Devils

As I explained yesterday, most of what the Monster Manuals give you, in terms of imaginative fuel with the Demons and Devils, is the pictures.

In later years, mythology accreted around these guys, but it didn't really seem to "take" in the way that it did in other games--probably because it wasn't there from the beginning--at least not for people I know.

So in visiting the Devils in this here monster-by-monster review of D&D, we are mostly visiting their pictures.

Anyway...

Asmodeus

Now here is a man of wealth and taste. A man of wealth and taste from the '70s. The sideburns, medallion and Op Art dickey pretty much tell you all you need to know about this creature's preferred tactics. Here is Satan as Tempter, as opposed to Orcus' Satan as Metallest Possible Guy.

I can actually imagine, one day, the PCs strapping on their winged boots and pulling out their +18 lightning knives and girding their loins and actually marching forth to do fierce battle unto Orcus, but the idea of actually fighting Asmodeus just seems stupid. "He is physically stronger than any other devil (as strong as a storm giant)" yeah, I bet he says that to all the girls, right before he doses them with brown acid.
It will surprise absolutely no-one to hear that Playing D&D With Porn Stars has a soft spot for '70s Satanism, so Asmodeus is just fine by me.

Since he had the most hit points, in later editions, they made him all red and shiny and decided he just looked like The Devil, which seems like kind of a shame.
Beelzebul

I remember this review of the Dario Argento movie Suspiria that said something like "This movie is like what you thought horror movies were like when you were too young to get in to see them."

Beelzebul's picture reminds me of the cover of some '60s Penguin Sci-Fi novel that you'd pick up and imagine as being intensely fucked and mindbending and then it'd turn out to be about some guy on a space ship with a love interest.

I imagine Beelzebul's realm as a cruel David Hargrave/Early Monster Magnet skriekrealm of green glass windows and hallways that curve like the wrinkles in you brain and echoes that walk like men.

Later editions totally abandoned this "symmeterical freak in bug hat" look for Beelzebul, but did apparently keep "The most disturbing thing you can come up with before the Fed Ex deadline on Friday" as the artist's brief for designing him so I'm good with that. There's room for translucent slug-lords on the ceiling of my psychedelic nightmare palace.



Barbed Devil

You know these guys--they wallow in flame and mock you as you suffer. Even Hell needs scenery, and since it's D&D, the scenery needs stats.

Bone Devil

You want to put a scorpion tail on a skeleton and call it a devil? Fine. Clearly I'm in a generous mood today. I'd use one of these in a game, no problem. "I turn it" "No you don't".

The giant fish hook, though? Really?

Chain Devil

Debuting in D&D 2.0, these guys look like mummies only with chains instead of bandages. A little more Hellraisery than the original Monster Manual devils, but I like them ok. And the girls pretty much like anything with S&M overtones. So, yeah, maybe I'll try to kill them with a chain devil at some point.

Dispater

Does Asmodeus, Lord of The Nine Hells really need to be scalable? Dispater is useless.

Erinyes

The furies--not unlike the succubi--are really a whole adventure seed implied in a monster. Break an oath, commit a foul deed, and hence they come--to ensnare and to slay. Rock.

Geryon

The original Greek Geryon had one head attached to three bodies, so if you wanted to make a Geryon that wasn't boring that's where I'd start.

Glasya

The only interesting devil to appear in Monster Manual 2. Despite her problematic nose and even without the "69 hit points", it's not hard to figure out the point of Glasya. You can check that Jungian archtype off the list, guys.


Horned Devil

Pit fiend lite. Snore. Are we at the dinosaurs yet?


Ice Devil

Creepy polar insect-men are go! I can see them very clearly, emerging out of a blizzard in a godforsaken landmarkless land, yellow eyes gleaming unnaturally against the slate-grey sky, their alien faces squirming with inscrutable hunger. (Also, they just made me remember I like the Chasme, or Demon Fly--which should've been in yesterdy's entry.)

