Best 3E era monsters?

[Celebrim]

By far, the best thing 3rd edition did with monsters was make them full characters. The best thing that 3rd edition did for monster diversity was templates.

But 3rd edition has brought us surprisingly few really new archetypal monsters (compare with beholders, mindflayers, drow, etc.) Indeed, there aren't many I'm even tempted to use.

My favorites:
Chuul (MMI)
Darkmantle (MMI)
Fihyr (MMII)
Moonrat (MMII)
Phase Wasp (MMII)
Chelicera (MMIII)
Living Spell (MMIII)
Necromatic Golem (CCI)
Fatling (CCI)
Unholy Child (CCI)

Not quite as good, but I still might use them:
Glimmerskin (MMII): It's somewhat hard to understand the motivation of a positive elemental creature attracted to destruction. Something more complex in its motivations might have inspired more imaginations.
Boneclaw (MMIII): It's an interesting use of the rule mechanics, but it doesn't quite do anything else.
Hullathion (FF): Some background on the origin of these undead terrors would have sold these creatures more easily.
Ulgurstata (FF): I love the horror of these things, but I can't imagine them showing up more than every other campaign at most.

 

[Ripzerai]

Glimmerskin (MMII): It's somewhat hard to understand the motivation of a positive elemental creature attracted to destruction. Something more complex in its motivations might have inspired more imaginations.

The Glimmerskin
it's an infinite star, a sea of meaningless light that goes on and on. Supposedly, there are settlements where creatures of flesh live protected from the sheer overwhelming intensity of life. I never saw them. Before I left the plane, I never "saw" anything. It's all light, no gradations, nothing for vision to pick up. Indeed, there was hardly a "me." I was nearly one with the plane, nothing but a feeling of restlessness surrounded by a circle of maddeningly serene elders.

The elders do not want us to leave. They disapprove of our adventures. But we became increasingly addicted to them. The feeling of flesh, of air and water and fire and earth, is like nothing on my plane. Most of all, we grew addicted to battle, to adrenaline and sweat and pain and victory and defeat. This is life, not the stale and constant boredom of the positive energy plane.

The elders are increasingly impatient. They say we are interfering with the development of souls. They say our skin-riding is an abomination.

But where did the elders come from? Why are they so different from us? Where did they get their serenity, their knowledge of the workings of other planes, and most of all their individuality?

Of course, they were once like us. Perhaps for centuries they lept from body to body on this wondrous material plane, and in the bodies of warriors and adventures they learned about magic, money, sex, and of course the struggle for life in death in the thick of battle, until they finally felt ready to retire. And they presume to judge us.

I only hope things don’t go too far. With the knowledge and skills they must still have, it would be very awkward if they came to collect their wandering young.

 

[Celebrim]

The Glimmerskin...it's an infinite star, a sea of meaningless light that goes on and on. Supposedly, there are settlements where creatures of flesh live protected from the sheer overwhelming intensity of life...

You've anthromorphized them. A elemental creature that mingles itself in non-elemental things doesn't learn and become an 'elder'. It can't but be diminished in some fashion by its experience - giving up something of itself for whatever it gains (if anything). Fire doesn't meet water and become more firey. Matter can't meet anti-matter and then become more material. It becomes nothing, and only thing gained is the chaotic flailing energies it sheds in the encounter. Is it the dream of positive to encounter the negative? Surely if the positive didn't wage war with the negative, ever striving to stay above its destroying embrace (however futilely assuming a universe that obeys the laws of thermodynamics), then the whole universe would collapse like an emptied balloon.

Of course, this assumes a polar universe. We could have a tri-valued universe in which nuetrality had as much substance and energy as positive and negative. But even then, surely there is some force opposing the gathering of negative to positive, otherwise wouldn't the universe have already come to equilibrium?

It's one thing to have a mingled being enjoying things of mingled value - sex, money, violence. Those things are natural to the nature of a being of mingled matter with the capacity for good and evil. But however tempting it is to make an elemental more nuanced, in doing so you aren't making the totality more complex. Rather, you are painting your whole canvas grey - coloring over the whites and blacks on the edges. If your demons can be good, then you've removed absolute evil from your palette. There are lots of things in the middle to be nuanced, but only a few things exist on the edges. Destroy thier basic nature and you lose the idea of them, and thus the totality of them entirely.

