I've always hated rust monsters. They just seem so cheap to me.
I dont care for any monster that destroys gear. As a GM I usually change it to another ability or have them deactivate the magic in the gear.
Anything with spiraling death effects.
Losing Str or Dex sucks, but losing Con means losing HP and losing fortitude saves, meaning you are more likely to fail the next save, and so on.
I like a challenge as a player, but when no one in the party has a real way to deal with swarms, ghosts, or whatever, sending those in constantly is frustrating.
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
We're not allowed to make political statements on the boards.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
They are a CR5 creature that lives in the Ethereal Plane... a place that's pretty much inaccessible to PCs until you get to 12th level or so.
They phase in as a free action, attack, then phase out as a move action.
There's really not a whole lot PCs can do about them!
The only effective tactic is to ready the action, "Shoot at the phase spider when it appears," and wait for it to attack. But they can see from the Ethereal Plane into the Material, and are smart enough to notice that their opponents are readying missile-weapons, and therefore won't necessarily attack every round!
The things are TPK machines!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm pretty bitter about being faced with monsters that have effects at a level that the characters cannot be expected to remedy them. There isn't a class around that gets remove curse, remove disease, remove paralysis etc. prior to level 5. Level 5 and up, the inability to deal with these conditions is due to poor choices and lack of preparation but before that, it's just dirty pool to suck up the party's wealth with a bunch of just in case 3rd level spell scrolls.
Vargouille are my nemeses for this reason. I've lost two characters to them, both prior to level 5.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The things are TPK machines!
*takes careful notes on Phase Spiders*
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Depends on what you mean by "hate". Hate fighting against? Hate playing as a GM? Hate the lore concept of? Hate the mechanics of? Just don't care for their face(s)?
mostly the concepts and mechanics
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've answered this before!
And here-
And also... I despise catfolk, most likely because I remember the 1990s and early 2000s with clarity. Unlike my other "gah, not THAT!" creatures, this one is purely a matter of personal preference without a lot of reasoning to slap up here.
They are a CR5 creature that lives in the Ethereal Plane... a place that's pretty much inaccessible to PCs until you get to 12th level or so.
They phase in as a free action, attack, then phase out as a move action.
There's really not a whole lot PCs can do about them!
The only effective tactic is to ready the action, "Shoot at the phase spider when it appears," and wait for it to attack. But they can see from the Ethereal Plane into the Material, and are smart enough to notice that their opponents are readying missile-weapons, and therefore won't necessarily attack every round!
The things are TPK machines!
I don't think anyone is supposed to knlw what action is being readied otherwise readying an action to counterspell a spell would just allow casters to not cast a spell or make you waste it in a low level spell.
Another instance of this being a problem is bracing for a charge attack. Nobody is charging you if you do that. Incorporeal monsters that force you to ready actions would also be almost impossible to defeat if they knew exactly what you were readying.They disrupt the caster who was about to cast a spell with their own readied action.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Anything aquatic. Aquatic monsters SUCK. I've lost more characters to aquatic foes than anything else, and half the time it's not because the monster was tough and killed me outright, oh no, my character died because the (expletive) just held me underwater until I drowned! I'm all for tactical uses of terrain and thinking around problems, but having a high level character drowned by a mob of grindylow is just insulting. Skum, sahuagin, deep ones, orms, dragon turtles, I hate ALL OF THEM.
Anything aquatic. Aquatic monsters SUCK. I've lost more characters to aquatic foes than anything else, and half the time it's not because the monster was tough and killed me outright, oh no, my character died because the (expletive) just held me underwater until I drowned! I'm all for tactical uses of terrain and thinking around problems, but having a high level character drowned by a mob of grindylow is just insulting. Skum, sahuagin, deep ones, orms, dragon turtles, I hate ALL OF THEM.
How are you held underwater for 10+ rounds?
I actually don't care for monsters generally. I feel like monster centric campaigns become silly after a while, for me dramatic storytelling is better when it involves humanoids.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Most evil outsider groups except azura, oni, and rakshasa.
Most incorporeal undead.
I really don't like Liches.
Though my least favorite monster would have to be...humans;)
I rarely use monsters in my world's settings. I really don't have any that I hate or even dislike (I'm ALWAYS the GM). As a player however, wraiths scare the hell out of me.
Anything incorporeal or with stupidly-specific means of defeat. The latter usually means tpk or hasty retreat unless your party happens to have the right kind of spellcaster who happens to have that specific thing available right that moment.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
If previous editions were the "gear is more important than who you are" days, why are rust monsters more hateful to people now then they were then?I've answered this before!
Because the modern player base has a higher percentage of spoiled brats? : )
Anything aquatic. Aquatic monsters SUCK. I've lost more characters to aquatic foes than anything else, and half the time it's not because the monster was tough and killed me outright, oh no, my character died because the (expletive) just held me underwater until I drowned! I'm all for tactical uses of terrain and thinking around problems, but having a high level character drowned by a mob of grindylow is just insulting. Skum, sahuagin, deep ones, orms, dragon turtles, I hate ALL OF THEM.How are you held underwater for 10+ rounds?