30 years later they're still using basically the original design. I'm guessing Trampier doesn't get royalties.


Lemure

Lemures can become wraiths or spectres whereas Manes can turn into shadows or ghosts. Got it? There must be some German compound word for "an idea which is identical to some other idea only there were two different words for it so Gary Gygax conveniently used the concept of 'alignment' to separate them and make the Monster Manual twice as long". Kervonschtensynonymschplittenkonzept or something.


Pit Fiend

By this time in the Monster Manual, you've already read through Balor, Barbed and Malebranche and then you get to Pit Fiend and you're like, ok, I get it: horns, tails, pointy things, they are Fiends from the Pit. Interesting tidbit however--cover up the upper half of the Pit Fiend picture and there's a whole other monster there.

____________
I don't have all the image credits but the pictures all came from here.

Demons

Oh, the D's...

Here I am, trying to talk about all the monsters in alphabetical order. It was going so smoothly A was cake, B too, C got a little weird, but now D is just tanking the calm and symmetry of the project altogether.

The way this thing was supposed to work is I go through each monster one-by-one and say something useful about how I'd DM that monster in a game or, failing that, make jokes about it. Now, I like jokes as much as the next guy (and I probably like my jokes even more than the next guy) but if the only thing I did here was make fun of D&D monsters, well--there's whole other, way funnier, sites that do that already. So I feel like it's best to have at least the possibility of the specter of some vaguely useful or at least interesting DM-ish observations going on here.

Which brings me to the D's...

Ok, so, most of the Monster Manual's "D" section is devoted to the iconic terrors of the game--Demons, Devils, and Dragons--plus Dinosaurs, for which Gygax had the same tactically-detailed love which he otherwise reserved only for polearms.

The problem for me here is that the interesting thing about most of these monsters is what the Monster Manual (and its many successors) don't say about the various fierce entities involved.

What in fuck am I talking about? Ok:

Let's take the Demons and the Devils...

First off, what's the difference? In D&D terms, the Demons are Chaotic Evil and the Devils are Lawful Evil. I'm not real big on alignment so I don't really care. The arch-devils tend to look like horned people and the demon princes tend to look like monsters. The rest of the differences are just mechanics and salad dressing. Gary liked synonyms and used them to make more monsters--that's why a spectre and a ghost are two different things.

ANYWAY...

The idea of demons (and devils) in the primeval mind is interesting, and the idea that they have hierarchies is interesting, and the idea that their realm is a chaotic and primordial one where they war with each other despite these hierarchies is interesting, and the idea of demons having worshippers just like gods is interesting and the idea of them being summoned and told what to do against their will is interesting and the idea of like Cthuloid demons being something different altogether is interesting, and Carcosian ritual magic is interesting, and demons being tempters and metaphors for human weakness is interesting, and the idea of hell being a place you can actually walk around in is interesting and yet most of these things aren't dealt with in too terribly much detail in D&D--and when it is (mostly in later editions), most DMs don't read it and basically make up their own evil demon and devil stuff anyway.

As far as telling players what Those Who Dwell Below In Shadow are really about and making it stick in players' minds--later games totally kick D&D's ass (Warhammer and Call of Cthulhu being the most obvious examples).

In D&D, I would feel perfectly ok changing Yeenoghu so that his flail no longer causes "confusion" and change the part about him being in charge of both gnolls and ghouls. But in Warhammer, changing Nurgle so he wasn't the Lord of Disease would seem pointless. Nurgle is a more robust fictional construct than Yeenoghu, for whatever reason. D&D demons are for people who basically want to make up their own demon and say it's a fat goat-guy and call it Orcus. Which, being a DIY D&Der, I am ok with--there's something to be said against Brandifying the demons--but it makes the actual monsters-as-presented seem a little dry:

What any given D&D demon/devil/lower-planecreature entry mostly provides is a set of powerful but largely interchangeable stats (the demons rarely have powers unique to themselves), a cloud of spells they can cast (half of which are utility stuff like read languages so they don't end up looking stupid in front of the PCs), a table for what other demons or devils they can summon, a short physical description, and a picture somewhere along the spectrum from megalame (Type VI) to intriguingly creepy (Baalzebul).

