Summary
- Don't hold back when running an oni encounter. Make it a boss fight with real stakes and balance the encounter appropriately with minions.
- Create an interesting lair for your oni, incorporating wintry touches or designing a dungeon with traps, minions, and treasure.
- Lean into the horror of oni by drawing inspiration from their terrifying lore, but always prioritize player boundaries and establish them in session zero.
Being a Dungeon Master (DM) in Dungeons & Dragons is always tough. Between balancing encounters and making sure your players are engaged with the campaign, it's easy to find yourself exhausted. You may often find yourself tempted to run the same monsters repeatedly or fall into the same old tropes.
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PostsOni are an underutilized monster in Dungeons & Dragons. They first made their debut in the poorly-aged Oriental Adventures for AD&D Second Edition. They've appeared in every edition since, including the fifth edition's Monster Manual. Here are our tips on running Oni NPCs, from building memorable encounters to roleplaying believable characters.
6 Don't Pull Your Punches
Delver's Torch by Bram Sels- Oni are written to be a boss encounter. Make sure there are real stakes.
- Make sure you balance the encounter appropriately with the right minions.
As a CR 7 encounter, oni are most appropriate for a mid-level party. They're able to both throw punches and sling spells, so your first inclination might be to make them into a boss encounter. Unless there is a very good reason within the story of your campaign, make sure they're appropriately brutal when fighting your players.
If you want to make sure your boss fight is a deadly one, you'll also want to make sure your oni has some minions. Action economy is everything, and even a powerful creature like the oni can be easily overwhelmed with a large party. Other creatures with the Giant type are suitable, such as ogres. However, humanoids that serve the oni are also appropriate.
5 Have Fun With Lairs
Mammoth Bones By Olly Lawson- Oni, like onions, have lairs.
- Make your oni's lair a winter wonderland for added atmosphere.
An often overlooked aspect of encounter building is designing a lair that suits your monster. It's natural to remember lairs when they're synonymous with the monster itself, as is the case with dragons and liches. But often, oni are given little more than a simple cave.
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PostsThat's not befitting of an intelligent creature, and you could do better. As creatures associated with ice, you might be inclined to add some wintry touches to your oni's lair. You could also give them their own dungeon, with traps, minions, treasure, and plenty of rooms for your players to explore. You could even homebrew some lair effects and actions!
4 Lean Into The Horror
Heroes of Horror by David Hudnut- The lore on oni is pretty terrifying, so use it as inspiration if you'd like.
- Always keep player boundaries in mind.
If you really want to hammer home what your players are dealing with, try brushing up on the Monster Manual's lore for oni. Plenty of monsters in D&D eat people, but the Monster Manual goes out of its way to note how oni find humanoid children particularly delicious. That puts oni on a level of messed up only matched by hags.
If you want to go wild, add a larder full of dead humanoids to your oni's lair. Perhaps a cookbook full of recipes for how to cook people, or even a kitchen where baby soup is being prepared. Just remember to make sure your players are on board with this before committing to any gory descriptions. Setting boundaries in session zero is never a bad idea.
3 Remember Every Spell On The Stat Block
Prismatic Spray art by Clint Cearley- It's not just Cone of Cold; oni have plenty of spells at their disposal.
- Keep utility spells in mind when roleplaying oni.
There are two common pitfalls when it comes to running encounters with the oni and similar creatures. Oni are monsters that are strong both physically and magically, so it's easy to only focus on one of those attributes. Some DMs choose to focus solely on an oni's physical strength, while others over-emphasize Cone of Cold.
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PostsCone of Cold is a great spell, but it has limited uses, even during combat. Charm Person can be used on your players in social encounters leading up to an eventual battle, especially if you want the oni to be a recurring NPC. Gaseous Form and Darkness are also often under-utilized, so it's a great idea to keep their utility in mind during encounters.
2 Utilize Their Shapechanging Ability
Mordenkainens Polymorph by Oriana Menendez- Oni can shapechange into either humanoids or giants.
- This gives them plenty of flexibility when roleplaying.
As an action, the oni can polymorph into either a humanoid or a giant. Other than its size, this doesn't affect any of the oni's stats. However, this is a useful ability for roleplaying, and you'd be remiss if you didn't use it. Critical Role's Lorenzo spent much of his time in humanoid form, making the reveal especially punchy.
Your oni could also use this ability to mingle among humans, forcing your players to do some detective work to figure out what they're actually dealing with. It's possible your players might even fight the oni without realizing their actual creature type until the very end.
1 Build Interesting Characters
Icewind Dale: Rhime of the Frostmaiden art via Wizards of the Coast- Oni are sapient, so they're able to be written as well-rounded characters.
- Use the lore as an inspiration or come up with your own ideas.
In the second campaign of Critical Role, Matt Mercer had three player characters kidnapped by an oni named Lorenzo as a means to handle the out-of-game absence of their players. Lorenzo earned the audience's hatred by killing Molly, but he was still a memorable character with a distinct personality rather than a one-note monster.
You don't need to be Matt Mercer to achieve the same results. All you need to do is remember how to make memorable NPCs. A stat block is just a collection of numbers and rules. What makes an NPC memorable is the personality you give them at the table.
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