The Snatcher

Spiciness: 5/5

While not having AoE or insta-kill abilities that are the staples of a TPK, it's possible that hot dice rolls combined with the Bleeding condition could take down a party if they lack any healing.

Feeds about 3-5 players, level 7-9

Scales for: Number of Players, Player Level

Ingredients:

• X Snatchers

Scaling the Encounter: Usually I provide detailed methods of scaling the stats of the creatures to keep the difficulty, but with an encounter this straight-forward, you can reliability use Kobold Club to find the right balance for your party.

Preparation

The Underdark is aptly named, with light being the most precious resource. As such, most creatures evolved darkvision, blindsight, or other means of seeing what dangers lurk. The Snatcher, however, took a shortcut.

This aberration has found a means of plucking the eyes from living prey, and adopting it into its own body, gaining their use and whatever perception they used to grant their rightful owner. This horrifying process is why it is known as the Snatcher, the Look-See, the Eyerate, and simply the "oh fuck what is that!?!"

Some Snatchers that have managed to take down more dangerous prey have gained special abilities from the eyes they've collected. As such, they often seek out interesting eyes for their collection, and devour the rest of their prey. As Umber Hulks are fairly common in the Underdark, many Snatchers have gained their Confusing Gaze ability (and thus, it is included on the statblock as Umber's Gaze).

Cooking the Snatcher

Generally my tactics provide a round-by-round breakdown of how to use the abilities in an order that maximizes the effect-- but the Snatcher can use all of its abilities in a turn, unless you've dropped in a Spicier version with eye-ray attacks (see: Variants). Because of this, I'll just be describing the general synergy of the abilities below.

Snatching Tendril. The bread-and-butter of the Snatcher: It snatches. Each tendril only steals an eye if the attack crits-- but that's not super unlikely, since it has 3 attacks per round, and Precise Strikes helps it land. With 10% chance of hitting a crit, that means we have 1-(0.9^3)= 27.1% chance of stealing an eye on a turn-- and that's before we take into account Umber's Gaze.

Umber's Gaze. This ability has been stolen from the Umber Hulk, as the Snatcher has stolen its eyes. It's been scaled up a little, to work better on a CR 7 (as opposed to CR 5), and to align with the Snatcher's abilities scores. It also serves several purposes-- firstly, it gives the Snatcher some defense that it desperately needs (it has no regen, no legendary resistance, nothing beyond this one ability).

At the start of each turn, your players will have a choice-- Look at the Snatcher and risk becoming Confused, possibly losing the entirety of their turn; or look away from the Snatcher and not be able to see them. This is important, because that means the Snatcher is now an Unseen Attacker, giving it advantage on all attacks (and raising the odds of stealing an eye on a turn up to 46.9%). It also means the players who avert their eyes will not get attacks of opportunity against the Snatcher, and they will have disadvantage on all attack rolls, and any spell that requires you to "target a creature that you can see" essentially forces you to look at the Snatcher or you can't cast it at them.

On your turn, it's important to remember who's looking away and who isn't, target the people who are averting their eyes, and try to steal them. Once you've claimed both eyes, move to your next target (blind = no attacks of opportunity).

Variants

If a snatcher would steal eyes that have a magical ability, it is able to use that ability. At CR 7, it would be fair to give it an eye-based ability from any lower-CR creature that it could reasonably kill-- Thus, it could use the Basilisk's Gaze attack for a particularly brutal passive-ability, a Gauth's Stunning Gaze, or a Mindwitness's eye-rays.