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With decades of adventures, Dungeons and Dragons has mountains of dangerous places and treacherous creatures. Whether playing 1st or 5th edition, you're never safe from a horde of monsters wrecking your run. However, it’s worth noting that a monster is more than just its CR (Challenge Rating). It also depends on how the DM decides to use them and how powerful the party is.
On that note, one particular monster almost made this list - Dungeons and Dragons players. They are the greatest threat to wildlife, monsters, and even innocent citizens across the D&D multiverse. These players are quick to slaughter anything they see in the wild.
When considering the strongest Dungeons and Dragons monsters, I considered personal experience across my many years of playing the tabletop RPG, their challenge rating, and the overall terror these monsters can induce in a party.
Which monsters are the greatest threats in Dungeons and Dragons?
10) Illithid/Mind Flayer (CR 7)
Whether you call them Illithids or Mind Flayers in Dungeons and Dragons, they are always a threat. A powerful, tentacled being from the Underdark, they are powerful, psionic beings who feast on brains. One of their most familiar abilities, after all, is Extract Brain.
It deals 10D10 piercing damage, and if it reduces the player to 0 hit points, it kills them by eating their brain. These telepathic, squid-faced creatures also use the powerful Mind Blast attack that fires a blast of psionic energy in a cone. While their CR isn’t high, the fact that they can eat an adventurer's brain and kill them is horrifying.
9) Shadow Dragon (CR 13)
Each dragon in Dungeons and Dragons has its own special ability or attack, making it a threat. Shadow Dragons are weaker than other dragons, they’re often credited as being among the most crafty ones - more than the Reds and equal to the Golds. What makes them so dangerous?
Shadow Dragon breath drains levels or hit dice of whoever is caught in the blast. It’s a cloud of blackness, 40 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 20 feet high. Those caught in it are blinded for a round and drained of three-fourths of their levels (or hit dice). If you save versus Breath Weapon, you only lose half.
8) Lich (CR 21)
Dungeons and Dragons’ Lich was originally inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep” and Garder Fox’s sorcerer in “The Sword of the Sorcerer.” Undead spellcasters, they often look skeletal in appearance. Depending on the situation, they can be dressed in fine robes or rags.
Once human, these spellcasters encase their souls in a phylactery. They retain all of their original memories and spells. As long as the phylactery is safe, these spellcasters are ostensibly immortal.
Their spells, stats, and abilities often vary, depending on the DM's whims. That’s what makes them so terrifying - each Lich is its own unique challenge to overcome.
7) Beholder (CR 13)
Another classic Dungeons and Dragons creature, the Beholder is a memorable creature. It's even been a part of the original Final Fantasy, as the “Evil Eye” monster, but it was a Beholder in Japan. These Eye Tyrants come in various flavors but always resemble a floating sphere with eyestalks protruding out of it.
Each separate eye has its own magical power, from disintegration and death rays, or more manageable abilities like a chilling ray. Considered hyper-intelligent, they can easily destroy a player in one attack.
6) Dracolich (CR 17)
What’s scarier than a dragon in Dungeons and Dragons? An undead one! Occasionally, an Ancient Wyrm decides they want more power and chooses to continue their existence as an undead creature. They also hide their soul in a phylactery, making them essentially immortal.
In addition to now being undead, it retains all its powers and abilities. If bested, this powerful dragon can retreat to its phylactery and inhabit another body later. It cannot be stopped unless you defeat its phylactery.
5) Demilich (CR 18)
There sure are a lot of powerful undead creatures in Dungeons and Dragons! On top of that, they’re almost always magical creatures. The Demilich has been featured in Magic: The Gathering and is a floating, magical skull. It is a regular Lich whose body has deteriorated.
If said Lich isn’t feasting on souls or renewing the spell they used to give them unlife, the body will start to wear away. Like other Lich, a Demilich’s power can vary wildly, but they are always terrifyingly potent spellcasters. Some lich willingly become Demilich when they no longer need a corporeal body.
They learn how to make soul gems, which typically wind up as the eyes or teeth of the skull. To defeat a Demilich, you must destroy not only their Phylactery but all eight of the soul gems connected to the Dungeons and Dragons foe.
4) Elder Brains (CR 14)
Illithids are terrifying enough, but the Elder Brain is the next stage in that evolution. The leaders of the Mind Flayers in Dungeons and Dragons, an Elder Brain rules over each Illithid village.
It’s essentially a collection of brains merged together to form one terrifying, intelligent mass. It has overwhelmingly powerful psionic powers, thanks to being made up of several Mind Flayers’ brains being combined.
They have almost no physical attacks, but the Elder Brain has intelligent and psionic powers that have no equal, save perhaps the gods themselves. It has all of the powers of a Mind Flayer, but can also easily dominate weaker minds.
If that weren’t enough, Elder Brains also cast as a high-level sorcerer, so it can obliterate the parties of adventurers with powerful magic.
3) Ancient Red Dragon (CR 24)
In general, Red Dragons are scary Dungeons and Dragons encounters, but the Ancient Red is an evil version without comparison. Not only is it the most terrifying, but also crafty, greedy, and powerful.
Red Dragons aren’t shy about collecting and using magical artifacts in addition to the regular treasure hoard.
Gargantuan in size, they’re well known for their powerful cone-of-fire attack. Often found in the mountains, the favored children of Tiamat are deadly, no matter their age.
Notably, there are several legendary red dragons throughout Dungeons and Dragons history.
2) Solar (CR 21)
Solar are a part of the most powerful host of Angels in Dungeons and Dragons. You don’t get much closer to being a god than Solar. They are often the direct hand of whatever god they serve, and even the most powerful demons dread dealing with a Solar.
They’re always Lawful Good, being moral and ethical on a level that most humans cannot comprehend. While most good parties won't have to deal with a Solar, that doesn't mean it's impossible.
These angels commit to a code that mortal men cannot fathom, and if humans fall short of their expectations, they could wind up locked in combat.
No matter how dutiful your party is, it’s unlikely they can match the standards of a Solar. They can turn invisible and command their blades to attack without being in the melee range. Unlike Clerics, they can also call upon the power of their god without praying.
They can grant wishes, create earthquakes, control the weather, and raise the dead. It’s often said that if a Solar touches a mortal, they can survive anywhere for nearly 100 years. Their power is nearly unmatched, save for perhaps the gods they serve in Dungeons and Dragons.
1) Tarrasque (CR 20-30)
According to Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, the game needed at least one unstoppable creature. Thus, the Tarrasque was created. A 50-foot-long creature, it’s neutral in alignment and has the intelligence of your average animal.
It’s not clever, but it’s impossibly powerful. It often awakens once a decade and rampages worldwide, devouring whatever it can find before sleeping again.
It deals incredible amounts of damage, and thrice a day, upon failing a saving throw, it can simply choose to succeed instead. If targeted by a Magic Missile spell, a line spell, or any spell that requires a ranged attack roll, the dragon can reflect it. At a 1-5, the spell simply does nothing. On a 6, it does nothing, and it’s reflected.
The Tarrasque is immune to Fire, Poison, Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagic attacks. It cannot be charmed, frightened, paralyzed, or poisoned. It’ll eat whatever is available and consume even giant creatures if awake. It's an unstoppable force of nature and the strongest creature in Dungeons and Dragons.
