Deadliest Monsters in Dungeons and Dragons 5e by CR - Part Two

Who are the Deadliest monsters in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition? Today is a lesson in encounter design and balance as we look at the strongest monsters in 5e by each level. This is part two which will cover all monsters from CR 9 to CR 21!

Links to books mentioned in video:

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[joelshaffer]

I'd be disappointed if Dragons didn't feature heavily on the strongest monster list. They form a cornerstone of fantasy settings and are physically imposing while still being incredibly intelligent.

[leohale]

Love the shirt! I am currently battling it right now, and have been since December. Thank You all for the very kind words. I am so far doing well and hope to continue to do so.

[mitchelltyner]

"cr 15 strahd von zarovich wishes he had a spell list this good.", you mean he does have a list this good. This is a good spell list and will be using it on enemies from now on :)

[madscurr]

I've run Curse of Strahd, and yeah the party knocked him down in 2 rounds. But those 2 rounds were thoroughly planned and built up to by the party over the course of the last couple levels of the campaign, acquiring the items and magics they'd need and learning the specific conditions under which he could die, and the trick that killed Strahd also killed two PCs. So I wouldn't say that it was underwhelming by any means.

[thehulkster]

I'm not disappointed to see dragons well represented. They are after all the titular monster of the game.

[TheFirstLanx]

I just recently played through Curse of Strahd and the experiences there confirmed my theorycrafting of them. They do **not** flat out suck, BUT they're very underwhelming to the levels they're supposed to be a challenge to.
Vampires are truly murderous to characters and even entire parties of low level, or parties that don't (yet) have effective countermeasures to their abilities. All the vampire's abilities are geared towards winning a long protracted fight. They reduce the maximum hitpoints of victims so they can't be healed, and if it looks like they might lose they can easily disengage and regenerate back up and then come back and fight again. This makes them way WAY more dangerous to low level parties than even a beholder, which can be outwitted and worn down through clever play and luck. With a vampire it barely matters what plan you have or how good your dice are, if you don't have a critical mass of power to back your play, you just lose plain and simple.
There comes a critical point however, when a party can just about challenge a vampire, a sweet spot where the fight could go either way. This is when vampires are the best to include in your game and where they're actually fun to fight. This point is really short lived however. Once your PCs gain even just a tiny bit more power than is the bare minimum to break through the regeneration, and to endure a couple of attacks without needing to heal in between, then suddenly they can overwhelm a vampire really REALLY fast with near-impunity. I don't think there's any monster that falls off as hard as a vampire does.

[nonya]

Geezer here...
Good vid...
Must say the most dangerous "monster" in any game system is what ya kids call the "murder hobo"... TPK for sure at any level.
Game on.

[alnu]

Elder Oblex: For when you absolutely, positively must run "John Carpenter's The Thing WITH MAGIC!" in your game.

[zackarysmith]

as someone who is fighting pancreatic cancer. i FING love that shirt your wearing!

[Lhight]

IMO it is underwhelming that Strad has basically the same stats that the standard vampire comes with. The only difference is that he has lore.

[PerfectionHunter]

This video, and Part One is the best videos you have done so far. They are, possibly, the best D&D-related videos here on YouTube for us DMs. Good job! Keep em coming.

[bendystrawz]

I half expected half the comments to be about the shirt.

Awesome shirt by the way :D

[aaronpangilinan]

“That i did a few weeks ago”

Oh yeah, 2 months ago is technically a few weeks ago, sure

I jest, I’ve just been waiting for this for so long!!! (apparently 2 months)

[fiddleburg]

For the Challenge rating 20 spot I'm under the personal opinion that the adult gold dragon shadow variant takes the cake, as it can create such absolute chaos in combat, with a stealth bonus of +14 it can easily get the drop on the party; combine that with its breath weapon that is now necrotic rather then fire making it less commonly resisted, that also happens to kill a party member if they drop to 0 hp because of it and proceeds to be raised as a shadow to further devastate the party. This combined with the inherit bulkiness(256hp and 19ac), speed(80ft flying speed), and the very scary ability to throw 2d10+4d6+24 dmg out with a single action via multi attack, it makes it quite a forced to be reckoned with. At the very least, it's defiantly a viable pick for true polymorph at the very top level of play lol

[brissinger]

Personally, I was almost wanting to expect to see the Nightwalker for CR 20 because of its ability to outright kill on fairly decent damage, despite it being a little squishy. It still does have quite a few resistances from what I remember as well.

[drasedrase]

Missed you Cody! Hope you are doing ok!!!

Had an episode idea, ask commenters for worst multiclass ideas. Would be funny, revoke some more dnd cards lol

[dylancoetzee]

Love your shirt bro, lost two besties this year from that truly dangerous BBEG. Alas Stephen who passed last night was also part of the passion that drove me to try be a GM 1/2 as good as he was. Thanks for the amazing content and shows, big fan.

[durakku]

I'd like to see a video of the deadliest named monsters too. Maybe a top 10 or something. It'd be neat learning about what they can do.

[JustinLaw]

The Elder Oblex is basically the Thing from John Carpenter's "The Thing" that can possess multiple people AND has supernatural mind control. I ran a horror one-shot one time with this thing and was AMAZED by how easily I TPK'ed my players, like I wasn't even trying.

[BubblingBrooke]

Aboleths also dont get legendary resistances. We were level 10 and all I had to do was feed it drugs that was the equivalent of the confusion spell and we shut it down immediately.(I know they werent chosen I'm just adding why they arent the pick XD)