Most cliched enemies.

[Insane Psychic]

Slimes seem to have fallen out of favor in recent years. I for one, miss the gelatinous cube.

 

[DraQ]

Slimes were cool in Wiz8.
Shiny and colourful.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

trolls

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Motherfuckers.

 

[Berekän]

Nazis

 

[BSOD]

Ancient Evil (tm).

 

[Ogg]

Ancient Evil (tm).

They come in different flavors, but the worst being of course the one that awakens once every 1000 years or something.

 

[merchant's skeleton]

Bad Guys.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Insanely aggressive animals with a deathwish - wolves, rats, you name it. At least the bears in BG were not hostile unless you dallied around them long enough.

 

[Kavax]

Goombas.

 

[Oarfish]

Thugs / Rogues / Generic Bandits that Zerg you despite stupid odds and having to climb over the corpses of a thousand dead $PersonOfACriminalNatureWithLimitedPlanningAbilities.

And wolves.

 

[DraQ]

Filler enemies, alwayschaoticevils and stupid suicidal fauna it is then.

 

[Zeus]

Rats

Dragons & Undead can always have a twist, like Draconians from Dragonlance or infected-rage-zombies from 28 Days Later. But rats are almost always rats. Just big dumb brown rats. It's so dull I could shoot myself just describing them.

The only spin on rats I can think of are "Plague Rats" from Magic: The Gathering, who were... well, basically zombie rats.

That's just sad.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

There's not much you can do with rats, tbh. Rat-men, maybe?

 

[Texas Red]

Insanely aggressive animals with a deathwish - wolves, rats, you name it. At least the bears in BG were not hostile unless you dallied around them long enough.

Especially when wolves come in hundreds even though the average pack size is about 6 wolves.

Rats

Dragons & Undead can always have a twist, like Draconians from Dragonlance or infected-rage-zombies from 28 Days Later. But rats are almost always rats. Just big dumb brown rats. It's so dull I could shoot myself just describing them.

The only spin on rats I can think of are "Plague Rats" from Magic: The Gathering, who were... well, basically zombie rats.

That's just sad.

I would have you banned on spot and eraze all of your posting history. PS:T specifically tackled all of the RPG cliches and introduced the Cranium Rats. Cranium rats shared a hivemind and were able to use magic if they came close together. Half of the catacombs were ruled by an entity called "Many as One" who fought against another attack against cliches, the nation of peaceful undead.

At one point you could buy variously prepared cranium rats which was a pretty nice touch.

 

[BSOD]

Ancient Evil (tm).

They come in different flavors, but the worst being of course the one that awakens once every 1000 years or something.

More specifically the one that was banished/sealed/put to sleep 1000 years ago by a group of semi-mythical wise asses who weren't quite wise enough to actually kill the evil, who eventually does get killed by some mortal peasant because he had a funny sign on the back of his neck/arm/ass. Funny signs apparently mean you can kill ancient evil that highly trained paladins or wizards couldn't. Of course, he couldn't do it without the help of some artifact he needed to chase down pieces of because when ancient evil (tm) rises again, time apparently isn't of the essence so the wise asses believe- but I digress.

 

[Moray]

I cast a vote towards basic and generic human (or, also perhaps whatever other available races/species the setting entails) thugs and cutthroats. As I see it, especially in any later stages of any game, combat against any sort of human adversaries should be against similarly skilled and powerful individuals. Frankly, I just don't see the average mugger, be it one or in a group of such, going after that well-equipped, experienced party - the ones wearing all that fancy looking armor and carrying those menacing looking weapons - rather than the average shmuck instead.

Animals are essentially essentially animals, which includes rats obviously. It would be nice if animals in cRPGs were more animal-like in nature (attacking you when you're weak, as well as to some degree avoiding you unless provoked); the bears in BG that only became hostile if you moved close to them have already been mentioned. This would make it more interesting overall, but an animal is still an animal and should pale in comparison to the depth that can be given to a "human" adversary.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I would have you banned on spot and eraze all of your posting history. PS:T specifically tackled all of the RPG cliches and introduced the Cranium Rats. Cranium rats shared a hivemind and were able to use magic if they came close together.

actually that's just the "hivemind monsters" concept applied to rats. Also, Mass Effect Geths become smarter and more dangerous if they come close together, too

 

[DraQ]

Dragons & Undead can always have a twist, like Draconians from Dragonlance or infected-rage-zombies from 28 Days Later.

