Rough Draft Excerpt from my dinosaur document:
Battletitan Dinosaur
Battletitan Dinosaur: The Battletitan is specifically bred to be a combat mount. With all armor proficiencies, Cleave, Improved Initiative, Improved Natural Attack (Bite), Improved Natural Attack (Claw), Improved Overrun, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Multiattack, Power Attack, Run, Improved Grab & Swallow Whole, this creature puts most of the melee classes to shame. And you get to ride it!
Let’s learn more about this critter! Parts of the MMIII entry read:
“This giant, bipedal, reptilian beast has powerful jaws, massive teeth and thick bony plates along its back and spiked tail.”
“Meticulously bred as hybrids of other dinosaurs. They do not occur naturally; only elaborate, nonmagical breeding techniques give rise to the mighty battletitan.”
“With the ferocity of the most dangerous carnivores and the defenses of the toughest armored herbivores…”
“Battletitans are trained from birth to fight carrying a rider and wearing barding.”
“The rider gives the creature commands as it would any other mount trained for war.”
“A rider must make a Ride check to attack while riding a Battletitan, and usually requires a reach weapon to attack foes.”
“Training a young Battletitan requires six months and a DC 28 Handle Animal check; Battletitans cannot be domesticated if they reach adulthood without having been trained. ”
“Battletitans are naturally sterile, and each specimen is the product of direct crossbreeding of other dinosaurs.”
Battletitans are Huge dinosaurs, with 36HD and a CR of 16. That’s a sick mount. Want, Yes Please! While the entry does not specifically state which dinosaurs are the parents of such a creature, there is some information we can glean: Mix of herbivore and carnivore, massive teeth, powerful jaw, thick bony plates, spiked tail. When considering all the herbivores with bony plates and a spiked tail (That have D&D stat entries), we are limited only to the Gargantuan-sized Stegosaurus. When we consider massive teeth and a powerful jaw, we have a few options to choose from. Let’s deduce the possibilities from the stats and mechanical abilities: The Battletitan is a Huge creature, therefore the other parent is not also Gargantuan or larger. It is unlikely smaller than Large, because breeding would be difficult between a range of 3 or more sizes between parents. So, in the range of Large and Huge dinosaurs with massive teeth and powerful jaws, we have: Deinonychus (Large), Allosaurus(Huge), Megaraptor(Huge) and Tyrannosaurus (Huge). The Battletitan possesses the Improved Grab and Swallow Whole abilities, which it does not inherit from the Stegosaurus, but is possessed by the Allosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus. Since it is lacking the pounce ability and foot claws, this further confirms eliminating the Megaraptor and Deinonychus as parenting options. Since the Stegosaurus and the Allosaurus share a Trample ability and the Battletitan does not, I’m inclined to choose the Tyrannosaurus as the other parent. Battletitan does have Improved Overrrun, so a balance between a Trample and non-Trample parent perhaps?
And so, we can reasonably conclude that the Battletitan is a crossbreed between a Tyrannosaurus and a Stegosaurus, using nonmagical means. There are many details that the entry leaves blank, such as which creature provides which gender parent? How do you get a carnivore and herbivore to be amorous, instead of killing each other? For this I have two suggestions. The first, have an arbitrarily, ridiculously high Handle Animal score, and handwave the details. The second is, anything you can do without magic, you can do better with magic! (Assuming the actual copulation is non-magical, but the process of getting them to copulate could be). Spells like
Omen of Peril, Augury, Divination, Commune, Contact Other Plane, Legend Lore, Vision, and similar Divination spells can help you discern answers to the question, “How do I breed these two dinosaurs together to get a Battletitan?” Spells like
Calm Animal, Charm Animal & Dominate Animal will allow you to influence the behavior of the dinosaurs favorably so as to actually produce the offspring.
Speak with Animals is likely to both allow you to gain information and diplomatically influence the dinosaurs. Two Telepath Psions with Mind Switch... Ick, but possible.
So, you’ve now learned the secret (when you find out, tell me what it is!). Swell! Makin babies. Next, how to we get an infant, how long does it take to grow to adulthood, and how to we train it during that time?
Well, we need 1) to time it takes between conception and laying the egg, 2) the time it takes for such an egg to hatch, and 3) the time it takes to grow from infancy to adulthood.
The RAW is fairly silent on all of this. Therefore, we have to draw on other sources of information to fill in the blanks. One source is real world information (Dinosaurs were real!), another source is analogous creatures.
My google-fu has failed in discovering anything on the life cycle of a Stegosaurus. Since the Battletitan appears physically much more similar to it’s bipedal parent in size and shape, I’d feel more comfortable basing the growth and development off of the other parent, the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Tyrannosaurus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia offers some insight into the lifespan of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. It is believed that this dinosaur lived to a maximum of approximately 30 years. It is also believed that the T-rex experienced a growth spurt in the teen years starting around age 14 into mature adulthood at age 18. These 4 years saw a growth from about 4,000lbs (Border of Large & Huge size) up to over 9000lbs (Well into Huge size).
Wouldn’t you know, Draconomicon p.12-13 shows the age progressions of dragons, a creature at least physically analogous to the T-Rex. Dragons are Wyrmlings from birth to around age 5, Very Young ages 6-15, and during the Young range
begin to experience the growth spurt that carries them towards adulthood ages 16-25. Isn’t that a nifty comparison? Now, the lifespan of the T-Rex and any dragon are nowhere near comparable, and the rate of reaching sexual maturity, “adulthood” is far from the same. A T-Rex achieves Huge size around age 14, where the mighty Gold and Red Dragons, largest of the species, does not attain Huge size until the Young Adult phase after the age of 50. Since the T-Rex reaches adulthood (age 25) at about half the age a typical dragon does (Age 50), let’s roughly half the durations of each of the phases. If we model the T-Rex progression off of a sped up version the largest dragons, we can expect a “Wyrmling” phase age 0-3 (Medium), a Very Young phase from 3-7 (Large), the Young phase age 8-13 (Large), Juvenile age 14-18 (Huge), and finally Adult between 18 and 28 (Huge).
An Young Adult Red Dragon has 19HD at the age it reaches physical maturity. A Tyrannosaurus has 18HD in the Monster Manual stat block, the comparison seems close enough to carry it’s own weight.
We know that the Battletitan is not a Tyranosaurus. It has twice the HD at 36. It’s half Stegosaurus! But the T-Rex info is all we have to go on, so let’s carry over the life cycle and age categories regardless. MMIII p.58 provides information about training the Battletitan at a young age, for 6 months with a DC 28 Handle Animal check, otherwise it is not domesticated and unable to be used as a mount without this training. This means that sometime within the first 17 years of life, this training must occur.
Thoughts?
Edit: Realized I totally skipped the part on egg rearing. I'll work on it.
