What's Your Monster Palette?

[mmadsen]

What's your monster palette? With a nearly endless supply of monsters (and races) to choose from, which ones do you use in your world? Have you chosen a specific theme for your campaign (or some part of it)?

In an older version of the Little Changes with Big Flavor thread, I recommended restricting your palette, and people came up with some great ideas:

• Mythic Greece -- Centaurs, Minotaurs, Pegasi, Nymphs, Satyrs, Medusas, Cyclops, Titans
• Fairy Tale -- talking animals (Awakened Dire Animals), Pixies, Gnomes, Unicorns
• Middle Earth -- Goblins (Orcs), Hobgoblins (Uruk-Hai), Ogres (Trolls)
• Lost World -- Dinosaurs, Dire Animals, Mammoths
• Starship Troopers -- Xill invading from another dimension
• Center of the Earth -- Efreet, Salamanders, Fire Elementals
• Shadow World -- Shadows, Shadow Fiends, Shadow Mastiffs, Shades
• Demons -- no nonhumans and no monsters except for Outsiders summoned by evil sorcerers
• Night of the Living Dead -- Zombies rising from every grave
• Planet of the Orc -- after a spell gone awry, the PCs find themselves in a world ruled by Orcs (and where Elves are extinct)

 

[Hand of Evil]

Norse/Middle Earth/End of Ice age - Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblin, Frost gaints and Drow vs Human, dwarf, and elf races. Humans are 'the newest race' being raised up from animals by the Elves and Dwarves.

A lot of dire and normal animals, some others from the MM(s) as I see fit.

 

[Tonguez]

Polynesian - No Large land Mammals (mundane or monstrous)!
*in Polynesia there are Pigs, Dogs, Rats and Bats however

Lots of Aquatic creatures (including aquatic mammals), reptiles, birds, giant insects, oozes and things with tentacles.

 

[Psion]

Well, mine may be a little ordinary / mainstream, but you might call it "evil magic." I concentrate on evil outsiders, drow, undead, and evil NPC spellcasters. I really don't use things like giants and humanoids that much.

 

[Desdichado]

I mostly concentrate on humanoid races in all the campaigns I've run. Right now I'm running Middle-earth online and playing Iron Kingdoms, so neither is really "homebrew." However, as usual, I've got a campaign in my back pocket that I'm detailing. I modified almost all the races but they're still roughly recognizable, so I have Sidhe (elves) dweorg (dwarves), halflings, humans and orcs as potential PC races. NPC races add centaurs and satyrs to that mix.

I haven't really thought much about what other monsters I'll use in this campaign, but as I tend not to do much with monsters, I may just pick and choose as needed rather than develop a "monster pallette."

 

[Breakstone]

I've been sort of using the Greek Palette. There are a lot of ors, and some centaurs, but when I have something like Meduse I have the Medusa, meaning only one.

However, I've mixed in some of the Night of the Living Dead, Center of the Earth, and Fairy Tale. I have had zombies, elementals, and talking animals.

I suppose I have a Greek Night of the Fairy Earth palette...

 

[Hand of Evil]

Polynesian - No Large land Mammals (mundane or monstrous)!
*in Polynesia there are Pigs, Dogs, Rats and Bats however

Lots of Aquatic creatures (including aquatic mammals), reptiles, birds, giant insects, oozes and things with tentacles.

Java has tigers, rinos and elepants. But that is really Indonesia.

 

[BluWolf]

My campaign world features a "fractured" cosmology. The other planes "bleed" into the primematerial so besides normal monsters you run into "planetouched" or what people in my world called the tainted, all the time.

This ranges from fire squirrels too Earth rhinos.

The major monster race is the Goblyn. They range from small to large and vary from warriors to wizards. Orc and bugbear are just different names for bigger sized goblyns.

Hobgoblyns are actually breed half humans and a PC race.

One of the toughest monsters my group has meet so far was a HalfFiend Half Ogre Barbarian named Ghengis Rage.

They ran. He is still lurking around looking for them.

 

[mmadsen]

Some more ideas:

• Conan -- degenerate subhumans, ape-men, and man-apes (all Orcs with no armor and simple weapons); Dire Apes, Snakes, Tigers, etc.; an occasional Fiend/Demon.
• Narnia -- much like the Fairy Tale example above; Fauns (Satyrs), Dwarfs (Gnome stats), Awakened Dire Animals (all sorts), Dryads, Unicorns, Giants, etc.

 

[RangerWickett]

My Game--Human, Elf, Orc, Dragon. Everything else is either a foreign creature conjured through magic, or a magically-altered creature.