What's your favorite "fodder" monster race?

[Desdichado]

Goblin. Although recently I have been using gnolls a fair bit as well.

Because I play E6, it is not inevitable that they become fodder either.

Indeed, that's one of the many benefits of E6 (or other games with much flatter power curves) that is often kind of over-looked. If a monster starts out scary and then becomes nothing but fodder after a few sessions or so, then essentially, your game has changed genres entirely. That's not something I ever really want my game to do.

 

[Jester David]

I like the Paizo/Pathfinder goblins a lot. But for D&D it's old school orcs and/or gnolls.

 

[Dungeoneer]

No undead on this list?! That smacks of life-ism!

Gentlemen prefer zombies.

 

[Pheonix0114]

For me it's goblins. In my games they are always the poor marginalized race pushed to the edge by the stronger races. As such they have their own sort of inventiveness that I play up along with strong familial ties...

Yeah, my players have learned that no races are just meat bags of loot and exp They always hate when the "BBEG" holds an undeniable moral high ground.

 

[Quickleaf]

I love kobolds. And their traps.

If it wasn't obvious from my 4e conversion of Dragon Mountain

 

[TerraDave]

I have enjoyed using all of them but orcs. Just too blah, or cliche, or I don't know, but never a major adversary.

Of course, it all depends...

Humans make great fodder.

In my current campaign, githyanki are about to be fodder, and at one point it was demented sleeths--a psionic lizard person race from gamma world that is normally good--but these were demented.

 

[TerraDave]

No undead on this list?! That smacks of life-ism!

Gentlemen prefer zombies.

And this too! The more the merrier.

 

[Shemeska]

I usually run planar campaigns, and I typically start with the PCs around 5th level or higher. As a result of both the nature of planar games wildly varying in monsters by plane, and those added initial levels, none of the "fodder" monsters really tends to apply to my games. If anything I have more humans and planetouched as frequent baseline enemies

Though my current campaign didn't start out on the planes, it has ended up there in relatively short order, but it began on Golarion and I enjoyed the heck out of some of that setting's rather unique goblins while the PCs remained on the Material plane. Love those cute little murderous pyromaniacs.

 

[Cadence]

For the en-masse terror and threat of being over-run I like Kobolds.

My favorite for a challenge at low levels that they gradually get more powerful than I like Hobgoblins.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I am personally fond of baaz draconians. I love how draconians are every bit as deadly when they die as they are alive. So when you kill a baaz, they turn to stone, and your weapon has a chance to get caught. They eventually crumble into dust.

Plus, they're created from dragon eggs! They can't fly, but they can glide.



Beyond that, I have to say that my favorite two fodder monsters are goblins and kobolds, but with the caveat that they're the Pathfinder versions.