D&D General The abandoned core monsters of D&D

[Wofano Wotanto]

Now I want to run a campaign where the PCs have to prevent an army of extraplanar beaver-folk from turning the entire Material Plane into a flooded wasteland.

They'd do it, don't think they wouldn't.

Make it a quest to stop them from getting an artifact set of adamantium teeth that will let them chew a hole into the plane of water.

 

[ichabod]

Now I want to run a campaign where the PCs have to prevent an army of extraplanar beaver-folk from turning the entire Material Plane into a flooded wasteland.

Check out Beowulf's Children by Niven, Pournelle, and Barnes. It's got giant lizard beavers on speed.

 

[Tonguez]

They'd do it, don't think they wouldn't.

Make it a quest to stop them from getting an artifact set of adamantium teeth that will let them chew a hole into the plane of water.

Then theres the Castoroides (Dire Beavers) in the Ark Survival game, they may look cute and docile but never make the mistake of hitting one. Those things are tough and the whole population will hunt you down

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This was probably cut from later publications because it's from The Chronicles of Narnia

I don't think there's any way the Lewis estate could claim ownership of giant beavers, even if they were inclined to.

 

[ilgatto]

I don't think there's any way the Lewis estate could claim ownership of giant beavers, even if they were inclined to.

I'm pretty sure giant animals are not subject to intellectual property law. Do you mean a desire to dissociate D&D from Narnia, which is conspicuously absent from Appendix N? Mr and Mrs Beaver aren't much bigger than real world beavers (which are sizable animals) anyway. Reepicheep is the only really giant animal. (...)

Fair points. I've just always thought their removal was a copyright issue. I also didn't realize that Mr and Mrs Beaver weren't 6' long/tall. Hmm..., curiouser & curiouser.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Fair points. I've just always thought their removal was a copyright issue. I also didn't realize that Mr and Mrs Beaver weren't 6' long/tall. Hmm..., curiouser & curiouser.

They are child sized, since they are interacting with children. A little larger than most real world beavers, but not much. It is mentioned that Aslan’s blessing could make animals “greater” as well as able to speak and walk “upright”.

 

[JEB]

wow I dont even remember these creatures and always thought the floating eye was the product of some LSD inspired art from an album cover.

I'm pretty sure the floating eye is based on this.

I also seem to recall Windwalkers were a specifically Al-Qadim monster too?

Wind walkers did make an appearance in Assassin Mountain! Then they were reprinted in the 2e MC Annual. (Maybe I should upgrade the spreadsheet to include some of these intra-edition appearances...)

Of course, this would open up a wholly different and rather massive can of worms.
Giant rams?
Giant porcupines?
Giant badgers? Giant skunks? Giant weasels? Giant wolverines?
Giant boars? Giant hyenas?

Not to mention giant bhaergalas, giant cooshees, giant debbis and, of course, giant and minimal monkey spiders.

Indeed. The giant mammal template was almost certainly put in the Monstrous Manual to help economize on space, since they also cut the aforementioned giant mammals (which had been in MC Vol. 1 and 2). But they must have recognized that as not good enough, since the originals made a full comeback in MC Annual 2!

Heh, makes you wonder what DMs were to make of the MCC1 Locathah entry.

Ha, oops. (Though my favorite error in that book is including ixitxachitl twice: once by itself, once under "fish".)

These where specially designed to make life difficult for PCs lucky (i.e. fudged rolls) enough to have psionics. Since 2nd edition completely changed how psionics worked, they became redundant.

FWIW, the cerebral parasite did reappear in The Complete Psionics Handbook, outside the 2e core. (After that it's just been a disease, though.)

 

[Orius]

The other question is, why has the main D&D line (AD&D onward) been so reluctant to include these Basic monsters in later core lineups? 3e tried, with the athach and nightshades, but that's pretty much been it. It's even rare to find these monsters updated in non-core books for later editions (excepting the Mystara MC in 2e, which pretty much had "update Basic D&D monsters" as its remit).

I think it's probably more cynical than that: They created different sets of monsters to insulate themselves from paying Arneson for AD&D, which had a different set of monsters and thus is clearly a different game than AD&D.

I'd have to concur. Except for the fantasy and folklore staples as well as the giant animals, D&D and AD&D's monster lines were probably kept separate because of the legal issues with Dave Arneson. Still, TSR did produce the Mystara MC for AD&D which had many of those monsters. By the time WotC bought TSR and then brought out 3e, many of those monsters had fallen deep into obscurity and thus were maybe not seen as being worth updating.

Is the Rules Cyclopedia manscorpion different from the D&D tlincalli, which has manscorpion as an alternative name?

Not sure about the Mystara based manscorpions, though I think 2e didn't make a distinction. But 3e has I think at least 2 different ones, there's a scorpionfolk in MMII and the stinger in Monsters of Faerun and I think both have different stats. They have different CRs.

Not the only case of overlap. There's a goatman entry in the Savage Coast MC, but a different type of goatfolk in 3e's MMIII though that involves 2 different editions. Or as I mentioned already in one of these threads how the Miniatures Handbook added catfolk when D&D already had tabaxi and rakastas. There's a lot of overlaps and similarities over the years and it's a bit frustrating that the designers didn't just convert something that already existed instead of whipping up a new monster that's similar to an existing one.

• Floating eye, masher, etc.: Bias against aquatic monsters, as suggested by @Remathilis

These are pretty obscure even among 1e fans, so they probably were just forgotten. The masher doesn't have an illustration in the 1e MM which may be a reason why it's obscure. Both got 2e conversions in MC Annual 2 though.

 

[Voadam]

The masher doesn't have an illustration in the 1e MM which may be a reason why it's obscure.

Neither did the Wind Walker.

You had to get the fourth set of 1e Monster cards to get an illustration.

But it was worth it for Erol Otus art.

 

[JEB]

Not sure about the Mystara based manscorpions, though I think 2e didn't make a distinction. But 3e has I think at least 2 different ones, there's a scorpionfolk in MMII and the stinger in Monsters of Faerun and I think both have different stats. They have different CRs.

The scorpionfolk in 3e's MM II actually has an interesting pedigree: it originated in the third-party Creature Collection, as the "sandmasker". Along with another CC monster, the "iron tusker" (rebranded as the "razor boar"), it was ported via the OGL to make an appearance in MM II. The only time I'm aware of that Wizards took advantage of the OGL in the other direction.

But in short, no, not related to the D&D manscorpion/stinger/tlincalli.