Grapple, dive. Once you're a hundred feet or so underwater it gets pretty hairy.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
mostly the concepts and mechanics
Concepts:
I don't like orcs. Haven't since the first time I picked up a Tolkien book. They're essentially placeholders for "those barbarian savages what live yonder". Goblins at least have interesting qualities, especially Paizo ones. Orcs hit too close to actual representations used by real-world bigots. I avoid them when possible and play against type when it isn't.
Mechanics:
Hydrae. They have special, not-quite-called-shot mechanics that don't apply to other creatures, but there's nothing in-world that really justifies it. A player has no reason to think they can attack heads separately from the rest of the creature--you can't with an ettin, for example. Once they figure that out, I have a hard time later saying that a character can't specifically attack the dragon's head with intent to sever (or that doing so is fundamentally no different from attacking the rest of the dragon) once that character's player has run up against a hydra. Pathfinder made it both better and worse by treating the heads as weapons to sunder instead of pseudocreatures--now players start asking if they can sunder a tiger's claws, etc.
Any grappling specialty creature.
on the mechanics of hydrae I never got why players would bother sundering its heads because it has no ranged attack and can't fly so it would seem the smart thing to do would be climb/fly someplace it can't reach and hit it with ranged attacks till it dies.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As for concepts I would have to say the attic whisperer as the whole idea makes me sad for real.
Mechanics:Hydrae. They have special, not-quite-called-shot mechanics that don't apply to other creatures, but there's nothing in-world that really justifies it. A player has no reason to think they can attack heads separately from the rest of the creature--you can't with an ettin, for example. Once they figure that out, I have a hard time later saying that a character can't specifically attack the dragon's head with intent to sever (or that doing so is fundamentally no different from attacking the rest of the dragon) once that character's player has run up against a hydra. Pathfinder made it both better and worse by treating the heads as weapons to sunder instead of pseudocreatures--now players start asking if they can sunder a tiger's claws, etc.
yeah, it opens a can of worms either way. Maybe the hydra should be allowed to use it's heads to grant cover for it's self ala the ally shield ability. If you "miss" the hydra due to the cover bonus you hit the head instead severing it.
In this way, it becomes an active defense of the hydra that doesn't introduce tactics the players will try to use against other monsters. If characters have ways to avoid cover then they can try to avoid chopping off it's heads.
The remorhaz. I will shamelessly and openly metagame to kill those things without suffering casualties.
Concepts: Mindless or Free-willed creatures that are always of a given alignment. Just is not to my taste. I understand some people prefer it, and I'm not trying to spawn an alignment thread hijacking, so please don't follow up on this in this thread.
Mythic versions of creatures. It bothers me that there are the legendary owlbears, but then there are also the super-legendary owlbears and the super duper with a cherry on top legendary first owlbear. We could just have a better base set of stats and let the stronger ones have templates for almost all mythic versions of normal creatures. No problem with the mythic creatures that have no counterpart.
Vermin as a creature type. I'd really rather see this as an animal subtype. Special shout out to Giant Ants because I feel like the complex colonies ants can form, complete with farming mushrooms or raising aphid or centipede livestock, are not given justice by the mindless trait.
Mechanics:
Destrachan: High damage sonic attack at will with a variant that stops PCs from acting and disarms them as well, and the AoE is huge to boot. Crazy tough fight and it feels kind of cheap when the players start dropping before they get up to it. Dropping buildings on people by shattering support columns doesn't help my perception of them either
Banshee: First it almost kills everyone with an enormous amount of damage, then those that are left get to face an over-pumped touch attack which adds a healthy dose of not acting into the mix, and add to that the the ability to farm AoO's with its 12AoO's in a round and step up. That the wail penetrates silence, and this counters an otherwise intuitive preparation to make before fighting one, and it's touch attacks dispel effects that help fight against cowering and impose a penalty on saves v the wall of it didn't lead with that is just icing on the hate-cake.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Rust monsters- A holdover from the "gear is more important than who you are" days of design. I know people who love them, because they cause characters to react with more terror than things which might kill them. To me, that's a bug, not a feature. Sir Goodguy the Brave should be more concerned with saving the villagers trapped in Lord Nastybad's dungeon than in making sure his armor isn't destroyed.
.
If previous editions were the "gear is more important than who you are" days, why are rust monsters more hateful to people now then they were then?
.
Because the modern player base has a higher percentage of spoiled brats? : )
.
I disagree with Blaphers' tongue-in-cheek answer to Corathonv2 (which did make me snicker, LOL)
It's because back in the 70s and 80s the game was much less concerned with internal consistency, logic and depth. We just kicked in a door, killed the orc, and stole the pie. Story and background may have existed in some games on some level, but not nearly like what we had in the 90s, or even today.
It's like back then when you didn't take prisoners and when there weren't any orc children that made you feel bad for murdering them. And dungeons didn't have a source of water or food, no bathrooms either. And you could bump into a named Lich who's just standing in a dungeon corridor doing nothing (for ages) until PCs happen to walk by.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've always been in the camp with "born_of_fire" pointing out monsters whose CR is appropriate to the APL but who the PCs can't actually do anything against.
