The monsters know what they re doing pdf

The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

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

Monsters of the Multiverse: Demon Lords

Time to wrap up my survey of Monsters of the Multiverse with the final category: demon lords. My look at archdevils went so quickly, I was tempted to go ahead and lump both groups of archfiends into one post, but demon lords turned out to be more complicated. As with the archdevils, I’ve placed these notes behind spoiler tags.

One note that applies across the board is that references to insanity have been eliminated, so that any regional effect of a lair characterized as “Madness of X” is now called “Beguiling Realm” or “Corrupted Nature” and given the simple effect of imposing advantage or disadvantage on certain skill checks, or it’s simply deleted. Regional effects usually kick in before combat begins, so these changes mostly apply to situations occurring before or after a battle, but they can also alter the outcome of a mid-combat parley or keep an unconscious and dying character from being stabilized.

Monsters of the Multiverse: Archdevils

It’s been my longtime policy not to post analyses of the stat blocks of unique villains on this blog, because I’d be a fool to think players don’t read it, too—in fact, I’ve encouraged them to—and going through every part of a BBEG’s kit is about as spoilery as it gets. Which is why the tactics of archdevils and demon lords are content exclusive to MOAR! Monsters Know What They’re Doing.

But there’s a problem, isn’t there? The content of MOAR! Monsters, at this point, is locked in, and it refers to the archfiends and their stat blocks as they’re described in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. The only place you’ll find updates reflecting the changes in Monsters of the Multiverse is right here. However, all the archfiends are changed in some way or another, and I can’t ignore them.

To resolve this conflict, I’m taking two measures:

With that out of the way, let’s start with the archdevils.

Monsters of the Multiverse: Celestials, Fey, Elementals, Constructs, Oozes and Beasts

Lots of monster types in this batch, but not that many monsters. The overwhelming majority of the mechanical changes in Monsters of the Multiverse went into humanoids and fiends; whether because they were designed and balanced better to begin with or because they just aren’t encountered as often, other monster types got away pretty clean.

Monsters of the Multiverse: Fiends, Part 3

Aside from devils and demons (and their lawful and chaotic fiend-kin), there remain four neutral evil fiends that receive significant updates in Monsters of the Multiverse: three types of yugoloths (hydroloths, yagnoloths and oinoloths) and barghests.

Monsters of the Multiverse: Fiends, Part 2

On to ƬЄƛM ƇӇƛƠƧ!

The maw demon, a wind-it-up-and-let-it-go battlefield hazard of the Abyss sometimes found in the company of gnolls, loses the Rampage trait (and, thus, much of its connection to gnollkind) and gains Disgorge, a projectile vomit attack. Charming. This action recharges only on a roll of 6, meaning the maw demon will most likely get to use it only once per combat encounter. Since it’s stupid and erratic, the maw demon won’t wait for a better opportunity to use it than the first one it gets, so its nature impels it to move straight toward any group of three or more foes clustered together in a 15-foot cubical area and vomit as soon as it arrives. If it gets a chance to do it again, it will, but that’s not probable.

The babau’s Multiattack is dialed back: formerly comprising Weakening Gaze and two melee attacks (either Claw or Spear), it now comprises only two Claw attacks, one of which it can replace with Weakening Gaze or a Spell. The Spear attack is gone, which is fine; the babau didn’t need it. Its spell list is left intact.

The flaw inherent in Weakening Gaze remains: It’s primarily useful against enemies who are likely to have the Constitution to resist it. And the tactical conclusion remains: Use it against paladins and fighting clerics, because at least they don’t have proficiency in Constitution saving throws. Fear is still likely to fail, but the fact that it costs only one Claw attack, rather than an entire action, makes it a somewhat less pointless gamble against three or more targets within its area of effect. For the same reason, darkness is a better deal than it was before, particularly against a party that contains neither a paladin nor a battle cleric. And heat metal is dramatically better, since it can now be combined with a Claw attack for up to three dice of damage plus the babau’s Strength bonus. If none of these options makes sense, default back to two Claw attacks.

The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

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

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Just a little timeout from the monster tactics to share with you a bit of what it’s like to write and maintain a blog.

Monsters of the Multiverse: Fiends, Part 1

On to fiends, which receive—by far­­—the greatest number of substantive changes in Monsters of the Multiverse, and that’s not even counting archdevils and demon lords. In fact, so many fiends receive significant updates to their actions that I’m going to break my examinations of this creature type into five posts: three for the rank and file (one each for the lawfuls, chaotics and neutrals) right now, then two more for the archfiends (one for archdevils, one for demon lords) after I’ve covered all the other creature types.

To begin with, the merregon’s Multiattack has been made unconditional: three Halberd attacks, period, whereas before it received the third only if there was a superior devil within 60 feet of it. That means there’s no longer any particular need for merregons to form a line to either side of a bone devil, erinys, pit fiend or amnizu commander. They can form any kind of formation now, including rank upon rank in front of their commanders, who can lead from the rear. A detachment of them can also break formation to strike at an enemy weakness. Mind you, at CR 4, merregons are hardly weak minions—each of them is roughly the equivalent of a level 11 PC—so even a mere platoon of them is better managed using the mass combat rules of your choice. The Loyal Bodyguard reaction is unchanged, so it does still make sense for a ring of merregons to surround the superior devil that commands them and act as its personal guard.

Monsters of the Multiverse: Aberrations

Time to look at the aberrations that receive significant updates in Monsters of the Multiverse. Most of these are spellcasters; the exception is the star spawn mangler. These changes aren’t tactically earthshaking, but they do require certain things to be prioritized differently.

First, the neogi master. It gains a new attack action, Tentacle of Hadar, a hybrid of arms of Hadar and eldritch blast with a range greater than the former and less than the latter. Its Multiattack is modified to allow it to attack twice with this action as an alternative to Claw/Bite. As for its Spellcasting ability, it loses access to arms of Hadar, counterspell, fear, invisibility, unseen servant, eldritch blast and vicious mockery. It can cast its remaining leveled spells once per day and its remaining cantrips at will. Finally, Enslave, formerly an action, is now a bonus action.

Because Multiverse monsters no longer have pact magic, the neogi master can cast hold person at only one target at a time, whereas before, it could target three. This loss hurts, because the neogi master can no longer paralyze both the target it wishes to enslave and the tough front-liners who come to its defense—and the concentration requirement means it’s still constrained from casting hunger of Hadar at the same time. A neogi master now needs a posse of regular neogi to lock these characters down, whereas before, it could have worked alone.

On the other hand, thanks to the Multiattack upgrade, a neogi master no longer has to get within melee reach to attack. The one-two Tentacle punch makes the neogi master a more effective skirmisher than it was before, able to switch back and forth flexibly between short and long range. Also, the loss of other combat actions narrows the focus on what was probably meant to be central to the neogi master’s tactics all along: hunger of Hadar, a damage-dealing sphere of magical darkness into which the neogi master can see, thanks to Devil’s Sight (which it always had, although it wasn’t called out explicitly as a trait), and therefore use Enslave. In fact, since Enslave is now a bonus action, it can even combine the two on the same turn. The caveat is that, while hunger has a 150-foot range, the range of Enslave is only 30 feet, so the neogi master can’t execute this combination from farther away.

Monsters of the Multiverse: Undead

Half a dozen undead creatures in Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes receive significant updates in Monsters of the Multiverse, and deathlocks account for half of these—unsurprisingly, since they’re all spellcasters.

Gone from the deathlock’s Spellcasting repertoire are arms of Hadar, hold person and chill touch. Eldritch blast is reskinned as the ranged spell attack Grave Bolt, dealing an extra 3 damage (presumably from the deathlock’s Charisma modifier). A new Multiattack lets it attack twice with either Deathly Claw or Grave Bolt, doubling the amount of damage it can deal in a single turn.

These changes turn the deathlock inside out. For starters, it loses both of the spells that benefited from being boosted to a higher level by the deathlock’s warlockitude. It also no longer has anything that fills the role of chill touch’s suppression of healing. On the other hand, the fact that the deathlock now gets to attack a second time makes invisibility-based ambush more practical (although it gains advantage only on the first attack roll of the two), and spider climb no longer has to compete against more potent spells for the use of a spell slot.

As for direct attacks, the choice is no longer between Deathly Claw and chill touch but rather between Deathly Claw and Grave Bolt—which is really a choice between melee and ranged combat. This choice is resolved by looking at the deathlock’s ability scores and asking what they say about its combat role. With Charisma as its primary offensive ability and Dexterity as its primary defensive ability, the deathlock is a spellslinger, and as such, it wants to sling spells and avoid melee.

Therefore, its strategy is now to fortify itself in advance with mage armor and either disguise self or invisibility (the latter precludes the use of detect magic while the deathlock concentrates on it); stay as far as possible from likely foes; cast hunger of Hadar to delay opponents while the deathlock completes its task(s); and if that fails, cast spider climb to escape or to attack with Grave Bolt from inaccessible places. Since the deathlock no longer has a convenient way to paralyze an opponent, Deathly Claw is now only a last-ditch defense, for use when the deathlock is cornered and can’t get out of melee.

Monsters of the Multiverse: Giants

Monsters of the Multiverse doesn’t make many changes to giants. Then again, there weren’t many giants in Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes to begin with, just some specially trained and equipped ogres and elite giants and trolls. Only three of these are revised enough to require reexamination.

The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters, Available for Pre-Order

Since I started writing this blog, a number of readers have asked whether I planned to compile The Monsters Know What They’re Doing’s monster tactics into a book, and the answer I gave was always no.

Then I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Cover: Lily Pressland

This book will feature all the creatures I’ve analyzed from the Monster Manual, along with exclusive analyses of un-blogged monsters including aarakocra, basilisks, cockatrices, griffons and hippogriffs, kenku, merfolk, quaggoths and xorn, and will be available in both hardcover and e-book formats.

Click here to pre-order The Monsters Know What They’re Doing from your favorite independent bookseller. I’m a strong believer in independent booksellers as community anchors, promoting the free expression and sharing of ideas, enriching the cultural life of communities, and keeping money circulating in the local economy. If you don’t already have a favorite independent bookseller, maybe it’s time to get to know one!

Or, I guess, you could pre-order from one of these online retailers:

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35 thoughts on “The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters, Available for Pre-Order”

Well this is just grand news, isn’t it? You’re making it harder and harder to keep your wisdom away from my players, but I preordered the book anyway.

Also… I find myself repeatedly buying new copies of “Live to Tell The Tale” as a gift to every friend I play D&D with. It’s becoming a compulsion…

This is excellent news.

Fantastic! Well done, Keith. And the zip code tool for finding indie book stores is also a treat.

SO EXCITE, MUCH WOW

Seriously, Keith, I’m thrilled to hear this and look forward to buying one to support your fabulous work!

A much deserved boon for you and your efforts. I will spread the word of Ammann.

Your monsters are going to slay my poor student wallet but somehow I don’t mind.

[…] The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters, Available for Pre-O…​ – The Monsters Know […]

Cool! Is there a possibility of an audio book version?

I don’t know for certain yet, but I can let my editor know that readers are asking.

I’m gonna pick this up to support the blog regardless, but is this book just a compilation of the blog posts, or is there new material?

As I indicated above, the book will include material that hasn’t appeared (and won’t appear) on the blog.

I think folks will particularly enjoy the tactics of the xorn.

Oh sorry, I just realized I misread that sentence and asked a redundant question! Silly me

This is released on my birthday. Pre-ordered. Happy Birthday to me!

I would like to second the idea of making it an audiobook. With me being blind it’s probably the only way I’ll be able to read it.

Gah… IndieBound only ships to the continental US..

It would be like totally awesome if you brought this (and your other book) to GenCon Indy. I’d totally buy autographed copies from you!

This is the best news!

Hey it’s me again are you all releasing this book on the Kindle as an e-book, will you do so for live to tell the tale?

Spelling errors what I meant to say was: hey it’s me again you are releasing this book on Kindle as an e-book. Will you do the same for live to tell the tale?

I’m excited for your book, but does this mean no new content on the site for a long time?

It means that when my 4-month-old daughter deigns to take a nap, what little cognitive candlepower I have left is mostly going into revisions at the moment. But yes, I do mean to keep putting content on the blog when I can manage it.

hey it’s me again you are releasing this book on Kindle as an e-book. Will you do the same for live to tell the tale?

I just bought a copy of Live to Tell the Tale. Would prefer to pay more and get a hard or soft bound copy. Printing out a pdf and putting it in a folder is much less satisfying.

Just out of curiosity, I ordered my copy of Monsters directly and not through one of the book sellers. Does that mean that you will just be shipping out copies (and that you will then keep the profits)? I hope so.

If you mean you ordered Live to Tell the Tale directly, I do receive all proceeds from that.

If you mean you ordered The Monsters Know What They’re Doing directly off the publisher’s page, then no, you’re not ordering from me, you’re ordering directly from the publisher, and it’s the publisher who’ll ship it to you when it’s released.

