Your first monster encounter?

Do you recall the first beastie you saw, the first time you played D&D? Mine was memorable, although not too romantic: an otyugh. (I'm actually pretty sure it was a neo-otyugh, but why split hairs..)

Wow that's a mean beastie for your first adventure! They are 8 or 9 hit dice monsters if I remember correctly.

I can't remember my first monster but I remember my first party. The DM got me to roll up 4 1st level characters, they were -

Groin The Groper - Male dwarven fighter

Legolam - male elven magic user

Eorache - female human cleric

Arrowroot - male human ranger

I've just looked and I still have the character sheets from when they were 4th level.  I think the first creatures I met were kobolds or goblins.

One of my most memorable adventures was when my gnome fighter/illusionist was hit by a remorhaz, we use critical hit tables and triple damage was rolled. Now my gnome had a ring of fire shield (4th level magic user spell) and any hit that he took then the attacker took double. So I got whacked for 41 points of damage and was left on 5 hits but the remorhaz took double that and basically blew itself up around me! One of those really cool moments that D&D throws up and the story was told in all the taverns and inns and became part of the Legend of The Gnome.

Hah!  The gnome was covered in corbomite..  That's great.  :)

I don't think the DM who created the ring of Fire Shield realised just how powerful it was. I don't know if you can remember but you had a choice of flames and one was cold and gave +2 to save vs fire and the the other was hot and (surprise surprise) gave +2 vs cold. If you saved you took no damage and you only took half damage if you failed. However if you had the cold flames to save against fire and you failed to save against a cold attack then you took double damage.

C'mon guys surely you have an idea of your first encounter?  Or maybe a classic encounter?

My first encounter was a giant spider, medium-size. I was six at the time. I was an elven ranger named Legolas, my brother was a drow ranger named Drizzt, my mom was a dwarven cleric, Karmina, and my dad was the human wizard Merlin. My dad was the DM, and he had completed the sample adventure in the 3e DMG, which has a map, 3 detailed areas, and a lot of undetailed areas. The treasure we found was a 10 gp garnet in a pile of bones. Shortly afterword we fought a gelatinous cube, and then my brother and I died to some ghouls.

Ghouls with their 3 attacks and paralysation are definitely monsters to be feared.

They woke us during the second watch, and yeah, they were effective.