I just fought my first [insert critter here]!

[Breakstone]

I remember my first fight against a Bullete. I was playing a Half-Orc Barbarian/Cleric named Splurk in my first 3e campaign. We were playing through an adventure from Dungeon in which the denizens of this forest had turned against the people who lived there.

We were tromping down a path when suddenly the bullete came at us. I thought we were fried. But, of course, my barbarian hopped onto its back and started Power Attacking like crazy. The Bullete was so startled that it turned tail (after receiving a good amount of damage) and started burrowing away, with my barbarian hanging onto the fin on its back!

While it was a rather short battle in itself, the imagery of my barbarian hanging onto that fin, hacking through the thick armor with his bastard sword, slamming into- and through- the ground sticks with me to this day...

 

[Nellisir]

It's nice to be surprised and left uncertain by monsters, especially when you're an experienced gamer.

My players freaked out when they fought a beholder with several eyestalks amputated and capped with iron cups, and a iron plate, ring, and severed chain fastened to it. That was the first beholder they'd ever fought, and they spent the next few weeks trying to figure out what could do that to a beholder.

Then they found out.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Nellisir]

...blade troll. By happiest circumstance, I met Mike Mearls and a few of his friends yesterday, and he ran a short AU adventure featuring some of the new AU monsters. That was also the most successful 3-hr game I've ever been involved in.

Unfortunately, Mike's computer went into a coma just before my giant warmain got serious.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[nimisgod]

My party fought a Nightwalker in a deadly FR module. Surprise round saw one of us kick the bucket. The remainder of the fight was the rest of us trying desperately to kill it. Since I GM most of the time, I was sorta sure of what it was (but unsure of some of its abilities).

So I spent a few rounds RPing my character's ignorance (sending at it the wrong kind of spells). Those rounds saw more of the party drop. I dealt it tons of damage though the party's templar finally landed the final blow.

It was an insane encounter, especially considering that if the creature used it's finger of Death ability on me (the surprise round PC kill), I wouldn't have been able to resist.

What sucked though was that a lot of the party's cleric's healing spells were nullified by an aspect of the module so the creature was especially harder to beat (A Heal spell would've made it a lot easier).

 

[Mouseferatu]

We just this evening fought a bunch of barghests, something I've never encountered before in all my years of gaming.

I'd like to humbly suggest that they're a bit under-rated in the MM, in terms of CR...

 

[heimdall]

The one "first time" that stands out for me is when I was first starting out and we ran into Nilbogs. It was an old Judges Guild module from their old magazine and we thought we were dealing with normal goblins. Only, we'd whack one good and he got stronger. And stronger. And stronger. As a 3rd and 4th level party we suddenly realized these weren't any ordinary goblins and fled in a panic.

The DM (my father) was back there chuckling the whole time. He compounded the issue by having us run into normal goblins shortly thereafter. You guessed it, we thought they were nilbogs and ran. And there went the chuckling again. All the other players but me and my mother worked with my father and spent the whole week pleading with him not to do that to 'em again. He agreed. So the next session he broke out his bugbear shamen. Egads. I remember as a 6 year-old screaming at those grown men that we were better off facing the nilbogs. At least we could take care of them, having learned the secret from a baby purple dragon. Sheepishly, they agreed. And my father sat behind that screen chuckling the whole blasted time again.

 

[Ace]

I fought an Otyugh for the first time Thursday in an online game

I was playing a 2nd level Elven Druid (my first Elf too!) and it went down pretty fast