I love this blog and I’ll definitely be picking up a copy of the book. Any chance you’ll finish off the Beasts section before print? Would love to have the tactics for all the critters druids can Wildshape into or that you can summon with Conjure Animals.

No new beasts, unfortunately. The book is going to be thick enough as it is!

Do you think you’ll get around to adding them to the blog then?

I’m happy to add that to the queue of requests.

Godangit I hope i can buy a pdf later because ordering to sweden is hard,
But I’m still happy to hear the news!

Any chance of a pdf release? Shipping from the US to Sweden usually costs an arm and a leg.

It’s going to be available in both print and e-book formats! Still don’t know about audio, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

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The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters unpacks strategies, tactics, and motivations for creatures found in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Now, MOAR! Monsters Know What They’re Doing analyzes the likely combat behaviors of more than 100 new enemies found in Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes.

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“I’ve always said, the Dungeon Master is the whole world except for his players, and as a result, I spend countless hours prepping for my home group. What Keith gets is that the monsters are the DM’s characters, and his work has been super helpful in adding logic, flavor, and fun in my quest to slaughter my players’ characters and laugh out the window as they cry in their cars afterward.”
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On the heels of The Monsters Know What They’re Doing—a compilation of villainous battle plans for Dungeon Masters—Live to Tell the Tale evens the score, providing beginning and intermediate D&D players the tools they need to fight back. Examining combat roles, class features, party composition, positioning, debilitating conditions, attacking combinations, action economy, and the ever-important consideration of the best ways to run away, Live to Tell the Tale will help you get the most out of your character’s abilities.

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Just as eruptions of magical energies and careless experimentation by incautious wizards have resulted in the creation of monstrosities such as the owlbear, the shambling mound, and the banderhobb, they’ve also produced fearsome mutations in the common pigeon. Some of these cousins of this hardy avian species keep to remote locales, while others share their forebears’ predilection for the easy grub to be found in city streets.

Use the stat blocks of these foul fowl with the Pigeon Tactics on this blog!

KIETH AMMANN’S The Monsters Know What They Are Doing

The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters unpacks strategies, tactics, and motivations for creatures found in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Now, MOAR! Monsters Know What They’re Doing analyzes the likely combat behaviors of more than 100 new enemies found in Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes.

Keywords: Monsters Know,TheMonstersKnow,Monsters,DnD,5e,PHB,DM,Combat Tactics,Strategy,Monster Psychology

In 1979, as a precocious ten-year-old with a yen for puzzles, I was always excited

to get my hands on a copy of Games magazine. The September/October 1979
issue, though, seized my attention like no other had, because it included a feature
article that described an entirely new kind of game—one involving maps,
monsters, and hunting for treasure—called “Dungeons & Dragons.” I showed the
article to my mother, and before long, I had the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set in
my hands. It contained a rulebook, an adventure module called “The Keep on the
Borderlands,” and a set of the exact same hard polymer polyhedral dice I’d seen
advertised in my mom’s teacher supply catalogs.

managed to find another gaming group that I clicked with. Eventually, I returned
home to Chicago and reconnected with Julian and some other players—but by
that time, they’d moved on from D&D as well. They were playing GURPS (the
Generic Universal Role-Playing System), which worked with any genre, including
fantasy.

Everything changed in 2015, when my wife came home from work one day
and asked me whether I could help get a D&D game going with some of her
coworkers. (Someone at her office had referred to a client as “someone who looks
like he’d play Dungeons & Dragons in his mother’s basement,” to which one of
the aforementioned coworkers had replied, deadpan, “I would totally play
Dungeons & Dragons.”) My first thought was to run a fantasy campaign using
GURPS, but my wife said her coworkers wanted to play D&D, and she prevailed
on me to stick with the biggest name in roleplaying games.

I hadn’t played D&D since shortly after the second edition of the game came
out, and I hadn’t kept any of my books, so I went to a friendly local game store
and bought the D&D Starter Set. The timing couldn’t have been better: Wizards
of the Coast, which had bought the rights to D&D from its original publisher,
TSR Inc., had recently released the fifth edition of the game. This edition had
taken a hulking gallimaufry of accumulated rules and options and streamlined it
into a tight, consistent system that treated all its core functions—attack rolls,
saving throws, and ability checks—the same way, reducing a plethora of lookup
tables to simple calculations, while preserving the game’s high-fantasy soul. The
more I got into it, the more I liked it (even though I still favored anchored fantasy
over wild, fantastic, superheroic fantasy). I also began to recognize certain
emergent properties of some of fifth edition D&D’s mechanics—properties with
tactical implications.

As a young person, I’d always been interested in strategy games, but I’d also
never been particularly good at them, because I never learned to think
strategically. What really drove this fact home for me, a couple of years before
discovering fifth edition D&D, was playing the computer game XCOM: Enemy
Unknown. Over and over, I kept getting massacred, even on the easiest levels.
What was I doing wrong? I had no idea. However, by that time, after many hard
years, I had finally learned how to learn. And I figured out that I was failing at

XCOM because of something I hadn’t known I didn’t know: specifically, small-
unit tactics. When I started reading up on them, my XCOM game changed
overnight.

As I ran a fifth edition D&D campaign for my wife and her coworkers, I began
to think something was missing in how I was running monsters and non-player
characters in combat. Reflecting back on my XCOM experience, I decided I
needed to understand those monsters and NPCs more deeply and to come up
with action plans for them before, rather than during, our game sessions.

Once I’d come up with these plans, it seemed selfish to keep them to myself. So
I created a blog, The Monsters Know What They’re Doing
(themonstersknow.com), where I analyzed the stat blocks of monster after
monster for the benefit of other DMs, figuring that what was helpful to me might
be helpful to them as well.

I began writing The Monsters Know What They’re Doing in August 2016. Six
months later, I noticed a spike in my traffic, seemingly driven by Reddit. Users of
D&D-related subreddits were answering “How I do I run [monster x]?” questions
by sharing links to my blog. Eventually, I realized that a growing number of other
DMs were visiting my blog as a routine step in their combat encounter planning.
The comments rolled in: “I love what you’re doing here.” “This resource is
fantastic!” “Thank you for doing this. It’s saved me a lot of work.”

I now have the honor of presenting The Monsters Know What They’re Doing
to you in book form—consolidated, revised, in some cases corrected, and
supplemented with additional material, including analyses of monsters not
examined on the blog. Note well: This is not a substitute for the Monster Manual
(or any other D&D core book); for the actual abilities, traits, and other stats of
D&D monsters, as well as the official lore attached to them, you’ll need the
Monster Manual. But if you want advice from a D&D veteran about what to do
with those abilities, traits, and other stats when the fur starts to fly, The Monsters
Know What They’re Doing is the book for you.

Any creature that has evolved to survive in a given environment instinctively

knows how to make the best use of its particular adaptations.
That seems like a straightforward principle, doesn’t it? Yet monsters in

Dungeons & Dragons campaigns often fail to follow it.
No doubt this is largely because many of us begin playing D&D when we’re

teens (or even preteens) and don’t yet have much experience with how the world
works. Or we come to D&D as adults with little or no background in
evolutionary biology, military service, martial arts, or even tactical simulation
games, so we don’t consider how relative strengths and weaknesses, the
environment, and simple survival sense play into the way a creature fights, hunts,
or defends itself. Consequently, we think of combat as a situation in which two
opponents swing/shoot/claw/bite at each other until one or the other goes down
or runs away. Not so.

Primitive societies may fight battles by charging out into the open and
stabbing at each other, but trained soldiers don’t. They use ranged weapons and
shoot from cover. They strive to occupy high ground, where they can see farther
and from which it’s easier to shoot or charge. While one soldier or fire team moves
from cover to cover, another stays put and watches for danger; then they switch.
They’ve learned this from centuries of experience with what wins a battle and
what loses it. They know what they’re capable of, and they make the most of it.
This is what makes them effective.

What makes the predators of the natural world effective is evolution: behavior
fine-tuned into instincts over countless generations. Lions, crocodiles, and bears
are all potentially deadly to humans. Yet lions and crocodiles don’t charge at us

from out in the open. They use cover and stealth, and they strike when they’re
close enough that we have little chance of running away. This is their most
effective strategy: A crocodile isn’t fast enough to give chase over land, and a lion
will tire itself out before catching an impala or wildebeest if its prey has enough of
a lead. Black and brown bears, which are also deadly up close—and are more than
fast enough to chase a human down—use stealth hardly at all. Why? Because, by
and large, they don’t hunt. They scavenge, forage, and fish. Their environment is
different, and their diet is different, so their habits are different.

In a game of D&D, what distinguishes goblins from kobolds from orcs from
lizardfolk? In many campaigns, hardly anything. They’re all low-level humanoids
who go, “Rrrrahhhh, stab stab stab,” then (if the player characters are above level
2) get wiped out. They’re cannon fodder. Only the packaging is different.

Yet the simple fact that they have different names tells us there should be
differences among them, including differences in behavior. One of the great
things about the fifth edition of D&D is that not only the ability scores but the
skills and features of monsters are specified precisely and consistently. Those skills
and features give us clues as to how these monsters ought to fight.

However, because a Dungeon Master has to make one decision after another in
response to player behavior (and the better the players, the more unpredictable
their behavior), it doesn’t take long for decision fatigue to set in. It’s easy for even
an excellent DM, well acquainted with their monsters’ stat blocks and lore, to
allow combat to devolve into monsters running directly at the PCs and going,
“Rrrrahhhh, stab stab stab.”

The way to avoid this is to make as many of these tactical decisions as possible
before the session begins, just as a trained soldier—or an accomplished athlete or
musician—relies on reflexes developed from thousands of hours of training and
practice, and just as an animal acts from evolved instinct. A lion doesn’t wait until
the moment after it first spots a herd of tasty wildebeests to reflect upon how it
should go about nabbing one, soldiers don’t whip out their field manuals for the
first time when they’re already under fire, and a DM shouldn’t be contemplating
for the first time how bullywugs move and fight when the PCs have just
encountered twelve of them. Rather than try to make those decisions on the fly,

the DM needs heuristics to follow so that combat can progress smoothly, sensibly,
and satisfyingly. That’s what I set out to provide in this book.

This book is aimed at:

Beginning DMs, especially younger DMs and adult DMs with little or no
strategy gaming experience
Intermediate DMs who are looking for ways to add more flavor and
challenge for their players
Advanced DMs who could figure all this out perfectly well on their own but
are too busy to put the time into it
And players. Yes, players! I don’t see anything wrong with your scoping this
book for intel. If your DM is using these tips, it’s going to make your
characters’ lives a little tougher, and I don’t want them to get slaughtered. If
your PCs know something about the creatures they’re up against, they can
begin to plan for it, and that’s part of the fun of D&D.

WHY THESE TACTICS?

To analyze the stat blocks of the creatures in the Monster Manual and other

books, I proceed from a certain set of assumptions:

With only a small number of exceptions (mostly constructs and undead),
every creature wants, first and foremost, to survive. Seriously wounded
creatures will try to flee, unless they’re fanatics or intelligent beings who
believe they’ll be hunted down and killed if they do flee. Some creatures will
flee even sooner.
Ability scores, particularly physical ability scores, influence fighting styles. In
this book, I use the phrase “ability contour” to refer to the pattern of high
and low scores in a creature’s stat block and how it defines that creature’s
overall approach to combat.

Two key elements in a creature’s ability contour are its primary defensive
ability and primary offensive ability. The primary defensive ability is either
Constitution or Dexterity, and it determines whether a creature relies on its
toughness to absorb incoming damage or on its nimbleness and mobility to
avoid it. The primary offensive ability may be Strength, Dexterity, or a
mental ability, and it determines whether a creature prefers to do damage via
brute-force melee attacks, finesse or ranged attacks, or magical powers.

