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Yora
2013-06-16, 08:22 AM
After a while always seeing the same critters gets a bit boring and stale. You can easily make your own monsters for most games, but the hardest part of it is comming up with an idea.

So let's collect some (or hopefully a lot) cool idea you have for new monsters, that people could make for their games. You can also point out cool monsters from other sources, that would be great in an RPG. The description of your ideas could be as simple or as elaborate as you think neccessary.

I am doing the start with one very simple idea I just had:

"Dire Lobster"

:smallbiggrin:

Rhynn
2013-06-16, 08:54 AM
Vampire watermelons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_pumpkins_and_watermelons).


RuneQuest 6's rules were very inspiring for thinking up undead. In RQ, a shaman can discorporate, leaving his body to go into the Spirit World. A shaman can bring others along. Smart shamans leave their fetch spirit/"second soul" to protect their corporeal being, because the Spirit World is full of hungry, malign spirits, and the standard mode of spiritual attack happens to be possession. Many spirits are specifically capable of Dominant Possession, in which they control the possessed body. This includes ghosts.

So, from time to time, it is bound to happen that a shaman who goes on one of his mysterious journeys - probably in great privacy, usually - comes back "wrong," as a sort of undead being, a ghost or undeath spirit or "demon" having replaced his own soul in his body.


I've got a huge bunch of AD&D 2E/ACKS monsters, too...

Freak
Freaks were once humans and demihumans who became addicted to a powerfully narcotic mold that accumulates in the brain and gradually changes it. Initially, victims become obsessed with seeking more of the drug, lying, stealing, and killing to feed their habit. Eventually, becoming saturated, they lose all interest in the drug, and barely have attention for the basic necessities of survival. They shamble about the darkened places of cities, in back alleys and in sewers, collecting in packs that spend most of their time standing in tight circles, facing inwards, hunched over and motionless. When someone approaches who does not smell like one of them, they turn their attention outward.

In combat, freaks attack with their bare hands, grabbing and pulling, trying to exhale their fetid breath and mold-infected spittle on the victim's face. Anyone who engages in combat with even a single freak is afterwards at risk of contracting the mold addiction. The addiction slowly worsens over time, consuming the victim's attention and life, eventually turning him into a freak.

Fungal Husk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o57imEfknMQ)
On the dry plain, decrepit, starved humanoid forms shamble obliviously toward the highest hill in the vicinity. The hillsides are littered with sitting and kneeling humanoid corpses, dried and mummified, their faces turned up, and a horrible fungal stalk growing out of each forehead. Some varieties are found in the underworld, where the husks seek sources of water. They kneel by the water, leaning down, and releasing the spores into the water, where they incubate and infect anyone drinking it. Certain terrifying types of fungi infect humans, demihumans, and humanoids, growing inside the head and taking over the brain, turning them into decrepit husks that seek high ground so that the fungus may sprout and spread its spores.

The fungal husks do not fight back if attacked, but when "killed," they collapse on the ground, and on the next round, small fungal stalks sprout forth from the head, releasing an invisible puff of spores. Unless blown away by a strong wind, they will reach everyone within 30'. Those who are infected become progressively more erratic and demented until, some days later, they become fungal husks seeking high ground.

Headless (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blemmyes)
The headless (also called blemmyes or acephalous) is a humanoid monster with no head, but a mouth and sensory organs in its chest cavity. They eat human and humanoid flesh. Their naked, browned flesh is covered in rough hairs. They are able to navigate in complete darkness without any problem. Headless have no language, only gnashing their wide, terrible mouths.

Blemmyes attack by tearing, clobbering, and clawing with their powerful four-fingered hands. They are immune to any vision-based effects and any mind-affecting effects.

Husk Ghoul
Bony arms, withered skin, madly staring eyes in a face like a skull. A husk ghoul being is neither dead or alive, but something horrible in between, and it is greedy for human flesh. Husk ghouls are withered human beings, so ancient and emaciated that it is impossible to tell whether they are even truly alive anymore. With wrinkled, paper-thin skin, patchy white hair, and bony claws for fingers, they look grotesque and morbid. Husk ghouls were once humans, but have lived far past what they should have — for reasons of magic, technology, or some sinister influence. They live in ruins, catacombs, and sewers — often in places where they were trapped by circumstances, but survived under some malign influence that prolonged their lives into hundreds of years. They eat meat, preferring humans and demihumans, and are clever enough to take prisoners to serve as "larders." Husk ghouls rarely speak, but theoretically understand speech.

In combat, husk ghouls attack rabidly with clubs and other makeshift weapons, or by clawing and biting. They appear withered, but have a fiendish strength and resilience.

