More fun playing with Loch and Louis's monster generator. This time, I mostly went through a list of half-formed monster ideas and used the generator to flesh them out. This is why so many are humanoid in form.
For your own ease, here is an automated version of that generator using Spwack's list-to-html marvel:
Pilate Bush
Grow slowly, only reliably reaching ambulatory adulthood near cataclysms and old battle sites. Lacking the full spiritual dimension of humanoids (which they are far more closely related to than true bushes), they seek to understand the divine spark of conscious life, like anatomists from the good old Burke and Hare days. They study victims spread-eagle, eventually giving up, drinking down the blood, and moving on.
HD 4. Armor: Needles. Attack: +2 impale/impale/impale/impale. Mind like a beefeater. Moves like an octopus on land— not apt, but surprisingly quick. # 1d2
- Needles: provide armor as leather, bypassed by sawblades, machetes, or fire.
- Impale: On hit, the target takes d6 damage. Until the Bush is dead, the target must make a grapple check to free themself from the needles. On a failure, they must either remain where they are or make a save vs death as they slide off the branch.
- Organization: tend to chase off others of their kind, but 50% chance an adult Pilate Bush is training its 2 HD offbudding. On that Treasure Type V lifestyle.
Eukaryote
Ancient pre-humanoids, chitinous guys with odd jaws and experimental shapes. Some tall and thin, others bell-shaped, others squat, and so on. Suspicious of intricate crafts, they count loyalty as the highest technology. Known for their anaugers, those who seek glimpses of the upcoming ages and help their community to plan for them.
HD 1. Armor: as chain. Attack: weapon or Friend. Mind like a first-generation business owner. Moves like an old man with a cane, swims with hesitant grace.
- Friend: Once all life feared the dry, deadly land. It was lightning, dancing light, that told them "I will go with you. I will bless and better you," In one round, a eukaryote can call out a spot for their friend to strike, and the vicinity goes tense with ozone. In the next round, the friend pounces, all flame and light— save or take 3d6 damage and everyone can see your skeleton.
- Lycanthropy: The moon has slain many Eukaryotes for fleeing his service in preference for the high-falutin land. A Eukaryote gets -3 reaction to all encounters found in the moonlight, and attacks against one in moonlight crit on a 19 or 20.
- Organization: undirected and ad hoc. Often encountered in groups of 1d8. Their spokesfigure is usually a carpenter or warrior. Elder Eukaryotes grow fatter shells and an extra HD, and are afforded bone kama as status symbols. Communities have Treasure Type D.
Carbonifer
Claim to have invented fire, but you'd think they'd be a bit more bored of it if that was the case. Broad-faced, neckless humanoid amphibians, they are genial swamp-dwellers who have through intelligence fucked up their ancestral niche. As a species, the carbonifer mates in the hot, dark summer, but suitable conditions can be simulated with enough smoke and fire. Small wars have been fought merely to gain hold of enough dry, flammable buildings to set the mood for an army's single's night. A more enthusiastic collier there has never been.
HD 2. Armour: sometimes. Attack: as weapon, or +2 tail whip 1d4. Mind like an impatient workman. Moves like a monkey in an axolotl's body.
- Coalsmoke: Groups of Carbonifers love to burn their so-special smokes, especially in exigency. Each subtle hue in the coal can be brought out by the patient screever to filter out some behavior or perception. This one filters out anger and fear, and thus pacifies. That one renders impossible the concept of an "army." When you breathe the smoke, save or have the intended concept filtered from you for 1d6 Turns.
- Sluggard: Overexcitement mingles the fresh and spent blood in a Carbonifer's heart. They get -4 to grapples, physical saves, and the like.
- Organization: found in crews of 1d4 x 2, always operating in even numbers to facilitate use of the butty system. Carbonifers prefer their mixed coalsmokes to most magic items, but can meet or exceed the craft of dwarves with ten times the bulk and a steady-burning power source. Treasure Type G.
Nosto
Dignified and romantic, subtle and shrill, everyone dreams of dating a bat-person who fell from the moon in a meteor. But truth is often the disappointment of our dreams. These are a stoic and cynical lot, on a reckless mission to gain their way back home.
HD 1/2. Armor: Grace. Attack: Foil 1d6 or Bite. Mind like a James Bond. Moves in brief flutters, unused to the weighty earth.
- Grace: When holding still, unarmored. Otherwise, armor as plate and +3 to physical saves.
- Bite: Save or be suborned, charmed by the little guy hanging off your neck or arm, their skull flattening around their mouth. Control lasts for 25 rounds, minus victim's Charisma score. If the Nosto is killed before the duration ends, the affect [sic] continues until removed, dealing 1 damage to the victim.
- Organization: Nostos operate in isolated cells of 1d4+2, with a 2 HD handler. They are known to use magic wands and scrolls. Treasure Type S.
Hadean
Rocky centauroids from a world like our own volcanic past. They regard our experience of liquid water and plate tectonics as a pitiable state. Morose, cynical, and egalitarian.
