D&D 5E Playable Plant People

[Azurewraith]

Some (very few) people can sell hair to make wigs. Blood donation isn't compensated, though you CAN be compensated for donating plasma...up to 2x per week for about $30. You can't sell most organs. Not legally, at least.

Feces, however, can be donated for the treatment of certain diseases (like C. difficile infections) for up to $13,000/year. However, the donors have to be so healthy, only 4% pass the screening process.
Sooo, overall, not exactly a solid basis for a stable trade system.

Better go make me a wheat grass smoothie and possibly go do some form of yoga

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Plus, a lot of SF does the mirror thing too. I'd argue Fantasy is even less about the mirroring than SF is – Fantasy takes you to some fantastical place that is unlike reality. You're breaking away. That's why Tolkien is one of the critically successful Fantasy writers; he grounds his fantasy. But SF is usually grounded as a mirror of the now, with a few things changed. You get rubber forehead aliens and planets of hats that discuss elements of current society. When it starts going so out-there that it's not reflective of reality, then we're really in Science Fantasy, not Sci-Fi.

Fantasy is different from reality in intuitive ways, ways that are comfortable for us to process. In Tolkien's fantasy, agriculture, war, government, art, morality, and feeling are all immediately recognizable to those of us brought up in Western culture. It feels natural to us, in some ways more natural than reality, because the essences of these things as we understand them are distilled and set before us in pure or even exaggerated form: the pumpkins are always round and orange, the battles are always epic clashes of steel, the kings are always descended from an ancient line, and so on. It's the world as we're ready and willing to imagine it -- that's the emotional resonance whence the genre derives its power and appeal.

SF, in contrast, challenges our imaginations with reality, because the truth is that reality is much, much weirder than we are well equipped to imagine. The most "out-there" SF is not science fantasy, but hard SF, because when human authors make up the rules of the universe they always tend to gravitate towards familiar-feeling ones -- hence the rubber-forehead aliens and planets of hats -- but when they extrapolate from actual rules of physics or biology they can get to some really counterintuitive places. Look at Interstellar, which was a (poorly reconciled) hybrid of both genres: it begins with truly un-earth-like extraterrestrial worlds and mind-boggling relativistic situations, but ends by concluding that all this alien novelty is trumped by the power of love, something we have known and told stories about since forever. The third act is the fantasy, a mirror showing our own emotions; the first and second acts are the SF, a telescope showing the hugeness of the universe.

(And remember: all serious telescopes have mirrors in them.)

 

[Minigiant]

Some (very few) people can sell hair to make wigs. Blood donation isn't compensated, though you CAN be compensated for donating plasma...up to 2x per week for about $30. You can't sell most organs. Not legally, at least.

Feces, however, can be donated for the treatment of certain diseases (like C. difficile infections) for up to $13,000/year. However, the donors have to be so healthy, only 4% pass the screening process.

Sooo, overall, not exactly a solid basis for a stable trade system.

But again you are thinking in human term.

Most plants actually create their seeds in ways to make sure the seed is planted far way from them.

The Vined race in my setting, when they trade with the wood elves, often put their trade agreements that the elves must take their eggs-seeds and plant them someplace outside Vined territory. Wood elves are not too keen on the idea of introducing new species to areas they aren't native to BUT they understand that the Vined need to reproduce. Therefore it often costs the Vined a lot to get the elves to accept. Typically it cost 100 times the egg-seeds weight in gold for the wood elves to accept.
Vined adventurers often take fertilized egg-seeds with them to plant them far from their home garden.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But again you are thinking in human term.

Most plants actually create their seeds in ways to make sure the seed is planted far way from them.

The Vined race in my setting, when they trade with the wood elves, often put their trade agreements that the elves must take their eggs-seeds and plant them someplace outside Vined territory. Wood elves are not too keen on the idea of introducing new species to areas they aren't native to BUT they understand that the Vined need to reproduce. Therefore it often costs the Vined a lot to get the elves to accept. Typically it cost 100 times the egg-seeds weight in gold for the wood elves to accept.
Vined adventurers often take fertilized egg-seeds with them to plant them far from their home garden.

Yes, but you're ignoring what it takes to create identifiable culture and civilization, namely, a relatively coherent social community group. Regardless of what nonsentirnt plants do, if plant/fungal sophonts are going to be anything beyond solo monsters, if they are going to have towns, etc., there has to be a drive AGAINST seed/spore diaspora.

Perhaps they set aside a certain percent of their seed pods or spores to maintain or grow the community*, trading the rest, but- given the uncertainty of population dynamics- it is unlikely that they could afford to disperse a large, economically significant percentage of them.






* in pyramid-shaped granaries, perhaps.

