Creature Feature - Giant Worms, Spell Slinging Spiders, and Bloody Bushes

Annelid, Great

What is an Annelid you dare ask? Well it’s a giant hermaphroditic worm, up to a 1000 ft. long and has 25-50 HD (holy fawking $hit Bro!). ohh I almost forgot the obligatory Dune reference “The sleeper has! Blah, blah, blah.

The highlights are that it digs giant tunnels and swallows people whole. Also it paralyzes earth elementals with its bite, though this power is poorly understood. You know, kind of like why this monster exists. Who is going to fight this thing anyway? I can see it now, our trusty adventurers encounter a thousand foot behemoth. The DM looks across his screen, you have initiative, what do you want to do. Joe who plays the Halfling, grins and says “I pull my dagger, let’s gut this biatch!” Hah! just kidding, everybody would run or maybe the wizard could levitate it to death or something.

Possible Hooks: The Ground shakes outside the tavern, plates and mugs fall of the table and clatter to the floor, pictures fall of the wall and patrons are violently thrown the flood. Then, as suddenly as it began, it’s over.  As the characters step outside to investigate, they barely avoid falling into the 25 ft. wide hole in the taverns porch, the middle of the street and the shops across the way used to be.

GRUBS Rating: Meh, Uninspired. Big, Dumb, Stupid looking.

Aranea

Whoa! Large brained, super intelligent spiders that can cast spells and spend their leisure time doing arcane research. So it turns out that the super large bump on their heads is just wizard hat in disguise. Inquiring minds want to know, but the text doesn’t say, can Aranea cast Web? There is no information about their society or other habits but they are chaotic so I’m gonna guess they aren’t party friendly. Lol

GRUBS Rating: Uninspired, While spider are creepy and shit, just adding spells to them isn’t that great of an upgrade.

Archer Bushes

Yep, this is the ugly little bastard.

“A rose by any other name is…ow, stop shooting me with thorns thou fucking bushes!” Shakespeare it is not. This thing isn’t horrible, it’s just that the picture has it with a gaping fanged maw. Which is pretty stupid. It would be far more interesting if it were just a natural plant that defends itself from being trampled and preyed on by animals. Maybe those thorns are also seeds that grow new plants. But no, instead it’s a carnivorous, blood slurping, semi-mobile escapee from some lunatic wizard’s tower. Just one more reason to burn magic-users at the stake.

GRUBS Rating: Uninspired, killer plants are pure fertilizer.

Creature Feature - Prehistoric Animals

Consists of eight prehistoric animals. Not so useful for most straight up D&D games unless you are doing a Lost World type scenario or campaign. If you are playing a prehistoric game, like Wolf Packs and Winter Snows, then these would be an auto include as prey animals and predators. They might even be useful in a regular D&D game as say…the last of their kind, and a one off encounter.

Buluchitherium – A 20ft tall rhino.

Giant Elk – A bigger than big Elk

Grangeri – A rhino-giraffe.

Hyenodon – giant hyena like critter.

Megatherium – Giant ground sloth, a.k.a. Easy Pickin’s

Phorobacos –  Giant bird or Swordbeak.

Titanothere – A blunt horned rhino, as seen in the movie Ice Age.

(the suffixes there and therium, are Latin for - of the big-ass variety. Which is much better than using the lame word Dire, which is just stupid as all get out. I mean really, Dire Halflings, see what I mean. I really like to add some serious science to my D&D games.)

Possible Hooks

The Royal Bromance: Your fighter has been invited to go hunting for the Elk King, a legendary Elk, with the Castellan / Lord from the local keep. Wizards and Clerics can stay in the tent with the rest of the skirts, as usual.

Flock Me!: Get chased around the tall grass prairie by a flock of Phorobacos.

Dine in, or Carry Out: A Carnivorous Megatherium, which sounds stupid at first, but bear with me. As slow as this thing moves it should be stealthy as all get out. It moves around in the trees and drops into the PC’s camp in the middle of the night. Of course they are on guard but they will be looking outward, probably not up. Heck, maybe it even avoids large groups and prays on lone travelers or small groups, as it is not likely to be making a quick getaway. The characters set up camp only to notice that there is a lot of equipment, blankets, pots, pans etc just laying around in the spot they chose to camp. A thorough search reveals that there are no tracks to be found except those made by the victims.

