Legends In Their Own Minds

Recomended monsters

My original title was a play on a well-known job search site. Josh warned me to change it, so visualize pun here.

List of favorite and least favorite monsters seem to be making the rounds.

I don’t have favorite monsters or favorite colors. It all depends on context.
But here are monsters that I was surprised by how well they worked, despite being leery of them after reading a Monster Manual description.

1. Formians. These are hive-mind ant-like outsiders representing Law. What worked with them is to use them as potential allies rather than adversaries. Negotiating with Formians is tricky, because they do not really understand individuals or human limitations. But they make great trade partners, always keeping their word, and with a chain of communication and command that cannot be beat. The players loved how reliable and efficient Formians were.

2. Lizard people. Lizard people are pretty generic, but they are the rare D&D creature that is threatening (for low-level parties) without being out-and-out evil. They are easily provoked and war-like, but don’t fight if it’s not in their interest. My best experiences with using lizardfolk is again to make them potential allies, but highly suspicious allies.

3. Trolls. Actually, this one isn’t a surprise. But trolls are a great minion combat monster for high level parties. Trolls are (just barely) intelligent enough to follow orders, but reckless enough for suicide missions. On the
one hand, trolls aren’t very powerful individually. On the other hand, for even high-levelish parties, ignoring a troll is a really bad idea. So throwing in a few troll minions to a high level ( 10-13 is high for me) encounter increases the odds of the BBG surviving more than 2 rounds significantly, and won’t give the party massive amounts of xp.

4. Demons. Again, demons are not that interesting as straight adversaries. They work best as frenemies, offering the party tempting shortcuts that will cost them later on down the road. They’re great as henchmen for the evil masterminds, because they are mobile, good fighters, and totally disloyal. Does the party want to fight the demons or can they just buy them off? If they start making deals with demons, what are the hidden catches? Isn’t just talking to these guys a sin? Unfortunately, D&D demons aren’t given many abilities that make them good tempters and tricksters, like they should be. Fortunately, the GM can do that him/herself.

5. Dragons you never meet. Dragons are the canonical foe in D&D; it’s right there in the title. Dragons are the enemy so powerful that they don’t bother to hide their treasure-filled lairs. It’s right there on the map: This is the demenses of (dragon name). Then the party goes to elaborate lengths NOT to meet a dragon.

Another five next post.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Campaigns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.