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View Full Version : Monsters with unique and interesting sets of abilities



Yora
2016-04-21, 10:27 AM
I am always interested in learning more about the making of really great monsters that develop some kind of unique identity that lasts beyond the end of a fight and can become an important element of the setting as a whole.

In my own campaigns I've introduced several creatures with interesting roles and backstories in the world, but they never really had any special abilities. Poisonous bite and being really stealthy usually is the highest extend that I reach.

What kinds of monsters are there in RPGs that have abilities that makes fighting them really different than fighting some generic ogre or wizard?

The one really good example I can think of is the ilithids from D&D. With their mind blast they can completely disable anyone who gets too close and they can target it at whole groups when they stand close together. Fighting an ilithid means trying everything possible to kill it quickly without giving it a chance to mind blast too many party members too quickly while at the same time dealing with their horde of mind controlled minions.

Donnadogsoth
2016-04-21, 11:26 AM
I don't know if you're looking for sci-fi monsters as well, but in Gamma World we had the glascids, these sheets of transparent, rubbery, glass-like monsters that would hide in window-frames pretending to be panes, and quietly dropped and glided down onto any hapless passers-by. They exuded an acid that caused severe burns and ate through clothing. Immune to just about anything. One time we had an entire convention center atrium stocked with these things.

Hamste
2016-04-21, 11:34 AM
The Pugwampi from pathfinder are pretty interesting. They bring a curse of bad luck to everyone nearby by making them roll twice.

razorback
2016-04-21, 01:04 PM
Like the Ithilid, I have always had a fondness for the Meenlocks (MM2). The fear aura and rend mind with the transformation makes, to me, an interesting background with powers that makes sense for it.
Not very powerful except in numbers, you think about the terrors these can be to a nearby settlement and you understand why they would call in adventurers to root out the infestation.

Heck, I almost had a TPK when my group of 8th level adventurers went in and tried to rush a 'hive' and, a few bad rolls later, 3 of them were being drug away to their fate.

Eldan
2016-04-21, 01:10 PM
One of the monsters I always wanted to use was the Darkweaver. It's basically an intelligent spider that weaves illusions to make its victims come to it by confusing it about where they are walking. Pretty basic. But the Planescape mosnter manual (I think it was PSMC II) just wrote a really, really good description of them. And I like the concept. Basically, as written originally, you have to make will saves to not walk deeper into their lair, even if you begin to understand what's going on.

Knaight
2016-04-21, 01:53 PM
Are you looking for interesting combat abilities, or interesting abilities that affect the rest of the setting? The first post seems a bit disjointed on that, so I'll just give examples of both. The vast majority of antagonists tend to be humans in my games (although in many cases there's enough technology in play that it's a bit besides the point; if you're fighting a space ship it being crewed by humans is likely not a hugely significant factor in how it behaves).

Node Fish
Node fish are flying fish, in the sense that they literally fly and are similar to angler fish in appearance. Just one is pretty much harmless, but if there are multiple they send powerful electric currents between their nodes (similar to the angler-fish lantern), and move such as to sweep over areas with that deadly arc of electricity. As they do that to every other node fish sufficiently close, the scale of the problem escalates quickly. With two node fish, there's one lightning line to avoid. With three, there's three. With four, there's six, and it just keeps getting worse.

Node Serpent
Node Serpents are similar to node fish, but where node fish create fairly small lines of electricity between them, node serpents create contorted sheets. They're also bigger, and even on their own have highly electrified skin.

Gold Beetle
Gold beetles are small burrowing beetles. They produce extremely caustic, rock dissolving acid, and are usually found burrowing through solid rock. As pests they are essentially termites for stone, and a real problem. However, they generally slurp up the dissolved rock and pass most of it later, and tend to keep trace gold, which accumulates in their shells. As such, they have niche mining applications, provided they stay under control.

