Top 10 D&D 5E Monsters Most Likely to Cause a TPK

This week we are ranking all D&D 5E monsters in order of the most likely to cause a total party kill and wipe out everyone at the table! Avoid these creatures if you're a DM who doesn't want to kill your players (or their characters). Some of the most dangerous D&D monsters are not what you'd expect!

#DungeonsAndDragons #DnD #Monsters #Top10 #TPK

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0:00 - INTRO
01:05 - RANKINGS

[alphonso]

I remember facing off against a mindflayer that always got his psychic blast in a campaign not too long ago. Bear in mind, everyone in the party, which we lovingly dubbed the "Himbo Troupe", had a score under 10, so we were all at a disadvantage.

My barbarian fighter, someone that should have been the most susceptible, kept rolling and meeting the save and wailing on the mind flayer.

We played it off as him being too angry to be stupid

[rune]

"Banshees can only use wail once per day"
Suddenly, 4 banshees

[DarthSoto]

The really scary thing is Mindflayer often has intellect devourers as pets, and it is not uncommon to have to face both at the same time.

[alexeybalabanov]

The intellect devourer is a bit overwhelming, in cases where I want to deploy them without killing the party I make weaker versions of them. Instead of devouring the brain I make them latch into the creatures head, like the head crabs in half life.
Attacking them in this state will cause the character to take half damage for the intellect devourer, and they can be pulled out with a good STR check. It still makes them powerful. But more manageable at lower levels.

Although the sheer fear of seeing an unchanged intellect devourer is a feeling hard to achieve in DND

[slashes]

CR is a perfectly balanced system in 5e. 5e is a great system that requires no extra-work whatsoever from the DMs.

[Valandar]

Some members of my party used to game with another DM... and have been conditioned to react to an Intellect Devourer with absolute panic. We're talking up-cast Fireballs cast by two different casters on the same Intellect Devourer while screaming "NONONONONONONONONO!", ignoring whoever else might be in the AOE.

[cpesper]

The only TPK I've enacted was at the end of a one-shot. The (3 third-level) characters desecrated a goblin altar to discover it was actually a sarcophagus. Unable to resist, they opened it up and tried to take the sword that was in the grip of a dessicated corpse, but the sword was holding a stake in place, so ... out popped a vampire. She made very short work of those three.

[ViruZ]

Banshee with a willow wisp swarm following her could be both thematic and incredibly dirty

[JeremiahLiend]

Almost had a TPK to a shadow dragon. 2/3 lvl 10 players turned into shadows. Final character with 8 HP remaining survived only because of the assistance of his gargantuan duck companion.

[jeremylackey]

4 level 1 players. First combat encounter of the campaign. Figured I was taking it easy, seeing as my players were all seasoned. 4 wolves and 1 slightly bigger wolf. Some bad rolls from the party and a couple rounds of standard trip-gang up wolf strat and everyone was prone, near dead, or dying. Nobody had been able to kill any wolves.

I felt so bad. 🤣

[ERBanmech]

One I would also say is a little too strong is the Zombie Beholder. Unlike the normal beholder the zombie variant is a lower CR at the cost of having weaker stats and only 4 eye stalks. While this sounds balanced one of the stalks it keeps is the death ray which now instead of having a 1/10 chance of happening now has a 1/4 chance meaning it dishes out way too much damage for the level of the party it would be up against.

[RaisedtoSabbath]

I've made an Intellect Devourer as a player character before. It's honestly a really fun concept to only keep your mental stats while basically being a body- and class-snatching purse dog.

[thomanator]

My party actually got super scared when I had a mind flayer take root under a town, with an Ooblex under it's control, bringing people down for it to feed on before it starts an actual colony. Luckily there was a local paranoid wizard who tossed some info the player's way that let them figure out what they were originally tracking, (The Ooblex). They freaked when they saw the mindflayer, but luckily jumped it in it's home because it was like only a Week since the flayer set up shop.
They were hunting down this ooze, saw the purple tentacles digging out dirt and freaked *The fuck* Out, But they survived without any casualties, due to their caution.

[HereticalKitsune]

So in short, damage to stats is what most easily can destroy a party one by one, or at the very least destroy single characters in a very short time.

[garryame]

⦁ 1:05 black pudding
⦁ 3:00 banshee
⦁ 4:10 dracolich template
⦁ 5:24 marut
⦁ 8:09 will o' wisp
⦁ 9:55 mind flayer
⦁ 12:35 shadow dragon template
⦁ 14:14 shadow
⦁ 16:24 solar
⦁ 19:19 intellect devourer

[mpeterll]

Over the years, I've killed a rather disproportionate number of characters with kobolds. This includes one adventure where the same small group TPK'd the party twice.

[MySerpentine]

I was once in a monster game where we had an intellect devourer with a mimic sword. I think his name was Bob, because it was that kind of game.

[hereticpride]

I’ve become infamous for what my players refer to as “the will o wisp/banshee trap”

[Hakriusthebird]

I like that the Marut can just spirit you away to Sigil, if you somehow manage to survive that 1v1 and not anger the Dabu's or the Lady of Pain you're going to have a heck of a time trying to find your way back to your party. Marut the rudest monster in DnD XD

[Spooksmagoo]

I think ghosts also hit incredibly hard for their CR. Possession, yes, and so if you have no good way to drive them out you have to kill your friend. With the ability to pass through walls, and the being a tortured undead who cares only to torment the living, I ran an encounter where:

Ghosts come through the floor boards. Drop Horrifying Visage and to try and possess the party.
Party knocks out possessed PC.
Ghosts immediately pile on to kill the downed ally. The Ghost in the body of a PC held by Hold Person can even leave the body as a bonus action, attack the downed PC as action too.
Not caring about AoO, slip back through the floor boards to retreat to recharge possession.

Rinse and repeat. Ghosts have all the time in the world. This is how I used 4 CR 4 creatures to kill a level 15 PC.