Small, low-Strength creatures try to compensate with numbers, and when
their numbers are reduced enough, they scatter. Low-Constitution creatures
prefer to attack from range, from hiding, or both. Low-Dexterity creatures
must choose their battles judiciously, because they’re not likely to be able to
get out of a fight once they’re in it. High-Strength, high-Constitution

creatures are brutes that welcome a close-quarters slugfest. High-Strength,
high-Dexterity creatures are hard-hitting predators or shock attackers that
count on finishing fights quickly; they’ll often use Stealth and go for big-
damage ambushes. High-Dexterity, high-Constitution creatures are scrappy
skirmishers that deal steady, moderate damage and don’t mind a battle of
attrition. High-Dexterity creatures without high Strength or Constitution
snipe at range with missile weapons or spells. If all three physical abilities are
low, a creature seeks to avoid fighting altogether unless it has some sort of
circumstantial advantage—or it simply flees without hesitation.
A creature with Intelligence 7 or less operates wholly or almost wholly from
instinct. This doesn’t mean it uses its features ineffectively, only that it has
one preferred modus operandi and can’t adjust if it stops working. A
creature with Intelligence 8 to 11 is unsophisticated in its tactics and largely
lacking in strategy, but it can tell when things are going wrong and adjust to
some degree. A creature with Intelligence 12 or higher can come up with a
good plan and coordinate with others; it probably also has multiple ways of
attacking and/or defending and knows which works better in which
situation. A creature with Intelligence 14 or higher can not only plan but
also accurately assess its enemies’ weaknesses and target accordingly. (A
creature with Intelligence greater than 18 can do this to a superhuman
degree, detecting even hidden weaknesses.)
A creature with Wisdom 7 or less has an underdeveloped survival instinct
and may wait too long to flee. A creature with Wisdom 8 to 11 knows when
to flee but is indiscriminate in choosing targets to attack. A creature with
Wisdom 12 or higher selects targets carefully and may even refrain from
combat in favor of parley if it recognizes that it’s outmatched. A creature
with Wisdom 14 or higher chooses its battles, fights only when it’s sure it
will win (or will be killed if it doesn’t fight), and is always willing to bargain,
bully, or bluff if this will further its interests with less resistance.
Creatures that rely on numbers have an instinctive sense of how many of
them are needed to take down a foe. Usually this is at least three to one. This
sense isn’t perfect, but it’s accurate given certain base assumptions (which
player characters may defy). The smarter a creature is, the more it accounts

for such things as its target’s armor, weaponry, and behavior; the stupider it
is, the more it bases its estimate of the danger its enemy poses solely on
physical size.
A creature with a feature that gives it advantage on a roll (or gives its enemy
disadvantage) will always prefer to use that feature. If it uses such a feature to
initiate combat and the circumstances aren’t right for it, it may never attack
in the first place. On average, advantage or disadvantage is worth
approximately ±4 on a d20 roll; with midrange target numbers, it can be
worth as much as ±5. It can turn a fifty-fifty chance into three-to-one odds,
or three-to-one odds into fifteen-to-one odds… or the reverse. By
comparison, the rarest and most powerful magic weapons in fifth edition
D&D are +3. Advantage and disadvantage are a big deal!
A creature with a feature that requires a saving throw to avoid will often
favor this feature over a simple attack, even if the average damage may be
slightly less. This is because the presumption of an attack action is failure,
and the burden is on the attacker to prove success; the presumption of a
feature that requires a saving throw is success, and the burden is on the
defender to prove failure. Moreover, attacks that miss do no damage at all,
ever; features that require saving throws often have damaging effects even if
the targets succeed on their saves.
In fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, unless otherwise specified, any
creature gets one action and up to one bonus action in a combat round, plus
movement and up to one reaction. Any creature that exists in the D&D
game world will have evolved in accordance with this rule: It seeks to obtain
the best possible result from whatever movement, actions, bonus actions,
and reactions are available to it. If it can combine two of them for a superior
outcome, it will. This principle is widely referred to as “action economy,”
and that’s how I refer to it here.
I make frequent reference to the Targets in Area of Effect table in chapter 8
of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. It’s intended primarily for resolution of
area-effect spells and other abilities in “theater of the mind”–style play, but
here I use it as a guide to the minimum number of targets against whom a
limited-use area-effect spell or feature is worth using. For instance, if the

table indicates four creatures in a spell’s area of effect, I conclude that the
caster is disinclined to waste it against three or fewer if it has any other
reasonable choice of action.
Good creatures tend to be friendly by default, neutral creatures indifferent,
and evil creatures hostile. However, lawful creatures, even lawful good
creatures, will be hostile toward chaotic creatures causing ruckus; chaotic
creatures, even chaotic good creatures, will be hostile toward attempts by
lawful creatures to constrain or interfere with them; and nearly all creatures,
regardless of alignment, are territorial to some degree or another. Intelligent
lawful monsters may try to capture and either imprison or enslave characters
whom intelligent chaotic monsters would simply drive off or kill.
I consider a creature that’s lost 10 percent of its average hit point maximum
to be lightly wounded, 30 percent moderately wounded, and 60 percent
severely wounded. I use these thresholds to determine whether a creature will
flee or otherwise alter its behavior or attitude toward its opponents. Except
in rare and specific cases (such as trolls using the “Loathsome Limbs” variant
rule), they don’t affect what the creature can do.

Not all monsters’ tactics are interesting.

Despite what I say about monsters knowing the best way to make use of
their features and traits, the sad truth is that there are some monsters,
including a few I’ve omitted from this book, whose features and traits
don’t lend themselves to anything but “Rrrraaaahhhh, stab stab stab.”
Most of these are brutes with only one means of attack, no special
movement, and no feature synergy to give them any kind of advantage.
Some could pose a special threat to particular opponents but don’t,
because they’re too stupid to distinguish one opponent from another.
Some are simplistic in a different way: They’re too weak and fragile to do
anything but run away when encountered.

The fact that the monster isn’t interesting doesn’t absolve you of the
need to make the encounter interesting. Keep the following in mind when
the situation that you’re devising (or that appears in a published
adventure) calls for a tactically dull monster:

Sometimes monsters exist just to soften the PCs up, increasing the
danger level of a subsequent encounter. When this is the case, make
them weaker and more numerous. This way, the monsters’ lack of
sophistication is obscured by the challenge of having to fend off a
horde of them. If there’s no weaker version of the monster you’re
looking at, reduce its hit points to something at the lower end of its
range (remember, you don’t have to use the default average hit points
or roll for them—you can assign any value within the random range).
Sometimes a monster is narratively and/or thematically appropriate
but otherwise not that interesting. Find other ways to enliven the
encounter, such as unusual terrain that the PCs can exploit to
outmaneuver a less mobile brute, environmental hazards, distracting

developments taking place around the combatants, or an item that the
PCs want and the monster has taken (or eaten).
Sometimes a monster is less of an enemy and more of an obstacle. Offer
your PCs two or three ways around it that they can discover if they’re
creative. A monster encounter doesn’t always have to be a combat
encounter.
Sometimes monsters fight other monsters! Not every fight has to be
two-sided. Introduce a more complex monster as a foil for the simpler
one—and for your PCs. Your players will delight in the chaos of a
three-way battle.
If no other solution presents itself, let the battle end quickly, so that
you and your players can move on to more interesting things.

WHAT MONSTERS WANT

Fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons organizes monsters into fourteen different

types. In most cases, a monster’s type is an excellent indicator of its basic goals and
desires.

Beasts and monstrosities are easily grouped together, because their priorities
are simple: They want food. Also, perhaps, territory, but territory is mainly a way
to ensure uncontested access to food, along with individual survival.
Monstrosities tend to have animal-level intelligence, although there are a handful
of exceptions, notably krakens, sphinxes, nagas, lamias, and those yuan-ti that are
considered monstrosities rather than humanoids. Even these exceptions will
possess an animal-like instinct to establish and defend territory, despite coming up
with more sophisticated rationalizations for this behavior. Combat with a beast or
a monstrosity most often occurs for one of four reasons: It’s trying to eat you;
you’re hunting it because it’s been eating something or someone else; you’ve
stumbled onto its turf, and it feels threatened; or another foe is employing it as a
watchbeast.

Dragons are über-monstrosities with distinctive personalities. They want food
and territory, but they also crave two more things: treasure and domination. The
treasure thing is a compulsion, because it’s not as though they’re going shopping
with all those hoarded coins and gems. They like beautiful, expensive things, and
they want them—end of story. They also have a deep-seated desire to demonstrate
their superiority over other beings. Although they generally don’t have any
interest in the practical aspects of ruling, they’re quite fond of being rulers, and
they think they’re entitled to it. Thus, they may act like mafia bosses over a region,
extorting wealth in exchange for “protection,” by which they mainly mean

protection from them. Even good-aligned dragons share this tendency, although
their rule is benevolent rather than exploitative.

Other creatures in the dragon family lack either the power or the intelligence to
dominate other beings in the way that true dragons do, but they still exhibit
draconic avarice and wrath in the limited ways they’re capable of. Pseudodragons
gather shiny objects like magpies, wyverns exhibit dominance behaviors as they
hunt and fight, and so forth.

If dragons are über-monstrosities, then giants are über-humanoids. However,
while dragons have broader interests than most monstrosities do, giants’ interests
tend to be narrower than those of most humanoids, and they’re tightly dictated by
their species and their place in the Ordning—the giants’ status hierarchy. In terms
of social ideology, giants are chiefly interested in their relationships with other
giants, and this impinges upon humanoid society only to the extent that giants
need to claim humanoids’ territory, humanoids’ wealth, humanoids’ food
supplies, or rulership over a humanoid group in order to establish their
intragigantic status. In other words, giants’ goals revolve around rivalries, and

when this makes them the villains, it’s usually because of the collateral damage
they’re causing around them.

Undead creatures are driven by compulsions generated by whatever spell,
influence, or event caused them to rise from the dead. The simplest undead
creatures are compelled by the orders of whoever or whatever controls them (or
once controlled them). Ghosts are compelled by the need to resolve unfinished
business. Other mid- and high-level undead are compelled by hunger, malice, and
megalomania. Whatever the compulsion of an undead creature, everything it does
revolves around that compulsion and serves it in some way. It supersedes
everything else, sometimes including the creature’s continued existence.

Celestials and fiends are two sides of the same coin. They’re embodiments of
good and evil, but they’re not just quasi-humanoids that meander through
everyday situations and always do the good or evil thing. They’re concerned with
cosmic order, and their goals revolve around purification and corruption.
Celestials aren’t just about doing good things—they’re about purging evil
influences. Fiends aren’t just about doing bad things—they’re about introducing
evil influences, tempting people to do wicked things they might not otherwise do.

For these reasons, while celestial and fiend goals differ from humanoid goals,
they make excellent complements to these goals. The involvement of a fiend
might push a group of humanoids to take their ideological pursuits in an evil
direction—or desperate humanoids might enlist the aid of a fiend in the pursuit of
their goal, corrupting them and their goal in the process. Celestial involvement in
humanoid affairs is a trickier needle to thread, and if you’re going to make a
celestial into a villain, it’s almost by necessity going to have to be misinformed or
overzealous—or corrupted and on the verge of a fall.

Aberrations, by definition, are beings whose ultimate goals make no sense to
us, and for this reason, coming up with decent, plausible schemes for aberration
villains can be challenging. Fall back on conventional schemes of domination, and
you risk making your aberration into a funny-looking humanoid, for all intents
and purposes. An aberration’s behavior has to be weird. But also, for an
aberration to be a villain rather than a mere curiosity, it has to pose some kind of
threat. A good solution for aberrations with mind-control powers is to have them
brainwashing ordinary people into participating in their weird schemes. No one

wants to be a part of that. Aberrations’ activities can have deleterious side effects
on nearby habitations. Maybe they’re causing nightmares, spooking livestock (the
livestock are always first to know when bad juju is going down), disrupting the
local economy with excessive demand for some random commodity, or using up a
natural resource. Or maybe, like the stereotypical gray alien, they’re abducting
people, probing them with weird devices, then returning them to their homes.
Aberrations’ behavior doesn’t have to make obvious sense—although, in at least
some respects, it should make internal sense.

Fey creatures’ goals, in terms of how much sense they make to an outside
observer, aren’t all that different from those of aberrations. However, while
aberrations’ goals are simply inscrutable, fey goals always have a clear emotional or
aesthetic aspect, something that might not make logical sense but would seem
perfectly sensible in a dream or to a child. Mischief is common; outright malice is
unusual. The seven deadly sins are all well represented, however, as is every
primary or secondary emotion, turned up to 11. A fey antagonist is an id without
an ego to ground it. No matter how large or small the scale of a fey’s goals, they’re
always personal, and the motivations behind them are explainable, if not
excusable.

Constructs don’t have goals, only instructions—specifically, the last
instructions they were given. When the instructions no longer fit the
circumstances, they sometimes go haywire trying to resolve unresolvable
contradictions.

Oozes don’t have goals either; they’re sub-beasts that aren’t even interested in
territory, just food. Most plants are the same, although there are a small number
of monsters categorized as plants that possess above-animal intelligence. Even an
intelligent plant, however, is unlikely to possess any goal beyond survival, self-
propagation, and protection of its environment; it simply develops more
sophisticated means of pursuing these goals, ones that involve understanding
other creatures, anticipating causation, and planning for the future. Cursed
plants, like blights, have a wee dram of undead-ish compulsion in their
mentalities.

