A waste of statistics and an illustrators time.

[schulerta]

Tarrasque

 

[Samuel Leming]

Poor or misleading illustrations are the primary problem with many of the creatures mentioned. I could create interesting encounters using the tojanida or yrthak, but fighting the silly images already in the players' minds is an uphill battle rarely worth fighting. I need to learn how to draw!

Oh, and the phantom phungus doesn't even deserve the name "flumphy"

Flumphs aren't so bad once you give them a few levels of psion.

Sam

 

[Samuel Leming]

The hullathoin & the ulgurstasta, aka the pus dragon & the snot worm, from the 3e Fiend Folio are the worst. What were they thinking? :\

Sam

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Hey. There are a bunch of cool Dark Sun creatures, plus moon rat, catoblepas, bronze serpent, corpse gatherer, feyr (I have the new spelling though), Spelljammer creatures, phoenix, meenlock, and avolakia.

... not to mention death knight, nimblewright, dragon golem, bone ooze, glass golem, moonbeast and the tauric template, among others.

The hate on MM2 never ceases to amaze me; IMO, it's by far the best of WotC's monster books, and one of their best books period.

EDIT: Oh, and my vote goes to the Ooze type; a few are downright nasty, but they're basically passive threats and an incredibly tiny subsection of monsters. I can't believe they get an entire type unto themselves.

 

[rounser]

The hate on MM2 never ceases to amaze me; IMO, it's by far the best of WotC's monster books, and one of their best books period.

Seconded...apart from the no-brainers they had to include like orcs and dragons, MM is absolutely full of stinkers compared to MM2, IMO.

And agreed that assymetry just seems to make monsters lame, outsiders included.

 

[Sejs]

Wait, the bone ooze was a good thing? Since when?

 

[Bobbert]

The Disenchanter is my pick for worst monster. It's bad enough when your +5 sword gets drained of its magic, but when it happens from the tongue lash of some lame blue horse-mule creature, that just adds insult to injury.

How did this guy get into 3e Fiend Folio? At least "Flumphy" has his own cult following...

 

[MerricB]

The poor Phantom Fungus gave me one of my best encounters - in the Dungeon adventure "The Seventh Arm".

The characters were crossing a large cavern when they were attacked by the phantom fungus. The sorceress immediately hit it with a fireball, killing it, but no-one realised.

Two fireballs later, a few arrows and a lot of pounding on the dead corpse, they finally realised it hadn't attacked for several rounds...

It was great!

I've just discovered that Destrachans are really interesting, too.

Ethereal Filchers exist for one purpose - to be useful in the Miniatures Game. I don't like them at all for the RPG. (However, as I now have a couple of them in miniature, I might just throw them at the PCs and see what happens...)

Cheers!

 

[rounser]

The Disenchanter is my pick for worst monster. It's bad enough when your +5 sword gets drained of its magic, but when it happens from the tongue lash of some lame blue horse-mule creature, that just adds insult to injury.

It's cute (at least the original one in the fiend folio is, haven't seen the new picture), which is more than can be said for the ethereal filcher. Snuffle up the magic, yum.

At least with dissy, the frustration level's marginally less - when the snouty one's done with you you're still holding a token sword, which is not the case if that other deus ex machina of a monster has taken off with it.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Actually you are thinking about the Ravid, not the Rast

Nonetheless I fully second you here. Totally unplayable. A CR 5 Monster with low hp, a 25 AC and always protected by an animated objet up to gargantuan size (CR 7, only 148 hp and a +15 slam for 2d8+10 woot !) is a totally ridiculous concept. Granted the animate object power is random, but activates each round (a lucky ravid can gather up to 20 Gargantuan animated objects...). To me such a monster could be killed in half a second or could lead to a TPK depending on the situation, definitively not worth using.
Ooops, I forgot to mention I don't like what it looks like... at all... ok actually I hate that monoarmed (is that a word?) flying albino snake...

How is this unplayable?

The Denzellian from the 1E Fiend Folio always made me feel like I was being robbed.

Number of attacks: Nil
Damage per attack: Nil
Special Attacks: Nil
Alignment: neutral
Intelligence: Semi

What exactly was this thing for. Oh yes...and the picture was of a featureless blob.

Yeah, the Creature Catalog screwed up here. This isn't an Ooze, it's a hazard.

And the reason why the Spider Eater isn't a vermin? Look at the MAGIC POWERS IT HAS! Vermin don't have MAGIC POWERS.
Yeah, so it's only freedom of movement. If it had no Int score, it couldn't use it very well.