Reflavoring Monsters

[Rechan]

These threads pop up time to time. I wanted to go ahead and start one.

This thread is for monsters and monster races. Normal PC races I'd prefer to keep over here.

Reflavoring the monster's origins or even what they are is totally legit here.

Things I've done:

Kenku. Kenku are the result of crows feeding on the carrion of great and powerful things. Demigods and dragons, demosns and angels, and all manner of things.

Bugbears. Two avenues for this one: 1) Shifters that "gave in" to their animal nature, forsaking the humanity inherit in their soul. 2) Rugaru. Men who took up hunting other men for sport. The act slowly changed them into the Hunters of Men (behaving much like the yautja from the movie "Predator"). Either way, Bugbears do the same thing: stalk and hunt sentient prey.

Grimlocks. Grimlocks consider eating people to be a religious experience, and they are religious fanatics. Cooking sites litter the underdark like shrines to gluttony, so that the Grimlocks can drag live prey to them and cook them alive. They believe that Fear marinates the flesh, and so everything they do instills fear: painting themselves, using drums to let a terrifying beat echo through the caverns as a herald to their coming. They use magics of fog and darkness - they cannot see them, are not hindered, but their targets are now hampered, trapped in the lightless depths as grimlocks swing and scutter over the walls and ceilings after them.

Goblins. Goblins are not a race unto themselves. They are a byproduct. When someone has nasty thoughts - hateful, cruel, covetous thoguhts - a goblin is spawned. They come into existence, innately able to find one another, and group up. So goblins truly are a plague of discontent created by the darker desire of man.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Reflavoring monsters can give new life to a creature. While I'm not currently using the Pathfinder rules, I love what Pathfinder has done with some monsters. In particular, I love what Pathfinder has done with goblins and kobolds. Now I can't imagine them any other way.

 

[Rechan]

Here's some really great suggestions I've seen here on ENWorld. I don't remember their authors, otherwise I'd cite.

Gnolls. Gnolls are not a race of humanoid hyenas. They are actually what happens when a hyena eats a sentient being's soul. As soon as that happens, they start spreading, trying to grow their numbers, while worshiping and calling to demons to bring them over. Hyena are actually created by demons, as a sleeper agent to bring them over. (This is how I use Gnolls in my games after I read this).

Trolls. Two here. Trolls created either by hags through a ritual - combining lightning and the bitter unrelenting of the cold, the constant hunger of darkness, and the unmoving power of stone. This is why they are hurt by fire and acid - not part of the ritual. The other suggestion was Trolls being knightly vassals of Dragons. Given that they are vulnerable only two two elements, it makes sense dragons would have created them, possessing the only two elements that would destroy them.

Orcs. Two ideas I've seen done well: Orcs as horse-riding mongol raiders. Or Orcs that aren't necessarily evil or destructive - just very chaotic; hard to keep still, hard to follow rules, not reliable. Very very rowdy and aggressive in nature. And very fertile. (This is why you end up with many half-orcs; women of various races are attracted to the orc for a rowdy time).

Hags. The makers of monsters. They seduce men, often powerful men, and the resulting child is usually a horror. And that horror is used to beset upon the father and his holdlings.

Dragons. Dragons are part spirit - literally a combination of the physical mortal realm and the spirit realm. When they eat, they eat the spiritual energy of something - so they could eat pearls or sheet music. (I added to this notion the idea that the Dragon were used in the Dawn war, a sort of collaboration between the Gods and Spirits to seal the agreement of battling the Primordials).

Harpies. Once a city of amazonian elves who believed they were more beautiful than the gods. They were struck down by their hubris, changed into a mockery of beauty. Harpies still pursue the affection of men - by kidnapping them and laying their eggs within a man's stomach.

 

[Rechan]

I'm going to bump this.

 

[jmucchiello]

I like this kind of thing from a design perspective but from a player perspective it is really annoying. If these reflavorings were found in the 4e MM (5e, 6e whatever) then while I might miss the old flavor I'd have no issue going forward with the new flavor. But when someone sits down at my table and says "I want to be a half-orc bastard of a local princess whose father of course disowned me." I don't like having to stop him to say "well in my game world orcs are hatched from eggs and...." Because now the player's expectations no longer match the ingame reality.