HD 3. Armor: Rock. Attack: +2 (+4 when charging) Sledgehammer 1d8 or +3 Rescue. Mind like an umarell. Moves like an overladen deer.
- Rock: provides AC as chain armor, and DR 2 vs attacks that wouldn't be very effective against a rock guy, like a sword slash.
- Rescue: especially charitable Hadeans may try to carry off targets from their humid, soft-fleshed environs and rescue them to a nearby volcano or chasm. When a Hadean charges or rides by a foe, they can roll vs the target's AC to sweep them up. Someone who grapples their way free of a Hadean may risk 1d6 road rash damage (leather armor negates).
- Avert!: Hadeans regard lithostratic inquiry and geology to be the key to avoiding liquidity on their own world, and must save or be fascinated by sufficiently interesting minerals, fossils, or stones.
- Guileless: The unicameral Hadean mind is unaccustomed to flim-flammery, rhetoric, or legalism. It cannot assess whether a complicated series of logical statements are straightforward or deceptive, and thus many Hadeans regard the humanoids of our world like tottering tricksters. They get disadvantage vs. mazes.
- Organization: 2d4 clades (1d6) make up a pride, led by a 5 HD mare and a 4 HD quartermaster, who has a 50% chance of owning 1d4 stones similar to our world's feather token. Instead of a tree token, for instance, it might summon a lattice of gypsum. Instead of an anchor, a lodestone. Instead of a bird, a mole. Treasure Type A.
Pangean
Four-foot-tall brightly colored vulturoids, with round teeth, slutty mynacean garments, and advanced glass eyewear. Used to be top dog before their supercontinent-spanning empire was split apart by warring successor-generals and tectonic plates. Though their society is egalitarian and still very advanced in ingenuity, Pangean society at large disdains most of the world as jumped-up former colonies and ungrateful yokels. Nabobs seek to recreate their "golden age" society in missions across the continents, never admitting that the golden age they chase is long-set.
HD 1. Armor: none. Attack: Spell or Mammalesis Staff. Mind like a Lepidopterist. Moves like a vulture.
- Mammalesis Staff: used to keep servitor species in line, way back when. The target saves or grows more hirsute, spawns extra ossicles, broadens their forehead, and/or lactates. This deals 1d6 damage and 1d3 dexterity damage. If a creature is reduced to 0 dexterity in this way, they explode into a pile of live young of a new species. A staff has 2d6 charges.
- Dirge: to maintain their society's haughty and exclusive customs, Pangeans are stuffed with cultural programming and a literary canon like they're foie gras. If anyone plays the Notes of Noy, or quotes other examples of the works memorializing their lost empire, Pangeans must test Morale or flee and weep, thinking only of their losses.
- Organization: expeditions of 2d6 Pangeans, led by one 3 HD professor (75% chance of magic staff, 50% chance of 1d3 spell scrolls, 25% chance of treasure map) and accompanied by 1d20 non-Pangean servants. Treasure Type E.
Schioppa
Captured valkyries, left to winnow and molt in cages of armor plates, too clumsy to heal or carry, and too ill-oiled to sing thee to thy rest. Most confuse them for ensorcelled armor with plaster wings. Sorrowing weapons of war, bound to bound forward like charging destriers to break a line, and leave the souls of the vanquished for the crows. Some wander the byways now, stuck in a never-ending pilgrimage, laying strangers low for there is nothing else they can do and no one to stop them.
HD 3. Armor: plate. Attack +6 Barrel Through 3d8 or +2 Buffet 1d8. Moves like a nurse just coming off a long shift, or like a drunken bull. Mind like a rambo.
- Barrel Through: with at least 20 feet of space to build up speed, a Schioppa can run straight through formations, walls, and even your scrawny ass, essentially running a path of destruction in a 60' straight line. Any hit that exceeds the target's AC by 5 or more throws them into the air, to somersault and crumple.
- Angelic: though diminished and pitywauling, the Schioppa still has scruples unbroken. Children and the totally innocent cannot be Barreled Through, and the monster is careful not to harm someone who is already dying. If she somehow breaks this prohibition, she must save or become demonmail.
- Bitter Fruits: A slain Schioppa's armor has a 50% chance of being cursed with one of the following: (d4) casts levitation at inconvenient times 1/day, -4 AC, frightening afterlife dreams that prevent rest, or -6 to attack Lawful creatures. Otherwise, a set of armor is worth 1,000 to a collector or 2,000 to a godi or jarl. Treasure Type U.
Breaker Guardo
The elite soldiery of and main export of Breakerland , a remote mountain nation which maintains shrines to gods of traps, gold, and lack of moral outrage, even trapping the few tunnels and passes into their land and banking for demiliches and Orcuses. There are two sorts of Breakers— those who carry a knife, and those who carry a knife and a short-hafted mancatcher. The cream of the crop are rented out to patrol and vouchsafe the bodies of warlords, dungeon masters, and most famously, the faith head of the Archdruidal States.
