A Gator Man is basically just a beefed up lizard man with the head of an aligator instead of a lzard. In actual combat, they are a lot meaner, though. Gator men stand well over 2 meters tall and at 7 Hit Dice really have a lot of hit points and good chances to hit which are well beyond what you usually get from humanoid monsters. They also swim 50% faster than human characters run, which can make them very mean ambushers. They attack with normal weapons, but these completely pale compared to their bite, which deals a massive 3d6 damage. Groups of them are usually lead by a chief, who is even bigger and meaner and has a bite that deals 4d6 damage. When encountered by low level characters, they probably simply bite their head off!
A Hephaeston is a giant for high level adventures. It’s 8 meters tall and has intimidating 25 Hit Dice, which should be well over 100 hit points. The skin of a hephaeston is like iron and gives him a very high armor class and can only be injured by magical weapons. It is completely immune to mind affecting magic, all spells of 1st and 2nd level, and fire. Though I think by the time a group of player characters has any chance to fight this guy, they probably wouldn’t attempt to hurt him with nonmagical weapons and low-level spells anyway. The amount of damage it can dish out is staggering. When attacking with a weapon, it deals 4d10 points of damage and it also has the option to attack with a free hand as well, which also deals impressive 3d10 points of damage. If that bitch slap from hell hits with an 18 or higher, the hephaeston grabs the character and smashes him into the ground for another 5d6 damage. This is so funny I wonder if anyone would ever make make a hephaeston fight with a shield. In addition, it also has the ability to levitate iron objects (to throw on people, I assume), make an iron object get red hot, or magically create a wall of solid iron. Fighting one of these guys really doesn’t sound fun. Or very fun, depending on how you look at it. Fortunately, hephaestons live alone.
The Hutaakans are probably one of the most iconic creatures of the Known World. Which means that most of you have probably never heard of them. Hutaakans are humanoids with jackal-like heads but are otherwise very similar to humans or elves. In the ancient past, they ruled over a small empire but have almost disappeard by now, with only a few groups remaining in remote mountain cities. They are not particulary strong and have no real special abilities other than being able to see in the dark and being quite sneaky. They are highly civilized and ruled by a caste of priests. Overall, they are really very similar to stereotypical elves with dog heads and priests instead of wizards. It’s mostly their place in the Known World setting that makes them popular, but as generic monster for games in other worlds there really isn’t anything remarkable about them.
The Kara-kara are a race of humanoids who live on the islands in the south of the Known World and are basically chubby polynesian orcs. They don’t have any metal weapons or armor, but can prepare themselves for battle with a war dance that makes them tougher and more resistance to spells. Or as the great Mystara scholar Blacky the Blackball called them, “racist as fuck”. I personally don’t quite see the problem since the are orc with a new stylistic design, but perhaps it’s a British thing. I don’t know what popular racist stereotypes there are still floating around and have not been fully dealt with in Britain.
Lupins are like werewolves but good instead of evil. They hate werwolves a lot and will ally with humans to hunt and destroy them. Which to me very much sounds like some player has been whining to his GM that he want’s to play a werewolf and it totally won’t be disrupting the party, really. On the plus side, they are often riding dire wolves and attacking with lances, which does indeed sound pretty cool.
The Oards are typical BECMI weirdness. The module in which they originally appeared in can be summed up as “A group of cybernetic creatures from the future have traveled back through time to enslave the human race… and you’re here to stop them?” Which is a quote from Star Trek 8, which has exactly the same plot. Predating the Borg from Star Trek by four years, I just can’t see how the costume designers came up with the alien design independently, without having been aware of the oards. And it’s not just the suits. Oards are grown in breeding tanks and then having large parts of their bodies replaced with machinery. (Assimilation was only introduced in Star Trek one season after the first appearance of the Borg and later retconned.) They lack any real individuality and all wear the same dark grey suits. They are immune to all illusions and paralyzation and have very high saving throws. They have all kinds of technological devices that allow them to shot projectiles like magic missiles from their hands or create a forcefield that works like protection from normal missles, resist cold, and resist fire. People can complain all they want about coincidences, cybermen, and terminator, but these are Borg! Four years before Star Trek. And it’s not mentioned on either wikipedia or the Star Trek wiki. Plagiarism, I shout. Plagiarism! But the result was cool, so I am okay with that. The oards also have a few special abilities that the Borg don’t have, like holographic image projectors that can make them look like normal people and the ability to levitate.