The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

Ready-to-Use Tactics for D&D 5E

Mind Drinker Vampire Tactics

March 16, 2026

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Undead

Ravnican blood drinker vampires are creatures of the night—primarily. It’s not because they have to be: They lack the Sunlight Sensitivity and trait of off-the-rack Dungeons & Dragons vampires. It’s simply that their darkvision makes it advantageous for them to operate after sundown, so they prefer to do so. In theory, however, they might be encountered anytime. Mind drinker vampires, on the other hand, do have Sunlight Sensitivity, along with Shadow Stealth (like the shadow horrors I examined last time). They’re strictly nocturnal.

With extraordinary Intelligence and exceptional Dexterity, mind drinker vampires are psionic spellslingers, capable of melee (they also have very high Strength) but somewhat averse to it, preferring to strike physically only when they’re fairly sure they can finish an enemy off in one strike, two at most. They’re proficient in Perception and Stealth, the skills of an ambush attacker, and it’s worth noting that their Mind Siphon action is neither an attack nor a spell, so a hidden mind drinker vampire can use it without immediately giving its position away. In fact, since only spells with a verbal component give away a hidden creature’s position, the mind drinker vampire can use any of its psionic “spells”—even message!—without making itself a target. Consequently, if a mind drinker vampire can accomplish its mission without ever coming out of hiding, it does.

Mind Siphon is the mind drinker vampire’s key ability, combining the more superficial portion of detect thoughts with a jolt of psychic damage. It can’t be used to dig deeper, the way detect thoughts can, so it’s not especially useful as an interrogation tool. By House Dimir’s standards, this feature is a very blunt instrument. So what’s it for? Clandestine commando raids, basically. Rapid operations in which the guild’s agents must physically penetrate a location, are using the mind drinker vampire to tell them where to go and what to watch out for, and aren’t concerned about whether they leave a trail of bodies behind them.
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Horror Tactics

March 6, 2026

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Aberrations

Horrors are barely sentient living nightmares pressed into service by the guilds of Ravnica to stalk and, occasionally, kill their enemies—and no guild makes greater use of horrors than House Dimir. Horrors come in three varieties: flying horrors, shadow horrors and skittering horrors.

With their extraordinary Dexterity putting all their other abilities to shame, flying horrors are shock attackers that terrify their targets, maul them, then skedaddle. Their 120-foot darkvision and Sunlight Sensitivity inform us that they’re active exclusively at night. They use their impressive Stealth skill to get within 90 feet of their targets, then on their next turn use their full 60-foot flying movement to get close enough to let loose a Frightening Screech against those targets, along with any and all allies present.

This maneuver would be more impressive if the DC on it were higher: Given that House Dimir doesn’t send out flying horrors willy-nilly but rather aims them at specific enemies, it seems uncharacteristically sloppy for them to use an asset against which a target will succeed on their saving throw at least one-third of the time and in many cases even more often than that. Not only that, but the target gets to repeat that saving throw at the end of each of its turns, so even if it fails the first time, it will probably succeed on the second or third. But it’s what the flying horror’s got, so we may as well use it.
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Dimir NPC Tactics

February 27, 2026

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Humanoids
House Dimir is a guild of secret agents, assassins and other shadowy horrors; if its members ever find themselves in a head-to-head fight, they’ve done something wrong. I began my posts on Azorius and Boros NPCs with discussion of their soldiers, but Dimir doesn’t use soldiers. When other guilds’ soldiers are on the march, Dimir’s forces are nowhere to be seen. Their best defense is not to be found.

Instead of soldiers, the bulk of House Dimir’s active assets are spies. As I discuss in How to Defend Your Lair and in my upcoming revised edition of The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, due out later this year, the spy stat block in the Monster Manual is an unrealistic, idealized notion of a spy that isn’t even particularly good at what spies do. It’s better to think of spies as falling into two categories:
- Snoops, unremarkable “gray people” whose job is to observe, report and, most important of all, not be noticed.
- Plants, who go undercover to observe but also to conduct clandestine activities under their targets’ noses. They can’t help but be noticed, so they strive instead not to be doubted.
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A Small Quality-of-Life Improvement

February 20, 2026

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Meta

I’ve been dutifully tagging all my posts on monsters from the Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica with the “ravnica” tag, but aside from my post–Monsters of the Multiverse updates to the monsters I analyze in MOAR! Monsters Know What They’re Doing, I haven’t been so conscientious with monsters from other books. That changes now. I’ve just gone through all my posts from Eberron: Rising From the Last War, Ezmerelda’s Guide to Ravenloft, Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, Spelljammer, Planescape and Mythic Odysseys of Theros and tagged them accordingly. Now you can use the tag cloud in the sidebar to go straight to monsters from each of these books. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, and today I discovered just how easy it was, so … presto! I hope readers find these new tags to be helpful.
Guardian Giant Tactics

February 19, 2026

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Giants

Guardian giants are gatekeeping sentinels with longstanding beef against the Gruul Clans, to which most other giants owe their allegiance. Once in a while, they also venture out on more active operations against exceptional threats.

Absolute tanks, guardian giants possess extraordinary Strength and Constitution, but their exceptional Wisdom also stands out. They can’t be surprised, and they’re extremely difficult to slip past unnoticed. They’re also far more agile than their size would suggest. They have proficiency in Dexterity and Wisdom saving throws, so not only are they hard to manipulate using magic, they’re also surprisingly good at dodging incoming projectiles, both magical and mundane.

Tactically, there’s nothing remarkable about them: They’re front-line brutes that hold their ground when defending and move directly to engage in melee when attacking, using their spears one-handed since they carry shields. Although their speed is 40 feet, if they’re advancing alongside a unit of Boros soldiers, they slow their movement so that they don’t get more than 10 feet ahead of their comrades. This way, they can use their Protection reaction to hinder incoming attacks against important allies—“important” being defined first and foremost by rank, since while the overall Boros ethos is lawful good, guardian giants themselves are lawful neutral. However, if all allies within reach are of the same rank, they’ll defend whoever happens to be nearby and need it.
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