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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doctor Futurity" data-source="post: 7690729" data-attributes="member: 10738">It's all in the implementation. I have found bodak much more threatening and disturbing to run than plain old ghosts. Sometimes it's not about what's most convenient to run, but about what's unknown...in the case of my games, the players hadn't met bodaks, while they had met ghosts. Also, even if you have savvy players with a resistance to death gazes, a bodak used in a manner threatening to nearby innocents, or which is predatory on NPCs that the PCs seek to protect can be more unnerving.Yes, I agree that you could use a ghost just fine, or invent something entirely, but for myself, reading about a creature such as the bodak prompts me to think of ways to use it, to expand on it, to make it something for my campaign. Sometimes....well, sometimes you're just sick and tired of plain old ghosts and bodaks with their hypnotic, death-dealing gaze is all you need to feel a bit of inspiration.I don't honestly know why anyone would use a monster without thinking about it a bit, first. Adherers seemed odd to me...weird and interesting, maybe reminicent of those people-digesting aliens from Beast Master (the movie), and then the Pathfinder Bestiary entry on them made the whole thing "click" at just weird and cool they were as alien monsters.I wonder if the need for monsters is directly proportional to the time one has to run games. I've averaged 1-2 games a week, every week, since 1989. Sometimes 3 or more times a week in my earlier years. That adds up....and the need for inspiration and resources to keep myself interested is high. Having a lot of monsters that provide springboards for inspiration is extremely important; and running planar adventures is just one more element of the need to supply interesting content for both player and GM. At some point you can call them all ghosts and be done with it, but then you have a campaign full of ghosts, and a need to make them all a little different. Why reinvent the wheel when D&D has done so countless times? For some, the differences are inconsequential. But from a story perspective I see worlds of difference between ghosts and astral voyagers. One is the spirit of a dead man haunting the living, usually constrained to a haunt in the mortal realm. The other is the screaming, agnonized emotional baggage of still living people ripped from their nightmares, relentlessly hunting down prey in the astral plane. Those sound insanely different to me.EDIT: I am actually not trying to convince you that your approach to monsters is wrong. Rather, i am trying to convince you that other people's approach to --and need for-- monsters can be very different. I will specifically shun fantasy games that don't offer up at least a decent array of monstrous entities, precisely because I find this a significant and important part of the experience for me as GM. By contrast, a game (which I like) that takes a more universal approach to monster design is Fantasy AGE, which provides templates for "types" of monsters....where even a troll and ogre is a variant on the same stat block. This might be a better approach for someone like you. But for me, all I can think of is how badly Fantasy AGE needs its own Monster Manual.I mean....I'm still annoyed that Runequest 6 ranks orcs and goblins in the same stat block. WTF....mechanical similarity absolutely does not equal descriptive/fluff/story/plot/thematic similarity in my book.</blockquote>

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