Part I is here.
5. Shambling Mound
According to Gary Gygax, the shambling mound was inspired by the 1940s comic book monster, the Heap, which seems plausible, given that the Monster Manual states that it "appear[s] as a heap of rotting vegetation." My own fondness for the shambler stems from my love of all manner of swamp monsters, most especially Père Malfait from the Kolchak episode, "The Spanish Moss Murders." There's no denying that there's something positively primal about the idea of a monster rising out of the muck of a dismal marsh to attack unsuspecting travelers through its domain. As a referee, I've made good use of these creeps over the decades.
In a sense, I owe my playing of D&D to green slime. As you may recall, my earliest experience of fantasy gaming came through the boardgame Dungeon! One of my favorite aspects of that game were the monster cards that you flipped over whenever your token entered a space on the map. Mixed in with goblins, giant rats, and skeletons were a number of weirder enemies that captivated my youthful self. Chief among these was green slime, which was a truly nasty opponent, being immune to fireballs and requiring double digit rolls to kill for all attacks except lightning bolts. The D&D version of green slime isn't quite as hard to destroy, but it's still plenty dangerous, turning living beings it touches into more green slime – no resurrection possible. Yikes!
3. Beholder
The beholder has to be a strong candidate for the most iconic D&D monster ever. That said, they've rarely appeared in my own games over the years, partly because they possess a wide array of dangerous abilities. Yet, there's no denying beholders are an imaginative and compelling monster – among the best in the game – which is why I've ranked them so highly on this list.
2. Lich
Arguably this monster is a violation of my own rules, since the idea of an undead sorcerer is hardly unique to Dungeons & Dragons. I readily admit my hypocrisy on this point, but I don't care. Moreso than almost any other "standard" D&D monster I can think of, the lich draws deeply from the game's pulp fantasy roots and that's a big part of why I love it. I also have lots of great memories of liches from adventures I ran in years past, like Asberdies from Descent into the Depths of the Earth (and Acererak from Tomb of Horrors – yes, I know he's a demi-lich, but, since we've already established I'm a hypocrite, why not include him too?).
This was an easy one for me. The Cthulhoid stylings of the mind flayer held instant appeal the first time I gazed upon Dave Sutherland's illustration in the Monster Manual. The fact that these monsters used psionics was another point in their favor, since I was strangely fascinated with AD&D's convoluted (and largely unworkable) system for handling psychic powers. Like the lich, the mind flayer is highly intelligent, but its intelligence is of an inscrutable, alien sort that gives the monster a little extra oomph, hence its place in the top spot of this list.
That's a fun Kolchak episode. I don't know why, but it never consciously occured to me until now how much DCSIII's shambling mound design owes to Marvel's Man-Thing.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that the shambling mound mentions as inspiration one comic book monster, while the illustration is clearly based on a different one, marvel comics' Man-Thing.
ReplyDeleteThis top ten of yours really brings home just how much horror there is in D&D:s deepest layers. The illustrations (and arguably the way these things are interacted with in play) don't much emphasize it, with more of a cartoon or action figure aesthetic to most of them. But taken out of that context, something like an amorphous slime that turns people into more slime, or a psychic alien that peels back your brain layer by layer with its mouth-tentacles has the potential to be tremendously scary. Certainly John Carpenter would've made a memorable movie out of one in the 1980s.
I think there's a superb horror game lurking in there, in D&D, that's always peeking out a little but that would take some kind of dramatic change in approach from the system and the DM to fully uncover. Mainstream D&D isn't much interested in it (even Ravenloft, I think, sits kind of uneasily in modern D&D with its brightly colored, approachable vibe), and while the OSR has certainly heaped on more slime and gore and cosmic baddies, I'm not aware of any hack or adaptation of D&D that tries to really pivot the game into the horror genre. It would be interesting to see.
Green slime (and most of the other oozes and jellies) pretty clearly stem from the original Blob movie, albeit with a different color scheme. Their weird and varied immunities and vulnerabilities even connect to the weakness to cold the film monster displayed, but also reflect early D&D's fondness for "puzzle" monsters where your players had to resort to trial and error (or reading the monster listings) to figure out what worked and what didn't.
DeleteI made the association as soon as I saw the picture, but the Heap is a lot older, and looks even more like a shambler: https://comicvine.gamespot.com/the-heap/4005-30639/. Someone below mentioned Sturgeon's It, but that creature wasn't illustrated AFAIK, so the look probably comes from the Heap.
