Favorite / Most-hated Creatures and Foes

Maesenko

So from a GM's point of view, what creatures or enemies do you most like to use, and which ones do you hate to use?

And from a player's point of view, what creatures do you like to see headed your way, and which ones do you most dread?

NikMak

Ninjas!

My Marvel Supers game is always infested with evil NPC ninja clans. There are several reasons for this, mostly based on the mechanics of the system. Ninjas are more or less normal humans with loads of talents, and as such are very scale-able. Their sneak ability makes them a more diverse challenge for the team (the super strong members of the team cant just rock up and smash them to itty bitty pieces) and lastly the threat level is ramped up. In marvel there are damage types, and piercing/edged attacks are one of the few ways where there is a minor risk of loosing your PC to a death blow. To be honest the odds of killing anyone other than "Aunt May":http://i.annihil.us/u/prod/marvel//universe3zx/images/b/be/AuntMayandweirdlookingpete.jpg are incredibly low, but still, its there as a back ground threat for the PCs to factor in when delaing with the ninjas.


Oh yeah, and Ninjas are freaking cool! :D

Tau_Cetacean

my players in a D&D campaign got me this shirt as a passive-aggressive commentary on the amount of undead in my campaign:

!http://logo.cafepress.com/4/1221917.6258104.jpg!

although, in my defense, they did kind of start the trend by picking the ruins of a temple to the dwarven god of the dead as their "let's sleep here tonight" locale during a dungeon crawl

critters I consider too stupid to exist in my campaign: owlbears, needlefolk

critters I like more than seems generally fashionable: gelatinous cubes, darkmantles, otyughs

pencilneckgeek

Goblins are kind of my go-to, though as the characters increase in level they get more and more pointless.

I absolutely hate gnomes, so they do not exist in my campaign world.

As a player, I hate seeing wights coming my way (level-sucking critters )

Lxcharon

As I've mentioned before I love me some Gnolls. I have no idea what it is about their hyena faces that I love so much but I do. I use them in almost every campaign I run in some aspect.

I'm the opposite of pencilneckgeek, I love gnomes, but I hate halflings. I mean I'm already not a big Tolkien fan already (blasphemy I know) but I don't see anything that halflings add to a world, other than being a reference to tolkien.

On a similar note I'm not really an orc fan either. That one I can't explain as much, I've just never cared for them.

twiggyleaf

As a GM, the monsters I hate using are the ones that do CON damage, so you have to continually work out decreasing Hit Points accordingly. I also don't like having to do this for players having the same ability.

I do like using any creatures that cause confusion though, they can be very interesting in disturbing the whole dynamic of a conflict.

twigs

Abersade

Gelatinous Cubes, Slimes, and Oozes are among my absolute favorites. I'm known to break a rule here and there by adding class levels to really up the tension of the encounters. I tend to shy away from Ethereal Marauders and Ethereal Filchers, them seem extra stupid in my opinion.

I also loves me some undead, doesn't really matter which.

Lxcharon

I love me a good gelatinous cube!

Abersade

Intelligent Gelatinous Cube + Rogue Levels + Wand of Lightning Bolt = Fun! Also, one heck of a surprise for your players.

Tau_Cetacean

I need to dig up the stats I made once for a Paragon something something something Gelatinous Cube... CR 25 or something obscene like that

UselessTriviaMan

I also like using goblins and gnolls.

1. I built a pretty sizeable goblin nation in my old homebrew game. They were enough of a problem for the nearby human kingdom that a bounty was placed on goblin ears. The elite (barbarian) goblin warriors called themselves the Earless - they voluntarily chopped off their own ears to spite the humans. My players learned to fear those little bastards.

2. I got my hands on a copy of the "Slayers Guide to Gnolls":http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/2831/Slayers-Guide-to-Gnolls?it=1 a few years back, and I really like their spin on that evil race. I've incorporated it into my games ever since.

GamingMegaverse

I hate using zombies.
I love using recurring enemies- it gets the players more involved.
killervp
"A God...Rebuilt":https://a-god-rebuilt.obsidianportal.com

twiggyleaf

I agree about the recurring enemies.
Nothing like a constant "THORN IN THE SIDE" for the players.

I intend to do more of this in Mysteria Phase 2: Southlands!

twigs

Lxcharon

UTM is Slayers a non system specific resource?

I also love recurring villains, especially a handful of bumbling idiots that somehow always manage to escape and resurface throughout the adventure.

Basileus

bq. a handful of bumbling idiots that somehow always manage to escape and resurface throughout the adventure

I thought we were talking about foes, not the PCs...

Abersade

HA! The tagline for our previous game was "It's not stupid, it's adventure!", they would have fit that description beautifully Basileus.

BearerOfTidings

I have the same preferences as Killervp.

