What Monster(s) are Overexposed?

[Remathilis]

Lots of campaigns, modules, and adventures deal with a certain group of monsters, but certain groups get a heckuva lot more focus than others.

Which groups, do you think, are overexposed (Yay, another undead module. gag.) and which don't see enough love?

Note: The first group could include other low-HD humanoids like gnolls. Giants could include ogres and trolls. Demons and Devils are split to see if one side is overexposed over the other. Aberrants include the classic D&D monsters (beholders, mind flayers) and all the Far Realm/CoC inspired creatures of madness. Elemental Monsters are creatures composed of mostly one type of attack/terrain (fire bats, sea creatures). Dragons include highly draconic creatures as well as the normal dragons.

 

[Grymar]

I picked Drow. Frankly, all of the the others can be used well, even if it is rare, but I haven't seen a drow in years that doesn't make me want to roll my eyes.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Drow are a fine race, but definitely have been overused.

I also think dragons should be used sparingly; I don't like how often they're presented in published material as being another monster in a dungeon or a random encounter.

The rest I think all have a great deal of playability and are not particularly overused.

 

[CleverNickName]

I picked aberrants. I never did like the "way out there" flavor of mind flayers, beholders, Slime Horrors from the Xabqjoparivrafd Dimension, etc.

"Oh look, another creature with tentacles and psionic powers."










...I actually like the drow...

 

[renau1g]

My picks were drow and kobolds, but that's because someone at WoTC has mad love for the kobolds and I've gotten sick of fighting them in just about every low-level adventure.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Gotta go with drow. A lot of the others you mentioned - undead, humanoids, elementals, fey - are broader categories of creature. Drow are a much more specific type, technically a subrace of elves, and yet still we see them a lot.

I'd like to see some more obscure monsters from myth and folklore. Alea Publishing did an excellent, though very brief, 4e write-up of John Mandeville-type headless men, called Anthropophagi. Or how about a rat king instead of the far more common wererat?

 

[Dragonbait]

I voted Drow. They are used in an inordinately large amount of adventures for a subrace. Others are used in excess, too. Races like orcs, goblinoids, kobolds, ogres, undead, and so on. Unlike those I just listed, the drow are often used as the big-bad-evil, the puppet masters, or appear in dramatic pivotal encounters. More so than other creatures that could fill the same role. Illithids, yuan-ti, beholders and the like are very underused as a non-standard-race main villain.

...I just thought about it and it could also be that unlike many of the other races that could be the secret masters of evil that I listed, the drow are the only race that is open content..

 

[Wicht]

You need an option for those of us who don't have a problem with much of any of these being used a lot. Maybe Drow for me but not enough to really vote for it and the last Drow adventures I've seen (from Paizo) were pretty well done.

Then again, I've never opened a 4e module yet so maybe there's more drow in those than I know.

 

[Shemeska]

The Far Realms are overexposed, especially if everything with tentacles and odd anatomy is linked to it (as in 4e), but I felt the same way at times in 3.x as well. Not lovecraftian monsters in general, but those with a defined link to the Far Realms as a 'generic land of gooey more evil than evil that cannot be defined even more evil than chaotic evil its that evil'.

I like that stuff, but it has bordered on overexposure at times in the past few years. There are times that it is done very well (Cordell's subtle and very well done use of it in the 2e 'Guide to the Ethereal', and 3e's 'Lords of Madness' by Jacobs et al) and other times that it isn't handled as well (the more recent making of all abberations everywhere linked to the Far Realms).

 

[ExploderWizard]

The drow by far. Even if the chicks are hot those outfits are far too revealing.