The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

Ready-to-Use Tactics for D&D 5E

Category: Monstrosities

Cerberus Tactics

January 7, 2025

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Monstrosities

Modern roleplaying games often include minotaurs as a species, but in Greek myth, there was only one: the Minotaur. Our krakens descend from the Kraken of Nordic lore; our medusas, from Medusa. “Leviathan” and “behemoth” likewise both began as Hebrew proper nouns. Yet for some reason, Mythic Odysseys of Theros’s inclusion of “cerberi” as a genus of monstrosities hits me as being particularly goofy. It’s as if Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft had included a listing for “draculas.”

It’s commonly believed that the Cerberus of myth had three heads, but in fact, he was most often depicted in art as having only two, and in a few cases with only one. Theros presents a lesser, two-headed species of cerberus and a more formidable, three-headed species. In other respects, however, the two-headed cerberus and the Underworld cerberus are essentially the same:
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Theran Harpy Tactics

December 20, 2024

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Monstrosities

Mythic Odysseys of Theros includes two types of harpy, one weaker than the basic Monster Manual harpy and one stronger:the CR 1/8 blood-toll harpy and the unique, CR 5 Nyxborn creature Aphemia. (Fun trivium: “Aphemia” comes from Greek roots meaning “no-voice,” and it’s the clinical name for a type of aphasia in which the ability to speak is lost or severely impaired—appropriate for a creature whose “song” consists of cacophonous noises.)

The blood-toll harpy is a simple—let’s be honest, simplistic—creature. Because of its low challenge rating, it’s always encountered in flocks, outnumbering level 1 player characters two to one and level 2 or higher PCs three to one. Even at level 3, three blood-toll harpies per PC are fairly easy to dispatch; at tier 2 and above, they’re nothing more than a minor hazard, and better to leave them as such than to waste your players’ time with a superflock of 40 or more. As often as not, you’re going to want to speed up the encounter by using mob attacks (chapter 8 of the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide, chapter 3 of the 2024 DMG) anyway.

If you are using mob attacks, remember that each blood-toll harpy makes two attacks. Its Bite and Claws attacks are functionally identical, the only difference between them being damage type (piercing vs. slashing), which as we all know is really no difference at all. Also remember that its Blood Frenzy trait gives it advantage on attack rolls against wounded targets. If you’re using 2014 rules, which instruct you to assume one hit per creature with Multiattack, add an extra hit for every two harpies beyond the first, rounded down, against an unwounded target; and assume three hits for every two harpies, rounded down, against one who’s wounded to begin with. If you’re using 2024 rules, use the Normal column against an unwounded target, but if this gives you more than one hit, add one for every three harpies beyond the first; against a target who’s wounded to begin with, use the “With Advantage” column of the Mob Results table.

Blood-toll harpies are shock attackers with a normal self-preservation instinct. They attack for two rounds, after which all surviving harpies fly away, using the Dash action (they’re not smart enough to Disengage).
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Megapede, B’rohg and Braxat Tactics

December 22, 2023

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Giants, Monstrosities

Last time I promised megapedes, but you get two bonus monsters today, because I’m trying to get Spelljammer behind me by the end of the year and it turns out that none of the three are particularly complicated.

The megapede is exactly what its name promises: a 100-foot-long bug with too many legs. The stat block and the flavor text seem to have been written by two different people. The flavor text says it buries itself in the sand and ambushes passers-by, but it has neither a burrowing speed nor blindsight nor tremorsense. The flavor text also says it can be found in “cavernous underground chambers,” and it does have a climbing speed, but not the Spider Climb trait, so it’s not going to get very far up the wall, and it definitely won’t be hanging out on the ceiling. Proficiency in Stealth and expertise in Perception are an ambush predator combination for sure, but I’m not sure where this megabeastie is supposed to hide if it wants to spot prey without being spotted itself.

With extraordinary Strength, very high Constitution and not much else to speak of, the megapede was never going to be anything but a brute melee fighter, charging its prey as soon as they come within 40 feet of it. Its Multiattack consists of one Bite attack and its choice of two other actions, and the only choice to be made is which of those two actions it takes.
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Spelljammer Thri-kreen Tactics

December 18, 2023

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Monstrosities

In addition to the basic thri-kreen stat block in the Monster Manual and its two variants, Boo’s Astral Menagerie provides three more—the hunter, the mystic and the gladiator—and these are actually some of the better-constructed stat blocks in Boo’s. Whoever designed these was clearly a fan of the thri-kreen and wanted to see them done right.

To recap what I’ve said about thri-kreen before: They’re skirmishers and shock attackers that employ ambush as a primary strategy. Their leaping ability gives them a mobility advantage in difficult terrain, such as shifting-sand deserts and tall-grass savanna, and the poison in their bite reduces the risk of withdrawing from melee combat without Disengaging. They communicate constantly during combat but generally don’t use this information to coordinate their assaults. Most thri-kreen fight using natural weaponry only, but martially trained individuals wield dual-bladed weapons called gythkas and large, shuriken-like throwing weapons called chatkchas (don’t blame yourself for having trouble pronouncing that last one).

Thri-kreen used to be categorized as humanoids, and the typical specimen had Intelligence 8. The Dungeons & Dragons design team has been moving away from giving humanoid folk average Intelligence scores of less than 10, but in Boo’s, they made the interesting choice not only to give these thri-kreen Intelligence 10 but also to recategorize them as monstrosities (something they also did with the ssurrans). Instead of chaotic neutral, they’re now “any alignment” (not just “typically” CN). You know what that means: Meat’s back on the menu, boys.
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Ssurran Tactics

December 11, 2023

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Monstrosities

We now turn to the postapocalyptic desert world of Athas, homeworld of the second edition Dark Sun setting. It’s a world defiled by reckless use of magic, where metal is scarce, fierce monsters roam, and the gods are silent. It’s also mentioned nowhere in the fifth edition Spelljammer box set, yet many creatures of Athas have been repurposed for this product (including the gaj, which I’ve already looked at, unaware at the time that it originally came from Dark Sun).

On Athas, ssurrans are reptilian nomads, sometimes traders, sometimes raiders and sometimes scavengers, who live and wander in tribes. In Boo’s Astral Menagerie, they’re recharacterized as desert- and Wildspace-adapted lizardfolk. Boo’s presents stats for two types of ssurran: the ssurran poisoner and the ssurran defiler.
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