New monster ideas

[nppangband]

Agreed. Along with Oangband, UnAngband has alot of additional monsters as well.

NPP has about 40-50 additional higher level monsters. Replacing Angels with Ainur opened up many possibilities for monsters for deep levels.

But higher level "people" characters, such as top level priests, rogues, warrioers, etc....have potential to add many higher level creatures without raiding the AD&D monster book.

Although I am sure there are some good monsters to be found in AD&D as well.

A more off-the-wall idea would be to take 1-2 monsters from other popular fiction, such as HP lovecraft, or even dementors from Harry Potter.

[Nick]

Monster lists of variants would be a good first port of call here - for example O has a good range of archers.

[Derakon]

Tiburon: to be fair, a lot of Angband monsters are already templates applied to a base class. White, red, blue, green, etc. jellies, nagas, snakes, scorpions, worm masses...I chose "abyssal" because it's a neat "undead" adjective that we haven't worn out yet. Is it a D&D template? I wouldn't be surprised. But that's not what I had in mind. Still, if you have an idea for a better name, by all means!

As for the archer, I don't think we have an upper-level archer class, no. The Ranger Chieftan is mostly a high-speed animal summoner in my books. We could make a Master Archer 'p' monster, but since that letter is already so overloaded I wouldn't have a problem with making it a Centaur Archer instead. Fast or very fast, shoots arrows one time in two, has trampling melee attacks.

I dig the distortion vortex. Gravity + hallucination is the combination I'd go for. I suppose that makes it a gravity/chaos vortex with hallucinating melee attacks.

Also, I think the aether vortex should be moved shallower (current native depth: 3000') and made more common. It's a good introduction to exotic breath attacks since it doesn't use the nasty ones all that often, and only has 420 hitpoints. They're pushovers when I find them in-depth, and worth too much experience.

Plasma isn't really fire + electric; it's just that those are the associated "normal" elements. Having those resists doesn't help you any; it just determines which items are vulnerable to the breath.

Atarlost: those would be good. I tried to think of good names for deep snake monsters, but unfortunately I don't think that e.g. a Tsuchinoko would really fit into Angband. Sadly the orc-carrying steel snake wouldn't be much good in the deeps, but on the other hand if it showed up around 1200' or so it could still pose a legitimate threat. We'd need a summon-orc spell though.

[Atarlost]

The original Fall of Gondolin (lost tales volume 2) includes a number of creatures of artifice. Off hand I remember fire snakes and giant steel snakes full of orcs. I think there was something of bronze or brass as well.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

One thing I would prefer to NOT see, is critters that are overly D&D, especially when it feels like "oh we'll take this monster and put a template on it." I don't expect that's what you're thinking by any means, but over on D&D boards I see way too many vampiric hellspawn dragons, offered with more Gush than you can put on the back cover of a romance novel. So e.g. the abyssal slime just strikes a bad chord with me. Reskin it, and it'd probably be fine.

How many higher-end archers, and ONLY archers, are there? I know there's a ranger chieftain, but he's got a whole bunch of goodies. Centaur knight got me to thinking about a really good archer, cuz centaurs are arguably the perfect platform for mobile archery. So something that's a single ranged attack but conceptually with a heavy crossbow, with seeker bolts...something like 16d5 + 20.

How much of a pain would it be to introduce a new attack type? Plasma is electrical + fire; I'm thinking anti-plasma (yeah the name bites) might be cold and nether. Or Miasma breath...nether + confusion, or possibly blindness + confusion (altho that feels redundant, in that they're both principally status effects). Miasma cloud...parts of it shift and coalesce and re-form. Its behavior is much like a will o' the wisp, portaling regularly, but it's got a 'breath attack' as a different part of the cloud coalesces around you.

Seriously evil combination for a vortex: distortion vortex. Time + hallucination, or arguably gravity + hallucination...your senses reel as space shifts around you.

[Derakon]

One thing we could stand to do to add interest to the game is to add new monsters in the 2000'-5000' range. So this thread is for brainstorming new creatures to smush. They don't need to be fully statted-out (and the names and abilities are open to critiques); just important abilities and general difficulty level.

Centaur Knight: a melee-oriented, very fast 'q' that shows up a bit after Death Knights do. No spells, but hits much harder than Death Knights do and has decent chance to stun (DKs are 6d6 and 2x 5d5; CKs should be more like 6d12 hit and 2x 10d3 trample).

Unicorn: The unicorn is to angels what the enchantress is to dragons. Shows up around about 3000' (Archons are native to 2750'; the unique angels to 3050', 3100', and 3200'), very fast, and likes to summon angels. A white 'q', naturally.

Abyssal slime: Think ochre jelly, but drains experience instead of hitting you with acid. Maybe let it walk through walls too. Most of the early life drainers are pretty fragile; this could be sturdier.

Dark matter vortex: basically a gravity vortex. Fragile, but (very?) fast and breathes frequently.

Solar Fiend: a plasma-based greater demon. Has shocking and burning melee attacks, breathes plasma -- a plasma vortex with a brain and way more hitpoints. I've noticed that we actually don't have very many fire-based demons; it's mostly the balrogs and pit fiends. This creature should of course show up before those do; somewhere in the 2250' range should be good.

Animate Armor: a golem made of razor blades. Still doesn't have any subtlely to it, but its attacks will cause heavy wounds. The most powerful "basic golem" is the Eog Golem at 1700'; this could show up around 2600' and move very quickly (Bone golems are at 3400', and bronze golems at 3750'). Could also call it a Diamond Golem.

Vent: an entirely new set of monsters that use the '.' character like Trappers. These are stationary, mindless monsters whose only ability is to breathe a specific element. So e.g. you'd have Fire Vents, Poison Vents, Gravity Vents, etc. They'd show up roughly when the corresponding vortex does and have a similar number of hitpoints.

Skeletal Wyvern: an early undead 'd' dragon, showing up with the early ancient dragons. Take a wyvern, boost its hitpoints and melee, and give it a life-draining bite.

Feel free to post your own ideas or critique these.