The best unusual monsters to use in your campaign

Key things

• Monstrosities offer a versatile and exciting opponent option in D&D like Asteroid Spider and Deep Scion.

• Hoard Mimic and Ironscale Hydra provide unique challenges for players looking for new combat encounters.

• Mage Hunters and Remorhaz add variety and unpredictability to encounters, making it clear that you can challenge any character.

Dungeons & Dragons has no shortage of awesome monsters to use, but there's only so many times you can put a group of orcs or a group of cultists on the board before players start to find your combat encounters predictable. It's important to bring a variety of opponents for your players to deal with.

The Monstrosity monster category is one of the most versatile, but also the most overlooked. It's tempting to think that undead are the best monsters or that nothing beats the thrill of a dragon, but take a moment to consider the following monsters and realize what a fantastic set of options it has for you as a Dungeon Master.

8

Asteroid Spider

You will need a bigger boat

If you're running a Spelljammer campaign and your players are cruising through space, then there's nothing scarier to throw at them than an Asteroid Spider. This gargantuan monstrosity simply cannot elicit a reaction.

Capable of capturing an entire ship and perfectly disguised as a regular asteroid, this ambush predator is a great way to spice up interstellar travel if your players are too focused on simply getting from one place to another.

You do not need to have a Spelljammer campaign running to use Asteroid Spider. If players hear about a fallen asteroid, they'll want to explore it, and the last thing they'll expect is for it to get up and start walking.

7

Deep Scion

A drowned return

Aquatic campaigns are often littered with sea serpents, krakens, and leviathans, but don't overlook the Deep Scion. They were humans lost at sea and saved by these kinds of monsters at the cost of their humanity.

They now serve the creature that saved them and lure others to him. With their consciences in the past and able to disguise themselves as who they once were, the Deep Scion can be a tricky infiltrator to root out.

6

Hoard Mimic

A terrible treasure

The Hoard Mimic is a more dangerous version of the popular classic monster, the Mimic. Unlike the regular variety, a Hoard Mimic can change their appearance to resemble a collection of items rather than a single one, allowing them to disguise themselves as a large part of a dragon's treasury.

This is the perfect monster to keep in your back pocket as a DM when your players are fighting a dragon. If the encounter with the dragons was exhausting and they barely survived, keep the Treasure Mimic for another time. But if they're slogging their way through combat and merrily collecting treasure… you know what to do.

5

Ironscale Hydra

Hydra Plus

Hydra is a tried and true favourite, you really can't go wrong with it. The only problem is if your players have been rolling dice for years and know what to expect from classic creatures like the Hydra.

Ironscale Hydra is the answer to this problem. Significantly stronger and harder to kill than the regular variant, the Ironscale Hydra will catch your players off guard when they may have expected an easier fight.

4

Kamadan

Fight monsters, not animals

Many players prefer not to have too many combat encounters with animals, or even none at all. Dealing with a pack of wolves may be a staple of the genre, but the genre is fantasy. If someone wants a fantasy where they don't have to hurt an animal, why not let them have it?

Kamadan is a way to get the feeling of fighting a beast while making it clear that the creature is a monster, making the fight less morally ambiguous. Just make sure to gauge your player's reactions. If they're still unsure, you can always have Kamadan run away.

3

Garou heist

More Attention-Wolf

Werewolf is a real monster pleaser, but his rating is a lackluster three. At the higher levels of the game, they just won't hold up and your players will wipe them out in less than a full turn.

The Loup Garou is much, much stronger, with a hefty CR of 13. Drop one of them into a group of werewolves as a pack leader and watch your players panic when they realize they're dealing with a lot more than they bargained for.

2

Mage Hunter

Sharing is scary

The D&D community often makes a lot of fuss about the differences between casters and combat techniques, arguing that combat techniques cannot compete with the usefulness of casters. Whether that's actually true or not, monsters like Mage Hunter make it clear that you can create challenges for any character.

Mage Hunters are arachnoid monsters designed to do exactly what their name suggests. If hit by a spell, it takes only half the damage and the person who cast the spell must make a Dexterity saving throw or carry the other half. Go ahead, use Disintegrate, we dare you.

1

Remorhaz

A beast from the cold

Remorhaz is a fantastic monster that will throw at your players if they are walking through a snowy environment. They often attack from under the snow and catch weary travelers by surprise.

The thing that will most likely surprise your players is that hitting Remorhaz in melee deals damage to anyone who attacks it. They might expect it to be cold damage, but it's actually Fire, as Remorhaz has an extremely high body temperature that helps it survive in arctic climates.

Remember, you're never limited to just using monsters in the environment they're normally found in, and you can change anything about them if you want. If you want Remorhaz to spawn in the desert instead and deal Cold damage instead of Fire, there's nothing stopping you.