There was a lot of talk online this week about monsters (and potential monsters) in the new edition of D&D. It is a hot-button topic for many and everyone seems to have a dark horse favorite for the first monster manual. Luckily for me, I love undead and beholders, both of which are 99% certain to appear. This led me to think about iconic monsters in D&D (both good and bad) and today’s comic.
There seems to be two camps when it comes to Flumphs: Love or Hate
I tend to love them for their ridiculousness and their subtle reminder that D&D at it’s heart is a game and games should never take themselves too seriously.
Commenters: Okay lay it on me, favorite monster (or monster type)?
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Love the nod to the mighty flumph.
As for me, it’s all about dragons. Not only are they super iconic, but they are just as fun to run as to slay.
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Weswoof Reply:
July 19th, 2012 at 2:11 pm
I just read “super iconic” as “supersonic” and it made dragons that much more awesome.
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The DuckBunny. I think it should be the default familiar in DnDNext.
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Pfffffft. Bards are awesome.
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You say that until you read Misfit Monsters Redeemed, from Paizo. Daigle took the lame flumph and made it glorious. GLORIOUS, I SAY!
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Ninjaxenomorph Reply:
April 20th, 2012 at 7:35 am
Yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about. In Pathfinder, Flumphs and ESPECIALLY bards are awesome!
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I’m drawn to the undead, goblinoid and “Ravenloft” style monsters. The Flumph is bad, but some of the random animal pairings got me even more here’s hoping there’s no Garbugs or Spider-Horses.
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Gah! No love for bards OR flumphs!? Dead to me! Dead!
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Owlbears! And Displacer Beasts.
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My favourite D&D monster are dragons and the devete. The devete is an obscure AD&D 2nd ed monster. It is a little blue monster that looks a bit like a goblin. It is not very powerful but it mimics the emotional state of the people it interacts with. If you act friendly, it will be friendly. If you try bluff it by being friendly while secretly planning to betray it, it will be trying to bluff you by acting friendly while scretly planning to betray you.
It is a great role-playing monster. It is not an easy one to portray but that’s also the fun aspect.
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Trolls, of any variety. Swamp, mist, cloud, etc… I fuckin love ‘em all.
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Dragons & Drow all the way for me.
I prefer Dragons to be extraordinarily dangerous though, no 2HD pushovers in my games.
The Drow make a fantastic big bad behind conspiracies too.
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Illithids and displacer beasts.
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As a DM, Dragons are the most fun to run, both as the big bad pulling the strings and as just a brute force reminder to the players. Same for the beholder.
As a player, I’ve got to go with the displacer beast.
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As a DM, Mindflayers would usually end up as the villans in most of my high-power campaings, an entire evil, psychic empire is just so much fun.
As a player, I adore Psudodragons. every (non-evil) wizard I have played has had a psudodragon familiar after level nine or so.
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Kobolds. And not “they-might-be-dragons” kobolds (from whatever edition that was). Plain, old, vanilla kobolds. I’ve seen a dozen kobolds with rocks, a couple crossbows and a pit-trap TPK a mid-level party.
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Lava sharks! When your players laugh and run lightly across the surface of the volcano, throw a flaming, fire-breathing, terror of the deep at them!
This is closely followed by my second-favourite, Lightning sharks!
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I love kobolds so much I made a kobold-expy race one of the major races in my fantasy novels.
Now the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing…there’s a monster I never really liked. It’s a stump with a sideways mouth, two tentacles, and a growth on top that looks like a rabbit. Tell me whoever invented that one wasn’t on drugs.
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I have particular love for Xorn and Otyughs.
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I sometimes get so lost in the details that running monsters feels like interchangeable Stat Blocks. It’s something I need to improve. I find dopplegangers to be a lot of fun because they offer many interesting plot options.
Dragons are obviously enjoyable because they grab everyone’s attention immediately!
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The greatest D&D monster was the Nilbog. Especially against an unsuspecting mid level character. What do mean I gave that goblin my stuff?
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MegaBee Reply:
April 20th, 2012 at 4:50 pm
Hell. Yes.
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I like the campaign arc my buddy is running for us. We are working our way through the Kingmaker Precon for Pathfinder and we decided to start out with an evil party. I ran a werebear fighter, and his npcs were a tengu anti-paladin and a tiefling rogue poisoner. We ended up crushing the wills of everyone we were supposed to kill and started our kingdom with many of the “enemies” as our henchmen. Kingdom then got random rolls for population growth… We have a huge kobold pop, with orcs, tengu, ogres, werewolves, tieflings, and the outnumbered humans as the minority. Its a beautiful thing. And yes, Pathfinder makes the bard awesome, especially with a few of the optional archetypes
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Something that made me sad with the early cancelation/replacement/retirement of 4e was that it never had a chance to find its own icons. And correct me if I’m wrong, but 3e/3.5 seems the same way (haven’t played, not counting pathfinder, but basing this observation on the fact that I don’t see anything in 4e that didn’t really show up in my 2e monstrous compendium). I am really hoping that 5e comes out of the gate swinging with NEW stuff, not just selling us the same stuff they’ve made for 30 years. I still want dragons and goblins and that, but shouldn’t a new game have new content, not just new rules?
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This may sound impossibly first level of me, but goblins will always hold a special place in my heart.
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Brian Reply:
April 20th, 2012 at 3:33 pm
I LOVE goblins.
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My favorite monsters are humans. There are too many monsters that I love to pick just one: illithid, lizard folk, dragons, owlbears, displacer beasts… for “big bass” I like demons, devils, and daemons.
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As a DM my favorite classic would have to be the rust monster – just to make the paladins and tanks hike up their skirts and screech like little girls -bwahahahaha!
As a player, the absolute bane of my existence is the grey ooze. What do you mean my +N magic weapon just got disenchanted?
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woo, bring on the Undead baby!
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Wardon Reply:
April 21st, 2012 at 9:26 pm
The trap type monsters: mimic, lurker above, trapper, cloaker, roper, piercer, etc.
And the flumph was created by some Brits.
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N0083rP00F Reply:
April 23rd, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Actually all those came from the Fiend Folio which was a british product of mostly fan submitted monsters like the Quillan and sons of Kyus plus other notable aberrations and monstrosities … most were on the level of weird to “what were they thinking?”
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So, I’m working on this May of the Dead adventure… and it just might have something horrible, undead, and relevant to the comic.
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Goblins are great to use as pc characters, they are one of the best critters ever
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Since I haven’t seen one of mine mentioned: Xvarts!
Also, I’ll second Rust Monsters as the MOST fun to run as a DM. I had the pleasure to run a table of Living Greyhawk at a convention for a bunch of …ahem… challenging people. One of whom walked right up to my rust monster and hit it with his +5 every enchant possible greatsword. And rolled a 1 for the save…
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Undead, always has been always will be, specifically Skrellingtons
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A bit of thread necromancy here, but I’m I fairly new reader to this comic (completely awesome comic btw!) so I thought it wouldn’t be too bad
Anyway I’ve always been a sucker for Aboleths, Illithids, the old-school and quite insane Death Knights from Ad&d iirc, Nightwalkers aaaand outsiders (yeah all of them!)
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