Guest Writer: Devlin DM
How to Make Monsters Scary Again Using Lair Actions
Are you sick of your epic villains dying in just a few turns as the party surrounds and splats them?
Do you get frustrated that your boss fights turn into boring slug fests where everyone involved just stands still and wallops each other?
Do you want to fill your players with dread anticipation with only two words?
“Lair Action. Skeletal hands burst from the floor and walls around you grasping and clawing.”
“Lair Action. The cave ceiling cracks, covering the ground with uneven rubble, it looks like the section above your head is about to collapse.”
“Lair Action. Maddening whispers fill your mind, urging, demanding, screaming that you turn on your allies and kill.”
Welcome Dungeon Masters, enter my domain and in this 3-part-series I shall impart to you the secrets of lair actions. I’m Devlin DM, part of the creative team for the bestselling Home-Field Advantage: A Compendium of Lair Actions. This Mithral product contains 250 unique lairs covering over 320 creatures and is available in PDF and print at DMsGuild.
In Part 1 I talked about how a monster’s lair makes a great hook for adventure. In this article, I’m going to break down one of my favourite lairs from Home-Field Advantage, and use it to showcase how to build your own Lair Actions by pushing them to the limit!
Making Monsters Meet Expectations
Good horror is notoriously difficult to pull off in 5e, as once initiative is rolled, most monsters are just a sack of hit points with multiattack that the party just throws damage at. Lair actions can add in narratively satisfying abilities that monsters otherwise lack. Let’s take a horror staple: the Zombie Horde!
First let's make a list of the key tropes for zombie horror:
Zombies are difficult to kill without a headshot or divine power
The recently dead rise from their graves to join the horde
A bite or scratch infects, then kills, then turns you into a zombie
The horde surging forward, overwhelming people, grabbing them, knocking them down, tearing them apart.
Someone makes a loud noise, drawing the whole horde towards them, then stupidly standing still as the zombies shamble toward them, even though they could easily run, JUST RUN MORON!!!!
Sorry, got a little carried away at the end there. Where was I? Oh yes. Tropes are tropes for a reason, and usually, people love having their expectations met. So let’s look at the Zombie statblock and its cool thematic abilities.
High HP, low AC & speed: awesome, zombies are shambling slabs of meat.
Undead fortitude: Perfect, ticks off our first trope.
Slam: Ok, everything needs a basic attack, but why isn’t it a bite? Aaaaaand… that’s it.
If you throw a horde of these against your players, undead fortitude and high hp are going to make it a long, drawn-out slugging match, with basically no tactics. Also, the low speed means the party can just walk away from the fight (unless you’ve locked them in the room! Muahahah-ahem). So let’s add these abilities in for ourselves. First, the dead rising to join the horde makes for a great regional effect:
The magical energies that animate the dead extend throughout the region. Any humanoid that dies within 1 mile of the horde must succeed on a DC 9 Charisma saving throw or rise as a zombie after 1d4 hours. And as a lair action for reinforcements:
A humanoid corpse within the zombie lair rises as a zombie. The horde cannot use this lair action again until it has used another lair action.
Now let’s do the rest of the lair actions. First the infection:
One creature injured by a zombie since the last initiative count 20 must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or contract a disease. Until the disease is cured, the target can't regain hit points except by magical means, and the target's hit point maximum decreases by 3 (1d6) every 24 hours. If the target's hit point maximum drops to 0 as a result of this disease, the target dies and rises as a zombie in 1d4 hours.
Next, the overwhelming surge:
Each zombie in the horde may use its reaction to move up to its speed toward a living creature it can see. If it ends this movement within 5 feet of an enemy, it may immediately attempt a shove or grapple action. The horde cannot use this lair action again until it has used another lair action.
A couple of points about the design here: The lair action uses the zombies reaction, as they’re low CR creatures, so the power boost from the extra movement and grapple/shove is pretty big. Also, we don’t want the zombies sprinting after people every round or the DM will have to switch the combat music to Yakety Sax. Horror taken too far becomes comedy.
Alrighty, to finish up, let's do my pet peeve, but make it actually work:
The entire horde turns towards a single living creature that caused significant disturbance on its last turn (such as turning undead, casting fireball, or ringing a church bell). The creature must succeed on a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened of the zombies, rooted to the spot in fear as the horde begins to lumber towards them, heedless of other targets. A creature frightened in this way has its speed reduced to 0 and can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on a success.
Use this on your squishy sorcerer to give your party a real “Oh $#!T” moment. Now the fighter has to drag them to safety as the horde surges after the pair, threatening to overwhelm them!
And finally, remember the zombie horde doesn’t have to stay in one place, they can be on the move, and take their lair actions with them. This kind of unshackles the “Lair” from the “Lair Action”, but it also gives you great freedom to put lair actions into all kinds o fights. The sky's the limit!
Excited for more? Check out Part 3 of this series coming soon, where I’ll be showing off how to Make Monsters Scary Again and push lair actions to their limits with the Zombie Horde.
Can’t wait? Grab yourself a copy of Home-Field Advantage: A Compendium of Lair Actions and give your party boss fights they’ll never forget.
Thank you for reading our blog. If you enjoy the content and want to support us, visit our store or follow us on social media, join us on discord, youtube, and leave us a review.
Keep your blades sharp and spells prepared heroes!
*Crit Academy is an Affiliate of Amazon, DMsguild and DriveThruRPG*