The Phase Spider that Haladir mentioned, along with the Ethereal Filcher (which has the metagame problems attributed to the Rust Monster
Gas Spore & Disenchanter) are the ones I've ALWAYS had a real problem with. They are total BS.
I add to the list the Allip -- a CR 3 incorporeal undead (w/ Channel Resistance).
Anything that grapples.
I'm pretty bitter about being faced with monsters that have effects at a level that the characters cannot be expected to remedy them. There isn't a class around that gets remove curse, remove disease, remove paralysis etc. prior to level 5. Level 5 and up, the inability to deal with these conditions is due to poor choices and lack of preparation but before that, it's just dirty pool to suck up the party's wealth with a bunch of just in case 3rd level spell scrolls.
Vargouille are my nemeses for this reason. I've lost two characters to them, both prior to level 5.
Sing it, preacher.
Freakin' vargouilles are the worst, because there's a few PFS mods that throw them in at Tier2, where you're liable to encounter them as a 1st-level character.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I rarely use monsters in my world's settings. I really don't have any that I hate or even dislike (I'm ALWAYS the GM). As a player however, wraiths scare the hell out of me.
as a player, I hate incorporeal undead in general, but I have a fond momory of the day when my lvl5 priest of Sarenrae made a natural 20 on turning a wraith and destroyed it outright... without this, it might have turned into a tpk.
Monsters in general I find tediously dull compared to sentient races with class levels.
IOW, monsters are for square-room hack-n-slash.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I wouldn't say I hate them, but I've always been irritated by the Skulk. The creature is portrayed as a chameleon, and many published adventures presume it can sneak past the party using its racial stealth bonus. It can't; the Skulk doesn't have the hide in plain sight ability, and thus cannot attempt stealth checks without cover or concealment. It can't actually do what it's supposed to do. (Easily fixed problem, but it irritates me that the cornerstone of its entire concept is missing from its statblock)
I'm pretty bitter about being faced with monsters that have effects at a level that the characters cannot be expected to remedy them. There isn't a class around that gets remove curse, remove disease, remove paralysis etc. prior to level 5. Level 5 and up, the inability to deal with these conditions is due to poor choices and lack of preparation but before that, it's just dirty pool to suck up the party's wealth with a bunch of just in case 3rd level spell scrolls.
Vargouille are my nemeses for this reason. I've lost two characters to them, both prior to level 5.
Sing it, preacher.
Freakin' vargouilles are the worst, because there's a few PFS mods that throw them in at Tier2, where you're liable to encounter them as a 1st-level character.
The flipside to that is that once players have access to remove disease, neutralize poison, and the like, disease and non-fast-acting poison become trivial to the point that they might as well not exist. At lower levels, they're something for the player to be afraid of, something that warrants careful planning instead of the usual "wade in and trade blows until it stops moving" strategy.
Vargouilles are especially nasty, though. Area paralysis is no joke at almost any level.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
"Common" Orcs ("CR 1/3" is an unfunny joke) are a sphincter-clenching terror at low-level, and it doesn't help that the Pathfinder variety switched out 3e's greataxes for falchions, tripling their chances of scoring a crit against you. They're +7 on a charge.
And there's usually an Orc Berserker (CR1) in the group; he'll have a raging Str of 28 and is +11 on a charge. With Ferocity and rage up, it takes 45pts (almost double their listed 24hp) of damage to drop them.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've always been scared of will-o'-wisps.
I always used will-o'-wisps to great effect in my game, so much so I made variants of them for my players. They hated it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"Common" Orcs ("CR 1/3" is an unfunny joke) are a sphincter-clenching terror at low-level, and it doesn't help that the Pathfinder variety switched out 3e's greataxes for falchions, tripling their chances of scoring a crit against you. They're +7 on a charge.
And there's usually an Orc Berserker (CR1) in the group; he'll have a raging Str of 28 and is +11 on a charge. With Ferocity and rage up, it takes 45pts (almost double their listed 24hp) of damage to drop them.
Ever since I learned Nonlethal "turns off" Ferocity I have made sure I had some way to deliver it on all my characters and fear it no more!
They are a CR5 creature that lives in the Ethereal Plane... a place that's pretty much inaccessible to PCs until you get to 12th level or so.
They phase in as a free action, attack, then phase out as a move action.
There's really not a whole lot PCs can do about them!
The only effective tactic is to ready the action, "Shoot at the phase spider when it appears," and wait for it to attack. But they can see from the Ethereal Plane into the Material, and are smart enough to notice that their opponents are readying missile-weapons, and therefore won't necessarily attack every round!
The things are TPK machines!
I once forced my players, then around level 8, to navigate an invisible maze with pitfalls and cramped spaces while being hunted by sharks that did this. It was one of several trials they went through with the end result being that they became mythic, which I’d say was well earned after that.
Wait no, the maze wasn’t invisible; it only existed at all when light was being cast on it and the entire place was otherwise a giant pitfall where magical light sources and flight were shut down, so they had to get through this thing keeping torches lit while being constantly attacked by sharks that came out of nowhere and disappeared after biting. The sharks didn’t fly on the material plane, they just jumped out like a fish leaping out of water.