el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
I was reading through a bunch of @Echohawk's fantastic articles on the history of different monsters in D&D and it got me to thinking about monsters I have never used as a DM or faced as a player and that I doubted I ever would (given my tastes and those of the people I generally game with). D&D has a lot of weird monsters that work for some games and not others, or that in some cases have been accepted by some groups as a just "default" to the game and thus always faced eventually, while that same monster is never even mentioned in some other group's games as to even discuss its inclusion would be absurd.
So my question is, what are those monsters for you? If you want, you can discuss why but "It just doesn't suit me" is a fine answer.
My answer would be the Catoblepas. It is just such a weird monster that doesn't serve much purpose - not even the purpose of "just looking cool." I tend to not use monsters with gaze attacks or death attacks Heck, I didn't even remember it existing past 1E, though from the history of it, clearly it did.
There are others that I just can't imagine ever using either, like the Loxodon (though I've used Giff
), or others I have only rarely come across and have only used b/c they appeared in a module I didn't have time to revise (like Perytons). Sometimes my impressions of monsters changes, for example the minute I thought of Loxodons I thought they'd be cool in a Spelljammer campaign, so who knows - but I am pretty certain about the stinky death cow known as the catoblepas
I am sure there are others that will come to me. This is coming from someone who claims the 1E Fiend Folio as his favorite monster book - so I have used some weird obscure monsters (my favorite, a flail snail with a fire template), but nevertheless obscure or common, what I want to know is what are the monsters you just never play with?
So my question is, what are those monsters for you? If you want, you can discuss why but "It just doesn't suit me" is a fine answer.
My answer would be the Catoblepas. It is just such a weird monster that doesn't serve much purpose - not even the purpose of "just looking cool." I tend to not use monsters with gaze attacks or death attacks Heck, I didn't even remember it existing past 1E, though from the history of it, clearly it did.
There are others that I just can't imagine ever using either, like the Loxodon (though I've used Giff
), or others I have only rarely come across and have only used b/c they appeared in a module I didn't have time to revise (like Perytons). Sometimes my impressions of monsters changes, for example the minute I thought of Loxodons I thought they'd be cool in a Spelljammer campaign, so who knows - but I am pretty certain about the stinky death cow known as the catoblepasI am sure there are others that will come to me. This is coming from someone who claims the 1E Fiend Folio as his favorite monster book - so I have used some weird obscure monsters (my favorite, a flail snail with a fire template), but nevertheless obscure or common, what I want to know is what are the monsters you just never play with?