In other words, mostly what really defines one D&D demon or devil as distinct fictional constructs is just the picture. So I'm going to do a lot of talking talk about the pictures...

Demogorgon
One thing that strikes you reading the descriptions of the demon princes is that Gary definitely expected you to fight them sooner or later. There's a little bit of description and musings on the hirearchy of the abyss but mostly there's a list of things Demogorgon will do if you try to hit him. Considering the oft-remarked difficulty of getting to high levels in original D&D I feel like there was sort of a dare or cruel joke worked into the Monster Manual. You could go fight some orcs and bugbears and maybe kill a dinosaur but Demogorgon was still there howling into the ether and just waiting around in the 666th layer of the abyss for you to learn to play the game right.

Outside stats, the little we do get of Demogorgon is pretty tasty--the name dates back to the following note scribbled in the margin of an obscure medieval text by an unknown scholar in the fourth century "He is speaking of the Demogorgon, the supreme god', or 'He is speaking of a god, the supreme Demogorgon"--which sounds like something out of Legend of the Overfiend. Gary decided he was a reptilian guy with two blue-and-red mandril heads and tentacle arms and we're all real used to that, but, really, that is pretty fucked.

Drawing by me

Jubilex
The cult of Jubilex is extremely fun to try to imagine. "Who do you serve?" "Some goo." "Goo?" "Yeah, well, with eyes." "Goo with eyes?" "Goo that's 'striated in disgusting blackish greens, foul browns and yellows, and sickly translucent grays and ambers'" The usual idea with demons and devils is that they tempt you with something and appeal to your base desires. You kinda have to stretch to figure out what goo with eyes would tempt you with. The Cthulhu people really have nothing on the the Jubilex people when it comes to total fucking batshit. With their sacred black pudding jars and ochre-jelly-rubbing rituals... None of that's in the book of course.

Manes
Phonologically identical to "mayonnaise".

Orcus
Here's 99% of what I feel I need to know about Orcus:
So: like Baphomet, only fat. A goat-and-human-sacrifice type Satan rather than a charming and tempting type Satan. Metal. All I have to add is he's 3 feet shorter than his nemesis, Demogorgon. A sixth shorter. In human terms that's like a foot, it must be embarrassing. No wonder he's always going on about his wand.

Succubus
There isn't a lot to say about the Succubus that hasn't already been said, though I will give you a brand new monster:
Fat Succubus

The Fat Succubus is in all ways identical to the Common Succubus (q.v.) only fat. Some have underwear from the future.

Anyway...

Type I
Loser.

Type II
Loser.

Type III
Loser.

Type IV
Even worse. While Types one through three at least look like some sort of shrieking, petty horrors from the lower depths, Type IV looks like some guy you keep seeing every time you go to the bowling alley yet who you never see bowling.
My best guess for Types I-IV is someone at TSR got ahold of some H/O scale wildlife and a glue gun and threw some stuff together and said "What should we make this, a sickle-dog?" And somebody else said "It can be a demon." "But I thought those things were demons?" "Well this is just the type III demon then."

Type V
The Marilith is an absolutely peachy monster.
Even if the Marilith picture is kind of crappy and the Succubus is obviously traced you already know what a pretty girl is supposed to look like so you get the idea. I look at a Type II and I seriously have no idea what this thing is supposed to be. Or what I would do with it in a story or a dungeon that I wouldn't do with the guy right under it.

Poll--anyone out there ever been inspired by the Vrock, Hezrou, or Glabrezu?


Type VI
This was the demon that was supposed to be like a Demon, horns, tail, whole nine yards. The Pit fiend has a better name and a better picture, but it's basically the same thing.

