Feats are awesome. The easiest and fastest way to modify a creature is to mess around with her feats. New feats can give a new personality to a classic monster, as well as new attack options in a battle. As a GM, it can be a good idea to surprise your players by giving a new set of feats to a creature that they ''think'' they know all about. What about you ? What are the modifications that you make to a monster list of feats, and why are you doing those modifications ? I'll break the ice with some of mine :
Goblin
Toughness instead of Improved Initiative
In my vision of Heroic Fantasy, goblins shouldn't act before the elf PC, it should always be the other way around. I tend to see goblins as weak, coward, clumsy, stupid and evil little fellows that are easy enough to catch off-guard for seasoned adventurers. However, goblins are kind of tough for their small size, making them hard to kill for low level PCs. This modification was inspired by the golbins in the Demon Wars trilogy from R.A. Salvatore.
Orc
Reckless Offense (from the EPHB) instead of Weapon Focus (falchion)
Why dedicate yourself in the subtile handling of a single weapon when you can be more powerful with all of them ? Using brute force over finess, Reckless Offense stick well with the orcs' mentality. They sacrifice their defense to get a better offense, because they don't need to defend themselves against dead opponents. Reckless Offense will make the orcs more likely to hit higher level PCs and their Ferocity will take care of keeping them alive for a while. This modification was strangely inspired by the box's art covert of the game called HeroQuest, the game that made me discover the world of Heroic Fantasy (along with Conan the Barbarian). It's because of that game that I discovered D&D.
Next ! :D
Yeah, this is a thing that I love, too.
Though, I generally simply diversify humanoids through class levels - most of them are "level 1 something".
Nevertheless, for other monsters like giants and outsiders, i love swap 1-2 feats for a maneuver or two. This brings in nasty surprises for the players.
The swapping for thoughness it's a good one for everything I suppose :)
Yeah, ToB is great. With ToB, big monsters can do things that they should be able to do, like Charging Minotaur and stuff like that. :)
Here's another one :
Skeleton
Dodge instead of Improved Initiative
Being dead and without muscle don't make you faster to react, but since you're only made of bones, people can't hit you in the belly, because you don't have one. Arrows can fly between your ribs, making you harder to hit.
Yeah, ToB is great.
i meant combat maneuver - say, drag in place of pull, or dirty trick in place of alertness on a monster with combat expertise.
Nevertheless, yeah, in my 3.x campaing I used ToB with NPC along with a lot of other books.
Making level one NPC's is fun for me as a GM. It is like half the fun for me. Heck I made a goblin level one shaman and used it as an npc. Bruning hands seems like something a goblin would use since they love fire so much. And if at first level no one has evasion.
I made a two weapon fighting goblin fighter with weapon finese and two weapon fighting and two short swords one of which is masterwork.
Dodge on goblin might make them even harder to hit.
I also made some goblin archers with point blank and precise shot. (One of my players has really bad memories with 1st level fighters and rapid shot. )