How frequent are vermin encounters in your game?

[Glyfair]

Could you give some information about them?

Trolls in Glorantha (very different from D&D trolls - intelligent creatures with a strong darkness connection) have a close relationship to trolls. They use them as beasts of burden, familiars, pets, etc. Insects are closely tied to darkness in Glorantha, thus the connection.

In fact, one of the adventures in the RQ supplement Trollpack (the best and most thorough racial supplement for any RPG ever and I say that without qualification) has the players dealing with a grubfarm in troll lands.

Gorakki (troll goddess of insects)

 

[Jhaelen]

Trolls in Glorantha (very different from D&D trolls - intelligent creatures with a strong darkness connection) have a close relationship to trolls.

Who would have guessed?

 

[Set]

I use them when they're called for, and prefer them at lower levels to 'fantasy monsters.'

I tend to give 'mindless vermin' an Int score of 1 (since bugs can be trained, and it solves the weird corner cases of how Drow / Duergar etc. training 'riding spiders' and the like), and get rid of the 'mindless' special quality.

In my Freeport game, the party ended up encountering brightly colored giant praying mantises, with ornate carapaces, and discovered later that, thousands of years ago, the Valossan's used them as guardian beasts, and the different colors represented the different noble houses, as they each modified their own servant critters to show 'house colors' and the like. (I kind of wanted to evoke the feel from the book Congo, where an animal species reflected behaviors and the like imposed upon them by a long-dead human civilization.)

They've also dealt with vermin in other ways. An alchemist might hire them to capture giant spiders, so that he can 'milk them' for the materials to make Tanglefoot Bags, or whatever.

They ran into a creature type I called the Sun Kings, which was just a locust swarm with a hive-mind intelligence of 6, statistically, but was a swarm of red and yellow carapaced flying beetles who carried fine glaives made from obsidian and chitin, and fine shields made from cast off carapaces (and who glowed faintly, because of a phosphorescent bacteria that lived in their hive). The 'Sun Kings' lived in huge termite-mound like nests, which had bones and bamboo rods inserted into the structure, both for support, and so that the hollow insides of the rods and bones made for pre-made uncollapsible tunnels (and also stuck out of the mound in all directions, like impromptu pungee-stick 'earthworks'). Deep in the hive, the Earth Queen, a sessile Int 9-10 bug the size of a housecat, with the casting ability of a 1st to 3rd level Adept, created alchemical mixtures within her own body from the materials her swarms of minions brought her, secreting them in fleshy sacs for use defending the lair.

After fighting off the first couple swarm attacks, and finding the 2 meter high, 3 meter across 'mound,' the party then had to fend off attacks of acid and alchemical fire being lobbed from the nest!

So yeah, I threw my players against Locust Swarms that used alchemist's fire. I'm crazy that way...

 

[BLACKDIRGE]

I particularly like vermin. The problem is coming up with an explanation why you might encounter different kinds of vermin in the same place.

For instance, recently I was scratching my head trying to figure out a reason why the PCs would be attacked by a giant praying mantis, a few centipedes, etc at the same time; that's not normal insect behavior!

I found one solution is to have various humanoid groups that use insects, either as mounts, symbiotes, or weapons. My PCs are coming across some jungle-dwelling cannibals that use praying mantids for mounts and guards, use immobilizing centipedes as grenade-like weapons (tossing them at the feet, letting them attack as normal), and use corpse slugs to compliment the ghouls they venerate.

The nice thing about vermin, too, is the variety and availability for inspiration. The animal kingdom is full of very curious species. Take for instance the wasp that shoves its stinger in its prey's brain, controls them and makes them walk into a hole it can lay eggs on them. That's a really cool idea for a monster, mind-controlling wasps! They're also fairly simple, and easy to sprinkle into any environment or situation.

(Plug: Blackdirge's 4e BUGS pdf; I had no part in making it, but I like and use the contents!)

Thanks for the plug, Rechan.

I love vermin, and I use them all the time. There's an ickyness factor to giant insects and other invertebrates that is hard to achieve with other monsters. I mean, being eaten alive by a giant spider or a giant praying mantis is beyond horrible; there's just an inherent wrongness when insects prey on higher life forms. Just YouTube “praying mantis” for some videos of mantises eating mice and goldfish to see what I mean.

Rechan, you bring up a good point about vermin. They are not inclined to work together on any level. I think when constructing an encounter with different types of vermin you should use that scene in Peter Jackson's King Kong as inspiration. The giant creepy crawlies in that scene weren’t working together, but they were all acting at once to get at the "food." That's always how I envision an encounter with multiple vermin.

BD