Yeenoghu
"His head is that of a hyena, his chest is canine in form, his hands are paw-like, and his feet are pawed. Yeenoghu is thin to the point of being skeletal, and his only body hair is a mangy crest of putrid yellow from his head to his mid-back. Yeenoghu’s skin is a dead gray in color, and it is smooth. His eyes are lambent amber and large."

And next to it there's a picture of a homophobic poodle crudely attempting to mock a passing Gay Pride parade.

Some later illustrators did eventually manage to do a better job with gnolls. There is something sinister about the way hyenas hunch and grin.

But still: he's a big gnoll, lord of the gnolls. He has a flail, but other than that--not much to go on.

You think--Well why not just do that with everybody? A big bugbear, lord of all bugbears, a big giraffe, lord of all giraffes, a big beaver...

Which is what people did. Could've worked out worse, I suppose.

"C" is William S. Burroughs Favorite Part of the Monster Manual

Monsters that start with "A" suck. Monsters that start with "B" taste good. What is it about monsters that start with "C"? Maybe nothing. Only one way to find out. Plus, really, I do this all the time anyway--look through all the monsters and decide what I want to use. Starting again with the original monster manual...

Camel, Wild

Please write in comments if you have ever had to use the Monster Manual stats listed here for a camel. I'm not saying you haven't, I just want to hear the story.


Carrion Crawler

I was never big on the carrion crawler, but then I saw this thing from Reaper, marketed under the name "Charnel Grub":
And I love it. I guess it's the same reason I like sickly-yellow ooze better than black pudding--I just prefer things to be disgusting.


Catoblepas

Jesus, if Pliny the Elder wrote about his leaking faucet, Gary would've gone and statted it up.

If you came to my house and forced me to use a catoblepas (that sounds so filthy) then I'd make it a unique and elusive creature that looked like a bantha. But you didn't so I didn't and I'm happy.


Cattle, Wild

Gygaxian naturalism in action. Trampling causes d4 per trampling cow, so that makes the herds of livestock that presumably dot any properly simulatory medieval D&D landscape another probably-under-utilized animal weapon. A little math and googling reveals that that means the average British Columbia dairy farm has enough cattle to kill the Tarrasque in one round.


Centaur

By rights I should like centaurs since I like pretty much any Greek monster, but where the fuck do you put them? They're goofy in dungeons, awkward in creepy forests, out-of-place in frozen wastes. Centaurs imply big open grassy plains. Big open grassy plains imply me yawning.


Giant Centipede

The giant centipede is only a foot long. Somehow that's so much creepier than it being ten feet long.

Also: this is where I start realizing the hidden thread of "c" monsters--they are the monsters most likely to appear in a William Burroughs novel. Camels? Tentacled grubs? Men with the lower bodies of horses? See? And the rest of "C" is just illness, hallucination and local color.
"He tells me about an incident where a man was half eaten by a crocodile and they found parts of his body in the crocodile's stomach"
"He had headed north instead, into a land of sandstone formation, carved by wind and sand - a camel, a tortoise, Cambodian temples - and everywhere caves pocked into the red rock like bubbles in boiling oatmeal."


Cerebral Parasite

Oh, look at that--"evil is quite literally a virus parasite occupying a certain brain area"
-Place of Dead Roads

Anyway, these are invisible, undetectable things that go into your brain if you use psionics, eat your psionics points and won't leave unless you use cure disease. I can't figure out any possible way these could be fun. Ok, maybe shapechange into one and fuck with a mind flayer, but, really, haven't you got better things to do with your time?


Chimera

The chimera is the only thing in the monster manual with goat parts*, which--while it was considerate of Gary to leave the Warhammer people something to work with--it's weird considering goats are way eviler than lions and the chimera's one of like 20 monsters in the manual that are mostly a pair of wings with a lion in the middle--the sphinx, lamassu, gryphon, manticore, etc.