HD 2+2. Armor: Costume. Attack: +2 Mancatcher or +2 Knife 1d4. Mind like a child soldier. Moves like a parade ground bravo.
- Costume: Pantaloons and doublets of slate grey or marbled marble flicker into braggadocious technicolorcolor right before the Breaker attacks. Ambushes on a 1-2, as long as they remain still. Protects as leather +1.
- Mancatcher: On a hit, the target takes 1d6 nonlethal damage from the jostling spikes within the collar, and saves or is grappled. If reduced to 0 damage while mancaught, the victim is half-conscious and helpless, easily led and unable to defend themselves.
- Ancient Enmity: goes postal in the presence of a Gessler, an explosive skeletal wheel-shaped creature known for trampling crops by night and thwarting the looting of cities and churches. And you know what? Fair enough. Also fears other tokens of their local superstition, such as the linden leaf, depictions of Lady Medusa, and the touch of a Lawful cleric.
- Organization: Found in platoons of 2d4 squads of six. Like to carry magic items as a display of wealth, but tend not to use them. Treasure Type C.
Carnifex
When the wrong person is interred in a sarcophagus, especially a chamber intended for a rare and noble personage, the unrest in the ceremonial vessel and the lich can mingle together, spiraling around the unrest of lacking the proper inhabitant. Stone swells over the fingernails and tastes the gums. Bone swirls through and around the coffin. Once waiting becomes unbearable, the box-body floats up and begins to search for the right occupant.
HD 6. Armor: Lithossum. Attack: Apprehension and +6 Crash 1d8 or +4 Swallow. Mind like a starving rat. Moves like a mastiff running on ice.
- Lithossum: The ornate planes of the box are easy to strike (armor as leather) but harm is only suffered when attacked with something that has a reasonable chance of damaging stone.
- Apprehension: the mind of the Carnifex rubs against yours, searching for familiarity that will never come. You sense death probing you. Save vs fear or refuse to approach the Carnifex for a turn.
- Swallow: the lid unhinges to engulf someone— perhaps this is the correct occupant? If it is, the carnifex immediately disanimates. Otherwise, it begins to drain the moisture and youth from the victim, 1d4 Constitution damage each turn. The Carnifex will always use this ability after crashing into a group of foes.
- Vacation: The box's interior still contains the rooted skeleton of the original, erroneous occupant, the skull flickering with electrical force. When the skeleton is exposed (including during and right after the Carnifex attempts to use its Swallow ability), it can be attacked. It is unarmed and lacks the Lithossum ability, and when harmed inflicts double damage on the Carnifex. Treasure Type B.
These last two were largely the creative work of Renegade, who is very good at synthesizing a strong concept from the table results. I composed the words.
Scadu Fairies
The shadows of fairies, and some say their opposite. Rough and crass, they bring unwelcome news and unwise solutions, then demand they are enacted. They're always saying things like "So what if she gave back the ring? She can't run around with someone else!" and "You should kill your boss!" As a group, they have a raggedy hierarchy like kids playing soldier.
HD 1/2. Armor: smallness as chain. Attack: +1 needle 1d2. Speed: annoyingly fast. Mind like a tattle-tale. Moves like a dragonfly.
- Things of Shadow: Live in the shadows of flowers. At night, you can't see them and therefore they disappear until sunrise. They are flammable, and if one member of a cloud of Scadu Fairies is ignited, there's a 50% chance a nearby one will be too (and so on and so on).
- Organization: Frequently appear in clouds of 2d10 or more, dispersing into a spy network to sniff out wrongdoing and demand the person they imagine to be the victim to seek justice. Treasure Type U.
Melach Hashuta
Also called a Fool's Angel. This creature hides in cavern pools, turning them into deadly sludge. A golden crystalline thing that can shift from the form of a pillar to a pile to a grasping tendril. Its touch fills water with sulfuric acidic. Made by an ancient logos as a chthonic angel to protect the occulted teachings of that godhead, and gradually parasitized by pyretic structures which help it drink up the vital juices of interlopers.
HD 5. Armor: as chain. Attack: +5 slam 1d8. Moves with lumbering reproach. Mind like the scripture of an inhuman god.
- Crystalline Coating: has achieved perfect, austere stillness, resembling a remarkably large but inert pyrite outcropping. Ambushes on a 1-3. Though large as a stallion, it can flow through any space large enough for a newborn foal.
- Sulfuric Acid: All water touching the monster is impregnated with potent, scentless, colorless, oily vitriol. Those who might touch it unknowingly save to realize the danger in time, or take 1d6 damage, and 1d6 for each round spent in the water. Wood chars, leather suffers, metal discolors. If the water is superheated, as by a fireball, it will disperse acidic fumes in a 60' radius.
- Forehead: A broken Melach Hashuta will reform over the course of 1d4 days unless the pyrite around its head is scraped away to reveal the Secret Name that animates it. As soon as it is read, the creature slow, fails, and dims.
