Favourite FF Monsters

[sylas]

Make a list of your top 5 Monsters made for the world of Fighting Fantasy (from any FF book or other FF product)
These must be strictly FF creatures so it quickly becomes a challenge more than you think.

Currently mine are, in no order:

Bloodbeast
Mirror Demon
Jib-Jib
Sturramak
Thassaloss

[thealmightymudworm]

This is not my final judgement, (and there are a lot of gaps in my book knowledge) but as I've got a few minutes:

Thassaloss
Rolling Golem
Obisian Predator
Bone Demon
Vivisect

(Are these all exclusively FF? I might have included some from Sword of the Samurai without that condition.)

[sylas]

exclusively FF, yes, but not exclusive to Titan so anything from the sci-fi books or Talisman of Death or Legend of Zagor are allowed.
if you think they should be allowed for the way the are represented then, yes, they are allowed. just not typical stuff like Dragons, Manticores, Trolls, and Hydras.

incidentally, what book features the Rolling Golem you mentioned? is it from Warlock magazine?

[thealmightymudworm]

May 3, 2015 20:09:13 GMT sylas said:

Incidentally, what book features the Rolling Golem you mentioned? is it from Warlock magazine?

I've mis-named it. It was mainly an illustration I liked.

This was the chap I was thinking of:

[sylas]

ah the Great Golem. the idea of a Golem on rollers is kinda cool.

[thealmightymudworm]

The ones I was considering from Sword of the Samurai were the Kappa and Rokuro-Kubi, btw. Both lifted from Japanese mythology (even if the latter's name was muddled with something else).

I don't think that traditional Kappa were as large and upright as they were in the book, although they did rely on having a head full of water to breathe.

Come to think of it, I think that one of the primary reasons for traditional Kappa attacking passers-by was in order to steal their anuses. I'm glad that didn't make it to SotS.

[hynreck]

This gives a whole new meaning to: "I'll get myself a piece of ass!"

[sylas]

those two are fine since they are vastly different from the ones in folklore and don't appear in everything.

[deadshadowrunner]

Off the top of my head:
Ganjees
Obsidian Predator
Mandrakes
Gonchong
Xakhaz

[Peter]

I have just come across this thread, so here are my 5:

The Alien Deity on the Vandervecken - six different weapons with different skill scores and damage amounts - unpredictable, so therefore interesting.

The Serpent of Time - a fascinating situation to visualise.  Imagine watching time speed up or slow down...

The Street Fighter Robot on Radix - an interesting choice to make each time you win an attack round (reduce its stamina OR its skill), while it does increasing amounts of damage to you each time it wins.

The Snake in the guard's room in Firetop Mountain - quite possibly your very first battle of the Fighting Fantasy series, and (with a decent skill score) you could conceivably win with a single dice-roll.  Completely forgettable, and therefore very memorable.

The Creature of Havoc (i.e. yourself) - even without knowing who or what it is, it can deal instant death to an opponent if it rolls any double in any attack round, win or lose.  Very handy.  Has this idea been utilised in any other book?

[kieran]

Mar 5, 2020 9:16:13 GMT Peter said:

The Creature of Havoc (i.e. yourself) - even without knowing who or what it is, it can deal instant death to an opponent if it rolls any double in any attack round, win or lose.  Very handy.  Has this idea been utilised in any other book?

Not quite, but there's a few instances where a double 6 will insta-kill:

Rebel Planet allows you to insta-kill on a double 6 if fighting unarmed - meaning oddly you fight better unarmed than with a weapon yet a major plot point in that book is trying to recover a weapon...

Slaves of the Abyss gives you a particularly good sword that insta-kills on a double 6.

Island of the Undead has an alligator who insta-kills you on a double 6.

[scramblehead]

The Calacorm is easily my favourite. I remember encountering it as a kid when I first read Citadel of Chaos and finding the whole concept very amusing - two heads which chatter and argue with each other, a hunger for snakes, a delightful sense of humour (tickling peoples' toes with a burning torch is rather funny), a harmless hobby of key-collecting. Not to mention the deadly fear of mice. The Calacorm is so silly and imaginative that it's always been the quintessential Fighting Fantasy monster to me.

mudworm already mentioned the Vivisect, and that would be my second choice. It really is an incredibly memorable concept, made especially repulsive by Bob Harvey's fantastic artwork. That Moreau and Polonius call the horrible monstrosity "she" and have incredible pride in their revolting handiwork ("Isn't she beautiful?") really adds to the 'charm'. Wonderful stuff.

There are some other clever creatures which stuck in my head over the years: the jib-jib, the Ganjees, the Gonchong, Snattacats. But what about YOU? Yes, YOU, for YOU are a monster YOUrself in Creature of Havoc. Surely that counts? As a kid I remember being confused, assuming the greenskinned scribbler on the book's cover was monsterific YOU, but puzzling over why YOU were writing and wearing clothing... it took a while before I realised the cover art was probably meant to be a depiction of Zharradan. I think the fact that Steve Jackson was very careful not to provide too much detail about YOUr appearance helped with my confusion. We know YOU is lumbering, strong, scaly, with (retractable?) claws, and iirc there is a hint that there is some Orc in YOUr marranghanised make-up. I only just realised that this was probably very deliberate, playing into the usual FF trope of being deliberately vague about YOUr appearance to help aid the immersion...

EDIT: I see Pete already mentioned the Creature. I'd totally forgotten about the doubles insta-kill. Very formidable.

