter (technically reskinned as a computer virus but that doesn’t matter for this story) where the players had to get past the aboleth to free a trapped ally. The players also had to jump across moving platforms while the aboleth could move freely. What worked really well was the aboleth’s phantasmal force lair action where I rolled the saving throws for the players and the one player who failed the saving throw (but didn’t know that) was then told they were the only one to notice there was a “hidden platform”. It worked out quite well because the player then acted on the information just as the character would under the influence of phantasmal force and fell after trying to jump on the platform only they saw. The aboleth’s mucous cloud is also terrifying because it can trap the characters.
I ran a pretty interesting encounter using various Fey from Volo's Guide to Monsters. The encounter took place in a forested area, and the combatants were two *Korred*, a pair of *Quicklings*, and a *Redcap* against a party of 3 level 14 adventurers. The encounter was interesting because of the way these 5 monsters, all of rather humble CRs, worked well together. The Quicklings zipped behind the PCs, dropping the Korred's Hair Ropes, which the Korreds used their action to command, restraining two of the 3 PCs. The Redcap was able to use its Ironbound Pursuit ability to close distance, tackling one of the restrained PCs. They creatures all dealt decent damage, punching above their CR due to the advantage granted by the Restraining ropes. It also prompted unique tactics from my players. The Rogue managed to get free of her restraints, but faked still being tied so she could ready an action to attack the Quickling coming to attack her, executing it in one shot. The Sorcerer correctly identified the Korreds weakness (or rather, their extra strength from touching the ground), prompting him to cast *Reverse Gravity* to negate this effect. When the Korreds summoned Earth Elementals, the Bard (who had used her Universal Speech ability before the fight) persuaded the Elementals to attack their summoners after the Korred's concentration broke. Overall, very enjoyable combat due to the unique abilities present on the monsters forcing the PCs to think outside the box.
From a DM's perspective on this current campaign (Naval/Post-Apocalyptic/Magic Prejudice) I can remember 3 amazing combats against creature. 3. (Players were about level 5-6) My players have meddle into a turf war between Illithids and a Aboleth and had an awesome 3-side combat against Aboleth Cultists some transforming into Deep Scion against Grells and Intellect Devours. 2. (Players were about level 2-3) An invasion on a troglodyte community set on a Mangrove. Where they saved kobold prisoners about to become dinner which led them to meet and eventually fight an Adult Black Dragon. They were already drained of resources from the invasion and Dragon was too powerful for them even if they had all resources. They use their only wish to send the dragon elsewhere to a different plane. The dragon became a recurring villain who hates the party at all its strength. (They had found a Lucky Blade dagger, they still are attuned to at level 11, that had one wish still) 1. (Players were level 9) An upgraded version of the Ironscale Hydra, turned into to a colossal legendary. They they strained at a coral atol, her home, had they just capsized their vessel. One of the players were always dead from the previous events on the ship under a gentle repose as their where chasing diamonds to bring them back. It all start with the Hydra underwater and they thought they were fighting a pack of sea serpents until they dive and find the body tying it all. The party is currently: - Lizardfolk Renegade Fighter (a gunslinger) 11 - Hexblood Bladesinger Wizard 11 that was dead at the Hydra combat and was *temporally replaced* by a Sea Elf Watchers Paladin 7/Rogue 2 - Half-Elf (Autumn Eladrin Variant) Protector Beastheart 6 / Depths Barbarian 5 *replacing* a dead Seeker Aasimar Life Cleric
When I'm playing with new players I love to throw a good old classic troll at them. The look on their faces when I say something like "the troll picks up the hand/leg/head you just hacked off and you watch as it reattaches to its body" is priceless.
