What monster should I use?

[Quasqueton]

What I would like is some sort of monster to be stalking them amongst the ruins; a continuous threat that hampers their exploration of the city (but doesn't drive them away screaming) but that won't be just fought and dealt with all at once.

Go to Walmart and buy one of the 10"? Silver Surfer action figures for $6. This represents a 50'-tall greater stone golem. Something that can be heard walking from a good distance as it patrols the city. Something that towers over many buildings. When you put the action figure on the battlegrid, the Players/PCs will immediately know it is something they should avoid. [A greater stone golem is listed as Huge, but the action figure represents something Gargantuan. Adjust its size modifiers in its stat block, and you're golden.]

The stone golem is CR 16. But as it only has a speed of 20', the PCs should be able to outrun it. It has no ranged capabilities -- so long as the PCs stay away from it, it can't hurt them. And as it has no intelligence, it is easy to outsmart. [Once PCs are out of sight, they are out of its mind.]

The action figure drives home the danger of the creature in a visual way. This is something that the PCs will always have to be mindful of. Something that will always be around as a threat. But something that can relatively easily be avoided without confrontation.

I did something similar with an eldar treant represented by a Treebeard action figure. When the Players saw the "mini" on the battlegrid, they knew it was badass.

Quasqueton

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Necromancer Games' Tome of Horrors I. 3.0, but still a great source of converted monsters.

Not sure if these have been converted to 3.5 yet, but the AD&D MMII had a low-powered creature called a "Vilstrak," basically stone-skineed, insectoid-looking creatures with clublike hands that could move through stone freely (IIRC).

 

[Kunimatyu]

I like the Gargauntuan treant/stone golem idea. Some templated earth elementals would make decent hit-and-run opponents.

Of course, a Xorn totally trumps an earth elemental for creep factor, and an Elder Xorn would be just about perfect as a continuous harasser, and it gets to knock around the party with Awesome Blow.

 

[Mark Causey]

You could go with a slight modification of the 'elf' in the Sunless Citadel (it wanted to be a dragon so much that it messed with foul and fel magics and became a weak troll). These elves wanted to be closer to their dwarven kin (or maybe just a few of them, like a cult). They became abominations as well - minotaurs. The base minotaur is good for weak encounters, add the Feral template to them to beef them up some later encounters, and give them class levels on top of that for upper range/bbeg/final boss encounters.

Make it a real maze!

 

[diaglo]

Heh, yea he said no undead, plus you must have missed the part about the party being 7th level! Last I checked, a banshee was something like CR 19. That was my initial thought as well, but just wouldn't work for his group.

sure but with ghost as a template now.. you don't have to have really, really high CR monsters.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I gotta say, the giant stone golem works. What's nice about it is that it shows the elves, at one time, were quite magicaly adept -- so whatever knocked them down (and petrified all the trees) was pretty serious, and that ratchets up the mystery.

Me, I was going with a half-earth elemental behir, because behir are always cool.

 

[painandgreed]

Evil (or CN) pixies with a couple of class levels in rogue and fighter. Flying, invisible, damage resistance, spell resistance with the ability to polymorph and cause illusions. They could appear as anything the wanted to and might do it just for the fun of it even if it was a particularly deadly joke. Throw in sleep and forget arrows and you've got the makings for people to disappear from the group knocking them off one by one.

 

[ElvishBard]

I would say a basalisk should be in there, as everything is stone, and what is better at turning stuff into stone than a basalisk? Just make sure that if you do that you have some statues (petrified elves) with terrified expressions that seem very lifelike. The basalisk would probably get a good amount of food from the left overs from when the elves left, and adventures that go there, so there could be quite a few of them, maybe even a dozen.

 

[Warehouse23]

Mmmm.... half-earth-elemental treant....

 

[skullsmurfer]

Encounter in stone ruins

I have a copy of the old orange D&D creature catalougue. Under the heading of Living Statue is a Rock/Ooze Animated Statue. It is a magical construct cast from stone and filled with gray ooze. It resembles a large stone golem but it is only resistant to 5th level magic and below. The cool thing about it is that it can merge with stone work only to reappear at the most inconvenient moments. It is supposed to be able to spit out 2 globs of ooze per round. I think ooze is treated as a sort of acid attack. Either way I think it is a rare enough to be interesting. the stats are from DMR2, so it needs to be converted.