Hell Yeah
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Beholder, kobold, or a carnivore scarecrow (animated, perhaps awakened, nothing like from Oz)
I thought some darker or dark/funny options would be fun.
Still preferring to make others into a familiar. Like roommate or someone from school staff though 
Kobolds are intelligent humanoids, which I thinkdisqualifies them. Beholders are definitely automatically disqualified by virtue of getting the author sued, because they’re IP-protected. No using them without WotC’s explicit permission.
I mean, I suggested the Nightmare, a horse-shaped hellspawn that canonically feeds on people and their souls (or platinum oats - mythology is weird). I’m not sure we can GO darker and still have the game published by CoG.
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If not a kobold then a gremlin, somesuch
Then a carnivore scarecrow seems most likely of the 3, albeit not sure why beholders would sue the author, not getting that.
Beholders (and other fun stuff, like mind flayers) are the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast. Using them in a work without WotC’s express permission opens you to the possibility of a lawsuit. It’s legally no different than using Mickey Mouse or Harry Potter.
They just own the names, you can still use the creature and call it something else.
Also I think WoC lost the right to the mind flayers at least once.
That’s like Tolkien and ‘Balrogs’, didn’t stop Pathfinder from having Balors.
It’s the opposite of Games Workshops and Skavens, where they don’t own the race’s name (since the name was used in public domain before) itself but they own their own depiction of it.
You can probably have a creature as hardcore as you want as long as you don’t actually DO dark stuff with it in the story. Pokemon style.
Strange, as a Hungarian i can say it was never an issue here. Multiple works use the Beholder name, plus one of the main fantasy publishing companies for over 30 years even i worked for.
But yeah, if worried just rename it to an ‘ocularly’ or so.
That’s not EXACTLY true. You can certainly do like Munchkin did and use a creature that’s a big ball with an eye with eye stalks coming off it. If you have those eye stalks firing magic rays, ehhhhhhh…
The illithid are an even dicier situation, because their design is much less generic than the beholder’s.
Consult your friendly neighbourhood lawyer.
But that’s a totally different thing - there’s no way to reasonably argue in court that people are going to confuse a publishing company with the monster.
Anyway, like I said, check with a copywright lawyer, because that is an entire legal field that takes specialisation in, on account on being absolutely filled with clauses and caveats.
(except if it’s a Disney property - never touch a Disney property, because they’re likely to sue you even if they can’t make a convincing case and just throw money at the case until you’re forced to quit or go bankrupt. These are the people who took to court to argue that they didn’t have to pay author’s rights to sell his book, because they claimed they had just bought the rights to sell the book, not the duty of compensating the author)
They’ll do worse than that, they’ll straight up have the government change copyright laws to fuck you over.
How do you think Mickey is STILL not public domain?
Disney is straight up the reason for 99% of copyright overreach in the US.
Pretty sure Oculothorax are literally that. Though since it’s a public domain monster, WoC probably didn’t bother to legally challenge it.
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Eh, up to the author what, and how goes. If we need to suggest more unique ideas i’d propose a green gas/poison creature, like a green cloud.
Can fly, no swimming of course.
Can go into enemy bodies through holes to affect them in nasty ways.
Can spy for you decently.
Might be able to take different shapes, but still only gaseous.
Weak against normal air/wind elementals.
The interesting thing about this could be to allow once or multiple times in story change its form. A green gas dragonling? Sure. A green gas cat hovering two inches above ground? Sure.
Etc
Could even be used for distractions making it take shapes of a cow or tree or vague person
It helps that WotC SEEMS to be more lax about their IPs if what you do makes them giggle and doesn’t eat too much into their bottom line.
EDIT: I think it’s also related to what their actual products are. Disney sells stories, but WotC sells materials for you to make stories WITH, so they probably don’t want to come down too hard on stories that use their stuff, because using their stuff in a story is basically publicity.
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It’s also due to their bad experience with copyright lawsuits in the 80’s and 90’s where the Dungeons and Dragons brand lost the rights to multiple of their ‘mainstays’ and got them declared public domain while trying to sue book authors and other game companies.
But yeah, the fact that the more their monsters are used in stories, the more people want to play their modules containing said monsters also help.
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These are all really cool ideas!! I did want to keep the creatures with mostly more animalistic qualities, for lack of a better word. I also want to keep them on the lighter side (nightmare and hellhound being the farthest I’ll go) because, without spoiling much, the story itself will begin to take a bit of a more serious direction the longer it goes on.
I think these creatures might work best in another world, maybe in a dimension where malicious/creepy/strange/what have you things are commonplace? I also want to limit my creature-spiration to mythology and widely-known fiction, for personal integrity reasons!
I absolutely adore hearing all of your ideas for this world, though, so please don’t hesitate to leave them. Even if it just ends up sparking a fun discussion, I love seeing how everyone views the world through different lenses.
Thank you for reading and commenting!!
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Can I headpat the Kitsune Kiyoko? I like to pat the Kitsune. Her character is pretty adorable.
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@JBento, @halfmooncroissant Shadow Jackal, Elemental Birds [Water/Ice, Fire, Air, Earth, Lightning], Sleipnir, Kirin [it’s already there, I think?], Basilisk, Chimera [of any sorts], Catoblepas[too big and too dangerous, bit maybe 
], Slime, Hippogriff, Hippocampus, Hellhounds.
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Author’s note, can confirm, Kiyoko would love this very much.
Thank you so much for reading!! 
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Kirin, Basilisk, Chimera, and Hellhound are already there! But these are all excellent! I was actually already considering a few. I might add them in! Thank you so so much!
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You’re Welcome. I was gonna add some Australian Aboriginal, Japanese and some Spanish, German and ancient mesopotamian mythic animals
[
not usual creatures] too but thought that most of ’ are either too powerful or too big and dangerous or way too damn creepy.
Maybe Jade Fox, Jade Mere, Bunyip, some Ammit/Ammut like creature, Cockatrice [rooster like dragon], Hel Bat or Infernal Cat… Maybe Naja or maybe something like Inix.
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I wuv ittt 
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If we’re talking about less used monsters, Flying Monkeys, Nue (maybe as a Chimera variant) or a Molan could be fun. Or as an alternative to a Nine Tailed Kitsune or a Nekomata, you could have a Jueyuan.
(Yes, I like monkeys).