Manual of Meh - The Bestiary of Indifference

[Yora]

I'm doing some conversions of monsters to my setting while preparing my next campaign, and going through the Monster Manuals and Bestiaries, I stumbled on lots of creatures I've never been giving a second thought, because they are just so damn bland and pointless.
And there are actually quite a lot of them.

So let's have a ranking of the least favorite creatures in D&D, PF, and even d20 games in general. Don't mention creatures you actively hate for one reason of another. At least those monsters got some emotional response from someone.
What I am asking for is those creatures that are so uninteresting and forgetable, that you ...usually forget they even exist.

Here are mine:

Asperi: I flying horse. Another one.
Attach: An ogre with a third arm on his chest. So...?
Berlker: I don't know why, this monster seems to have actually some real thought behind it. It just never gets mentioned or referenced anywhere, and the 3rd Ed. MM picture just looked stupid.
Delver: Poor delver. A CR 9 aberration should be at least somehwhat interesting. But it really isn't.
Locathah: What was that person thinking? An ugly merfolk? Maybe they had an interesting culture in the original source they appeared in. But the monster manual creature is just a 2 HD humanoid that can breath underwater. And that's it.
Rast + Ravid: Also known as "that useless section in the back of the Monster Manual". At least someone tried to be creative, but somehow I feel everyone read their description once, and only once.
Xill: I don't know what's wrong with them. They might actually be quite cool. If they had some contextual fluff outside of the bare stats.
Yrthak: I think I once saw them as a random encounter in a big Underdark adventure (which my group never encountere). But that's really the only thing I can say about them.

[Starbuck_II]

Xill: I don't know what's wrong with them. They might actually be quite cool. If they had some contextual fluff outside of the bare stats.

They get good fluff in the tv show Andromeda starring Keven Sorbo. Their children take on aspects of their parents.
Was a pretty good take on them (different name but same implant ability)

[Togo]

I'm quite fond of delvers. A monster that can stone shape at will is an excuse for some really crazy architecture, they have some interesting acid-based defensive abilities, and they're intelligent enough to be NPCs with information or clues.

[Sgt. Cookie]

I'm not that big a fan of mephits, stunted elementals? Really?

[hamishspence]

They seem more like "elemental imps".

[TiaC]

Locathah: What was that person thinking? An ugly merfolk? Maybe they had an interesting culture in the original source they appeared in. But the monster manual creature is just a 2 HD humanoid that can breath underwater. And that's it.

MM1 has far too many aquatic humanoids and monstrous humanoids. Aquatic elves, hags, kuo-toa(horrible art), locathah, merfolk, merrow(giant but not an interesting one), sahuagin (and malenti), and skum. The only ones I've ever seen used are sahuagin, hags and kuo-toa (once). That's not even counting kapoacinth, which I'd never even heard of until now.

[hamishspence]

70% of the planet's surface area is sea.

A case could be made that "far too many land humanoids and monstrous humanoids" is even more true.

[Gazebo's Bane]

Achaierai: I presume a designer had been looking at an Heironymous Bosch painting and thought "A bird... with more legs! That will be brilliant!". It isn't.

[Keneth]

Xill: I don't know what's wrong with them. They might actually be quite cool. If they had some contextual fluff outside of the bare stats.

I actually think Xill are pretty sweet.

My list of meh monsters is horrendously long, though. And with good reason. By the time they released Monster Manual V, ideas had been running rather thin, to say the least.

I might do a quick run through the books later to jot down some of the worst offenders.

[Daftendirekt]

Attach: An ogre with a third arm on his chest. So...?

I think you mean "Athach".

[the_david]

A monster is nothing more than a bag of XP.

But my pet peeve is Gary's Monster Symmetry. Have you ever compared a Pit Fiend with a Balor, or a Succubus with an Erinyes? Did you ever wonder why there are 10 different kinds of dragon in the MM? (5 good and 5 evil ofcourse)
Yes, that's right. Gygax did it.
Instead of filling Greyhawk (and the MM) with all kinds of interesting monsters, he chose to duplicate some instead. You know what the worst part is? Those "twins" are some of the most common choices for DMs everywhere and they exist in nearly every campaign setting.