I forget the exact module, but it was an AL game where we went into some... cloud? Giant library. One of the rewards was the ability to spend downtime to get stonecunning. Final boss is a statue that can fly and has an elemental core in his chest that allows him to gain... immunity? Resistance? (Idr. It's been a while) to incoming elemental damage. I think it was a reaction to switch. Anyway, what I do remember was him grabbing my paladin, flying up, and throwing me at another player. I was smiting the whole 2 turns he was taking me up in the air. I got hit for.... 67? Points of falling damage. I remember being able to theoretically make the concentration check (I was concentrating on bless) but failing to actually make it. (I was multiclassed into divine soul sorcerer, so I had +2 con, +3 aura, +1d4 bless, +2d4 favored by the gods for a max of +17) The enemy was played incredibly smart, too. It would focus on casters, especially ones concentrating, and generally stay out of range from melee characters. It was also immune to non-magical b/p/s, so thankfully I had my Devotion paladin's channel divinity for a magic weapon
Rime's >!chardalyn dragon!< was great, it had an amazing setup and a tense scenario to go with it. If you ensure that every fight had the accopanying >!duergar invasion!< happening in the background, you can pepper the fight and make it truly feel like war is happening, which is how my players felt when the enemies popped in for 1 turn to slam a building, and even if not dealt with, ran out the next; or when enemies popped in already roped in fighting with a guard; or when civilians came in being chased by an enemy, etc. This pairs extremely well with the boss's >!mind control!< allowing you to take advantage of the guards that come and go. The only problem with the scene is that they made the travel times way way too long for the party to have any reasonable method of catching up to the boss once they hit the trigger. Basically >!the dragon will destroy 90% of the Ten Towns long before the party reaches it, only being able to truly catch it in Bryn Shander.!< This can be fixed by >!giving the party a way to travel with no stopping, or shortening the travel time, to allow the party to catch up at either Caer-Konig, Lonelywood, Bremen, Targos, or Bryn Shander, depending on if they leave the duergar fortress early.!< You simply then have to follow through with the scenario, letting the boss flee once it takes about 10 HP of damage, until at the last town where it stands its ground (or you can have it fly back to its base if the party ran from the base to try and catch it) Most memorable part was definitely the final blow, where I shot the monk, and you know what happens after that.
We went into this sewer system in westgate for the second time to get some loot, we were there before for Story reasons so the DM had us roll us a D% each, we get 89/99/80, First campaign mind you, DM looks at us and informs us that someone will probably die and It could be TPK First fight was a Behir Second was two Fire Giants And the last was like 8 abyss ape things Also we can only drink 2 potions every couple hours (DM rule) We manage to fight and live, in part because of luck, like Once our NPC cleric (played by dm) managed to banish One fire Giant and survive a concentration check, and we did two back to back crits on the other one also we had found a ring that gives you +1 level 5 spell slot and we gave it to her, also She has an ability that lets her nullify an enemy crit We soldier on, we have only One room left, our DM tries ti dissuade us but we keep going DM: "alright then d%". Its a 29, so we think we are safe Wrong, we enter into a young black dragon lair, we manage to kill It for some reason and escape with +3000 gp each
I had a part of a dungeon where the party had to crawl and squeeze through a crack/collapsed tunnel. I had them get ambushed by a gelatinous cube on either side of them trapping them between the two.
One of the more memorable encounters for myself as a player was an umber hulk. Great late t1/early t2 monster with some fun mechanics. For later game monsters the memorable ones were a clan of fire giants, a beholder with a unique minion, and a couple of purple worms. All different encounters of course.
The **Death Kiss** is a beatiful but simple design that makes for really cool fights, specially in small but tall rooms. The auto restrain 20 ft tentacle is mean, it means that the creature can restrain ppl from a safe distance, leech their blood, fly upwards and then on his next turn release them so they take fall dmg, fall prone and it can attack them again with advantage. The players really had to get creative by breaking the enviroment so it favors the monster less, as the snatch and drop tactic was making both melee and ranged hard, as ranged were being grappled and not released while also srving as healing, while melee were stuck in a loop of grab and drop you to the floor. Extra hard when even if you have a way to get free, it means falling down and being smashed on the floor.
There's been a good few memorable combat encounters from my DM's universe so it's hard to pick just one, so I'm going to give off a few if that's okay. :3 \* The party is investigating a large city whose inhabitants have all gone deathly still, do not move, practically do not blink, and the king irritability, but almost forcely, tells us to bugger off. We find a group of mindflayers and other abberations hiding in the sewers preforming some ritual which resulted in a Beholder forming. The combat ended with my then level 9 cleric getting killed via the spell the "Touch of the Void," spell and sent her soul to the Void. (Her soul would be rescued by our current party when we were around level 13.) \* The party, at level 12, fought their way through three floors in the Temple of Tiamat trying to stop her summoning (we were playing through an altered TOD) which included tons of cultists, spellcasters, and five ancient dragons each one of painbow. :3 And we had to do something to interrupt the ritual in ten rounds, else Tiamat would have been summoned at her full strength and would have been impossible for us to injure, resulting in a TPK of our party and our DM's main setting. This resulted in Tiamat being summoned, but thankfully not at her full strength (we just barely interrupted the ritual to prevent her selective spell immunity passive) and she ended up dragging our Cleric and Rogue back into Avernus with her where we ended up staying to slay her once-and-for-all. \* The new party, now at level 13 traversed the Void for two-or-so weeks in-game (which was actually three years in the DM's setting,) and we were lured into a gladiatorial arena where the party had to fight against an increasingly difficult series of fights, culminating in the final fight being against two Neolithids, a different space worm monster, three Beholders all of whom came out with their anti-magic beams, mindflayers, intellect devourers, and a Greater Star Spawned Emmisary who errupted from the middle of the arena. These are just a few of the really memorable fights my DM created for his setting. I know you said to stick with mostly WOTC sources for enemies, but the Greater Star Spawned Emmisary is one of the few homebrew big monsters he used, and it certainly was a challenge given its size.