In the Sphinx's case, the resemblance is probably because the Chimera is supposed to be the Sphinx's mother. Seeing as how "Chimerae speak a very limited form of red dragon language" (presumably that's the form of the red dragon language where you're constantly getting interrupted by a goat and a lion) and the Sphinx is all-wise and all-knowing and does riddles and stuff, I'm figuring this was one of those oldest-sister-leaves-town-and-gets-all-cosmopolitan-in-order-to-distance-self-from-hick-parents-type situations. "Cover yours--BAAA!--ROAR!--up, girl! Who'll buy the she-goat if they can get the milk for free?" And then, when you consider that Chimera's mother was Echidna...

...you have to figure the intergenerational confusion in that family was probably pretty thick.

"Chimera" is also a synonym for "delusion". I once read in art school a whole book by a feminist poststructuralist who made much of the fact that the Chimera was female--the implication being that in our patriarchal system fantastic delusions are considered inherently female.

Also Chimera is the name of a crappy band I saw open for Slayer once.

Although I'm very fond of the Chimera I'll admit it's a little confusing to imagine how it works in combat. I mean if you were it, wouldn't you just go dragon head/dragon head/dragon head and let you goat head just hang out? The normally fairly tactically-minded 3.5 monster manual offers no help on the subject saying only "the Chimera prefers to surprise prey" which is good because it's pretty hard to imagine it doing anything else. "What's that?""Oh, you know, a fire-breathing goatliondragon that talks" "Oh, that again".

Anyway, Chimera are the closest thing in D&D to true medieval monk, bad-ergot-trip prophetic-hallucination, so I'm all for it.

Mandy's stated preference is for the wingless version that has a lioness head and body with a snake-head tail and with the goat-head sticking out of the center of the spine.


Cockatrice

Alexzander Neckam said the Cockatrice is born of an egg laid by a cock and incubated by a snake or toad, though modern scholars claim it was born from a translation error in 1397.

According to the Monster Manual, it turns flesh to stone and "the petrification aura of this monster extends into both the astral and ethereal planes and can thus affect creatures in these planes as well."

According to Wikipedia:

"Attempts to identify it with any particular biological species have proved generally futile."

Thanks, Wikipedia.

Personally I think the Cockatrice is ok, but if you're going to go around petrifying PCs you'll probably start out with a basilisk or a medusa first since they're way cooler. So what you do is save the Basilisk for a bathetic effect very late in the campaign--like "Yeah you had a hundred and sixty hit points and +5 pants but you failed your saving throw and got killed by a magic chicken."

Couatl

The thing is they keep telling you how good and smart the Couatl is but seriously it's a snake with wings. The black-eyed predator in the original Monster Manual doesn't really scream "kind-hearted genius with mastery of five psionic disciplines". I find it very hard to picture the Couatl doing anything nice--the 3.5 manual takes this cognitive dissonance to a surreal level with "If more than one Couatl is involved, they discuss their strategy before a battle." "I sssay old chap lets usssss fall upon that miscreant and harm him with blows!"

I don't know how faithful to pre-Columbian belief the Couatl is but 3.5's "It uses its detect thoughts ability on any creature that arouses it's suspicions" makes me really wonder about Mesoamerican child-rearing practices. "Always be good or a giant snake will read your mind fly out of the sky and kill you with poison" seems like a more effective means of social control than the possibility of getting coal in your stocking.

Crab, giant and Crayfish, giant

Both of these monsters have whole entries underneath them in the MM but all I see when I read them is "when we first invented this game, monster miniatures didn't exist so whenever anything in my daughter's terrarium died I statted it up, put it on the tabletop, and made some Chainmail knights fight it."

Interesting tidbit: The giant crab is apparently more surprising than than the giant crayfish--the crab surprises on a 1-4 and the crayfish on a 1-3. Which is weird because the giant crab was in that Sinbad movie so you'd think people'd be used to it.

