[Week 8] Which is the Playground's favorite monster?! (2.0) - What the Avatar bends.

[Yael]

Welcome to week 8 of us finding out popularity on monsters by direct vote!

You may vote freely for any number of monsters of the selected theme, and at the end of each day for a whole week, we'll see which one was the favoirte 7 days later.
This isn't a competition, just a game, and as a game, everyone is entitled to their opinion of which monster is the best for them, so no arguments please, be good bois. Feel free to say why you love your picks, to help us expand on our viewpoint of that particular creature.
Any vote cast as a reply will be added or counted, so if your monster isn't named yet, vote for it and it will appear and compete~!
Also, whenever your vote isn't statted in D&D 5e rules, it will also be counted as an honorable mention, so don't worry about silly details and keep voting!

This week's theme is:

Elemental type

I wasn't able to find the original artist, if source can be provided, it will be appreciated as to give credit.

The end date will be next Wednesday, August 12th.
Any source in 5e is fine, as there isn't that much to pick from (yet), and for those obscure 3rd parties, just point out where are they located for the sake of reference~

My vote: Well, here we go, elementals. Such an interesting, yet not that populated type IMO. Most of the time, only the classic, erm, elemental elementals are used, and even then they are interesting as creatures. This time, I'll go with three votes, the Efreeti, the Djinni, and the Water Elemental, the genies are so cool and lorewise pretty good encounters (both social and as complex problem-solving), and I just like the Water Elemental.

Creature	Creature Type [Tag]	Source	Votes
Blistercoil Weird	Elemental	Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, p207	1
Cwinga	Elemental	Tomb of Annihilation, p125	1
Elemental, Air	Elemental	Monster Manual, p124	1
Elemental, Earth	Elemental	Monster Manual, p124	2
Elemental, Fire	Elemental	Monster Manual, p125	2
Elemental, Water	Elemental	Monster Manual, p125	1
Elemental Myrmidon, Air	Elemental	Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, p202	1
Elemental Myrmidon, Earth	Elemental	Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, p202	1
Elemental Myrmidon, Fire	Elemental	Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, p203	2
Elemental Myrmidon, Water	Elemental	Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, p203	1
Flail Snail	Elemental	Volo's Guide to Monsters, p144	1
Gargoyle	Elemental	Monster Manual, p140	3
Gennie, Dao	Elemental	Monster Manual, p143	1
Gennie, Djinni	Elemental	Monster Manual, p144	2
Gennie, Efreeti	Elemental	Monster Manual, p145	7
Gennie, Marid	Elemental	Monster Manual, p146	1
Invisible Stalker	Elemental	Monster Manual, p192	1
Leviathan	Elemental	Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, p198	1
Mephit, ALL	Elemental	Monster Manual, p215-217	1
Cwinga	Elemental	Tomb of Annihilation, p125	1
Ogrémoch	Elemental	Princes of the Apocalypse, p216	1
Water Weird	Elemental	Monster Manual, p299	1

Spoiler: Playground's Favorite Monster's Week (3.5) Index.

Show

Week	Type/Subtype	Most voted!
[Week 1]	Aberration Type	Aboleth.
[Week 2]	Dragon Type	Pseudodragon.
[Week 3]	Lawful Subtype.	Inevitable, Marut.
[Week 4]	Undead Type.	Lich.
[Week 5]	Ooze Type.	Living Spell.
[Week 6]	Earth Subtype.	Earth Elemental.
[Week 7]	Outsider Type.	Asmodeus, Lord of the Ninth

Spoiler: Playground's Favorite Monster's Week (5e) Index.

Show

Week	Theme	Most voted!
[Week 1]	Aberration Type	Aboleth
[Week 2]	Humanoid Type	Kobold
[Week 3]	Dragon Type	Pseudodragon
[Week 4]	Undead Type	Shadow
[Week 5]	Monstrosity Type	Mimic
[Week 6]	Devil Tag	Erinyes
[Week 7]	Demon Tag	Orcus
[Week 8]	Elemental Type	Efreeti

Disclaimer: I am not sure where this thread should be located, as is D&D 5e specific, but isn't addressing any rules, so feel free to move it to the appropiate forum if neccesary. Thanks.

[ftafp]

Blistercoil Weird and Flail Snail are my favorites

[ScoutTrooper]

Water Weird Monster Manual p.299

Such a great CR3 monster; can be easily defeated by a witty party, or dastardly to the surprised and unprepared party. Combo it with a water puzzle and you have one hair raising stress causing encounters. It understands the Aquan language but can't speak, so no Bard trickery here.

