That power comes from the Displacer Cloak, which appeared in the original D&D books. In the tale, a character describes a thing called a “coeurl” that looks like “a big cat, if you forget those tentacles sticking out from its shoulders, and make allowances for those monster forelegs.” The beast first appeared in the Greyhawk supplement, but the coeurl lacks the displacer beast’s defensive power.
Before the creature appeared in the Greyhawk supplement, Gary explained that “All I needed to do was a bit of editing to make it a great addition to the terrible monsters to be found in the D&D game.” BugbearĪlthough Wizards includes the displacer beast in D&D’s product identity, the monster owes its appearance to an alien in the 1939 story “The Black Destroyer” by author A. Rob credits his brother Terry with a wild imagination and the idea for the beholder, originally called the eye of doom. One of D&D’s original players, Rob Kuntz eventually joined Gary Gygax as co-dungeon master in the Greyhawk campaign. Many of D&D’s classic monsters have better stories behind their inspiration. The gauth just offers a junior beholder to pit against lower-level adventurers. D&D features a long history of frog men, but Charles Stross says a literal fever led him to imagine the extra-planar, chaotic slaad.
When Dave “Zeb” Cook needed memorable foes for an overgrown, forbidden city in the jungle, he made snake men called yuan-ti.
When Gary needed “something new” to populate the underworld, he imagined fish men and called them koa-toa. The leap of imagination required for some monsters seems short.
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