I don't like throwing around a lot of mooks that are there to die quickly proving how tough the heroes are. Instead I prefer to have relatively few but memorable combat scenes. In a recent adventure I had a bunch of fairly low-level characters get overwhelmed by a decent number of Orcs who all had fighter levels. The Orcs took the characters back to their camp and the characters had to figure out how to escape before being sold into slavery. The escape attempt featured a lot of stealth, a one-on-one combat between the toughest fighter in the group against a bodyguard of the Chieftain who had treated the group badly, and a lot of running away like crazy. Things generally went well and the group had huge amounts of fun.

I should also mention that the group got to see the inner workings of an Orc tribe and found them to be a lot more interesting and logical than they expected. The Osprey book on Orc Warfare that I got off of Drive-Thru RPG was an invaluable resource for this session.

Tau_Cetacean

love having recurring enemies... even if the players don't even know about it (at first) - somebody they honk off in an early adventure keeps pulling strings and orchestrating events in further adventures to avenge themselves, up to the players to piece together why they keep having such bad luck and trace it back to the man behind the curtain and get a rematch

NikMak

Im with you Tau, for my Ninjas, a few of the comic reading players know exactly who the Ninjas are working for - but the rest have not even bothered to ask the question yet :)

ketherian

I've tried to write a reply to this thread several times.
I love the mystical and the magical. But I don't have one type of critter that I always pull out of my hat against the party. It's always been very campaign specific. Nor has there been a particular type of enemy I like to face.

Looking at it another way, I come up with an answer similar to Killervp, and BearerOf Tidings, and Tau-Cetacean. Re-occurring enemies are the best. Because they must be competent to have survived so long. They are motivated to keep coming back.

My current campaign has occasional combat with mooks. The last game the party got ambushed on the road by 10 bandits (2 armed and mounted knights and 2 men-at-arms and a bystander, also mounted against 6 spearmen and 4 polarmers). The fight was touch-and-go for a bit, but the party prevailed. I've had them meet and sometimes allie with mystical creatures, tribesmen, and other things. And in other cases they've killed them. My favorite scenarios are when the party does something unexpected and either through diplomacy or combat, turns the scene on its head.

Going with my current campaign (which is human-centric), I'd have to say my favorite bad guys (statistically speaking) were human. In my Rise of the Runelords campaign they were goblins and then giants.

UselessTriviaMan

@Lxcharon If I remember correctly, the entire Slayer's Guide series was written for the d20 system. But the non-game-mechanics fluff is the part that stayed with me.

Recurring villains are a staple of a good campaign, in my opinion. The most satisfying way to get my players invested in the story is to let a bad guy escape (without resorting to _maching_ any _deus ex._) Speaking of which... I think I need to do a bit of villain prep.

Basileus

I do like some thematic undead (remnants of fallen civilizations, specific legendary monsters associated with a particular story or region, etc...).

But I think my favorite type of monsters to use are what I shall here refer to as "Nameless Things". Gandalf might describe them thusly:

bq. Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day.
[...]
There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.

Now this can apply to any setting of course. Set up the "normal" world and your players' expectations with certain types of common foes, your villains and ever-present menaces. Then when they go wandering too far off the beaten path, maybe draw a little too much attention to themselves or start to feel too comfortable/safe/powerful... BOOM! Ancient nameless monstrosity shows up and attempts a TPK! Back during 3.5e I had all the monster manuals and I'd go crawling through for obscure monsters I could use to surprise my players (or reflavor less obscure ones so they seemed more exotic than they really were).

The thing about these kinds of encounters though is that they really only work well if you use them sparingly.

Lxcharon

Thanks UTM, I think I may pick up the PDF.

And Badileus, I love using obscure or alien creatures! To the point that I hunt down weird monster art online and then reskin existing monsters to be them. I hate rolling out troll after goblin after bear after warg. Like I want to describe a creature or show a picture and have to make up a completely new name for it, or let it go nameless. I think for a lot of us we are so use to fantasy worlds that things like goblins and even my beloved gnolls have become so common place that the games we play lose a certain amount of magic or fantasy. I have folders on my computer filled with random monster art to whip out at any given time. Nothing brings a smile to my face like watching my players scramble when introduced to something alien and baffling to them.

twiggyleaf

I agree with Basileus's "themed undead" notion.

In my Shimring campaign I developed a creature called a "Malcurate":https://a-database-of-stock-npc-s.obsidianportal.com/characters/antipriest or "Anti-Priest" that was similar to a shadow but did wisdom damage instead of strength damage and exuded an aura of "anti-turning". The central theme of one section of the campaign was of a crumbling Demonweb (the Gods having left already) being run by three Archliches, one of them protected by creatures of his own making - the Malcurate.

P.S: They were quite good fun, so feel free to steal and use!

twigs

Basileus

I dig the idea. I may have to convert it to Fate Core somehow and use it!