What monsters are poorly designed?

[Berandor]

You took the words right out of my mouth.

...it must have been while you were kissing me...

The mindflayer has one great ability and hit points that kill it quicker than a stepped-on-bug.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The Tarrasque.

What's wrong with it?

 

[LordVyreth]

I'm not a fan of the 3.5 hydras. I understand it's difficult to create a good method for dealing with a creature that responds so uniquely to specific injuries in specific locations in a system with no official called-shot rules, but introducing a de facto feat-based called-shot that only works on one monster was not the solution. And if you don't have that specific feat, you could be fighting a monster with an obscenely low CR considering their multiple attacks and fast healing.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Ogre Mages - simply not worth their CR. Why is a CR 9 creature casting sleep? And only once per day? It can't even threaten a village with that.

Vampires - energy drain with their fists? Plus the weaknesses (except sunlight) are, IMO, very stupid.

Infinite darkness and invisibility effects more than make up for that, IMO.

Yeah, they can do more damage with their firsts than their obvious special ability. I don't like it much either.

 

[francisca]

Meh. Beholder. That is poor design! I mean, how does it eliminate bodily waste products?

On a serious note, I think this thread points out that the CR, while often useful and a boon to the DM, is not the be-all, end-all for determing what constitutes an appropriate encounter. Each DM must decide if a particular creature is appropriate for the party, on a case-by-case basis.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Personally I think it's high time monsters started working a lot more like classes and a lot less like stop-gap challenges. They also need to start acting as part of the world, rather than reclusive things that only emerge when the PC's are around.

I've got no problem with monsters that you can use smart tactics to overcome...the ultimate purpose of a monster is to expend party rescources, be it reviving the barbarian or helping out the halflnig who couldn't fly.

What gets me is paper tigers (mindflayer! pretty much any fey!), melee monsters (Yes, I have seven attacks on a full attack, plus rend and pounce, why do you ask?), and undead (sooooooo many....sooooo few hp!).

By "acting more like classes," I think monsters should get more features with their HD than just hp, and that 1 monster HD should approximate 1 PC HD, and everything that comes with it. I think that the powers of monsters should be tied to HD and advancement, so that a mind flayer out of the box may not have very many powers, but as you give it HD and advance it, it explodes with psionic goo (dness).

But now I'm giving away inspiration for things I should be writing. Heh. If I get my way, you'll be seeing better monsters in the future.

 

[ken-ichi]

Actually the Hydra sunder thing works on several creatures with tentacles or multi heads. Giant octopi and giant squid and a few others in various monster books.

 

[Amaroq]

By "acting more like classes," I think monsters should get more features with their HD than just hp, and that 1 monster HD should approximate 1 PC HD, and everything that comes with it. I think that the powers of monsters should be tied to HD and advancement, so that a mind flayer out of the box may not have very many powers, but as you give it HD and advance it, it explodes with psionic goo (dness).

But now I'm giving away inspiration for things I should be writing. Heh. If I get my way, you'll be seeing better monsters in the future.

Yeah! Let's ditch this whole 'Monster Manual' - give me the 'Monster Designer's Handbook', complete with CR values of abilities, ac, saves, etc.

I mean, thats what I've done ever since my 1st-edition campaign where I discovered that re-naming and re-describing monsters brought the game back to life for my players, because they no longer knew cold what it could do until they'd fought it several times, just like their characters. Why not give us a solid set of rules for it?

 

[AuraSeer]

Meh. Beholder. That is poor design! I mean, how does it eliminate bodily waste products?

I've seen two explanations. The more physically believable is that its digestive system has only the one opening. When it has to get rid of any internal waste, including the undigestible parts of food, it essentially vomits.

The other option is that its whole metabolism is magical. Any matter that can't be dealt with by biological processes is magically disintegrated.

 

[takyris]

Beholders can be wimps, unless you play their Intelligence correctly. A beholder in a dark cavern who hits the party with its long-range antimagic cone and then telekinetically throws a boulder at the party wizard for 13d6 damage is doing alright for itself. (Yes, I've done that. Yes, the party panicked. Yes, it was awesome. Yes, the party wizard survived, darn him.)

A beholder who makes a lair out of carved tunnels, which have varying degrees of slope, so that sometimes the party has to use resources (or split the party) letting a flyer or climber get up a sheer vertical tunnel wall is darn hard to kill. Lots of fun there.