In my mind the whole point of the gargoyle as a monster is that it can be confused for an ordinary statue of a gargoyle.
The problem is of course that you never see "ordinary statues of gargoyles" in published materials. Which means that whenever the party sees a gargoyle, they automatically know it is a monster and not a statue.
I'm actually starting to run an old Basic D&D module, and there are a couple of gargoyles in it (BTW basic D&D gargoyles are a kind of construct). They are the only monsters in a room which it would be inappropriate to fill with statues.
I'm wondering if I should:
A: change the gargoyles to something else
B: scatter gargoyle statues around the place to make identifying them a valid part of the encounter
C: ignore the surprise element and play it as a straight monster fight
What do you guys think?
There are already golems and living statues, and it does seem to be kind of weird that if a gargoyle is a construct it isn't categorized in one of those two types. The other thing is of course, if a gargoyle is construct, what is it supposed to look like? There are no "real" gargoyles to model them on.
As a contruct, I think I'd prefer a more flexible design. Gargoyles get lots of natural attacks and they can fly. Redesign it so that they can simply be "built" with N points of damage divided over so many attacks and a type of special movement. This would allow you to re-skin a gargoyle to look like something someone might be more likely to make a normal statue of.
So I could have a couple of statues of lions or giant eagles or some other mundane thing that come to life. Maybe that's the answer.
Peet
I believe it is stated in the "Classic Horrors Revisited" book that Gargoyles adapt to their environment. Thus, they start looking like statuary from where they live.
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Doesn't help.
Anybody who lived through 1e or 2e immediately gets suspicous of statues.
Statues near a door? Cartyiad Columns!
Free standing statue? GOLEM!
Creepy statues? Gargoyles!
Rough Hewn Statue? EARTH ELEMENTAL!
Realistic statues? Freaking mages casting statue!!
A lot of realistic statues? MEDUSA!!!
Little statues? IMPS!
Statues are never good news. Its like discovering the floor of the dungeon is chessboard.
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If you can get the players so paranoid that they start smashing every statue they see, you've already won.
"You are charged with vandalising the statue of the king in the town square, an act of high treason. How do you plead?"
If there is a gargoyle monster that is indistinguishable from a statue of a gargoyle monster, then it might be popular for people to carve statues that look like that to scare off prowlers.
If you enter a room with gargoyles in the corners, a chessboard floor, a giant mouth carved into the wall, decorative spikes hanging down from the ceiling, an open treasure chest containing a sword, a mysterious lever, a trapdoor, tiny holes in all the walls, and a charred skeleton, what do you focus on first?
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If you enter a room with gargoyles in the corners, a chessboard floor, a giant mouth carved into the wall, decorative spikes hanging down from the ceiling, an open treasure chest containing a sword, a mysterious lever, a trapdoor, tiny holes in all the walls, and a charred skeleton, what do you focus on first?
The door you just walked through.
Optional battlecry: NOPENOPENOPE
Doesn't help.
Anybody who lived through 1e or 2e immediately gets suspicous of statues.
Statues near a door? Cartyiad Columns!
Free standing statue? GOLEM!
Creepy statues? Gargoyles!
Rough Hewn Statue? EARTH ELEMENTAL!
Realistic statues? Freaking mages casting statue!!
A lot of realistic statues? MEDUSA!!!
Little statues? IMPS!Statues are never good news. Its like discovering the floor of the dungeon is chessboard.
So turn the idea of statues into good news, or at least different news, so the players are unaware. Can you put in a long hallway of statues before you get to the big important fight room with gargoyles? Is there someone filling in the role of trapfinder/disable device user?
If you answered yes to these questions, then maybe you want to consider making a few statues laying around into disguised, trapped treasure chests in the pedestals. This both serves as a honey trap (hey, they want to get that loot), and they are fooled into believing that the only danger they will face would be traps, and they might have to get in close to disable them. That presents an excellent opportunity for your gargoyles to ambush.
This also helps to hide the attention to detail. I mean, the main reason people get suspicious about statues is because they are rarely ever included unless they are somehow important to gameplay. Adding them otherwise is just excessive detail the rest of the time. So, by giving them an in game purpose, you divert attention away from the usual assumptions.
I love to throw in completely mundane items to make players think something bad is about to happen, e.g. the aforementioned chessboard floor, etc.
Yeah, because there's nothing as fun as having a speed bump that slows the game down to a crawl!
Seriously, that's the type of idea only a GM would love. :-)
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I'm a big fan of placing minis on the grid that represent innocuous statuary.
- Torger
As for normal gargoyles used in published material, The Sixfold Trial describes the Westcrown mayor's mansion as littered with them.
