Monsters that are a Waste of Pages

[Plane Sailing]

The Owlbear. It has no abilities that separate it from an ordinary bear. Essentially it is just a re-skinned bear with a more weird/horrifying appearance. While I appreciate the concept, it doesn't "do" anything special as a monster.

Ah, but have you seen what Piratecat does with it?

 

[Holy Bovine]

denzilians from the 1e fiend folio are Horta monsters from an old Star Trek episode, "The Devil in the Dark"

The ones listed here tend to have mechanics that don't match their cool factor.

Whoa - truer words were never spoken. I always assumed the denzilians were supposed to be based upon the Horta but when you look at some of the glaring differences (the Horta could move through rock like humans move through air - the denzilians took a week to eat through a foot of rock, Horta they had a deadly acidic touch that deduced a man to ash in seconds the denzilian had no attack mode of any sort, the Horta could think and communicate the denzilian were mindless etc) it is hard to believe the creator of the denzilian ever even heard of Star Trek.

 

[Holy Bovine]

The Owlbear. It has no abilities that separate it from an ordinary bear. Essentially it is just a re-skinned bear with a more weird/horrifying appearance. While I appreciate the concept, it doesn't "do" anything special as a monster.

Heresy! I have loved the Owlbear since I first saw one on the inside cover of B2 Keep on the Borderlands. To me it is an iconic D&D monster and no edition of D&D would be complete without it!

 

[AllisterH]

Personally for me, it's the humanoid monster races that exist in earlier editions.

What exactly was the difference between a gnoll and an orc?

Es[ecially given that I remember the 1e MM talking about how different orc tribes should be described to look and fight differently...so the excuse that you can say gnoll fight differently made no sense since mechanically there WAS no difference..

 

[Barastrondo]

I think a large part of what makes a "useless" monster is that for a while, the monster stat block was the only real interface that people were used to. Check out the cerebral parasites from the 1st edition Monster Manual sometime: they have a whole stat block, for formality's sake, but the only actual statistic that applies is "number appearing." They're basically a living disease, but because they're alive they were treated as a monster and given the stat block format. These days you'd use a variant on a disease rule, much like statting up green slime as a hazard rather than a monster.

Things like the spanner and denzelian are likely the same way: these days we would probably stat them out using something other than the usual combat stat block for a "monster". A spanner would probably work better with a 4e trap stat block.

To get back on topic, I'll admit I'm not really fond of D&D critters that don't look like they crawled out of somebody's myth cycle. This puts me in a weird place because I wind up being absolutely taken with things like nagpa and gnolls and wyverns, and rather unmoved by kruthiks and destrachans and even beholders. An immense part of a monster's utility, I believe, is whether the players have an interesting gut reaction to it or not. If they're trying to intellectually figure it out ("wait, it's an insectoid reptile? What is that even supposed to mean?"), it knocks a bit off the immersion.

But I'll admit my standards are different.

(Also, owlbears are completely awesome. I like the implications of a world where there are gryphons and chimeras and also new hybrid creatures; in a way, it further justifies the gryphons and such. They remind me of Baum's Kalidahs, which is also good stuff.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Heresy! I have loved the Owlbear since I first saw one on the inside cover of B2 Keep on the Borderlands. To me it is an iconic D&D monster and no edition of D&D would be complete without it!

Yeah, the Owlbear is certainly by far my favorite of the 'composite animal' type monsters. It has a certain weird plausibility about it. Hippogriffs and Chimera and whatnot are just biological abominations. You could almost imagine the owlbear as a real creature though. It is a lot tougher and scarier than a bear too. I mean bears are fairly scary, but they're MUNDANE. They also aren't really usually something that you need to worry about as long as you don't mess with them. The owlbear, it wants to eat you, and it has the means to do so. They DO have their own unique attacks too, in most incarnations, they can shriek, they're very quiet, and they can see really well in the dark. Good stuff!

Personally for me, it's the humanoid monster races that exist in earlier editions.

What exactly was the difference between a gnoll and an orc?

Es[ecially given that I remember the 1e MM talking about how different orc tribes should be described to look and fight differently...so the excuse that you can say gnoll fight differently made no sense since mechanically there WAS no difference..

1 hit die vs 2+2 hit die? Sure, humanoids are all pretty similar, you could just lump them all in together if you really wanted, but there are some differences. AD&D didn't do too much to develop the low level humanoid types, they were really meant to be mooks or introductory monsters. Making each hit die grade a different race was mostly a way of letting the players know they were facing a tougher challenge (at level 1 you kill orcs and run from gnolls).

 

[Almacov]

Yeah, I have to admit, the owlbear is in my top five monsters in the game.

As for the monster I'd be most likely to call a waste of pages, mine is probably the Blood Fiend. It's just so boring. It's got a couple more arms than it should, some sharp claws, and it likes blood.
I'm convinced it's only in the 4e MM because they needed an Epic Level mook (which should really be an oxymoron) that was bland enough it could be slipped into any meal, like nondescript gruel! The problem is that slathering nondescript gruel over my steak won't make it more filling - it will just stop me from eating it.

I just don't see the point.

