I am currently doing some organizing for my upcoming Dark Sun campaign, and I have been compiling a list of Monsters that I can use from the first MM for my encounter building -- It was inspired by this Thread -> community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
I would like to share that list here, as well as have you guys weigh in on the monsters I am not sure about.
Here is the List I have put together for Monsters I have determined as usuable for whatever reason;
Abomination
Archon
Azer
Bat
Beetle
Behemoth
Bulette
Chuul
Cyclops
Death Knight
Demon
Devil
Dragonborn
Drake
Dwarf
Eladrin
Elemental
Elf
Ettercap
Galeb Duhr
Gargoyle
Ghost
Ghoul
Giant
Gnoll
Golem
Gorgon
Grimlock
Halfl ing
Human
Hydra
Hyena
Kruthik
Lizardfolk
Magma Beast
Minotaur
Mummy
Rat
Salamander
Scorpion
Skeleton
Skull Lord
Snake
Specter
Spider
Tiefl ing
Wight
Wraith
Wyvern
Yuan-Ti
Zombie
Below is the List I would like you guys to weigh in on, Could these monsters exist on Athas? Some are denizens of the Underdark, Some are Plant types, others are classic D&D monsters.
Balhannoth
Basilisk
Battlebriar
Beholder
Boneclaw
Carrion Crawler
Dracolich
Dragonspawn
Drider
Drow
Dryad
Ettin
Flameskull
Fomorian
Foulspawn
Githyanki
Githzerai
Grick
Guardian
Hag
Harpy
Helmed Horror
Hook Horror
Kuo-Toa
Lamia
Lich
Mind Flayer
Naga
Nightwalker
Ogre
Oni
Ooze
Otyugh
Roc
Roper
Rot Harbinger
Sahuagin
Shadar-Kai
Shambling Mound
Shifter
Slaad
Stirge
Swordwing
Treant
Troglodyte
Troll
Umber Hulk
Vampire
Vampire Spawn
Vine Horror
Thanks in Advance!
Below is the List I would like you guys to weigh in on, Could these monsters exist on Athas? Some are denizens of the Underdark, Some are Plant types, others are classic D&D monsters.
Anything can be done with a bit of imagination. I'll give some ideas for each one.
Balhannoth: Athasian underdark creatures that guard hidden horrors of the long-gone flesh crafters.
Basilisk: psionic monsters of the wastes that turn people to obsidian. They die in captivity, so are not a renewable resource for obsidian collectors, but brave prospectors may enter their territory.
Battlebriar: Fierce servants of the dryads.
Beholder: There is one last beholder colony left in the depths of the Athasian underdark. There the Great Mother and her childer sleep, waiting for the time when the word is bereft of it's dubious guardians.
Boneclaw: Boneclaws are made through a ritual involving grim defilement. Dregoth's dray minions know it, but others have discerned its secrets.
Carrion Crawler: Most carrion crawlers lie dormant in the ruins of ancient civilizations.
Dracolich: The Dragon's lich-like servants have devised rituals to bind powerful drakes in a state of eternal undeath.
Dragonspawn: Drakespawn are surprisingly hardy mutant offspring of regular drakes.
Drider: Members of the forgotten dark elves of the underdark mutated by proximity to the pristine tower.
Drow: Elven refugees of the cleansing wars took refuge in the underdark and changed over the years to their current form.
Dryad: Guardians of the last forests. They put geases upon worthy trespassers to eternally guard their domains.
Ettin: A variety of giant often found in the company of brohgs. Some of them have two beast heads.
Flameskull: On Athas, flameskulls are psionically created undead, made from the skulls of potent defilers. Many of them guard the inner sanctums of lost ruins.
Fomorian: Tasked with guarding the few subterranean gates to the Feywild. They often conscript other Fey to their duty.
Foulspawn: Foulspawn tend to be tied to curses upon ancient treasures. A mere coin from such a hoard could provide the gate for one of these monsters to slip into reality.
Githyanki: Cursed by their closeness to the cosmos with a form of non-death that radiates and sickens the living in their proximity, they patrol the abomination and angel-polluted wastes of the astral sea, which is illuminated by the sickly red light of the dying Athasian sun. Compelled to preserve things, they assail vessels and entities from other planes, and prevent natives from leaving. The githyanki collect and catalog artifacts and even creatures in order to preserve them, headless of the fact that their presence poisons the living. For this reason among many others, the powers of bordering realities have sealed off the Dark Sun worlds.
