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What Can Big Bad Nasty Monsters Do To You?


Gauntlet

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This is a Topic going over what are some of the Nasty things that a Big Bad Monster might do to the Player Characters. Like swallowing you whole or smashing you into the ground or anything else you would like to see that huge behemoth of a Worm, or Lizard, or Insect, or whatever might do.

Edited by Gauntlet
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  • Gauntlet changed the title to What Can Big Bad Nasty Monsters Do To You?

I'm guessing you want to move beyond the whole clawing and biting routine.

 

Variations of stepping on you -- trample you in a charge, jump on you or fall on you. Or literally step on you if their feet are big enough.

 

Squeeze you to death -- tentacles, serpentine body, trunk, bear hug, or in their hands if they're big enough.

 

Drop something really heavy on you -- boulder, tree trunk, pillar or collapsed building or cavern ceiling.

 

Dismember you -- pull off your arms or legs, tear your head off, or grab your body at either end and rip you in two.

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1 hour ago, Ninja-Bear said:

How about Throw you for distance?

And its cousin, throwing you at another target, most likely a PC. 

 

Swallow and spit back out at someone is a variant.  Beware the giant archer fish.

 

One of my GMs back in the 70s had a stone giant encounter where they were pretty much playing baseball with the PCs.  One of them would pick you up and throw you at another one with a club, who would bat you to a third one who'd catch and squash you a bit before throwing you back to the pitcher for a replay.  Think the was the first encounter I was ever the sole survivor of, by dint of Brave Sir Robin tactics.  I might have been nine years old but I wasn't a dummy.

 

Big spiky monsters might grab you and impale you on its spines like a butcherbird does with insects on thorns or barbed wire.  There's a smallish (20' tall IIRC) D&D monster called a corpse collector that does that, bringing its load back its necromancer owner when full.  Might also get impaled like that just by being run/rolled over by a bigger spiky critter, getting injured and pulled along with the monster until you pull free.

 

Big slimes and macro-amoebas and the like might engulf you, which is pretty much like being swallowed with a "Go Directly To Stomach, Do Not Pass Teeth" modifier.

 

A really, really big monster might accidentally inhale or ingest whole groups of people, with its internal organs becoming a new hazardous battleground where you can contend with its immune system and possibly other victims.  Snit's Revenge time.  

Edited by Rich McGee
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Frankly, the most horrific thing I can imagine is the monster overpowers you, and while you are unconscious it implants an egg in you.  The larva hatches inside and consumes you from within as it develops, carefully avoiding doing any immediately lethal damage until it is ready to emerge, which could take months or years.  There are bits of this concept in the Alien franchise and other sci-fi tales, of course, but it could be done in a fantasy context as well.

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18 minutes ago, Cancer said:

Frankly, the most horrific thing I can imagine is the monster overpowers you, and while you are unconscious it implants an egg in you.  The larva hatches inside and consumes you from within as it develops, carefully avoiding doing any immediately lethal damage until it is ready to emerge, which could take months or years.  There are bits of this concept in the Alien franchise and other sci-fi tales, of course, but it could be done in a fantasy context as well.

 

That or the replacement monster like those from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

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While it may not be directly harmful to you, a really, really big monster might be able to ruin your life by destroying the place you live in when you aren't adventuring along with the NPCs you count as friends and allies.  Your childhood home, your personal stronghold if you have one, the castle of that noble who acts as your most important patron, the capital city of your nation, etc. 

 

The 13th Age campaign Eyes of the Stone Thief does this once the party has delved there a few times and escaped, getting the attention of the eponymous living dungeon mega-monster.  It will start burrowing under entire settlements connected to the PCs when they aren't around, swallowing them from below.  You'll find the shattered remains of places you once knew the next time you delve there, making the whole campaign stakes a lot more personal.  Few things scarier than a dungeon with a grudge. 

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On 1/22/2024 at 12:57 PM, Cancer said:

Frankly, the most horrific thing I can imagine is the monster overpowers you, and while you are unconscious it implants an egg in you.  The larva hatches inside and consumes you from within as it develops, carefully avoiding doing any immediately lethal damage until it is ready to emerge, which could take months or years.  There are bits of this concept in the Alien franchise and other sci-fi tales, of course, but it could be done in a fantasy context as well.

 

*conscious

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10 minutes ago, MordeanGrey said:

A famous encounter from 25-30 years ago with our gaming group was a female player who had the equivalent of a giant tape worm inside of her. The party decided to cut her open to remove it and as soon as the player made the first incision the GM said, “Initiative!” 😅

We had something vaguely similar with a shrinking/mind controller villain in V&V way back in the day.  We knew he'd "infected" the mayor and were standing in his office discussing potential "treatments" for getting him out when the mayor gets an odd look on his face and we hear him say (in the villain's voice) "You know I can hear you, right?"

 

 

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