Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

Hehe, you got me. My ABSOLUTE FAVORITE monster is the peryton, but i never got positive findings from my d&d party then using it. They just couldn't get fond of the image of this monster... it endend everytime like this:

"okay... in spite of all the gruesome-spooky description and that... the thing that just tried to kill us is basically a carnivorous flying stag?" "...yes, but..." "BWAAHAHA!"

The original Find Folio is way ahead of may time. My older brother has/had a copy somewhere in his bookcase, but my englisch when was even worse then know and I couldn't understand a single word... So my personal D&D collection started with the AD&D Creature Catalogue I (naturally in german).

For "weirdest or most obscure", I have to go with the gulguthydra, which is a hybrid of a gulguthra (known outside the Forgotten Realms as an otyugh) and a hydra.

It's like a six headed hydra, right? But it has otyugh tentacles with which to rake in its food )plants, animals, anything short of bare rock - it had a broader appetite than an otyugh but is not above coprophagy) which it ravenously devours, apparantly for the sole purpose of excreting through its skin to produce a continual effusion of slime to lubricate its slithering path as it wanders in continual search for more food. It's special weapon is a nauseating stench.

I have never yet had cause to use one in a game. But it only takes one to un-sylvanify a Sylvan Wood very quickly! Seems to have been principally invented for the "Ewww!" factor.

And yes, the old Fiend Folio had a number of monsters that just made one go, "Wha?" and wonder what the designers had been smoking.

I've never heard of that one!! Where did you find it?

It can be found in the Forgotten Realms supplement, Monsters of Faerun.

I do not think it is an Ed Greenwood creation, though he did give the otyugh its alternative name of "gulguthra" in his realms, and as well in his article, "The Ecology of the Gulguthra", published in Dragon #96.

How someone took that and decided, "Now, here's just the creature for a hydra hybrid!" is anyone's guess. Perhaps a mental leap to combine two of Heracles' labors - Lernaean hydra, Augean stables - into a single challenge.

Flumphs are cool, in a weird sort of way. I remember when one of my college buddies first encountered one. We'd just returned from a very profitable dungeon foray, and he and his character were both trying to drink up the loot. So he comes staggering out of the bar one morning and sees a flumph. After about four hilarious minutes of describing it to him (with assorted 'no shit?' comments), he turned around and went back to the bar. Obviously, he wasn't drinking enough.

For weirdest, I'm not sure if I'd go with duckbunnies, Bell golems or bonnarcons. Each have their out there moments, but I'd probably pick the bonnarcon. Not only is it an actual mythological creature, but it's sort of the patron totem of the internet.

Ok. WHAT are bonnarcons and bell golems?

Bell golems are built by clerics to defend places. When they find intruders, they beat on themselves to ring the bell, which has various effects depending on construction.

Bonnarcons are mythical cow-like beasts that, when attacked, defend themselves with waves of flaming bullshit.

I kid you not.

Oh, my vote's for the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, as seen in module S3, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. The module was one of the cruelest, nastiest ones I've ever read, and though my players begged me to run it, we ended up retconning the events of the module completely in disgust.

The WiSC came with the instructions to the DM to grimace, roll eyes, and show the party the picture in the module's art section of a "cute little bunny on a stump." The bunny, you see, is bait -- the monster was the stump, which used the bunny to lure predators (who'd like to eat the bunny) close enough to catch in its tentacles and pull to the massive toothy mouth in its stump. Yes, the directions demanded that the DM social engineer the encounter out of game with a grimace reaction to the "cute bunny."

This monster screams "cheap shot." It's up there with the mimic, the ragamuffin, and that thing-that-looks-like-a-sword on the list of "monsters created to mess with the PCs." You'd have to put a lurker above, a trapper, and four stunjellies into a room where the only door in was actually a mimic to get much cheaper than this!

Don't forget a few goldbugs in the treasure pile, and those ear borers that live in locks.

So that's why they are the patron beast of the Internet! Makes perfect sense!

Eeek....

I love Mycanoids. Not exactly obscure (they were in nearly every MM1), but a humanoid fungus that tries to comunicate with you by blasting spores in your face is hillarious (and nearly every new group I DMed had to suffer this ).

Also moondogs were kinda strange, a dog that fights evil by barking at the moon! WTF!? I could imagine a nice scene where one of the younger monsters in Black Mountain brings one of them home "I found him, may I keep him?"

Weirdest/ Obscure?
Hell Kittens... a small litter of adorable kittens that start eating you alive when you pick them up.

One of my favorites are winter wolves. Had a wizard that managed to sort of befriend one, and roleplaying Agoreth was a blast.

I heard a good one on the Worm that Walks: why would a mage choose to become such a disgusting and weak thing when there are liches and demi liches to pick from?

Weirdest DnD monster, i would have to say is a tie between the Thought Eater or the Brain Mole.
A platypus who can't seem to keep a meal down or a cute little animal that has to constly eat or die, who also has a taste for brains.
I just don't know.

However my all time Favorite monster is by far, the Gelatinous Cube.
I could finly fight the one thing in school I dreaded every thusrday, and thanks to its acid any metal stuff came out nice and shiny.