What's a good way to design an eldritch creature that's

Look to mythology: Biblical angels, Gnostic archons, Hindu asuras and Shinto yokai.

Or do what disgusts or frightens you and your player. One of my players is grossed-out by blood so a lot of my Eldritch monsters are blobs of flesh and guts.

>>46580027
It should be something that's slightly off. Like a person whose skin seems to not fit properly. Or something wrong with the eyes or too many teeth.
You shouldn't try to describe it, build an outline and let the players fill in the rest.

>>46580027
Creeped out my players by making one which was basically a vaguely bipedal cyst in space. Well, usually vaguely bipedal. It didn't stay connected to itself - its head and limbs basically were anywhere it needed them to be, regardless of where the rest of it was.

>>46580027
You shouldn't really be describing eldritch horrors, at least not in concrete terms. That kind of defeats the purpose.

>>46580027
Treat it like the shark in Jaws: never describe it in full detail (your players will probably ask). Don't mention whether it has an unusual number of hands/tentacles/claws/pseudopods until it uses them to do something. Don't tell them how many eyes/mouths/digits/limbs/bodies/minds/voices it has until those things come up.

For added fun, have your players draw what they think it looks like!

>>46580721

Like this. Too much exposition ruins monsters.

For a little extra, look at each player's drawing (make them draw separate from each other), and have it look that way to THAT player; its appearance is entirely dependent on the beholder. Or maybe give each player a glimpse of a drawing, but don't let them know they're looking at different drawings.

It could also look like a static, abstract symbol or icon.

Another good trope is to make truly monstrous, otherworldly beings look completely human, except impossibly perfect. Players/readers expect their monsters to be ugly or terrifying, so mess with their expectations. Maybe even force their characters to roll in order to act against such antagonists.

>>46580944
edit: I remember when I was a kid, my class was doing a play of Noah's Ark, and there was a scene involving God. It would be silly to have someone dressed in costume, but an offstage voice wouldn't have enough presence, so I suggested several flashlights backlighting a cloth backdrop. The idea came from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. A glowing ball of light (or something similar) could make for a great extra-cosmic adversary.

>>46580690
>this defeats the purpose
naw mah nizza, the eldritch creature is simply something created by eldritch powers or something, and imo, is thereby meant to show the highly menacing nature of eldritch forces as well as their extreme master over the manipulation/control of life forces.
In other words my eldritch creatures are all suposed to have the fantasy version as the same background as xenomorphs, while also being significantly larger of course.

>>46581045
While I appreciate the weirdness of the concept, I'm not sure how a ball of light would make for a fulfilling villain

>>46581142
Read "The Manor of Tian" on the tg archive, and see how its done.

Anything can be a fulfilling villain senpai, you just have to work hard at it

>>46580027
There was one that somebody talked about that I really liked where the eldritch monster had no fleshy bits what so ever. It was just a 6th (in the mathematical sense) shape moving in and out of our universe.

>>46580721
Alternate idea: shifting features: it might be blue to begin with, but at some point, start insisting that it's red and always been. It walks away on its bidepedal two legs and trips a player with a twelfth dodecapedal leg. But be careful not to sound like you're making shit up on the fly to one-up the players.

Just be yourself and don't try too hard.

>>46582137
"Despite having memories of IT that only make sense IT had 2 legs, and others that only make sense with 8, all those memories show IT having 12, almost like reality itself can't decide or make IT stay consistent."

>>46580027
Avoid describing them at all, generally. Make references to what they're not, as opposed to what they are, or use non-sequiter descriptions that initially seem to make sense but upon further consideration are just weird or absurd.

>>46580027

Make sure that your description is contradictory. Your typical Lovecraftian beast is beyond the scope of human minds, and you should present it as such.

If you want to have even more fun, don't describe it out loud, and instead hand the players note cards with a different description on each.

>>46581142
Have you not seen Heavy Metal?

>>46580027
Something like "As you look upon, or into, or at least what you think to be toward the form, the shapes your eyes behold are ones your mind simply rejects. Where your reality knows things to have length, and breadth, and depth; whatever measure of this abhorrence must be terms known only in the tongues of gods and demons. Trying in vain to wrap your mind around this impossible geometry only leads to vertigo- and you can't be sure if it is moving or stationary or both, or something else entirely."

>>46584220
You look down at the creature - not because it is beneath you, but because for reasons you cannot explain, its direction is now down for you. You feel a bizarre new gravity, and a desire to clutch at the ground, although you cannot tell if you have moved any closer to it at all, or how long this internal struggle has played itself out.

Pick something obscure from mythology and something from the deepest depths of the ocean and mash 'em together.

>>46580027
>how do you design eldritch
You don't. Read Lovecraft and realize that most of his monsters aren't fucking described beyond the vaguely sense so that readers can fill in the blanks.

If by eldritch you mean a le spoopy starbeast, then you might as well just slap a bunch of tents clef and teeth and other gribblies together

>>46584452
Describing an eldritch creature's effect on your players' psyches or perception could be more important than describing its physical form. After all, Cthulhu's just a squidheaded giant green batman, and really quite silly if it weren't driving people mad.

Your eyes roll wildly in their sockets as they bounce over the creature's outline. Try as you might, you cannot look at it straight on - no especial fear deters you, but your eyes will not obey!

You want to lash out at the thing with all your revulsion - but that's what it wants. It has no mouth, no eyes, no mode of expression you can decipher, but still you feel its gloating laughter.

This arm isn't yours anymore. It's its. Its! ITS! Cut it off! Throw it back! It can have it!

>>46580027
I don't want to spoil it, but read Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.

Or to generalise - take an ordinary creature, scale it up/down as neccesary, and imagine what would have to happen for it to become either an apex predator or otherwise very high on the food chain, if you were to subject it to immense evolutionary pressure in a horrifying environment