That leaves elementals, which I find the hardest type to sum up. They’re not
full-on alien, like aberrations; simple, like beasts and monstrosities; mechanistic,

like constructs; nor defined by their social structures, like humanoids. What they
are, I think, is temperamental, in the sense that they’re defined by temperaments
associated with their elements. However, the classical humors, which you’d think
might be a natural fit for this purpose, aren’t. While it’s easy to imagine elemental
beings of fire as choleric (i.e., bad-tempered and irritable) and their goals as
primarily involving destroying things out of anger, phlegmatic water elementals,
melancholy earth elementals, and sanguine air elementals fit poorly in adventure
narratives and feel off base, somehow. Traits drawn from Chinese astrology and
traditional medicine fit better—elemental beings of fire being angry and volatile,
those of water being aimless and impulsive, those of earth being stolid and
hidebound—but they offer us no insight into air, which isn’t one of the five wǔ
xíng elements. It looks like we have to abandon ancient natural philosophy and
rely on our imaginations.

In both literal and figurative senses, elementals are forces of nature, difficult
for ordinary mortals to redirect once they get going. There has to be a sense of
out-of-controlness about them, even—perhaps especially—the intelligent ones,
like genies. We all share a pretty good sense that elemental beings of fire are about
burning everything down, but what can we intuitively say about the rest?
Elemental beings of earth want to solidify, to suffocate, to entomb—at least
metaphorically, if not literally. Elemental beings of water are the flood, the
tsunami—inexorable forces carrying away anything and anyone that’s not tightly
secured, whether it be a seaside village or people’s common sense. Elemental
beings of air are entropic—they want to scatter what’s ordered, create disarray,
rearrange everything, then rearrange it again, the opposite of their earthy
complements, which seek to hold everything in place. In this respect, they’re a bit
like fey, except that fey can be reasoned with, if you know the rules of their
antilogic, while elementals can’t.

All the tactics I discuss in this book describe how to use a monster’s features
effectively, considering what it’s capable of. The monster’s type, as described here,
tells us why the monster is doing what it’s doing. Ultimately, a monster’s choices,
in or out of combat, are a function of this motivation, and when you’re writing
your own adventures, you should use this information not only to generate plot—
to determine why your monster is a threat in the first place—but also to

contemplate in advance how your monster is going to react when it realizes that
the player characters aren’t going to let it have what it wants.

Dungeons & Dragons is chock-full of low-challenge humanoid creatures, which

inexperienced Dungeon Masters may not bother to distinguish from one another
—an unhappy oversight, because their differences are key to making these
encounters memorable. Goblins are sneaky and slippery. Kobolds are pathetic on
their own but fierce in packs. Orcs are brutal zealots with an expansionist
ideology. Lizardfolk are intensely territorial. Gnolls are driven by an ever-present
gnawing hunger… and so on. Making full use of the features in their stat blocks
will bring the personalities of these mooks, beastfolk, shapeshifters, underground
dwellers, and astral nomads to the fore.

Here’s what we know about goblins from the Monster Manual: First, from the
flavor text, they live in dark, dismal settings; congregate in large numbers; and
employ alarms and traps. They’re low-Strength and high-Dexterity, with a very
good Stealth modifier. Their Intelligence and Wisdom are in the average range.
They possess darkvision and the Nimble Escape feature, which allows them to
Disengage or Hide as a bonus action—very important to their action economy.

Because of their darkvision, goblins frequently attack under cover of darkness,
when their targets may be effectively blinded (attack rolls against a blinded
creature have advantage, while the blinded creature’s attack rolls have
disadvantage). They’ll also attack from hiding as much as possible, making use of
their high Stealth modifier, and doing so in dim light decreases the likelihood that

they’ll be discovered, since many player characters will have disadvantage on
Perception checks that rely on sight.

A picture of goblin combat is starting to coalesce, and at the center of it is a
strategy of ambush.

A typical goblin combat turn goes Shortbow (action), move, Hide (bonus
action). Because they attack from hiding, they roll with advantage. Regardless of
whether they hit or miss, the attack gives their position away, so they change it
immediately, because they can. (The sequence is important. Whenever possible, a
goblin must end its turn hidden; otherwise, it’s vulnerable. Move/Hide/Shortbow
would achieve the same offensive result but leave the goblin exposed to retaliation
between turns.)

Being a Small creature, a goblin has a good chance of Hiding successfully
behind the trunk of a mature tree; even if it fails, it will still enjoy three-quarters
cover (+5 AC). But since you can’t hide while someone is looking directly at you,
goblins have to use their movement to scramble out of the PCs’ field of view,
meaning they have to be close enough for their own 30-foot movement speed to
describe a significant arc. At the same time, they don’t want to be so close that a
PC could close the gap between them and attack. So the optimal distance from
the targets of their ambush is about 40 feet, no closer—and they don’t want to
move farther from the PCs than 80 feet, their bows’ maximum range for normal
shooting.

As long as they can stay out of the PCs’ reach, they’ll use this tactic over and
over. Suppose, however, that a PC does manage to close with one of them. In that
case, the goblin Disengages (bonus action) first. Then, depending on how great a
threat the PC poses, it either Dashes (action) out of reach—forcing the PC to use
a Dash action as well if they want to catch up—or, if it thinks it may be able to
finish the PC off, moves its full distance to a place of cover, then Hides (action)
again, preparing to attack with advantage on its next turn.

Incidentally, the goblins aren’t trying to stay together as a group. They aren’t
looking out for their buddies—goblins don’t do that sort of thing. They are,
however, trying to goad the PCs into splitting up.

Goblins are squishy: They have only 7 hp. One good hit will seriously wound
them—and also mean that their genius sniping strategy has failed. Therefore, a

goblin reduced to just 1 or 2 hp flees the scene, end of story. But a moderately
wounded goblin (3 or 4 hp) is thirsty and tries to regain the upper hand. It stalks
the PC who wounded it, first retreating to a safe distance, then Hiding and
moving with Stealth until it can get back to around 40 feet from its quarry, at
which point it returns to its Shortbow/move/Hide sniping tactic. A captured
goblin surrenders immediately and grovels for mercy, counting on its ability to
escape as soon as its captor’s attention wanders.

What if the PCs have the good sense to take cover themselves? Goblins aren’t
brilliant, but they aren’t stupid either. They won’t waste arrows on a target that’s
behind three-quarters cover, because that would completely negate the advantage
they gain when shooting from hiding. Instead, a goblin stealthily repositions itself
alongside or behind its target before shooting and giving its own position away.

A goblin that finishes off its target doesn’t immediately go hunting after other
targets. If another is already in view, it attacks that one. If not, the greedy goblin
first ransacks the body of its victim for anything valuable. A clever and stealthy
PC who’s counter-stalking the goblins can exploit this weakness.

So far, the entire discussion has been about ranged attacks. Goblins carry
scimitars as well, but they don’t use these out in the open, because there’s no
advantage to it. The only time a goblin willingly engages in melee combat is when
it has some other overwhelming advantage, such as a combination of numbers,
darkness, and the ability to flank, which in fifth edition D&D means attacking
from two opposite sides of a target creature. (Front-and-side isn’t enough to gain
advantage on attack rolls. See “Optional Rule: Flanking,” Dungeon Master’s
Guide, chapter 8.)

A goblin’s +4 attack modifier isn’t quite good enough to give it two-to-one
odds of hitting an armored enemy by itself, but when advantage is brought into
play, a hit is almost guaranteed. If three goblins surround a PC in the dark, the
chances are very good that they’ll land three hits and not have to worry about
retaliation. That being said, if those three hits don’t finish the PC off, the goblins
will realize that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, and on their next
turn, they’ll Disengage (bonus action), go scampering off into the darkness
(movement), and Hide (action) someplace where they may later be able to land a
surprise hit on a wounded foe.

Also, goblins can tell the difference between a creature that’s lost in the dark
and one that has darkvision. They won’t attack the latter close up if they can avoid
it; instead, they’ll prefer to shoot with their shortbows. However, in the narrow
passages of a cave, establishing a good line of sight may not always be possible, and
melee may be the only way to attack. If this happens, they’ll use their knowledge
of the terrain to tease the party into overextending itself: A lead goblin may use its
Scimitar attack (action), Disengage (bonus action), then retreat down the
passageway (movement) until it comes out into a more open cavern where it and
several other goblins can all jump the first PC who emerges with Readied attack
actions. Meanwhile, while the PCs are being drawn forward, other goblins may
shoot or stab at them opportunistically from any side passages that exist along the
way.

There is one other circumstance when goblins may engage in melee fighting:
when commanded to do so by hobgoblins or bugbears, which goblins fear and
defer to. They’ll do it, but they won’t like it. They know they’re not good at it;
they’d rather be sniping. If pressed into an infantry unit, they’ll fight without
coordination and desert at the first opportunity. However, that doesn’t mean they
won’t keep attacking if they think there’s something to be gained by doing it their
way.

Goblins recognize the value of stealth and surprise, and they’re not about to let
anyone get the same advantage against them. They make extensive use of alarms
and traps, but since they’re not great inventors, by and large, most of these are
crude: metal junk that makes a racket when disturbed, falling rocks, pits (with or
without punji sticks), simple snares. Every once in a while, though, a lucky goblin
may get its hands on a hunter’s trap that both restrains its victim and does damage.
These are prized possessions, and the goblins use them to protect their most
important locations.

The goblin boss is distinguished from ordinary goblins by its Multiattack and
Redirect Attack features and by the fact that it doesn’t use a bow. Additionally,
the Redirect Attack action is useful only in a context in which goblins are fighting
side by side rather than in an ambush or skirmish. Based on this, I conclude that
goblin bosses are found only in goblin lairs—caves, ruins, what have you—where
large numbers of goblins can fight in close quarters.

By the way, have you read that Redirect Attack feature? The goblin boss uses
its reaction to avoid a hit on itself and to cause it to land on one of its goblin
minions instead. What a jerk! Here’s a critter that’s stronger, better at absorbing
damage, and capable of landing more blows than most of its kind, and yet it
possesses no notion of carrying the team. “Aw, sorry about that, Jixto! Send me a
postcard from Hades!”

A creature like this, even if it fights in melee, is obnoxiously focused on self-
preservation. Fighting in a group, it begins on the front line with everyone else,
using its Multiattack action to attack twice with its scimitar (note that the goblin
boss’s Multiattack has disadvantage on the second swing). As soon as it’s taken
even one hit, however, it changes tactics: After its Multiattack action, it
Disengages (bonus action) and moves 15 feet to a position behind the front line
where melee opponents can’t reach it and it has “meat cover” against ranged
attacks. On subsequent rounds, it moves up to 15 feet into a nearby hole in the
front line, Multiattacks (action), Disengages (bonus action), and moves back
behind the front line again. (If there’s no actual hole, remember that it can move
through a square occupied by an ally as if it were difficult terrain. Thus, it has just
enough movement speed to go through the front line, and back, if it has to.)

If the goblin boss’s minions are wiped out, it’s out of there, and ditto if it’s
seriously wounded (reduced to 8 hp or fewer).

Hobgoblins are very different from goblins—they’re natural soldiers, tough
and disciplined where goblins are squishy, lazy, and craven. They have no physical
weakness, they’re intelligent enough to make and use swords and bows and to
conduct reconnaissance, and their Martial Advantage trait gives them bonus
damage for fighting in close formation. On the other hand, they have no Stealth
proficiency and no Nimble Escape.

Hobgoblins move and attack at night, when their darkvision gives them an
advantage over PCs without it; if they don’t have the advantage of darkness,
they’ll attack only with at least a two-to-one numerical advantage. In groups
consisting only of hobgoblins, they move in tight teams of four to six. If there are
multiple such teams, one consists of archers, positioned between 60 and 150 feet
from the action. With goblin troops, they have to be careful: Hobgoblins don’t
lack the courage to fight on the front line, but they know that goblins do. Rather

than set an example that the goblins won’t follow, they give commands from
behind the front line, where they can keep an eye on the goblins and shoot at
opponents with their longbows. Martial Advantage helps them in this instance,
even though they’re not engaged in melee themselves, as long as they’re choosing
targets that the goblins are engaging in melee.

The more hobgoblin teams that are engaged in melee, the more sophisticated
tactics they’ll use. For instance, if there are three, one engages directly, one shoots
from a distance, and one moves to whichever flank looks weaker before engaging.
If there are four, one moves to each flank. Five or more try to encircle the PCs.
These movements take place before the battle begins—hobgoblins are intelligent
and disciplined enough to prepare. They also take place at a sufficient distance
that their lack of Stealth won’t be a hindrance.

Hobgoblins don’t flee when they’re losing; they execute an orderly retreat.
When at least two hobgoblins in a team are seriously injured (reduced to 4 hp or
fewer) or killed, the team begins to fall back, starting with the most injured
hobgoblins. These Disengage and retreat at their full movement speed. On the
next round, the two next-most injured Disengage and also retreat at their full
movement speed, while the previous two fall back only 5 feet, so as to remain in
contact with the hobgoblins that are now joining them. Meanwhile, in this round,
the hobgoblin archer team, if there is one, notices the retreat and focuses its
arrows on any potential pursuers, in order to cover the retreat. On the third
round, any hobgoblins left in the team Disengage and retreat at full movement
speed, joining up with those that have already retreated. They carry out this same
maneuver repeatedly, until no enemy is engaging with them anymore.

