Untold terrors haunt the Domains of Dread. Among them skulk nightmares known on countless worlds, but even familiar monsters can take on twisted forms or demonstrate unexpected abilities. This chapter explores ways to help you, the DM, make even the most commonplace monsters more frightening, as well as providing a host of horrors to add to your adventures in the Mists.
Horror Monsters
For adventurers who regularly face terrifying monsters, it's easy for familiarity to sap the frightfulness from terrible foes. Restoring mystery and menace to even the most ordinary monsters can be a simple matter, though, and enhances the atmosphere of horror adventures. Six simple techniques can transform a stat block straight out of the Monster Manual (or other source) into a horror to haunt your characters' dreams:
Monstrous Origins
A variety of explanations, from transformative curses to magical experiments, can justify the appearance of a unique individual with unusual traits. In the same way, monsters in Ravenloft don't need to be members of a species or society. You can have a vicious merrow living under a bridge or a yuan-ti abomination Darklord without having to explain merrows as a species or the nature of all yuan-ti in the setting. Monsters can be one-off flukes of nature or the products of insidious magic.
For significant adversaries, use the tables in the "2" section of 2 to inspire you as you craft a monster's unique details. When it comes time for the final confrontation, it might not matter whether the bridge-haunting merrow was the product of an amoral experiment to infuse piscine traits into a soldier or the result of someone drinking from a spring tainted by demon's blood; the merrow's stat block remains the same. But those different origin stories suggest completely different paths for adventurers to follow when investigating the creature and ensuring nothing like it ever returns to be a menace again.
Notorious Monsters
Every monster tells a story. The more you treat monsters as unique individuals and foreshadow their threat, the larger they'll loom in characters' minds. Build dread by giving monsters reputations that suggests their form, deeds, or peculiarities while letting players' imaginations embellish details.
For example, tales describe a horrifying skeletal figure that corrupts the land wherever it walks. Its habit of whistling cheerfully while committing brutal acts is the source of its epithet: the Whistling Fiend. Characters might hear rumors of its merry tunes becoming fearful earworms for those who survive its passing. A party seeking the monster might also hear the whistling long before they confront the fiend. All that time, they can at guess at their enemy's nature, but ultimately the Whistling Fiend might be any demon or other threat you choose.
The Whistling Fiend's notoriety has little to do with its stat block. It's famous because of its habit of whistling amid acts of terrible carnage. Use the tables in 4 of the Dungeon Master's Guide to help inspire similar characteristics to color a monster's notorious reputation.
Describing Monsters
When adventurers encounter a monster for the first time, especially if its reputation precedes it, dwell on its description. You could tell the players that they see a merrow or hold up the creature's picture from the Monster Manual. But that first moment of revelation is the best time to paint a horrifying picture of the monster in the players' imaginations. In addition to the techniques described in the "4" section of 4, consider these concepts as you describe a monster:
Monstrous Tactics
Monsters, just like player characters, can try anything you can imagine in combat, including the full range of combat options described in the Player's Handbook. Monsters can use the Help action to aid each other, they can grapple or shove their enemies, and so on. Some monsters use these options to maximize their advantages in battle; others use them to sow fear among their enemies, even if they're not strategically optimal choices.
For example, creatures known as "goblyns" in 3 and other domains are ordinary hobgoblins in terms of their game statistics, but they're known for a tactic they call "feasting": they grapple their enemies and then make unarmed attacks to bite their faces. These attacks aren't terribly dangerous (a hobgoblin's unarmed strike deals only 2 damage, compared to the average of 5 it deals with a longsword), but the face-biting is much more shocking to the victim and onlookers.
Monsters become more fearsome if they use tactics like ganging up on the least-armored characters in a party, taking the time to take bites from unconscious foes, separating party members from each other, and attacking from hiding. Use these tactics judiciously; the goal is to surprise and scare the players, not to convince them that you're trying to make them fail.
