[3.5] Suggestions for melee fodder monsters?

[hymer]

I'm sorta looking for some nice monsters for the melee to play around with (you know, go all Cleavey and Powerattackey), and with something to let the casters hold back a bit on using spells on offensive stuff. It seems the higher the CR, the more stumped melee is.
So ideally, these monsters would have: Not too high hp, not too high AC, no (or easily cuttable) DR, high touch AC, Evasion (easily achieved with a couple of class levels, of course), SR, and decent saves. If they're crittable, so much the better. Melee love their crits, and rogues and scouts need love too.
Golems get tiresome fast; with the right spells available, they tend to fall into caster fodder territory anyway. They also fail to live up to many of the criteria.
Pretty much any (non-epic) CR is of interest.
So, anyone have some nifty ideas?

[limejuicepowder]

giants? high hp, low ac, relatively speaking. maybe not a great idea to go toe to toe with a giant though. and definitely not cleave-able.

dire animals - boar, lion, rats, badger, wolverine. probably avoid wolves and bears cause of the trip/grapple attacks.

zombies and skeletons: I always have great fun slaughtering masses of the undead. no crits though.

other option of course is to use monster races like orcs, goblins, gnolls, bugbears, etc, and give class levels. A whole pack of PC classes can get very dangerous very quickly though, even for higher level PC's - consider what 6 goblin rogues, 4 hobgoblin fighters, and a bugbear barb could do with the proper tactics, which fluff-wise, they should have.

[hymer]

Thanks for replying. :)
Good points all. The giants and dire animals are still kinda susceptible to spellcasting, though, but maybe I can find ways to reduce this a touch.
I especially like the idea of pretty much building my own monsters for them. Some monk levels should help frustrate offensive spellcasting, and keep the touch AC and base AC pretty close. 13 levels for the SR is probably aiming a bit high, but I guess I can find some creatures with SR. Some refluffed and reskinned Derro or Drow might do the trick.

More suggestions and ideas are certainly welcome. :)

[Diarmuid]

While those types of creatures are indeed good punching bags for melee, what makes you think the casters are just going to sit back and watch the melee's trade swings with them rather than dominate the fight like they would with something melee would normally have had problems fighting?

[hymer]

@ Diarmuid: Ideally they shouldn't sit back entirely, of course. But it's a considerable concern that they tend to dominate every fight.
How would you go about picking monsters for this purpose?

[Diarmuid]

Without resorting to things that are simply immune to magic or have super magical defenses I dont think you're really going to find much that fits your needs. If it's going to be hard for the casters to dominate, it's going to be even harder for the melee.'

This is simply an issue of power levels that is a challenge for DM's everywhere to overcome. More creative encounters than simply "pools of HP" against "pools of HP" do wonders for keeping people interested and invested.

Motivations for their characters doing what they're doing help keep people going.

[hymer]

Allright. Thanks for the input and advice.

Still, if anyone has more little nuggets of gold to add to my little pile here, I'd be thrilled to hear from you. :)

[rot42]

Karsites in Tome of Magic are a race of magic-eating humanoids. +1CR gets you DR/magic, SR = 10 + class levels, spell healing, and the ability to temporarily suck the magic out of items. That last ability kinda dumps on melee, but it is a non-standard Will save based on the karsite's Charisma; you can likely tune the DC to keep the fight difficult rather than annoying.

[hymer]

Sounds very interesting. Thanks! I'll go take a look at those.

Edit: Mmm, luvverly! They even look like humans, so there's no problem fitting them into the campaign, and their fluff needs little change. Wonderful race, thanks a bunch!

[Clawhound]

Golems. But used too much, they get to be rather dull.

Use of special "terrain" might help. For example, creatures have been drinking from a magic well, giving them a high SR, or there's something dampening.