Despite being the very model of discipline otherwise, according to the Monster
Manual, hobgoblins flip their lids when they see an elf. They attack elves first,
“even if doing so would be a tactical error.” Does this mean they’ll charge into
combat prematurely, during daylight, with inadequate reconnaissance, just
because they see an elf in the party’s camp? That’s the DM’s call. You could play
them this way, but given the extent to which they’re built up as being militarily
savvy, I’d say that before the action starts, their disciplined nature prevails—they
simply construct their battle plans around taking out the elves first. Once the
battle commences, though, maybe they allow a human warrior to score free hits

on them while they concentrate their attacks on an elf warrior. Maybe the
hobgoblin archers keep shooting at an elf mage when they should be covering
their fellow hobgoblins’ retreat. Maybe the sudden appearance of an elf rogue in
its midst causes a hobgoblin melee group to forget what it was doing entirely and
fixate on getting that elf. Or maybe they hold true to their disciplined nature, elf
or no elf.

A hobgoblin captain is an extra-tough hobgoblin with Multiattack and
Leadership. The Leadership feature is incredible: For 1 minute (that is, 10
rounds), as long as the hobgoblin captain isn’t incapacitated, every allied creature
within 30 feet of it gets a 1d4 buff on attack rolls and saving throws. It activates
this feature just before melee combat begins, so as not to pass up its own attack
action. In other respects, it fights as an ordinary hobgoblin. If there are multiple
hobgoblin groups but only one hobgoblin captain, it’s attached to the main melee
group. Hobgoblin captains don’t wield bows, but they do carry javelins. They’ll
hurl one of these at a fleeing opponent rather than break ranks to give chase.

A hobgoblin warlord is everything a hobgoblin captain is and more. It can
Shield Bash to knock an opponent prone, and it can Parry a melee blow.

Parry adds +3 to AC as a reaction, so the decision of when to use it is easy:
when a player rolls between 20 and 22 on an attack (assuming the hobgoblin
warlord hasn’t already used its reaction on something else, of course).

Shield Bash requires a little math to analyze. The hobgoblin warlord’s
Multiattack allows three consecutive melee swings in one action. The Longsword
attack does the most damage, so it’s the default, but when is Shield Bash a
reasonable alternative? Assuming a hit, Shield Bash does, on average, 2 hp less
damage than a Longsword attack, so the crux is whether the chance to knock the
opponent prone is worth these forfeited points. Attacks against a prone opponent
have advantage, which raises the probability of a hit by an average of about 20
percentage points. If the hobgoblin warlord uses the Multiattack sequence Shield
Bash/Longsword/Longsword, this means it will have advantage on two
Longsword attacks after a successful bash. The longsword does an average of 8
damage on a hit,I 15 damage on two. Twenty percent of that is 3, so using Shield
Bash before striking twice with a longsword increases the expected damage of
those two hits by 3 hp—if it works.

The trouble is, the DC 14 for Strength saving throws against a Shield Bash isn’t
very high. Unmodified, the hobgoblin warlord has just shy of a two-thirds chance
of knocking its opponent down. Modified by the opponent’s Strength—and keep
in mind that it’s probably the party’s toughest front-line fighters who’ll confront
the hobgoblin warlord—the chance of success recedes to the neighborhood of
fifty-fifty, even less against PCs who get to add their proficiency modifiers to their
Strength saves.

Hobgoblins aren’t dumb; hobgoblin warlords even less so. They know from
experience that a weak opponent (one with a negative Strength modifier) usually
won’t withstand a Shield Bash, but a stronger opponent often will. However, they
also know that if one or more of their allies can land melee attacks on a prone
target before they get up—if the advantage applies to their allies’ attack rolls as
well, not just to the hobgoblin warlord’s two attacks—then the expected value of
Shield Bash is much more likely to exceed its opportunity cost. Also, in most
instances, if an ally of a hobgoblin warlord is near enough to take whacks at its
target, it’s near enough for the warlord’s Martial Advantage trait to kick in, which
nearly triples the average damage of one of its Longsword attacks and roughly
doubles the average total of the two together. Plus, if the ally is also a hobgoblin,
its own Martial Advantage comes into play as well. Add it all together, and the
Shield Bash tactic becomes effective enough to try even when it has as little as a
one-in-three chance of success.

Bugbears are even stronger than hobgoblins, but they lack hobgoblins’
intelligence and discipline. They do formidable melee damage, thanks to their
Brute trait (which is like landing a crit with every hit), and their Surprise Attack
ability allows them to nova on the first PC they engage. Bugbears are stealthy, too,
so despite being brute fighters, they fit in well with the ambush strategy that
goblins employ. The difference is, while goblins engage in hit-and-run sniper
attacks, the bugbear lies hidden until its foe comes within reach (or creeps up on
its foe unseen until it comes within reach), then springs out and smashes it to a
pulp. It’s indiscriminate in its target selection: It attacks whoever it can get at first.
It doesn’t distinguish between targets that look weaker and targets that look
stronger. To the bugbear, they all look weak.

Bugbears carry two weapons: morning star and javelin. They don’t fear in-
your-face confrontation, and the morning star does more damage, so the only
reason for them to use javelins is if for some reason they can’t get close enough to
whomever they want to attack.

Bugbears love mayhem and will chase down a fleeing opponent. Their survival
instinct, however, is powerful. If one is seriously wounded (reduced to 10 hp or
fewer), it will become confused and flee, using the Dash action and potentially
exposing itself to one or more opportunity attacks. If by some miracle a group of
PCs captures a bugbear alive, it will be humiliated, traumatized, and willing to do
just about anything to preserve its own life.

A bugbear chief is an exceptional member of the species, with Multiattack
and the Heart of Hruggek trait, which gives it advantage on saving throws against
a variety of conditions. It also has Intimidation +2, so one might suppose that a
group of bugbears led by a bugbear chief would initiate a “parley” (consisting
mostly of taunts and threats) at the beginning of an encounter. However,
bugbears’ Stealth proficiency is one of their advantages, so why would they blow
their cover simply to hurl taunts and threats? Bugbear chiefs have Intelligence 11
and Wisdom 12; that’s not the sort of mistake they’d make. There can’t be many
circumstances in which a party of adventurers and a bugbear chief would have
anything like a purposeful conversation, but I can think of a few: Maybe,
somehow, the party has managed to surprise the bugbears rather than vice versa.
Maybe one side is besieging the other, and they’ve reached a stalemate. Maybe the
PCs are high-level enough that the bugbear chief realizes it will be hard to win a
fight against them, yet they still have something the bugbears want. (Of course,
the bugbear chief’s idea of “negotiation” will still consist mainly of demands,
threats, and insults.)

Kobolds differ from goblins in significant ways. Their Intelligence, Wisdom, and
Constitution are all lower. They have Sunlight Sensitivity, which means that while
goblins may prefer to dwell in the dark, kobolds must. Like goblins, kobolds set
traps; unlike goblins, they’re not nimble or stealthy.

What’s most distinctive about kobolds is their Pack Tactics trait, which gives
them advantage on attacks when ganging up on a target. That’s the crux of how
kobolds ought to fight. Kobold society has evolved to be highly cooperative.
Unlike goblins, forever squabbling and looking out for themselves, kobolds
instinctively work together, even without having to discuss what they’re doing.

A kobold attack begins as an ambush: Hiding kobolds (which aren’t
exceptionally stealthy but may gain the element of surprise anyway, since they
have decently high Dexterity and live in dark places) pop up and pelt the party
with sling stones from 20 to 30 feet away in order to soften them up. This lasts
until either the player characters close with the kobolds or the kobolds have lost
any advantage they had, such as the PCs being restrained by a trap or blinded by
darkness. At this point, the kobolds surge forward and engage in melee.

Kobold melee combat is all about swarming. No kobold will ever fight an
enemy hand-to-hand by itself, not even one its own size. Any kobold that’s the
only one left fighting a single foe retreats, possibly regrouping with other kobolds
fighting a different foe. However, a seriously wounded kobold (1 or 2 hp
remaining) turns and runs. It’s not smart enough to Disengage to avoid an
opportunity attack; it Dashes instead. If at any point the attacking kobolds no
longer outnumber the front-line PCs by at least three to one, they’ll withdraw.
They can’t do much damage on their own—on average, just 4 hp per hit—so they
have to make every attack count. But kobolds using Pack Tactics against a target
wearing chain mail can still deal damage two times out of three.

That’s basically it. Kobolds don’t get bonus actions or reactions (other than
opportunity attacks) that might increase the complexity of their behavior. They
have Pack Tactics, so they attack in packs. When attacking as a pack no longer
works, they cut their losses. They also know to stay out of bright sunlight. If their
enemies retreat into a well-lit area, kobolds simply won’t pursue. Kobolds that
retreat don’t bother switching to ranged attacks, because their slings don’t have
enough range to keep target PCs from closing with them again.

Winged kobolds are only slightly better. Because they can fly, they can sustain
the ranged-ambush phase longer… unless they run out of rocks to throw. Their
flying movement is enough to allow them to swoop down, grab a rock, swoop
back up, and throw the rock, but if the PCs block their access to the rocks, so

much for that. They also have two more hit points than regular kobolds, but that
makes no difference with respect to when they’ll flee.

If kobolds are lucky enough to defeat a whole party of adventurers, they’ll haul
them off as prisoners and taunt them for entertainment.

Unlike goblins and kobolds, orcs are strong and tough. They’re not very smart—
their behavior is largely driven by instinct—but they possess average Wisdom and
decent Dexterity. They have the Aggressive trait, which allows them to move their
full speed toward a hostile creature as a bonus action, effectively allowing them to
Dash forward, then attack. Curiously, they have proficiency in a social skill:
Intimidation. Their standard melee weapon, the greataxe, deals damage that can
be deadly to a level 1 character.

These are no hit-and-run skirmishers or snipers. Orcs are brutes. They charge,
they fight hand-to-hand, and they retreat only with the greatest reluctance when
seriously wounded. (Being fanatical valuers of physical courage, orcs—unlike
most creatures—are willing to fight to the death.)

The Aggressive trait applies chiefly to one situation: when a group of orcs is
between 30 and 60 feet away from the player characters. As a DM, you should
therefore assume that first contact with a group of orcs always takes place at this
distance, that the orcs will be initially hostile, and that they’ll charge the second
they decide talking is boring. However, the fact that orcs have any social skill at all
—even if it’s just Intimidation—suggests that there ought to be some opportunity
to interact before combat begins.

Any parley with the orcs will be brief (no more than a handful of chances to
cajole, bluff, or bully them) and somewhat one-sided, as the orcs will issue
nothing but demands and threats. At this point, any hostile action on the PCs’
part, including moving closer than 30 feet for any reason, ends the parley
immediately and initiates combat.

However, a smooth talker may be able to stave off an attack by making a
Charisma (Persuasion) check with disadvantage—against DC 15, say, or maybe
DC 20 if the orcs are there for a specific purpose, such as guarding something or

staking a territorial claim. If it succeeds, the orcs’ attitude shifts from hostile to
indifferent; if it fails, however, give the party only one more chance to successfully
reach a détente.

The PCs may also try to bluff their way past the orcs by making a Charisma
(Deception) check with disadvantage (no disadvantage if they’ve been talked into
indifference), opposed by the orcs’ Intelligence or Wisdom, depending on the
nature of the bluff. If they succeed, the orcs believe their lie. If the lie fails,
however, the orcs attack immediately.

Finally, a PC may try to threaten back! Have them make a DC 20 Charisma
(Intimidation) check, opposed by a Wisdom check for the orcs. If the PC and the
orcs both succeed, the orcs appraise the situation, attacking immediately if they’re
stronger than the party but retreating if they’re weaker. (Before the encounter
begins, use the XP Thresholds by Character Level table in chapter 3 of the
Dungeon Master’s Guide to determine which side is stronger. If the orcs’ adjusted
experience points would make them a Deadly encounter for the party, consider
them stronger; otherwise, consider them weaker.) If the PC succeeds on their
Intimidation check and the orcs fail their Wisdom check, the orcs are rattled, their
attitude shifts to indifferent, and the PC gets advantage on their next social skill
check with the orcs. If the PC fails, the orcs attack.

Orcs initiate combat by charging, using Aggressive (bonus action) plus their
movement to close the distance between themselves and the party’s front line,
followed immediately by attacking with their greataxes (action). From this point
on, it’s a slugfest. As long as the orcs aren’t seriously injured, they keep fighting,
using their Greataxe action every round and moving on to the next PC back if
they hew down one in the front line. If there’s a PC between 30 and 60 feet past
the one the orc has just felled, it has a chance to use Aggressive again—so why
not? This should create a moment of excitement in your session and put a healthy
fear of orcs into your archers and spellslingers.

