Who needs "Monster Bad Guys"?

[Umbran]

Need? Sure, I suppose you don't need them. I've run games with only humans in them, too. But that doesn't mean the non-humans are pointless.

If you are playing the non-humans well, they give you something other humans can't - non-human psychology and perspective, and the occasional game mechanic. There's nothing like a villain who lives for centuries, so that they can wait for decades to come to fruition. Or one for whome there's a good mechanic for eating your brain on a combat timescale

 

[Nightfall]

Rem,

Yeah there's still nothing quite as satistying as seeing the look on a player's face when you say "Mind Flayer", "Balor", or "Vampires". Cause let's be honest, there's evil and then there's soul sucking evil. I favor the latter meself.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Rem,

Yeah there's still nothing quite as satistying as seeing the look on a player's face when you say "Mind Flayer", "Balor", or "Vampires". Cause let's be honest, there's evil and then there's soul sucking evil. I favor the latter meself.

Yeah. You guys are right. There IS something special about the really evil bad monster dudes.

And I do like the expressions on players faces when one of them pops up unexpectedly.

 

[Psion]

I use lots of human classed villains and organization, but would never dispense with the likes of mind flayers and demons, though.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Well a lot of people have focused on the dramatic effect of fiends or other kinds of bad guys. But there's one other benefit to consider with monsters: they don't need as much equipment to be deadly so the PCs get less money for killing them. A dragon, for instance, doesn't need magic armor or a magic weapon. Similarly, a zombie doesn't need a spellbook. Monsters are a good way of giving your PCs experience without overloading them with loot.

 

[Altalazar]

I think it is fun to have both - diversity, as it were, with each group in its place. It isn't so much that the orcs are 'eeeeeevil' that they are obviously not human, and so any human kingdoms with any strength will tend to keep them out of their borders. And perhaps vice-versa. With plenty of bad guys to go around, orc and human. Though ultimately, it is the shades of grey that are most interesting. Bad guys that players may even feel some regrets before chopping their heads off and looting their corpses.

 

[Nightfall]

I use lots of human classed villains and organization, but would never dispense with the likes of mind flayers and demons, though.

Clarification Psion,

Do you mean you NEVER use them or just use them rarely/sparingly?

*thinks he means never get rid of them obviously but wants to know frequency of useage*

Doc,

Yeah well some times seeing a bad guy as a human only goes "oooh okay be careful* Seeing a former ally change into a Rakshaka with sorcerer levels start blowing out spells, now THAT's when players go "oh crap-on-a-stick!"

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

If you're running DnD, you need to use monster NPCs. Human NPCs, especially fighter types, suck due to the magic item problem.

But for a game where PCs aren't given weird advantages over NPCs, human NPCs work very well.

 

[Shade]

Humans that can be very bad yes, but fiends are even worse. Probably why I'm such a lover of fiends. Fiends rule.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

Evil people and evil monsters can sometimes complement each other well. Human(oid) evil is interesting and scary because you can fathom and understand it or at least its motivation. Alien evil, like fiends, is something of a different nature, frightening because it goes past what we think of in the human spectrum of behavior. However, what is really frightening is when the plot to brainwash everyone and suck out their internal organs is not being planned by some alien aberration but rather the real mastermind is the friendly cleric down the street that you would never expect. Getting the players used to fighting monstrous, alien forms of evil can put the players into shock when they find out a human can stoop to that level of vileness.