Interesting monsters

Also sludge vampires are cool.
What happenes if an ooze wears a human skin and pretends to be human?

> Crack Spiders
Ever redecorated a house, and found that the walls were actually covered by hairline cracks in the plaster? Crackspiders. These little buggers leave tiny cracks wherever they go, scuttling along your walls leaving little irritating fractures in their wake. Given enough time and enough of an infestation, they could theoretically reduce a house to rubble. (Probably only affects inflexible materials: wood is probably safe)

>Dust Bunny
Typically found in ill kept magical institutions, Dust bunnies are clumps of dust given life and proper form by ambient magical energies. Apart from being a symbol of poor housekeeping, Dust bunnies help keep their homes clean, by absorbing any future dust created. Their appearance depends on the magical energy surrounding them, exemplified in the necromancer's dust bunnies, which are shambling horrors of the dust of undead flesh.

>Candleflies
Luminescent flying insects that lay their eggs in dead flesh, giving their larvae ample food supply when they hatch. Candleflies and their larvae produce a small amount of necromantic energy, not enough to raise anything on their own but well-known to reanimate a corpse in a colony given enough time to fully develop.
The mature flies do not usually stray far from the host corpse, instead breeding in and consuming its rotting flesh until the undead kills another or strays across another corpse whereupon the mature flies will migrate and form a new colony.
Cultures in the regions Candleflies are found consider it especially important to bury or incinerate their dead, as large-scale infestations can quickly lead to undead uprisings, blights upon the land and even attract liches and necromancers.

Veins of the Earth is criminally overlooked by Veeky Forums. Quality stuff.

reading it now and it is amazing.

Would you recommend any other Monster Manuals of similar level?

Nothing in a similar vein (ahaha) comes to mind in regards to pure monster manuals, but the stuff by Patrick S and co often has some real excellent monster design. While as a full adventure I think Maze of the Blue Medusa is almost too big to run, it serves brilliantly as a big book-o ideas.

A Red And Pleasant Land is also full of cool shit, assuming that you're running alice-in-wonderland-but-also-vampires. There are entries for pudding! and mice! and lapray vampire bishops!

Are there monster descriptions or just adventure hooks?

Also let me post one of the oldest monsters I have on the drive.

I would like to mention that creatures that are made from parts of existing animals are much more interesting and creepy then totally made up stuff.

For example picrelated is better monster...

...then this

Another example is how to draw the same monster:
compare this

To this.

Tell me which is better.

The good old pangols deserve being here.

>dinosaurs
>Zergs

I fucking love these so much.

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What are some abominations besides the ones in Lords of Madness?

I want one as a familiar.

What is the werewolf like creature in this pic?

Why is flail snail so popular? I keep seeing it here and there but to me it looks like any other generic critter? Anyone knows why?

It was a silly monster from early in D&D's history that has managed to stand out precisely because it's silly.

FLAIL
SNAIL

hmm. Like the owlbear. Fortunately so many other were forgotten. Did it have the anti magic properties back at the time or it is 5e addition?

Unrelated but Patric S. is a beast.

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I imagine it being from MtG. What is that gibbering horror to the right?

Speaking of werewolves. Does anyone know of any other monster that share a special relationship with the moon?

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THe first one is certainly weirder but the second one looks more Sword & Planet style.

I wrote a PDF of what happens when you eat all the creatures in Veins of the Earth.
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/08/monster-menu-all-part-2-veins-of-earth.html

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I really like Azlu form Werewolf the Forsaken.
>The Azlu, or spider hosts, are driven by instinct to strengthen the Gauntlet. They begin life as an ordinary looking spider. They have the ability to possess a human by crawling in their ear and eating their brain, which gives them access to the human's memories. A human possessed in this way is preserved by the Azlu, and will only begin to decay after a month. After an Azlu melds with enough other Azlu, it consumes a human by biting it and wrapping it in a cocoon, after which it slowly melds its essence with the human, creating a human-spider hybrid. These melded Azlu are solitary creatures, but can easily be a match for a pack of Forsaken, since they tend to be the size of cars and often have one set of legs that are enormous bone scythes. Adult Azlu must eat one human a month for sustenence, and constantly weave webs which thicken the Gauntlet around them.

Also f you kill a powerful Azlu it splits in tiny spiders and tries to escape.

Despite being pathifnder I liked the idea behind this guys.

It is hard to find new horror monsters that hold a candle to iconic vampires and weres.

Those little guys play on untaped fears of alien abduction and invasive surgery.

I started reading Pathifnder bestiaries and they suck.

For example picrelated. Neothelids were interesting in D&D as they are overgrown mindflyers children. Hated and hunted by the parents.