Despite their aggression and stupidity, even orcs know when they’re
overmatched. Depending on how you, the DM, believe that this particular group
of orcs should act, a seriously injured orc (reduced to 6 hp or fewer) may be
willing to fight to the death for honor’s sake, or it may possess more of a will to
survive, in which case it will Disengage and retreat its full movement distance.

(My own inclination is to have orcs that see their fellows retreating successfully be
more willing to retreat themselves, while orcs whose fellows have been slain will
fight to the death themselves.) An orc that finds itself fighting two or more foes
rather than just one tries to reposition itself so that it has to fight only one, if
possible. Since this will always involve moving out of at least one opponent’s
reach, there are three possible ways: Dodge, then reposition; Disengage, then
reposition; or reposition, risking an opportunity strike, then attack. The first two,
frankly, strike me as un-orc-like, while the third strikes me as very orc-like. If
there’s no way for the orc to evade its extra attackers without their simply closing
with it again, then Disengage/retreat seems like the most likely response—either
that or, if its fellows have been slain, fiercely fighting to the death.

The fact that a group of orcs has retreated doesn’t mean combat is over. The
survivors long for payback. Orcs aren’t stealthy, so they won’t stalk the characters,
but they’ll certainly keep an eye out for the PCs as long as they’re in that vicinity.
If they re-encounter the PCs, and if the PCs seem to be weakened in any way, the
orcs will seize the moment and attack—once again, using Aggressive to charge in
and strike the first blows.

The Monster Manual lists several orc variants that may appear in encounters
with intermediate-level PCs. The orog is a much stronger, tougher, and smarter
variant with many more hit points and two swings per Multiattack action.
Ordinary orcs aren’t smart enough to strategize, but orogs are. A group of orcs
that includes one or more orogs and that knows the PCs are in the area doesn’t go
after them right away but rather waits until nightfall, to take advantage of the
orcs’ darkvision: In darkness, PCs who lack darkvision are effectively blinded and
make attack rolls with disadvantage, while the orcs have advantage on their own
attack rolls. Orogs also have the sense to Disengage before repositioning in melee
combat and may even order regular orcs to do the same. However, their Wisdom
is no higher than that of a regular orc, so they’re prone to the same “death before
dishonor” attitude when they’re low on hit points.

An orc war chief is a formidable opponent, even more so than an orog. It
possesses the orog’s Strength and Constitution, a high Charisma, less Intelligence
than an orog but more than an average orc, Multiattack ability, and proficiency

bonuses on several types of saving throws, plus two fearsome features: Gruumsh’s
Fury and Battle Cry.

Gruumsh’s Fury is a passive trait that increases the orc war chief’s weapon
damage by 1d8 on every hit. This doesn’t affect its tactics at all; it simply makes
the orc war chief a wickedly effective damage dealer. The real game-changer is
Battle Cry, a once-per-day power that gives the orc war chief’s warriors advantage
on attack rolls for the next turn. The effectiveness of Battle Cry is maximized
when it can buff the greatest number of orcs. Therefore, there’s no reason at all
for the orc war chief to wait to use it, save one: The war chief has to forgo its own
attack to use it, because Battle Cry is an action. The cost/benefit analysis hinges
on which is expected to do more damage: a horde of orcs with advantage or a
single orc war chief swinging its greataxe.

By itself, an orc war chief, with +6 to hit, has a 70 percent chance to hit an AC
13 opponent. It does an average of 15 damage with every hit, and it gets two
swings per Multiattack action. Therefore, its expected damage per round is 21. A
regular orc, with +5 to hit, has a 65 percent chance to hit an AC 13 opponent; it
does an average of 10 damage with every hit, and it gets only one chance per
round. Ordinarily, therefore, its expected damage per round is 6. If the orc attacks
with advantage, however, its chance to hit increases from 65 percent to 88
percent, so its expected damage increases to 8. In short, giving a single orc
advantage on its attack roll increases its expected damage by about 2 (2.1, to be
exact). From this, we can determine that the orc war chief will prefer to use Battle
Cry rather than charge with its troops and Multiattack when it commands a force
of no fewer than ten ordinary orcs.

Would an orc war chief have any way to calculate this? No. But it would know
intuitively, from its battlefield experience (which comes mostly from fighting
other orcs, who have AC 13—that’s why I chose that number), that issuing a
Battle Cry before charging seems to make a difference in a group of ten or more
orc warriors, while in a smaller group, it doesn’t.

All that being said, the Battle Cry action also allows the orc war chief to make a
single attack as a bonus action, meaning that if it’s already next to an enemy, it’s
giving up only one of its two potential attacks. So if the war chief is fighting

alongside five or more other orcs, but fewer than ten, it still uses Battle Cry—after
it’s already charged with the rest of its band.

Last, there’s the orc Eye of Gruumsh, a battlefield cleric. Smarter and wiser
than an ordinary orc but not any stronger or tougher, the Eye of Gruumsh is
distinguished most by its spellcasting ability. (It also has Gruumsh’s Fury, but
again, this is a passive trait whose only function is to increase weapon damage—
although this makes more of a difference for the Eye of Gruumsh than for the war
chief, because the Eye of Gruumsh uses only a spear, not a greataxe.) The variety
of spells at its disposal potentially makes the Eye of Gruumsh’s combat strategy
much more complex, so we need to take a look at the effects and effectiveness of
each spell and how it fits into the Eye of Gruumsh’s action economy.

One spell stands out: spiritual weapon. Unlike all the Eye of Gruumsh’s other
spells, this one is cast as a bonus action and, in addition, gives the caster a new
bonus action to use every round. This completely changes the Eye of Gruumsh’s
action economy. The Eye of Gruumsh still charges with all the other orcs, because
otherwise, its Aggressive trait would be wasted. But on its second combat round it
casts spiritual weapon as a bonus action, and on every subsequent round (up to
the spell’s 1-minute duration) it continues to use its bonus action, again and again,
to attack tougher or harder-to-reach opponents with the Floating Spear of Glowy
Force.

The question now is, what does the Eye of Gruumsh do with its action?
Spiritual weapon won’t require concentration, so it can start the battle off with a
spell that does: bless, guidance, or resistance, of which bless is clearly the strongest.
(Which of its companions would the Eye of Gruumsh bless? Orcs aren’t exactly
altruistic. I’d say it would first take a blessing for itself, then give one to the orc
war chief, if there is one, then to any other individual that stands out in the
group.)

How about once combat is underway? Augury takes a full minute to cast and
has no purpose in combat. Thaumaturgy is interesting, but one has to consider its
primary application to be during the parley phase, when the orcs are trying to
maximize their fearsomeness. That leaves command.

Command can have a tide-of-battle-swinging effect. One possible beneficial
outcome of command is that a PC may be forced into a position that gives

opponents advantage on melee attacks. Another is that a PC, ordered to flee, may
be subjected to one or more opportunity attacks.

Let’s look at what the Eye of Gruumsh gives up by doing this: its Spear action.
Against AC 13 (what most orcs are used to, as mentioned above), with +5 to hit,
the Eye of Gruumsh has a 65 percent chance of dealing an average of 11 damage,
for an expected damage per round of 7. For the Eye of Gruumsh to forgo its Spear
action in favor of casting command, the effect of the spell needs to inflict at least 8
expected damage.

As we saw previously, giving an ordinary orc advantage on an attack roll
increases its expected damage by about 2. That’s not enough for the Eye of
Gruumsh to give up its own Spear action. What about an orog? Still not enough:
The damage increase is about the same, although it is doubled because of the
orog’s Multiattack. An orc war chief? Now it starts to get interesting, because the
war chief does so much damage with each hit. But the increase in expected damage
from attacking with advantage turns out to be surprisingly small: only about 3 per
attack, or 6 altogether. And, of course, the Eye of Gruumsh doesn’t itself benefit
from ordering a foe to grovel, because it gives up one attack action to gain
advantage on the next, allowing it one hit at most, rather than two. In addition,
we have to remember that the target of a command gets to make a saving throw, so
all these gains are attenuated by the probability that the target will shrug it off.

However, what if the Eye of Gruumsh can provoke multiple opportunity
attacks on an enemy by ordering them to flee? For starters, opportunity attacks are
reactions, meaning we’re adding a new element to the action economy. Also, this
isn’t about the difference between attacking with advantage and attacking
without it—it’s about the difference between getting an attack and not getting an
attack. One orc’s expected damage per attack is 6—not as much as the Eye of
Gruumsh’s expected damage per attack—but two orcs’ expected damage is double
that, and three orcs’ expected damage is triple that, and so on. An orog’s expected
damage per attack is 7, and an orc war chief’s is 10. Command’s chance of success
is only fifty-fifty even against an average person, so we have to figure that there
need to be several orcs on hand to make opportunity attacks for this stunt to be
worth trying.

Here’s our conclusion: An orc Eye of Gruumsh forgoes its own Spear action in
order to cast command against a foe that’s within reach of four or more ordinary
orcs, or two or more plus a leader. It issues the command “Scram!” (equivalent to
Flee) in order to provoke an opportunity attack from every orc that can reach the
target.

Gnolls are described in the Monster Manual as rapacious raiders, scavengers, and
nomads with hyena-like heads. They have high Strength and low Intelligence;
their behavior is driven by their violent and destructive instincts. Like many other
humanoid D&D monsters, they have darkvision. They wield spears and
longbows, according to the Monster Manual, and they have one distinguishing
feature, Rampage, which allows them to move half their speed and make a bonus
bite attack after reducing a foe to 0 hp in melee.

Honestly, I’d dispense with the longbow—it doesn’t make sense in the context
of what else the Monster Manual says about gnolls. Their Strength is high enough
that they gain little advantage from using one. They aren’t smart enough to craft
one or social enough to barter for one. According to the flavor text, gnolls prefer
to strike at easy targets; longbows are designed to puncture armor. And gnolls’
single unique feature is melee-oriented.

So my vision of the gnoll is strictly a hand-to-hand fighter. As creatures with
high Strength, high-average Dexterity, average Constitution, and a respectable five
hit dice, gnolls are shock troops. When they spot a vulnerable target, most likely
during a nighttime patrol (darkvision provides advantage on attack rolls against
PCs who don’t have it), they strike at once. They’re fearless and aggressive, using
their full movement speed to approach their targets, then attacking with spears; if
one such attack reduces an enemy to 0 hp, the gnoll Rampages toward another
enemy within 15 feet and bites it (bonus action).

As vicious as they are, however, gnolls are creatures of instinct without
ideology, and they place their own survival over such concepts as valor or honor.
If one is seriously wounded (reduced to 8 hp or fewer), it turns tail and flees, using

the Dash action to get away as fast as possible and potentially exposing itself to
one or more opportunity attacks in the process.

A pack of gnolls may be led by a gnoll pack lord, which is a more able
specimen in every respect, including getting two swings per Multiattack action
and having the Incite Rampage feature. (It also wields a glaive, which I have to
imagine—given that even the gnoll pack lord’s Intelligence is only 8—consists of a
pillaged sword lashed to the end of a spear. By gnoll standards, this surely qualifies
as technological genius.)

Incite Rampage is part of the gnoll pack lord’s Multiattack combo, so the gnoll
pack lord doesn’t have to forgo attacking to use it. Effectively, what Incite
Rampage does is grant another gnoll in the pack (a technicality in the wording of
Incite Rampage restricts its application to other gnolls, plus giant hyenas, since
these are the only creatures with Rampage) the equivalent of an immediate
opportunity attack against its opponent. This happens during the gnoll pack
lord’s action. Incite Rampage consumes that gnoll’s reaction, so if its opponent
moves out of its reach, it can’t make an actual opportunity attack.

Aside from this feature, the only other distinctive thing about the gnoll pack
lord is the fact that its “glaive” (snicker) gives it 10 feet of reach rather than 5 feet.
None of this makes the gnoll pack lord’s tactics any more elaborate than a regular
gnoll’s.

At first blush, the gnoll Fang of Yeenoghu also appears to be little more than
an exceptionally able gnoll, with a Claw/Claw/Bite Multiattack in lieu of
weapons. But the Fang of Yeenoghu has some actual intelligence, so it maneuvers
around the battlefield and targets vulnerable PCs, particularly those who dish out
a lot of damage but can’t take it. Gnolls sense weakness and zero in on it, so
assume that the Fang of Yeenoghu can “read” a PC’s hit points and Armor Class
and strike accordingly. This also allows the Fang of Yeenoghu to maximize the
value of its Rampage feature, because by targeting PCs with fewer hit points first,
it increases its chances of getting to Rampage more than once. If you’re a
tenderhearted DM who wants to protect the fragile flowers in your players’ party,
don’t throw a Fang of Yeenoghu at them, because that thing’s gotta follow its
nature.

One other detail about the gnoll Fang of Yeenoghu, which has nothing to do
with its tactics but is still worth noting: Unlike gnolls and gnoll pack lords, the
Fang of Yeenoghu isn’t categorized as a humanoid. It’s a fiend, and as such it’s
detectable by a paladin’s Divine Sense or a ranger’s Primeval Awareness, and a
protection from evil and good spell offers defense against it.

