Legendary Animals?

The thing that annoys me most about legendary animals is that they're given solely as ways to boost the druid's smackdown ability. Can't get that dire tiger into the dungeon? No problem -- get a legendary wolf instead. As presented in MotW, they're really nothing more than bigger bundles of hit points than regular or dire animals.

IMO, a legendary animal should be just that -- legendary, and I don't mean just "super powered". At the very least, the writeup in the book should have provided some suggestions for why these animals exist in the first place. Are they incarnations of the elder spirits of the animal world? Are they agents of the gods sent to guard nature and/or exact vengeance on despoilers? Or what? As it is, there's no in-game explanation for why these animals should exist -- a metagame explanation, along the lines of "to keep the druid happy", is a piss-poor substitute.

And yes, I know the DM can always come up with an explanation suitable for his or her own campaign. That's not the point. While it's well and good for the core books to focus on technical rules, the whole point of a splatbook is to provide depth and flavour beyond what's in the core. It's no wonder that certain persons (who shall remain unnamed) keep rabbiting on about D&D's blandness.

(st00pid double post)

Amen to that, hong

I agree entirely

In my world I apply both Celestial Templates to animals and also have Beast-Lords - that is a unique beast which embodies the 'Spirit' of the species (like the Great Elk). These Beast-Lords behave like animals but are more intelligent, more 'noble' looking, stronger (advanced HD) but only slightly larger.

These beast also act as a conduit for the beast Spirit - so if Shaman(Druids) try to cast spells on them they are overcome and come face to face with the Spirit.

The Spirit can sometimes manifest in the Beast - and hence you have talking beasts appearing.

They do have some flavor -- they are gifts from nature to the spellcasters.

Okay, it's not much, but they did make an effort.

It needs more, but, pheh....I can always do what I need to do.

IMHO, it seems like they're dragons for druids. I mean, look at the Legendary Wolf. That's about LV 14 -- about the same point that a paladin can get a dragon cohort.

Also, IMHO, there's a lot of ways to solve the problem of animals -- when you outgrow a dire tiger, get two.

I agree that the term "legendary" calls up all sorts of images of what these things plainly aren't. There are so many legends of animals out there and these fit just about none of them. I think in my game they won't exist as written, or if they do I will change it from "legendary" to "druid-pacifier".