Ok two headed Neothelid sound fun, but it is presented in the most boring way possible. Now it have more psychic powers. That is it. No longer any relation to the mindlfyers.

Fuck I'm disappointed.

Of course owlbear is famous. Anything fused with an owl turns out glorious

Looks like a lamer reskinned aboleth but the tripple bite mechanic is fun.

Cosnidering the Dungeon Mushi influences I might play a cook in a campaign sooner or later.

Thanks for the pdfs.

SHadowrun also sucks

That arc with a whole mimic ecosystem was fantastic, I liked the orcs too even though it was a pretty basic twist

>monster menus

That is pretty funky, thanks.

even the older editions. Picrelated is the only good one I have seen so far.

They even tried to pass hedgehogs as creative monsters.
What the fuck.

Fire on the velvet horizon is OP.

any idea why 'tetramorphs' is used throughout fire in the velvet horizon to refer to monsters? I worked out a lot of the stuff around the 3 naturalists, but I couldn't find if there were some explanation for this specifically.

Is this a comparison between Numenera's blandness and Velvet Horizon's literary warfare?

what is this from??

I still haven't finished the book but so far no idea.

I don't think I haven't posted stuff from Numenera yet. Some of them I find neat Like picrelated.

Goblin punch
goblinpunch blogspot it/2015/08/the-bestiary html

If you want I can post the exact pdf it is taken from.

Sorry I was copying images from PDF and pasting them to paint.

My 1337 haxxor skillz aren't to high.
Here is a complete monster.

And I'm proved wrong picrelated is a nice take on the aberrations.
Good guy pathfinder.

well, if it's not a werewolf, I's say a Quaggoth?

Well that's absolutely fucking horrifying.

>illithids aren't playing their instruments with their face tentacles

THERE IS NOT ENOUGH BOI, WHEW LAD, OR NIGGA WTF IN ALL THE PLANES, DIMENSOINS OR REALMS OF THE MULTIVERSE FOR THIS PIC

Two tailed, two headed snake.

Butterfly trees.

White Stag
A beloved child of a forest god. Every lawful character in his presence takes 1d6 damage per second. Every chaotic character gets healed for 1d6 health.

Sentinel
Undead that guards a temple. Cannot be turned while in the temple.

Fire on the Velvet Horizon (also by Patrick S and Scrap Princess) is my favorite, but I don't know whether most people would like it.

>Tell me which is better.
The first one, , by a mile.

Moon rats, which gain in strength and intelligence with the waxing of the moon. I feel like I ought to be able to think of others, but nothing comes to mind.

I don't understand. It has two minis, each with his own health pool and acting independently, and when one dies it does not affect the other... What's the difference between this and two snakes?

It's from a blog article about combinign monster stat blocks to create a new monster. They used the two-headed two-tailed snake as the most simple possible explanation of the concept (it's two monsters that are treated by the GM as one monster, despite mechanically still being two separate statblocks)

As an example of what you could actually do, you could, say, make a big two-headed dragon with different breath weapons by using the statblocks of two smaller dragons. Players can choose to attack either left or right head, and you aply the damage to the statblock of the corresponding dragon. Once one of the dragons would die, the corresponding head gets chopped off and the dragon loses the ability to use its breath weapon and bite attack.

Can you point out a particular entry which uses the word? I'll have a look.

What do you mean by "literary warfare"?

Numenera really is remarkably bland, yeah.

I remember looking up the Nibovian Wife entry when there was some controversy about it, and felt that it had no character and made no sense. Why do they need sperm to open a transdimensional rift in their wombs? (Well, sperm isn't explicitly specified, but they need *something* they can only get by seducing men.) Why do their horrible ultraterrestrial offspring exhibit a compulsion to hunt down and kill their fathers? Who would build a Nibovian Wife, anyway, and why would you bother? If nobody builds them, how do they reproduce? The basic idea isn't compelling and none of the details make sense.

>Veins of the Earth is criminally overrated
FTFY

You have a PDF? can you post it on MEGA or show the original link you got it from? i can't seem to find FOTVH anywhere digital.

update: found it on mega, but it's fucking massive:
mega . nz/#!tMtk3b4A!ICubXRK9C7O_dlCfGoFaqa-cvdesY2fsps43PI_sGBE

yeah I only got the same one.
The author did not want to release a digital version.

So, it's a larval Mi-Go then?

Found something nice on reddit.
reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/3o1p25/the_ecology_project_is_live/

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I think overlooked is probably more accurate- it dosen't seem to get all that much attention from anyone outside /osrg/.

What do you think it did wrong?

