Ever since it’s creation, Dungeons & Dragons has captured the minds of millions of players, and thousands more start their first campaigns every year, battling vile, wretched monsters and villains and looting dungeons of their treasures.
Many decades of D&D adventurers have been forced to do battle with a number of deadly monsters. While many of them are typical creatures like goblins and vampires, there are also numerous creatures D&D parties have come across that are the stuff of nightmares. Which of these monsters are the most terrifying?
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Mind Flayer
Made even more famous after a creature like them served as the main antagonist for two seasons of Stranger Things, mind flayers are truly terrifying creatures for parties to come across.
Mind flayers live off of eating the brains of their victims, absorbing everything about them into their own collective consciousness. What makes this even scarier is when they decide to harvest brains for scientific study, usually turning the harvested brains into intellect devourers. Those killed by mind flayers in combat will find it very hard to be resurrected since their brains are usually eaten upon death.
Aboleth
If they ever make it to the big screen, aboleths should easily be ranked as one of the scariest movie sea monsters ever, for these underwater behemoths are not to be messed with.
Aboleths can use their psionic abilities to charm other creatures, bending them to their wills. Their mucus can remove a creature’s ability to breathe air, forcing them to only breathe water for a period of time. These monsters can also come up onto land to enslave more creatures. Even worse is that these things never truly die; should a body be destroyed, its spirit simply must wait for a new body to grow.
Froghemoth
In D&D, there are always going to be monsters that try to eat the players, but a froghemoth is certainly one of the scariest beings that can swallow characters in one gulp.
Massive in size, froghemoths can eat and hold up to two characters in their stomachs, where the eaten creatures take acid damage during the monster’s turn. The beast, despite its size, can also hide extremely well in pools of water, using an eyestalk to watch for unwary travelers to get close enough before emerging from hiding, using its tentacles and tongue to sweep up its unfortunate prey and swallow them hole.
Bodak
Undead monsters are some of the creepiest creeps ever to be found in D&D, and bodaks are no exception to that.
Bodaks are extremely deadly; even merely looking at their eyes can be enough to kill party members. Even worse, creatures killed by this death gaze will eventually rise up as bodaks themselves like so many movies where the victims become the monsters. Given that they’re undead, they also are immune to many mind-related attacks, making these shambling evil beings all the scarier.
Oblex
Once an experiment of the infamous mind flayers, the oblex is a horrific slime with frightening abilities that only make them more terrifying.
The oblex can consume the memories of its victims as well as impersonate creatures whose memories they’ve consumed. Even more nightmarish is that, due to their slime form, they can get into almost anywhere they want to go. Even places that are completely sealed may not be safe, as the oblex can even get through holes that are no more than an inch big.
Boneless
The boneless are exactly as the name implies: corpses without bones brought back to a twisted sort of life by necromancy. However, this state just makes them even deadlier and scarier.
The boneless can squeeze through just about any hole they want and can move with incredible speed for someone without any bones. They slap their victims with their hands and wrap themselves around them, squeezing and crushing them to death. It’s a nightmarish way to go out.
Swarm Of Rot Grubs
Small things like rot grubs may seem harmless at first, but an entire swarm coming at adventurers with the intent of tearing flesh from bone is a horrifying sight that would send most running for the hills.
While they are easy to defeat, even for those creating their first D&D character, a swarm can overtake characters if they are not careful. These rot grub swarms eventually burrow down into a character’s heart, killing them. Getting killed via stabbing or magic is bad enough; getting killed by a swarm of tiny creatures eating victims from the inside out is even scarier.
Spawn Of Kyuss
Zombies are a constant presence in D&D, but they aren’t really like the zombies most people know in pop culture today. A spawn of Kyuss, however, feels more like the zombies everyone knows, only scarier.
Unlike regular zombies, a spawn of Kyuss is infested with burrowing worms that it can launch or fling out from its body. If the victim dies, it rises only minutes later as a brand-new spawn of Kyuss. The worms from this creature make it even scarier than regular zombies, since it can infect multiple people with its slithering, curse-inflicting worms from a distance.
Sibriex
This hulking mass of flesh and bile looks like a monster straight from a Lovecraftian horror movie, and its powers get even scarier for anyone that dares to challenge it.
A sibriex can spew out acidic bile and naturally has an aura of corruption around it. But this nightmare of a beast gets even worse, as it can warp a creature’s mind and body into hulking, grotesque forms of what it once was. These body alterations can be anything from growing wings to growing a second head. It’s unbelievably terrifying, and most sane warriors would run screaming for the hills if a sibriex is near.
Bagman
One look at Bagman’s form is enough to prove that this monster is clearly nightmare fuel. And his legend just makes him even scarier.
Bagman can be summoned from a Bag of Holding or can simply crawl out of it on his own to drag a hapless adventurer back into the bag with him. But the truly terrifying thing about Bagman is that there is no stat block for him, making him impossible to fight against unless the DM chooses to create homebrew stats for him. Players may never look at their Bag of Holding the same way again with this legendary nightmare on the prowl.