"Creature, drinking from this magic river, have shown strange and surprising abilities. Magic hurts them less. Some spells they can entirely avoid." That (or some rationale like it) might be fun for a series of adventures. If such strange animals are obvious, such as "golden bears", then the spellcasters will know to hold back rather than waste many spells. In this case, the spellcasters make the choice.

[hymer]

Sounds good, Clawhound! I should probably up the CR a tad on the subjected creatures, making them more cleaveable in relation to their CR, which is perfect. I don't even have to tell the spellcasters what the exact effect is. I doubt they'll want to experiment a lot, and rather prep som buffing for the melee guys.
And, of course, keeping some non-resistant critters around will keep the casters interested.
Thanks!

[Kuulvheysoon]

Toss on a template to the base creature.

Spellwarped (MM3) can be particularly handy, in fact.

[Psyren]

Bring in enemy casters. Have them counterspell the PC mages, fly up after them, dismiss their summons, block their AoE spells, that sort of thing. The melee can chop their minions to bitty pieces while the magical duel is raging over their heads, before flying up after them or getting out the longbows.

[hymer]

@ Kuulvheysoon: Good one! I like a nice spellwarped creature meself. Thanks for replying. :)

@ Psyren: Sounds like an interesting experiment. How long can you make a game of rocket launcher tag last?
I guess someone with a wand of dispel magic and UMD could try to 'counterspell' with it as well, though not that reliably. Well, maybe just have that be a damaging spell spell of some sort, better still a few creatures with different spell... Maybe some hiding so they can't see exactly what's doing it... Something to think about for sure. Thanks!

[Psyren]

Well, "spellcaster" is actually a pretty modal term. For instance, if you send Babau demons after them (rather than an actual mage) they have dispel at will and can keep the casters quite busy. And a limited caster like that means less bookkeeping for you - no tracking "how many spells should this NPC have" or "if he has a wand of dispel, how will that affect the treasure for this encounter" etc.

So you get the magic duel feel with less work.

[hymer]

Great! Thanks a bunch. :)

[Seharvepernfan]

Replying to original post:

It sounds like you want duergar/drow/svirfnebli mooks. If you want high touch AC, go with monks. Their AC and HP will be mediocre, and they will be very difficult to affect with spells.

Also, at higher levels, don't be afraid to throw larger numbers and/or combinations of lower level monsters/enemies at the party. This provides the party with enemies that the casters would rather not waste spells on (except on large groups - so keep them coming at a steady trickle), and makes warriors valuable to the party.

For instance, say the party is in the underdark and is confronted with a military force of duergar/drow/svirfnebli. The terrain is tunnels and caverns, so the enemies can keep attacking in groups without swarming the party all at once and without providing the casters with a big nice target.

[hymer]

@ Seharvepernfan: Sounds good! And of course, I can combine those tactics with most of the suggestions others have made too. I guess Underdark races should play a more prominent role in my campaign. :)
Thanks for your thoughts!

[Randomguy]

You could take a page out of 4th edition's book: they have monsters called minions there that fit this role perfectly. Essentially, they're normal monsters with normal stats, but they only have 1 hp and never take damage on a failed save or a miss, even if there's an affect that makes you deal damage when you miss. 4 minions give the same amount of xp as 1 standard creature their level.

They were actually created for this purpose: In 3.5, low level mooks would never hit and wouldn't do enough damage, while higher level ones were too strong individually to make good mooks, so they made minions to fix this.

An alternative solution is to take any monster that fits most of the requirements and give them 2 levels of monk and 2 of hexblade, so they get mettle, evasion and great saves.

[hymer]

@ Randomguy: Thanks for replying!
As for the minion thing, a GM i played with tried that one time, and all the players (two of which play in my campaign) had a very negative reaction to it. Maybe we're just set in our ways, but it felt entirely unreal and like fighting cardboard cutouts. Not in the least heroic.
As for a few levels of Hexblade, that's a nifty idea. I hadn't thought of Mettle, as I had of Evasion! Thanks!