Fantastic Fauna and Flora

[Verequus]

In nearly all campaign settings I've remember, the fauna and flora consists of earth animals and plants + some monsters due to magic and the imagination of designers. This has been taken into extreme with a German RPG, which is a kind of earth with magic. I find this both unfullfilling and "unrealistic". Next to the abysmal small probabilities, that in parallel worlds the animals and plants are to a good part the same, I doubt that gods and magic are shaping the world without having any influence on the less intelligent species. If it is accounted for this possibility, then more through templates which are applied upon special cases.

So I seek for my own homebrew two kind of animals or plants, so I can turn the danger and novelty one notch up:

1. Creatures which are a variation of a known animal or plant. This can be a small change of physiology, a change of niche (like in our world, where the fox, a canine species, emigrated to a feline niche) or even a hybridisation of two creatures. Whatever the change is, the base animals/plants should be somewhat recognizable or at least relateable to mundane creatures. It shouldn't be as exotic as a chimera, but more or less a possible animal or plant in our world.

2. Creatures with some special abilities, which are a possible evolutional adaption through having magic available. Those abilities shouldn't be for the most time as dangerous as for true monsters, because the predators should still have a good chance to hunt their prey - a fly capable of casting lightning bolts will soon exterminate birds, if those don't develop some defenses. While the arms race should go further than in the real world, it shouldn't end in blowing the world up.

Creatures can fall into both categories and it would be nice, if some thoughts could be put into the relationships between the animals and plants.

Some sample animals, I've created:

• A horse, which has at its hooves retractable thorns and a powerful jaw for better selfdefense.
• A cow, which can release gas to make enemies unconscious.
• A deer, which protects itself through electricity.
• A mouse, which is somewhat ooze-like to be able to squeeze through smallest cracks.
• A cat, which has a venom to paralyze the mice for preventing an escape.

What can you came up with?

 

[JustKim]

I haven't strictly invented much I can recall, but I like to make use of some of the less offensive D&D monsters as a natural part of the ecosystem. The current obscure flavor of the day is the al-mi'raj from the 1E Fiend Folio, a psionic, horned bunny.

The CC conversion.

 

[ender_wiggin]

Cranium Rats!!!

Rats that, when banded together, can make use of the ambient magical energy around them to cast kewl stuff.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

Jungles in my homebrew often cantain Cackeymats, the stupidly named little creature that makes for a fun familiar or pet - basically they're tauric reesus (sp) monkies/housecats - like cute little wemics.

There are also some innocuous sunflower-like plants that follow (point to) the nearest magical effect, rather than towards the sun. Everybody agrees that these plants will be suitable material components for some spell some day, but nobody's figured out yet what, or how, exactly to use them.

 

[DMH]

When it comes back up, I have a thread on http://www.oathbound.net that is exactly this. The thread title is Background critters (and plants).

 

[Tonguez]

Somewhere around the net is the 'Aphis' my write-up modifying sheep stats to create a giant vermin (a soft-shell Aphid) which became the major herd animal in one homebrew (the 'wool' was a silk excreted through the creatures shell - and actually its body waste!)
Other giant vermin were also present including Sea-Scorpians (giant scorpian with swim speed), and a forest dwelling horseshoe crab (a common pet)

That same world had no mammals with the niche of most creatures taken up by eye-less amphibians (who used electric pulses to see). The most notable of these were a crocodile like axolotl, a landbased Chalicothere-like amphibian, and goblins (who ae amphibians too)
Various feathered Coelurosaurs (proto-avian dinosaurs like Deinonychus, Velociraptor etc) held the niche of predatory mammals (including monkeys, pack hunters canines and felines etc)

 

[the Jester]

In my world, there are no (well, very few) horses. So instead of horses, mules and ponies, folks use the following as mounts and beasts of burden:

Garen- Slightly smaller than a horse, looks like a zebra except it has two colors of green, brown and yellow. Jungle zebras with a better attitude. These take the place of riding horses.

Kocho- Big flightless birds, foul-tempered and suitable for warfare. These take the place of warhorses.

Linnep- A smaller equine species, about like a pony.

Bodokod- Big tireless beetles, used as pack beasts. Slow but steady. Not too good for riding, but they make fantastic mules.

Shikkigar- Large cats trained as war mounts by gnomes. Ouch.

 

[Gez]

There are several weird critters, weird plants, and weird rocks IMC.

Some evolved naturally, other were bred and altered by magic-using races (that is to say, about everyone).

For example, the gigantic starfir tree, whose branches grow in snowflake-like patterns, with about one meter between each "flake" of branches, was long ago created by Faen druids to serve as home for their kind.

Floatvines are an example of natural magical plant. These aquatic vines do not land their roots in the soil, but instead drift freely on the rivers. A bit carnivorous, its sticky roots sometimes catch fish or molluscs or other tiny aquatic critters and slowly digests them.
They grow large, shelled fruits that double as floaters: once the fruits are ripe, the shell opens, drops its precious charge, and closes back once empty, and a new fruit will be grown. When they finally reach the open sea, they slowly agglutinate until forming little islands of floatsam which serve as home for a species of salmon that feeds on the floatvine fruits. These salmons are naturally immune to the root's glue. When the salmons swim back to the river to spawn, they unknowingly also bring back floatvine seeds with them, which are laid amongst the eggs. The seeds grow into full-fledged plants first by stealing nutrients from the nearby eggs, decimating about one quarter of the salmon eggs.

A symbiotic relationship of mutual devouring, that's the beauty of wildlife.

 

[Verequus]

Thank you! There are some very interesting creatures, which I'll integrate directly in my world. Do you have more ideas like them? I'd love to them!

 

[grodog]

RuleMaster, if you're looking for good flora-inspiration for your games, I highly recommend Rob Kuntz's Garden of the Plantmaster book. It's been published in print twice---once in 1987 as a generic 1e module by Rob's company Creations Unlimited, and once recently for Kingdoms of Kalamar by Kenzer & Co.

GotPM is an adventure set in a fantastical garden filled with ferocious fauna, and it also contains a campaign resource section which is filled with interesting ideas and ways to use plants in your games. From a quick comparison I don't believe that the Kenzer version cut any of the campaign source materials from their version, but I'm not 100% sure on that front. You can get the 1e CU version from

If you have a copy of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Rob gets a thank you for his creative design contributions to the garden level from Gary Gygax, so that'll give you a taste of the kinds of things in GotPM.