Simple question: What is your favorite creature type in D&D? Both DMs and Players can answer this, based on which one they like using as enemies/NPCs in their campaigns, or which ones they think are the most interesting to interact with as players, or whatever other reason. Just answer the question, and feel free to explain why you answered the way you did.
I'll start. I like a lot of different creature types (aberrations, constructs, dragons, undead), but my overall favorite has to be Aberration. This is strange for me, because I've never really been into the Cthulhu mythos or Eldritch Horror in any place except for D&D. The Aberration creature type is home to many awesome and iconic D&D monsters, like the Beholder, the Mind Flayer, and the Aboleth. There's just something about players facing off against an unknown and monstrous evil that feels so attractive to me both as a DM and as a player. My overall favorite type of aberration is the Mind Flayer, with my favorite type of Mind Flayer being the Gnome Ceremorph (a combination of one of my favorite races in D&D and one of my favorite monsters in D&D, making an adorably evil monster that will fit perfectly into any campaign that they're put in, and I will die on that hill).
Let's get the thread started! I'm excited to see what you answer!
Oh man, there are a lot of creatures that I love in D&D. Of course I chose dragons as my #1, thats a no brainer for me. A very close second however would be monstrosities. They are just so varied and have many are the classic monsters from various mythologies in this category like Medusas, Minotaurs, Griffons, Chimeras, Hydras, Basilisks, Nagas, Sphinxes , and so one. Not to mention creatures like Gray Renders, Yuan-tis, Rust Monsters, Owlbears, Displacer Beasts, Deep Crows, Behirs and Gloomstalkers. I love them.
Depends on what I need a creature to do, so I cannot say I have an overall favorite since it kind of depends on the situation.
If I were a player, my favorites would probably constructs and undead, since you can create minions that are completely obedient to you.
As GM, my favorite enemies to use would be humanoids since there is so much variety and you can create a lot of shades of grey. In terms of patrons, I like to use fiends.
I would lean towards the undead. I had a large undead Warhammer army growing up and a lot of the related media. Its just such a wide ranging group, from zombies to dracolich, spirits to mummies, vampires to liches. They make great high level enemies, and often have that very relatable wish to live past mortality. Some are ravenous beasts, others are cultured nobles or stitched together constructs. There's a horror for every occassion.
I'm a fan of aberrations in principle, but in practice they're all amorphous tentacle monsters. The cosmic horror genre is so weighed down by Lovecraft, it seems.
I'm a fan of aberrations in principle, but in practice they're all amorphous tentacle monsters. The cosmic horror genre is so weighed down by Lovecraft, it seems.
I agree that Lovecraft was an awful person and that he gets more credit than he deserves, but not all aberrations are "amorphous tentacle monsters", and they're very different from most of Lovecraft's monsters (Beholders, for instance, are purple floating heads with 11 eyeballs that shoot magic, and Neogi are Eel-Spiders that enslave humanoid races).
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Thus far, the majority of monsters I've created or lined up for games seems to be Constructs. Specifically Golem variants. I also have used Undead quite a lot.
Really, I've not paid much heed to the types (though it could come up for various magics), I just picked things which seemed to fit properly with the aesthetic. Looking through my notes, Elementals have come up a lot (but not so much for conflict).
My favorite monster (the mind flayer) is aberration, so that's what I went for at first. But, the other aberations aren't super interesting to me, to I switched this out.
I also love dragons. There just so cool and iconic, plus they not only contains cool monsters, but the dragon type is the only one that contains no monsters I don't like. I ended up going with dragons.
Plants are also super fun. I mean, a literal plant attacking you? Plus it's just so underrated, underused, and underappreciated, I can't help but love them.
Constructs can be super awesome. I mainly like the animated objects, which are just so cool.
Undead, elementals and monstrosities are also fun, so they're the runners up for me, after the above ones.
EDIT: I didn't see humanoid there. This 100% goes to humanoid, as you can go super in depth into backstory, personality, and most importantly, there motives are reasoning for being good/bad. I mean, mind flayers are always evil, whereas for a humanoid, you can have a backstory and reasoning as to why they're evil.
This is super difficult because each area has so much potential for interesting and unique creatures with interesting mechanics and/or stories. With that being said, I LOVE OOZES. They, to me, are something that is uniquely DND. Sure there are slimes in games like dragon quest or Terraria, but 1986 (when the first dragon quest came out) was 12 years after the first edition of dnd came out (1974). There is just so much potential within Oozes that has yet to be tapped into through DND and I hope to see it much more.
Plus, Ooblex is my favorite creature in the game. So there is probably some bias in that.