EDIT: I've just become aware that the Blood Fiend was present in both the 3e Fiend Folio, and City of the Spider Queen. Was it more interesting there?

 

[the Jester]

EDIT: I've just become aware that the Blood Fiend was present in both the 3e Fiend Folio, and City of the Spider Queen. Was it more interesting there?

I don't know about CotSQ, but the FF says, "Blood fiends create more blood fiends from other demons in a manner similar to the way vampires create more vampires from humanoids." They were CR 14, but to spawn more blood fiends, they had to kill an outsider with the evil subtype with their energy drain.

Energy drain, in this case, that offered a saving throw (Fort DC 21) to avoid gaining a negative level in the first place- very unusual!

This means, in practical terms, that a blood fiend would have to hunt lesser demons with few enough HD and a low enough save bonus to drain them completely. It does have a kick-ass at will dominate monster gaze, but other than that, it isn't really that great against evil fiends (it has spell-like abilities like blasphemy, detect good, chaos hammer, unholy blight, blasphemy, desecrate and a few others that are more utility types- darkness and teleport without error).

So, is it cooler than the 4e version? Yes, definitely. But at CR 14 it only has 78 hp and AC 31; it might be a little weak.

YMMV, obviously.

 

[Metalmaster]

Haha cool topic Jester

I only mention my hated monsters from the 4E monster manuals, to keep it shorter.

I love many many monsters, but in every monstermanual there is also a shitload of and things I rather see dumped.

MM1:
- Tangler Beetle (there are spiders, no need for silk shooting beetles)
- Cambion (I never liked halfbloods)
- Spinagon (where is hamatula?)
- Dragonspawn (all of them, so uninspired)
- Drake (all of them, except for rage drake)
- Elemental (I prefer the normal elementals, all of these stupid ones suck)
- Hill Giant (too much like ogre and ettin, nothing special)
- Githzerai (one gith species is enough)
- Hobgoblin (I hate them so much, don't understand that everybody likes them)
- Stone Golem (I prefer Eidolon)
- Grick (ugly stupid thing, mistake to put it into the first MM)
- Hippogriff (only griffon please, this is a joke, why not put in a elephantgriff aswel?)
- Grimlock (Troglodyte is much better for a blind subterrean creature)
- Homunculus (all of them, not monsters, should be in other manual)
- Horse (all of them, at least the non monster horses)
- Humans (this ain't no monsters, so a waste of space in a monster manual)
- Magma Beasts (all but Magma Hurler, boring)
- Panther (displacer beast is already a panther)
- Giant Rat (why dire rat AND Giant rat? Why not cranium rats or rylkars?)
- Shifter (boring, lycanthropes are enough, and I hate halfblood )
- Tiefling (I hate halfblood , its preverse)
- Dire Wolf (worg is much the same)

MM2:
- Abyssal Eviscerator (what was his name again? Oh uninspired bunch of )
- Bloodseep Demon (another stupid demon)
- Gnaw Demon (ANOTHER ONE!)
- Needle Demon (ARGHHHH!!)
- Runespiral Demon (faints)
- Deva (I hate perverse creatures from dates with monsters and humans)
- Devil (all of them except for Erinyes) (what a worthless bunch of devils in this book!)
- Elemental (all of them, except for Dust Devil and Mudman)
- Fell Taint (his power is cool, but could be given to a feyr or something more famous)
- Fey Lingerer (undead eladrin... well why not make everything undead?)
- Ghost Legionnaire (just don't care for this thing)
- Iron Golem (too much like shield guardian)
- Half-Elf (this must be the most stupid monster ever, and it wastes 2 freaking pages!)
- Half-Orc (same as half-elf )
- Another load of Homunculus
- Another load of humans
- Weretiger (yes why not make every animal into a werething? Weretiger looks too much like Rakshasa anyway)
- Marut (I don't hate them, but the 2 in the first MM were enough, really)
- Gray ooze (Serious dump that )
- Retriever (give me bebilith over this machine anyday)
- More shadar-kai... the ones in the mm1 were enough.
- Shark (why not megalodon or something more fresh and original?)
- Slaughterstone Construct (Very uninspired and boring, I rather saw Clockwork horrors back in this manual)


MM3:
- Ape (what is this manual called again? The manual of apes? I'm fine with girallon, yeti and su monsters, but cut these apes)
- Another load of beholders... really 2 manuals with these cool things is enough, I like beholders, but not these.
- Bleh another load of halfbreed cambion...
- Rage Devil
- Slime Devil
- Vizier Devil
- Dread Warrior (did this thing really need 2 pages? they are just skeletons...)
- Frog (at least give us some cool high level frog with that stuff, these frogs suck.)
- More sucky hill giants.
- More sucky spiders, I rather saw more centipedes or scorpions.
- Tanarukk (you already know I hate halfbreeds eh?)
- Wilden (nice another elf-like breed...)
- Xivort (there are enough much more cooler small humanoids already, this one doesn't make sense at all)


Finally finished

 

[Joshua Randall]

Your issues with miscegenation are fascinating.

Lie back on the cough and tell me about your mother.