Interesting Monsters
Here are three quick principles for an interesting monster: Give them interesting tools/abilities/skills. I'm thinking something mechanical or pseudo-mechanical. 8HD is an ability to tank hits, as is AC18 (though in slightly different ways). Incredible movement speed or climbing ability don't have a number attached to them, but still give unusual ways for a monster to interact with a party. Have the monsters leverage their interesting features. Tankiness lets them take a few hits, so these can sit up front and be bruisers. Agile creatures can get to the back of the marching order in, say, a turn, and attack the squishy magic-users. Have the monster be initially unpredictable, but easy to figure out. There's nothing more tense than coming upon a monstrosity and having no idea how it might fuck up your party. But after a successful or failed encounter, the party should have an idea of what it can do. Has anyone done mixed-creature random encount...