Dragons as big dumb monsters to slay are just a fucking waste of awesome. They have all the hallmarks of potentially interesting characters and strong players on the gameboard, being powerful, intelligent full of knowledge and wisdom collected over centuries and thoroughly non-human, yet the best use for them is to let some fuck in shiny armour bury his sword in their skulls and take their stuff. FFFFUUUUUUU-

The only spin on rats I can think of are "Plague Rats" from Magic: The Gathering, who were... well, basically zombie rats.

That's just sad.

I would have you banned on spot and eraze all of your posting history. PS:T specifically tackled all of the RPG cliches and introduced the Cranium Rats. Cranium rats shared a hivemind and were able to use magic if they came close together. Half of the catacombs were ruled by an entity called "Many as One" who fought against another attack against cliches, the nation of peaceful undead.

At one point you could buy variously prepared cranium rats which was a pretty nice touch.

FFFFFUUUUU-

I wanted to be first.

 

[Moray]

How 'bout a game where rats are the dominant species of the world, with humans infesting infrastructure, living in sewers and warrens, and rummaging through trash heaps?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

ith humans infesting infrastructure, living in sewers and warrens, and rummaging through trash heaps?

so, like IRL?

 

[Moray]

ith humans infesting infrastructure, living in sewers and warrens, and rummaging through trash heaps?

so, like IRL?

Perhaps to a degree, but I meant it's the case for everyone rather than just the lowlifes and the homeless. Also, with freakishly large, grotesque and horrific rat overlords.

 

[Zeus]

I would have you banned on spot and eraze all of your posting history.

No offense, but you sound like a muppet.

PS:T specifically tackled all of the RPG cliches and introduced the Cranium Rats. Cranium rats shared a hivemind and were able to use magic if they came close together. Half of the catacombs were ruled by an entity called "Many as One" who fought against another attack against cliches, the nation of peaceful undead.

At one point you could buy variously prepared cranium rats which was a pretty nice touch.

I forgot about those guys, I think they were in the D&D 2nd Edition Monster Manual. Cranium Rats sound like Magic: The Gathering's plague rats. The more of them there are on the battlefield, the stronger they are individually. This lead to decks with 30 Plague Rats and maybe a few Dark Rituals to speed them along.

Deadly.

But yeah, aside from Wererats and Plague/Cranium hive mind rats, we basically have 10,000 examples of menial pest control.

It's too bad no one's thought of a race of evil kung-fu wererats. Imagine an alternate dimension where Master Splinter teamed up with Shredder. OMG THEY'D BE UNSTOPPABLE. :shock:

 

[Norfleet]

The undead are overused, but the problem is that they're not used properly. Zombies don't surround you in great numbers, block off all exits and overwhelm you.

Well, if zombies came at you in massive numbers, the real reason you'd loathe them is because they'd either bring your computer to a crawl, or TAKE FOREVER to take their damn turns.

Ghosts don't have fear effects, don't pass through walls or are immune to physical attacks.

Eh. "Fear effects" are a crutch for poor monster design, and really just annoying. If they were better-designed monsters, they wouldn't NEED "fear effects" to terrify the player, the player would learn to fear on them on his own!

Skeletons rarely have a significant resistance to arrows, they don't lose members in fights, don't still come at you when cut in half or such. They all just have different stats, not different tactics and behaviors.

See, that would be awesome if there were monsters that kept coming at you even when horribly maimed and dismembered.

But mostly, what we need are monsters that are neither especially tough nor powerful, but simply are really evil. Like the infamous Tucker's Kobolds. They were just ordinary kobolds, but they were mean.

 

[Zeus]

Eh. "Fear effects" are a crutch for poor monster design, and really just annoying. If they were better-designed monsters, they wouldn't NEED "fear effects" to terrify the player, the player would learn to fear on them on his own!

Hah, that's awesome.