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Converting prehistoric creatures
- Thread starter Shade
- Start date
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Cleon
Legend
Challenge Rating 2 seems to fit. They're pretty close stat-wise to the CR2 Monitor Lizard and Crocodile.
Rappy
First Post
How's this?
This creature resembles a shrunken elephant with sparse, coarse hair dotting its tanned hide.
Dwarf elephants are the results of insular dwarfism on small island chains in the warm regions of the world. Grazing in matriarchal herds of up to 20 individuals or smaller bands of sub-adult bulls, they roam the scrub plains of their fortress-like islands in a near-constant search for food, using their trunks to feed upon the sparse vegetation of scrub bushes found dotting their habitat. While some sea-faring traders attempt to capture dwarf elephants as exotic goods in foreign lands, the natural flightiness (due to many island predators, usually large eagles or monitor lizards, being all too willing to consume the tiny elephants) and fickle diet (mostly endemic shrub bushes of the islands they inhabit) of the species makes them generally unsuitable for such ventures.
A dwarf elephant stands about 3 feet at the shoulder and weighs 300 to 500 pounds.
Thirdly, the pygmy mammoths were 5'+ at the shoulder (the pygmy woolly mammoth was pretty big, being 6-8 feet tall, it just wasn't as big as a regular mammoth, being roughly 2/3rd their size).
So I'd recommend using the Large version of these dwarf elephants for their stats, how about changing that bit to:
Dwarf Mammoth: A similar species of dwarf proboscid living on some temperate and cold islands. These animals are roughly twice the size of a dwarf elephant, being 5 to 7 feet tall and weighing around 2000 pounds. Use the stats for a dwarf elephant that has been Advanced to Large size.
Combat
Dwarf elephants would rather pursue flight than fight. If they are pressed into combat, however, it's a fairly straightforward act of run and gun, with the largest individuals in the herd rushing the opponent with their tusks before retreating back into the safety of numbers.
This creature resembles a shrunken elephant with sparse, coarse hair dotting its tanned hide.
Dwarf elephants are the results of insular dwarfism on small island chains in the warm regions of the world. Grazing in matriarchal herds of up to 20 individuals or smaller bands of sub-adult bulls, they roam the scrub plains of their fortress-like islands in a near-constant search for food, using their trunks to feed upon the sparse vegetation of scrub bushes found dotting their habitat. While some sea-faring traders attempt to capture dwarf elephants as exotic goods in foreign lands, the natural flightiness (due to many island predators, usually large eagles or monitor lizards, being all too willing to consume the tiny elephants) and fickle diet (mostly endemic shrub bushes of the islands they inhabit) of the species makes them generally unsuitable for such ventures.
A dwarf elephant stands about 3 feet at the shoulder and weighs 300 to 500 pounds.
Thirdly, the pygmy mammoths were 5'+ at the shoulder (the pygmy woolly mammoth was pretty big, being 6-8 feet tall, it just wasn't as big as a regular mammoth, being roughly 2/3rd their size).
So I'd recommend using the Large version of these dwarf elephants for their stats, how about changing that bit to:
Dwarf Mammoth: A similar species of dwarf proboscid living on some temperate and cold islands. These animals are roughly twice the size of a dwarf elephant, being 5 to 7 feet tall and weighing around 2000 pounds. Use the stats for a dwarf elephant that has been Advanced to Large size.
Combat
Dwarf elephants would rather pursue flight than fight. If they are pressed into combat, however, it's a fairly straightforward act of run and gun, with the largest individuals in the herd rushing the opponent with their tusks before retreating back into the safety of numbers.
Last edited:
I think the posting is wonderful, but I am not understanding this sentence transition... Am I seeing a cross-post typo, or am I not seeing a missing word here? I don't know what the correct statement should be for "their miniature [fortresses?] with... These miniature pachyderms take...........
Aside from this, it is quite excellent Rap.
Cleon
Legend
Fixed.
I was rather tired when I wrote that.
I think the flavour text is fine overall, but I'd suggest a few changes.
Firstly, I don't feel it needs the bit about the gerenuk, so I'd cut it out. Secondly, I think "vegetation in shrub bushes" reads a bit wrong. I'd change the first flavour paragraph:
Dwarf elephants are the results of insular dwarfism on small island chains in the warm regions of the world. Grazing in matriarchal herds of up to 20 individuals or smaller bands of sub-adult bulls, they roam the scrub plains of their fortress-like islands in a near-constant search for food, using their trunks to feed upon the sparse vegetation of scrub bushes found dotting their habitat. While some sea-faring traders attempt to capture dwarf elephants as exotic goods in foreign lands, the natural flightiness (due to many island predators, usually large eagles or monitor lizards, being all too willing to consume the tiny elephants) and fickle diet (mostly endemic shrub bushes of the islands they inhabit) of the species makes them generally unsuitable for such ventures.
A dwarf elephant stands about 3 feet at the shoulder and weighs 300 to 500 pounds.
Thirdly, the pygmy mammoths were 5'+ at the shoulder (the pygmy woolly mammoth was pretty big, being 6-8 feet tall, it just wasn't as big as a regular mammoth, being roughly 2/3rd their size).A dwarf elephant stands about 3 feet at the shoulder and weighs 300 to 500 pounds.
So I'd recommend using the Large version of these dwarf elephants for their stats, how about changing that bit to:
Dwarf Mammoth: A similar species of dwarf proboscid living on some temperate and cold islands. These animals are roughly twice the size of a dwarf elephant, being 5 to 7 feet tall and weighing around 2000 pounds. Use the stats for a dwarf elephant that has been Advanced to Large size.
I have found other analogies elsewhere in creature descriptions which help to describe the ecological niche of a creature which no longer exists to be quite helpful, actually. Please keep it included. I have no other beefs with input from this post (I am openly uneducated about the rest...
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