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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2211365" data-attributes="member: 4937">I just happened to be married to an entomologist.  What do you want to know? <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=";)" />Some sorts of odd giant insects:Phasmodia: "The Walking Sticks"  Real versions of these get up to two feet long.  Some species emmit noxious chemicals, somewhat like a skunk.  Others have defensive barbs on thier hind legs.  All have a powerful bite.  In Cloud Giant scale, these insects could get up to 6' long.  In titan scaled world, they could get up to 20' long.  Phasmodia are known for thier chamoflage abilities.  Bigger ones could try to mimic fallen logs or entire leafless trees.  Phasmodia are not carnivorus, but outbreaks of them can reach plague levels in subartic forests.  They are voracious leaf consumers.  Hemiptera: "The True Bugs"  Real versions get up to 5 inches in length.  Most are plant feeders but a few are carnivorous.  All have peircing mouth parts like syringes, so blood drain in a monstrous hemiptera is a real possibility.  Commonly refered to as stink bugs, most can emit a noxious smell from special glands to drive away predators.  Some are aquatic.  A cloud giant sized bug would only be about 1' long, but a titan scaled hemiptera could be up to 4' long.  Grylloblattodea: "The Ice Bugs" A strange group of ice dwelling insects - cold resistance would be appropriate.  You could also possibly turn them into some sort of quasi-elemental creature.  They generally die if the temperature gets much above freezing.  In the real world, they are generally quite small - no more than an 1 1/2 in length, so even the ones living with Frost Giants wouldn't be that big, but you could concievably scale them up into something monsterous if need be.  Personally, I think that they are wierd enough that even a 3' long one would send me running.  They have long antenna that give them blindsight, and biting mouthparts.Mecoptera: "The Scorpion Flies" Recognizable by thier oversized stinger like genetilia, the scorpion flies are active predators of smaller soft bodied prey and scavenge on just about anything including corpses.  They are something of the vultures of the insect world and thier appearance and habits make them excellent candidates for making particularly vile and evil creatures.  Some species drag corpses of dead insects over thier eggs so that thier larva will be able to feed on them.  It's possible that monstrous versions would have necromatic qualities.Siphonaptera: "The Fleas" Fleas are the champion jumpers of the animal world, capable of leaping up to 150 times there body length.  The largest fleas are about 1/2" long, which means that even a monstrous flea might not be more than 5" in length.  This makes fleas excellent candidates for monstrous fast moving swarms (+30 jump checks).  A swarm of rat sized fleas presents a horrific foe.  Fleas are blood suckers.  Fleas are actually mildly poisonous, and inject a venom which causes itching (DEX damage) and which is a decoagulant (bleeding wounds).  They are also disease vectors, most notably of the black death.  I would model an insects durability with DR and fortification.  I'd also give them the ability to stagger on even at negative h.p., and all insects should get the Endurance feat for free because they basically little organic machines and they'll trundle on regardless of discomfort, missing limbs, or whatever.  But they don't actually have that high of general CON IMO, so don't overdo it.  Typically, a virus will come along and wipe out a generation of insects almost completely, and thier poison resistance is exaggerated.  They are actually more sensitive to poisons than people - the problem is that you do want to dump something into the environment that is less than like 50 times as poisonous to them as it is to us, because we're atop the food chain.  What insects do have is a heavily armored flexible body containing relatively few vulnerable systems and very small brains.  Unless the exoskeleton is actually breached, they are just about unkillable and they can withstand alot of pressure.  Trying to kill a cockroach by standing on it is pointless.  You might consider making it so that half of all bludgeoning damage that they took was converted into non-lethal damage after DR was applied.  Most of the time when people hit an insect, all they've really done is stun it.  If you don't see guts, it isn't dead.But even that isn't true in general.  Some insects are soft bodied and really really fragile.  I can't really give specific advice on insects as a whole.</blockquote>

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