5E Monsters That Will Surprise Your Players

How do you surprise your players with 5E Monsters? Let’s face it, unless your players are playing for the first time, they probably don't get surprised by many of the low-level monsters you are using in at the beginning of your campaigns. It could even be happening at high levels. The Dungeons & Dragons ® Monster Manual ® is full of the classic 5e monsters and they have been consistent over the years. But I can’t even count how many times I’ve had a player say “Oh, it’s just an Orc” or “Oh, it’s a Troll, use fire”. Some of the mystery and adventure starts to fade when the creatures in your games stay the same.

But as the Dungeon Master you have the power to make changes. Changes that will get your players questioning their assumptions. Having to think on their feet and surprise them as their normal tactics won’t have the expected outcome. Bring back mystery and the sense of adventure that drew people to the game in the first place.  All of this can also add to your longer-term campaign storylines, but I will get into that another time.

I have a free example at the end of the blog you can download.

Let's go through the steps

1. Pick the monsters you want to change.

This is the easiest part. As you are building your encounter just pick a monster or group of monsters that you would normally. This should make sense for your campaign and the area that you are building for.

In this example, I am going to pick the Goblin on page 165 in the 5E Monster Manual. A nice challenge of ¼ each.

2. Next change its appearance 

A quick way to get your players wondering what is going on is simply to change the way the monster looks. Change its height, shape, size, or color all while leaving the stats the same.

In my example of the Goblin, I am going to change their appearance to be more similar to the squirrels I see in my backyard. Covered in black fur, big ears, with a fluffy tail that goes well above their head. But in this case, they are more humanoid and still roughly 3 feet tall. Now with a quick cosmetic change, your characters don’t know what to expect. But in reality, from your perspective, they are just goblins.

3. Consider the monster’s tactics

Most of the well-established monsters behave a particular way and that can come out in their tactics during combat. If you change their normal behavour, players that are paying attention will start to wonder what is happening. It will at least surprise them, and that is what we are going for.

For our goblin example, let's assume we didn’t change their appearance so radically, instead we could change their tactics in combat. I tend to play goblins as a chaotic group of unorganized savages, driven by their innate evil. But instead, we could have them highly organized and acting similar to Roman legions. They could attack in a formation and fight as a team or unit. They could continue with the fight and be difficult to demoralize because of their high level of training. This is behavour that is very unlike the normal goblins and to make sure that this change is driven home, perhaps they could have a clear uniform and symbol. This goes back to the previous example of changing its appearance.

4. Change or add some abilities

This can look easy at first, but you have to balance what you are adding and consider how this will impact the encounter. At its simplest level, I just add resistance to a type of damage that the monster wouldn’t typically have. Slightly more complex and more dangerous for your players is adding special attacks or spell casting. You can also consider tactics that wouldn’t be normal or working in conjunction with other monsters. You can mix them all together which is the most dangerous and get your player wondering what is going on. 

At this point, you are making a new creature so I recommend having a look at the section in the Dungeon Master guide Creating a Monster on Page 273 (2014 version - we're looking in to updating this). It will help you figure out the DC and help you make sure that you are not creating something that will unbalance the encounter. Once you have done this a couple of times, it will get easier.

Back to our Goblin example. We don’t want to make them too powerful, they are already well organized, but I think giving them a little bit of damage reduction can make sense. This ability can play out in the game with their unit tactics and special armour deflecting some of the damage. These sorts of changes will help get the players engaged in your story and have them wondering what is going on.

5. Pick something from the community of creators

The easiest way to do this is to pick something that has already been created by the community of creators who love to do this sort of thing. There are so many options out there, we are just a small part of a vibrant community of creators sharing their ideas.

If you liked the Squirrel creature idea above, I’ve named them, Scratlings. Feel free to add these creatures to your campaign. We’ve created a 5e monster sheet pdf that you can download. 

If you are looking for something a bit more risque, you might want to consider our Filthy Foes which has 5 NSFW monsters in it. Most of our other books contain a few monsters or adventures that you can drop into a campaign, just have a look in our store.

Happy adventuring, I hope this helps you add some mystery to your DnD campaigns.