How popular are aberrations?

[WanderingMonster]

They are SO popular! More popular than the Beatles!

 

[blargney the second]

Aberrations good. You can kill them with a pretty clean conscience.

 

[CharlesRyan]

My favourite category of monsters, frankly. But then, I tend to go for a touch of Cthulhuesque horror in my gaming.

 

[olshanski]

I love aberrations, but then I NEVER want to see a humanoid or bipedal aberration. The point of abberations is that they are really freaking bizarre, like the Grell, Aboleth, or Gibbering Mouther.

My mind flayers do not have normal bipedal bodies under their robes, but rather twisting coils of tentacles and bloated pale mystery organs underneath robes.

I would be pretty disappointed with "salamander people" as aberrations, when I think they should be monstrous humoinds or something like that.

 

[lutecius]

How popular are aberrations?

I don't know. some of them are kind of cool, others are a bit ridiculous, but they don't really work for me as a category. Then again, I don't "get" the whole Far Realm thing.

...(in this case, amphibious) race with a very unusual civilization that has few parallels to our concept of civilization) and warhammer orcs (multi-stage life cycle, starting with pirana-like tadpoles who grow into intellegent Kneuts that eventually grow into troll-like monstrosoties who exist more or less to try to eat everything).

sounds a bit like Slaads to me.

 

[Dausuul]

I don't know. some of them are kind of cool, others are a bit ridiculous, but they don't really work for me as a category. Then again, I don't "get" the whole Far Realm thing.

Me neither, but a lot of folks feel otherwise.

sounds a bit like Slaads to me.

Actually, what it really reminds me of is neogi.

 

[Glade Riven]

The whole race is still really early in development, and it may have to ferment for a while. Here's a brainpuke on 'em:

 

[Set]

My mind flayers do not have normal bipedal bodies under their robes, but rather twisting coils of tentacles and bloated pale mystery organs underneath robes.

I like the notion of tweaking mind flayers to be psionically capable darkmantles that descend upon the heads of humanoids they've stunned with their psychic blasts, and then slide a tentacle into the spinal column to allow full control of the body of the host. The quasi-sentient darkmantle, once bonded to the humanoid host, becomes fully sentient, using the brain of the host to increase it's own fledging intellectual abilities, and much more efficiently, in most cases, than the original creature did, becoming singularly intelligent.

The longer the host is ridden in this manner, the more it's body transforms, gaining rubbery violet-hued flesh, etc. If the conjoined creature is slain, the body falls down, and the darkmantle waits until it thinks no one is looking and either crawls away or floats to safety, retaining only a primarily animalistic level of intelligence unless it finds another host, in which case, the memories of it's prior intelligent phase(s) are chemically unpacked from storage organs and it uses the brain of it's new host to download and begin using it's old memories, which it's animalistic brain couldn't effectively use, making the illithids effectively immortal, if the parasite can get away and find a new host body...

 

[jbear]

Yeah, my big evil villainess demon has a fish-sidekick. The Aboleth! The PCs haven't got that far yet, but they just set foot on the threshhold of its realm. I hope its memorable.