Chimeras
Yep, chimeras. I know, I know. We’re not playing ‘that game’. But bare with me. I think they can be used as minions. In a recent session the heroes had to contend with a chimera demon that had taken over a zoo. The Chimera Demon is a demon that takes animals and creates chimeras. I didn’t even bother stat’ing him up, he was just the means to an end. The end being throwing lots of random critters at the PCs that while not overwhelmingly powerful, were strange, dangerous and creepy as the ran into them.
Check out www.boredpanda.com/animal-hybrids
Do you really need a justification to this at your players?
“Snakespiders. Why did it have to be snakespiders?”
Rattlespake. Nice. I actually have a collection of chimera pix, but never really though to weaponize them this way. Huh.
Yep. The site i found it at has stuff like squirrel-sparrows where you can feed it into the beginning of the episode to tip off PCs that something is going on it’s not super dangerous. Then someone finds a spidersnake in the boys lockerroom and things start esclating, then someone gets attacked by tiger headed monkeys or they see an eagle with a panda’s head. Then after a day or two they run into owl-headed tigers or gorillas with wings, things animals that by themselves can do a lot of damage without being mystical. Slowly ratchet up the danger.