Advice for the next campaign - Big Evil Race

[Nightfall]

Well that is unusual but another idea using Ettercaps is probably just a magic effect that raises their Int to above average and thus make them much more deadly.

 

[CrusadeDave]

How about Gargoyles?

Against the Halflings from the Plains, imagine, winged Gargoyles swooping down to eat their food, driving the Halflings, underground.

With their Darkvision, they could also be useful against the Dwarves. You could even make some half breeds that have both the swim speed and the flight speed, and have them despoil the water source for the Dwarves.

 

[Woas]

For Dwarves, and maybe Gnomes: Derro (p.49 MM 3.5), the forgotten monsters that are stuck inbetween Demons and Devils (with their friend, the Destrachan). They don't even have a picture! Poor guys...

Derro
Small Monstrous Humanoid

Derro are afflicted by a form of racial madness, which most often manifests as delusions of grandeur coupled with an overpowering urge to inflict torment on other creatures. Derro are capable of holding their murderous impulses in check for short periods of time in order to cooperate with creatures of other races, but such arrangements rarely last more than a few weeks. Of course, no derro is capable of recognizing that he is out of his mind.

 

[Andor]

Make gnomes the bad guys. No one will see it coming. They all secretly worship some dark god and have spent centuries infiltrating the good races and building their trust to bring their dark designs to fruition.

 

[Testament]

OK, depending on which race the campaign goes with, here's my suggestions

Goliath: Yak Folk slavelords, Gargoyle predators, or Salamander invaders. The Yak Folk, with their Body Meld ability, would be interesting.

Halflings: The Gnoll idea is fantastic.

Elves: Hmmm, if we go with the Forest dweller angle, then I say Splinterwaifs, Twig Blights and that sort of thing. Unseelie invasion.

Illumians: KILL 'EM ALL. Sorry, that slipped out. Elan from the XPH make a good foil to them I think.

Dwarves: Trying to avoid the cliche? Kuo-Toa. They live in the Underdark, and hardly ever get used IME.

Of course, if any of these races live in a coastal area, then sic the Sahuagin on 'em!

 

[Ry]

If this is really what you want:

Think "every thing was going well until the <big evil race> came"

If I understand you correctly, it would work if these guys were pretty - through - extremely evil. So campaign plotlines like:
- Humans nearby are attacking us (they were leaving us alone until the <big evil race> came)
- My favorite villagers have been dragged away by something horrible (they were doing well until the <big evil race> came)
- Aah! <big evil race>! Evacuate the town!
- We need heroes to track the <big evil race> down! Where are they coming from?
- The <big evil race> is implacably evil. We need to destroy them for good!
- Why on earth are our political leaders so evil? / Dismissive of the <big evil race>? Oh, no! They're working for the <big evil race>!

I'd definitely go with a hierarchy of related aberrations.
For that, I'd suggest aboleths at the top, taking the place of elder brains in illithid brine pools. This gets the "villagers kidnapped for horrible ritual" plot line right away. Of course, the aboleth have some skum slaves. But the lieutenants of the aboleths would be mind flayers (think of them as tadpole illithid, and it works great). Just below them, mix in some half-doppleganger mind flayers for infiltration politics (why are the Humans attacking? Why are our political leaders so evil?). Finally, under the mind flayers, put Umber Hulks (or throw the half-illithid template on an umber hulk - "Evacuate the town!"). So now you've got an incredibly evil hierarchy:

Skum at the bottom (direct servants of the aboleths, and help for individual mind flayers, also a great low-level encounter).
Umber-hulks in the middle
Half-mind flayer Dopplegangers
Mind Flayers
Aboleths

Basically, you still get your good race vs. evil race war, but you never have to cope with "what about the baby orcs?" Having run a humans vs. aberrations campaign, I can tell you players get MOTIVATED to kill off those suckers.

 

[Nightfall]

rycanada,

I guess my only gripe with your idea is this: Illithids and Aboleth, while not having a large racial hatred, don't really work that well UNLESS the aboleths got an edge somehow (IE control of the elder brain and/or a bunch of Ullithilids under their command.) Even then I'm a little hesistant. But otherwise I think you have a FINE idea for using abberations as a replacement race.

 

[Ry]

Oh, to clarify, I'm envisioning it as a slightly changed version of both (historically, not stats-wise), so Aboleths ARE the old Mind Flayers (like a third stage after ceremorphosis). Depending on how it worked out, I might make all Aboleths Savants just to beef them up as the "overlord" type.

Really, when you think about it, it'd be easy to portray the Skum corruption and Ceremorphosis as different aspects of the same horrible process.

 

[just__al]

rycanada,

I guess my only gripe with your idea is this: Illithids and Aboleth, while not having a large racial hatred, don't really work that well UNLESS the aboleths got an edge somehow (IE control of the elder brain and/or a bunch of Ullithilids under their command.) Even then I'm a little hesistant. But otherwise I think you have a FINE idea for using abberations as a replacement race.

Oh, to clarify, I'm envisioning it as a slightly changed version of both (historically, not stats-wise), so Aboleths ARE the old Mind Flayers (like a third stage after ceremorphosis). Depending on how it worked out, I might make all Aboleths Savants just to beef them up as the "overlord" type.

Really, when you think about it, it'd be easy to portray the Skum corruption and Ceremorphosis as different aspects of the same horrible process.

Hmmmm, both definately have possibilities. Especially if the PCs decide to help the mind flayers get back control of the elder brain in exchange for a sessation of hostilites. Then of course they are betrayed.

 

[schporto]

How about dwarf Vs. elf. Pick a side - who says good can't war with each other. OK maybe there's some intelligent creatures behind (Lords of Dust?, yaunti, mind-flayers, etc) the whole thing. Make it some goofy war over land or some percieved slight.
You could probably pull the same for halfling vs gnome too.
-cpd