Types of Lightning Rods for D&D and 5e

Lightning Rods are monsters selected to showcase specific character abilities in our D&D and 5e games. You can learn more about this concept in my article, Lightning Rods – Showcase Powerful Character Abilities, and in the book Forge of Foes by myself, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, and Teos Abadia. For an easy cheat-sheet, there are two types of monsters that work well as lightning rods: One or two big brutes Hordes of weaker enemies Big brutes with poor dexterity, wisdom, and charisma are great lighting rods for spells like banishment, hypnotic pattern, charm monster, dominate monster, and other single-target control-type spells. When we know characters lean heavily on such powerful monster-removal spells (often called “save or suck” spells), we might include big brutes in our battles specifically so characters can control them as part of our encounter design. "Tank" style characters like fighters, paladins, and barbarians also love locking down and controlling brutes so they can't smush…