Canyon Triton
These are a small tribe of tritons that live in a canyon, one of two warring species that both live in fairly small tide pools, and tend to try and expand when the canyon floods and the tide pools are accessible. They have primitive knives and spears, and a number of specialized combat techniques that leverage their extreme strength and slightly above average speed, specialized against the fighting styles of the canyon naga. Notable tricks include forcing wounds shut with muscle control, using knives to pin armor to stone canyon walls (for types of armor this works for), and a general propensity for fighting while partially submerged. They also have domesticated attack turtles, so there's that.

Canyon Naga
These are a small tribe of naga that live in a canyon, one of two warring species that both live in fairly small tide pools, you get where this is going. They tend to favor swords and mechanical tail-stingers, and also have a number of specialized techniques, many of which involve water to air charges. They're fast, capable of ambushes, and their mechanical tail-stinger has a poison that is a potent muscle relaxant and magic suppressor. They also have domesticated attack eels, along with domesticated jellyfish they use for poisons.

Modbot
These are technically robots and not monsters, and in the game they showed up in featured them as PCs. They're roughly spherical, with three short stubby legs that fold into the sphere, a big red sensor eye in the front, and a few bands of sensor systems and internal components. Most significantly though, they have 6 nanotechnology employing ports, which they can use to hook up all sorts of components, including those never meant for robot use at all. Think of them as universal adaptors, which give them a bottom port, a top port, two side ports, a front port, and a back port. All sorts of esoteric things show up in these ports, with these being highly modular foes.

Gellipede
This one is just stupid, but: The gellipede is a class of oozes characterized by two things. One is that they are essentially small strings of discrete blobs, the other is their convoluted life cycle, with the blob chain shortening, transforming individual blobs, and morphing in response to contact with any number of much larger oozes, and then absorbing a shorter chain produced elsewhere. How did this bizarre creature come to be? It may or may not have had to do with me studying the citric acid cycle for a biochemistry class while in that extremely tired state that produces really weird creative things. Like ooze chains made of oozes that totally don't correspond to carbon atoms with distinct functional groups.

yougi
2016-04-21, 02:35 PM
I think there are two sets of abilities which make an encounter very different: gaze attacks, and different modes of transportation. In the first section, you can find umber hulks, medusas, and basilisks; in the second one, depending on how deep you want to go, you have flying creatures (or flying mounts), teleportation, walking through walls...

4E D&D also gives every monster a few more interesting attacks, which gives them a certain feel, making an Orc Warrior different from a Hobgoblin Warrior or a Human one. Once again, depending on how deep you want to go, some are as simple switching place with your target, pulls and pushes, but some are truly more interesting.

Also, I've personally had a lot of success creating "three-stage bosses". The idea first came from AngryDM, who got it from action VRPGs. Basically, you create 3 different versions of a character, and whenever the first one's hp are at (or below) 0, he is replaced with the second version, and the same between #2 and 3. A great example was while fighting a Sorcerer, who first was slinging minor spells while his minions did the blunt of the fighting, then turning to flames, hurling larger AoE spells (taking out the remaining minions) afterwards, and finally changing into a dragon for the end. On a more subtle note, I also made an Ogre Martial Artist who was cocky and used flashy actions in the beginning, to then become a high-mobility melee striker when he understood the PC's threat, and then a panicked, enraged all-out brute hitter. These make for very memorable enemies as well.

Âmesang
2016-04-21, 03:21 PM
First thing that came to mind were the hordlings, but mainly because their abilities and appearance are randomized; so you could have a fish-like hordling perfect for underwater combat, a bird-like hordling perfect for aerial combat… or fish-like flyers, bird-like swimmers, and hordlings with multiple legs, multiple arms, multiple eyes or no eyes…

…you know, I already made a webpage that randomizes their stats on refresh. I don't want to type it all out again. :smalleek:

SirBellias
2016-04-21, 03:37 PM
Mimics are always fun. Or oozes, when you have them in an area designed with them in mind. The ability to squeeze through small spaces should not be underestimated! Though that would fall under different movement types, as stated above.

ATHATH
2016-04-21, 08:33 PM
A lot of the stuff in the Mind's Eye Articles is quite interesting. Zap Crabs are nasty if you abuse the CR system's non-linear CR scaling for multiple opponents, especially if their prey is ambushed or lacking in AoE attacks. There are also sapient cacti that hunt travelers for water.

goto124
2016-04-21, 09:23 PM
There are also sapient cacti that hunt travelers for water.