Their attack of hitting becomes auto grapple. Is what makes the PCs worry the most. It has caused a lasting impression on my players when they come down the dungeon steps and see a foot of water on the ground.

[MrStabby]

Efreeti.

Love the aesthetic of the city of brass, love that the efreetis are evil but also manage to be a kind of evil with personality. It always feels like Efreeti have an alignment rather than being defined by it. Great as a basis for building a custom bad guy for a campaign - not only having martial and magic abilities but possibly the right set up to own lots of treasure for quests, slaves for other quests and generally being a threat... for even more quests.


And invisible stalkers

So a nice CR6 entry. The idea of a hunter imbued with knowledge if pretty fun - that if you meet one then they are probably on a job. I like that they can be harmed or dominated so that if you speak the language you can extract information from them. But generally I like monsters that mixup which abilities are useful - an enemy that is invisible is tough to target with spells, it is likely to ignore a number of attacks of opportunity, and in addition it has a lot ofnatural immunities to conditions that would slow it down. If you ever want an enemy to scare the sorcerer or bard in the back line of a party, this is a great candidate. Ifyou are the kind of DM that likes to throw round class levels on your monsters, that can make these guys even more fun and scary.

[TigerT20]

Gargoyles are pretty cool and help keep up paranoia. I also like the idea of more intelligent and peaceful ones being used as door guards and the like - there's no-one that can stay in one place and watch like a literal statue.

Firenewts are humanoids, but if they were elementals I'd vote them too. Should have done them on humanoid week.

[MrStabby]

Gargoyles are pretty cool and help keep up paranoia. I also like the idea of more intelligent and peaceful ones being used as door guards and the like - there's no-one that can stay in one place and watch like a literal statue.

Firenewts are humanoids, but if they were elementals I'd vote them too. Should have done them on humanoid week.

Not quite the same thing but salamanders are elementals... and if you want the humanoid elementals there are Azers, which look a bit humanoid... kind of... if you squint a bit... and if you think humanoids tend to be on fire.

[rickayelm]

I like the effreetee.

[P. G. Macer]

I’m going to vote for the Fire Elemental Myrmidon from Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. The Myrmidons often get overlooked in favor of their standard counterparts, but I like them.

[ForeverFlame]

Earth Elemental. IMO best form for Moon Druids, and Moon Druids are awesome.

[Millstone85]

My votes are:

• basic elementals (including fire, air, water and earth elementals)
• elemental myrmidons (including fire, air, water and earth ones)
• genies (including efreet, djinn, marids and dao)
• the salamander (no aerial, aquatic and terrene variants?)

[Yakmala]

Efreeti.

Love the aesthetic. Love using the City of Brass as a setting. I have a regular player in my campaign that is a Fire Genasi with an Efreeti father so it's given me an excuse to really flesh out the politics and personalities.

I tend to play them as lawful evil nobles / corporate raiders.

[Warlush]

1. Leviathan from MTF. Super boss level nation razer. If I was a warlock of Tharizdun I'd totally summon one of these on the eastern seaboard.
2. Chwinga from ToA. They are so fun to roll play and add a ton of whimsy to any encounter.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Efreeti.There is just so much lore and art associated with them. I had one in a recent campaign that called himself the "Sultan of Brass" who had ongoing encounters with the players. He escaped several times and made life hard on them, and at one point was forced into servitude. They really wanted to get him.
I'd love to give a vote to something that could drown the players, but the 5e rules are so generous that would be a fairly difficult scenario to achieve.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Gonna put gargoyle down as my vote. Had a gargoyle lawyer NPC who was fun.
Close second is frost salamander.

[Littlemike137]

I’m gonna agree with others and vote gargoyle, followed closely by the earth elemental, I’ve always liked earth spells and stuff, wish there were more of them.

[Tanarii]

Mephits. Every DM needs low challenge elementals for a themed dungeon, and these guys fit the bill perfectly.

Efreeti. Because evil scheming burning genies are BBEGs the PCs will remember.

Fire elemental. Because no one forgets the time they summoned one and the next thing they know half the city is on fire*.

*Also true for Fireballs and missed Firebolts but I digress.

[loki_ragnarock]

Ogermach.

Classic, iconic, an elemental.

[Yael]

This week is over! (Late huh)

Well, the winner was picked by a lot of people, which makes sense, big, powerful, inspired a disney villain, there was just not other outcome, obviously the Effeeti had it in the bag, all planned.

Sadly, we'll be taking one week off, next time will not be "type or tag" themed, but environmentally themed, so expect us to continue next week~!