Monstrous Traits
Consider undermining players' expectations about what a creature is or can do by making tweaks to the traits in its stat block. Adding a sahuagin's Blood Frenzy trait to a different monster can help it feel like a bloodthirsty horror, for example. Traits such as a troglodyte's Chameleon Skin or a doppelganger's Ambusher can help make a monster feel more sinister as it lurks in hiding and ambushes its foes. Some traits, such as a night hag's Etherealness or an imp's Invisibility, can help a monster escape from an encounter so it can return to haunt the adventurers another day. Traits such as a banshee's Horrifying Visage or a black dragon's Frightful Presence can heighten the inherent fearsomeness of truly terrifying creatures.
Of course, you're not limited to the traits that appear in existing monster stat blocks, but those are a good starting point. Feel free to invent your own.
Monstrous Minions
In the Land of the Mists, many monsters serve as minions or manifestations of more powerful villains. To reflect a minion's relationship to its Darklord master or other sinister forces, add one or more of these traits to a monster's stat block.
Alien Mind
If a creature tries to read the minion's thoughts, that creature must succeed on a Intelligence saving throw with a DC equal to 10 + the minion's Intelligence modifier or be stunned for 1 minute. The stunned creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.
Minion's Mind
The minion can't be compelled to act in a way contrary to its master's instructions.
Sacrificial Minion
When the minion dies, its master regains hit points equal to four times the minion's challenge rating, as long as the master is within 100 feet of it.
Selfless Bodyguard
When an attack hits its master and the minion is within 5 feet of its master, the minion can use its reaction to make the attack hit itself instead.
Telepathic Minion
The minion and its master can communicate telepathically with each other, as long as they are on the same plane of existence.
Creating Unique Nightmares
Once you've considered the techniques in this section, put them all together to create your own unique terror. If you have ideas about what you want your monster to do, write them down. Then think of what stories connect the pieces you want to use or fill in gaps you don't know about yet.
For example, perhaps you've got an idea for a troll that ambushes adventurers while they rest. Considering its origins and appearance, the troll literally being a troll isn't important to you; you're more interested in that general challenge and look for the creature. To make your troll feel notorious, you think of what would scare adventurers—where they're vulnerable and what they're sensitive about. You come up with an idea for a creature that can come from anywhere, maybe even within the adventurers' own gear. With tactics and traits in mind, you think of your troll as an abductor and give it the Grappler trait of a mimic and the Amorphous trait of a black pudding so it can sneak in anywhere. Finally, you don't think of the troll as a minion, but you give it the Alien Mind trait to reflect its tormented psyche. Then you flesh out its story and give it a name: the Bagman.
Beware the Bagman
The Bagman is an urban legend about an adventurer who sought to escape doom by abandoning his party and hiding inside a bag of holding. When he tried to leave, though, he became lost amid a constantly increasing number of extradimensional storage spaces. Over time, the strange forces of this magical in-between place transformed the adventurer into a monstrous creature. Now, every night, the Bagman slips out from a random bag of holding. If he doesn't find his home, he drags someone back into the bag with him and leaves behind some trinket from his hidden kingdom of lost junk. Some say that if you speak too loudly over an open bag of holding or whisper "follow my voice" into a magical storage space three times, the Bagman will come for you.
Any character might know the story of the Bagman. What the Bagman is and how you use this urban legend is up to you. Is there truly a Bagman, or is he just a story? If an object vanishes overnight or if someone finds something that isn't theirs in a bag of holding, is the Bagman to blame? Is the Bagman just a monster that preys on adventurers, or is he the Darklord of his own hidden domain? The possibilities for horror adventures are endless, and nowhere—especially not adventurers' gear—is safe.
Bestiary
Many terrors lurk in the shadows—some in the corner of perception, and others beyond the Material Plane. This chapter presents stat blocks for a host of threats that can play a role in horror-based campaigns.
The creatures in this chapter are organized by their challenge rating in the Creatures by Challenge Rating table.