D&D 5E Rot grubs

[FormerlyHemlock]

After all, what do rot grubs turn into when they mature?

Kender.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If I had a group carrying rot grubs around to infest random foes, I would:

(2) Make them roll each time they handled the colony to keep from being infested themselves. After a few characters have died or nearly died due to accidents, they might decide it's not so clever an idea after all...

That was part of the old-school Gygaxian approach to discouraging poison - make it so book-keeping- and risk- heavy that it wasn't worth the busywork of determining if you poisoned yourself, let alone the actual risk, itself.

After all, what do rot grubs turn into when they mature?

Grub certainly implies a life-cycle stage of an insect to a modern reader. The common medieval belief, even among the learned (going all the way back to Aristotle), however, was that maggots arose from rotting meat via spontaneous generation. Thus rot grubs, as lethal, monstrous maggots, might be assumed to arise from the death & putrescence of, well, monsters, embodying their monstrous qualities.

But, I suppose you could pick any insectile dungeon denizen whose larval forms aren't specified, and make them the adult form.

 

[LordEntrails]

...
But, I suppose you could pick any insectile dungeon denizen whose larval forms aren't specified, and make them the adult form.

You could, but which one would be the perfect answer?
Ooh, this is interesting. Carrion crawlers and purple worms are the easy answers. Not necessarily wrong, but, not very creative. Could it be more than one? Maybe their is a whole family of beasties that the larval form is a rot grub. Maybe a whole new beastie?

 

[Tony Vargas]

You could, but which one would be the perfect answer?
Ooh, this is interesting. Carrion crawlers and purple worms are the easy answers. Not necessarily wrong, but, not very creative. Could it be more than one? Maybe their is a whole family of beasties that the larval form is a rot grub. Maybe a whole new beastie?

Carrion Crawler leapt immediately to mind, since it does lay its eggs on live victims. But the adult from is already caterpillar-like, and vastly larger than a rot grub - each grub would have to polish off a lot of corpses to grow into one.

It'd be amusing if they were a more innocuous dungeon denizen (not that those get detailed much), like the firebeetle or something. More out-there possibilities might include the infamous ear-seeker, stirges (they look like bats but they're chitinous), and, of course, pixies.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It'd be amusing if they were a more innocuous dungeon denizen (not that those get detailed much), like the firebeetle or something. More out-there possibilities might include the infamous ear-seeker, stirges (they look like bats but they're chitinous), and, of course, pixies.

Don't tell my players, but at my table stirges are the larval form of dragons.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Don't tell my players, but at my table stirges are the larval form of dragons.

That's a lotta blood...

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

That's a lotta blood...

Fantasy physiology. (And wyrmlings aren't that big anyway.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fantasy physiology. (And wyrmlings aren't that big anyway.)

I was thinking instead of wyrmlings, stirges hatched from the eggs. So a nice fat, happy, blood-bloated stirge pupates and emerges as a wyrmling? OK. Doesn't say much for draconic parenting, though....

... oh, unless stirges are orphaned dracolarvae, and normally they feed on the parent?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I was thinking instead of wyrmlings, stirges hatched from the eggs. So a nice fat, happy, blood-bloated stirge pupates and emerges as a wyrmling? OK. Doesn't say much for draconic parenting, though....

... oh, unless stirges are orphaned dracolarvae, and normally they feed on the parent?

Even worse, at my table, dragons don't consider wyrmlings to be dragons yet, any more than humans consider sperm to be humans. They're still merely potential dragons until they become at least young adults around age five.

You can slaughter all the stirges and wyrmlings you like and dragons just won't care.

Also, there's only one race of dragon. Reds/golds/greens/etc. are all one race. Just like crocodile gender/physiology is determined by temperature, which dragon phenotype manifests in an individual depends on its temperament, which depends at least partially upon its inclinations and actions. (No metaphysical debates over free will, please.) Dragon moms will tell their young adult offspring the equivalent of, "Better study hard, sweetie, or you might grow up to be a white!" (White dragon = Stupid, brutal. Black dragon = vicious, cruel. Red dragon = commanding, powerful, unscrupulous. Copper dragon = frivolous. Gold dragon = benevolent, pompous. Etc.)

 

[MechaPilot]

Dragon moms will tell their young adult offspring the equivalent of, "Better study hard, sweetie, or you might grow up to be a white!" (White dragon = Stupid, brutal. Black dragon = vicious, cruel. Red dragon = commanding, powerful, unscrupulous. Copper dragon = frivolous. Gold dragon = benevolent, pompous. Etc.)

A real tiger-dragon mommy, huh.