No, I'm not interested in anthmorphic drives for an existantiated idea. I'd be interested in some ideological force - even a misguided one - that might drive a unmingled being to seek pleasure in things of mingled value in such a fashion that even a pure being might see the attraction of it. The Glimmerskin can't be a mere thrill seeker, because that presumes that things that thrill it are the sames that thrill us. It's more likely that it would recieve estactic pleasure from things we are barely sensitive too. The Glimmerskin can't be seeking war for the sake of violence itself, because a positive elemental being would - absent something else to feed on - starve on destruction and death (indeed would be poisoned by it). And the Glimmerskin can't be taking pleasure in the exercise of power alone. It's evil that revels noisily in its might and vainglory, not good. So what? Is the knowledge of good and evil a thing of positive value in itself? Is there some noble element to conflict that lets a creature of positive value exist in the midst of the hell of it? Is the Glimmerskin a rogue aura of courage or noblity, feeding synergisticly on the splendor of war and noble causes, while while slowing killing itself on this ultimately deadly narcotic? Is the Glimmerskin the rogue spirit that drives good men to seek quick victories over evil? Is it the drive that causes noble men to fight for evil causes? What ultimately does it want, and why? Surely there is more going on here, and surely above all a Glimmerskin cares about the 'taste' of the violence it experiences. I would imagine in a raging psychopath there is very little to enjoy if you're a positive spirit.

How can a positive spirit be parasitic anyway? Surely a positive spirt gives more than it takes - the opposite of parasitism. Perhaps to a Glimmerskin, we are the parasites that it can't avoid getting diseased with, but then why does it enjoy the experience? Can it not help itself? Again, must we then be feeding it some rich broth amongst the poison? What? Not sex. A positive spirit is sex and extacy bursting out all over all the time.

I've never thought through this fully, but it seems to me that the only possibility is that there is some nobility in striving which a creature from a universe of infinite resources cannot get in its home dimension. If everything is abundant, what's there to struggle for, and if there is nothing to struggle for then there are certain goods which cannot be experienced. Perhaps the creature feels afflicted by the fact that in a universe without danger and fear, there cannot be quite the same nobility in courage. I'm not sure I completely buy that though. That implies that good can't exist without evil which would seem to hobble good and diminish are pallette. If we can imagine things which can be created but not destroyed, I wouldn't be so quick to remove the possibility of good which exists independently of evil.

 

[Vuron]

Deadly Dancer from Tome of Magic Deadly Dancer Picture

It has a very clean design while being suitable alien and strange which goes a long way to being very memorable.

 

[Ripzerai]

You've anthromorphized them.

Intentionally so. Anthropomorphic creatures are more interesting to me.

Fire doesn't meet water and become more fiery.

Why not? How does a fire elemental know what fire is unless it experiences contrast?

A fire elemental may become mighty on its own plane, but the truly wise ones - yes, a pilgrimage to confront and destroy its antithesis might well be in order.

How can a positive spirit be parasitic anyway? Surely a positive spirt gives more than it takes - the opposite of parasitism.

Don't confuse "positive" with "good." Positive energy isn't always beneficial. Touch too much of it, and living creatures can be ravaged by its excess, burnt by the extremes.

 

[tsadkiel]

We ended up pronouncing their name as "ba-hoot".

It's actually pronounced like "boot". (I watch a lot of Indian movies, and it's one of the usual terms for ghost. I refer to my annual October festival of ghost-centered movie reviews "Bhooty Call.")

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I like big Bhuts.

 

[Celebrim]

Intentionally so. Anthropomorphic creatures are more interesting to me.

I have no problem with anthropomorphism, but if we make even the alien anthropomorphic then we are painting with a pretty narrow palette. Are things that are inhuman so uninteresting that we must banish them from existence? I suppose one could argue that by incarnating an abstraction in any form we are anthropomorphicizing it, but I see no need to carry that trend any further than that. I find it stretches the mind more to hold alien ideas at as great of distance from our common experience as our imagination allows.

Why not? How does a fire elemental know what fire is unless it experiences contrast?

I hear this argument all the time. I find in unconvincing. A fire elemental does not have to know what fire is to be firey. I fire elemental is fire incarnate by definition. It can't get any more firey than that. It is firey. If it doesn't know what fire is, then fire itself doesn't know what it is. That's like having a rock not know its shape. If a rock does not know its shape, how does it hold itself with such rigidity, and if it does not need to know its shape to intrinsicly be it's shape, then neither does a fire elemental have to know fire in order to be firey.

