Beast Musings.

[Dreaddisease]

Good luck getting a hollow boned, low internal organed hippogriff to carry a human rider. I based its weight off of its carrying weight. If it did have hollow bones and what not it might weigh the same as a heavy set human. 250-300 maybe.

(Insert Monty Python swallow skit here)

 

[Crothian]

Well, unless wizards ever gives some actually detail to any opf their monsters, it's rather moot becasue there just isn't enough info given to determine this sort of thing.

 

[SpikeyFreak]

Look, this is all quite beside the point. Winged flight is simply not a magical ability in D&D. Period. A creature does not become a magical beast simply by virtue of having functional wings.

Indeed.

Originally posted by Dreaddisease
Good luck getting a hollow boned, low internal organed hippogriff to carry a human rider. I based its weight off of its carrying weight. If it did have hollow bones and what not it might weigh the same as a heavy set human. 250-300 maybe.

Indeed. There were flying dinosaurs that had 30 foot wingspans that were the size of a turky and weighed 25lbs. I doubt if the wingspan necissary to lift a 200 lb creature is really feasable.

--Contradictory Spikey

 

[dcollins]

Agreeing with Dr. Rictus here. Regardless of the exact limitations, the basic notion of "winged flight" is clearly a real-world ability. Is winged flight listed in the core rules as a special quality, or spell-like or supernatural? Can it be dispelled or go away inside an antimagic field? If "no", then in the world of D&D, it is not a magical ability. A creature may be fantasy (and hence a Beast), without being magical (and thus a Magical Beast).

However, it's a common error to specify creatures as "Beasts" when they should really be "Animals": www.superdan.net/dndmisc/beasts_in_cc.html

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Very cogent argument you link to, dcollins. Though you should be careful about the use of the term "prehistoric," given that being "historical" is part of the definition of an animal.

But of course that leaves the issue of what we mean by "historical:" in the case of D&D, the line seems to be drawn with the beginning of mankind (not for example the beginning of civilization or of recorded history). That neatly puts pleistocene creatures as animals and dinosaurs as beasts.

And you're quite right about the Tome of Horrors issue you mention: merely being gigantic in size clearly does not make a beast out of what would otherwise be an animal in D&D. I might note that many such creatures are just as unrealistic on the basis of their size as a gigantic winged flyer, but you don't see us arguing about them (yet).

 

[HellHound]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Beast Musings.

Going strickly by the laws of physics, bumblebees should be incapable of flight.

That is not actually true. Recent scientific studies of the physics of bumblebee flight show the exact methods they use to fly (through the creation of micro-eddies and stuff - it's fairly complex physics that only applies to creatures of the size of a bumblebee or thereabouts).

 

[lukelightning]

Stirges are birds?!?!

Someone posted "Stirges are birds, and therefore vertebrates."

I don't know about you, but where I live birds do not have 6 legs, 4 batwings and blood-draining probosci. Maybe in Australia they do, though, or perhaps Canada...

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Re: Stirges are birds?!?!

I don't know about you, but where I live birds do not have 6 legs, 4 batwings and blood-draining probosci.

And yet, you can't have batwings without an internal skeleton, since that's part of the structure that defines a batwing. So the point still stands. Stirges are vertibrates.

 

[Wippit Guud]

Re: Stirges are birds?!?!

Someone posted "Stirges are birds, and therefore vertebrates."

I don't know about you, but where I live birds do not have 6 legs, 4 batwings and blood-draining probosci. Maybe in Australia they do, though, or perhaps Canada...

Well I don't know about having bird like that up here... but we DO have mosquito's that are about that big....

 

[Silver Griffon]

Dire hawk is in MMII. Unless, of course you just want to make your own