Otherwise, always follow LazarX's advice. Whatever you do, don't blink!
I would either put minis down constantly for normal statues or constantly draw things in so they put it into the background.
You can also change the position of your gargoyles. When buildings get fancy they have a lot more stone room frunishings.
Support pillars
I forget the name but the fancy curved decorations you get in corners. You can also drop red heirings.
Basically they either get so paranoid they suspect rverything or they start ignoring stuff. Either way works.
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If you enter a room with gargoyles in the corners, a chessboard floor, a giant mouth carved into the wall, decorative spikes hanging down from the ceiling, an open treasure chest containing a sword, a mysterious lever, a trapdoor, tiny holes in all the walls, and a charred skeleton, what do you focus on first?
I would check how thick the armor on my butt was.
Support pillars
I forget the name but the fancy curved decorations you get in corners. You can also drop red heirings.
Oooo....that gives me ideas. Not applicable for this situation, since it is a preexisting campaign and you are already just about going into this place, but this can serve as brainstorming for other with an interest in gargoyles.
The idea comes to this: mixing knowledge(engineering) with a reoccurring opponent that likes....dramatic escapes. Take out a pillar or two (shatter can work well for this) and then the whole roof can start coming down. Basically, to make an escape where the party must flee in the opposite direction or "rocks fall, everybody dies".
This tactic is obviously infuriating, and the party will try to stop it so they can take their revenge. And that is the point. This suddenly turns architecture into a recognizable gameplay element with expectations that are not "it is going to jump out and kill us". This takes advantage of the party's meta-instincts. The red herring of course leads into the reveal that the large statue supporting the ceiling is a gargoyle/golem/etc.
Bonus points if the demolitions expert enemy is some type of construct crafter, and the scene takes place in one of hit lairs. Because to get the party emotionally involved with killing the antagonist is the GM's job, and the more they hate the villian, the more memorable it becomes.
One game I played in had stoning as a lower level spell, transforming victims into grotesque, Gargoyle-like blobs. Gargoyles rest in much the same form. Imagine my surprise when I tried to dispel a victim (we were looking for a lost princess) and the game's first Gargoyle slapped me silly!
Just change the look of the gargoyles.
Then allow a knowledge history or arcana roll to recognize the genuine azlanti "statue" sitting among the cheap thassalonian knockoffs.
"Where's the princess, witch?"
"I transformed her into a hideous statue! Spare me and I will release her from the enchantment!"
"Um... Was that the one on the battlements that looked like a gargoyle? And, hypothetically, could you still release her from the enchantment if it had been pounded to gravel?"
"Where's the princess, witch?"
"I transformed her into a hideous statue! Spare me and I will release her from the enchantment!"
"Um... Was that the one on the battlements that looked like a gargoyle? And, hypothetically, could you still release her from the enchantment if it had been pounded to gravel?"
*facepalm* HOW much sovereign glue did we take off that drow on the way in?
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Back in 2e, I remember a way of handling it (the DM argued we didn't have the wherewithal to smash statues), was to buy a lot of burlap bags full of bells and tie them over the statue's heads.
Generally monsters wouldn't go along with having them tied on, but if they did and later 'took it off' it would usually clatter and raise an alarm.
Adventurers do weird things when they run into statues.
*facepalm* HOW much sovereign glue did we take off that drow on the way in?"Where's the princess, witch?"
"I transformed her into a hideous statue! Spare me and I will release her from the enchantment!"
"Um... Was that the one on the battlements that looked like a gargoyle? And, hypothetically, could you still release her from the enchantment if it had been pounded to gravel?"
I always did wonder: did mending repair damage to petrified people? Would it work like a cure spell for damage gained while in statue form? (obviously damage gained before hand would not, since you started out as a statue with a huge gash across the chest)
Back in 2e, I remember a way of handling it (the DM argued we didn't have the wherewithal to smash statues), was to buy a lot of burlap bags full of bells and tie them over the statue's heads.
Generally monsters wouldn't go along with having them tied on, but if they did and later 'took it off' it would usually clatter and raise an alarm.
Adventurers do weird things when they run into statues.
Just a loose rope collar with bells attached slung around the neck should suffice, since blinding them might make it easier for them to decide to take it off, even with low intelligence. And if it does take off the bells anyway, then you have an idea of how intelligent it is. Just be sure to collect the bells back up again, and this seems like a perfectly viable paranoid countermeasure.
I'm running a campaign that hasn't had gargoyles in it yet, nor has it had any kind of walking or moving statues. One of my players did randomly attack an actual statue though. So yeah, with no reason to suspect it was anything other than a statue, my player attacked a statue. (He critical fumbled his attack on the inanimate object. It was funny.)
