Iconic Monster Use - The Displacer Beast

[el-remmen]

There are two in Asflag's Unintentional Emporium, which nearly caused a TPK back in 2E days.

 

[Ambrus]

In over fifteen years of playing and DMing I can't recall ever facing or running one. There are many "classic" D&D monsters for which I'm at a loss to understand their position as "fan favorites". Sometimes I suspect that the game designers just keep updating them lovingly from one edition to the next because they themselves remember them fondly; but which the rest of us simply consider one more random (and oftentimes uninteresting) monster from the manual. Likewise I don't understand the fascination with beholders, githzerai or githyanki. :\

 

[Glyfair]

Likewise I don't understand the fascination with beholders, githzerai or githyanki. :\

Beholders have always seemed cool to me in theory. In practice they seem to have always been underwhelming (based on second-hand comments).

Githzerai and Githyanki I never felt any attraction towards until the Dragon/Dungeon "Incursion" storyline.

I vaguely justified one once; never again.

I dislike most ethereal and extra-planar creatures as presented in D&D.

What does this have to do with Displacer Beasts, who aren't ethereal or extra-planar?

 

[Seeker95]

I voted 16+ times. Then again, I started playing D&D in 1978.

 

[KB9JMQ]

3 times total. All of those in the last two years.

 

[Hussar]

See, thing is, I've been playing for a couple of decades or so as well. And I can only recall using them a handful of times. Or seeing them.

If it skews, so be it. From where I'm standing right now, it looks like the Displacer Beast isn't getting used all that much.

 

[sjmiller]

Since 1979 I have encountered or ran encounters with Displacer Beasts more than 16 times. heck, we had a displacer beast encounter last year, and expect one this year too. Oh, wait, I guess it is a good thing my players do not read this site, or the surprise would be ruined.

 

[Mark Hope]

I don't think that I've used displacer beasts more than once or twice over the years. I quite like them as a concept - they've just never cropped up very often for some reason.

 

[Woas]

In over fifteen years of playing and DMing I can't recall ever facing or running one. There are many "classic" D&D monsters for which I'm at a loss to understand their position as "fan favorites". Sometimes I suspect that the game designers just keep updating them lovingly from one edition to the next because they themselves remember them fondly; but which the rest of us simply consider one more random (and oftentimes uninteresting) monster from the manual. Likewise I don't understand the fascination with beholders, githzerai or githyanki. :\

I feel the same way. Even more so because instead of 15 years of gaming, I only have about half that (about 6 now I'd guess). So a lot of these "iconics" have no real history to me or my players and are just too alien.

 

[Glyfair]

I don't think that I've used displacer beasts more than once or twice over the years. I quite like them as a concept - they've just never cropped up very often for some reason.

I wonder if its style of gaming. I've used them periodically, but almost always as a wandering monster type encounter. I don't see them cropping up very often otherwise. Maybe games that shy away from the wandering monster type encounters don't see them very often.