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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5065674" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 167: March 1991part 2/6The ecology of the su-monster: Another excuse to ensure everyone knows about a newly updated monster here, including a reprint of it's stats. In this case, it's also a means of indirectly promoting the newly released Complete Psionics handbook. Gotta collect 'em all! That bit of suspicion aside, it's not a bad ecology in it's own right, spinning a rather grim tale of how creatures like this can be a threat to an entire community. Sometimes you don't need dozens of varieties of monster to make an interesting adventure, just one being numerous, devious and intractable. When they can also have various selected powers that differ from one individual to another, they can be pretty versatile even without class abilities. A strong revaluation of an underused creature. Tempting. The dragon's bestiary decides to give us some more problematic plants to make your outdoor adventures a little more dangerous. Like underwater stuff, this isn't too common an option for writers, but there's tons of material to draw upon, so it still has plenty of room for adding surprising creations to your game. Giant bladderwort pretends to be solid ground in marshy terrain, and then sucks you gloopily under for a good digestin'.  Swamps are already one of the least glamourous locations for adventurers to tromp through. Stuff like this is why I try and get flying powers ASAP. Giant butterwort also follow the ambush predator route. They'll stick to you like a fly in amber and wrap you up in their loving tendrils. They get nearly everywhere if you don't clear them out as well. Plants can grow surprisingly fast, remember. Giant rainbow plants dazzle you with their pretty colours and lure you in, before dropping the act and suffocating you with their sticky leaves. Another one that probably has less ferocious relatives in real jungles. Giant waterwheel plants are another way of making players deeply paranoid of going wading. They'll lurk below the water and digest you leg first. Sword Grass is pretty self-explanatory. You try and step on it, it slices you to ribbons and uses your corpse to enrich it's soil. They're not hard to mow down, but will regrow unless you dig up the whole damn root system. Which means like goblinoids, they can keep showing up to challenge low level adventurers again and again. Clubthorn are mobile holly bushes that'll beat you to a pulp. Since normal holly can do enough pain on it's own, that seems pretty decent grounds for paranoia. Something blackberry related would be even more tempting to lure us into a false sense of security. Bloodflowers put you to sleep, and then drain you dry slowly. Now there's a pretty common archetype. Just the thing to be growing in a vampire's garden. Helborn seem rather inspired by the Little Shop of Horrors, being sentient, semimobile creatures that can grow big enough to swallow a person, and have quite uncanny persuasive powers. Like Audrey II, they may try and deal with you, but that just puts you one lapse in feeding schedule away from being next on the menu. Still, anything intelligent can be played with variety, and I find the thought of using one of these as a crime lord and slave trader quite appealing. I can do a quite good impersonation of their signature line, and my players are the sort to appreciate that, so look out world. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" /> This lot definitely make good additions to your random encounter tables for various terrains. Curses are Divine: Or more encouragement for your DM to be a sadistic, ironic, arbitrary bastard. Does anyone really need encouraging for that?! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Anyway, this is for those of you who'd like to put a bit of deific intervention in when your players loot, pillage, desecrate and slaughter the stuff of the wrong god, but aren't sure how to go about it. Chances of the god noticing and deciding to intervene in response to various actions, and a whole bunch of sample punishments. Under this one, it's a damn good idea to pick a team and stick with it, because gods generally don't mess with other god's sheep directly, but a free agent is free to be smitten from all sides. And a betrayer is trusted by no-one. The fantasy mafia in the sky are watching, and treading on the wrong turf without paying your dues may be ignored most of the time, but when response comes, it will be horribly disproportionate. One to be used with caution, depending on your assumptions about the nature of gods, their degree of omniscience, range of attention, degree of busyness and amount they care about their worshippers. Choice is yours, blah blah blah. Can't get up much passion for that.</blockquote>

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