Spotlight on Obscure Monsters

[Persimmon]

So my big gaming project this year is to do a massive conversion/expansion of Undermountain to C&C, transporting it to my homebrew setting (in the city of Deepwater) and bringing it both 2e and 5e material. As you may know, most of the published material starts at around 5th level. So in order to make it a complete campaign, I started going through other stuff I had to fill in the lower level adventuring needs. Turns out I have digital copies of Joseph Bloch's Castle of the Mad Archmage, which is his homage to Castle Greyhawk, and written for his Adventures Dark & Deep game, basically a modification to AD&D. So it's a snap to convert and has some upper and surface levels designed for beginning PCs.

As I was creating my random encounter tables for the upper level last night I was flipping through M&T looking for something unusual. Lo and behold, I stumbled upon the gorbel, a monster I cannot recall ever using or encountering in more than 40 years of playing D&D, though I recalled the original picture in the Fiend Folio with the gorbel attacking some Asian guy. As it turns out, the attacks and abilities of the gorbel vary slightly between AD&D & C&C. But it's in my game now and as I go forward I'm hoping to use lots of these obscure monsters to keep things fresh.

So what obscure monsters have you used/encountered in your games recently?

[Go0gleplex]

Humans & demi-humans...most folks don't consider them monsters but humans can sometimes be the biggest monsters around. But if strictly monsters; official stuff would be the Volt, Assassin Vine, and Phase Spider. unofficial would be several of my own monsters such as Dust Wraiths, Gossamer Haunts, Dry Slime, and Carnivorous Books as few among many.

Gorbels are a PITA when used well...otherwise they get stuck alongside the Flumph as the most useless monster created in D&D (per a Dragon article way back when). Of course, many underestimate weak monsters fairly regularly...like kobolds...and get served nicely. lol

[Geroblue]

I took the balloon from the tv spy show, "The Prisoner" starring Patrick McGoohan and made it into a monster for my campaign.

"You see a large balloon coming towards you."

[maximus]

I took the balloon from the tv spy show, "The Prisoner" starring Patrick McGoohan and made it into a monster for my campaign.

"You see a large balloon coming towards you."

That's awesome! Love that show.

[maximus]

I recently ran 2 of Rob Kuntz's modules (Cairn of the Skeleton King and Tower of Blood). He had creatures called "ghools" which look like undead, but aren't. Also, "uderlings" which are undead gnomes. They have some interesting abilities that were hard for the party to pick up on at first. Which was fun...

[Bison]

I have become enamored with the idea of working a Blindheim into my campaign. A monster that rolls back its eyelids to blast blinding light from his eyes is just too cool And its bite also can cause disease. It's a nasty monster for a suberterrain encounter.

[Persimmon]

I have become enamored with the idea of working a Blindheim into my campaign. A monster that rolls back its eyelids to blast blinding light from his eyes is just too cool And its bite also can cause disease. It's a nasty monster for a suberterrain encounter.

Yeah; I've used the blindheim and I'm sure it will show up somewhere in Undermountain.

Another one, which we've referenced here before, is the penanggalon, taken from Southeast Asian folklore. I've used them too.

[Fiffergrund]

I use the aurumvorax all the time. Love that thing.

[serleran]

It is unfair for me to weigh in but I really enjoy the ones that no one ever even considers using, like boggles and nilbog, not only for their game-breaking potential but because, when they are encountered, the players have absolutely no idea what the heck it is or how to handle it. What's even more fun, since a nilbog can technically be applied to any creature (per its original source), mixing that with something else is just downright amazeballs humorous.

[Persimmon]

If you want some really weird/fun new monsters, I'd suggest checking out the "Hacklopedia of Beasts" volumes produced for Hackmaster 4e. They are statted in pretty much the AD&D 2e format, so it's an easy switch to C&C and there are tons of critters, like the "Gummy Fiend" and the "Grappling Thrasher" that I've never seen in any other monster books. The various Tomes of Horrors for Swords & Wizardry are also good for this and they include ascending AC in their stat blocks.

