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

[DrunkonDuty]

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.

Now that right there I call a win for the GM!

 

[Richards]

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.

And that's when he found out it wasn't a normal tree he had tied himself to, it was an evil treant....

Johnathan

 

[DrunkonDuty]

All my referents are from PF 1e or DND 3.5 and earlier but not that much has changed, right?

As a GM I tend to go through phases of loving different things. There was a time in the long ago I tried to work in Shadow Mastiffs and Yeth Hounds every chance I got. Much more recently Hags have featured very regularly. Giants are a perennial favourite.

I like Mind Flayers, but I would only want to use them in rather specific types of campaigns. I'm not even sure I know what I mean by that, except to say that I'd want to use them right.

I haven't gotten anywhere near the same amount of time as a player that I've had as GM so I haven't had the chance to meet many monsters more than once. I think it's hard to build up a good "love to hate" with only one encounter. I did once play about 2/3rds of the Age of Worms AP and I got heartily sick of (in a good way) Kyuss Spawn.

 

[CleverNickName]

Well dragons are a given; they're literally the name of the game. Of course I'm gonna have dragons in my D&D campaign setting. That aside:

No matter the campaign setting, I will find a way to incorporate at least one lich, displacer beast, and mimic. They are probably my absolute favorite monsters in the book.

And I won't use mind flayers anywhere in my campaigns; they might as well not be in the Monster Manual. They're great for a Lovecraftian horror game like Call of Cthulhu, or maybe as an alien villain in a sci-fi game like Stars Without Number...but I don't care for them in D&D. They clash with my hobbit haflings and canine kobolds.

 

[el-remmen]

Bullywugs.

Oh and as I love to say, every dungeon needs a garbage pit and every garbage pit needs an otyugh. So yeah, otyughs.

 

[Tutara]

My favourite ‘monsters’ are bandits/pirates, simply because of the vast variety of tactics and variations you can put into a raiding party.

That said, I also like leucrottas, froghemoths, weird beholder variants and bodaks because they all have interesting mechanics beyond multiattack and some hit points.

 

[James Gasik]

One of the people in my playgroup mentioned another critter that they despise, and I agree: the Bezekira or Hellcat. I don't know if they have current 5e stats, but as of the last time I had to deal with one, it was invisible in areas of bright light. Obnoxious!

Also I'm not particularly fond of Hags.

A monster I really have always liked, but rarely get a chance to use is the mighty Marilith. I'm also partial to Gynosphinxes.

 

[James Gasik]

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!

There's a bit of this occasionally with constructs, I remember back in the olden days when Golems were animated by Elemental spirits. A neat creature I've only used once, the Grisgol, is a special construct that is animated by the Phylactery of a Lich, but nope, it's not Undead either.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I remember back in the olden days when Golems were animated by Elemental spirits

That's still true in 5e. This is from the 5e Monster Manual:

Elemental Spirit in Material Form. The construction of a golem begins with the building of its body, requiring great command of the craft of sculpting, stonecutting, ironworking, or surgery. Sometimes a golem’s creator is the master of the art, but often the individual who desires a golem must enlist master artisans to do the work.

After constructing the body from clay, flesh, iron, or stone, the golem’s creator infuses it with a spirit from the Elemental Plane of Earth. This tiny spark of life has no memory, personality, or history. It is simply the impetus to move and obey. This process binds the spirit to the artificial body and subjects it to the will of the golem’s creator.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

There's a bit of this occasionally with constructs, I remember back in the olden days when Golems were animated by Elemental spirits. A neat creature I've only used once, the Grisgol, is a special construct that is animated by the Phylactery of a Lich, but nope, it's not Undead either.

I mean, let's be honest, the creature types in the MM dont make much sense.

Construct should be a subtype, like:
Flesh Golem, Undead (construct)

Same thing for ''monstrosities''. If they the creature breeds true and have a natural place in the (fantasy) natural order, they should be beast, not ''monstrosities''. It's like saying some types of dogs or vegetables arent an animal or plant because they were bred by science at first. Monstrosities should be for creature outside the natural order, a one off of evolution created by magic, such as yuan-ti anathema.