Revenge of the Cacti sounds like a great Western...

Yora
2016-04-22, 03:12 AM
Or oozes, when you have them in an area designed with them in mind. The ability to squeeze through small spaces should not be underestimated! Though that would fall under different movement types, as stated above.

That's something I've never thought of. There certainly is a potential there.

It probably requires a campaign style in which avoiding fights is common. Probably won't make any difference if the players always dig in and keep fighting until everything is dead. If you have to contain or lose an enemy, oozes would be really fun, though.

Knaight
2016-04-22, 03:15 AM
That's something I've never thought of. There certainly is a potential there.

It probably requires a campaign style in which avoiding fights is common. Probably won't make any difference if the players always dig in and keep fighting until everything is dead. If you have to contain or lose an enemy, oozes would be really fun, though.

It can work pretty well. I used an ooze for a horror one shot once, and it worked beautifully in that role. The mobility was a major component of that, but I also played up how the lack of vitals made harming it less than viable, the extreme acidity and corrosiveness common to oozes, etc.

Vinyadan
2016-04-22, 03:39 AM
I really like the hungry ghosts in Dungeon Crawl. You thought you were safe because you have armour, resistance to elements, poison and negative energy? Let's see your character starve to death because of a fat ghost!

It also shouldn't be too difficult to tie them into the setting, although keeping count of food may be boring, and a hungry ghost probably is less dangerous or interesting for a group than for a single PC. A swarm, however...

Joe the Rat
2016-04-22, 10:10 AM
Also, I've personally had a lot of success creating "three-stage bosses". The idea first came from AngryDM, who got it from action VRPGs. Basically, you create 3 different versions of a character, and whenever the first one's hp are at (or below) 0, he is replaced with the second version, and the same between #2 and 3. A great example was while fighting a Sorcerer, who first was slinging minor spells while his minions did the blunt of the fighting, then turning to flames, hurling larger AoE spells (taking out the remaining minions) afterwards, and finally changing into a dragon for the end. On a more subtle note, I also made an Ogre Martial Artist who was cocky and used flashy actions in the beginning, to then become a high-mobility melee striker when he understood the PC's threat, and then a panicked, enraged all-out brute hitter. These make for very memorable enemies as well.

Seconded. Multi-stage baddies let you change the dynamic mid-battle, or extend the use of lesser monsters. having the goblin-with-a-haunted-axe fall, only to have the haunting spirit manifest to take on the party directly gives you that wonderful "oh crap" moment, and forces a change in tactics.


Camouflage monsters can make things interesting, but I like them not just as ambushers, but as reinforcements. Fighting in the crypt for several turns before the skeletons pop up to join the fray, Animated statues and suits of armor that wait until the fight comes to them, then reach out to grab / attack

TheCountAlucard
2016-04-23, 12:28 PM
The Neomah demon from the Exalted setting has a pretty unique ability - one can take minuscule flesh or fluid samples from two or more people, creatures, et cetera., and produce a living infant from it.

(Not really what I'd call a combat ability, unless you count using it to justify having a bunch of monstrous hybrid minions, but given the unclear parameters, I feel my post is acceptable.)

Yora
2016-04-23, 12:37 PM
It's not unclear, it's deliberately very broad. Anything that makes fighting a creature interesting.

Mastikator
2016-04-23, 06:29 PM
I guess what you want is something where brute force (or whatever is the typical tactic) is not effective and has at least one unorthodox method of defeating that isn't also tedious. That then depends on what game you're playing, what the PCs can and can't do. Something standard like humans in a shield wall with long spears could be interesting to face, unless all the PCs can just nuke them with powerful magics. Humans warriors with cloak of invisibility might be interesting, humans in mech suites might be interesting.
Most gimmicks that monsters can do can also be done by humans. Humans are the most interesting and unique monster ;)

ATHATH
2016-04-23, 07:07 PM
Cursts and members of the Emerald Legion are fun if you want to send what is effectively a Terminator after your PC's.

