Favorite Critter Or Two

[megamania]

I sense a movement to use more Gnolls in my campaigns sinse I finally finished painting them. I wish Chainmail stuck it out.

 

[Richards]

I'm rather partial to jermlaine, if only because my players absolutely HATE the little buggers. Bad enough being beaten by a bunch of kobolds, but it's so much worse getting your butts handed to you be shrimpy little 12-inch humanoids with gobs of extra skin!

My oldest son has hated jermlaine with a burning passion ever since they shaved his elven thief/mage's head and eyebrows back in our 2E campaign. I think he would actually take a clean death over humiliation when it comes to his PCs.

Johnathan

 

[the Jester]

Beholders and mind flayers.

I never was into Spelljammer much, though.

On another note, the combo I'm dying to try out (heh heh....) is the illithid-avolakia alliance....

 

[Templetroll]

Trolls - Loved the description of one from "Two Hearts and Two Lions"; also thought the RuneQuest version was fantastic. I like the troll encounters I run to have personality in addition to a good fight.

The party sees a large warty-skinned creature sitting next to a small ditch sliced across the road; there is a board placed over the ditch.

The creature snarls, "Five coppers toll to cross bridge."

That encounter lasted for more than a year since the party thought it was funny, they just paid to go by.


Intelligent magic items, especially weapons. Once gave a cursed intelligent sword out; it had the mission to defeat fighters. It also had Heal once a day so it was quickly selected. The ranger who got it eventually got overconfident with having Heal at his call and decided to take on a stirge nest with only a wardog and a wolf he was training along with him. Soon into the battle he realized the animals were likely to get slaughtered so he cleared them of stirges and sent them away.

By this time, he was just past half his hits and asked the sword for a Heal. It said, "No." The shocked expression on the player's face was priceless; he fought on and asked it, "Why not?" The sword replied, "Because that wouldn't be heroic." The fight got a lot more intense for the player after that! He won with just a couple of hits left but it was close.

Stirges are a great little beasty, also.

 

[Templetroll]

Kobolds - My players hate it when they have their butts handed to them by a bunch of these guys (esp. when they're the MM garden variety, with no class levels ).

My favorite was an ambush in the woods along a trail. Kobolds pop up from underbrush on one side of the path to toss rocks at the party, then retreats when the party moves towards them. The party then runs into the hiddne sticks in the ground hidden by the underbrush, this slows them up and injures them slightly. Some kobolds up in the trees drop down nooses to try and snare the slowed PCs, the kobolds on the ground will be moving around to get into position to pitch more rocks at PCs trying to climb the trees. At least one kobold will be on the branch close to the trunk to poke a spear at the climbing PC.

Magic users are aproblem for these kobolds but they know to pitch many rocks at guys in robes to chant. it's really embarrassing for a PC to fall to a thrown rock or a stick in the ground.