So, they are fun to read. But I don't use them.

 

[Set]

Love the flavoring of the Kenku, Bugbears (type 2), Grimlocks, Goblins, Hags and Gnolls! (The Gnoll one gives my Buffy flashbacks, like a reverse Wendigo sort of situation.)

My own tweak for Hobgoblins, Goblins and Bugbears is to make them descended from Unseelie 'shadow court' fey, with Elves being the Seelie version of Hobgoblins (explaining their emnity) and Gnomes being the Seelie version of Goblins (with, inexplicably, less emnity, and occasionally cross-species dalliances). Presumably, there was once a 'good version' of Bugbears, but whatever Seelie race represents Bugbears has apparently been hunted to extinction by the Bugbears, who are a very sparse species, compared to the others, perhaps as a result of this campaign of genocide against their sister race. If an elf (or gnome) turns wicked and capricious and arrogant enough, they can transform into a hobgoblin (or goblin), and the reverse is also true, such that a particularly noble honor-obsessed hobgoblin might cross some metaphysical line and become an elf (or some soft-hearted and curious goblin might become a gnome).

This sort of thing isn't mentioned in polite company (specifically, the presence of other races, and the elves even go so far as to pretend that it doesn't happen at all, in front of the gnomes, who know better), and can result in odd families, where an elf and a hobgoblin are brothers (one having 'fallen').

Kobolds Two species;
First, the kobold, are hairy dog/ape-men who run at 30 ft. landspeed on all fours, but only move at 20 ft. when walking bipedally to fight. Despite their brutish appearance, they are shockingly adept innate smiths and craftsmen, being the 'evil races' version of dwarves, creators of masterwork arms and armor.
Second, the wyrmkin, hatched from unfertilized dragon eggs, usually in clutches of about a half-dozen per egg (with female dragons laying one or two eggs once or twice a year, fertilized or not). They are the scaly 3.5 style 'kobolds,' and fanatically worship their mothers (not all dragons want these little guys hanging around, and eat them, or just devour their unfertilized eggs before they hatch, or drive them forth to annoy other locals, while others keep them as servants). They have some color-based abilities as well, with the spawn of whites, greens and blacks being able to swim really well, the spawn of greens and blacks being very weakly acid-resistant, the spawns of reds and whites being weakly resistant to fire / cold and vulnerable to the opposite, etc.

This allows me to have both 1e/2e style yappy dog-men kobolds, as well as 3.5-esque little arrogant dragon-men.

One tweak I'm not so sure about is the idea of making dragons hermaphroditic. Some might have aggressively male personas, and others more female personas, but when two dragons mate, they each can lay eggs afterwards (and produce wyrmkin servants).

 

[Ktulu]

My current campaign is full of this. Outside some magical beasts, there are few traditional monsters in my world. If they do exist, they're repurposed in some way.

Yuan-ti: My first on the list, and the most important in my world. Long ago, the snake-worshipping Beysibians (humans, repurposed tiefling) discovered a ritual that allowed them to bind their soul to their snake-god Zehir, directly. This broke the cycle of life and death, which drastically weakened (and angered) the Raven Queen. The Beysibians eventually began to change, taking on more serpentine qualities. Within a generation, the race had split into two different castes; the god-like Yuan-ti, and the slave Beysibians. There are many different "types" of Yuan-ti:

• Medusae - Beysibians who drank the blood-of-zehir, becoming half-snake half human. These creatures are horrid abominations and are used as generals in armies.
• Snake-Charmers (refluffed Succubi) - The Snake-charmers are yuan-ti that can assume the skin of those they've consumed, making them excellent at infiltration. Their natural pheremones are intoxicating to humans, making it very easy to control the weaker minded.
• Ssarpacala (refluffed Salamanders with lightning keyword instead of fire)- The Ssarpacala were the Yuan-ti sent to destroy the champions of Kord. After consuming the champions, they stole Kord's mastery of storms.
• Thesalossk, the ancient one (Refluffed purple worm into poisonous giant snake) - Thesalossk was awakened and purposed with killing the emperor of Ranke, along with toppleing the outer-walls of the capitol city. He succeeded at both tasks, but was killed by the campaign's heroes in the throne room (rather, what was left of it).

