Mornings Wrath is an isometric Adventure/RPG that I'm working on with a team. We've got a great deal of the game done, but we've had a hard time thinking of enemies for a certain part of the campaign. This part is an underground city, abandoned centuries ago because of a "mana poisoning" plague. The atmosphere is dark and foreboding. We've been over this alot, but we can't think of anything other than the usual "zombie" or "ghoul" type monster. What we need is something fairly original, that can introduce a level of tactics when combating them. If we have to, we'll fall back on the zombie, but that just seems tired. So we wanted to see if the community could come up with interesting ideas. Of course, there are limitations on what is feasible, both engine and art production wise. That doesn't mean we aren't open to great ideas, even if they do require considerable implementation. If you have any ideas, we'd love to hear them.

What? Your whole team can't think of any monsters besides zombies, when there are still so many cliché monsters out there? These are just off the top of my head:
rock throwing apes/ giant monster that blocks an entire passage and waves tentacles at you/ giant burrowing insects/ worms/ snakes/ floating, fire-breathing heads/ the deadly acid puddle/ spikes that inexplicably pop-up out of the ground...
Those aren't so original either. Unfortunately, I think if any game designers came up with any brilliant ideas, they'd keep them for themselves.

hehe, thanks kelly, we have thought of many cliche ideas we just didint list em all.

those are some good ideas, but most dont strike fear into 'me' at least, and year we are looking for somthing with a curve. we hope that community input will help us see outside the box.

thanks for your input :-D

Earth Elementals who feed off poisoned mana. They meld with the surrounding cavern walls/ground and pops up to attack without warning... etc. etc. etc.

how 'bout medusas? they're sinister enough and they could turn out to actually be dryads poisend by the corrupted mana or something.

Burrowing insects are good; you can take that in many directions. Pretty butterflies that heal their soldiers, stolid beetles that are heavily armored, quick wasp-like stingers that pack a punch...

As for tactics, I really hate it when you get adversaries that cast Slow on you, cast Heal on their own people (weakest first), and have a few guys beating on you all the while. Usually, I go for the healers. Maybe make it so that the healers can't heal themselves, to make it slightly less tough ;-)

I'd go straight to the AD&D Monster Manuals and Fiend Folios on this one, depending on how allergic you are to *ahem* borrowing. ("Talent borrows, genius steals" goes the old quote...[smile]). From there you get walking graveyards, walking piles of leeches, floating brains that scan levels using poison gas filled eyes gouged from their dismembered victims.

Or, you could take a completely different and totally unexpected tack: The town that's supposed to be abandoned is, after plenty of foreshadowing, inhabited by normal people who are unusually nice to the player... until you notice that the walls keep moving and reorganizing, and later learn that some of those walls have become ravenous undead things which move into position to keep the player forever trapped. If the engine supports it, you could have a fiendishly difficult block moving puzzle as the player tries to escape.

Oh, and the people? Well, you find their skeletons somewhere in the basement.

Quote: Original post by hplus0603
As for tactics, I really hate it when you get adversaries that cast Slow on you, cast Heal on their own people (weakest first), and have a few guys beating on you all the while.

Yes, this and stat-loss is what I fear the most. Dying I can reload from, but those stats I've worked so hard for!

In the fantasy/cyberpunk Shadowrun pen-and-paper RPG, one can found areas having 'negative mana background' in which a lot of 'dangerous' creatures can be found. Here it goes :

- Mutant critters, these are animals who have adapted to a high-radiation or toxic environment, they are some times bigger, tougher and have poisnous attacks

- Toxic spirits. In Shadowrun, a mage can summon spirits, in some place with a positive or negative background count, they can appear by themselves. In the negative background case, they tend to be brutal, they either want to bring more toxicity to their environment or, to the opposite, they want to revenge against Humans who they consider responsible for the situation.

- Insect spirits. Coming from an astral plane made accessible thanks to the background count, these spirits have the form of giant insects living in a hive (ants, bees, etc...) or who live in solo (mantids, wasps...) Surprisingly fast for their size, immune to normal weapons, they are a though opponent. Often, they capture human beings in order to merge with them, it is an easier way for spirits to come in the physical world and they inherit of the physical characteristic of their victims.

- Horrors. Able to cross only where the background count is very high, these twisted creatures made of the corpses of many sacrificed persons melted in one body, can have practicaly any form, giant bumping mushrooms, hexapod creatures, they seem to come from a mad Frankenstein's nightmare.

- And of course, boss of all those creepy things, proliferating in every toxic place, the Lawyer of the Company. Who tells every body that all is fine, that this land is clean and that the Company never did anything harmful to the environment in this zone.

Iv

Ooops didnt see you had a med-fan universe...
But apart from the Lawyer, you can adapt every monster to your universe. I don't know if you think they are too common for you, but the zombie thing is just so repetitive...

>> Iv