Likewise, we would never say, "How does a sailor know the sea, unless he has lived in the desert. Experience with dryness is not necessary for the understanding of wetness. Conversely, a desert nomad does not have to see the ocean in order to understand the sand. A person who has lived always in light without ever seeing darkness does not need to see darkness to know all thier is to know about light, and a person living for ever in darkness does not need to know the light to know the darkness. Experiencing the phenomenom of light doesn't provide any more information about the darkness than was present without. It educates about the light, not about its absence. I reject the notion that we must experience the absense of the thing to know, understand or even appreciate it. Absence may or may not make the heart grow fonder, but absense is not necessary to develop fondness. For example, quite a few people have a great appreciation for food, even though they've never really known hunger.

A fire elemental may become mighty on its own plane, but the truly wise ones - yes, a pilgrimage to confront and destroy its antithesis might well be in order.

In which case, it will cease to be an elemental. Why do singularities seem so abhorent to you?

Don't confuse "positive" with "good."

I'm not. But don't think that you can separate them by a great difference, especially in the D&D cosmology. If good is not related to the positive element in some fashion, then you are going to have a hard time explaining why the negative element is so often linked to absolute evil.

Positive energy isn't always beneficial.

I didn't say it was. I said that it was always additive, which isn't the same thing at all. Of course additive processes aren't always beneficial, especially to beings of such a mixed corpus as ourselves, but the natural way to look at parasitic processes is that they are subtractive (blood drinking, for example). We need a new word since in our enthropy bound universe of finite energy, you don't find creatures giving away more than they take. Cancerous comes close, because it carries the idea of run away growth, but it is still growth which is parasitic in a way that a positive elemental creature should not be.

Touch too much of it, and living creatures can be ravaged by its excess, burnt by the extremes.

Sure, but this is still an additive process.

 

[Ripzerai]

Are things that are inhuman so uninteresting that we must banish them from existence?

That's a rather extreme assumption. I didn't intend to imply that nothing should be completely alien. But neither does everything from the inner planes have to be a completely alien, incomprehensible enigma. Anthropomorphic glimmerskins interest me. Anthropmorphic xag-ya do not.

fire elemental is fire incarnate by definition.

Very true. But being something and fully understanding what you are are two different things. Know thyself isn't a simple proposition.

If it doesn't know what fire is, then fire itself doesn't know what it is.

Fire learned what it was when it first encountered ash.

That's like having a rock not know its shape.

No. It's like a cubic centimeter of steel buried inside three square miles of steel not knowing what metal is.

That's a pretty good analogy of a fire elemental's situation, but it doesn't come close to the existence of a glimmerskin. A glimmerskin is like the cubic centimeter of steel not having a unique identity. It's like a drop of water in an ocean of water.

Likewise, we would never say, "How does a sailor know the sea, unless he has lived in the desert.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything, I'm just throwing ideas out there. If you don't like the idea, I can accept that and won't try to sell it to you. Your analogies are poor, though. A sailor experiences all sorts of elements. Sailors don't live in elemental planes, and they certainly don't live on a plane as bleak and monotonous as the Positive Energy Plane.

Why do singularities seem so abhorent to you?

Singularities aren't abhorrent to me, so I don't know why it seems that way to you. I endorsed one particular duality; that doesn't imply a hatred of non-duality.

But it was my intention to be helpful, not to start a flame war.

A fire elemental who confronted water would not cease to be an elemental. That seems a strange idea.

I think your concern about the word "parasite" is unfounded. As described in the MMII, they're symbionts, returning a benefit in exchange for their enjoyment of the flesh. The point is that positive energy need not be entirely beneficial. Whether they are additive or subtractive is not important.

Good is not associated with the Positive Energy Plane in any fashion. The plane has no alignment traits, and all of its native inhabitants are neutral. Good deities prefer to heal than to harm, and good deities prefer to rid the world of soul-sucking horrors. But the energy they use is only a tool. It is part of nature, just as negative energy is. Both forms of energy are vital for the cycle of nature to continue. Both types of energy can be harmful or beneficial, depending on the situation. Neither type of energy is safe if you're exposed to too much of it.

I have had no problems explaining this in the past.

 

[Nightfall]

It's about time you showed up. Did you catch the SL loving earlier in the thread?

No I missed it. I had other things to do.

Pants,
The armor is still cool! *agrees that Templated Unhallows rock* Especially Death Knight Forsaken Knight duel templating!