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?
~Mae
CotM Selection Committee
Comments
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
!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
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 )
--The Geek
Current Campaigns:
Shadows of the Rift : Homebrew Pathfinder Campaign (Campaign of the Month, September 2018)
The Dresden Files: Portland
Deadlands: Riders on the Storm
Velvet & Steel : 7th Sea 2nd Edition
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.
I do like using any creatures that cause confusion though, they can be very interesting in disturbing the whole dynamic of a conflict.
twigs
"I met a traveller from an antique land....."
CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.
Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign
Inner Council Member
I also loves me some undead, doesn't really matter which.
GM of Rise of the Durnskald: Wrath of the Fallen Goddess - February 2016 CotM
GM of Core: The Ashes of Alcarna - April 2020 CotM
GM of Stream of Kairos
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GM of Rise of the Durnskald: Wrath of the Fallen Goddess - February 2016 CotM
GM of Core: The Ashes of Alcarna - April 2020 CotM
GM of Stream of Kairos
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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.
Ptolus, City by the Spire - 2016 Campaign of the Year
"Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life." - - Kevin Smith
I love using recurring enemies- it gets the players more involved.
killervp
"A God...Rebuilt":https://a-god-rebuilt.obsidianportal.com
Just trying to help out.
Nothing like a constant "THORN IN THE SIDE" for the players.
I intend to do more of this in Mysteria Phase 2: Southlands!
twigs
"I met a traveller from an antique land....."
CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.
Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign
Inner Council Member
I also love recurring villains, especially 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...
GM of Rise of the Durnskald: Wrath of the Fallen Goddess - February 2016 CotM
GM of Core: The Ashes of Alcarna - April 2020 CotM
GM of Stream of Kairos
Need CSS Help? It may be covered here: Abersade's CSS Hub
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.
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.
Signs & Portends, Dwarves of Lost Koldukar, In a certain realm
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.
Ptolus, City by the Spire - 2016 Campaign of the Year
"Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life." - - Kevin Smith
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.
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.
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
"I met a traveller from an antique land....."
CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.
Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign
Inner Council Member