Ten Monsters I Love (But Rarely Use)

I thought I’d chip in on the latest subject to be making its way around the RPG blogs.  Instead of just my favorite ten monsters, which would include common reliables like kobolds, dragons, and vampires, though, I thought I’d list the ones that are favorites of mine but that I rarely find myself using.  They might be too specialized, or might not fit the flavor of my plots often enough, or might just be obscure, but I love the concepts anyway.

1. Purple Worm. It’s… an enormous worm.  It will swallow you whole, and your mount along with you, and maybe it’ll even do it by accident.  Then it’ll keep burrowing on its way.  And if your party follows it and tries to rescue you, the nastier versions of this thing have a poison sting on their tails.  You don’t want to mess with the purple worm.

2. Gelatinous Cube. I know, these things are practically iconic.  It’s a monster shaped precisely to fit a 10′-by-10′ corridor (the standard back in the day).  It crawls around, almost invisibly, absorbing and dissolving organic things and carrying metal remnants along like… well, like bits of something suspended in Jello.  It’s hilarious, yet it’s also a real threat to low-level characters.  Which makes it even more hilarious.

3. Nilbog. This is one of the “gotcha” monsters of older editions.  It’s a variant of a goblin that looks and acts just like a goblin, except that it’s healed by damage and harmed by healing.  The “healed” part is a little misleading, too, because it can gain hit points beyond its usual maximum.  The more damage the characters pour into these before realizing what’s going on, the more troublesome it becomes to take these down — the cleric might not even have enough cure spells prepared.  Back when I was a more sadistic GM than I am now, I once had a party run into a group of these… accompanied by some rust monster pets who were also afflicted with nilbogism.  To this day I’m not sure they’ve forgiven me for that one.

4. Larva Mage. The spirit of an evil wizard that takes control of the worms and maggots devouring his corpse.  It keeps some of its spellcasting powers.  Oh, and it can cast an illusion that makes you believe you’re being devoured by maggots.  This is one of the creepiest and coolest monsters in D&D, even if I’ve only used them on occasion.  They’re linked to Kyuss, a name the old-schoolers will recognize, though they’re not exactly the same as the Sons of Kyuss, another fairly cool monster from older editions.

5. Eye of Fear and Flame. These are skeletal undead.  They’re robed skeletons, meant to be mistaken for liches, but they have two gems for eyes:  a red one (fire opal?) that shoots fireballs, and a black one (onyx?) that projects fear.  Eyes… fear… flame.  Yeah.  I can’t really explain the appeal today, but when I was starting out, my young mind immediately seized on this as one of the cooler monsters in the book.  Haven’t used one in years, but I still have fond memories.

6. Carrion Crawler. This thing traumatized me when I was playing with the red-box D&D Basic rules.  First, it looked something like a giant centipede as interpreted by H.P. Lovecraft.  Seriously, it’s all legs, bug-eyes, and tentacles.  Second, those tentacles.  It attacked with eight of them.  Eight attacks. Every round.  And this was a monster you met at level 1 or 2.  Now, those attacks did no damage… but every hit meant a save vs. paralysis.  Miss one save, and you’re stuck for quite a long time.  Once the cleric runs out of spells to cure paralysis with (or if he didn’t have any yet — level 1 clerics got no spells, in old D&D…), you’re looking at potentially an entire party standing still as statues, waiting to be nibbled to death by a Lovecraftian centipede-thing.  Nibbled.  To.  Death.  Nothing says “old school” like that.  It’s “save or die,” but with style.  I don’t believe I’ve ever used one, as a GM.

7. Duckbunny. D&D is home to a lot of monsters that are crosses between two different animals.  The best-known of these is probably the Owlbear, which is, you know, a bear with an owl’s head.  Which is a bit silly, but it’s lasted four-plus editions, so it can’t be all bad… right?  This, on the other hand, is one of those monsters that exists solely because it makes sense that it should, yet which is more or less completely useless and silly if looked at outside of the raw-simulated-immersion mindset.  A duckbunny, you see, is created by novice mad archmages, who are just starting to learn how to cross two natural creatures to create an unnatural abomination.  Because they’re just practicing, they find it best to work with innocuous, harmless animals.  Like a duck and a bunny.  Then once they master their arts, they move on to owls and bears, or wolfs and spiders.  And cleverly call them things like “owlbear” or “wolf spider.”  (Seriously, look it up.)  Has anyone ever actually used a duckbunny as part of an encounter?  I doubt it, but 2e had stats for them nevertheless.  This was old-school AD&D, where you never spent one sentence establishing something as a game flavor element when you could use a fully-statted Monstrous Manual page to accomplish exactly the same thing.  Still, despite everything, there’s a part of me that loves that someone sat down and thought, “Well, what do those mad archmages start with…?” and then published the thing in an official supplement.  That’s just awesome.  Duckbunny guy, I salute you.

8. Blink Dog. I used to have packs of friendly blink dogs show up on a fairly regular basis.  As a player, I even had a ranger with one as a companion.  I just like these things, and I’m not sure why.  They’re intelligent Lawful Good dogs that teleport and hate displacer beasts.  It’s like magical Lassie.  You just can’t hate them no matter how trite they seem at times.  In fact, now I feel like statting them up for 4e.  Probably’ll be my next post.

9. Displacer Beast. And while we’re on the subject… these were pretty much straight-out lifted from A.E. van Vogt’s couerl.  TSR added an extra pair of legs and introduced it to the game in Supplement I: Greyhawk.  Wizards of the Coast later (3e/3.5e) made it “product identity” under the OGL.  They get to lift it, but you can’t.  Anyway!  Large six-legged panthers who appear to be a couple of feet away from their actual position.  And they’re intelligent and evil.  Plus, tentacles.  Tentacles make every villain better.  I love these things, but I rarely drop more than one encounter with them into any campaign, because they’re a little one-note.  The whole displacement gimmick overrides a lot of their other flavor, as far as the players are concerned.  Or maybe it’s just me.  Either way.

10. Marilith. A demon with the body of a snake and the head and torso of a woman, except it has a couple of extra arms.  And every one of them is wielding a nasty sharp pointy bit of steel.  This is unquestionably the coolest of the old “Type” demons, in my mind — a marilith’s appearance is just iconically swords-and-sorcery in a way that, say, vulture-demons aren’t.  They aren’t the most powerful of demons, or the most subtle, although they can hold their own on both counts… but none of the others screams heroic-fantasy the way a marilith does.  This is one monster I regret not using more — it often falls victim to the “nope, doesn’t fit here” factor.  I’ve started planning in advance to include one or two, though, because my recent groups of players seem to love fighting them, too.

Related posts:

1. What D&D Is (To Me)
2. What is D&D, Anyway?
3. If you love Ochre Jelly…
4. More Treasures of Galadria
5. Hanging in the Balance