Lizardfolk aren’t sophisticated, but they are significantly tougher than goblins,
kobolds, and orcs. According to the Monster Manual flavor text, their most
salient behavioral trait is their territoriality, followed by their generally acting like
South Seas cannibals in a movie from the 1940s. On the flip side, the text does
acknowledge that lizardfolk may occasionally form alliances with outsiders, but
we’ll set that aside, since it’s not going to influence their combat tactics.

Lizardfolk, like orcs, are brutes: average Dexterity, high Strength and
Constitution. They’re also proficient in Perception and Stealth, and they’re more
or less amphibious—they can’t breathe underwater, but they can hold their breath
for up to 15 minutes, and they can swim as fast as they can move on land.

Based on this information, the most likely lizardfolk encounter scenario is with
a group of scouts patrolling the outskirts of their territory. They’ll be alert to
intruders—it’s why they’re out there. Once they notice intruders, they start
stalking them (from cover to cover if on land, underwater if in a swamp), until
they’re close enough to attack. Then they strike first, with surprise if possible.

The lizardfolk’s Multiattack action specifies, “The lizardfolk makes two melee
attacks, each one with a different weapon.” The choices available are Bite, Heavy
Club, Javelin, and Spiked Shield. Honestly, the only combinations of these that
don’t strike me as silly are Heavy Club/Spiked Shield and Javelin/Spiked Shield.
The lizardfolk’s upright physiology makes the idea of their lunging to bite absurd,
let alone lunging to bite in combination with swinging or thrusting a melee
weapon. Of course, it’s all cosmetic, since every one of the lizardfolk’s attacks has
the same attack modifier and deals the same damage; the only difference is
whether the damage done is bludgeoning (the club) or piercing (everything else),
and even that isn’t a real difference unless a PC is covered by a magic item or spell

that provides resistance to one type of damage and not the other. Let’s just say
that a lizardfolk’s Multiattack action consists of one weapon strike and one shield
bash and leave it at that.

Lizardfolk don’t have any feature that grants them bonus actions or unique
reactions, and their Intelligence is low, so we can assume that they fight like
primitives: They pick an enemy, they bash that enemy, and they keep going until
the enemy is dead or they’re seriously wounded themselves (reduced to 8 hp or
fewer). At that point, whether they keep fighting depends entirely on whether or
not they’re within their own territory. If they are, they keep fighting to the death.
If they’re not—if they were scouting beyond their borders, or if they were on a
raid—they Dash back toward their own territory as fast as they can, potentially
incurring one or more opportunity attacks. Instinctively, they always attack from
the direction of their own territory and position themselves with their backs
toward it. They may ambush, but they don’t flank.

Long-range weapon attacks confuse them, and magic awes and terrifies them.
A lizardfolk shot by an arrow or crossbow bolt instinctively moves in the direction
of its territory. (If it’s already within its territory, it moves toward the center of
that territory.) Depending on the type of spell, the damage it does, whether the
lizardfolk can see the caster, and whether they can get to them, they either try to
rush the caster or run for their lives. Rushing is more likely if they can see the
caster, the spell does no more than light damage (5 or less), and/or there’s no other
PC in the way. Running is more likely if they can’t tell where the spell came from,
the spell does serious damage (14 or more), and/or there are too many enemies
between themselves and the caster.

Lizardfolk never surrender voluntarily: They assume that they’ll be killed.
However, lizardfolk who are subdued and captured are impassive about it and will
talk to their captors, if any of them speaks Draconic, without sullenness or bluster.
That being said, they’ll also turn against their captors in a heartbeat if their
chances of success look good. An unarmed lizardfolk will bite, as well as grab the
nearest handy object to use as an improvised weapon.

A lizardfolk shaman is basically a reskinned druid. It’s distinguished by its
spellcasting and shape-changing abilities, the latter of which is restricted to the
form of a crocodile. That’s pretty good, compared with most of the spells the

lizardfolk shaman can cast. But one of its spells is so effective that the crocodile
form has to be considered a secondary self-defense measure.

That spell is conjure animals, which requires concentration and therefore
prevents the lizardfolk shaman from casting its other most potentially effective
spell, entangle. But by itself, conjure animals should give a party of PCs pause. It
allows the shaman to summon one CR 2, two CR 1, four CR 1/2, or eight CR
1/4 reptiles. There’s no CR 1 reptile in the Monster Manual, but check out the
other options:

one swarm of poisonous snakes
four crocodiles
eight constrictor snakes
eight giant lizards
eight giant poisonous snakes

You can consider the different abilities these creatures have (crocs and
constrictor snakes can grapple, giant lizards are tanks, giant poisonous snakes deal
heavy damage), but you can also feel free to base your decision entirely on the
emotional reaction you want to elicit from your players: Do you want icky-
creepy-get-it-away-from-me (one square full of writhing danger noodles),
moderate freakout (four crocs), or full-scale panic attack (eight king cobras)?

From the caster’s point of view, “more” usually trumps “better.” More
creatures mean more attacks, and summoning four or eight rather than just one
will bump up the encounter multiplier by one or two levels, unless the lizardfolk
group already substantially outnumbers the PCs (see the Encounter Multipliers
table, Dungeon Master’s Guide, chapter 3).

Therefore, unless you’re specifically looking to elicit a different reaction, the
first thing the lizardfolk shaman is going to do once an encounter commences is
cast conjure animals to call up as much reptilian backup as possible. After that,
the shaman doesn’t enter melee combat—not that it couldn’t, being just as strong
and tough as any other lizardfolk, but unlike them, it’s smart enough to know that
if it took a solid hit, its concentration could be broken, and then there’d go the
cobras. Instead, the shaman lobs produce flame cantrips (which do 2d8 fire

damage rather than 1d8, because the shaman is a level 5 spellcaster) at any enemies
within 30 feet. Its fellow lizardfolk, incidentally, aren’t afraid of this magic—on
the contrary, since the shaman is on their side, they’re feeling extra bold and are
much more likely to rush an enemy caster rather than run from them. They’ll also
become mighty salty if anyone dares to assault their shaman.

Speaking of enemy casters, if one makes the mistake of coming within 30 feet
of the lizardfolk shaman, it casts thorn whip and yanks them forward, so that the
other lizardfolk can pound them into jelly.

What if the shaman is targeted by a ranged attacker? It’s still caught off guard,
but its greater mental flexibility allows it to come up with a purposeful response.
If its concentration isn’t broken, it sends a couple of the king cobras (or whatever
creatures it summoned) after the PC who shot it. If its concentration is broken, its
main contribution to the battle has just been negated, and until it takes care of
that marksman, there’s not a lot more that it can do: Most of its spells don’t have
great range. But since its fellow lizardfolk are useless against ranged attackers, the
shaman has to take care of the problem itself. In a swamp, it can Change Shape
into crocodile form, submerge, and go after the shooter. In jungle, this won’t
work, because a crocodile has only 20 feet of movement speed over land, so a
marksman can easily keep their distance. The shaman will be forced to conclude
that the battle is going south and cast fog cloud, either to cover the lizardfolk’s
escape (if they’re outside their territory) or to enshroud the PCs so that the
lizardfolk can reposition themselves more advantageously.

In general, any time a battle outside their territory goes badly for the lizardfolk
—say, at least half of them seriously wounded—the lizardfolk shaman casts fog
cloud to help them get away. (Inside their territory, the shaman will have already
cast fog cloud on the PCs first, to allow the lizardfolk warriors to sneak up on them
quickly.) If the fog cloud is dispelled (by gust of wind, say) while the lizardfolk are
retreating, the shaman will follow up with plant growth to slow their pursuers
even further. (What about entangle and spike growth? Their utility diminishes
significantly in a swamp or jungle, where the terrain is already difficult. And the
fact that they also require concentration forces a choice between one of them and
conjure animals or fog cloud, which are clearly superior.)

The lizard king/queen isn’t complicated at all. Mostly, it’s a bigger, badder
lizardfolk. For its Multiattack, it can use Claws/Bite, Trident/Bite, or
Trident/Trident. Let’s get real: If you’re leading a bunch of tribespeople carrying
clubs and shields, are you going to go out there and chew on your enemies? No,
you’re going to go out there with an even more impressive weapon and show
everyone how it’s done. Your Trident attack does more damage than your Bite
attack (assume that it’s wielded two-handed, since the stat block makes no
mention of a shield), and besides, your Skewer feature only works with the
trident. Of course you’re going to use the trident for both attacks!

There is one other detail to note about the lizard king/queen: its immunity to
the frightened condition. We can infer from this that the lizard king/queen ain’t
afraid of nothin’… least of all Trawiodol the Uncanny’s dancing lights. The Royal
Reptile isn’t going to run from a spellcaster, ever. No, it’s going to single the caster
out for special pointy attention, just to show all the other lizardfolk why it’s the
boss and they’re not.

Yuan-ti are snake-human hybrids, created in the earliest days of civilization, whose
culture fell from an advanced, enlightened state into fanaticism and cruelty. They
live in a caste-bound society in which those who most closely resemble humans
make up the lowest stratum, while the most snakelike constitute the highest and
most powerful. One distinctive characteristic they all share is the innate ability to
cast suggestion: Like Kaa in The Jungle Book, they try to win your trust before they
mess you up. Another is that they all have magic resistance, so they have no reason
to fear spellcasters more than anyone else.

The most common and least powerful caste are the yuan-ti purebloods.
(Counterintuitively, “pure” is a pejorative to the yuan-ti; the more adulterated by
reptilian essence they are, the more they’re esteemed.) Their physical abilities are
average-ish, with a slightly elevated Dexterity; their Intelligence and, particularly,
Charisma are higher, implying a species that approaches combat from a mental
angle first. This implication is emphasized further by their proficiency in
Deception and Stealth. They have darkvision, suggesting that they’re most at

home in dim places and/or most active at night. Along with suggestion, they can
cast the cantrip poison spray three times per day at its base damage level of 1d12 (I
like to imagine that they spit it from their mouths). They can also cast animal
friendship on snakes, for whatever that’s worth.

According to the Monster Manual flavor text, yuan-ti purebloods often put
on cloaks and try to pass for human in order to “kidnap prisoners for
interrogation and sacrifice,” so let’s start with that: The yuan-ti wants to kill you,
but it doesn’t want to kill you right here and now. Instead, it wants to get you
someplace where it can kill you in a way that makes its gods happy.

Therefore, a yuan-ti pureblood encounter is going to begin with the yuan-ti
cloaked and hooded, using Deception to hide what they are, and casting suggestion
as soon as the player characters approach within 30 feet, saying something along
the lines of “This is a dangerous place, and you look like you could use some extra
help. Come with us.” I’d say that their moderately high Intelligence combined
with the fact that this is an innate ability lets them “read” the PCs to pick out
which ones have the lowest Wisdom saving throws and therefore will be most
susceptible. Remember that a single yuan-ti can target only a single PC at once
with this ability; if you want to charm more PCs, you need more yuan-ti.

If the suggestion succeeds, they’ll take the PCs back to their settlement,
overwhelm the PCs with numbers and grappling attacks, and prep for their
sacrificial ceremony. If it fails, the PCs will undoubtedly attack, and if they don’t,
the yuan-ti will.

Yuan-ti purebloods are competent, though unexceptional, at both melee and
ranged combat. In melee, they have Multiattack, letting them attack twice per
turn with their scimitars. At range, they have only one shot per action, but their
arrows are poisoned, which makes ranged attacks marginally better, though not
enough to make a meaningful difference. Thus, whether they opt for melee or
ranged combat depends in large part on where they are when combat begins. If
they’re in the thick of things, they choose melee; if they’re at a distance, they
choose ranged; and they pretty much stay wherever they are unless they’re forced
to flee. Poison spray doesn’t offer them any real advantage over either a scimitar or
a shortbow, unless they’re disarmed somehow.

Yuan-ti have had hundreds of generations to live and adapt on their own, so
they’ll have the same self-preservation instinct as any evolved species. If they’re
seriously injured (reduced to 16 hp or fewer), they’ll run away, using the Dash
action (yuan-ti purebloods don’t have the training to Disengage).

Combat with yuan-ti purebloods by themselves isn’t that interesting; it gets
better, though, when you combine them with yuan-ti malisons. Malisons are
mostly-humanoids with serpentine heads (type 1), arms (type 2), or lower bodies
(type 3); the third type is my personal favorite, because I think it synergizes best
with the yuan-ti pureblood. All three types have high Charisma and Intelligence
and also high Strength and Dexterity, making them good commanders and shock
troops. They can also Shapechange back and forth between their yuan-ti form and
a Medium-size snake form; their equipment doesn’t change with them, however.

