What's Your Monster Palette?

[Jürgen Hubert]

For Urbis, I am using all the "standard" monsters from the MM - but I plan to give each some interesting twists. Some examples:

- Destrachans and yrthaks are aliens from another world in the same solar system who were teleported in eons ago.

- All doppelgangers start out as homunculi created as slaves in a certain city-state.

- Ghouls are highly intelligent and dangerous sewer dwellers (actually, they already are highly intelligent - I just think this fact hasn't been stressed enough).

- Mind flayers are actually a kind of parasites that can infest various host bodies - the humanoid form is only the most common one, and hosts can range from cats to dire bears (illithid dragons are thankfully very rare...).

I try to integrate each monter into Urbis, so that its presence makes sense. That's much easier than buying half a dozen additional "monster books"...

For more details on the monsters, see here. For a thread on my version of mind flayers, see here.

 

[War Golem]

My palette is so broad it doesn't really qualify as one, I think. I focus on the Monster Manual, with other critters from assorted other monster supplements strewn about, and occasional use of custom d20 conversions of other creatures from game settings (Talislanta), miniature lines (Rackham's Wolfen), or fantasy literature (Black Company, Gor).

I guess I really don't have any overarching theme; I just try and make sure the monster makes some sense when I use it (no nocturnal monsters wandering around at high noon, no arctic beast in the desert, etc.).

Percentage-wise, I stick primarily to humanoids and monstrous humanoids near civilized areas, some magical beasts and undead. In more remote areas, or in anything resembling a "dungeon," I've actually been trying to make a point throughout the campaign to have the characters encounter as many different monsters from the MM1 as possible. I think this was a semi-conscious decision I made at the start of this 3e campaign after never using so many monsters in earlier editions. I figure, "what the hell, let's try them out." The variety is fun for the players, although sometimes tough on the me as DM (always having to keep track of different abilities and powers and such).

 

[Ace]

Great topic choice mmadsen


I have been thinking about monster palletes lately

Now my pallete varies depending on the world

My main world Midrea is designed to use all of them, yes all of them, without any illogic

In addition to a standard "animals and stuff" pallete, a Cuthuliod pallete and a "Wizard made" there are also 13 pan dimensional gates.

Each gate world has a pallete that can be used. If I want say an ankheg, I just assume one wandered through the red gate


A previously unknown fae creature, no problem-- The violet gate

This way I can use the critters without trying to figure out an ecology that would support sheep, humans, beholders and displacer beasts

Recently I have been making a cosmological tweak and am adding (from an aborted game world) a Godling similar to the Harnic god Ilver

Basically this god will live in a sea of ash and create all the monsters (Beholders Frex) that make no sense otherwise

With an idea lifted from Harn, these critters will be fueled by the Godling and will not need food. They won't reproduce either. That way I can use silly stuff like Beholders with lesss fuss. I figure everything else will be made by one of the abundant mad wizards

All of the variety was a concious design desicion really, I wanted to build a world in which I could have any critter I wanted, anytime, without harming the continuity


The ones that see the most play are Fae and Undead as in general I prefer the main enemy to be humans


My second game world, not a D&D one but one using a Unsystem/Buffy hybrid uses

Animals
Spirits (buckets of em)

and thats about it, well maybe Dinosaurs and a few other yuccos too.

 

[mmadsen]

Great topic choice mmadsen

Thank you, Ace.

I have been thinking about monster palletes lately. Now my pallete varies depending on the world. My main world Midrea is designed to use all of them, yes all of them, without any illogic. In addition to a standard "animals and stuff" pallete, a Cuthuliod pallete and a "Wizard made" there are also 13 pan dimensional gates. Each gate world has a pallete that can be used....All of the variety was a concious design desicion really, I wanted to build a world in which I could have any critter I wanted, anytime, without harming the continuity

Do you think having such a broad palette adds or detracts from the flavor of the game world?

 

[blackshirt5]

I don't use a monster "palette" overall for my world, but certain areas have definite monster palettes to them. I use monsters from any product I can get my hands on though.

 

[Jeph]

I play a jungle-psi setting. LOTS of creatures with the Psionic template, hordes of yuan-ti, a bunch of Vermin and vermin-like creatures (Umbral Hulks and stuff), many animated plants.

In the session that I'm running tomorrow, I'll be intorducing genetically modified Yuan-Ti supersoldier. It's kinda like the Pureblood, but the stats are Str 20, Dex 20, Con 20, Int 6, Wis 18, Cha 6, 4 more Natural Armor points, and Claw attacks. It can go into a Psychic Frenzy, which grants it the ability to manifest Concussion as a standard action, +4 str and con and will, the Speed of Thought and Mental Leap feats, but -2 AC.

 

[Agback]

What's your campaign's monster palette?

