Bad monsters

[Quartz]

What are your truly bad monsters? The monsters with abilities that make play decidedly unfun?

I'll start with three monsters from the ELH: the Lavawright, Shape of Fire, and the Shadow of the Void with their permanent HP loss. Sorry, but what a way to nerf the fighter-types.

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

These are monsters I love as a DM, but as a player I hate:

Rust Monster

Disenchanter

(These two together clearly says the DM thinks you have too much stuff)

Wight (or those with similar level-draining abilities)

Any true golem (with their magic immunity, the casters become useless in many areas, most of them the damage-dealing ones)

I don't truly hate any of them, but those are tough ones to fight as players because they take your toys or render someone useless. And players generally like their toys.

 

[megamania]

Golems and Rust Monsters can be hard to play against but that is in part the idea. It forces players to think differently and allows some to get spotlighted also.

Beholders are tough and my group never had an easy time with them.

 

[Quartz]

Golems are just fine: the spellcasters can operate to support the fighters, and just because you can't directly affect the golem doesn't mean that you can't indirectly affect it. You can still wall it in with a Wall of Iron. You can still use Dig to collapse the ground underneath. You can still hedge it out with a Wall of Force. Etc.

 

[wayne62682]

Anything with a Save-or-Die/Suck power
Rust Monster
Golems
Anything that causes level-drain
Anything that causes ability-drain

--

Pretty much anything which clearly is in the "Use this to really screw the PCs over!" mentality of the game I find to be "un-fun".

 

[cougent]

These are monsters I love as a DM, but as a player I hate:

snip

Wight (or those with similar level-draining abilities)

snip

I don't truly hate any of them, but those are tough ones to fight as players because they take your toys or render someone useless. And players generally like their toys.

My players particularly hated Wights, and their dice seemed afraid of them. Even when they reached higher levels and only needed to roll better than 7 or 8 to hit and make saves they would inevitably come out with the 1-6 every roll. Meanwhile I am having to fudge 20 after 20 after 20 to avoid TPK's. From my DM perspective it was actually funny to watch double digit level PC's retreating from a half dozen Wights in order to stay double digit PC's.

 

[FalcWP]

Right now? Mummies. My 5th level party just fought one and, while they won... I don't think it was particularly fun. Particularly for the rogue - its AC was too high for her to hit consistently, its DR and undeadness made it almost impossible for her to damage, it could hit her fairly easily, and she was unlikely to make Fort and Will saves. The only useful contributions she could make to the fight were things like flanking the mummy to give the other folks +2 to hit, and while that's useful, it isn't fun. And other than the sorcerer, nobody could do much against the mummy... good AC and heavy DR, nobody wants to melee with it, and mummy rot is very, very nasty to try and adventure with.

Pretty much anything with save or die/save or suck abilities would be on my list. I try to avoid using those, especially save or die, for two reasons:

1) Save or die just seems to be a 'DM vs. Players' sort of thing. If you die because you've been hit a bunch of times, that's one thing, but dying because you failed one fort save that you couldn't avoid just feels different. And if its a targeted ability, then it can seem that the DM was gunning for a player.

2) To spare myself from having to find a way to work a new character in. If we were just doing a huge dungeon crawl where we were mostly ignoring plot and character backgrounds, this would be different, but if someone gets hit with a save or die in the middle of a dungeon, in a time sensitive scenario, and/or if they're a character who is becoming important to the plot, it can be tough to work in a replacement character.

 

[Dan Bell]

My players hate these guys: http://www.richardluschek.com/Illustrations/vlasta.html

(The Vasta are a monster in HarnWorld: http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/zoom.cfg?product_id=4611)

 

[jmucchiello]

The Hydra. It has broken rules for attacking a head (Sunder? Can I sunder something else's head? No.) And if you do sever a head, you get two more in the bargain. Craziness.

 

[Jubilee]

The Hydra. It has broken rules for attacking a head (Sunder? Can I sunder something else's head? No.) And if you do sever a head, you get two more in the bargain. Craziness.

Not to mention all the heads getting an attack of opportunity when you move up to it.. *mutters*

I'd add Bodaks to the list, too!

Our party ran into a rust monster (actually, 3) tonight, and they hit the artificer right off the bad. Didn't come out too badly. We also ran into destrachans a few sessions ago (I think the GM thinks he overdid our gear recently - we were dungeon delving and a rival patron sent a party that got there before us (died) and came in while we were elsewhere resting (died), so we looted both sets of corpses!).

We also had to deal with medusas, gorgons, basillisks and cockatrices today. That gorgon breath cone is nasty..

/ali