DeleteProbably the Blob was an inspiration for the various ooze monsters, but pulp magazines had earlier versions, e.g. Joseph Payne Brennan's "Slime" (1953).
DeleteConfession. I never actually grokked how green slime worked mechanically. Is it a save or die? Instant? Is there a grace period for actions and a save/second save? Is it a - fail to play/look and THEN it drops and insta save or death?
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty straightforward. If you touch or are touched by green slime you have 1d4 rounds to do something about it. "Something" is scraping it off, burning it, or freezing it - or a cure disease from a paladin or a druid (the clerical version takes too long). If you fail to take care of the slime you are turned into green slime. Saving throws don't enter in.
DeleteMoldvay's version (B36) is clearer. He explains the mechanics better than Gygax, & the mechanics are not the same (Moldvay's green slime moves 3'(1') rather than 0", and burning it off does half of the damage to the slime, half to the victim, among other differences). -- Does anyone know why DMG 203 assigns so much XP to green slimes: 610 + 2/hp? It doesn't seem to conform to the rules on DMG 85, which, for a 2 HD monster, would be closer to 65 + 2/hp if applying "EAXPA" or maybe 73 + 2/hp if also applying the "SAXPB". Is it a typo? But the TEE module repeats the inflated values (p. 24, #18)
DeleteSyonchovius, green slime is very tricky to assign an XP value to. I'd say it has three exceptional abilities: immunity to all weapons, immunity to all spells (save sure disease), and turning creatures into green slime with no save or possibility of resurrection. This would give 155 XP (+ 2/HP). But each of the three abilities is better then the sample exceptional abilities, and "if an otherwise weak creature has an extraordinary power, multiply the award by 2, 4, 8 or even 10 or more." Doubling gives 310, quadrupling gives 620. So perhaps it is a small typo, or else just a special award for a special monster.
DeleteMy teenage self — ever the Marvel brand snob — immediately recognized Man-Thing in the Shambling Mound. But I and my boy scout/gamer friends had already ripped off the idea in bringing the mythological creatures that legend said lived behind the Mess Hall at camp Hidden Valley to the game table: Swamp Boogies.
ReplyDeleteIt was foretold that the Swamp Boogies would arise at night from the muck of Sherman's Creek and drag off those scouts who failed to police the campsite of trash or keep the latrines clean.
My use of the monster was so effective that, year's later, a friend in another campaign thought I had invented the creature for the game, and was grossly disappointed we had just 'borrowed' it from campfire lore. So it goes...
I've always wondered why mind flayers were so popular when I'd read that nobody used psionics.
ReplyDeleteIt's a very good question. I suspect the Cthulhu-inspired imagery carries a lot of weight for many people.
DeleteBy the 1990s there was enough backstory and culture established that it was a major factor in how popular illithids are, and that's only been further expanded on with time. Their lore is seriously creepy and unpleasant - and it ties in with one of my own top tens, the equally-psionic intellect devourers that are effectively mind flayer "hunting dogs" despite their own considerable intelligence.
DeleteThe lore around mind flayers/ilithids was expanded a great deal in AD&D second edition. They published a series of adventures and a supplement called the illithiad.
DeleteDragon magazine 150 had a great article on the Mind Flayers! , incredibly sinister race the illithids!
DeleteFollowing your "unique to D&D" criteria I'd have found room for the intellect devourer, umber hulk, and displacer beast on my own list - although you could make an argument that the latter is a ripoff of the xeno from van Vogt's "Black Destroyer" short story. Aboleth almost make my cut but I really only like the super-chubby designs from the Dark Below campaign box.
ReplyDeleteIf we include more modern critters I'm also fond of the tsochar parasites, which have a nifty backstory and offer a lot of potential for body horror and the kind of paranoid menace you see in Heinlein's "Puppet Masters" novel.
Shambling Mounds may have been inspired by the Heap (1942), but the Heap was most likely inspired by classic Ted Sturgeon story "It!" from 1940. Well worth reading for fans of horror. There may also be a Solomon Grundy relationship there (Green Lantern writer Alfred Bester was, like Sturgeon, a working sf writer), but at that point, the provenance of "dead bodies in a swamp come to life" becomes harder to trace.