Pyrosarchus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrewsarchus)
The pyrosarchus is a four-legged mammalian predator and scavenger, 6' or more at the shoulder and 11' or more long. It has an enormous head with elongated jaws and great teeth that can crush bones. It hunts the stony barrens by ambush. In addition to its powerful bite, it can use pyrokinesis at will, to drive, trap, or injure prey, and may prefer to eat burnt flesh.

Swine Thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_on_the_Borderland)
These hideous creatures look somewhat like men, but have scarcely any chin or forehead, and their noses are snoutish. Their skin is a dead pallid color, except on their four-fingered, webbed hands, which are brown, and terminate in talon-like claws. Their feet sport cloven hooves. They jabber and shriek, grunt and squeal among each other — speaking in their own, grotesque language — but move quite stealthily when called for. Swine things have infravision. The swine-things fight with their taloned hands, grabbing and raking with their nails. They are clever enough to understand doors and other basic tools, though they do not make anything.


I also stole war chimps (http://falsemachine.blogspot.fi/2012/01/war-chimp.html) for my games.

Waker
2013-06-16, 10:00 AM
Hmm, sure I can post a monster I made a few years ago.

Liberomo (Bookies)
History- Historians believe that the Liberomo were originally created as familiars to guard the spellbooks and libraries of mages millenia ago. Since then they have moved on, but continue protecting any large stores of books they come across. They are often mistaken as ghosts due to their floating abilities and tendency to populate quiet areas, such as libraries.
Physiology- The Liberomo are humanoid in appearance. Skin color is dependent on the book from which they were born, giving most of them color ranging from white to yellow, although a small minority of other colors exist. Their skin itself is a papery substance, with a consistancy of cardboard. They lack any internal organs and are mostly solid. They do possess a few thin tubes which store ink, the Liberomo's blood. Liberomo have no need to eat or sleep, although they must draw substance from books (see Powers.) Despite the fact that a Liberomo may be masculine or feminine in appearance, they lack any sexual organs and reproduce asexually. One unusual fact about the Liberomo is that it's tongue is actually an ink brush. The average Liberomo weighs between 20 and 40lbs.
Mentality- Liberomo are the guardians of the written word, from the time they are born they have an instinictive need to prevent the destruction of books. Individual Liberomo vary from subject to subject, although their personality is heavily influenced by the subject which they favor. Liberomo who have a taste for Engineering books tend to be exact and direct individuals, while one who favors Romance novels would be prone to infatuations and drama. Regardless of their tastes, most Liberomo are soft-spoken creatures (except Adventure fans.) These creatures often pick up hobbies based on their topic of choice, Historian Liberomo may collect old artifacts, while Instruction Manual Liberomo build things. Liberomo do occasionally bond with non-Liberomo, mostly those with sharp minds and sharing interests in their favorite topics.
Life as a Liberomo- Liberomo are born in a process that is yet to be fully understood. Occasionally when a Liberomo has fed off a book (see Powers) a new Liberomo will be spawned from the book a week later. Upon emerging the creature is fully grown physically, although possessing only a rudimentary personality and understanding of language. As time progresses, they develop a personality influences by the books that they consume. Though a Liberomo can consume food they draw no sustenance from it, and soon after they tend to regurgitate the meal, outside the presence of polite company. Liberomo never eat watery foods or drink. The average Liberomo can live as long as 300 years.
Powers- Liberomo possess a few unusual powers granted to them from their time spent as familiars.
Levitation- The Liberomo are natural flyers, many of which go their entire lives without ever touching the ground. Because of this Liberomo almost never wear shoes.
Book Feeding- While the Liberomo never need to eat or sleep, they do need to draw substance from books at least once every 3 or 4 days. They do this by possessing a piece of writing containing at least 1000 words, which can be in any language. After reading a book in this manner, a Liberomo is sated. For reasons unknown, they cannot feed again on the same book, though they may still possess it.
Cannibalize- If a Liberomo is seriously injured, they may cannibalize a piece of writing containing at least 1000 words, destroying the writing in the process to, to heal their injures. they are loathe to do so and resort to it only under dire circumstance.
Weaknesses- The Liberomo possess a deathly fear of fire and water, and will flee at the sight of it. Because of their papery constitution, both water and fire can kill the creature. Tearing is painful and can be deadly, but is the easiest damage to repair (usually using an adhesive like glue.) If a book possessed by a Liberomo is destroyed, the Liberomo inside is also killed.

yougi
2013-06-18, 10:41 AM
Hmm, sure I can post a monster I made a few years ago.

LIBEROMO AWESOMENESS

This is mind-blowingly, jaw-droppingly, socks-knockingly awesome.

