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Add some flavor to a mushroom-rich adventure

Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
My player characters will be encountering a dungeon complex partially overgrown with mushroom and fungi. Shriekers and violet fungi are fine, I guess, but they're pretty much old hat at this point.

Help me put the "fun" in "fungi" for this low level party.
 

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Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
Supporter
Hm. The concept of a mushroom ooze comes to mind... the duxelles.

Or perhaps the mushroom and fungi aren't the hazards at all. The nearly-sentient insect monsters that tend their fungal garden, however....
 


Celebrim

Legend
Basidrond are pretty fun. Hallucinations are an underused status effect in modern D&D.

Yellow Mold and Brown Mold are classics. If your party is high enough level, up the horror with an intelligent psionic yellow mold.

No mushroom kingdom is complete without some Myconid shephards.
 

J.Quondam

CR 1/8
Riffing off shriekers, you could include a fungus that creates some sort of effect when touched. For example, I once used mushrooms that released a gout of steamy fog when subjected to heat (in an area PCs likely to encounter fire-based attacks). Clouds of hallucinogenic, sneezing, fear-inducing, etc, spores; or a spurt of slick, greasy slime could be effects that could compound the hazards of nearby terrain.

Yellow mold puffballs, or other alternative forms of known varieties of dangerous fungi.

Sentient slime mold (reskinned slug/worm or something; which communicate via wet whistles or telepathy?)

I once used a mythic "Amethyst Tree" which ultimately proved to be a vast and ancient semi-sentient violet fungus that communicated prophecies in dreams.

The gills of a large overhanging toadstool or bracket fungus could be the home of a swarm of bats, spiders, stirges or something.

Invisible phantom fungus is fun. I've used them as beasts of burden and food for grimlocks. In 3e, they remained invisible after death... which I assumed also meant that the grimlocks' favorite meal -- phantom fungus fillets -- were also invisible.

A witch might fly around in an inverted toadstool, perhaps scattering poisonous spores upon foes.
 

Lidgar

Gongfarmer
A small colony of myconids is always fun. They could have shrieker guards and view nightsoil as a prized possession, offering the party "special potions" in return. Maybe they also ask the party to protect their community from encroaching duegar, ala Baulder's Gate 3.
 


Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
Supporter
Myconids are classic.

But the Campestri from Wild Beyond the Witchlight are just funny...

campestri.png
 

Richards

Legend
I built an adventure once around a lizardfolk lair in which they harvested a type of fungus which, when disturbed, produced Strength-draining spores. The lizardfolk, already aware of the effects of the spores, would purposefully disturb them when intruders invaded and then make use of their ability to hold their breath for a long time to make sure they were not affected by the spores, while the intruders invariably were.

Johnathan
 

Tonguez

A suffusion of yellow
Singing campestri who want to be friends
Ascomoids rolling down corridors
A Gnome alchemist collecting rare fungal specimens
Fire flowers that temporarily grant fireball when consumed
Swarm of Spores
a pair of lost plumbers with Italian accents
Rotting Shambling Mound (undead)
An area of ancient eroded green pipes and floating bricks
Dagobah Gnarltree (The Spider-trees of Star Wars recast as a giant fungus)

(remember that Shrooms can be defeated by jumping on their heads (or hit with a giant mallet or fireball)
 
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