As a snake, a yuan-ti malison gets one Bite attack per action, doing 1d4 + 3
piercing damage plus 2d6 poison damage. In contrast, a type 1 or type 3 yuan-ti
malison can attack twice with its scimitar, doing 1d6 + 3 on each hit for about the
same total damage, or twice with its longbow, doing 1d8 + 2 piercing damage plus
2d6 poison damage on each hit, for roughly twice the damage. I know which one
I’d choose. Changing into snake form offers the yuan-ti malison no combat
advantage at all, except—implicitly—immunity to the prone condition (the stat
block doesn’t say this explicitly, but think about it for a second), and it comes
with the disadvantage of divesting it of its weapons. I’d say this is a dubiously
useful ability at best, and I wouldn’t have a yuan-ti malison Shapechange during
combat, except maybe to escape through a tiny hole.

One of the things I like about the type 3 yuan-ti malison is that it has the extra
attacking feature Constrict, which does 2d6 + 3 bludgeoning damage and
grapples its target, restraining it as well. Moreover, since it’s grappling with its
lower body, its hands are still free. That means that on its next turn, it can take
two scimitar swings with advantage. I love both the tactical elegance of this
combination and the visual image of it. Type 1 and type 2 don’t offer anything of
the kind. Plus, the idea of a person with snakes for arms—each with its own head
—strikes me as goofy rather than horrifying.

Say you’ve got a party of four PCs, encountering a group of five yuan-ti: three
purebloods and two type 3 malisons. The malisons hide 120 feet away from the

purebloods, while the purebloods use suggestion to charm the PCs. If a
pureblood’s suggestion fails or is broken, it draws its scimitar and attacks with it.
On cue, the malisons begin sniping at the PCs, targeting elves, gnomes,
barbarians, and paladins first. (Why on earth these categories? Because they have
the best resistance against being charmed.) Once all the purebloods are moderately
wounded or any one of them is seriously wounded, the malisons then Dash in to
fight hand-to-hand. They begin with a Multiattack comprising an attempt to
Constrict followed by a Scimitar attack. As long as their targets remain grappled,
they’ll keep Multiattacking with their scimitars; if a target breaks free, they’ll try to
Constrict again. Like purebloods, yuan-ti malisons retreat when seriously injured
(reduced to 26 hp or fewer), but unlike purebloods, they have the discipline to
Disengage before retreating.

Yuan-ti abominations are the top caste: giant serpents with humanoid arms.
Like malisons, they have the ability to Shapechange into snake form, and like
malisons, they suffer from the same disadvantage of not getting to hold on to their
equipment. They have the same Constrict ability as the type 3 malison and can
combine it with melee attacks in the same way. They have spectacular ability
scores across the board, but their Strength of 19 stands out. A yuan-ti
abomination is a great boss enemy for a party of intermediate-level PCs.

Yuan-ti abominations have mostly the same toolkit as malisons, with one
cherry on top: the ability to cast fear once per day. Why would they cast that,
though? They’re havoc in battle: Once they grapple an enemy, they can take three
scimitar swings with advantage and +7 to hit. (That’s an 88 percent chance to hit
against AC 15.) Whether they’re attacking at range with longbows or in melee
with scimitars, they do nearly double the malison’s damage.

There are only two reasons why a yuan-ti abomination would opt for fear over
simply beating the tar out of its opponents: Either it’s protecting some kind of
sacred or otherwise important place, and keeping trespassers away is its foremost
priority; or its opponents are tougher than it bargained for, and it’s losing the
fight.

In the former case—that is, when the yuan-ti abomination is more interested in
driving the PCs away than in murdering them—it casts fear at the very beginning
of the encounter, then fights those too stubborn to go away. In the latter case, it

casts fear when it’s moderately injured (reduced to 88 hp or fewer), in order to
reduce the number of enemies that it and its allies have to deal with right away,
and if it’s seriously injured (reduced to 50 hp or fewer), it Disengages and attempts
to retreat.

A yuan-ti abomination fighting to protect a place of importance does so
fanatically. If it’s seriously injured in that scenario, it won’t retreat but rather will
fight to the death. If it’s accompanied by yuan-ti malisons and purebloods, and if
they’re in a settlement or other location where reinforcements may be available,
one or more of the yuan-ti abomination’s allies will break off when the
abomination is moderately injured and run/slither to fetch more.

Yuan-ti abominations are very intelligent. They issue commands to their allies,
telling them what locations to attack or defend and which enemies to prioritize.
Because all yuan-ti are magic-resistant, they don’t place the same emphasis on
spellcasters that other intelligent enemies might. Instead, they focus on strong and
tough PCs, double- or triple-teaming them, and on particularly effective ranged
fighters. They may single out PC clerics and paladins as well, simply out of
sectarian loathing. Also, they direct their allies to make use of choke points, high
ground, and other strategically useful terrain.

Finally, yuan-ti abominations monologue as they fight, because what more
could you want from a fanatically religious enemy boss with Charisma 18? Chew
that scenery!

Bullywugs are petty, bad-tempered humanoid frogs, native to swampy areas. The
Monster Manual flavor text describes them as “struck with a deep inferiority
complex… desperately crav[ing] the fear and respect of outsiders” and says they’ll
generally prefer to capture trespassers rather than kill them outright, hauling them
back to win favor with their rulers first. One way they do this is by taming giant
frogs and having them swallow victims whole; however, this works only on Small
or Tiny targets, meaning that unless a party of PCs is made up entirely of halflings
and gnomes, this isn’t a strategy they can rely on in a typical encounter.

For creatures with only two hit dice, bullywugs aren’t too shabby in combat.
All their physical abilities are modestly above average, and they have proficiency in
Stealth and the Swamp Camouflage trait, which grants them advantage on
Dexterity (Stealth) checks in swampy terrain. It’s fair to say, therefore, that
bullywugs won’t venture outside such areas—not when they have such a natural
advantage on their home turf.

Moreover, their Standing Leap ability lets them move their full speed of 20 feet
per turn as a long jump, when the jumping rule would normally allow them to
leap only 6 feet. This allows them to cover distance in difficult marshy terrain
without having to halve their movement speed. If you want to be nitpicky about
it, you can require them to succeed on a DC 10 Dexterity (Acrobatics) check
when they land, per “Special Types of Movement: Jumping” in chapter 8 of the
Player’s Handbook, but personally, I’d say that bullywugs, whose natural habitat is
the swamp, shouldn’t have to make that check when landing. And for the sake of
flavor, I like the idea of having bullywugs bouncing around like a bunch of ornery
little Superballs during combat rather than trudging around in 2-D as we
landbound humanoids must. (Mind you, this doesn’t exempt them from
opportunity attacks when they jump out of PCs’ reach.)

Okay, so far we’ve established that bullywug encounters will occur in swamps.
Let’s also stipulate, based on the aforementioned features, that their favored
strategy is ambush (their physical abilities don’t indicate a preference for one form
of combat over another, but their features do). Now let’s add, based on their 40-
foot swimming speed, that they prefer combat to take place near open water: This
is their favored method of escape. From the bullywugs’ point of view, the ideal
ambush location is on ground solid enough to fight on but also near water deep
enough to swim in. They’re Medium creatures, so this depth will be at least 3 feet.

Wanting, ideally, to capture rather than kill, bullywugs attack in numbers large
enough to surround and overwhelm a party of adventurers—let’s say three to one.
But here’s a question: If you can get a free attack by popping out of hiding and
surprising your enemies, will you really forgo that attack and demand their
surrender when it costs you the benefit of surprise if they decide to fight back?
Bullywugs aren’t bright, but I think even they can grasp what the whole point of
an ambush is. They’ll take that surprise attack, thank you, and with any luck, the

Mind Flayer Tactics

Mind flayers are like classic pulp supervillains: brilliant, twisted, scheming, always wanting to take over the world—but first, they have things they want to do your brain. They even wear outfits straight out of Flash Gordon. And yet the fifth-edition Dungeons and Dragons mind flayer feels unsatisfying to me, maybe because, as written, it just isn’t very efficient.

This is paltry. It’s unworthy of a supervillain. I’ll talk about the tactics of the mind flayer as written, but then I’ll go on to talk about how to make a mind flayer capable of enthralling, and keeping enthralled, more than one minion at a time.

Mind flayers’ physical abilities are nominally average to slightly above average, but they’re no better than the average adventurers’ and downright weak compared with most intermediate-level boss monsters. Mind flayers compensate with exceptionally high mental abilities across the board, especially in Intelligence, and with proficiency in all mental ability saving throws. They also have proficiency in Stealth, Perception, Insight, Persuasion and Deception (also Arcana, but that’s strictly for flavor). They’re resistant to spells and other magical effects, and in addition to dominate monster, they can also cast detect thoughts and levitate at will and plane shift once per day on themselves.

Their primary method of self-defense is the Mind Blast action, which has a recharge and which affects every creature in a 60-foot cone, potentially stunning them. Secondarily, they can attack with their face-tentacles, which both grapple and potentially stun their target on a hit, and Extract Brain against an already incapacitated (by either stunning or some other means) and grappled opponent. But the mind flayer doesn’t really want to use this secondary attack against a still-functioning opponent. Ideally, no opponent should ever get within melee range of a mind flayer under its own power. Instead, mind flayers would rather incapacitate their opponents at range, then move in to consume their brains. Even a cornered mind flayer will prefer Mind Blast, if that action is available, over a melee attack with its tentacles.

To ensure that its enemies don’t get close, a mind flayer uses minions to run interference. The creatures listed above (troglodytes, etc.) are good choices, as are enthralled humanoid commoners. Grells also make a good fit thematically, continuing the brain and tentacle themes of the mind flayer and its dogsbody, the intellect devourer. PCs attacking a mind flayer in its lair will have to fight their way through waves of minions before ever getting near it, and in the meantime, it’s hanging back 60 feet behind the action, levitating about 10 feet in the air so that melee attackers can’t reach it, and Mind Blasting anyone who breaks through the line.

Mind flayers value their survival highly, but like a pulp supervillain, they value their schemes as well, and they won’t want to give up their lairs if there’s any chance at all that they can win a battle, so they’ll hold out until they’re seriously injured (reduced to 28 hp or fewer) before casting plane shift to make a hasty exit. But this presumes they have only one lair and one scheme going. If they’re up to different things, and the lair the PCs are attacking isn’t the most important one, they’ll cut their losses earlier, after being only moderately injured (reduced to 49 hp or fewer), and let any remaining minions handle the job from there.

Now, how to make a mind flayer capable of taking over more than a tollbooth? I’ve thought of a few possibilities, though I’m sure there are others (please feel free to share in comments):

In each of these cases, I’d change the listed saving throw to a DC 15 Intelligence save, to match Mind Blast and the mind flayer’s tentacle attack. Following the example of the aboleth’s Enslave feature, you might also allow a mind flayer three uses of Charm or geas per day rather than just one—or, maybe, give it Enslave as written, plus a single daily use of geas. This will give an entrepreneurial mind flayer a chance to build up a decent-size posse around its new base of operations in a reasonable amount of time. In case it wasn’t obvious, all of these choices replace dominate monster.

With any of these powers, a mind flayer has a new combat option: mind-control a PC into fighting against his or her allies. That will be its second-choice tactic, after Mind Blast. Enslave or a fast-cast geas is better for this than Charm, however, since Charm allows so many saving throws, the turned PC probably won’t stay turned for more than a round, unless his or her allies scrupulously refrain from fighting back. (You can do this with dominate monster too, which is why I suppose this spell was included among the mind flayer’s features in the first place, but the fact that it requires concentration means the mind flayer can’t dominate an opponent and levitate at the same time. Bogus.)

The obvious thought is to use this feature against the biggest, baddest fighter subclass in the party. It’s obvious to us because we don’t have Intelligence 19. The mind flayer, however, does. It can compel other monsters to form an offensive line, it can psychically debilitate anyone who tries to charge it, but it knows what its one real vulnerability is: archers. Mind flayers resist magic, but they don’t resist arrows. Against the mind flayer’s middling AC, a ranged attacker more than 60 feet away—especially a ranger with Colossus Slayer, specializing in Archery—will make quick work of it. That’s the one the mind flayer will want to mind-control. Plus, if you’re using the Charm or Enslave alternative rather than the geas alternative, a ranged weapon attacker is likely to be positioned farther away from his or her allies, so he or she won’t take damage so soon and therefore is likely to remain enthralled longer.

Now, you might say, “But mind flayers aren’t the real boss monster. They usually live in colonies, not by themselves. The real boss monster is the elder brain.” Yeah, you’re right about that. But there are two problems here. First and most important, the MM doesn’t give stats for an elder brain. (Maybe Volo’s Guide to Monsters does. If so, when I have that book, I’ll come back to this topic.) The second is that, for an intermediate-level adventuring party, one mind flayer commanding a decent number of minions is more than challenge enough. As I suggested before, let’s say this is one with an entrepreneurial spirit. Maybe it’s laying the groundwork for others to follow. Or maybe, as the MM flavor texts suggests, it’s simply a rogue or an outcast.