Crocodile

I've always thought the eastern idea of the sacred crocodile was interesting, monsterwise--though Gary's having none of it:

"All crocodiles are stupid and voracious eaters."

________

The Fiend Folio has a surprising number of interesting "c" monsters...

Carbuncle

The Carbuncle is one of those monsters that people love to make fun of. Mandy says "it sounds like something your great aunt would get on her foot." I actually like the Carbuncle but I'm not going to explain why here 'cause Mandy is helping me write this entry and I plan on using it very soon against her.

Caryatid column

Excellent monster. A column carved to look like a person and it's alive and it tries to kill you. Mandy wants me to write here: "one of these killed my awesomely-statted dwarf."

Anyway my point is it's a classic monster and it's weird that this was left for the Fiend Folio when there was apparently enough room in the Monster Manual for the Catoblepas and the Giant Beaver.


Cifal

Cifal is a hilarious sock puppet with a friend named Olly and is, apparently, also a formidable foe.


Crabman

A year ago I would've told you that crabmen were bullshit but that was before I started reading about what noisms was doing with them in his Yoon-suin setting which gives me terrible nightmares about opium parlours with yaks. So Crabmen are just fine with me.


Crypt thing

Crypt thing is a cool name and the picture is cool but the thing is, its attack is to teleport you to some random part of the dungeon. It's a neat trick and a cool monster but teleporting just doesn't seem very undead thing to do. According to the very first website I found with stats for it there's another version that just turns you invisible and paralyses you simultaneously. Which fits a little better but which also seems like one of the evilest things you could do to your players. Especially if they actually have a Fiend Folio and so they end up going all over creation looking for their "teleported away" friend. I might try it on my group if I ever decide being pummeled to death by angry porn stars would be a classy way to go.


Cyclops

The cyclops actually appears in Deities and Demigods but if you can't stat up a giant with one eye that owns some sheep you probably shouldn't be DMing.

At first I thought the cyclops ruined my William S. Burroughs thing but I googled this up:
Malcolm McNeill and William S. Burroughs began working together in London in 1970... Their first collaboration was a comic strip titled The Unspeakable Mr. Hart which appeared in the English magazine Cyclops.

So anyway, the big question is: When a giant and when a cyclops?

If you want it to have a crazy house with giant beer kegs and stuff than that's really more of a giant thing. Cyclops is more for the "oh my god everything on this side of the island is weird" vibe. Also, Cyclops' only hang out in warm weather because if they didn't then they'd be all vikingy and then they'd have beards and one eye with a beard is a really bad look. Also, the cyclops evokes pity in a way the giant does not. Do with this information what you will.

______

*Yeah, yeah,there's the satyr and Orcus's butt--thank you, Comic Book Guy.

If I Was Trapped On A Desert Island With Only One Letter of the Monster- Alphabet To Eat, I'd Choose "B"

I'm still perusing the original Monster Manual. I have absolutely no overarching thesis regarding monsters that start with the letter "B". I'll start writing anyway...

Baboon, bear, barracuda, boar, buffalo, bull, badger, beaver

Count among the appreciated innovations of later editions that all the regular animals were stuck at the back.

However, note:

While Gygaxian science acknowledges that badgers come in both normal size and "giant" ("twice the size of the normal sort"! Seriously, what does one hope to accomplish by fighting a twice-normal-sized badger?), baboons come only in "normal" and beavers come only in "giant". No comment.


Baluchitherium

Largest land mammal known. Except in D&D because D&D has storm giants. Which pretty much eliminates the only cool thing about the Baluchitherium.


Basilisk

Now the basilisk is a fine and excellent monster. And it's fun to say.

My big thing with the basilisk is determining whether to do it as a sort of dragon-plus-a-whole-extra-screw-you or whether it's some creepy little lizard that just happens to be able to make you into rocks. I tend to prefer the second, since then when a real dragon comes around it hasn't been diluted.