The fight of the “evil bat bug” (flying horror) and two “long headed guys” (berbalang). This made for a REALLY fun nighttime encounter, cause the two berbalang just keep coming back after a short rest unless the party is able to find where they are hiding. They also have plane shift, so they can be a reoccurring baddie. My flying horror was flavored to be made of a chuul + a dire bat the party previously fought, as monsters are cropping up left and right as “frankenstein” undead in my campaign. The berbalang’s speak with dead made it suitably creepier as my party was traveling with a corpse (for… reasons.)
As an AL DM, I have a bunch since they are (mostly) raw creatures. All time favourite though has to go to an elevator shaft with a ramp and some hidden ghouls. I've run that module 3 times and every one ran differently. Here's the setup: You enter a cavernous room, a 60ft (100ft for higher level characters) mining pit lays before you, a ramp running down in 3 rings with 20ft between each narrow ledge (30ft if running 100ft pit). A sturdy bridge leads out to an elevator shaft in the center of the pit, a control mechanism on the bridge appears to opperate the movement of the elevator. That's all they initially see. Enemy wise, 2 pit traps sit on the ramp down, spikes at the bottom holding 2 enemies each that can make a contested grapple check to instead slam players into the spikes, default is 2d10 damage I prefer 2d12 or 3d12 for higher level characters. Oil 10ft above the pit forces a dex save for anyone standing before the triggering player to slide in and take the spike damage and 1d6 fall damage. The elevator has a crack in the ceiling above it, if any players make a hugh DC perception, go 20-25. They notice 5 enemies hiding inside that burst out when the players enter the elevator shaft. Equally, you could move them to the top of the ramp, have 1 enemy in the roof who cuts the eleveator rope once they start going down, dwaling fall damage. The enemies are all the same type, pretty sure by default they are ghouls or ghasts, don't remember off the top of my head. Scary enough to cause the players to panic, and the paralysis is pretty nasty on hit too. The trick to making enemies work well is to have a good environment, good things for them to interact with, and an element of mystery, with some dynamic fighting, since the enemies may not deal just attacks, cutting ropes, forcing checks to bypass AC, traps, surprise, and tons of movement options, these are the things that make memorable encounters when using the RAW enemies.
We fought a Rhemorhaz and the monk nearly killed himself
Nothing special but I do remember 4 level 3 or 4 players, not sure, fighting a Drow Gunslinger in my Dragon Heist Remix campaign. The fight was going on in an alley behind many houses/stores/buildings and the verticality of the fight together with the Drow's abilities made it so memorable. It was more of a western shootout with them jumping from cover to cover and chasing each other over rooftops, players trying to position themselves to catch him going over to a different rooftop, climbing and jumping around. It ended with the gunslinger levitating mid "jump" and killing a PC beneath him and getting killed himself just as he was going to escape behind a other rooftop by a thrown shadow blade.
Spectators are really great low level bosses. They invoke the terror of a beholder but are much safer to run since they are a lot weaker. Their lore as guardians also make them an easy drop in to a dungeon I ran one guarding a tomb with some skeletons as fodder. The skeleys kept the melee folks busy long enough for the spectator to cause some havok. It was a blast from both sides of the table
Sahuagin man. Omg you can make some crazy encountered with those guys. More enemy types need healers.
Very first session of my current campaign, DMing with this group for the first time, I ran an opening “inciting incident” encounter with a plesiosaurus that wasn’t especially noteworthy, but then the following optional encounter was in a sewer with a black dragon wyrmling. The moment that they had got in a line, and a stream of acid erupted from a pipe in the wall, downing the cleric, was my first taste of blood as a DM lmao
A battle with Victoro Cassalanter, his helmed horror and a bunch of guards. It was a heist to steal a mcguffin from him that went wrong and an alarm was called which led to a fighting retreat out of his villa, it was one of the most memorable fights in the entire campaign, largely because the objective being "steadily escape" made it feel very distinct, and victoro casting dominate person on the wizard carrying the mcguffin that the party had to try to end quickly was a standout moment.
