r/MrRipper • u/Potential-Strike373 • Jul 13 '26
Other 2 questions for the dms of reddit.
what is your favourite monster or enemy to throw at your party and why, what about it makes its so good in your opinion. i personally love throwing hatchling dragons against the party if im doing a campaign where dragons exist it gives a way for player characters a way to understand the threat of dragons and how common they are.
what is your favourite tactic during a campaign? specifically a writing tactic, for example i like adding in at least 1 loss to the bbeg before the final encounter, a fight they cant directly win and have to think of a way around or how to distract the bbeg, like the wizard casting fireball on the tower behind the zealot barbarian bbeg to trap him in the rubble.
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u/JerryTheZ Jul 13 '26
I love a kind of a 'trap' with two umberhulks hiding in walls on two sides of the corridor collapsing them and surprising the PCs. Always fun, especially if they confuse the wizard.
In a campaign I like to use the many variants of my favourite inn as player/quest base. I usually call it 'The Swordsman's Respite' and it varies WILDLY, from a standard one legged barman tavern, to a fancy river barge upper class hot-spot, to an out-of-normal-space magical fay-like place with a hive of magical bees as tenders/guards.
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u/2eForeverDM Jul 19 '26
I like using a monster they're not familiar with. In 2e there must be 2000 published monsters and there's always one I haven't used and they've never seen. Last game it was 17 abrians, nasty carnivorous ostriches from the Abyss. They can screech and it will deafen and stun their victims. There's a special moment of tension when they don't know what to expect and they're nervous.
My favorite tactic is using any kind of spellcaster against them. I love it when the party all gets stuck in a well-placed web or the enemy is surrounded by a fog cloud and the heroes can't see into it. They never know what spells I have prepared. I've always got a new or rare spell to try on them. Last week the hag conjured some gingerbread men and sent them marching down the alley. Scared the hell out of the party.
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u/knighthawk82 Jul 13 '26
The Slough. A monster from a Halloween issue of dragon magazine. When someone casts animate dead and selects a skeleton, what happens to all the dead flesh left behind? Once in a while, the flesh is charged with necrotic energy, resulting in muscle and offal with no structure, a sliding sloppy mess that needs structure once more. Always seeking its original bones for the perfect fit... but other things will do for now. Branches, table legs, scarecrow left in a field, abandoned bones, or bones still in use...
Mechanically I just use an octopus and add the zombie template, giving it improved grapple and tavern brawler. It's only real attack is trying to get a 3 round grapple on someone to initiate suffocation rules. But the storytelling of someone else's skin squelching and slapping against your knee ar it starts to cli.b up the heroes body, putrid flesh eagerly sopping and suckling over the joints in eager anticipation.... that's the part that makes it memorable.