Canonfire!

Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:12 am Favorite Monsters (from DM's seat)

It occurs to me it has been forever and a day since I last posted a 'fun thread' that transcends all editions.

As a DM, what are your favorite monsters to run, and why?

I'll start, and these are in no particular order:

1) Trolls: I hate fighting them, but their regenerative powers mean that they take a beating, heal up, and rise to fight anew. They are tough and dish out a good amount of damage. Some of the "best" battles I've run have included trolls, although it doesn't occur very often because they are rare monsters. Thankfully, for the rest of the Flanaess...

2) Shambling mound: Don't underestimate these seemingly disinteresting heaps of 'intelligent' vegetation. They are virtually invulnerable to most attack forms, leaving most party members freaking out why their weapons and spells simply prove ineffective. Shamblers simply shrug off most attacks, then move in a club their foes to death or suffocate them. Given time, they 'regenerate' lost limbs and damage, and are ready for Round 2. BTW, the revamped Sussurus is a close 2nd...

3) Ju-ju zombie: My player now refers to them as "Iron Zombies" because of their special defenses against most weapon attacks. Ju-ju's take a licking, and keep on ticking. Even clerics have a rough time turning them.

4) Beholder: read any of the threads that includes beholders and their dreadful powers, and you will see why they will cause even the most experienced parties to rethink tackling one of the Eye Tyrants.

5) (any) Tanar'ri: Not many parties experience fiends, and with good reason. But playing these horrible creatures with so many defenses, magic resistance, innate abilities (especially Gating!), and ferocious attacks can make the DM giddy with excitement. Evil Grin

6) Dragons: 'nuff said? I mean, the game is NAMED after them, after all!

There may be more, of course, but these come to mind, first and foremost.

-Lanthorn

Sun Mar 08, 2015 11:27 am

Lanthorn,

Some good ones here is a quick list and reasoning that can to mind

Liche - I mean how much more magic can one creature have, if that was not enough then having a phylacity just makes them even scarier.

Vampire - If played correctly I think a vampire who knows the party are coming can kill almost any level of players (I know I was in one such party! Shocked

) Magic, summoned creatures, regeneration you name it they have it. Ok they also have the most well known weaknesses but these can be limited by a creative DM Evil Grin

Drow - I have to put these in as they are just plain Nasty. Ever since I played and later DMed D3 I have always had a soft spot for these, again their weaknesses can be counter acted by intelligent DMing (if you are running Drow you need to clever and twisted)

Sun Mar 08, 2015 11:30 am

I tend to like monsters that have a talkie aspect to them:

Xorn

Rakshasa

the (non-5e) Pit Fiend

Djinni/Efretti

Sphinx

Sun Mar 08, 2015 4:51 pm

It's a 3e and after monster, but I love gricks! They're just really nasty, stealthy predators. I used a mated pair as just kind of a filler encounter in one dungeon and they almost killed the party. The male drew the muscle into the cave by making noise out of their torchlight by scraping its beak on the wall while the female slid out of the little burrow in the tunnel ceiling, coming up behind the party's spellcaster, who preferred to stay in the rear. The look on his face when he got attacked from behind by surprise was priceless.

Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:25 pm

I'll Ninja this from Aeolius...

Hags: I find hags to be a truly versatile and 'everyman' monster. From low level to high hags can be the boogie men. From the swamp dwellers to the sewer dwellers they hate and they seek to dominate. Yay Hags!

Aboleth: Enslavement and never breathe air again. What's not to love??

Kobolds: yes I said Kobolds! Dangerous little things with traps and small tunnels, toss in ONE that's a poisonmaker and you've got a tribe that'll conquer all others!

Sun Mar 08, 2015 10:02 pm

Hmm. I can think of some monsters that I don't like, but I don't really have a favorite.
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Mon Mar 09, 2015 3:28 am

Ghouls. I am not sure any creature makes a party as scared as ghouls. Players know that just a few lucky hits and unlucky saves will stop them dead in their tracks. One of the best fights ever was against the ghouls in the moathouse in T1. I think I doubled their number, or more, and I almost ended up with a TPK!

Mon Mar 09, 2015 11:06 am

Carrion Crawlers. Low level/HD but the paralysis can wreak havoc. I still fondly remember a pinned down party outside the ruined keep in the D&D Basic Red Box adventure discovering the carrion crawlers under the fallen gate(I think) while under fire from nasty kobolds with crossbows. Pretty sure they ran away and left some of their number behind. That encounter was one of the reasons why I fell in love with D&D.

Mon Mar 09, 2015 3:40 pm

All kinds of fungi ( I think of the cover from B1)

Mon Mar 09, 2015 6:30 pm

All those listed before are great, but here are some of my favorites to add:

Illithids/Mindflayers.
Intelligent and deadly. These guys are worse in numbers than being ambushed by a party of drow.

Owlbears.
These beasts are a favorite because they bring terror to players of low-level characters. Many players have lost friends to owlbears in my campaign. They learn to run or go all in when an owlbear appears.

Kuo Toa and Kopru.
These two amphibious races are strange enough to evoke unease in players and powerful enough to present a serious threat to their PCs.

NPCs.
Iggwilv, Sir Bluto Sans Pite, Lareth, the Beautiful, and many more of my own creation have been the bane of PCs through entire campaigns. Nothing is a more fun or challenging opponent than one with skills similar to those of the PCs.