Erasmas
2013-06-18, 01:22 PM
Those are incredibly awesome, Waker! I might have to steal those for something down the road.
:smallbiggrin:

One of the most simple yet effective monsters that I came up with was based on a frightening flash of a nightmare that I had... a vampiric alligator.

In the same campaign, the party had to fight a vampire that had an amulet that allowed him to summon a swarm of stirges to him... and they gathered around him and lifted him up into the air, forming a kind of "stirge golem" (almost like the 'pumpkin' dragon from Dragon Hunters). Each slam attack embedded 1-3 stirges into its target, depending on how much damage it dealt with the attack, and once they had drained their fill... they returned to the swarm.

Waker
2013-06-18, 02:19 PM
Well thank you for your kind words. I never got around to statting up the liberomo (since they weren't made for D&D) but feel free to use them for your sessions.

Yora
2013-06-18, 02:32 PM
I was just thinking that the GMan from Half-Life might make a great type of demon/aberration. Which wears are relatively inconspicious guise, yet warps reality to manipulate events to progress in a certain way that works towards his enigmatic goals.

Though in a common fantasy world, it might actually be better if it looks clearly nonhuman, but keeps appearing in the distance out of reach of the PCs, killing sentries, clossing gates, destroying bridges, and so on.

Bhu
2013-06-18, 02:33 PM
"Dire Lobster"

:smallbiggrin:

I have one of these made somewhere.

Dayaz
2013-06-19, 01:42 AM
my dm had never stated it, but it was basically a sentient cat that could force people to shrink to the size of tiny mice, making the cat gargantuan to them. basically, if it got the drop on you you had to fight a super monster cat, but if you could hit it first it was just a normal cat. The entire race acted like assassins, but mainly killed for fun.

Paperback
2013-06-19, 05:22 AM
I homebrew a lot of monsters for my campaign that I run for my fellows. It's late so I don't quite want to go into a whole lot of detail on them, but here's some of what I've come up with.

Briarbuck: A Unique monster that I made as a sort of Giant Space Flea From Nowhere (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere) type boss. He's a rampaging boar that stepped in a mutagenic substance, and has been devouring everything in order to gain more power. There's two different versions of him I statted; one with less power and still very boar-ish (though large). The second version of him is more hellish and huge, and actually sentient to a degree (Int 4 is still sentience!).

Turrets: I have, like, four different kinds of these. They're construct turrets that are easy for my sorcerer to kill because they do not move, and ergo, do not have a dexterity score, and ergo, do not get a reflex throw against fireball. They're made of glass it seems like, but the weapons I gave them pack a punch.

Sentry Bot: Three-wheeled rampaging robot usually equipped with a machine gun and a missile launcher into each of its arms. VERY fun when used in an enclosed environment, and harder to kill with it's fire and electricity resistance, plus DR/Adamantine.

Deathclaws: I may have made these a bit too powerful. They're the Deathclaws (http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2010/297/0/a/deathclaw_by_chewbaccabigsis-d31e4k8.jpg) from Fallout, and they're freaking beastly. I threw five deathclaws in a hunting pack against my five-man level 10 party and they almost wiped because I am a terrible person that can't stat an encounter right. They lived though.

The Tainted Man: A human that was unfortunately disintegrated during my in-game apocalypse that happened a thousand years ago and his bodily essence was absorbed into a mutagenic substance I call Taint. He awakened when my party started nosing about in his resting place, and was driven to attack them by his own insanity from being stuck in a vat of goo for a thousand years. Essentially he did a bunch of acid damage with his touch attacks, and also had the chance to infest the PC's with the Taint (which would have most likely given them cancer, and less likely given them mutagenic powers, and least likely have done nothing at all.)

Yora
2013-06-19, 07:25 AM
I love the Snorks from Stalker. But I have still no clue what to make of them as a d20 creature.
Maybe some kind of aberration ghoul with a huge bonus to jump.

Jeff the Green
2013-06-19, 07:33 AM
I've been working on converting various fay to D&D, like the baobhan sith (Scottish vampire), the leanan sídhe (a muse that slowly drains the life of her beneficiaries), and the Cù-Sìth (giant green hound psychopomp). A couple other random one are the mau (the mummified corpse of a cat possessed by a spirit of Law), halfling bear dog (giant riding dog), and the ethercat (a semisolid cat that loves stealing things).

prufock
2013-06-19, 09:41 AM
I've always thought it would be fun to run an adventure involving the Nalajuit (http://mummersfestival.ca/home/?q=node/31), but play up the scary and violent aspects of it more. Make them actual fey or undead spirits, give them an agenda or grudge to motivate them, have them foiled by the power of song.