What monster types have been done to death?

[Conaill]

FYI - I just started a new "What monster types would you like to see more of?" poll, just to see teh other side of the coin. It'll be interesting to see how much (or perhaps how little?) correlation there is between the two.

Personally, I would *love* to see more Animals, Feys and Magical Beasts - three categories people apparently feel have *not* yet been done to death. Then again, somehow such products never seem to create as much buzz as yet another dragon book...

 

[Scarbonac]

Dragons; sick to death of 'em.

 

[Shade]

I should have voted OTHER....after I thought about it I know the one type of creature I don't ever want to see again.

The half-anything.

No more half-elementals, no more half-constructs, no more half-dragons, etc. Just sat no to half-anything.

I don't mind half-templates, but no more half-humanoid races (half-elf, half-orc)!

 

[Drowbane]

Dragons: All I need (YMMV) is 3 True Dragons (As is we have 3 types of Dragons. Uber (Gold/Red), Average(Blue/Green), and Weak (White/Black/Copper)), Wyverns, and perhaps 1/2 Dragons...

Elementals: I don't use these much...

Outsiders (Celestials): I'm all for more Fiends and whatnot... but I don't use the Celestials we have *now*, why would I want more? Of course, if I get back to my Epic lvl Evil Campaign... I'll be needing them.


I love templated Wyverns... and making my own lesser Dragons using other stuff + 1/2 Dragon. Ever seen a 1/2 Dragon Heavy Warhorse? Or perhaps a 1/2 Dragon Large Viper?

 

[mythusmage]

You know, what with all the half-dragons running around one can only conclude that for all their vaunted wisdom, dragons have really lousy taste in sexual partners.

 

[Nebulous]

I freakin love monster books, own probably ten of them, and a couple template books. It's the art that really gets to me now, as the stats all blur together into one big ball that the PC's will rarely be privy to see anyway. If the art doesn't bring a monster alive, then the stats won't do it for me either, as you can open a book, drop a finger, pick a monster, and then slap a picture to it from somewhere else if you want.

Cool flavor text is what is needed, stuff that is fun to read above and beyond a statblock.

Love the monsters though. If a book came out every year with thought-provoking art, scary stuff, surreal stuff, and then twists on the genre, i'd snap it up.

And yes, as someone pointed out Denizens of Avadnu was rocking. So is Monsternomicon. Two examples of great art and great flavort text over and above the norm.

 

[Orius]

Humanoids and Undead.

I'm jumping on the "No more subraces and furries!" bandwagon here. I tire of subraces; do we really need a whole bunch of different stats for common humanoids that are different only in terms of culture? D&D models all of humanity's racial and cultural variations with just one single race, so I don't see the pressing need for a dozen different dwarf race and twice as many elves. Same thing with the anthropomorphic stuff, sticking an animal head and fur (or feathers or scales or whatever) on a human body and making a new PC race doesn't really take too much creativity. Besides, I got enough of these from previous editions of D&D that I don't need new ones. And I don't need half-races or near human races either; I don't feel a need for that stuff either when there are already half-elves, half-orcs, half-ogres, tieflings, aasimar, genasi, githyanki and githzerai.

As for undead, I think there's enough of a spread of undead over the different CRs to cover the course of an entire campaign. Also, templating is a good way over handling these them as well. Of all the monsters that were introduced for the first time in the 3.0 MM the two that least me the most underwhelmed were undead — the allip and morhg.

I was tempted to vote Animal, that's just there to cover normal and dire animals and most normal animals that a DM is likely to use are statted, with the remainder being easy enough to extrapolate from existing stas. An exception would be strange prehistoric beasts that are now exinct that haven't yet been statted in 3e.

 

[Shade]

It looks like its time to call a moratorium on undead, dragons, and humanoids.

 

[The_Gneech]

What gets me about the proliferation of undead, is the sheer weirdness and/or "What does that have to do with being undead?"-ness of the ones that have showed up lately. To me, "undead" means "something that should be dead, but is still kicking" -- which implies either a corpse, or a spirit. Not weird extradimensional thingies that have never been alive in the first place.

-The Gneech

 

[Altalazar]

I am not sure of the exact ratios, but generally, if they try and keep a good variety in the future, some of each, and as long as they are interesting and fill a different niche (or an old niche in a new way) I'm happy.

What I'd like to see is something like the massive encounter tables of old in the 1E DMG - by geographical region, so I know if I'm in a cold / mountainous region, what sort of creatures might particularly like it there. That can be handy for random encounters. That is also handy for creating an adventure in a particular locale.