Gehennum (my campaign setting) has a distinctive monster palette based on the fact that it is a densely-inhabited tropical archipelago. Most adventures are plot-driven (rather than being dungeon-crawls), and based around intrigue within society. In my adventures players more often have to find out who the enemy is rather than where he is, and more often have to expose the villain than slaughter his minions.

By far the majority of opponents in my campaigns are people: almost always humans, but occasionally divers, flyers, and leshy. (These are homebrew races from my world.) I sometimes use ogres, but Gehennese ogres are just rather stupid people 8-9 feet tall. Criminals and tyrants, and their minions, with PC-like abilities are the meat and drink of my campaigns.

When I do use monsters I tend to emphasise shapeshifters and shapestealers: weretigers, wereleopards, werewolves, gathins, mujina, body-swapping vampires, dog-faced joes.

Occasionally I do undead: zombis and Ramastaarni mummies. This has my players worried enough that they are very careful not to leave corpses lying about. Once a Ramastaarni lodge offered to give an ally of a PC group a hero's funeral (which would have amounted to mummifying the corpse and displaying the mummy among their honoured dead), and they were sufficiently worried about the chance of his coming back (he was a high-resemblance avatar of the oneiros of honour, vengeance, and death, as well as being one PC's father-in-law) that they broke into the lodge, stole the body, and burned it.

Very occasionally I do a fiend (homebrew outsider) or elemental. Very occasionally indeed a dragon.

And then there is the mundane wildlife you would expect given the fact that my setting is a tropical archipelago: tigers, leopards, sometimes a rogue elephant, sharks, sea-serpents, orcas, saltwater crocodiles, pythons. But that, of course, rarely makes PCs break a sweat (except when, for ritual purposes, a PC might have to kill a tiger single-handed).

Regards,


Agback

 

[Tonguez]

POLYNESIAN here

Currently the PCs Island home is populated by a few goblins, some gnomes, a single family of Ogres* and the new 'human' (half-elf & half-orc included) settlers. A sahuagin lair sits in the reef a 1/2 mile offshore (and the Gargantuan Shark Megadon 'Sekola' sleeps in a deep underwater canyon 15 miles to the NE)

*IMC Ogres are more intelligent that usual and average around 10

The gnomes offer sacrifices to a fiendish giant eel, a few giant lizards roam the jungles and a nest of giant (medium sized)spiders lurks in the mountains (in the 'Spider Cave'). Other than that the rest are mundane animals (snakes, sharks, wild pigs)

However on other islands their dwell Gnolls, Lizardfolk and Bugbear (Beast-men). Vecoliraptors, giant eagles, sea lions, salt water crocs and sea serpents run rife. A few islands have Huge Dire Carnivorous Wild Boars and I have at least 1 NPC Abberation (a huge intelligent bloodclot with tentacles)

No undead other than a few ghosts and spectres, elves and halflings are both fey (and not a PC race) and I make extensive use of fiendish and celestial templates (my current major villain is going to be a Fiendish, Magma Elemental Ogre Scorcerer -currently he is 7 yrs old and going through some 'growing pains')

Previously I have used Griffons as the major predator and built an ecology down from there, I also have 'intelligent' ghouls (who are not actually undead)

I like making logical ecologies...

 

[Celebrim]

Tonguez: That's interesting. Not many people are into Polynesian. I had a friend who tried to get a Polynesian mythology survey published in Dragon (along with a few new monsters) and was rejected on the grounds that 'no one would be interested in such an esoteric topic'. Looks like they were wrong by at least one.

 

[s/LaSH]

For my part, I'm running my campaign in a modified medieval Europe (me and my players are descendants of Europeans, and the players lived in various regions of Europe for a while, so it made sense).

I use palettes based almost entirely on location. For example, if you go to Greece you find typically Grecian monsters; if you go to Africa, you find gnolls. Many creatures range further, however; dragons are incredibly rare and found everywhere, as are certain types of undead. I've actually replaced certain ethnicities with other demihumans: Germanic peoples are now elves (or dwarves, and Japan is also elven if the PCs choose to travel there), orcs roam the steppes of central Asia, halflings lurk in the jungles of the Congo, that sort of thing.

I went through the Monster Manual before beginning, and made notes on every single creature. I found myself cutting out all the pixies, and creating an extensive set of underwater dominions (ixitxachitl, merfolk, tritons, crab folk from old editions...) that slightly affects the balance of power on the surface. I haven't paid it much thought, but most powerful monsters are very rare, and there's a bit more abundance of life in general, so a monster ecology should sustain itself.

I don't have aberrations either. They're just not medieval. That goes double for half the outsiders and shapeshifters, and some magical beasts. Other than that, everything and its dog has a place somewhere in the campaign. It makes for good variety. I just have to give my players an excuse to teleport to new and exciting countries every so often...