The Dumbest Dungeons & Dragons Monsters Ever (And How To Use Them)

[Morrus]

The Escapist has a (slideshow) article about The Dumbest Dungeons & Dragons Monsters Ever (And How To Use Them).

• roving mauler
• flumph
• duckbunny
• flail snail
• raggamoffyn
• achaierai
• vegepygmy
• paeliryon
• thought eater
• stench kow (rhymes with drow)

 

[the Jester]

Well, it is a decent article. However- and yeah, of course it's a matter of taste- but honestly, only a few of those monsters qualify as amongst the dumbest D&D monsters, IMHO.

The roving mauler and duckbunny? Sure. Maybe the flumph. But the flail snail? The paeliryon? The thought eater??? Yes, they have their limitations, but they're awesome!

IMHO such a list ought to include certain creatures, no questions asked:

• Pseudo-Undead (1e MM2)
• Throat Leech (1e FF)
• Pernicorn (1e FF)
• Astereater (2e Spelljammer)
• Spanner (2e FF MC appendix)
• Tooth Beast (3e Tome of Magic)

Sure, it's a matter of taste, but I think that the flumph, achaierai and stench kow all have great uses- not every monster should be super-deadly (hi, flumph!) or for common consumption (if you're in Hell, it's nice to see the food chain). The ones I list are useless creatures that are unlikely to see official appearances again in the future, and for good reason! With the possible exception of the astereater, which can arguably fall into the same category as the stench kow, these guys are completely useless, at least as monsters- the throat leech and pernicorn can, arguably, make good environmental hazards, but how do you stab a monster that's stuck in the back of your throat?

 

[D'karr]

how do you stab a monster that's stuck in the back of your throat?

With extreme care.

 

[Lindeloef]

I have used the Paeliryon in my campaign and hat it french kiss two of the party

 

[Celebrim]

Raggamoffyn: These are actually not stupid and depending on the presentation vary from reasonably scary to downright creepy. They can be used anywhere you'd place a haunt, sentient curse, or spontaneous magical effect. It's not really that hard to create a backstory. For example, I'd use one to represent the cursed wedding dress of a bride murdered on her wedding night.

Most of the rest of his entries wouldn't make my top 20 list of most useless or dumbest monsters.

Stench Kow is perfectly acceptable as part of the horrors of hell if you are ever inclined to portray that Dante style. If you've ever smelled a cow that died in the winter after the spring thaw, you know full well just how bad even a normal cow can smell. An angry herd of cows that smell like that even when stomping your body into the jagged obsidian of Hell's heated plains doesn't sound to me like anything I'd want to face. But I'd rather face one than be one.

Jester's List:

Psuedo-Undead: I've considered using these in the past for 'half-undead' creatures, such as the 'half-vampire' concept of 'Lost Boys', 'living zombies' perhaps disease or drug induced, a 'boy raised by ghouls' and other similar concepts where the creature is existing in a half-state between life and death.

Spanner: The idea of a cursed or haunted bridge isn't all bad, but the implementation is probably lacking.

Toothbeast: *shrug* Doesn't seem so bad. Not nearly as bad as I was expecting from the name, which was more like a sentient cavity that attacked your teeth and caused toothaches or a literal tooth that tried to crawl in your mouth and replace one of your own. This expectation would be par for the course of a real list of the most stupid monsters in D&D.

Astereater: Typical Spelljammer gonzo gaming, and hardly the most ridiculous or useless Spelljammer monster.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Fail snails are the running joke for my PF game - all due to this paragraph:

"they have no spoken language, flail snails communicate using two different means, both completely silent. The first, an elaborate sign language of waving tentacles.."

One of the guys kept wanting to learn this fail snail language, except that fail snails have too may limbs - but if you had 2 characters that "spoke" snail then not only could they talk to each other (baddly) or stand behind one another for 4 limbed communication. Alternately you could lie on your back and wave your legs too!

maybe some kind of puppeteer rigg...
there is no end to the awesomeness.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

No Nilbogs? Or Carbuncles? They didn't mine the Fiend Folio enough -- that book seemed to be two parts awesome sauce and one part whacktard.

 

[Crothian]

You need to go into monsters created for specific modules and get awesome creatures like the Uniduck!

 

[I'm A Banana]

two parts awesome sauce and one part whacktard.

...this also describes D&D in general, I feel. Certainly every game of it I've ever run.

 

[Greg K]

They didn't mine the Fiend Folio enough

That was my initial thought as well

that book seemed to be two parts awesome sauce and one part whacktard.

I found it, at best, to be 1 part awesome sauce and three parts garbage