Favorite "New" Monsters

[Nightfall]

Slacerian Dragons
Ferals
The Blood Hag
Wrack Dragons

 

[DMH]

2) Ethergaunts. They were cool in the FF and Mechalich's subsequent elaboration on them made them better.

Have a link for this?

My absolute favorite are from Minions- secret eater, seeder, vapor bore, and hearth horror. Ethergaunts, mind shreders, moon rats, caffeine wasps, seedkin, coral dragon, wildgeist (the green spirits from Monsternonicon) and nail stealers are others that come to mind.

 

[Shemeska]

Have a link for this?

Right here

 

[DMH]

Very interesting. I wonder if he has taken the time to turn his write ups into pdfs or rtfs?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

TAbominations, particularly the Xixecal: Each one is an entire campaign in one entry.

Oh, hell yes. I'd like these guys moved to the 4E MM, myself, just to establish the top-end of the game. An infernal abomination who didn't know who or what she was for 100 years is the single most important being in the backstory of my homebrew -- she reacted poorly when she found out she'd been lied to all along, and thought very big in her revenge.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I really love bears and wolves, so is it any wonder that I choose the Bearhound?

 

[Morpheus]

Dire animals are really cool (and, technically, new to 3.x)

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Some I like a lot have been mentioned (dire animals and bearhounds, for two examples). I like legendary animals, also. Still, three critters from the new edition take the top spots for monsters that have sparked my imagination from the get-go - the krenshar, the delver, and the grey render. The krenshar because it seems like a cool animal that may have evolved on a magical world; the delver because it seems like a great way to justify all those caverns, and they seem like great allies of dwarves; and the grey render, which seems like the last remnant of a species created as bodyguards for a long-dead empire or race.

 

[Testament]

Ethergaunts: Sooooo creepy.
Zeugalak: Abberations that enjoy inverted sky diving! What's not to love?
Kaorti: CTHULHU DAWN!
Half-Farspawn: As Kaorti.
Tsochari: Goa'Uld + Invasion of the Body Snatchers + D&D = Sweeeeet.

 

[Felon]

Right here

Mechalich certainly has a flair for hype, but all-in-all the ethergaunts seem very overblown. Essentially, they're wizards with really high INT scores and a few abilities that, while creepy enough, are a lot weaker than their spells.

In particular, I really want to know what the point is of giving them a ranged touch attack that does a whopping 1d6 of damage. No matter how nasty they are otherwise, their scariness is seriously undermined by that one crap attack.

By and large, it seems the ethergaunts are formidable because they abuse plane-shifting back forth between the material and ethereal plane to a degree few DM's would alow a player to get away with (e.g. shifting away and coming right back with all your wounds fully healed and rested). And here's an excerpt from Mechalich's post that I don't get:

Even attempts to trap them on the material with spells failed, for then Whites would appear and allow the Reds to leave if the Reds attempt to dispel failed.

I assume this is a reference to the gaunts circumventing dimensional anchor or dimensional lock, but I'm not sure how Mechalich is saying they can do that here. How do the Whites "allow" the Reds to leave?


My favorite mobs:

Avolokia are pretty cool, if somewhat underpowered.

Ulgarstastas and hu;lathoins (basically different takes on the same monster idea).

Braxats

Spellstitched

Swarms and Living Spells

Death Giants & Eldritch Giants

Rot Reavers (similar to avolokias, but actually effective)