So, my son has been watching the old cartoon, which is a pretty cool treatment of gargoyles. So, gargoyles seem like they could be really neat monsters.
But it seems like in our pencil-and-paper RPGs, they don't make much sense.
CE Medium monstrous humanoid (earth)
Speed 40 ft., fly 60 ft. (average)
Languages Common, Terran
Freeze (Ex) A gargoyle can hold itself so still it appears to be a statue. A gargoyle that uses freeze can take 20 on its Stealth check to hide in plain sight as a stone statue.
And in Golarion there's Xoveron, the demon lord of gargoyles and ruins, who wants to destroy all civilizations.
But...they're earth-element humanoids that hide in cities by standing still so they can steal trinkets and eat homeless people? How on earth did that kind of monster society come about? And then...kapoacinths?
Has there ever been an "Ecology of the Gargoyle"-type article, to make more sense of this? Not in "Dragon", apparently.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?131553-Ecology-of%85
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So, my son has been watching the old cartoon, which is a pretty cool treatment of gargoyles. So, gargoyles seem like they could be really neat monsters.
But it seems like in our pencil-and-paper RPGs, they don't make much sense.
CE Medium monstrous humanoid (earth)
Speed 40 ft., fly 60 ft. (average)
Languages Common, Terran
Freeze (Ex) A gargoyle can hold itself so still it appears to be a statue. A gargoyle that uses freeze can take 20 on its Stealth check to hide in plain sight as a stone statue.And in Golarion there's Xoveron, the demon lord of gargoyles and ruins, who wants to destroy all civilizations.
But...they're earth-element humanoids that hide in cities by standing still so they can steal trinkets and eat homeless people? How on earth did that kind of monster society come about? And then...kapoacinths?
Has there ever been an "Ecology of the Gargoyle"-type article, to make more sense of this? Not in "Dragon", apparently.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?131553-Ecology-of%85
Classic Horrors Revisited has a section on gargoyles that goes into their society and ecology, but the take is much more of a horror-themed snatching people off the streets and doing unspeakable things things to them than the cartoon's take on them.
Rite Publishing released a protector style race of gargoyles called stonewardens. It includes ecology, society, ect. It is more in line with the image portrayed in the cartoon, if that's what you were looking for. But as far as villains? Yes, Classic Horrors Revisited is great in covering that sort of gargoyle.
Originally (as in AD&D 1) they were the equivalent of a magical beast without the ability to look like a statue - however you needed a +1 weapon to hit. AD&D II they gained the 'pose as statues' ability.
3.0 they were Magical Beast (Earth) with DR 15 (except for +1 and freezing) and still used the 'pretend to be a statue' trick.
Which considering that gargoyles in RL are stone waterspouts on top of churches (and other similar buildings) often shaped like minor demons - all seems to fit quite well.
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It's enough to make you think Good and Neutral-aligned communities would stop making statues that look like winged humanoid monsters. Seriously, every time I'm running a game and I say the party sees a statue of a winged, horned humanoid, they just assume it's a gargoyle and go to town on it. "Sorry about your waterspout, your holiness, but better safe than sorry, right? Here's a bag of silver to pay for the damages."
If I remember right, one of the origin stories in D&D lore for how the gargoyle race came into existence actually stemmed from their use as wards against evil. Apparently, stone gargoyle statues absorbed evil magic and influences trying to harm the inhabitants of churches and other structures and, over time, the build up of evil energy caused the statues to animate and go on a rampage. Some of the new creatures survived long enough to reproduce and, voilà, silent hordes of leering demon-faced lawn ornaments are plaguing adventurers and renting out space on top of vampire castles.
I worked up gargoyles per the cartoon at: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kc4d?Disneys-Gargoyles#1
Classic Horrors Revisited has a section on gargoyles that goes into their society and ecology, but the take is much more of a horror-themed snatching people off the streets and doing unspeakable things things to them than the cartoon's take on them.
I knew it had to be in one of them, but I didn't know which.
But what doesn't make sense to me is that these are humanoid creatures. So presumably they have a culture of their own, some existence before they encountered humans much less civilizations capable of huge stonemasonry projects, tribes in which they raise young. I can see a couple of opportunistic individuals taking up in cities. But what's with the freezing?
I mean, a wing of gargoyles out in some wilderness somewhere, do they just spend their time frozen on the cliffs, and for what reason? Do they just enjoy it inexplicably? Maybe they like to meditate, they're a philosophical race? When do all the baby gargoyles take up this habit?
Compare for example the calikang from Pathfinder #29: Mother of Flies, which is possibly even more implausible than the gargoyle. But it had a really nice ecology writeup, which made them make so much more sense.
Maybe I'll just think about the gargoyle as a relative of the calikang, with origins in some cold, mountainous desert. Since food is only seasonally available, they developed the ability to enter suspended animation (as an alternative to hibernation). That's the origin of the freeze ability. And with the expansion of civilization, they've been...opportunistic.
Anyway, I might ought check out CHR, thanks.
I think this paragraph from the Bestiary might help you:
"The longer a tribe of gargoyles abides in a region of ruins or buildings, the more its members come to resemble that region's architectural styles. The changes a gargoyle's appearance undergoes are slow and subtle, but over the course of years, it can shift radically."
I read this to mean a gargoyle can look like pretty much any kind of stone statue or structure, maybe even natural stone for "wild" gargoyles. You can many real examples of predators that stay still to hunt (herrings), and many creatures have evolved for human society (rats). You can imagine pre-history gargoyles posing as fertility statues, stone-henge-like structure, and Easter-Island heads. Really, that one paragraph suddenly makes the possibility for when and where a gargoyle might pop up almost endless. A modern-day gargoyle would probably look like some abstract art sculpture.
I really like the idea of different factions of gargoyles all stemming from some common mystic ancestry: Neutral gargoyles exist to ward against evil, and some gargoyles swear loyalty to their demon progenitors and are evil in nature. All of them turn to stone in daylight, of course.
(interesting factoid: stone gargoyles don't detect as evil while they are enstoned by daylight. A suspicious paladin will simply have to wait by the church until sunset.)
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I ran a PFS scenario not too long ago where the party encountered a trio of gargoyles in a salt cavern. Two of the creatures had lived there for years, and had changed their appearance over time to mimic the crystalline texture and white color of their environment, while their new leader still resembled the grey stone coloration of his previous territory. Thought it was a cool detail.