Dungeon Master
Posts: 46
Joined: Sunday, 20th November 2011, 01:52
Re: Redundant monsters
* Out of this list, I'd argue a few monsters aren't useless:
- Spriggan rider: The basic concept of two monsters, and their combined mr, sinv, hp, and magically allowing spriggans to use a spear and a buckler together isn't completely ignorable. Exaggerating this concept by making giant fireflies not rather plain would easily make this not a pointless monster.
- Cherub: Spreads might amongst other holies! Not ignorable!
- Spider: The basket of spiders trap is unique and amusing if you aren't vehemently against traps in general.
- Baby alligator: Alligator packs would be rather pushing the limitus of danger for swamp, so these dilute it.
* I do agree with good chunks of it, though; for example, I'd love for the fish to become distinct, or the garbage 5s and 4s. Quite a large chunk of the monsters addressed here mostly just fodder kept around at best so that more interesting/stronger monsters aren't continuously spammed, vague flavourful fodder for vaults (which I'm guilty of, myself), or to dilute summoning spells (wolves, crappy 4s/5s, the ghosts). However, I'd argue it's much worse when the level generator spawns them when they're no longer relevant (kobold packs, crocodiles in swamp) or extremely excessive (nothing wrong with skeletal warriors until you kill over 150 of them in one game without visiting the Hells) and thus pointing towards changes needed in monpick.cc as well.
* Most vault defined monsters would start falling into a case-by-case basis of checking each, but they mostly point at wanting to continue the flavor of a set while showing some weakness (if it were up to me I'd just swap out the vampire nobles and mummy warriors in el_kab with regular monsters owning better equipment). Personally, though, I find pure name changes like hungry kobolds, spriggan bakers, and mad/crazed wizards if not exactly necessary, at least mostly harmless in their elicited response. Some of the contestable exceptions to vault defined monsters being redundant or not interesting: crystal guardians, the sewer mermaids/siren, the diamond obelisk.
* Sometimes new monster concepts are combined with old monsters: gila monsters were reborn as basilisks, and the rolling boulder beetle patch on mantis is interesting. These redundant monsters aren't necessarily doomed, it's just much easier to come up with a new monster concept rather then improve old monsters, and it'd be a major shift of monster variety in executioner if such a mass of monsters was removed regardless of said monsters. (Seriously, the Existing Monsters Feedback page on the devwiki is huge, delayed, and ignored; it could use fresh blood.)