The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

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

Undercity Medusa and Devkarin Lich Tactics

April 20, 2026

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Monstrosities, Undead

Undercity medusas occupy a peculiar place in the Golgari Swarm. Although they live beneath the city, they don’t seem to share the Swarm’s ideology. Their alliance with the Golgari is a matter of convenience, a buffer that lets them live unmolested by the other guilds. The Golgari, in turn, benefit from their power to petrify opponents. Given the chance, though, the medusas would happily use the other denizens of the undercity for their own ends alone.

Nimbler and stealthier than ordinary medusas and much stronger and smarter, undercity medusas are dangerous ambush attackers. They can cast fog cloud once per day and often use it to conceal themselves, but the moment they’re ready to strike, they have to drop it in order to make use of their Surprise Attack trait, which grants them advantage on attack rolls against surprised foes. Why? Because as long as everything is heavily obscured by the fog, everyone in it is effectively both blinded and invisible, and the combination of advantage and disadvantage nullifies the undercity medusa’s own attack roll advantage. Truth be told, the fog is likely to be a tip-off to suspicious player characters; much of the time, an undercity medusa is better off merely using its Stealth proficiency to hide in the shadows and save fog cloud for emergency disengagement.
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Coming Oct. 6: Remonstered!

April 13, 2026

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Meta

Times have changed. The old rules no longer apply. Our foes have grown in strength. We must adapt.

Don’t worry. I gotchu.

In Remonstered! The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, every monster’s tactics are updated to reflect the recent changes to their stat blocks in the 2025 Monster Manual and accompanied by brand-new tips to help you prepare the battlefield, choose allies and minions, and take your combat scenes in exciting, unexpected directions. (Not to mention another banger cover by Lio Pressland and all-new interior illustrations by Jen C. Marshall!) This revised edition hits shelves Oct. 6, but you can preorder it now from Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Indigo or your favorite independent bookstore in the United States or Canada.

And if you’ve decided to stick with the original 2014 fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons rules, fret not: The original The Monsters Know What They’re Doing will still be available alongside the revised edition.
Golgari NPC Tactics

April 9, 2026

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Humanoids

From the legalistic Azorius Senate, the zealous Boros Legion and the scheming House Dimir to … our first bunch of weird little guys, the Golgari Swarm. Azorius, Boros and Dimir go about easily understood human goals in easily understood human ways. The Golgari, on the other hand, share a mentality from another phylum of life altogether, if not another kingdom. When they say “I hope you rot,” they mean that in the best possible way.

The Golgari rank and file comprises drow, fungus zombies, vegepygmies and kraul warriors. Kraul are a eusocial insectoid folk with an instinct for teamwork; their warriors have hard exoskeletons and wield spears. With high Strength and above-average Constitution and Dexterity, they have a slight bias toward toe-to-toe melee engagement but aren’t averse to the occasional hit-and-run maneuver. Some possess wings and act as “scouts and shock troops,” but a unit including scouts comprises only scouts; a unit of shock troops comprises only shock troops.

Kraul have 60 feet of darkvision and thus prefer to engage at night or underground, but there’s nothing stopping them from engaging in daylight beyond this preference and the fact that they have no particular skill at stealth. When they attack, it’s a direct, open assault. They do, however, have the Spider Climb trait, so if clinging to the ceiling confers any kind of advantage upon them, that’s what they’ll do. But it’s probably of greater concern that high walls and towers constructed to keep others out are no obstacle to them: They can walk right up the side.
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Nightveil Specter and Gloamwing Tactics

March 30, 2026

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Undead

House Dimir values discretion and usually goes about its business with great care … but accidents happen. A clandestine mission encounters chance interference, an undercover agent lets the wrong word slip, or an interrogator applies a little too much pressure and strips away their subject’s sense of self. Rather than release an amnesiac husk back onto the streets of Ravnica, though, House Dimir repurposes the hapless captive as a Nightveil specter, a tool of terror protecting the guild’s secrets from snoops. Waste not, want not.

With extraordinary Dexterity and exceptional Strength, along with proficiency in Perception and Stealth, the Nightveil specter waits silently in the shadows, then strikes hard and fast. Its Intelligence marks it as dim-witted compared with its former self—we’re talking ape-level cognition—but its very high Wisdom makes up for it, powering not just its senses but its intuition. It can’t speak, but it understands Common, allowing it to eavesdrop and glean others’ intentions. Ordinary weapons are weak against it, and it can’t be charmed or frightened. It has 120 feet of darkvision, indicating that it’s active almost exclusively at night and in dark places far from the light of the sun: dungeons, vaults, and other secret dens.

Its attack pattern isn’t complicated. Much like a beholder, a Nightveil specter lying in ambush positions itself where it has a security-camera view of the approach to the place it’s guarding; if it’s pursuing an interloper who’s learned too much, it often overtakes them, then wheels around to cut off their path of escape. It manages these feats by bestriding a flying mount called a gloamwing—more on that in a moment. For now, suffice it to say that gloamwings are quiet and fast and grant Nightveil specters an elevation advantage over their opponents, and a gloamwing is almost never encountered without its rider.
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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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