The other nice thing about the basilisk (along with the chimera and the cockatrice) is it offers a window onto the total lunacy of the western mind--Pliny said it smelled so bad it broke stones, Theophilus Presbyter said you could use one to turn copper into spanish gold, and Leonardo Da Vinci said the basilisk was so cruel that when it couldn't find an animal to kill, it would turn its gaze on plants and herbs instead. He also painted.

According to Wikipedia (or whatever drunk ESOL student was typing into it this morning) "its weakness is in the odour of the weasel".

Back in the Monster Manual--did you know that while the medusa's gaze works exactly the same on the astral and ethereal planes, the basilisk's gaze kills you in the astral plane and, in the ethereal plane it "turns victims to ethereal stone which can only be seen by those who are in that plane or can see ethereal objects"? This must have come up in the Lake Geneva campaigns. Which is weird considering how, apparently, things like "Can a wizard just not fit into a suit of armor or what, Gary?" never did.

Also, one of the few monsters whose endless D&D variants are actually cool and not redundant.

Beetle

There are six types of giant beetles, one of which is "boring", and all of which are boring.

Beholder
My only problem with beholders is PCs tend to die way before they are awesome enough to fight them. And no, I do not want to hear your clever excuse to trot one out early. A beholder is like a fine wine--like the pure concentrated essence of all that was good and original in Gary Gygax. Weird--but not merely whimsical, alien--but still primal, pure evil--but in a freakish way, pulpy--but not how Lovecraft would've done it. How many other spheres do you know that are "hateful, aggressive, and avaricious"? It seems so petty that a floating ball with a built-in disintegrator ray would bother with being greedy.


Black Pudding

Personally I prefer evil goo to be white, clear, transparent or yellowish. Probably because it seems way grosser that way.

My friends in New York want me to move back so we can have a doom metal band called "black pudding".


Blink Dog

Dogs are either cartoony domestic pets or they are there to remind us of our bodies--drooling, biting, growling. The point of dogs--death dog, war dog, devil dog, hounds--any kind of dog--is their physicality. Their heaviness and hungriness and hairiness. The blink dog's abilities go completely against this natural human association--so they just remind you of Bewitched. I'm sure some macho DM has horror stories of PCs devoured by the terrifying game-mechanical efficiency of slavering packs of blink Rottweilers, but these men have no poetry in their souls.

I just now went to the fridge and had a piece of chicken and invented Inevitable Dogs. They appear right behind you if, and only if, you turn your back on them. Suppose it's not quite as terrifying if it's a Corgi.


Brain Mole

It burrows into your mind. But, unfortunately, only metaphorically. This close to being a good idea.


Brownie

It can be hard to tell fairie folk apart--here's a flow chart for DMs:
Is it plausibly heterosexual?
Yes.
Do you want your PCs to expect it to give them wishes?
No.
Then what you want there is a brownie.

Also, considering that the B's contain not only the brownie and the black pudding but the bull, boar, buffalo and giant beaver, it's by far the section of the alphabet containing the tastiest monsters.


Bugbear

To those familar with the D&D-evil-humanoid-fireball-fodder scale (kobold-goblin-orc-hobgoblin-gnoll-bugbear), the word "bugbear" conjures an image of Maurice Sendak-beasts that hate you. To those who aren't (like my players) it just sounds dumb. I feel like there's a possible place for the bugbear in the "shapeless things that the superstitious townsfolk won't shut up about but which turn out to be symptoms of something much much worse" niche. "Ach! Fear the Blackbriar Woods, for they harbor the bugbear, the jabberwock and the Great Blue Grampus!"


Bulette

I like that Bulette. I really want Ultraman to fight it. But for some reason I do not want to see a knight hit it. That's my criteria for D&D monsters I guess--"Do I want to see a knight hit it". People's brains are weird.

