Hi! I’m Paul Hughes, the lead designer on Monstrous Menagerie 2: Hordes and Heroes (go and back it on Kickstarter now!) 

There are a couple of common encounter-design strategies that can help people build fun and dynamic 5e battles.

Throw in some twists. Don’t just have the players fight an orc in an empty ten-foot square room. Throw in some interesting terrain to interact with, or a few noncombat ways to advance the fight—something to keep a battle from becoming a static slugfest.

Start small and build up. Sure, you may start by fighting rats in a basement. But as players become more powerful, fights can become more complex, until at high level you’re facing legendary epic monsters.

Support your bad guys. Solo monsters have a lot of disadvantages against several clever players with the action economy on their side. Don’t leave your bad guy hanging; support them with underlings and reinforcements.

These are all great tips! But in Monstrous Menagerie 2 we designed a new class of monster, the behemoth, to let you break all these rules.

Even more than our other (already quite strong) elite monsters, these guys are designed to provide a dynamic solo showdown, no matter your level.

The monster throws in the twists. Each behemoth offers the heroes options beyond the usual assortment of attacks and spells. Swiping the behemoth beetle’s gem eye might be a more valuable use of your turn than simply hitting the beetle with your sword. Like a classic video game boss battle, a fight against a behemoth is a multi-stage combat with evolving objectives.

Behemoths are designed as big, tough solo monsters, with an emphasis on big. We’ve got six of them in the book, all Huge or Gargantuan. You want interesting terrain? The behemoths are the terrain! You’re encouraged to get up close and personal—climb them, jump on their backs, whatever it takes to reach those weak points!

In a way, a fight against a behemoth is a bit like a puzzle—but a puzzle can have more than one solution! There can be multiple ways to weaken a behemoth. And if your players are not inclined to subtlety and just want to hit things, they might emerge victorious from a straight-up slugfest—but they’ll get the fight of their lifetime!

Early epic battles. A lot of legendary and elite monsters are high level—but most characters, on the other hand, don’t get up to the heady heights of level 20, or even level 10. We designed behemoths to provide challenges throughout the heroes’ careers. The weakest behemoth, the behemoth beetle, is Challenge Rating 1—but be warned, it’s an elite Challenge Rating 1, about as tough as two normal CR 1 monsters! It’s a hard fight for the typical first-level party. The strongest behemoth is the wrathstorm boar at CR 20 (also elite, of course!)

Solo monsters. Like other elite monsters, behemoths are designed to work solo. They’ve got the high hit points and legendary action economy to back it up. That’s not to say that they have to work alone! In one playtest, I supported the behemoth beetle with some energy motes. The result was a wide-ranging fight with the heroes climbing, jumping, and ducking underneath the lumbering behemoth, accompanied by energy-mote-fueled special effects. In case you want to run your own playtest, here are the rules for behemoths plus the behemoth beetle stat block.