SirXaris
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Mon Mar 09, 2015 8:10 pm

My Top 5 (for tonight, at least ;) ):

- drow
- demons (in particular demon princes, goristroi, succubi, chasme, types 1/3/4/5)
- Greek Gigantes/medusae/lamiae/Echidna/Type V demon-like creatures
- perytons
- stirges
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Tue Mar 10, 2015 6:05 pm

Tue Mar 10, 2015 8:39 pm

My favorite monsters of all were the party's dead characters from the TPK a few weeks before. Since the party had pretty much cleaned the kobold burrow out just before being killed, a myconid colony moved in a couple of weeks later, game time, and the myconid king had reanimated their corpses as spore servants, along with all the kobolds. About a month later a NPC hired the new party (same players, but different PC's unconnected to the previous party except for being in Saltmarsh) to go in to retrieve an heirloom one of the dead PC's had on his body. It was a sweet concept and surprised them but unfortunately my rolls all sucked so they pretty much waded through their reanimated characters. But I did get in that awesome fight with the gricks in the same adventure.

Tue Mar 10, 2015 8:42 pm

Wed Mar 11, 2015 2:28 pm

Wed Mar 11, 2015 4:49 pm

Wed Mar 11, 2015 4:52 pm

If memory serves me correctly (this encounter happened about 20+ yrs ago!), he was plucked up and carried to the beast's nest since they require hearts as part of their mating ritual.

-Lanthorn

Wed Mar 11, 2015 5:35 pm

You're such a heartless DM, Lanthorn. Razz

SirXaris
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Thu Mar 12, 2015 8:32 pm

A fun thread!

Liches never bore me.
Oozes of any kind.
Golems of any kind.
Red dragons. They invoke the greatest fear.
Basilisk, Cockatrice and Medusa. Even more fear.
Shadows and Stirge. Cause I like sapping Strength and Constitution more than Levels and HP.

Fri Mar 13, 2015 8:47 am

Great list, Mort! Your mention of oozes reminds me of one of my absolute favorites - swarms! My players tend to maximize their ACs, so swarms cause them much consternation any time they are encountered. Any opponent that targets their Touch AC, or does automatic damage by ignoring AC altogether, is a bane of their existence. Laughing

SirXaris
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Thu Mar 19, 2015 10:28 am

Thassaloss (Greater or Lesser)
Owlbear
Gelatinous Cube
Stirge
Grell
Son of Kyuss
Necrophidius
Varrangoin

Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:14 pm my vote getters

My campaign started out with the U1-3 series, so I grew to love the sahuagin as the best nemesis race for my PCs. You don't even face them until the last module of the series, and they are too tough for the party to do much more then a quick raid/recon and leave. Also, they got a massive two page spread in the 1e Monster Manual. Any monster that deserves such weightly treatment gets my vote.

Other honorable mentions: Hobgoblins are my favorite humanoids - they always seemed a cut above the rest of the rabble and I liked the old first edition Monster Manual art of them in a sort of samurai trooper armor. Gave them a sense of class.

Troglodytes can be a lot of fun as a low to mid level threat. I also loved DMing the N1 module where these critters play a big part, so they are high on my list as well.

There are others that merit inclusion - my PCs made it to the G1-3 series and so playing giants to their full potential can be tons of fun. But of course that series leads to the discovery of the drow, and they take on a life of their own.

So many monsters, so little time.

Fri Mar 27, 2015 8:18 pm

Sat Mar 28, 2015 8:41 pm

I'm with Ragnar on ghouls. I just used 'em in an online game. And ghasts. And the boss was a Ravenloft ghoul lord. Nasty monsters!

My short list:

bandits

giant centipedes

ghouls (and ghasts)

ghosts

were-rats

goblins, hobs, bugbears

Tue May 19, 2015 6:50 am

Hiya!

Skeletons: I've used all manner of variants of them...some tougher, some faster, some on fire, some that emanate a cloud of putrescence, etc. :)

Ogre: I don't know what it is about them. Classic, iconic, tough enough to challenge a large range of levels with with only a few minor tweaks. And they eat you if you die. Monsters that actually eat you in stead of just leave you there or whatever.

Rot Grubs: Oh man I love these things! No other monster has so completely terrified my players in any edition of the game! I once had a giant rot-grub queen...who spat rot grubs at you...and when you hit her, rot grubs would spurt out onto you....and when she died, she exploded...into a hail of rot grubs! (30' radius) :D Good times...good times...

Tasloi: More annoying than kobolds...because they live in trees! In all honesty though, I've only every used them in The Forbidden City, where they first showed up. However, every single time I run that adventure, the Tasloi "encounter" is almost always the most memorable, or at least one of the top 3 memorable. Love these little guys!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Sun Jun 21, 2015 10:43 am

Mon Jun 29, 2015 8:51 am

I have to say Shambling Mounds can be very tough and destructive to almost any party if you adjust their size/HD. Their immunities are enough to bring even powerful PCs down to size.

Sun Jul 12, 2015 7:55 am

I recently used a High Level Vampire against a group of characters who were very tough. What she did was spent a few days before the adventure started, Charming all the bricks in the party who had fairly low will saves. She then disguised herself as a Cleric NPC in the group. Then a few days later when the group gets attacked by monsters sent by a Vampire lord she turns on the group and makes the fighters in the group attack all the squishy players. It was fun watching them try to figure out how not to kill their friends while she kept popping in and out and causing more damage until finally someone figured out a way to get rid of the charm. She then turned gaseous and sunk away into cracks in the ground. So they know she is still out there waiting for them.