Quote from: joriandrake;1022719I don't believe I wrote anything even close to this.

Never said you did.  I was merely pointing out a fact.

Quote from: Omega;1022673No no no! According to village idiot in training...

If you disagree with my assessment of your previous behavior, I would suggest you clarify your position, or point out faulty assumptions or errors in my interpretation. Petty insults will get you nowhere.

QuoteExcept that there are in the real world creatures with nigh impossibly narrow niches. They are few. But they do exist.

Also note some of these were inspired by creatures from books and real life examples of mimicry.

But at the end of the day the most logical answer really is. "A wizard did it!" and failing that. "A god/goddess did it!"

I like the idea of creatures in a world full of adventurers evolving (or intelligently designed, or the like) to fill the narrow niche of 'adventurer screwer-over-er.' After all, adventurers, by all accounts, are a known and consistent part of these worlds (well before the specific adventurers controlled by the PCs came into the picture. Why wouldn't something have come along with ecologically profit off their existence?
Mind you, "A Wizard did it!" works just fine a well.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1022736Never said you did.  I was merely pointing out a fact.

okay

Quote from: MonsterSlayer;1022725Aren't all monsters meant to "F" with the players, I thought that was the point of having adversaries. Some just do it better than others.

I don't have a problem with most opponents if they're interesting, I do hate creatures like which suck XP/levels because I always felt like that breaks the xth wall. Even attacks which make your character age years is fine. To make a difference I would say I have no problem if creatures try to "f" the characters, but I do if they actually target the player at the table.

Quote from: joriandrake;1022770I don't have a problem with most opponents if they're interesting, I do hate creatures like which suck XP/levels because I always felt like that breaks the xth wall. Even attacks which make your character age years is fine. To make a difference I would say I have no problem if creatures try to "f" the characters, but I do if they actually target the player at the table.

Yeah, I can take it or leave it when it comes to level drain. I think permanent ability score drain better represents something such as a Vampire/ Lich attack. Save vs.  Con or loose permanent Con score of 1. As long as the Vampire has you grappled the drain attack auto hits and you just have to make the save or loose another point per round. I think it is more thematic and represents how a Vampire makes the person more sickly as they slide toward death (see also Hammer vampire movies).

But I don't feel Level drain is a direct attack on the player at the table, I just think the concept could have been handled better. I personally like the permanent wounds built into the DCC monster crit charts. And to me DCC can be more adversarial between DM and player, but it is handled better and "expected".

Lava Children. A fat Alfred E Neuman that is basically incorporeal to metal.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;1022012Nilbog

We have a winner.

Quite a few if not most monsters in Paizo Misfit Monsters Redeemed book. In some cases they do a decent job of redeeming some dumb monsters in the book like Lava Children imo. Wolf in Sheeps clothing requires the group to be either total newbies to the hobby or just bored to be actually fooled by the creature. So if it kills say a Halfling it then uses the Halfling to lure new targets close to it. Yet somehow no one notices all the vines sticking in and out of the halfling.

Quote from: Rod's Duo Narcotics;1022188The Adherer - a Semi-intelligent, Lawful Evil (?) thing that looks like a mummy but isn't, it's just a sticky humanoid

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And I say this as someone who loves the Fiend Folio for what it is (incidentally, I owned the FF before I got a Monster Manual...it was a Christmas present along with the Moldvay Basic set and U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh...were my initial forays into D&D a little outre? you bet)

The Enveloper. A cylinder of flesh that beats you to death with fleshy appendages and then absorbs your abilities by enveloping you. For some reasons the ones you encounter have never done this before.

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It's Poppin' Fresh's brother!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1022832It's Poppin' Fresh's brother!

LOL

What surprises me is that they including the Adherer in the Paizo book which I thought was interesting. Yet somehow the above was left out.

I wanna do a retro-clone that takes Lamentations of the Flame Princess' "Every monster should be unique" guideline one step farther into "Every monster has to be based on a dollar store toy".

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There are worse guidelines.

Also, at last GaryCon somebody looked over the "bag o' toys" that the Rust Monster and Landshark are from, and noted that many of the rest were a) bipedal and b) proportioned suspiciously like a guy in a rubber suit.

I thought that was extremely interesting, myself.

Brain Mole and Thought Eater have to be up there for the fact of a lot of people throw out psionics.

Masher because of how often it gets missed.

Boggart seems lame to me and the Cat Lord is utterly cringe worthy. Grippli? 700 year old frog-men mashups? ugh.

The Grue Elementals always struck me as unnecessary. Wolf-in-sheep's-clothing? Double ugh.

As annoying as Rust Monsters are to players, I think that in terms of creativity it was really a work of genius. I wouldn't classify it as a 'dumb' monster.

Quote from: jeff37923;1022016Flail Snail

Flail Snails are great.