Monsters you use too much?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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The Monsters you just won't use thread has got me wondering, what monsters do you more often than you probably should?

Personally I've had a bizarre fondness for kobolds, medusae, and efreeti going back to old AD&D.


Hippygriff wrote:

The Monsters you just won't use thread has got me wondering, what monsters do you more often than you probably should?

Personally I've had a bizarre fondness for kobolds, medusae, and efreeti going back to old AD&D.

I don't have a specific monster for the first entry, but I do tend to use grapplers a lot.

Vampires tend to show up a lot also.

Bone Devils are another one.

Earth Elementals

Hydras in 3.5. Now that they have been powered down I don't use them as much.

Skullcrusher Ogre(MM 3) Ogres that were not stupid so I had a reason to use actual tactics.

Dire Wolves just to annoy the players with trips. Of course this was before I found out you could not trip someone who was trying to stand up. I will have to say if they are still useful in the next game.

Shadows and Wraiths

Spell Weavers(MM 2),


Monsters I use far, far too much.

Humanoids:

Humans
Hobgoblins
Orcs
Goblins

Undead:

Zombies/Skeletons
Vampires
Ghouls/Ghasts
Liches

Giants:

Ogres
Frost Giants
Fire Giants


I've developed a penchant for evil fey, and I've been using a quite a few bugbears since classic monsters revisited came out.

Grand Lodge

Humanoids:

Hobgoblins
Orcs
Goblins
Ogres

Undead:

Zombies/Skeletons

Scarab Sages

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My parties fight goblins till lvl 20....


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Fiends because I love them so much both as RP encounter and combat encounters (generally both in the same encounter :P).

My players say I have "weapon specialization: fiends" as a GM :)

Actually, since are new, I'm quite a noob now with Daemons and Qlipphot ^_^


There are way to many creatures I like too focus on a select few. But I have had DMs who love certain creatures to much though.


Humans. They're my favorite race, and as I've said before I'd love to rule that in the homebrew settings I create that they'd be the only race available to PCs.

I also tend to use undead too much, I think. Nothing scares a player more than the words "level drain".


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Solars.

That's how I start all my campaigns.

Dark Archive

wolves
pirates
undead


Set wrote:

wolves

pirates
undead

Toss in Devils and I'd say you were playing the D&D MMO. :p

Dark Archive

Symar wrote:
Set wrote:

wolves

pirates
undead
Toss in Devils and I'd say you were playing the D&D MMO. :p

I never played it long enough to get past kobolds and sahuagin. :)

I'd like to add ninja and dinosaurs to my list of overused monsters.


Anything big. Huge creatures or above. I, for some reason, can't fathom a boss fight without using a large to huge creature...

I have an extremely nasty habit for including fights with mooks in my games, which I like for theme but tends to be underwhelming.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Lately I've pitted my players almost exclusively against demons.


Things with class levels.


All low level monsters: Orcs, goblins, zombies, etc.

And vampires, shadows, dragons, and giants.


I usually use humanoid races as adversaries more than any class of "monster". I find it more dramatic and interesting.

I guess a close 2nd would be the various flavors of undead as level appropriate.


B0sh1 wrote:

I usually use humanoid races as adversaries more than any class of "monster". I find it more dramatic and interesting.

I guess a close 2nd would be the various flavors of undead as level appropriate.

I've been playing with DMs who are like you for almost 2.5 years.

It's boring. Facing enemies who you can figure out what they are and their abilities real fast gets boring even faster. You'd think on a theoretical level that that wouldn't be the case, since you have all the classes to choose from! But nope, it's always roughly the same thing. Some melee guys, maybe a caster or two, possibly a ranged attacker.

With creatures and monsters, you never really know what they can do until you've identified them, and I've found it a lot easier to not metagame with creatures. It's easily conceivable that my character will know what a wizard can cast in game, so I can act accordingly.

Throw a beast I've never seen before (much less a beast my character has never seen), and combat suddenly just got a lot more interesting. Instead of "I charge at the beast and swing my axe for X damage!" it becomes "Oh shit, I swung my axe and the creature split in two!"


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Cheapy wrote:
B0sh1 wrote:

I usually use humanoid races as adversaries more than any class of "monster". I find it more dramatic and interesting.

I guess a close 2nd would be the various flavors of undead as level appropriate.

I've been playing with DMs who are like you for almost 2.5 years.