Allright, that was me ranting. Gary Gygax was a great man actually.

[Daftendirekt]

Gary Gygax was a great man actually.

And I love that he lived about 20 minutes from me.

[Eldan]

I'm not that big a fan of mephits, stunted elementals? Really?

Look up the Planescape fluff. It's quite flavourful.

Mephits are small creatures created from elemental matter by the fiends with the express purpose to send someone a message. The element of the imp you use gives the content of the message, so there's 18 different possible messages.

[Callin]

Allip, Animated Object, Ankheg, Aranea!, Arrowhawk, Assassin Vine, Behir, Belker, Chaos Beast, Choker, Chuul, Devourer, Digester, Ethereal Filcher, Ethereal Marauder, Frost Worms, Fungus, Girallon, Grick, Howler, Krenshar, Lillend, Otyugh, Sea Cat, Skum, Spider Eater, Tendriculos, Thoqqua, Tojandia, Yrthak.

Just to name the ones from the MMI that i cant ever remember fighting or caring for or even few remembering.

[Tvtyrant]

All of the dozens of giant bug creatures. Especially the 20+ spiders. In a game where animals already have an intelligence capping at 3 there just isn't much interesting about giant bugs. Even when I have a hankering for "Bugs: IN SPACE!" I use aberrations, monstrous humanoids, magical beasts or fiends, not Vermin.

[Amnestic]

In MMV, there's a small section on Hobgoblins. There's four total statted out: Spellscourge, Warsoul, Warcaster and...Duskblade.

The former three all have something unique/special about them - a special ability here or there. Duskblades though? As far as I can tell it is literally just a Hobgoblin Duskblade 3. I don't think that deserves its own separate MM entry, really.

[Story]

Allip, Animated Object, Ankheg, Aranea!, Arrowhawk, Assassin Vine, Behir, Belker, Chaos Beast, Choker, Chuul, Devourer, Digester, Ethereal Filcher, Ethereal Marauder, Frost Worms, Fungus, Girallon, Grick, Howler, Krenshar, Lillend, Otyugh, Sea Cat, Skum, Spider Eater, Tendriculos, Thoqqua, Tojandia, Yrthak.

Just to name the ones from the MMI that i cant ever remember fighting or caring for or even few remembering.

Hey, Thoqquas are important! How else are level 5 Druids supposed to tunnel around dungeons?

[Kuulvheysoon]

They get good fluff in the tv show Andromeda starring Keven Kevin Sorbo. Their children take on aspects of their parents.
Was a pretty good take on them (different name but same implant ability)

Ah, another fan of Andromeda Ascendant. The first season was excellent, then it kinda rolled downhill.

Allip, Animated Object, Ankheg, Aranea, Arrowhawk, Assassin Vine, Behir, Belker, Chaos Beast, Choker, Chuul, Devourer, Digester, Ethereal Filcher, Ethereal Marauder, Frost Worms, Fungus, Girallon, Grick, Howler, Krenshar, Lillend, Otyugh, Sea Cat, Skum, Spider Eater, Tendriculos, Thoqqua, Tojandia, Yrthak.

Just to name the ones from the MMI that i cant ever remember fighting or caring for or even few remembering.

Are you kidding? Let's see how many of these have given either deaths or TPKs to my players. Allips and Tendriculos(es?) have both caused a TPK, and the rest have been responsible for deaths. Especially the Behir in RHoD. I mean, damn.

One of my players is a Duskblade with the Improved Familiar feat (Krenshar).

Have you read the damage on the Spider Eater's venom? I once let a player harvest it... big mistake.

