D&D Monster Monday: The Banshee

In this weekly series, I talk about some of my favourite D&D monsters, both official and homebrew. This week, we take a look at one of my new favourite monsters, the banshee.

My players had been exploring the catacombs of an ancient high elf city that had been destroyed in a disaster.

Throughout their exploration, they found many undead foes that they had to slay. None of these creatures was much of a threat to the party until they met their first banshee. Her Wail of terror brought two of the level 9 heroes to their knees.

A banshee is an undead creature that specialises in two things. The first is their mobility and tracking abilities within a 5-mile radius. The second are their fair, but very powerful crowd control area of effect abilities.

Even at higher levels, this Challenge Rating 4 creature can truly strike terror in the hearts of your players with its unique ability to drop a creature to 0 hit points.

Banshee Lore

In D&D 5e, banshees were once very beautiful female elves during their life. However, these were also evil and corrupt elves who used their beauty and a long lifespan for evil. Due to their evil deeds and nature, they were given The Banshee’s Curse.

The Banshee’s Curse: Upon their death, the elf changed into a horrifying undead creature, a banshee. They have no feeling, no beauty, and their bodies will continue to decay until they become truly abominable. On top of this, they are locked into staying within 5 miles of their place of death.

Banshees are cursed to feel distressed when they are in the presence of a living creature. This is because they are reminded of what they once were, a beautiful living being. Slowly, they will begin to loathe the living and make it a point to seek out and slay any that come within 5 miles of their domain.

Banshee Stats and Abilities

Let’s go over the base abilities and stats of a D&D 5e banshee so we can get an idea of what the role of this monster is. All of these stats and abilities can be found on page 23 of the Monster Manual.

Base Stats

Size: Medium

Armor Class: 12

Hit Points: 58 (13d8)

Speed: 0 ft., fly 40 ft. (hover)

Strength: 1 (modifier: minus 5)

Dexterity: 14 (modifier: plus 2)

Constitution: 10 (modifier: plus 0)

Intelligence: 12 (modifier: plus 1)

Wisdom: 11 (modifier: plus 0)

Charisma: 17 (modifier: plus 3)

Overall, the banshee has fairly low stats and AC. However, their 40 ft. of flying gives them the ability to outpace most player characters. Their health is also solid for such low stats and AC. Their main source of survivability comes from their long list of damage resistances and immunities.

Resistances, Immunities, Saves, and Skills

Saving Throws: Wisdom plus 2, Charisma plus 5

Damage Resistances: acid, fire, lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, slashing from nonmagical attacks

Damage Immunities: cold, necrotic, poison

Condition Immunities: charmed, exhaustion, frightened, grappled, paralysed, petrified, poisoned, prone, restrained

Senses: darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10

Challenge Rating: 4

Banshees basically have a laundry list of resistances and immunities. Outside of force, psychic, radiant, and slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning damage from magic weapons, the banshee will take either half or no damage from that damage source.

While they are easy to hit, most of the players’ spells and abilities will not deal their full damage.

Coming back to the manoeuvrability comment that I made earlier, banshees are immune to most forms of crowd control.

Even then, they have bonuses for both Wisdom and Charisma saves, which are both fairly common saves for crowd control spells and abilities for the few conditions they aren’t immune to. It’s very difficult to hinder a banshee’s movement.

Special Abilities

Detect Life: The banshee can magically sense the presence of creatures up to 5 miles away that aren’t undead or constructs. She knows the general direction they’re in but not their exact locations.

Incorporeal Movement: The banshee can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain. She takes 5 (1d10) force damage if she ends her turn inside an object.

Both of these abilities establish the banshee’s role as a hunter and killer of living beings. Detect Life gives them the general location of any living creature within 5 miles.

With Incorporeal Movement, they can move through solid objects, giving them even more manoeuvrability in combat. At this point, if she wants you dead, she will move through anything and anyone to get to you.