I like statues, I use them as dungeon decoration. You can too. Decorate your dungeons, and you'll actually surprise them when a statue attacks at some point.
For my part, I'm using a D&D Miniatures gargoyle mini (that looks like a Forgotten Realms kir-lanan gargoyle) to represent a berbalang in my campaign ("Ignore the horns on the mini. Creature doesn't have horns.") and a D&D Miniatures shadow demon mini (that looks like an incorporeal kir-lanan gargoyle) to represent the berbalang's incorporeal form ("Ignore the horns on the mini. Creature doesn't have horns.") so I'm unlikely to have a standard gargoyle show up as it might confuse my players.
I do think I'll use a D&D Miniatures gargoyle mini (that looks like a standard D&D 3.x gargoyle with the earth subtype) to represent a nabasu demon though, once we're a bit further in the campaign. It looks more monstrous than the mini that I'm using for the berbalang.
Anyway, I say decorate with regular statues, so your players can get complacent about statues.
Cornices.
There we go. Cornice Gargoyles, advanced gargoyles that can spider climb indefinately as long as they have 2 walls and a ceiling.
@lemeres the game seems set up to make that hard to do until higher levels. My lvl 12 tiefling can only shatter 120 lbs and a lot of the lower druid spells work poorly on "worked" stone.
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If any of them sound like Keith David I don't think there will be any trouble.
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Give them a limited shapeshifting power. They can look like any statuary, or just random rocks/boulders/outcroppings if they so choose.
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A while back, somebody here was asking about a "superdungeon" campaign, and how a party could resupply or find solace without leaving a dungeon.
I brought up the "Demon Doors" from the Fable series of games. They're basically stone doors with giant faces carved in, that will only open if you do a small quest for them or otherwise meet their demands.
The idea was that the superdungeon would be "populated" by benevolent (or at least ambivalent) statuary that can be negotiated with to provide supplies or information. Perhaps certain stone doors can be convinced not to let monsters in, or various relief carvings function as magical "vending machines" that sell potions?
Any dungeon that contained a few of these would eventually have the PCs looking forward to finding statuary-- so the inevitable Gargoyle attack would come completely out of the blue. MWAHAHAHAHA!
Statues are never good news. Its like discovering the floor of the dungeon is chessboard.
and don't EVER turn your back to the statues that look like angels, in fact, don't even blink
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Gary Gygax / Old School induced paranoia.
You open the door to the dungeon.
The floor attacks you (lurker below), the roof attacks you (Lurker above, natch), the statues attack you (Gargoyles), the coins attack you (those damn hoard beetles).
The next room, the empty space attacks you, because its actually a gelatinous cube.
You finally get to the treasure. The chest attacks you, it was a mimic.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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From the opposite direction, use monster minis as normal statues on the battle map, insert paranoia here.
The idea was that the superdungeon would be "populated" by benevolent (or at least ambivalent) statuary that can be negotiated with to provide supplies or information. Perhaps certain stone doors can be convinced not to let monsters in, or various relief carvings function as magical "vending machines" that sell potions?
Any dungeon that contained a few of these would eventually have the PCs looking forward to finding statuary-- so the inevitable Gargoyle attack would come completely out of the blue. MWAHAHAHAHA!
I'm stealing that one!
A lot of good suggestions here.
Right now I have a fair bit of statuary in the dungeon (it is a religious-themed place so it makes sense to have them).
One thing that would throw things for a loop is to have gargoyles in a room with other monsters. If you see a room with a lone statue in the middle, you think the statue is the monster. If you see a room with ten orcs worshipping a statue, you assume the orcs are the monsters, not the statue.
Right now I am working on a number of levels. Gargoyles as defined by basic D&D can fly and have a number of natural attacks. Having a gargoyle look like an ordinary animal will work just as well. In my gargoyle encounter I have a decorative fountain in a room, with statues of a winged cheetah and a winged bull locked in combat with one another. The cheetah and the bull are the gargoyles.
I did some research and gargoyles were often made to look like normal animals, and I've seen pics of gargoyles who looked like dogs, lions, dragons, and birds. The only requirement for a gargoyle on a building was that it needed a long neck, as the whole point was to project water from the roof away from the building.
I really like the idea that statues are hiding places for treasure. The friendly character turned into a statue is good too, though less likely in this dungeon. I also do have one living statue in the dungeon that can be talked to. I'm running out of rooms to fill but maybe a room that had magical statues that granted some kind of cool enchantment?
Peet