[Callin]

Its my experience. I would LOVE to fight more varied mobs ya know. Maybe play a different style of Game. In a Jungle or maybe a decent Swamp.. No my group likes plains and forests and maybe a mountain and lots of underdark. The same monsters over and over again. Course we have been playing together for over 10 years so we kinda got into a rut lol.

[Urpriest]

Almost everything from the Miniatures Handbook is fluffless garbage that only exists to provide extra low-CR monsters to sell as minis.

Spider Eaters are awesome, but primarily because for some reason they're a default bandit mount, which is just hilarious.

[SilverLeaf167]

Allip, Animated Object, Ankheg, Aranea!, Arrowhawk, Assassin Vine, Behir, Belker, Chaos Beast, Choker, Chuul, Devourer, Digester, Ethereal Filcher, Ethereal Marauder, Frost Worms, Fungus, Girallon, Grick, Howler, Krenshar, Lillend, Otyugh, Sea Cat, Skum, Spider Eater, Tendriculos, Thoqqua, Tojandia, Yrthak.

Just to name the ones from the MMI that i cant ever remember fighting or caring for or even few remembering.

I agree with pretty much all of those. The few of those that I do specifically remember are for reasons entirely separate from them being actually well-written...

• In the very first adventure I ever wrote (a semi-submerged cavern), I had a Sea Cat as something of a miniboss. I also had Tritons, which I've never seen used or mentioned anywhere else.
• Another relatively early adventure had a whole room of animated objects, like a bookshelf and a piano, just for the mental image. I think I never ended up using that...
• When I saw the Choker mentioned, a waaaaay old thread about someone polymorphing into one popped into my head.
• I saw a Lillend mentioned in a funny story here on this very forum, just earlier today.
• An adventure in a Drow dungeon I once wrote had an infestation of Spider Eaters. Also, they look funny enough for me to remember them that way.
• Thoqqua are mentioned pretty much every time someone asks for help with burrowing in a game.
• I remember once wondering: why the heck is the Tendriculos's regeneration overcome by acid and bludgeoning weapons, but not fire or slashing? It's a plant! With deadly acid inside it!

But yeah, most of the people here probably remember what the monster is like when it is mentioned, but these are just the ones that popped up to me from that list, for one reason or another.

This thread reminds me of a question I don't remember really discussing: just what about some particular monsters, which seem to be the same for most people, is so forgettable?
I think some things that matter are a weird/uninteresting name, trying to fill an already crowded niche, trying to fill a nonexistent niche, having no basis or equivalent in any other fantasy and lacking any qualities that just pop out and say "This would make for an interesting and unique encounter". If a monster has at least two of those, it's relatively likely to be forgotten. Having one of those is permissible: most of the standard races don't really "Make for an interesting and unique encounter" with just their basic fluff and stats, but their role and archetype is already familiar from other sources and that's why people use them. Having two traits from that list is worrying, but if the monster is very solid in other areas it might still do well.
On the positive side: Dragons, for example, have a very simple and recognizable name that we've all been hearing since early childhood, their niche isn't too crowded and definitely not nonexistant (they actually have traits from many niches: mobile durable melee combatant, caster, AoE blaster, mastermind, manipulator, "boss monster"...) and having all those capabilities gives the DM a lot of possible things to do with them.

[Eldan]

Allip, Animated Object, Ankheg, Aranea!, Arrowhawk, Assassin Vine, Behir, Belker, Chaos Beast, Choker, Chuul, Devourer, Digester, Ethereal Filcher, Ethereal Marauder, Frost Worms, Fungus, Girallon, Grick, Howler, Krenshar, Lillend, Otyugh, Sea Cat, Skum, Spider Eater, Tendriculos, Thoqqua, Tojandia, Yrthak.

Just to name the ones from the MMI that i cant ever remember fighting or caring for or even few remembering.

I agree on a lot of those, but since I once used an absolutely fantastic tribe of Araneae, I love them. I made them distantly related to the Darkweaver (Fiend Folio/Planescape) and that made them almost automatically gorgeous and intriguing. Shapeshifting spiders who weave strands of shadow into illusions? Yes, please.