ImNotTrevor
2016-04-23, 11:25 PM
I would take hints from Biology. Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction. You could easily adapt some of these critters into memorable monsters by stealing their weird things:

1. The Cookie-cutter shark. This weird shark survives by hunting, of all things, whales. But it doesn't eat the whole whale. Cookie cutter sharks come close and remove a puck of flesh and fat from the whale's flank with their specially designed mouths. One of these little guys disabled a nuclear submarine when it took a chunk out of the rubber covering on the Sonar, leaving the sub blind.

2. Toxoplasmosis: This is one of several Mind Control Funguses. Specifically, this one breeds in the urine of felines. However, these same spores can infect rats and mice. Rodents thus infected begin to not only stop fearing the smell of cat urine, but seek it out. This causes them to get eaten by the cat, and the spores reproduce.

3. Tarantula Hawk Wasp: This wasp fights tarantulas much larger than itself, stinging it with a paralyzing venom and laying eggs inside its victim's body. The larva eat the creature alive from the inside.

Those are the only three my sleepy brain can come up with, bu other examples like these exist.

Thrawn4
2016-04-24, 03:43 AM
What about enemies who can attack nasty long-term effects without being immediately a problem? A skunk can be annoying and make it difficult to talk to anyone, infectious creatures like zombies, ghuls or vampires can make it necessary to avoid them or to force a detour to find a cure.

Yora
2016-04-24, 04:10 AM
Long term hit and run could be a very interesting concept. If you come back for your second strike three rounds or two minutes later, the players will be ready for it. If the harm you caused will still be there in a few hours, you can take your time and wait for another good opportunity for your next attack.

It requires that the rules give you some advantage on a surprise attack, but I think most games do.

falcon1
2016-04-24, 08:19 AM
First thing that came to mind were the hordlings, but mainly because their abilities and appearance are randomized; so you could have a fish-like hordling perfect for underwater combat, a bird-like hordling perfect for aerial combat… or fish-like flyers, bird-like swimmers, and hordlings with multiple legs, multiple arms, multiple eyes or no eyes…

…you know, I already made a webpage that randomizes their stats on refresh. I don't want to type it all out again. :smalleek:



Link? Please?

Âmesang
2016-04-24, 08:30 AM
3rd Ed: Hordling Generator — https://www.schadenfreudestudios.com/dnd/hordling.php?cr=5
It's in my signature. :smalltongue:

EDIT: By the Nine Hells! Thank you for requesting this link 'cause whilst playing around with it I noticed I had put an infinite loop in the code that could cause high CR hordlings to go beyond Colossal size due to the "increased size" special ability.

(I was wondering why the CR 1000 hordling was listed not as "Colossal Outsider" but just "Outsider.")

Vwrt
2016-05-15, 09:44 PM
I am fond of looking for synergies between different monsters that complement each other. Since shambling mounds are buffed by electricity, for example, try putting a few of them in a pond with some electric eels, or maybe in a swamp with a behir in it. When that behir unloads with its lightning breath weapon, the players get zapped while the shambling mounds that are keeping them occupied hulk up. That makes a memorable encounter.

I also use a lot of homegrown critters to keep players on their toes, and some of those are quite distinct. A family of mones has a hit point pool between them, so when you deliver enough damage to the group through any member they all drop at once, but when a player is hammering away at one of them and it just won't drop because they've got the hit point pool of the whole group keeping them upright you can get some interesting player reactions. When there are fewer hit points than there are members of the group they are all fatigued, and then bam, the whole squad of them falls dead together. A vorg is a twinned creature, two monsters in one: a big badger like thing with a chilling howl that is bonded to a kind of shadow, so its shadow attacks as well as the creature itself and the shadow can throw itself over the creature to conceal it in darkness or take a hit for it, and when you kill one part of it the other goes into a frenzy. When you reduce the magical mountain predator called a splitter to zero hit points it splits into two smaller versions of itself with half of its hit dice, and each of them does the same, until you've been fighting a while and the big beast has turned into a swarm of little ones that are still hungry. I like playing with game mechanics like that as one offs to mix things up.