What's the lamest monster you've seen made cool, and how?

[HeavenShallBurn]

We can always take this thread in another direction... I think the Tendriculos is the lamest monster ever! How could I make it cool in my game?

You start with something unusual, say a big meteor shower. At first nothing seems wrong, but then woodcutters and such start disappearing from the forests of a particular area. Then contact is lost with outlying steadings nearby. People who go to find out why they haven't been heard from don't return. Plants all over the region seem to be growing, or perhaps overgrowing, far too rapidly.

You bring the players in by finding a reason for them to enter the area, just about any will do. They should notice that aside from insects and small pollinators there are NO animals. Play up the oddness of the place and that the plants in the area seem to be different somehow. Introduce the Tendriculouses in a once populated area. Say a small village or thorp that should be inhabited but is instead utterly devoid of animal life with no sign of how. Time the appearance of the Tendriculouses to match the sun.

Attack en masse inside the village with them coming from hiding places the PCs haven't checked yet but allow the PCs to escape the village relatively unscathed. They'll run when they realize they'd be overwhelmed, right out into that oddly animal-less forest. This is where the Tendriculouses should shine. Give them Pass Without Trace and bump up their hide and move silently score in heavy underbrush and forests. Then repeatedly attack with groups of the plant monsters. Play them like a plant zombie, without any intelligence at all but an unnatural savagery toward anything animal. Force players to beat off attack after attack and never get enough rest until eventually they get out of the forest. Make the only final solution to defoliate the entire region to keep them from spreading.

[sblock]Why yes I have seen Night of the Triffids how could you tell.[/sblock]

 

[demiurge1138]

Digesters. I made them mutated raptors corrupted by magic, and played up their unnaturally fused snouts and how they ran on their hands, their legs little more that twisted vestiges. That, and some good tactics, made my players very leery.

Demiurge out.

 

[greywulf]

Never trust a lame monster. Especially if it's a Kobold, as it's probably a trap and there's another 300 of the critters hiding just waiting to slingshot you to oblivion the minute you kick away his crutch.

Oh. I see what you mean.

For me, it has to be the Ethereal Filcher. Totally lame and the worst monster idea ever in the history of history. Until I played in a session where the b*ggers raided a caravan in a mist-shrouded valley, appearing and disappearing until they'd pretty much cleaned out all the goods and we hardly laid a finger on them. Our party had a hatred of Filchers ever since.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

Well, exactly which monsters are "lame"?

I think most monsters could be a credible threat if handled properly, and for some of those that aren't really threats (almir'ajs, or flumphs, to name some of the weirder Fiend Folio monsters, perhaps)...well, who says a monster exists only for the PCs to fight it? That's one of the strengths of D&D, regardless of edition: some of the monsters exist as flavor, as opposed to simply another type of killer creature that equates PCs and other human or demihuman beings with something to kill. Some of those creatures could fulfill useful areas in the myth or ecology of the setting, for example.

I can't imagine that's the case for a revenant or a doppleganger, which can be used as much as plot devices as direct antagonists for the PCs. In fact, some of them-most notably the ones that mess with enemies' minds, can't be affected by most forms of attack, or are otherwise mostly invulnerable to a straightforward attack, seem fairly dangerous.

 

[CRGreathouse]

We can always take this thread in another direction... I think the Tendriculos is the lamest monster ever! How could I make it cool in my game?

You're asking us? After Legends of Avadnu and Denizens of Avadnu, I thought you could make *anything* cool.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

The elf.

Eberron made elves worth including in D&D.

 

[Gort]

I think probably the lamest monster I've seen is the bodak. No combat power at all, except when you first see it you have to make a fortitude save or die. This means that the combat is either:

1) Player(s) die instantly, pretty much nothing they could have done.
2) Players pass the save and trounce the crappy monster that has no other powers.

How are either of those outcomes desirable?

 

[Celebrim]

You're asking us? After Legends of Avadnu and Denizens of Avadnu, I thought you could make *anything* cool.

I assumed the question was rhetorical.

Of course a huge man-eating shambling tentacled plant with a gaping maw is cool. If it has never been the beneficary of cool artwork, that is hardly its problem. It probably more has to do with the fact no artist has ever got a good look at one and lived.

 

[Celebrim]

I think probably the lamest monster I've seen is the bodak. No combat power at all, except when you first see it you have to make a fortitude save or die. This means that the combat is either:

1) Player(s) die instantly, pretty much nothing they could have done.
2) Players pass the save and trounce the crappy monster that has no other powers.

How are either of those outcomes desirable?

Actually, that's a pretty good standard. I agree that the bodak is lame, which just goes to show that a 'cool' concept does not necessarily a cool monster make.

 

[catsclaw227]

The elf. Eberron made elves worth including in D&D.

I think that Warlords of the Accordlands made elves cool. Seriously.

Actually that set of books made a few of the iconic creatures into cool variations.