Githzerai: Githzerai are the guardians of an unwitting elemental chaos from the incursions or the world's sickness. Using the paradoxical energy of entropy that reaches them from the abyss, they power several psionic seals that underpin reality. They psionically command armies of slaad.
Grick : Wo betide those who camp over a grick colony, for they come to hunt at night.
Guardian: A sorceror with the power to create one is a fearsome opponent indeed.
Hag: The hags are rumored to be the mothers of the mysterious belogi.
Harpy : A variety of Aarakcora. It seems they were modified by someone for a reason.
Helmed Horror : Servants of the Githzerai who are found in strongholds of their masters scattered throughout the world and elemental chaos.
Hook Horror : Hook Horrors spend most of their lives in toporous colonies, but every 17 years the colony awakes and invades the surface world in order to feed their queen and create the next generation.
Kuo-Toa : Fiercely guard rare underground aquifers, and sometimes invade the water sources that city-states depend upon. A few of them can be found in the last sea as well. They exude a slime that prevents moisture from leaving their bodies.
Lamia : Composed of desert vermin, the lamia delight in killing and subterfuge.
Lich: Known as Kaishargas on Athas, Athasian liches are for more likely to be fierce melee combatants than spellcasters.
A significant amount of Kaishargas are actually created psionically, and have obsidian spheres as phylacteries.
Mind Flayer: Mind flayers have psionically tricked the world into believing they no longer exist. Led by mad elder brains, they infiltrate society for reasons inscrutable, disguising themselves in such a perfect and supernatural manner that they can lose their own identities and become sleeper agents. When the time is right, some individuals find to their horror that they were really tentacled horrors all along.
Naga: Nagas guard ancient and forgotten temples. They desire sacrifice. Rumor has it they know what happened to the gods. Rumor also has it that they were the gods, and they have the raaigs and angels at their service to lend credence to this rumor.
Nightwalker : Exactly as the MM states, but likely to show up on nights when defiling has recently been done in the area, giving them the nickname of wake-walkers.
Ogre: Giants have ancient kingdoms in the elemental chaos, and the ogres dwell in such places.
Oni : Some say that on clear nights, one can see eerie lights playing about the surface of the silt sea. These are the oni, who dwell on secret islands in the sea.
Ooze : As in the MM. They prefer the underground. Some varieties of ooze feed on psionic energies.
Otyugh: Even Athas has its sewers.
Roc: There are few rocs left outside of the elemental chaos, due to their nutritional needs, but they patrol the ringing mountains, eating anyone foolish enough to brave the heights.
Roper: Those that seek new aquifers often come to find that ropers are lying in wait.
Rot Harbinger: As per the MM. They often precede appearances of rampagers.
Sahuagin : Twisted to mud-dwellers where water meets silt. They worship the elemental lords of water.
Shadar-Kai : Traffic with and are the slaves and relatives of the devils of the grey. Some have developed a disturbing and powerful relationship with the black.
Shambling Mound : Halflings have learned to hide themselves from these forest horrors by utilizing pungent unguents. They don't let trespassers in on this secret, but may swindle and sell a formula with the opposite effect to enemies that the halflings don't want to take on themselves.
Shifter: Shifters usually keep signs of their heritage hidden. Upon occasion, a shifter will give birth to a true lycanthrope. Such lycanthropes cannot reproduce, but do spread madness with their bite.
Slaad : Servants of the githzerai, who keep slaads in their thrall by controlling the spawing stone site which all slaad hold holy. The slaad lords are suspiciously unconcerned with the githzerai control over their spawn. Slaad are tasked with protecting the elemental chaos from the world's corruptin and are stationed about the cosmos, but escape their bonds and geases all too often.
Stirge : as per MM. They come out at night.
Swordwing : When the cleansing wars began, a desperate compact between the pyreen and the swordwings was formed to preserve creatures below the surface of the world. The swordwings were pleased to have such rare collectables, but are quite insane in their methods and many species under their care are now no more than undead races, acting a mock preservation of long dead cultures. A few swordwings can be found on the moons of Athas too. Swordwings venture to the world to find rare treasures, but often employ adventurers to do the dirty work before swooping in and stealing the prize.
Treant : Few of these yet live. Fewer still move. But many of the remaining ones are tasked to guard important natural artifacts.
Troglodyte : a bizarre race suspected to be a mixture of underdark refugee races.
Troll : There are a few immortal trolls that guard ancient sites and await champions mighty enough to finally kill them.
Umber Hulk: There are thought to be no wild umber hulks. Theirs is a race that had been subjugated by the subterranean refugee races to expand ever downward into the world.
