Robert Adducci, best known as the Community Manager of the D&D Adventurers League and for his work with the Athas.org website, has released a small pdf through the DMs Guild that provides ten monsters for use in D&D. Entitled Underdark Enemies, it is particularly useful for providing additional threats when running the massive sandbox adventure, Out of the Abyss, but the demons and fire giants it contains are equally likely to be used in other settings.

The monsters are a combination of relatively simple combat creatures and more advanced creatures with numerous special abilities. The focus of the product is on the monster’s stats; there is little in the way of descriptions for each monster. For the most part, these are conversions of monsters from previous editions, or variants of existing monsters.

You can find the following monsters in the package:

• Demons
  • Arrow Demon (CR 4)
  • Maurezhi (CR 11)
• Drow
  • Drow Acolyte of Lolth (CR 1/2)
  • Drow Veteran (CR 3)
  • Revenant Priestess of Kiaransalee (CR 10)
• Fire Giants
  • Azer Acolyte (CR 3)
  • Azer Priest (CR 4)
  • Fire Giant Forge Priest of Surtr (CR 11)
  • Fire Giant Lord (CR 10)
  • Hell Hound Behemoth (CR 6)

As you can see, there are a selection of challenges available; DMs wanting higher-level threats are likely to be pleased.

If I have a particular niggle with the product, it is that a couple of the stat-blocks break over pages; with a pdf document, page space isn’t at a premium so that sort of formatting can be avoided. The monster stats can be copied and pasted from the document, which is extremely useful.

Some of the damage codes are extremely high; the Maurezhi strikes at +6 to hit with its tongue and deals 48 (10d8+4) damage on a hit! The attack bonus is less than its Strength and Proficiency bonus would have it being; but 5E monster mathematics is not that strict, and given the damage it deals, a lower attack bonus somewhat balances the power, although it’s still an extremely dangerous monster. It might have only 102 hit points, but I wouldn’t like it to surprise me. More correctly, my player would prefer I keep it far away from their characters!

It’s hard to properly assess such high-damage monsters. Barbarians would shrug it off, but wizards would be little smears on the dungeon floor. I like having this starting point, however, and I’d start adjusting numbers to fit the abilities of my players. Which is what you really should be doing in any case, even with official monsters!

If you’re looking for a collection of themed monsters, especially for some of higher challenging ratings, you may want to investigate this product.