Not appearing in this post: charybdis, cerebus, and changeling. Inexplicably appearing: catoblepas. Get your shit together, D&D.
Carrion Crawler
Fuck yes.
Caryatid Column
Am I the only one who thinks this is possibly the weirdest thing that D&D keeps insisting on including in the Monster Manual? It's so unbelievably specific it just boggles my mind to suggest that this makes up a significant, identifiable part of the greater fantasy monster ecosystem alongside dragons, giants, ghosts, and goblins.
I mean, don't get me wrong. It's a good idea for a monster. Reminds me of getting attacked by decorative suits of armor in a haunted house. But like, can you imagine encountering one of these things twice? It feels like a one-time gimmick that someone came up with for a specific dungeon.
I get the feeling that a lot of the content like this in D&D books was included literally just because it was something that a TSR employee had made for their home game and the editor just needed something finished to fill the page count.
Catoblepas
Ben and I had very long argument about this monster. He is bewildered that the esteemed and powerful catoblepas has somehow earned the unfair reputation of D-tier monster, spoken of in the same breath as flumphs and flailsnails, subject to ridicule rather than play, and generally regarded as a waste of ink.
Ben places a lot of value on monsters having actual medieval pedigree, and this guy comes to us from Pliny the Elder himself. In principle, I agree with this philosophy. But the trouble is that some bestiary beasties just don't have sticking power in the imagination. Not every heraldic creature can be a mermaid or a unicorn, y'know? "Smelly cow with an enormously heavy head" ...? What the hell?
Anyway that's when he started bombarding me with images of water buffalo, wildebeests, shaggy highland cows, and those weird African ankole longhorns to make the point that a lot of bovines are genuinely monstrous. I guess I can get on board with a stinking, Bantha-like swamp yak with seaweed for hair and fungi growing from its hide. The massive head thing is a harder sell.
Centaur
CW: anecdote about (almost) sexual assault-as-comedy in a dumb elf game
My DM ran a feywild-focused 5E campaign for a few years. We ran into all the big names eventually. Including, of course, stumbling upon a bunch of centaurs throwing a keg party. They invited us to join them in their revelry. Sounds like fun, right? But knowing our DM's love for Ovid's Metamorphoses, we had long since learned that he likes his folklore strictly of the old school variety. He will always use the darkest and most grim interpretation of any monster possible. Which led to this conversation with my party:
Me: "Alright gang, before we answer, this is a trap, right?"
Everyone else: "Definitely."
Me: "And if we take them up on their offer, they're gunna roofie us, right?"
Everyone else: "No doubt."
Me: "And in the spirit of Ancient Greek mythology, they're then gunna rape us, right?"
Everyone else: "Of course."
Me: "So we're gunna say yes anyway?"
Everyone else: "Oh absolutely."
Me: "Cool cool cool, just wanted to make sure we were on the same page first."
So yeah, a few drinks later and we all woke up in cages, stripped naked and staring down a sinister frat bro centaur. Luckily, I provoked him into going for me first. Being a Fighter with a strength of, I dunno, 18 or 20 by that point in the campaign, I was able to easily wrastle him down, knock him out, and free everybody else. We've had a lot of good laughs over that lil episode in the years since.
Chimera
Ben and I have differing thoughts. He thinks they make the most sense as an experiment by a mad wizard. In fact, since "chimera" is literally just the word for animal hybrid creatures, then maybe this should be elevated to an entire monster type, just like undead and fey. Griffons, owlbears, perytons, etc. are all "chimeras." Now we finally have a common explanation for all these things.
Personally, I find "a wizard did it" to be the worst possible, bottom-of-the-barrel, last resort explanation for pretty much any monster. It's just so trite and lame. If every civilization of the ancient world was constantly coming up with these sorts of bizarre compound creatures without any notion at all of mad scientists or wizardly tampering, then clearly there's something that inherently resonates about "chimeras" which doesn't need to be justified. Nothing wrong with making it a demon, or even just a totally unique legendary beast born from a god or titan or something.
Oh, and I am firmly anti-dragon chimera. There are enough winged lions: griffins, sphinxes, manticores, lamassu, dragonnes. I can only imagine that whoever turned the snake into a dragon was an 8 year old whose parent worked at TSR.
I'll also accept this batshit humanoid one from God of War.
Cloaker
Cape-based mimic is goofy and not that great. It's a one-time prank. Manta-inspired aberration is pretty good but at that point why are we still talking about cloakers.
Cockatrice
Credit: Warhammer, again. Paint job by Anna "August" Augustyniak
Credit: Tony DiTerlizzi
| Credit: midhras, concept art for The Witcher 3 |
There are so many good ways to draw this thing. It makes me happy.
All the same strengths as the basilisk. So how to differentiate them? This is the one that gets to be the chicken, for starters. But they also petrify by different means. In D&D they do it by biting you. I would rather they spit or something. Actually, maybe the basilisk should be the one with petrifying spit? Y'know, like a cobra. Ah jeez.
Traditionally the cockatrice is small, literally just chicken-sized. That's kinda funny. But to me it will always be a huge beast, on par with a chimera or griffin.
Couatl
It is an absolute crime that this is the only Mesoamerican monster that's found its way into D&D. Hell, it's not even an actual monster from that culture. It's a god that's been demoted to a generic monster. Just shameful.
"Snake + bird wings" is very easy to describe and easy to imagine, which is something I value greatly. And I have to admit, this is a very good idea for how to make a celestial that isn't just a Christian angel, yet is equally believable in that role.
Cyclops
How many giant humanoids do you need? Cyclopes are great, ogres are great, trolls are great, and ettins are great. But is it great to have them all? Surely there's some redundancy. When do you use a cyclops versus any other giant?
In Greek mythology they had a "master forgers and craftsman" thing going on. But I hate according that trait to more than one race. That's firmly dwarves' thing, y'know?
But if they're going to be a whole society, there really ought to be some kind of angle there. The term "cyclopean architecture" implies the existence of an ancient fallen empire of cyclopes. And there's a pretty common trope of conferring them with mystical powers of divination and whatnot. That's not bad.
On the other hand, it's hard not to just make the cyclops a savage, animalistic, man-eating Ray Harryhausen monster haunting an island.
Maybe you should just split the difference. The three cyclops brothers, sons of the sea god, each a blood-drinking monster ruling an island yet also capable of speech and apocalyptic prophecy. When the thing tearing people apart with its hands and eating their corpses is not just a wild beast, but is actually intelligent, I find that a lot scarier.
-Dwiz
I always like cockatrices as chicken-sized, myself, because having to deal with a foul-tempered chicken that can instantly kill you regardless of your hp can create fun OSR-style monster-as-problem situations. And just generally ludicrous behavior from the players. Especially if you give them jerkface chicken cunning in response to traps designed to exploit their teeny brains. And then you can always provide a way to unpetrify PCs that got got if you're feeling merciful, a bit more easily than other nasty-trick monsters like permanent level drain undead or rust monsters or what have you.
ReplyDeleteI like cloakers a lot, too. The subsonic moans thing is a good combat gimmick, and they're just smart enough and weird enough in terms of how they communicate and what they want that they can be a spoiler faction in a dungeon that could turn into something more interesting than a BOO! monster.
I'd always had the thought that Hill Giants worship chaos and thus are prone to mutations so Cyclops, Ettins, and Ogres are frequently found/associated with Hill Giants and don't have cultures of their own.
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