Actions

Corrupting Touch: Melee Spell Attack: plus 4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (3d6 + 2) necrotic damage.

Horrifying Visage: Each non-undead creature within 60 feet of the banshee that can see her must succeed on a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw or be frightened for 1 minute.

A frightened target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, with disadvantage if the banshee is within line of sight, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a target’s saving throw is successful or the effect ends for it, the target is immune to the banshee’s Horrifying Visage for the next 24 hours.

Wail (1/Day): The banshee releases a mournful wail, provided that she isn’t in sunlight. This Wail has no effect on constructs and undead. All other creatures within 30 feet of her that can hear her must make a DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a failure, a creature drops to 0 hit points. On a success, a creature takes 10 (3d6) psychic damage.

Both Wail and Horrifying Visage are extremely powerful area-of-effect moves. Fortunately for your players, Wail can only be used once per day, and the important restriction is that it cannot be used in sunlight.

While Horrifying Visage can be used multiple times per day, your players will only be affected by the fear a maximum of once every 24 hours until they become immune to it.

Wail has the potential to either do an average of 10 psychic damage OR drop a creature to 0 hit points. That’s a huge amount of damage. This is still a fair move as it targets Constitution saves, and let’s be real, no one uses Constitution as their dump stat.

Corrupting Touch is a decent ability, though its drawback is that the banshee has to go into melee range.

Realistically, she would want to avoid using this ability until she’s been able to affect a couple of people with either Wail or Horrifying Visage. The banshee should not be trying to play fair; she should avoid being hit until she is able to close the gap on her prey.

Banshee Strengths

The primary strengths of the banshee are their manoeuvrability and their area of effect crowd control. This allows them to chase down their victims and gives them a way to get a jump on a softened-up group of adventurers.

Maneuverability

It goes without saying that 40 ft. fly speed while hovering is exceptionally useful for manoeuvrability. 40 ft. of movement is faster than most player characters’ base movement. Coupled with her Incorporeal Movement, a banshee can rush straight to their target without much effort.

Banshees are also able to avoid any traps or environmental elements that would hinder the movement of creatures that have to touch the ground.

Being immune to the vast majority of crowd control conditions in D&D 5e is a huge bonus to being able to dash around the battlefield. Plus, having a bonus to Wisdom saving throws is another advantage of avoiding a lot of crowd control spells and abilities such as Turn Undead and Turn the Unholy.

Area of Effect Crowd Control

Horrifying Visage gives the banshee a way to avoid taking damage by potentially imposing frightful on any non-undead creature within 60 feet. This imposes a disadvantage on attacks against the banshee, improving their survivability.

Creatures also can’t move closer to the source of their frightened condition, meaning that melee-focused characters can be screwed over pretty easily.

The best part of this ability is that so long as the banshee is within line of sight, the creature has a disadvantage in removing this effect when it makes additional saves.

Wail has the ability to drop a creature or player down to 0 hit points. It is a DC 13 Constitution save, which should be easy to overcome for most high-level characters. However, there is a decent chance that a banshee can eliminate at least one enemy from the fight when they use Wail.

Even if the creatures make the save, they still take an average of 10 psychic damage. This is an extremely powerful opening ability for the first round of combat.

Using these abilities in tandem will give the banshee a great chance at knocking out one or more enemies without risking their safety. But damage isn’t crowd control! It totally is if it takes an entire enemy out of the fray for at least one round.

Banshee Weaknesses

Low Armor Class

Outside of their uses of Wail and Horrifying Visage, the banshee is a melee attacker. While they have plenty of resistances and immunities, they are still very easy to hit with 12 AC.

Any enemy of the banshee that can either close the gap early in the fight or attack regularly from over 60 ft. away is at an advantage.

A player character or creature that can attack from beyond 60 ft. will completely avoid both area of effect abilities.

Conversely, a melee creature or player with a lot of movement can get to the banshee before she’s unleashed both abilities. Players with a large bonus to Wisdom Saving throws can also generally avoid the two abilities.