 

[Minigiant]

Yes, but you're ignoring what it takes to create identifiable culture and civilization, namely, a relatively coherent social community group. Regardless of what nonsentirnt plants do, if plant/fungal sophonts are going to be anything beyond solo monsters, if they are going to have towns, etc., there has to be a drive AGAINST seed/spore diaspora.

Perhaps they set aside a certain percent of their seed pods or spores to maintain or grow the community*, trading the rest, but- given the uncertainty of population dynamics- it is unlikely that they could afford to disperse a large, economically significant percentage of them.






* in pyramid-shaped granaries, perhaps.

I would guess a plant-like or fungal race could store unplanted seeds. Many seeds due go unplanted or are eaten/destroyed by natural forces. An intelligent plant race, could possibly store extra seeds when the population stabilizes and manage the sowing of the next generation based on the needs of the community. A thriving group of plant people might have extra seeds to trade. A desperate one without many resources would not plant many youngins either.

The plant race in my setting, since they were designed as servants and guards, can go into hibernation when planted into fertile ground. Most of the military is trained then stuck into the ground to sleep until an invasion occurs.

 

[Shasarak]

There's no such thing as an alien mindset. Even if it existed, people wouldn't play it.

There are no aliens in D&D. In fact there aren't any aliens in any fantasy or sci-fi setting ever created. Not one.

How about Octopus? They are pretty alien in nature.

 

[Marandahir]

Yes, but you're ignoring what it takes to create identifiable culture and civilization, namely, a relatively coherent social community group. Regardless of what nonsentirnt plants do, if plant/fungal sophonts are going to be anything beyond solo monsters, if they are going to have towns, etc., there has to be a drive AGAINST seed/spore diaspora.

Perhaps they set aside a certain percent of their seed pods or spores to maintain or grow the community*, trading the rest, but- given the uncertainty of population dynamics- it is unlikely that they could afford to disperse a large, economically significant percentage of them.

* in pyramid-shaped granaries, perhaps.

Plants form plenty of social groups, but they're completely unlike any social groupings that animals do. What you're doing is anthropomorphising the plants (and the fungi), or at the very least, animorphizing the plants (and the fungi). We need to develop societies that are accurate to the way the plants (and the fungi) function and would act.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Of course I'm anthropomophising. That's what will happen when we're talking about sentient, bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical plants...especially if we're discussing them in the context of producing something resembling a society as we know it, including agriculture (probably easier for them), toolmaking, architecture, art, music, etc.

Those things don't happen without a critical mass of individuals working cooperatively.

Now, if you want to consider sentient plants building societies differently, you have to start contemplating which of the above they're doing without. OR how they can have an alternative path to such things.

 

[Minigiant]

The problem is that plany people and fungus folk wouldn't create societies like animals would.

For one, if they can produce all the energy they need via photosynesis, they don't need agriculture. Probably not clothing either as they'd be confined to places with lots of light, warmth, soil, and water. Only explorers would need clothing.

No need for a giant chunk of the population as a class of farmers.
No need for a chunk of the population in a huge military or ready to enlisted in one over war for farmland or protect it.
No need for a security force to prevent stealing as you can sit around and feed yourself every morning.
Very few builders unless they get into greenhouse and hydroulture technology.

I'm slowly seeing plant people and fungus folk as close to the Protoss of Starcraft, just more peaceful. A bunch of priests who live off of light.

 

[GreenTengu]

I think an issue with a plant race, fundamentally, is that while certainly it could offer unique possibilities in regards to the finer details of roleplaying (and also figuring out how and what they eat given that most plants are continuously rooted in the soil for a reason), there really isn't anything in terms of how the race would be in comparison to humans in the more general sense isn't so clear.

You could easily just take the Elf stat block as given, maybe add a single line about how plant people differ from mammalian ones and then just alter their fluff to make them into a race of plant people who all look more or less female but are effectively both genders at once just like Guilds Wars did.

Orcs with just a small twist of fluff and a similar line could be transformed into a race of asexual fungus creatures like in WarHammer. Half-Orcs could just be humans whose mothers got infected by the fungus spores causing the baby inside them to be mutated.

I mean, you could rationalize them being any size, having any sort of physique (except as I noted in these examples, it probably wouldn't make sense for traditional human sexes to be assigned to them-- though WotC would probably do so anyway), having any given set of skills, have either no abilities or powerful druid abilities being equally viable...

There just isn't anything you could really say about how a vegetation-based race should really be in terms of visuals, characteristics, society, etc. that everyone can really universally agree on as being generally the right direction. And whatever set of these things you gave them, chances are there is already another non-plant race they would be so similar to that they would seem redundant.