Ideas and Suggestions (Monster Hunting)

[Stormcrow]

What I do want;
Ideas, Suggestions and Advice for missions for a mission based campaign where the PC's are employee's of "Yuri's Monster Hunters". Basically hired swords who take care of problems. Level five start.

What I don't want;
Thread hijackers using this as an excuse to verbally masturbate over their own campaigns.

I thought I'd start with some land based... maybe a Dire Wolf or something.

[Mike_Lemmer]

The biggest problem with focused mission-based campaigns is a lack of diversity. Having the climax be the same theme (take down one tough monster) with a variety of steps to get there (negotiating with locals to access its lair, studying its weaknesses, gathering bait, etc) can be very satisfying, especially if you find a way to wind an overarching plot through some of their missions.

[AslanCross]

Although you're starting at Lv 5, I'll give suggestions for later levels as well.
Is this core only?
-Dire animals would definitely be good.
-Gray Render. Makes for good twists as a misunderstood monster due to its tendency to bond with nearby creatures (possibly humanoids) who are not of the same species.
-For a truly tactical nightmare, a Behir.
-For a later aerial encounter: Yrthak

If you're looking beyond core:
-Charnel Hound (MMIII). Huge, ugly beastie made of corpses. It can begin with grave excavations gone awry, or rumors of "a very large dire wolf" preying on stuff in the woods.

-Haunts (MMV). These can make for very persistent problems as they can't be killed unless you solve the problem that caused them to become haunts in the first place. The Taunting Haunt can only be sent away with a battle of wits.

-Tirbanas (MMV) Hive-minded insects. They're LN, but are very focused on breeding---which requires them to implant larvae in humanoid host, who are kept alive long enough for the larvae to eat through their innards.

-Rylkars (MMV). Rat-like creatures with a hive mind. Good sewer colony creatures.

-A Hullathoin (Fiend Folio) is breeding undead in the swamp. The bloodfiend insects it hosts are beginning to range farther and farther.

-An escaped Bladerager Troll (MMV). Bladerager trolls seem to be presented as Fire Giant military technology. This one is a prototype that got away. The fire giants want to hire the PCs to go get them, but the PCs might realize that the fire giants will begin mass producing their pet berserkers to attack a nearby kingdom. Will they go through with it?

[Stormcrow]

They will expand into other kinds of missions after a while including capture missions and assasinations of "soft targets". Just using monster bash to teach the two new players how to handle their characters.

Thanks for the ideas, keep them coming!.

[Prometheus]

Ankheg are a good one - Because of the fact that they make the soil more fertile, they are almost always plaguing rural areas. As an added bonus, it can later create plot stuff based on how the farmers are now not being able to grow crops very well.

I also recommend an gray oozes and gelatinous cubes. Teaches them about, finding hidden enemies, enemies without critical hits or sneak attacks, enemies with immunities, enemies that engulf/grab, and above all enemies that they can tactically best simply be staying out of range.

Be careful with animals, some players/characters would object to the idea, and question whether or not the animal really is that hostile.

With hunts it is also a lot of fun to make the legend differ from the reality. Tell them tales of a dragon whelp that ate a band of merchants, only to find out it is just a giant lizard and the merchants show up a day later completely unaware that people had taken them for goners. Or conversely tell them it is just a couple of scorpions, neglecting to mention that they are very big monstrous scorpions. Random attacks from a Will-O-Wisp are reported as an invisible spellcaster stalking a noblemen.

[Cuddly]

A nice alternative to treasure would be letting the players salvage material from what they kill, and having it fashioned into special items.

Poison, hide, components for crafting magic items (thus mitigating the gp/xp cost somewhat), especially hard bone, horn, or tough fiber.

[Mewtarthio]

How about a hydra? They've got lots of attacks, and the PCs get the fun of dragging back lots of heads.

EDIT: You can also run this monster filter (http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20monsterfilter/) to get SRD monsters of the appropriate climate, type, and CR.