[Go0gleplex]

If you really want to make something outside of the box and don't mind doing a little work; A Magical Society: Beast Builder by Expeditious Retreat Press is an excellent book to use. Even if it is set up for 3.5e, it doesn't take much to modify for use with C&C.

[JediOre]

There are so many odd monsters that come from the old AD&D Fiend Folio, it is a treasure trove for under utilized creatures.

I've enjoyed having a small school of Khargas pop out of a nearby cave wall/floor and go after that highly armored party. Look at the Galltrit as a wondering monster that follows the party and attempts to suck blood on either PCs or their mounts at sleep intervals. Lastly, ignore the number appearing on the Mantari and have a pod/group of a dozen or so swarm the party, if you want a dangerous wandering monster encounter. They are wicked in groups.

Keep in mind I run more low-magic campaigns so my group's PCs are not walking armories. My son's five level wizard's go to wand is still Magic Missile. That is about the most potent magic they have.

[Persimmon]

Definitely. And the old UK modules really used a lot of the Fiend Folio monsters. We played UK 6 last weekend and I had to pull my FF off the shelf because a couple of the monsters never made it into C&C.

[Fiffergrund]

FF had some seriously out-of-the-box stuff that was genuinely weird and cool.

[maximus]

I loved the Fiend Folio. There's some goofy stuff in there, but some great stuff as well. Death Knights, Grell, Githyanki all great monsters. One weird one that can really shake things up is the Protein Polymorph. One of the Campaign Journals I follow on DF had one featured. The DM played it like "The Thing" from the movie. Awesomeness.

[serleran]

I know it is not used much, but it can be a very intriguing encounter, especially for those who believe they have fought everything or can defeat anything: the Tarrasque.

Of course, I like to have it walk head first into a reflection from a mirror of opposition... cause, you know, kaiju battle!

[Go0gleplex]

Mines of Bloodstone; In four hours lost an 18th level mage and 2x 16th level mages myself. Overall...by the time the beastie was down, only three characters were still standing out of the dozen of us players and minions (total wipe there). When you look up 'meat grinder' in the encyclopedia...the Tarrasque's picture is there! lol

[Lurker]

There are a ton of cool little used monsters out there FF etc are great to find them, and they can be fun to throw at the players - especially when they think they know all they need to know about the monsters and are surprised when their little tricks to defeat the common monster aren't working.

I'll switch gears though to using obscure monsters or weaker monsters as critical important NPCs

I have used a weaker devil temptress (forgot which book it was from, but it was a 3rd party 'Encyclopedia of Demons and Devils') married to a Duke to influence the group / dukedom to help her and weaken her devil and demonic opponents (gaining her power in the eternal war) , I'll never forget the look on the Paladin's player's face at the end of the campaign, when I had her drop her human face for a moment for him to see and know he had helped a devil for years as she and the duke road away going to the heart of the kingdom ...

Also, I used a Shade or Shadow can't remember exactly, that had the back story of having been a friend of the player back in the day and something happened where they willingly took the curse to be an undead. Made it feel like something that might not have happened if the PC had remained friends with him or that it was a 'but for the grace of God there go I' things. Sometimes he helped the PC/Party, sometimes .... not so much. I based it off a Dragon Mag article about one of them appearing to a noble's wife (he had loved her before she married the noble) and telling her that one of his kind was trying to murder her husband (he survived the first attack but was poisoned or something like that) and what she needed to do to protect him.

[Captain_K]

Even normal monsters using magic items (that they wear, ate, or somehow incorporated into themselves), advanced tactics, or minor changes to existing monsters, normally all it takes is an appearance change and some minor tweaks and you got a new and scary creature to make them think. A slime with 30' reach (think archer fish), it lives in muddy water so you can never really see it or how big it is, just the ripples that it makes. The early scary movies were not about showing the monster or the danger but hinting at it, never really seeing it or everyone sees something slightly different (4 blind men encountering an elephant from each direction will describe different things initially).

I also like having the powerful creatures play with the group, sneak attack, a probe, a quick scare to a sentry without attacking, etc. build the suspense.

[jimser]

Captain_K, thanks for the info, I'm new to the game, so your clarifications answered some of my questions as well