Monstrosities for sure. Not even close, although I make abundant use of other categories as well. Monstrosities encompasses just about everything, it’s adjacent to everything else.
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Thematically I really enjoy fey and feywild settings, but I try to vary my creature usage to keep it interesting.
The fey connection to nature means there is definitely a bias to the feel of them, but because of the general possession of humanoid level Intelligence, you can give the fey as much versatility as humanoids. You could have a cadre of unseelie fey as the masterminds behind a criminal organisation, or a seelie fey who stole arcane knowledge from wizards as a prank, got interested in it, and eventually became a lich.
I thought this would be hard but then I realized... This is Dungeons and Dragons.
It begins and ends with the title monsters: Dragons.
I mean . . . yeah. I always knew that they were going to win. However, there are good other options, and draconic creatures aren't just restrained to the Dragon creature type (there are Dracoliches and Brain-Stealer Dragons).
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This was a tough one, but the one that I enjoy using the most are fiends. I'm a sucker for planar settings, of which fiends make a good antagonist, but it's their versatility that really sells it for me.
Some monsters I would consider fairly one dimensional (oozes and elementals). They're cool and useful, but there isn't as much variety in the type of encounters you can create with them.
On the flip side, some monsters are TOO complex. You can't use them regularly because that would diminish the impact. Dragons are the obvious example here. I love dragons, but it really needs to be a climactic fight to use them to their fullest potential.
Fiends fall into that perfect middle ground where you can use them for any purpose. There are fiends of every CR all the way up to 20, and they're all very different from each other, even within the same fiendish "family" (demons, devils and yugoloths). In fact, they're so varied a lot of players don't even really know what they all do. Is this one immune to fire or just resistant? Do I need silver or cold iron?
They can be grunts or overlords. Puppets or puppetmasters. Manipulators or destroyers. And on the spectrum of evil, they're some of the worst, which makes them great villains. The only other creature type I would say has all these qualities are undead, which go back and forth with fiends for my #1 spot. They're just a pleasure to use and PCs sit up a bit straighter when they show up.
My favorites are aberrations. When I joined my first campaign, I saw a scary-looking thing with a huge eye on the front of the monster manual and thought "Wow, I want to fight one of those" Sadly, I never got to fight one, because the campaign ended and I am a dm now. They will still always be my favorites, though.
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Simple question: What is your favorite creature type in D&D? Both DMs and Players can answer this, based on which one they like using as enemies/NPCs in their campaigns, or which ones they think are the most interesting to interact with as players, or whatever other reason. Just answer the question, and feel free to explain why you answered the way you did.
I'll start. I like a lot of different creature types (aberrations, constructs, dragons, undead), but my overall favorite has to be Aberration. This is strange for me, because I've never really been into the Cthulhu mythos or Eldritch Horror in any place except for D&D. The Aberration creature type is home to many awesome and iconic D&D monsters, like the Beholder, the Mind Flayer, and the Aboleth. There's just something about players facing off against an unknown and monstrous evil that feels so attractive to me both as a DM and as a player. My overall favorite type of aberration is the Mind Flayer, with my favorite type of Mind Flayer being the Gnome Ceremorph (a combination of one of my favorite races in D&D and one of my favorite monsters in D&D, making an adorably evil monster that will fit perfectly into any campaign that they're put in, and I will die on that hill).
Let's get the thread started! I'm excited to see what you answer!
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Oh man, there are a lot of creatures that I love in D&D. Of course I chose dragons as my #1, thats a no brainer for me. A very close second however would be monstrosities. They are just so varied and have many are the classic monsters from various mythologies in this category like Medusas, Minotaurs, Griffons, Chimeras, Hydras, Basilisks, Nagas, Sphinxes , and so one. Not to mention creatures like Gray Renders, Yuan-tis, Rust Monsters, Owlbears, Displacer Beasts, Deep Crows, Behirs and Gloomstalkers. I love them.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
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Depends on what I need a creature to do, so I cannot say I have an overall favorite since it kind of depends on the situation.
If I were a player, my favorites would probably constructs and undead, since you can create minions that are completely obedient to you.
As GM, my favorite enemies to use would be humanoids since there is so much variety and you can create a lot of shades of grey. In terms of patrons, I like to use fiends.
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I would lean towards the undead. I had a large undead Warhammer army growing up and a lot of the related media. Its just such a wide ranging group, from zombies to dracolich, spirits to mummies, vampires to liches. They make great high level enemies, and often have that very relatable wish to live past mortality. Some are ravenous beasts, others are cultured nobles or stitched together constructs. There's a horror for every occassion.