GRUBS Rating: Meh, uninspired, but necessary.

Next up…Annelid, Great

Creature Feature - Giant Amoeba

Looks like a giant fried egg. Not to mention that the scale is off core is a 2ft blob, but the picture shows it as a third of the size of the Amoeba. Basically it’s a Gelatinous Cube that is amorphous and has a few extra HD and a gray blob in da middle. Sheesh. Maybe it should live near the Amber Lotus Flower, for all the good eats. 

This is the kinda thing that makes balk in disbelief that someone got paid to make this crap.

GRUBS Rating: Brain Damage, Massive

Creature Feature - Amber Lotus Flower

It’s a large water lily that looks like a large sunflower. When a character or creature gets near it, 10ft. it opens up and lets out a cloud of pollen that covers a 40x40ft area. Anyone caught in this area of effect must save vs. spells or go to sleep for 4d4 turns (40-160 minutes). The Amber Lotus has a symbiotic relationship with other living plants that like to feed on the corpses of adventurers and animals, such as Vampire Roses and Killer Trees. So by itself it’s not that dangerous but when it works with other living plants it can be dangerous.

First off, if this thing feeds off decomposing corpses, then the area around one of these is going to be littered with bones and rotting corpses. It’s going to smell pretty bad around it, not to mention that if these flowers are really water lilies then the water around it is going to be contaminated with dead corpses. This could be a potential plot hook.

The peasants from village downstream from the Amber Lotus is getting sick but nobody knows why. Turns out to be the Amber Lotus Flower victims are contaminating the water. When the characters approach they spot dozens of dead animals, and Bob, the village idiot who has been missing for months is lying face down near the bank of the stream half decomposed. You can tell it’s Bob by the obnoxious striped sox he always wears.

Now it’s not a very exciting plot hook mind you, but it might not be bad for a low level sandbox adventure.

If it is found in conjunction with Vampire Roses I am going to guess that some of the carcasses in and around the area are going to be completely desiccated. Which, in turn you could use to throw the characters for a loop and make it look like you have a dumping ground for some type of Vampiric creature. This could make a great addition to the old rumor chart. There is a vampire that roams the north woods feeding upon unwary travelers. He always dumps the corpses near giant water lilies to hide the smell of the decomposing corpses. (F)

Also, I nearly forgot. The pollen spray of the Amber Lotus recharges in 3d4 rounds (30-120 seconds). This means that any character that fails his save and goes to sleep 4d4 turns (40-160 minutes) will have to make another save when they wake up (unless you are a kinder, gentler DM than I). Rinse and repeat until they die from dehydration. LOL

Overall, it is kind of a dopey creature and one that I can’t see a lot of people using at all, or if they do use it, it would be a one-time thing.

Official GRUBS rating: Uninspired: meh maybe if I got nothing better, average.

CREATURE FEATURE

I recently picked up the D&D CREATURE CATALOG (DMR2) from a used book store and it was in excellent condition and cheap. I was pretty excited about this as I have never owned or read the book and I was hoping it would have some good stuff I could add to my D&D games. 

Yep, this is the one.

After reading through it this week I was thinking to do one of those “let’s read” type projects with the book. Starting next week (hopefully) I will be posting a summary of a creature, and then giving an actually review of the creature with the following 1-5 scale.

The GRUBS Rating Scale (because who doesn’t love a totally forced and useless acronym?)

Genius: This thing is so awesome I must use it NOW or in an upcoming adventure.

Right On: This thing is good enough to see regular use

Uninspired: Meh, maybe if I got nothing better, average.

Brain-damage: Reading this made my brain hurt.

Shit: I want my time and money back, and if I were a lawyer I would send the creator a C&D letter.

So…this scale gentle reader, should give you an overall impression of what I thought of the book and its content.  Some good, and some…quite a bit actually, really bad. Though I would guess that most of it just falls in the Uninspired category to be honest.