Quote:
Originally Posted by dbm
Also, beholders and mindflayers specifically are pretty much apex bad guys. You build up to fighting them and they’re still rock hard to defeat. Such things are great tales made of.
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That doesn’t address my issue at all. My issue is whether or not those apex monsters need to be original monsters or can come from mythology, and moreover whether original monsters should take precedence over monsters from mythology. My arguments are:
- There’s no reason these apex baddies need to be original monsters. The best argument for this is that original monsters can better take advantage of game loopholes, which helps makes them a challenge. Still, the apex monster of the adventure that happened when Arneson and Megarry drove down to Lake Geneva wasn’t an original monster, but a balrog, and the participants were suitably impressed. You can have epic fights against trolls and giants and dragons and vampires and monsters with the short description of “demon.”
- Original monsters only become interesting once you have already played the game. Beholders and mindflayers have little allure to non-gamers since they have no image of them outside of D&D. Because some of us have been gamers so long, we often lose that perspective.