OSE Encounter Activities - Gargoyle

Rapidly encroaching on a third of the way through! I’ll celebrate with a monster I enjoy: Gargoyles.

It should go without saying to anyone familiar with them that Gargoyles can be quite a nasty encounter to spring on an unprepared party. Their stealthy camouflage among other statuary is perhaps a bit overplayed, but it’s really their immunity to non-magic weapons that can make a fight rapidly turn into flight if the adventurers lack the appropriate tools to defeat them. In some ways, they can serve as Traps/Hazards and I always give the Dwarf their due bonus in recognizing them for what they are.

Remember that they have a tongue among the canonical twenty “Other Languages,” so this almost seems to imply that they aren’t merely Constructs and possess some sort of culture. I tend to default into running them with somewhat feline tendencies for some reason, maybe it’s their propensity for ambush?

As far as their origins, I play with a few options below, but you might have more original notions. Are they hewn from stone by Magic-Users in need of territorial guardians? Perhaps Gargoyles are Elemental transients, or maybe they evolved mimesis over eons like other gotcha-dungeon-dressing monsters like Mimics? How do they reproduce? Are they particularly religious, being found near Churches and Cathedrals so often? I love monsters that make me ask questions, and sometimes it’s even more fun to leave these answers up to my players.

Here are a hundred goings on for those grimacing grotesques and hunchback hunky punks!