Among non-Monster Manual "B" monsters, only two catch my attention:

Bats

Giant bats, bonebats, firebats, ice bats, rabid bats, bats with hypnotic eyes. Pretty much whatever works with bats. Problem for DMs is, you get one kind of bat, one kind of snake, and one kind of spider and then you don't use any of them again for, like, eight months at least. If you're always building on the classic chassis it'll make you lazy.

Blindheim

I talked about these frogs that blind you already. What I failed to mention there is I really like saying "The Blindheim!" in a sort of evil-scientist/skeksi voice. And I've never used one in a game or, as far as I can remember, ever had a real-life conversation about one, so I've only ever done this when I was alone. Which is a little creepy, I guess.

"A" Monsters Suck

I was looking through the AD&D Monster Manual and was struck forcefully with the following insight: monsters that start with "A" suck.

Aerial servant

Invisible? Boring.
Air elemental? Boring.
Summoned by clerics? Boring.
Here's the only good part: "If the aerial servant is frustrated from completion ["frustrated from completion"?] of its assigned mission it becomes insane, returns to the cleric which sent it forth, and attacks as a double strength invisible stalker."
Let's not mention how invisible stalkers are also boring.

Ankheg

This is one of those rare Gygax-invented monsters that gets absolutely no love from anyone. Nobody likes them, nobody hates them, nobody thinks they're funny, they're just one more giant bug. Being a big M John Harrison fan I have a soft spot for insects in medieval settings and still just can't bring myself to write "d4 ankhegs here" on a map. I think it's the name. Sounds like a verification word.

Ant, Giant

Within the insect-and-arthropod community, I'm pretty sure "ant" is synonymous with "square". As in, there's a bunch of wasps, spiders, flies, and cockroaches hanging out and they're like "Come onnnn, man, roooadtrip!"
"Awww, I don't know, Jimmy."
"Ok, man, look: you can crawl up into the van and come with us and have a blast seeing the world, or you can put on your tie, and go to work, and do whatever the Queen says, like some fucking ant."
"Awww, Jimmy..."

Ape, Gorilla, and Carnivorous

My theory is: there are Ape People and there are Monkey People. Monkey people like monkeys because they are funny. Also, they are creepy, clever, and decadent. The perverted elf princess in the silk-swathed tower made of jasmine and murder has a pet monkey--for sure.

Ape People are different: ape people tend to be fans of what I call "hairy" entertainment: Conan movies, Jack Kirby Comics, Zardoz, Planet of the Apes (naturally), these:

For these people, King Kong actually had a shot against Godzilla, and the giant ape is the finest monster of which one could ever hope to dream.

I confess to being more of a pretentious, scheming Monkey Person than a fun-loving, good-hearted Ape Guy, so the idea of asking a wizard to take time out of his or her busy schedule just to deal with some fucking gorilla just seems basically disrespectful. Though I will say that this thing is awesome:

Axe Beak

Does anyone care about the axe beak? Ok, didn't think so...

Ok, so, see? The A's are hopeless. If you go beyond the Monster Manual, the only other "A" monster that ever got any traction is the Aboleth.

Aboleth

These were supposed to be sort of creepy Lovecraftian menaces from the deep. But if you never read Lovecraft when you first got ahold of the Monster Manual 2 because you were a little kid at the time then this is just like a really fucked up whale that hates you.

If it wasn't a classic, like a dragon or a hydra, then you pretty much had only the illustration to go by to figure out what the fuck is the idea with a monster.

Strangely enough, I am right back in this position with my players now. This is how meeting an aboleth would go with my group:

Me: "...and it looks...like...this!"
KK: "What the fuck is that?"
Me: "It's an aboleth, an ancient and inscrutable race that lives deep beneath the sea, older than man, older than the tides, older than the gods, older than...."
Mandy: "So it's like a Lovecraft thing?"
Frankie: "What's a Lovecraft thing?"
Daniel: "He was like this science fiction writer who wrote about, like, big monsters that looked like that."
KK: "So it's like a space fish that's old?"
Connie: "Can I pickpocket it?"