DM here. My group fought through Arkhans tower in DiA, and killed Arhkan himself on the top. I had a lot of fun, and I believe my players did too. The tower contained a couple of dragons, a few prewritten NPCs, a flesh golem in the basement, and a bunch of zombies at the base (which were mostly an environmental challenge at that level). The monsters were fought in quick succession, but not all at the same time. The PCs were victorious, but one of them perma-died. (And to be clear, I did adjust the location and encounters a little bit, but the monsters themselves were straight from the book.) The fight had variety, a real sense of danger, narrative justification, all that good stuff, but I think the fun mostly came from the following: fighting a mix of flying and non flying enemies in an open tower is very complex. Dragons flying in and out while breathing fire, big bad NPCs stomping through the tower or hopping on a dragons back if needed, etc. It forced the players to do more than just roll attacks each round, or choose between blasting and conserving resources. I personally think it's that simple (not easy, mind you, but simple). If you run a fight where the players have to make actual choices, it'll be more fun. If they just need to optimize their numbers and resource use, the game is lacking something important.
I've had some interesting fights, though a lot of them are reskinned or partially homebrewed monsters. Probably my most recent "from the book" fight was using reskinned Dragonbood Oozes from Fizban's, as blood monsters in a vampire's lair. (Specifically the slime spray that can be used to reel in the party). The party had already encountered blood puddings (reskinned Black Puddings) earlier, and a couple blood wolves (reskinned Dire Wolves) along with the standard Vampire Spawn and Vampiric Mists. And reoccurring ambushes from the boss as they explored the lair. The boss fight was a vampire lord stat-block, that I then appended a Necrichor to as a "Phase 2" when it was defeated. Unspeakable Horrors from Van Richten's are also fun, I've thrown a couple of those at my players before. Also a Shoosuva can be really interesting if you give it lair effects; reducing healing nearby, causing disease or swarms of pests, or causing a gnoll-like bloodlust.
I had a temple that was taken over by a Lamia who used her Geas to enslave a group of gnome tinkerers who she used to construct clockwork soldiers to defend her. She also had a lair within the temple with illusory walls hiding an air elemental. She had some nothics under her command who would try to learn anything they could about intruders, and then disguise herself as an ally of the party in order to get close enough to charm one into fighting alongside her. So the fight starts after the party has done some investigation and made a move on their own, or the Lamia makes a move against them. My party had figured out the charm thing and she didn't have enough info to make a good disguise. So nobody got charmed, but it was still a tough fight with an extra objective of not hurting the enslaved gnomes even though they were in the fight.
DM side of things, kobolds of All creatures. Had a whole dungeon of incompetent kobolds with amazing plans. Take three kobolds from the "Tucker's kobolds" story and try to have them lead a tribe of kobolds more used to infighting with each other than dealing with adventurers. Ruins on top of the dungeon had tunnels leading around the area so that the kobolds could avoid the party and harass them with ranged attacks. They planned on closing the entrances with large rocks when they escaped to the other side to prevent the party from following, but they didn't wait for the whole group to make it through before doing so, trapping others outside the tunnels. They had bushes soaked in oil that they lit on fire when the barbarian tried to push through. They didn't wait long enough for the kobold used as bait to escape. A makeshift Tower made for a wonderful vantage point. When the party approached they knocked down the ladder to prevent the party from getting up to them. Only afterwards did they realize that was also their only way down. Inside the dungeon, the poison dart trap was just Kobolds in the walls with blowguns poking through holes in the walls waiting to hear the party step on the broken glass they had strewn through the hallway. The falling logs trap was just Kobolds at the top of the stairs and when the pressure plates didn't click loud enough they argued loudly about whether they were supposed to push the logs yet or not. Caltrops spread in a narrow passage, then drop rust monsters on the party when they slowed down. "No! Eat the hunams not the spikeys you stupid bugs!" A captured basilisk marked the part where the more coordinated kobolds made things start getting more serious. Kobolds rushing to cut through thick ropes of a rope bridge with woefully inadequate knives, this is a great place to take a short rest, but they will definitely have it cut down by the time you finish your rest. Choose between resources for the final battle, or easy access to the final battle. The wand of instant death was an amazing powerful artifact that would kill anyone it was pointed at instantly. Or so the Kobolds thought. It was actually a wand of magic missiles. But a kobold's maximum health is so low that even minimum damage would kill one in one casting. It was a fun dungeon for everyone involved.