Best Underrated Monsters

[Bizzare Beasts Boozer]

I feel like this topic must have come up before, but I also feel like it's the sort of thing people always like talking about!

What are your favourite monsters that are underrated, underused or otherwise overlooked?

[Bizzare Beasts Boozer]

I'll start with the monster that inspired me to ask the question: The Skelm.

When I first looked at their entry I wrote them off as "boy hags", but when rereading it today I realised how foolish I'd been.

They're monsters who wield societal norms like a weapon, combined with a weird cult of masculinity (literally bullying and humiliating angry men into becoming like them)! Add to that the wonderful line about their gaslighting nature:

Skelms pretend they don't have antlers at all when dealing with non-skelms, regardless of evidence or argument. Skelms will even gore enemies with their antlers in combat, even if afterwards they deny the action they obviously just took. - Bestiary 3

Safe to say Skelm will be infesting more of my settings cities going forward!

[GM_3826]

I think wraiths are some of the most terrifying monsters out there. They're so fundamentally alien, even for undead, as incorporeal creatures that are pure negative energy, and one wraith left unchecked can explicitly produce entire hordes of itself. They also spawn completely at random from the corpses of those that were so nasty that their evilness persisted after death. Coming face to face with these things must be horrific. You can't even hide from them, as they have precise lifesense up to 60 feet. If you're not a hero, you better start running.

I also think that as redeemed fallen angels who nonetheless maintain an edge as tricksters and atheists, peris are very interesting. They're one of the celestials that would work the best as NPCs, as their preference for letting mortals do the work themselves while dropping hints would make them good questgivers. I hope that when we explore the Golden Road peris and divs get a spotlight at some point. Divs are also interesting, as they have some of the most understandable reasons to hate mortals, which could make for good drama if the players have the chance to communicate with them.

Lastly, I think that aesir (einharjar and valkyries; they have their own trait in 2e) should receive more attention. Proteans are great, but don't work too well as allies due to their distance from mortal affairs. As aesir are patrons of warriors, they suit most PCs better, for better or worse. They're less likely to be opposed to the actions of PCs, which can make them more difficult to work into an adventure without taking the spotlight away from the players, but it also makes them more likable. They're still amoral, but a lot of players vibe with the idea of einherjar, as their life is not all too different from playing violent video games or sports all day and drinking the night away.