D&D General Monsters you love to hate, and monsters you hate to love.

[Vaalingrade]

I absolutely relish my burning hatred for the Grell and to a lesser extent all Lovecraft rip-offs and all other attempts to be the weird kid in class who puts staples in his arm to for attention.

 

[Omand]

My brain is really slow today. Thank you to everyone else for giving me a kick into gear,

Aquatic: Sahuagin, Sharks, Giant Octopi, Dragon Turtles

Undead: Wights, Wraiths, Skeletons, Zombies

Beasts: Giant Spiders, Giant Snakes, Carrion Crawlers, Owlbears (sorry @Morrus Bearowls).

And yes, Grells. Thanks @Vaalingrade for the assist. I agree, so annoying in some ways. Plus I am not a fun of Lovecraftian horror, but I darned well do love throwing a brain with a parrot's beak and paralyzing tentacles at a party.

 

[Omand]

Sorry @James Gasik for sabotaging the thread with my disjointed entries.

So much fun though, thanks for starting the thread.

 

[J.Quondam]

(I think a grell is just what's left over after disintegrating an owlbear.)

 

[MGibster]

Oh man, do I hate Ropers. Such an obnoxious monster.

I made the mistake of trusting the challenge rating of a roper and threw a few at my PCs. I ended up having the ropers retreat once the PCs got them to half hit points. And it was a good thing I did because otherwise I might have would up with a TPK.

 

[James Gasik]

Sorry @James Gasik for sabotaging the thread with my disjointed entries.

So much fun though, thanks for starting the thread.

No need to apologize at all. It's exactly what I wanted.

I think we can file all "aquatic" and "good-aligned" monsters together- traditionally, these tend to be way scarier than equivalent monsters.

 

[Alzrius]

I love to hate rust monsters. I had a fighter who lost his enchanted armor to one once, which was a very painful loss. And shortly thereafter, the same thing happened during my first (and only) experience with True Dungeon at Gen Con. Needless to say, I've developed a Pavlovian nervous tic whenever they make an appearance in our game.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Effin' scarecrows!

Once our DM made us do a long-ish quest about a farmer who delved in necromancy to put the ghost of his daughter and wife in 2 scarecrows (the object). So, as a a lvl 1 abjurer I put Protection against Evil on our tank only to have my DM says ''aha, it does nothing 'cause its not an undead, its a construct''. So I wasted a spell there.

Then the damn things could call for swarms of raven. In the description, I thought we were facing 4-5 fat crows and that's it, so I cast my remaining spell ''Sleep'' to put them to out of combat. But noes! It's not 4-5 1 hp ravens, its actually a swarm of ravens, as per the MM, so it has a boat load of hit points and my spell is wasted, again. The next turn they killed my wizard...

To this day I still call BS. If a thing is animated by a necromantic ritual to bind a ghost, its an Undead!

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

As a DM, I have a mild obsession with Mind Flayers and tend to have at least one in most of my campaigns, even when they don't play a major role. I just think their lore and creature design is amazing, and love all of the variant Mind Flayers (Gnome Ceremorphs, Elder Brain Dragons, Mindwitnesses, etc) and creatures created by them (Intellect Devourers, Cranium Rats, Oblex, etc). I'm also really fond of Aboleths and Beholders and their variants/creations. I'm partial to Star Spawn and Core Spawn, too. I guess that in general, I tend to like Aberrations. I hate to love them because my players absolutely despise them and always dread it when I put them in my campaigns.

As a player, I love to hate Faerie Dragons. And Fey-related creatures in general. One of my characters got separated from the rest of the party and harassed by two violet faerie dragons so much that they almost died.

 

[Swedish Chef]

My players hate Ankhegs. The first time I used them was back in 2ed. The party had stopped for lunch and everyone failed their checks and were thus surprised by the 3 ankhegs bursting from under the ground. The party lost 2 horses and almost one PC to that attack. In 3rd edition, I used them again as a random encounter early one evening. The party halfling had opted to sleep under a wagon after being attacked by flying creatures the night before when sleeping on the wagon. After being swallowed whole in the initial attack and barely surviving the party destroying the ankheg to release the halfling, the player opted to have his character sleep in a tree, after tying himself to a branch.

Another player absolutely hates girallons. The fact that his thief was being soloed by a girallon after being separated from the party, and the girallon managed a critical rend when the pc was about 25% health, probably is a key factor in his intense hatred and fear of those monsters.