I should probably make my own list. Let's see.

Spoiler

Show

Ankheg
Arrowhawk
Athach
Azer
Behir
Belker
Bugbear
Chimera
Chuul
Delver
Destrachan
Digester
most Dire animals
Dragonne
Frost Worm
Hill Giant
Stone Giant
Girallon
Grimlock
Hippogriff
Locatah
Ogre
Pegasus
Purple Worm
Rast
Razor Boar
Scum
Troll
Xill
Yrthak

all from the SRD. I'm too lazy to do all books.

[Keneth]

How are ankhegs not one of the most memorable monsters? Unless people haven't played Baldur's Gate, which is borderline heresy for any D&D fan, especially now that EE is out. I still remember carrying around a couple dozen ankheg shells in order to sell them and craft me some pretty sweet armor. Each and every siingle character in my party was encumbered and moving slow as hell, but it was worth it.

[Eldan]

Never could get into Baldur's Gate. I tried, several time, and pretty much every time gave up as soon as I left Candlekeep and it became one of the worst grindfests I've ever seen. You couldn't walk three steps in peace without being killed by some random bandit or goblin.

[Amnestic]

Never could get into Baldur's Gate. I tried, several time, and pretty much every time gave up as soon as I left Candlekeep and it became one of the worst grindfests I've ever seen. You couldn't walk three steps in peace without being killed by some random bandit or goblin.

The second game was a vast improvement over that in this regard, and you really don't need to have played the first to get the story (though it helps).

[Mithril Leaf]

I only know Girallons due to the assortment of supplemental material they receive in name. Girallon's blessing gives you extra arms! Plus there's Girallon Windmill Fleshrip! They're used a lot in arm related stuff.

[Keneth]

Never could get into Baldur's Gate. I tried, several time, and pretty much every time gave up as soon as I left Candlekeep and it became one of the worst grindfests I've ever seen. You couldn't walk three steps in peace without being killed by some random bandit or goblin.

Well if you quit as soon as you walked out of Candlekeep, you're not really entitled to critique the game as a whole.

That said, I loved the open-ended low-magic style of the game quite a bit. Most of the maps were actually quite empty and a lot of the encounters were avoidable, so you and I must have very different definitions of what constitutes a "grindfest". Admittedly, it was no Planescape: Torment, but compared to the majority of other RPGs it was far above average in terms of actual role playing (and it still is, really).

[hamishspence]

I only know Girallons due to the assortment of supplemental material they receive in name.

I figured they were the D&D version of the Great White Apes in Edgar Rise Burroughs' John Carter books.

[The Viscount]

Hook Horror: He's got hooks! That makes him horrifying!

Rilmani: We needed an outsider that embodied Neutral to complete the system we have. The result is underwhelming.

Galeb Duhr: This guy doesn't want to fight you. He's not even standing up. His notable ability is looking like a rock so he doesn't have to fight you.

Gathra: A cow with tusks! That makes him magical.

Wyste: Giant slugs. Tell me you have fought these.

Hulking Corpse: The name says it all. It's Large, it has 20 HD, you can beat it with command undead.

[Flickerdart]

I should probably make my own list. Let's see.

Spoiler

Show

Ankheg
Arrowhawk
Athach
Azer
Behir
Belker
Bugbear
Chimera
Chuul
Delver
Destrachan
Digester
most Dire animals
Dragonne
Frost Worm
Hill Giant
Stone Giant
Girallon
Grimlock
Hippogriff
Locatah
Ogre
Pegasus
Purple Worm
Rast
Razor Boar
Scum
Troll
Xill
Yrthak

all from the SRD. I'm too lazy to do all books.

Trolls? Pegasi? The other ones I'll give you (though Bugbears and Ogres are both classic and occupy a useful niche as low-to-mid level brutes) but these are iconic monsters that everyone recognizes on sight.