My group loves these bastards. Every time I've used them, they've taken them as pets, party mascots, chef's apprentices, or other such nonsense. They're a wonderfully silly creature.

the thing to the right is a werewolf converted into an Eldrazi, which are reality-warping plane-eating superbeings and serial antagonists in mtg

and this kids is the reason you shouldn't apply a template on a template.

I remember that minor magical creatures thread. Used to have them all saved, but lost the file.

Good times.

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Just an aberation that can never die, just be sealed.

Honestly slime skeletons (ooze fused with skeletons) are much better for this role. THey are weak enough that party can play with them and find creative way to render them inoffensive.

Numenera have ever predator reskins. But this cyclope like version is imho much better looking then the original predator.

Well in the case of the neothelid, they had to change it because illithids are WotC intellectual property.

They could have left a reference to a "monster that reproduces by infecting humanoid brains" DOes anyone play pathfinder and do not know what a mindflayer is?

And now you can fight memes.

>Honestly slime skeletons (ooze fused with skeletons) are much better for this role. THey are weak enough that party can play with them and find creative way to render them inoffensive.
Skeleton Jellies are fantastic learning monsters. Invincible, unstoppable, but dumb and weak. Use duct tape to solve your problems, not guns.

Megatherium

Huge beast, unaligned

Armor Class 16 (natural armor)

Hit Points 126 (11d12 + 55)

Speed 40 ft., swim 20 feet.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
24 (+7) 9 (-1) 21 (+5) 3 (-4) 12 (+1) 6 (-2)

Senses passive Perception 11

Languages —

Challenge 6

>Grief-Mad. At the start of its turn, the megatherium can gain advantage on all gore attack rolls it makes during that turn, but attack rolls against it have advantage until the start of its next turn.

ACTIONS

>Gore. Melee Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (2d8 + 7) piercing damage.
>Stomp. Melee Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 5 ft., one prone creature. Hit: 23 (3d10 + 7) bludgeoning damage.

>Mates for Life - Adult megatheriums form life-long pairs. If one of them dies, the other becomes insane, gaining the Grief-Mad trait, resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, and it also can’t be charmed or frightened.

I had unexpected reactions of sadness to this

>Under the dark depths of the skin-tearing sandstorm, appear light bursts which would blind anyone capable of seeing twenty feet ahead. One whose nostrils aren't fouled by sand would smell ozone. The beetles called Dark-Cracks show how life finds a way. Adamantine-strengthened exoskeletons so polished by the sand that seem glazed, pectinated antennae that absorve the static electricity created by billions of grains, these slender-bodied animals use lenghty wings to soar through hot winds until sensing the electric field of a target well suited for its lightning strikes. A single bug kills a camel, a swarm burns an elephant. Unlike what the caravaneers believe, the storms of the arid highlands aren't powerful enough to flense flesh from bones. They just hide the creatures capable of doing so

>Gumera

>These monsters are the worst kind of black magic. The ritual is tabboo in the land where it was created. It is known that certain materials colected from corpses and toxic plants are mixed into the mud used to make a pot. It must be big enough to house all the creatures to be enclosed inside. If the pot is broken or opened before the sounds inside stop, everything inside dies and one must restart the process.

>The lesser variants happen when a witch puts several venomous creatures inside a jar; The resulting critter combines all the venoms inside. The common mixture is to lock an entire vespiary. The result is a grenade, which when thrown releases something described as "wings, stingers and nothing else" by the chronicler Jin Kaiwan.

>The more powerful variants become a sort of chimera. The process is unpredictable, the resulting creature unique, alaways combining the worse traits of what was put inside. The dragon Genxun, member of the Blue Dinasty and governor of the Xu Province, has the Jincan Cauldron. Whoever fails with their duty is thrown inside and devoured by the thing within, similar to a huge starfish made of five fused worms. Local rebels dream of the day that they will release the monster upon the dragon.

bump

This book is essential Veeky Forums reading. It's an interesting work; it's halfway between an encyclopedia of mythical animals and Jorge Luis Borges' musings on them. He covers famous creatures like centaurs and dragons, but there are also entries for more unusual beings such as "An Animal Imagined by Kafka" and the Lamed Wufniks. My personal favorites are the Á Bao A Qu and the Fauna of Mirrors.

Here's a PDF of it.

Holy shit, this is fucking gay.

Cringe post user.

Cringe is a verb, not an adjective. Pleas spend less time on reddit.

Isn't it a thing in the English language that a verb can be a noun and a noun can be an adjective?
Any way, post some interesting monsters.

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Thanks. All the modern monster manuals spoiled me and now it is strange reading a book without monster illustrations.

They're a cute. The sorts of things you'd throw into an otherwise crapsack world for contrast.

There is no "digital version", the book's layout was made on a scanner.