Vampire: The vampires went into topor or were killed long ago, but when conditions are right, they roam the land at night for brief yet terrifying periods. Their unnatural presence defiles the land.
Vampire Spawn: When the vampires leave an area to sleep yet again, they leave plenty of bodies in their wake. These bodies rise on the third night that marks this departure. Without a master, spawn mindlessly attack the living.
Vine Horror: Vine horrors are nature's revenge personified. They hate spell casters, yet ironically their powers mimic arcane energies. They are drawn towards defilers above all. A few spirits of the land actively create vine horrors.
You won't encounter these Monster types wandering the wastes or even in the same frequency of the monsters you see in the Creature Catalogue, but there are some great backstory ideas you have come up with that could help me (and others) utilize their resources from the Monsters Manual.
My hats off.
Converting MM monsters to Dark Sun "fluff" is easy.
You just do it.
The underlying game math structure, is almost goof-proof.
Converting MM monster to Dark Sun "crunch" requires a small amount of work.
DMG is sorta clear, and DMG2 is clearer, that changing powers,
is no more difficult than finding a power of the same level or lower,
and swapping it in. That's it.
Then it makes sense to "justify" it somehow, via some fluff changes.
As a for-instance ...
take a Bronze Dragon and take away the wings and ~hide the legs,
tag a Defiling type thingy on the breath weapon, to compensate for the lost wings,
{ ... a couple of minions die for the privilege ... }
change the breath weapon to Sand Breath
that otherwise does the same thing and damage.
Voila!
You have one of those Sand swimming monsters from Dune or Beetlejuice,
and throw some Dark Sun -ish fluff into it.
PCs say: "What is that !! ??"
DM says: "You fail the Knowledge check (evil laugh) !"
PCs whimper: "Woe is be to me (us). What should we do? Run? We cay-yant run?"
DM says: "... and it surprised you. Ha."
PCs recover their "stones" and say: "What does it look like? Also known as Perception check."
Good list, but yeah, almost anything can be made to work with a little tweak of appearence, ecology, or type of attack..
And even a lot of the things Clayton said, like regarding trolls or vampires... not really the fluff I would go with, but any sort of mean, nasty, regenerating beast equals a troll...
and vampires don't have to be a "race" as much as single powerful individual who's defiling is much more life force oriented instead of sucking the life from plants too... whether actualy undead, or just needs life force to continue living is up to you...
again, you probably aren't basing a campaign around a vampire cult, if you did you'd probably have to modify their background a bit more, but as a template for a nasty monster or NPC the vampire works great even in athas.
Josh
Same goes for vampires. If they don't suck blood, they are something else. We already have water-suckers in DS, ferinstance.
Dropping a troll or two into your world is simple enough. But doing so dilutes the flavour of the world you're playing in, and lessens what makes it what it is. Don't take doing it lightly.
There's this guy called Hamanu who systematically went about obliterating every troll alive. Sure, he had to clean up after some other guy, but he had a big bag full of Twinkies for those longer days, and he got the job done. Belittle this by throwing a few more trolls back into the world, and you take something away from what is probably the most influential episode of the world's history.
Now sure, chaps like Albeorn didn't do so well, and probably care hide nor hair about elves these days. But you can bet Hamanu does care about trolls, probably because he succeeded where many of his peers didn't. And he was a little miffed when Sadira finally snuffed out Windreaver.
Taking a troll's stats and re-skinning them into another big-nosed green-skinned regenerating humanoid is one thing, but specifically putting trolls per se back into the world is something else ...
... although, making it part of an Epic-tier adventure, and having Hamanu come knocking at your door after smelling trolls would be kinda cool.
Dark Sun has PLENTY of monsters and threats, I think you can go one campaign without the PC's fighting trolls and mind flayers.
Basically, if using all of those monsters in your campaign is that important to you, maybe simply running a desert campaign in Anaroch in Faerun is the better alternative.
If you'll read my conception above, you'll see that I make no attempt to bring trolls back in an oppressive way. If something can be put into a campaign in a way that enhances it, by all means do so. Grabbing a troll's regeneration ability and putting it onto a custom monster is one thing, but just changing the name and keeping everything else is kinda silly.
BTW, I believe I read somewhere they wanted neither elves nor dragons when they first concieved the setting. Thank goodness they changed their minds. Anything can make your campaign better if you fit it to the cosmology.
Anything can make your campaign better if you fit it to the cosmology.
There is a difference between fitting a concept to a cosmology, and undermining that cosmology at it's basic level.
But do what you want, doesn't effect me.