It's boring. Facing enemies who you can figure out what they are and their abilities real fast gets boring even faster. You'd think on a theoretical level that that wouldn't be the case, since you have all the classes to choose from! But nope, it's always roughly the same thing. Some melee guys, maybe a caster or two, possibly a ranged attacker.

With creatures and monsters, you never really know what they can do until you've identified them, and I've found it a lot easier to not metagame with creatures. It's easily conceivable that my character will know what a wizard can cast in game, so I can act accordingly.

Throw a beast I've never seen before (much less a beast my character has never seen), and combat suddenly just got a lot more interesting. Instead of "I charge at the beast and swing my axe for X damage!" it becomes "Oh s&+$, I swung my axe and the creature split in two!"

Sounds like a problem with the DM then again my group is new to Pathfinder. Most of us stopped playing prior to 2nd edition and picked back up in Pathfinder, so a lot of this is still new.

I've never had a problem with my group meta-gaming away an encounter or it not be challenging to them. There's enough feat options, races and creative license to make things always interesting.


Giants, demons, and vampires. Most of my stuff is undead I guess.
But I also do a lot of odd stuff, like mindflayers with quickling psiblade vegepygmy servitors and troll wizards, so I guess it's all good.


If you play a ranger in my game, you want favored enemy undead.

I use corporeal undead the most.
Vampires
Vampire Spawn
Wights
Ghouls (with class levels!)
Zombies (with a plague!)
Skeletons (Now on fire! Or bloody!)

I have ideas for a lich but it will using the Uber-lich (my name for it) rules from Sword & Sorcery Ravenloft d20. Control a huge territory, have the ability to see through the eyes of any mindless minion, and more.

I'm running a module with a lot of outsiders right now. Nice thing about prefabs is that they use monsters I wouldn't think to include on my own.

Given my penchant for undead, Carrion Crown is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I also like wolves and dire wolves. Haven't used them for awhile, but they're likely to be prominent in whatever I do next, which will probably be ghost themed.

I also like worgs and winter wolves. I like winter wolves even more since the Bestiary categorizes them as "worg, winter wolf" now. I haven't had the opportunity to use any worgs in my tabletop game yet, but I do have a reoccurring worg pack leader in a NWN persistent world.

Given the opportunity, I plan to overuse werewolves too, and wererats.

Scarab Sages

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I was going to say Goblins, but let's be honest: is it REALLY possible to overuse goblins? :)


Wolfsnap wrote:
I was going to say Goblins, but let's be honest: is it REALLY possible to overuse goblins? :)

Just plain goblins, or other goblinoids included?


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

If your players as a group forbid you to use a monster, have you used them too much?

If so, Chokers.

I've only used them twice, too.


I don't think you can use any monster too much.

For example, in my Audor campaign, I was using gnolls a lot. But then, I established that there was currently a war against the gnolls, so it made a lot of sense to be fighting gnolls all the time.

Paizo Employee Director of Game Development

Drakli wrote:

If your players as a group forbid you to use a monster, have you used them too much?

If so, Chokers.

I've only used them twice, too.

Man, I love chokers.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I'm running Kingmaker, with a touch of Realm of the Fellnight Queen and Conquest of Bloodsworn Valley.

So

Spoiler:
Fey

Next campaign I run will definitely tone down on the buggers.


Undead all the way because they fit practically everywhere.

But my all time favorites are always Slaads (with Boggard minions).

Dark Archive

I know my groups end up fighting a lot of Kobolds and Gnolls at early levels, and then get slightly more varied from there.


PC races.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 8

Spiders. Big ones, small ones, elemental ones, poisonous ones, leaping ones, webbing ones, mechanical ones.

I hate spiders in the real world, so I guess I like inflicting that on people as a DM?

Aside from spiders, humans, aberrations, and homebrewed automata (constructs) tend to make up the bulk of my critters.

Sovereign Court

Orcs. But they're so much fun to use as Army cannon fodder. Kobolds. because every party needs an unoffical mascot.


I tend to use a whole lot of undead and evil outsiders, and I avoid using humanoid opponents because my campaigns are usually light-hearted in tone.

I'm currently running a Legend of Zelda campaign, and Stalfos (skeletal knights from the Zelda games that I've created using the Skeletal Champion template) are the main adversaries of the party.


I love the dead.