Due to the banshee’s low AC, these types of enemies can hit the banshee easily and not be deterred by her area of effect crowd control.

Clerics

Banshees are undead, and being undead, they are extremely susceptible to Cleric and Paladin abilities.

Clerics have two abilities outside of their spell choices that make them the bane of an undead creature’s existence. Turn undead allows them to use their Channel Divinity feature to make any undead that can see or hear them.

They are only able to use their Dash action to move away from the Cleric should they fail a Wisdom saving throw. They also can’t use reactions or move within 30 feet of the Cleric.

Destroy undead is another Cleric ability that ruins your undead minions. If the creature is of an appropriate Challenge Rating, it will be destroyed if it fails the Wisdom saving throw when the Cleric uses Turn Undead.

A banshee would not be destroyed unless the Cleric is level 17 or higher, so this isn’t going to be frequently applicable, but still, it’s worth mentioning.

Paladins

Paladins gain an extra 1d8 radiant damage when they use their Divine Smite. This is one of the few damage types that banshees are not resistant or immune to, which makes this ability even more powerful against them.

Like their Cleric counterparts, Paladins can also use Turn the Unholy to force creatures to flee from the Paladin should they fail the Wisdom saving throw. Turn the Unholy works the same way as the Cleric’s Turn Undead, but it can also be used on Fiends.

Like any other undead creature, if there is a Cleric or a Paladin in the party composition, your banshee is going to have a rough time.

How to Play a Banshee

The Huntress

Given their ability to track down any living being within 5 miles, banshees make great hunters. They also have darkvision, which allows them to sneak up on unsuspecting prey as they settle down for the night.

Their mobility is also a great boon for running down their unsuspecting victims, as well as running away from them should they be too much to handle!

Their 2 to Dexterity and ability to hide inside of solid objects are also useful for potentially sneaking up on their enemies.

Provides Support

Group a banshee together with a few other undead creatures. None of the banshee’s area of effect abilities will affect them. This will allow the minions to take advantage of any openings that a banshee’s Wail or Horrifying Visage will provide.

If a player or two drops to 0 hit points, the minions can quickly move in and attack their remaining enemies.

This also forces the party to focus on reviving any party members who succumb to Wail. If there is more of a chance that the minions will carve up their allies that are bleeding out, a player will spend their action economy focusing on revival rather than fighting the enemies.

Weaving In and Out of Line of Sight

Even though they’ll take a bit of damage, it is still an option to hide within a wall or object at the end of their turn. That 1d10 force damage is well worth the trouble if they can avoid being targeted by their enemies.

Many ghosts and apparitions, like banshees, have this ability. Use it in such a way that your creature is able to avoid a lot of damage from the players while still being a nuisance on their turn.

This strategy will be risky since you’ll be taking force damage if you end your turn within a wall. Enemies frightened by your Horrifying Visage also have disadvantage on the save while you are within line of sight. Keep both these scenarios in mind when using this tactic.

Sunlight Limitations

Remember that the banshee’s most powerful ability, Wail, cannot be used in sunlight. This creates interesting tactical considerations for both the banshee and the players.

Smart players might try to lure the banshee into sunlit areas, while a cunning banshee will try to fight in darkness or underground locations where they can use their full arsenal of abilities.

Conclusions

The banshee is one of my recent favourite creatures in D&D 5e. Their potential to drop even a high-level player down to 0 hit points makes them always a threat.

They are especially deadly when coupled with other undead or when getting the jump on an unsuspecting party. To cap it all off, they have some interesting lore that forces them to have some unique play restrictions.

Banshees are a few creatures that make a great low-level boss monster or part of a standard high-level encounter.

They have both interesting mechanics for a threatening encounter, as well as the lore to justify them as a boss encounter. Their area of effect crowd control also makes them a deadly addition to any encounter, even for mid to high-level campaigns.

Check out page 23 of the Monster Manual if you are looking to learn more about banshees!