[philsadler]

Brain Slayer (Man+octopus = nightmare)
Bloodbeast ('nuff said)
Death Skull (giant flaming floating skull: win)
Death Spider
Gangees
Gargantis (bastard)
God-Headed Hydra ('Hard' is not the word)
Hell Demon
Horned Demon
Jib-Jib
Mik (Massive head = more intelligent than you)
Mirror Demon
Necrotic Jelly (third most disgusting creature in all of FF)
Proto Zombie (Second most disgusting creature in all of FF)
Necroworm (most disgusting creature in all of FF)
Night Demon
Night Stalker (Big teeth+small eyes = evil)
Night Horror (Great abilities)
Nightgaunt (stuff of nightmares)
Pit Fiend (not a t-rex in the slightest)
Quagrant (revolting)
Skull Beast (giant skull with tentacles in mouth = no sleep)
Whirlwind (cute, I still would)
Xanthric Horror (utterly revolting)

[vastariner]

Add one for brain slayer, intelligent and vaguely alien, links to Khulian chaos.

Also:

-Rokuro-Kubi - if there were a Fright stat in SotS, surely you'd max out with them

-Fetch - malevolent ball lightning

-Ectovults - to show just how weird some of the other planes can be

-Mandrakes - very Summerisle-scary

[Wilf]

Brain Slayer
Calacorm
Mirror Demon
Messenger of Death
Deathwraith

[Gabe Fandango]

The Messenger of Death is realistically a ridiculous and pretty inefficient concept as an assassin, but I loved reading about it.

Also, the Assassin's Dagger (I'm not sure if this counts as a "monster" since it's said to be a spell in one of the AFF books, but I would guess it's something akin to a demon/magical construct summoned by the spell, so it should count).

Obsidian Predator, from Moonrunner, which has already been mentioned above, is metal (literally) as hell. So is the machete-wielding Jason-Voorhees tribute from the same book called the Maniac Guard.

As for the fifth.....there're too many good ones so I can't really decide. Maybe Silent Death, from the Blacksand AFF.

[vastariner]

Mar 10, 2020 6:37:22 GMT Gabe Fandango said:

The Messenger of Death is realistically a ridiculous and pretty inefficient concept as an assassin, but I loved reading about it.

The MoD is one of those that is so random and ridiculous that I wonder what on earth makes such a thing even a possibility.  Let alone the mechanics of how the letters could take your life away and how you know you are out of its clutches. 

The only thing I can think of is that it is one of Logaan's ideas.  That he liked the idea of creating something for evil deities to use - but that it would be based on chance rather than brute force.  From the opposite perspective, being able to find things like monkeys on Fire Island or inscribed discs in polar caves would also be down to Logaan messing with the evulz- making the hero the sort of messenger of death for the big bosses.

[Law]

Regarding all the nameless beings:

1.) Shape Changer - (iconic, meta-morphing, lacertilian, crowned with horns monster, appearing far before Darth Maul and the freaking Night King, or Zanbar Bone for that matter!)

2.) Wheelies - (for sheer quirky factor and underestimating them at your peril)

3.) Living Corpse - (unforgettably gruesome and unique undead animation from the City-port of Traps)

4.) The Malice - (Howl of The Werewolf namesake: a disgusting and likely immortal demonic amalgamation of vermin drawn from your innermost primal fears)

5.) Giant Storm Bird - (unimaginative maybe, but it was the first monster I ever rolled against when I was a wee barn of nine; so it gets a place on my list)

[Law]

Regarding named monsters:

1.) The Arch-Lycanthrope, Count Varcolac Wulfen, Voivode of Lupravia - (when I returned to the series last year, I was introduced to this cruel, capricious book-spanning boss battle. One for the ages)

2.) Grool, the Mutant Chaos Ogre of Castle Argent - (from his cyclopian freakishness to his surprising wiles; this guy is not easily forgotten)

3.) Fog Farkin, Intergalactic Terrorist - (the bare-knuckled Keeper boss battle, with a myriad of hand-to-hand combat choices done right)

4.) Lord Carnuss Sukumvit of Blood Island - (more satisfying to kill than even old Bloodbones himself; after all the misery he's put you through)

5.) Unseen Elder Vampire, Reiner Heydrich - (a foe faced across a century by two different warriors, either confrontation is legendary)

Honourable Mention: Master of Hellfire - (though Beyond The Pit sadly informs me that he is not a unique being; he's still my favourite among Steve's "frickin laser beams!" eye-issuing monsters)

[vastariner]

The Living Corpse was an interesting idea, but utterly exasperating in its execution. It was very difficult for any part of it to hit you, yet you needed at least six attack rounds to kill it off, and, if you were unlucky with rolling as to what part you hit, it could take an absolute age.  And for the first attack round, you had to roll seven times (once for yourself). 

Given the number of rolls you're likely to have to make, it's a bit similar to fighting a giant amoeba or something of Sk3 St50 or something.  You know you're almost guaranteed to win, if only you stay awake long enough.

[sylas]

Agreed. If the idea was to create a memorable monster, it should at least be some kind of threat as well.

[Peter]

Fantastic drawing though...

[The Count]

Wheelies
Tigerskin Rug
Night Horror
Jib Jib
Arctolyce

[tyrion]

Jib jib. Superb idea, excellently executed, awesome art.
That orc asleep in firetop mountain. First ff monster I encountered (although I slipped past it and it never woke up despite the amount of noise I must have made further up the corridor). Also Russ Nicholson.
All the seven serpents. All different encounters, all arrogant snakes.
Ape dog and dog ape. Really Steve? Really? Even Gary Gygax never dared, and his name is on the monster manual that has an owlbear in it.
YOU. Whether you are an actual monster (CoH, HotW) or a metaphorical one (WoFM), there are so many different stories played out over the series.