Phantom Fungus

Psion · Apr 29, 2004

Monte At Home said:
That's a really interesting point. Of course, with so many monster books out now, I wonder if that isn't the niche of practically the entirety of say, MM 2, or CC 3, or whatever.

Yeah, I thought of that too. But some people just play with the MM. They might want to have a small selection of obscure strangeness in there.

Not that I couldn't see culling it a bit. While I could see using an ethereal marauder or a phantom fungus, I don't ever see using a digester or an ythrak.

ForceUser · Apr 29, 2004

Psion said:
Yeah, I thought of that too. But some people just play with the MM. They might want to have a small selection of obscure strangeness in there.

Not that I couldn't see culling it a bit. While I could see using an ethereal marauder or a phantom fungus, I don't ever see using a digester or an ythrak.

Ythraks are pretty cool, especially advanced fiendish chimeric ythraks. They are one of those monsters that are good to use if you are trying to create an atmosphere of wierdness, alienness, or different-ness.

Storminator · Apr 29, 2004

Monte At Home said:
But I'm derailing my own thread here. To perhaps use your point but twist it a bit, I'm starting to suspect (actually I thought this for a while) that plant/fungus monsters can easily be seen as silly. I suspect that if you called this the "dark reaper" or something and made it an invisible demon-thing with the same stats, it would be a better monster. Thus, a good monster needs to be "neat" (as you said) and also have a purpose in the game. This isn't really news, but rather an examination of what "neat" really is (which is always a good topic).

This may well be it. I had my players fight a Quasit that I bumped up to Medium size, and I shifted his invisibility to a MEA. This made him right about on par with the Phantom Fungus stat-wise. And the players hated him, and continue to hate him nearly a year after he's dead.

I believe there's a PF in the Seventh Arm, in Dungeon 88. It did a fair amount of damage to a couple 7th level characters before it died. Attack, 5' step to the side. Players "attack where it attacked from!" nothing there...

PS

Felon · Apr 29, 2004

Monte At Home said:
Most good monsters have an actual game design reason to exist. These monsters are popular. That's the problem I see with lots of new monsters--they might have a neat picture or whatever, but they don't offer the game anything new.

And that's a statement that should be signed, sealed, and delivered to the folks at White Wolf for when they sit down to write their next Creature Collection (see below).

"Oh look, a dog with giant maggots sprouting out of its neck instead of a head. Man, that's a shocking visual. What does it do? Some sort of parasite deal? Dissolves your organs? Disease maybe?"

"It bites you! Hard!"

"Well, whoop-dee-doo."

(For the record, in my opinion, we don't ever need another dog monster that howls, bat monsters that shriek, no more dangerous humanoids that don't do anything an orc wouldn't do, and no more monsters that looks like treasure but actually attacks--those niches are full to bursting.)

Add to that:

1) Gross animated corpses that really don't do anything that zombies, skeletons, or ghouls don't do--they're just yuckier.
2) Anthropomorphicized animals that don't do anything besides bite and claw (and maybe not even that).
3) Monsters whose entire strategy relies on Improved Grab. We particularly don't need any more monsters that swallow characters whole, when that only affords the characters a safer, easier way to inflict damage on the monster.

Frilf · Apr 29, 2004

Never used the phantom fungus, never used the ethereal filcher. But I plan to now

There have got to be some good ideas using the fungi in conjunction with a template or two. Fun, fun. Besides, you can never go wrong beefing things up... well, OK. You can go wrong, but...

jgbrowning · Apr 30, 2004

Psion said:
Not that I couldn't see culling it a bit. While I could see using an ethereal marauder or a phantom fungus, I don't ever see using a digester or an ythrak.

I used a pack of digesters once to harrass my party. They were pretty beat up and the digester would hit and run, hit and run (thought that would be a cool hunting tactic on the plains). One of them died and the digester's acid was unfriendly to some of his remains.

They enjoyed it.

joe b.

rounser · Apr 30, 2004

Most good monsters have an actual game design reason to exist. These monsters are popular.

As a counterpoint, I'd suggest that if the design team had taken the opposite tack and did something like found out which monsters were consistently populating the adventures in Dungeon over the years (i.e. identifying the ones that actually get used in play because they have useful archetypes and appeal)...I think I would have much preferred that approach, rather than placing rules needs before D&D's flavour and atmosphere. I'd expect the designers did something along those lines anyway...it's just that it doesn't look or feel like it to me.

The MM seems a bit overloaded with outsiders for the core monster book, too...which IMO should have had a solid prime material bias.

All in all, I was a tad confused and disappointed when I saw what made the cut, given D&D's rich monster heritage...I hope 4E will come at it from a different angle.

Creamsteak · Apr 30, 2004

WizO_Dabus said:
A phantom fungus appears in the Dungeon #84 adventure, "Dungeon of the Fire Opal," by Jonathan Tweet. It's by the underground stream and effectively "guards" the remains of the abbot and the key that grants easy access to the treasury.

That's the only adventure of which I'm aware that features a phantom fungus.

We also slid two into Cooperative Dungeon 3. One templated as a ghost. Seems like a fine creature to me, but it's a niche monster.

Wrath of the Swarm · Apr 30, 2004

Well, I've used a heavily-modified version of the Phantom Fungus.

Did any of you ever see the episode of ST: TNG with the photomemetic chameleon creatures that reproduce by infecting other organisms? Geordi nearly became one permanently?

Well, that was basically what I did with the Phantom Fungus. My version was a predator that hunted small animals for food. Occasionally, it would try to ambush larger creatures, smearing some of the slime that covered its body onto them. Sometimes the creature wouldn't even notice. When it was attacked and killed, the fungus exploded in a shower of the same viscous goo. If the slime entered a break in the skin, the victim would slowly become a living, breathing host for the fungus. Plus the stuff was invisible, so it was difficult to know whether any had gotten on you and even harder to remove.

I just didn't think the standard version was scary enough.

Evilhalfling · Apr 30, 2004

PhantomFungus - no but its on my wilderness encounter table - (its a strange wilderness)
I did use a ethereral filtcher - but changed the visual to a tentecaled creature made of psuedo-plasm. It stole the parties quest item(strong magic) and wandered off - they freaked. it had only gone about 100' into a forest but they spent a full day strategizing and tracking it.

Phantom Fungus

Psion

Adventurer

ForceUser

Explorer

Storminator

First Post

Felon

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Frilf

Explorer

jgbrowning

Hero

rounser

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Creamsteak

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Wrath of the Swarm

Banned

Evilhalfling

Adventurer

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