Defend the Ethereal Marauder to me

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What book is that from? (I do something similar with the Astral, sort of looks like spelljammer with water. Ethereal's for ghosts IMC)

He uses the term Ethereal Sea in Beyond Countless Doorways and in Ptolus.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Has anyone used them to great effect in the past and might they be willing to share what's so great about the very vanilla ethereal marauder?

They're fun "sidekick" beasties in that a whole high EL horde of them is pretty memorable, especially trailing after something like a ghost, munching on weakened prey as they go. One phase in/phase out is kind of trivial, but a half-dozen of them nipping at your heels (when you can only hit one or two in a turn) can be pretty enduring.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Thinks.... errrr.... ummm... they taste great with Buffalo sauce?

The Auld Grump, who has never yet used them.

 

[Kelleris]

I used 'em as backstory in one campaign. Ethereal marauders would travel in large swarms, picking clean entire worlds. I also altered their HD advancement a bit, letting them grow to fearsome sizes. Multiplanar, monstrous locusts essentially. To stop this threat to the entire multiverse, one god started destroying infested worlds before the swarms could move on to others. That god was in turn annihilated by other gods, and his remnants served as artifacts and plot devices in the campaign proper.

Oh, this is great! "Consider it yoinked" great, I mean.

I think I'll move them off the Ethereal, though - they'll be inhabitants of the interstitial membranes between planes, subsisting on leftover planar matter until they devour the barrier between two planes and swarm forth in their obscene numbers from the new tear, burrowing back across planar boundaries to escape those who try to strike them down.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Yeah, by themselves they're not really all that interesting. If you couple them with other Ethereal planar beasties- such as the Filchers or the (more interesting) Nilshai (from Unapproachable East) and play up the Ethereal as a dangerous place, I think they'd work pretty well as some cannon-fodder. Maybe an Ethereal invasion kind of campaign.

 

[broghammerj]

I thought we were talking about this Groo:

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I thought we were talking about this Groo:

That Groo is just the Terrasque with new fluff.

 

[Echohawk]

The flavour text on the Ethereal Marauder mini's card makes this creature for me:

"What was that? And where's Lidda?"
- Mialee, adventuring wizard

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I used them as an encounter to demonstrate the weakened state of the planar boundaries in one session of an old campaign (actually, on reflection it might have been an ethereal filcher). It worked reasonably well. I also like the idea of using them as Far Realms-ish creatures (had to catch myself from saying Far Side-ish, which is actually almost equally applicable).

 

[LoneWolf23]

I rather like the Ethereal Marauders as written, and I see them as being a cosmological oddity explaining why Wizards don't spend all their time in Ethereal form: Ethereal Marauders can sniff out Material creatures in Ethereal form, and chase them into the Material Plane to track down their prey.

They, along with Ethereal Filchers, are part of the Ethereal Plane's wildlife. In the case of the Marauders, they're dangerous parts of the wildlife.