Savaging the D&D Monster Manual

My local gaming store is gearing up to host its twice-yearly consignment auctions, so I've been combing my collection looking for unused material to sell off. Since I'll be dropping off a load of stuff in the next couple of weeks, my buddy (and fellow RPG Diehard author) Ben pulled together a pile of saleable stuff from his own collection to add to the auction; this lot included the D&D 3.0 Monster Manual.

While organizing our shared auction wares, I happened to flip open the Monster Manual. Now, I must confess that I've never actually perused any of the various beast books for D&D—if you'd asked me last week, I would have told you that their content is utilitarian in nature...stat blocks for critters and little else.

And although I found stats aplenty, I also found myself enthralled by the narrative description of the monsters. In general, I've turned up my nose at the more mythic, oddball monsters in D&D, preferring instead to populate my wilderness with evil humanoids like orcs, hobgoblins and troglodytes. You know, monsters that can think and strategize. But skimming the Monster Manual really fired my imagination in regards to some of the more fantastical creatures in the book, stuff like thoqquas (the segmented, elemental lava-worms that will fit perfectly into a dungeon I'm working on), mohrgs (more interesting than your average undead), hippogriff (until recently, I couldn't say that word with a straight face) and, of course, beholders.

Before I knew it, I'd pulled out a notebook and begun sketching out Savage Worlds stats for a dozen of the more interesting critters. They're on the way to my campaign notebook now—and Ben's Monster Manual, having offered up one last burst of inspiration, is on its way to the auction and, hopefully, someone else's gaming table.

Help me make monsters scary again

So I'm busily populating my Points of Light hex map with encounters and threats, and I'm having a really hard time with monsters. Gryphons and harpies and werebears...they're all so quintessentially fantasy, but they don't scare me -- and I worry they'll have a similar effect on my players.

Oh sure, they're threatening and all. They can maim and kill characters, and in a pinch the PCs can rally together and bring 'em down in a hail of arrows, lightning bolts and fancy swordplay. But they're not scary, not in the sense that they inspire the PCs to do much more than simply slay them. And it ain't like I can't pull off a terrifying scene setup -- I can don't worry 'bout that. But I see more storytelling potential in "monsters" that stand on two legs: corrupt nobles, death cults, warmongering orc raiders, nefarious highwaymen, etc.

I think it's because monsters aren't smart. With a few notable exceptions, they don't plot or scheme or try to worm their way into positions of power. They react to stuff and defend themselves if attacked. That's about it. I've read James Maliszewski's treatise on Gygaxian Naturalism, and it's a very cool way to think about monsters -- but that still doesn't solve their innate lack of smarts.

Anyone have any suggestions about how to plop a few full-on monsters in my map -- without having them simply become speed bumps with hit points? Or, a better question might be: what are some monsters that are genuinely intelligent and could offer a real, perennial threat to the campaign?