D&D General Monster Expectations

[GMMichael]

Gnolls you mean. . .

How do you know? These can make for a good encounter too:

 

[RangerWickett]

Beware! Beware! The hills: the have come alive! You can hear them, shuddering, lurching, SINGING!!!! With the sound of music!

 

[Willie the Duck]

Gnolls you mean.

A Gnoll stealth-expert druid/assassin sniper named Grassy Gnoll would be a fun deep cut pun-NPC.

 

[Nightfly]

Dungeon Crawl Classics has an adage: Monsters should be mysterious. It's bad when the players think, "Oh, a group of three ankhegs, I know exactly what those do." Monsters ought to feel alien and intimidating.

 

[bloodtide]

No.

One of the cornerstones of a live RPG with a DM, is the DM can do anything. And one of those 'anythings' is making a monster anything. It is one of the big advantages over video games...the Gnolls will always be the same encounter in the video game, as that is what is programed into the game.

And for the most part, a DM should never just do a "by the book encounter". The whole point of the DM is to "make something else".

 

[Tonguez]

Not at all, you dont even have to call them gnolls

and if you want a gnoll to have troll stats go for it

Equally if can be fun to tell the PCs they are facing gnolls and use dog-like kobolds instead

 

[J-H]

Nope. Monsters should be interesting.

 

[Oofta]

Beware! Beware! The hills: the have come alive! You can hear them, shuddering, lurching, SINGING!!!! With the sound of music!

Epic level mountain giant? Where the mountain is a bardic giant? Sounds fun!

 

[Oofta]

I've always warned people they can't make assumptions about how difficult a monster is. On the other hand if I have a group of gnolls that are significantly tougher and they encounter them more than once I'll likely give them some distinguishing marks. But the first time? It will usually be a surprise.

 

[Li Shenron]

When the DM introduces a monster to a new party in a new campaign for the first time are they under any obligation to stick to the monster manual (of any other creature book)?

Of course not.

There is value in following the standards, if you have players who like having the possibility to use their knowledge from previous games, but the DM can always take the ultimate responsibility of what kind of game to play so in general the DM is not under any obligation.

I've seen veteran players saying things like "I know this one, we need to handle it this way, trust me" at the sight of a specific monster. If the monster doesn't meet their expectations, they can either be intrigued or feel cheated, depending on the player's personality. If you are worried you have someone like that in your group, it costs nothing to warn them before it happens. As an example, I've grown a bit tired with color-coded dragons, and I would prefer to have more unique dragon individuals, so a red dragon wouldn't necessarily imply they breath fire; if I start featuring non-standard dragons in a campaign, I might just tell the players that in this fantasy world every dragon is unique. If I knew my players enjoyed surprises (and surprise challenges specifically), I might instead have some standard red dragons first, and then one exception to screw them up. If I knew they instead valued traditionally established cliches as a way to make the game feel more predictable or comfortable, I'd go with standard monsters only. That said, adding class levels on base humanoid creatures is a fairly established tradition as well.