So what are your favorite critters and threats for places like abandoned buildings, sewers, low income housing, and other nice places?

Personally I like some of the old standbys: Ghouls and devil rats. They are expected and well known I know they won't really slow down the pace of the game. I tend to use them in areas that I don't really want to be interesting.

For something a little more interesting I use cockatrice, blackberry cats, gabriel hounds and gargoyles. All of these are urban and are slightly more familiar, but still exotic.

For full on creep and freak factor:
Incubus (gotta love that phantasm ability)
Toxic Spirits (acid is a great one, but sludge is good too)
Roach Spirits
and of course
the shedim.


Mix and match and it will be the type of run that will haunt runners for a loooonnngggg time.

Forget devil rats. If you want to give players a good scare, put them up against demon rats, the nastier first cousins of devil rats. Larger than even devil rats, and with some particularly nasty regeneration abilities to boot, you're talking about a hell of a time with any more than a handful.

The odd, feral, squatting dzoo-noo-qua is also nice to bump into, especially if it's quite on accident.

Insect spirits are a tad overdone, but depending on how damp, musty, and dark your warehouse is, a cluster of roach spirits turning it into their own private warrens is effective.

Sometimes what's been there before you is even worse than it being there. What if some shedim-possessed bodies were dragging live women and children into that warehouse, choking them to death, and then letting their disembodied shedim buddies hop in to do the same to others? What if they arrived at this warehouse to do this about every couple of weeks? Imagine the background count that would be going on there. Assensing the area is bad enough, but if a magician with Psychometry were to stroll in there, depending on how badly he rolled that might be enough to GM-fiat him some negative qualities due to the mental trauma.

I'm not such a big fan of forcing mental trauma on my players but it certainly does offer some good RP fodder.

Hm... Demon rats? What book are they out of?

How about some non-magical or only vaguely magical beasties? I'm thinking... stray dogs from hell or something. Anyone know any common threats we typically overlook?

Gabriel hounds are a good one. They just are large versions of dogs. If your looking more for suspense, keep in mind lots of squatters trap their squats. Simple pits and tripwires and such might be a realistic and problematic thing for the players.