Silly Monsters

[Bran Blackbyrd]

A lot of good ones so far but I gotta go with the Tirapheg from the original Fiend Folio. Don't know if it's ever been brought back.

If memory serves it had three legs but only one had a foot. Three heads but two were featureless. The one in the middle had eyes I think. And it had two fingers coming out the front of its torso.

The Tirapheg was strange, but for some reason it never bugged me. Hehe. I don't think it's ever been brought back.
More stupid creatures from the Fiend Folio: Flail Snail, Grell, Lava Children, Tiger Fly... I've always hated Grell.

MMII had the Boggle, which I've also always detested, and the Wolf-In-Sheep's-Clothing.
For those who don't know, the Wolf-In-Sheep's-Clothing was a creature that looked like a tree stump with a rabbit sitting on it. The rabbit (actually part of the creature) was just bait, the stump was actually a monster with a gaping maw and eyestalks.

Gomez: Nice.

 

[Gomez]

Unfortunately, that picture of Legion really doesn't look like a tojanda at all...


Demiurge out.

Ouch!

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Girallon, for me. I mean come on. It's a f***ing four armed carnivorous ape! I can't be the only one that finds this incredibly f***ing DUMB! They would leave out banshees, but have a four armed ape? GGGGAAAAUGH!!!

And second me for the tojanida. WTF is that supposed to be? Has anybody ever even used one? They left the zaratan out for this piece of s*** monster?

*head explodes*

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Don't you mean right up there with the rust monster? Hmmm, party has a lot of cool metal stuff.... I'll attack them with this flat lizard thing with a propeller on its tail that eats rust!

Well, in D&D, they use creatures for this work. In "The Black Eye" (Das Schwarze Auge - DSA; a German Roleplaying Game, basically the german answer to D&D), many adventures required the characters to travel via sea - and the ship would ALWAYS sink, and the characters would lose all their precious equipment, to start at zero. Just to make it easier for the adventure designers (I guess - though in DSA, magical items and other powerful stuff is quite rare) to design the adventure (and especially the encounter).
It`s a wonder that a) adventures ever bother to use a ship, b) the captain of those ships allows them aboard. (maybe there is an "adventurer insurance")... :=

 

[RangerWickett]

That's what a Charisma 30 means! Even mindless oozes are swayed by your smooth words!

I had a scene in one game where a player drank a potion of glibness, and a potion of glibness was simultaneously tossed into the gelatinous cube the villains were using as a waste disposal unit. The battle of wills was brief. Stanely Deadtree, Herald of Zorok, the Three-Headed Chicken God of Everything, rolled a 1. The cube rolled a 20. Convinced by the cube's persuasive argument, Stanely rushed over to see if he really could swim in jelly.

 

[Sejs]

It's even worse when the dragon parent is a good-aligned dragon. Now you know it was by choice, so how does a silver dragon seduce a gelatinous cube?

Oh that's easy. Champagne makes a gelatinous cube all giggley.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Aren't disenchanters the horse-like creatures with the long noses that eat enchantments/magical energy? Am I the only one that thought that this made sense in a world as magic rich as the default D&D game is?

I've thrown them in a couple of times in the past. Not to "screw over the players" but just because I figured that a world so rich in magic would probably spawn something that fed on such abundant energy.

 

[Richards]

A couple quick words in defense of the girallon: yes, it is just a four-armed carnivorous ape, but that's the whole point. The John Carter of Mars series of adventure novels, by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, featured as one of the native threats on the planet Mars (or "Barsoom," as the natives referred to it) a multiarmed, carnivorous ape with white fur. This creature was only ever referred to as a "white ape." I remember back before 3E officially came out, the playtest version of the Monster Manual (which at the time only included a very few new creatures) had the girallon under the name "white ape" (which was an add-on to the "carnivorous ape" entry). Apparently the designers decided it needed a bit more camouflage, so they named it the "girallon" - which, you'll note, consists of the letters of the word "gorilla" rearranged with an "n" slapped on the end.

My point? The John Carter of Mars series has been a source of inspiration for the D&D game since early on in the game's history. For example, the osquip is a poorly-disguised Barsoomin "ulsio," a multilegged ratlike creature. I'm just surprised we don't have thoats, banths, and zitidars running around most D&D campaigns.

Although, now that I think about it, the banth (a multilegged lionlike creature) may have in part been the inspiration for such multilimbed D&D felines as the displacer beast and the cantobele, and the Gamma World centisteed - a multilegged horse - may trace its ancestry to Barsoom's thoat. I can't recall having seen any multilegged mastodons in D&D, though.

Back on topic: besides the others mentioned so far, I'd like to nominate the umpleby - you know, the 8-foot pile of walking hair that gave off electrical energy in the form of static electricity...and then promptly fell asleep.

Johnathan

 

[Elemental]

.

Half-dragons! Dragons are insatiable, and will mate with anything from gelatinous cubes to dolphins! Try not to think of the biological and physical mechanics behind that. One of these days I'm going to post a half-red dragon/half-copper creeping coins (monster from Angband) to show just how stupid that template is!

It's even worse when the dragon parent is a good-aligned dragon. Now you know it was by choice, so how does a silver dragon seduce a gelatinous cube?

Well, you know how it--you're in human form, you get drunk, everyone's doing silly dares, and someone knows of a cave where there's this ooze....


Rust Monsters aren't so bad, so long as they're played as a predator that acts like an animal, rather than a kamikaze sword-destroyer that doesn't care if it dies, so long as it destroys magic stuff first.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

A couple quick words in defense of the girallon: yes, it is just a four-armed carnivorous ape, but that's the whole point. The John Carter of Mars series of adventure novels, by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, featured as one of the native threats on the planet Mars (or "Barsoom," as the natives referred to it) a multiarmed, carnivorous ape with white fur. This creature was only ever referred to as a "white ape." I remember back before 3E officially came out, the playtest version of the Monster Manual (which at the time only included a very few new creatures) had the girallon under the name "white ape" (which was an add-on to the "carnivorous ape" entry). Apparently the designers decided it needed a bit more camouflage, so they named it the "girallon" - which, you'll note, consists of the letters of the word "gorilla" rearranged with an "n" slapped on the end.

My point? The John Carter of Mars series has been a source of inspiration for the D&D game since early on in the game's history. For example, the osquip is a poorly-disguised Barsoomin "ulsio," a multilegged ratlike creature. I'm just surprised we don't have thoats, banths, and zitidars running around most D&D campaigns.

Although, now that I think about it, the banth (a multilegged lionlike creature) may have in part been the inspiration for such multilimbed D&D felines as the displacer beast and the cantobele, and the Gamma World centisteed - a multilegged horse - may trace its ancestry to Barsoom's thoat. I can't recall having seen any multilegged mastodons in D&D, though.

Back on topic: besides the others mentioned so far, I'd like to nominate the umpleby - you know, the 8-foot pile of walking hair that gave off electrical energy in the form of static electricity...and then promptly fell asleep.

Johnathan

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh, now this...this I can live with! I just had it in my head that the white apes were two armed, but it's been two years since I've read them.