Sovereign Court

Snakes.. it started out with the scout/cleric getting ambushed by a random encounter constrictor snake and constricted into unconsciousness. The player was a bit sore about that. A little while later the party had a random encounter with another constrictor snake (jungle campaign), and he ended up in the way of the snake that was fed up with being surrounded-flanked, so he got choked into unconsciousness AGAIN.

So they've found a dungeon, and this time it's the fighter that falls into the pit with venomous snakes, and stays down there for about ten rounds trying to kill them because he's afraid they'll get an AoO if he climbs out. (...)

And then they get to the dungeon's inner sanctum, which has a Giant Advanced Resolute venomous snake that spits poison. And the cleric just has to be the first one to storm in...

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8

At low levels, I tend to like classed savage races like goblins and orcs. I also use undead a lot.

At high levels, I tend toward a lot of outsiders and undead, but then... that's also because a lot of high CR monsters are outsiders and undead, and the ones that aren't, it's harder to always create circumstances as to why they are supposed to be there, or are repeat encounters.


Most recently I find I have been using a lot of classed NPCs (mostly humans)... probably more than I should be.


Weeping Angels and Vashta Naradas.

This means that either I've been watching too much Dr. Who, or that the two aforementioned monsters work very well with a customized Carrion Crown adventure path.


The _______ as characters races.

And any really low CR monsters as I love hordes lead by a semi-powerful command unit/monster.


Humans. In fact most of my campaigns have always been about humans. It's because they can be as powerful as the other players, and also allows for political intrigue or greater involvement with the actual characters lives. They can exist in the same world without having to be in a dungeon, but they arent limited to not being in dungeons.

Humans are so varied, because in essence, we created everything (in the fantasy world) therefor we can be everything.

Humans can be sinister, and can act on it more directly by living side by side with the PC's. They can murder the family members of the PCs, or harm other loved ones. They can gather information on them to figure out how they are.

Elves and Dwarves are good too, but I just have a particular view of them that tends to make them not good at being villains. Dwarves are too stoic. Elves are to aloof. Humans are the right type to get into your business and wreck stuff.

Humans are, and will always be my overused enemy.


Top 5 I probably "over-use":

Kobolds
Dire Wolves
Juju Zombies
Green Slime (especially in traps or other weaponized exposure)
Githyanki

... yes, the latter is not PF, but yay home campaigns that predate 3E :)

-TimD


Ogres
Low Gorgons
Black Skeletons
Dungie
Dire Rats

I don't often run into the issue with the Tome of Horrors, but sometimes old favorites come out too often. When I feel the monsters are getting stale I bring out another Monster Manual. Now they have only enountered Dungie a total of 3 times in 10 years but more than once per group tends to get old. I hate enounters with Dire Rats. Often I have them just run away. Against anything but a real low level party they are about the most useless monster I come accross too frequently.


I vary my monsters a lot - but according to my players, I use templates too much. They rarely fight an ogre - its usually something like advanced giant half-dragon ogres.

A personal fave is half-red dragon trolls.


Oozes and constructs. I don't know why. I just...love them.


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I've gotten predictable over the years. Minions and thugs generally progress in "humanoid order"

Kobolds 1st, then goblins, then orcs and hobgoblins, gnolls, then bugbears, then bring on the giants.

3.5 made it better when I started giving everything levels. The Pathfinder made it even better.

"Ha! Its only a kobold. Wait, it just did what?!"

Scarab Sages

Aazen wrote:
Orcs. But they're so much fun to use as Army cannon fodder. Kobolds. because every party needs an unoffical mascot.

Yes -- I'm particularly a fan of weird, templated orcs (half-fiend! ghost! ZOMBIE!). One of my ongoing campaigns had waves of zombie orcs just pouring over the PCs. The only thing better than cannon fodder is zombie cannon fodder. :)


Goblins, Orcs, Humans, Trolls, Orge, and various undead are my main monsters. I toss in others once in a while, but count on these in most games I run.


Drakli wrote:

If your players as a group forbid you to use a monster, have you used them too much?

If so, Chokers.

I've only used them twice, too.

Twice is two too many!

I played in those games, your chokers were brutal!

For me it was a race of creatures that combined doppelgänger and mimic abilities. Oh, and they could copy class abilities and magic item properties. They became the entire campaign. Won't do that again.


Robots.

The last 6 campaigns that I have written included one or more robots, and that is about the only monster the 6 of them shared in common.

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