Creatures that were refluffed to make more Yuan-ti - Chillborn zombies refluffed/keyworded to be minor Ssarpacala, a Green Dragon was refluffed to be an Immortal Yuan-ti, the cultists from Ari's Ashport module were refluffed to be Yuan-ti cultists. Elder Eye chainfighters refluffed to be snaketongue chainfighters, etc...

Also: Fire Archons were refluffed to be Pelor's Luminary guardians, warriors of fire created to aid the Lightbringers. A firebat was refluffed to be a guardian phoenix, protector of pelor's temple. The Earth Titan was refluffed to be a barbarian warlord who failed at the ritual of binding, becoming a massive brute, bent on destruction.

I'm sure there were others. I absolutely LOVE the ease of refluffing in 4e. Probably my favorite feature...definitely in the top 3.

 

[Ktulu]

Love the flavoring of the Kenku, Bugbears (type 2), Grimlocks, Goblins, Hags and Gnolls! (The Gnoll one gives my Buffy flashbacks, like a reverse Wendigo sort of situation.)

My own tweak for Hobgoblins, Goblins and Bugbears is to make them descended from Unseelie 'shadow court' fey, with Elves being the Seelie version of Hobgoblins (explaining their emnity) and Gnomes being the Seelie version of Goblins (with, inexplicably, less emnity, and occasionally cross-species dalliances). Presumably, there was once a 'good version' of Bugbears, but whatever Seelie race represents Bugbears has apparently been hunted to extinction by the Bugbears, who are a very sparse species, compared to the others, perhaps as a result of this campaign of genocide against their sister race. If an elf (or gnome) turns wicked and capricious and arrogant enough, they can transform into a hobgoblin (or goblin), and the reverse is also true, such that a particularly noble honor-obsessed hobgoblin might cross some metaphysical line and become an elf (or some soft-hearted and curious goblin might become a gnome).

This sort of thing isn't mentioned in polite company (specifically, the presence of other races, and the elves even go so far as to pretend that it doesn't happen at all, in front of the gnomes, who know better), and can result in odd families, where an elf and a hobgoblin are brothers (one having 'fallen').

Kobolds Two species;
First, the kobold, are hairy dog/ape-men who run at 30 ft. landspeed on all fours, but only move at 20 ft. when walking bipedally to fight. Despite their brutish appearance, they are shockingly adept innate smiths and craftsmen, being the 'evil races' version of dwarves, creators of masterwork arms and armor.
Second, the wyrmkin, hatched from unfertilized dragon eggs, usually in clutches of about a half-dozen per egg (with female dragons laying one or two eggs once or twice a year, fertilized or not). They are the scaly 3.5 style 'kobolds,' and fanatically worship their mothers (not all dragons want these little guys hanging around, and eat them, or just devour their unfertilized eggs before they hatch, or drive them forth to annoy other locals, while others keep them as servants). They have some color-based abilities as well, with the spawn of whites, greens and blacks being able to swim really well, the spawn of greens and blacks being very weakly acid-resistant, the spawns of reds and whites being weakly resistant to fire / cold and vulnerable to the opposite, etc.

This allows me to have both 1e/2e style yappy dog-men kobolds, as well as 3.5-esque little arrogant dragon-men.

One tweak I'm not so sure about is the idea of making dragons hermaphroditic. Some might have aggressively male personas, and others more female personas, but when two dragons mate, they each can lay eggs afterwards (and produce wyrmkin servants).

You should check out the 3.5 Kenzer book Gnomes&Kobolds. It talks a great deal on them, including them being hermaphrodites. Written by Wiggy Wade Williams, it's one of their better books.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've used Plains Indian cultures for Minotaur and Centaur tribes (in 2 different campaigns). The Minotaurs were a bit more of a challenge- they used chariots instead of single horses- but kept up with the archery thing. Given that this was 2Ed, that made them size L creatures...and let me tell you, those arrows HURT.

 

[Rechan]

Oh damn, how could I forget this! I saw this before and thought it was clever:

Gnolls. Gnolls set in the goblin family. Where Hobgoblins are the warriors, bugbears the murderous brutes/assassins, and goblins the scouts/grunts, Gnolls are the religious caste. They squabble with hobgoblins often over who gets to run the show. It also explains where Barghests come from: mating of goblins and gnolls.