I'm a fan of aberrations in principle, but in practice they're all amorphous tentacle monsters. The cosmic horror genre is so weighed down by Lovecraft, it seems.
I agree that Lovecraft was an awful person and that he gets more credit than he deserves, but not all aberrations are "amorphous tentacle monsters", and they're very different from most of Lovecraft's monsters (Beholders, for instance, are purple floating heads with 11 eyeballs that shoot magic, and Neogi are Eel-Spiders that enslave humanoid races).
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Thus far, the majority of monsters I've created or lined up for games seems to be Constructs. Specifically Golem variants. I also have used Undead quite a lot.
Really, I've not paid much heed to the types (though it could come up for various magics), I just picked things which seemed to fit properly with the aesthetic. Looking through my notes, Elementals have come up a lot (but not so much for conflict).
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Wow, as of now, nobody has picked beast, fey, or elemental. Oof
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This is very, very hard for me.
Undead, elementals and monstrosities are also fun, so they're the runners up for me, after the above ones.
EDIT: I didn't see humanoid there. This 100% goes to humanoid, as you can go super in depth into backstory, personality, and most importantly, there motives are reasoning for being good/bad. I mean, mind flayers are always evil, whereas for a humanoid, you can have a backstory and reasoning as to why they're evil.
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It’s a hard question, but I like dragons, fey, and aberrations.
This is super difficult because each area has so much potential for interesting and unique creatures with interesting mechanics and/or stories. With that being said, I LOVE OOZES. They, to me, are something that is uniquely DND. Sure there are slimes in games like dragon quest or Terraria, but 1986 (when the first dragon quest came out) was 12 years after the first edition of dnd came out (1974). There is just so much potential within Oozes that has yet to be tapped into through DND and I hope to see it much more.
Plus, Ooblex is my favorite creature in the game. So there is probably some bias in that.
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Monstrosities for sure. Not even close, although I make abundant use of other categories as well. Monstrosities encompasses just about everything, it’s adjacent to everything else.
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Thematically I really enjoy fey and feywild settings, but I try to vary my creature usage to keep it interesting.
The fey connection to nature means there is definitely a bias to the feel of them, but because of the general possession of humanoid level Intelligence, you can give the fey as much versatility as humanoids. You could have a cadre of unseelie fey as the masterminds behind a criminal organisation, or a seelie fey who stole arcane knowledge from wizards as a prank, got interested in it, and eventually became a lich.
I thought this would be hard but then I realized... This is Dungeons and Dragons.
It begins and ends with the title monsters: Dragons.
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I mean . . . yeah. I always knew that they were going to win. However, there are good other options, and draconic creatures aren't just restrained to the Dragon creature type (there are Dracoliches and Brain-Stealer Dragons).
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Undead for the win. I love horror-themed adventures and paladin or cleric characters, and undead are awesome foes for both.
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This was a tough one, but the one that I enjoy using the most are fiends. I'm a sucker for planar settings, of which fiends make a good antagonist, but it's their versatility that really sells it for me.
Some monsters I would consider fairly one dimensional (oozes and elementals). They're cool and useful, but there isn't as much variety in the type of encounters you can create with them.
On the flip side, some monsters are TOO complex. You can't use them regularly because that would diminish the impact. Dragons are the obvious example here. I love dragons, but it really needs to be a climactic fight to use them to their fullest potential.
Fiends fall into that perfect middle ground where you can use them for any purpose. There are fiends of every CR all the way up to 20, and they're all very different from each other, even within the same fiendish "family" (demons, devils and yugoloths). In fact, they're so varied a lot of players don't even really know what they all do. Is this one immune to fire or just resistant? Do I need silver or cold iron?
They can be grunts or overlords. Puppets or puppetmasters. Manipulators or destroyers. And on the spectrum of evil, they're some of the worst, which makes them great villains. The only other creature type I would say has all these qualities are undead, which go back and forth with fiends for my #1 spot. They're just a pleasure to use and PCs sit up a bit straighter when they show up.
Just my opinion of course!
Aberration because they are creepy af!
I like how 5e utilizes them too...a lot of great creatures in this grouping:
Aboleth
Beholder
Gnome Ceremorph
Star Spawn Larva Mage
My favorites are aberrations. When I joined my first campaign, I saw a scary-looking thing with a huge eye on the front of the monster manual and thought "Wow, I want to fight one of those" Sadly, I never got to fight one, because the campaign ended and I am a dm now. They will still always be my favorites, though.
I will protect those I hate. Even ... even if the one I hate most ... is ... myself.