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Gabe the Bard
2011-09-14, 01:29 AM
What are the most memorable monsters you've had in your game?

In a campaign I DMed a couple of months ago (D&D 3.5), I made a lot of custom creatures. But the one that the players remembered the most was a straight-from-the-monster-manual wereboar. It had to do with the set-up:

A group of orcs and ogres had captured a merchant caravan near a forest. One of the ogres was holding a broken chain, and was calling out to someone or something named "Tusk." Upon closer inspection, he had a nearly empty satchel with a few black and white crumbs, the remnants of a rare fungus that can turn an ordinary lycanthrope into a terrifying blacktooth lycanthrope. After another encounter in the woods, the party heard a great roar, and a huge wereboar, its teeth stained black and its mouth foaming, came crashing through the trees. He wasn't an actual blacktooth lycan yet, so the actual encounter lasted all of 2-3 rounds, with the PCs barely getting a scratch. But the players remembered Tusk and still talked about him several sessions later.

Tvtyrant
2011-09-14, 02:23 AM
Barghest with the ability to dominate an infinite number of goblinoids. It was building an army of goblins and hobgoblins in order to use them to steal an artifact it needed to pay off a debt (to a Balor). It used its SLAs to buff the goblins and almost beat us.

Parra
2011-09-14, 05:03 AM
The most memorable monsters for my group was a pair of Pit Fiends back in 2nd ed.

I think it was a random encounter pulled from a one of the decks of Random Encounters. It went something like this:

DM(me): "you see a large object falling from the sky at great speed, moving closer and closer. Making a beeline directly for you"

All but 2 of the Group: "Run like hell away"
Mage/Cleric: "Stay where I am, fire up XYZ protections and watch what happens"
Dwarf Fighter after a few moments: "So, Mage/Cleric guy... those protections are those area effect versions you're always using right?.... RIGHT?!?"
Mage/Cleric: "Nope"
Dwarf Fighter: "ahhhhh crap" starts running

Meteor impacts killing the Druid (was also his 3rd character that session) who didnt run far enough, badly injures the dwarf fighter and doing almost nothing to the Mage/Cleric. Rest of the group (6 others) are fine and start making their way back.

After a moment a pair of Pit Fiends pop out and start laying into the group. In short order the group focuses on and kills 1 of the pit fiends and badly injuring the other while taking very little damage themselves. Seeing how this fight was going the surviving Pit Fiend gets tactical and teleports to a safe but nearby distance.

What followed would do the Keystone Cops proud. Through full, near abusive, use of its Teleport and SLA's he starts to whittle the group down. Fireballs are flying, lightning are striking, black tentacles are forcibly intruding and magic missiles abound.
Highlights include Dominating the Half-Giant Psioncist who then turns on the Thri-Kreen Fighter and tries (mostly successfully) to eat him using the line "mmmm chocolate covered Thri-kreen"
The Barriaur Fight gets teleported into and smushed by an Evards Black Tentacles that the Mage/cleric had cast
A game of hide & seek though multiple Darkness spells sees the Dwarf Fighter bitten and dying from poison.
The Gnome fighter/rogue is incinerated in a combination of Fireballs from the Pit Fiend and being thrown through the Mage/Clerics Wall of Fire

By the end the surviving PC's (Half-Giant Fighter, Halfling Rogue and the Mage/Cleric) just about manage, beaten battered and broken, to break the domination on the Half-Giant Psioncist long enough for him to pin down the Pit Fiend so for the Rogue to finish him off.
The group was basically 1 dice roll away (the Psioncist's repeat save) from a TPK.


That fight was near on 13 years ago and we still talk about it and quote some lines used today

dsmiles
2011-09-14, 05:29 AM
A huge, ancient red dragon (1e/2e had different size rules for dragons):

TELEPORT! It's a long story.

Greymane
2011-09-14, 06:15 AM
The first encounter with a Greenspawn Razorfiend in the Red Hand of Doom. I was DMing and knew that as-written, the thing would get utterly wrecked in a fight alone as there were six PCs at the time.

I about doubled his Jump skill and let him Jump as a Swift action. He moved tactically around and sliced and diced. The PCs got wise and formed a little box around the squishy characters, though. I decided some of the water patches in the marsh in this area would connect with eachother in little tunnels, and so when he dove in one, and they moved to investigate (thus breaking their formation) he jumped out of a different one and dragged one of them into it. It caused a lot of panic and I enjoyed how the encounter went.

Special mention to the Razorfiend that shows up in the fight against Regiarax. The PCs ignored him and he bisected the Soul Knife*.

*I should note that this Soul Knife was houseruled in a number of ways to not suck.

Swooper
2011-09-14, 09:28 AM
While not exactly monsters, an extremely memorable encounter was the Conservation of Ninjutsu encounter. It was a tongue-in-cheek, very low level game (I think we were still first level) in a Waterworld-ish setting (no land, only sea) and our ship gets attacked and boarded by elven pirates. Who are ninjas. Yeah. :smallcool:

Anyway, initially about... 6-10 of them I think attack our ship. They are relatively easily dispatched at first, but each time one of them falls the DM makes us roll fairly difficult spot checks. When one of us finally made it, he described some sort of vapour trailing from the dead ninjapirate to the others near it. When we also noticed the ones still standing started getting stronger each time one died, we figured out what was going on... that was the ninjutsu flowing to the remaining ninjas! :smallbiggrin: The last one ended up at about 4th level, having absorbed the powers of his fallen comrades.