ReplyDeleteNothing from the Fiend Folio? You will never be forgiven. ;) My favorite other-planar monsters are the slaadi, and my favorite undead are the sons of Kyuss. (Hmmm. But it's a tough call between the sons of Kyuss and Rappan Athuk's black skeletons.)
ReplyDeleteMy tastes in D&D monsters were formed early, before I ever owned a copy of the FF. That said, the Sons of Kyuss are very good monsters indeed.
DeleteOh, and my favorite "humanoids" are the kuo-toa. ;)
DeleteNo gelatinous cube? Sigh.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like all of the illustrations came from the Monster Manual (1e); no?
Yes, I chose the MM illustrations for all of the monsters, because those are the iconic ones for me.
DeleteAs for the gelatinous cube, it's definitely in my Top 20, along with the black pudding. I may need to do a second post of some of the "runners-up."
I’m not criticizing; I’d have definitely used those too. It just seemed kind of funny after all was said that everything came from the MM.
DeleteMy brother owned all the books except I had the copy of the Fiend Folio so I'm partial to "my" guys. Displacer beast, stirge, and owlbear are probably my only MM creatures that make the cut.
ReplyDeleteIt is a good list, James! I can't argue with any of the choices and my list would look much the same.
ReplyDeleteTop 10 Fiend Folio list: Berbalang, Bullywug, Death Knight, Ettercap, Githyanki, Huecuva, Jermlaine, Kuo-Toa, Ogrillon, Revenant.
ReplyDeleteI felt like the Mind Flayers in D1-D3 came off as lesser than the drow --- a conquered people. It was an interesting twist that left me with the impression that they were prone to failures of hubris, in a classic bad-guy way.
ReplyDeleteAhhh yes, the Stirge. A 'favorite' scourge of one DM, and the source of the storied scars on the face of my barbarian character, Sandar Swiftsword — notably caused, not by the stirges themselves!— but when the barbarian rolled 1 TWICE in a row to strike the bloodsuckers attached to his head and critically hit himself instead.
ReplyDeleteOur high school group lived — and sometimes died — by the famous 1980 Dragon Magazine article "Good Hits & Bad Misses" which, along with James M. Ward's one-page masterpiece "Damage Permanence, or, How Hrothgar One-Ear Got His Name" made up our system of crits.
(Speaking of, James, I know you've been writing a bit about hit points lately, but did you ever do a look back at early Dragon articles that, while they may not have made it into the official rulebooks, formed much of the substrate of early D&D?)
I'd say, based upon the family's reactions, my favorites would be Shriekers, Ghouls, Stirges. Those are the foes they seem to dread more than any. As one of my sons said, I could tell them a demonic horde was waiting behind a door and they'd go there rather than face stirges.
ReplyDelete@James, I'd like to see a similar list from you of your top ten favourite spells.
ReplyDeleteYou have read my mind. I plan to do posts on that very topic, along with my favorite magic items.
DeleteI too would love to see your favorite spells and magic items. And you kinda got me thinking of my own.
DeleteGreat topic! The Holy Avenger might have been my favorite item, because the paladin was my favorite character type. I fell in love with the "idea" of the virtuous knight when I saw the film, Camelot, as a child, with Richard Harris as King Arthur, and the great Italian actor Franco Nero as Lancelot, torn between the love (philia) of his king and his love (eros) for Guinevere. (Younger people might know Nero from his memorable roles in more recent films, Die Hard 2 and John Wick 2). The character of Lancelot also appeared in John Boorman's excellent film, Excalibur, which had an equally memorable cast: Nigel Terry as King Arthur, Helen Mirren as Morgana, Liam Neeson as Sir Gawain, Gabriel Byrne as Uther Pendragon, Patrick Stewart as Leondegrance, and Nicholas Clay in the role of Lancelot. To cap that off, I had the pleasure of reading (and studying) Thomas Malory's novel, Le Morte d'Arthur (penned in 1469) when I was in college. Put it all together, and I always wanted to *be* Lancelot. (Still do.) While Arthur earned the right to wield Excalibur, I would have gladly taken up the Holy Avenger.
ReplyDeleteApologies- I guess I attached the above comment to the wrong article. I will copy and paste it in the correct place, and trust that James will be gracious enough to allow me to do so.
ReplyDelete