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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1710341" data-attributes="member: 3146">I don't think there's any reason that you couldn't just wipe them out. In fact, doing so would make an interesting campaign that would fit really well within the spirit of D&D but would seem pretty original. "We're the extinction committee and we're coming for the worgs first, then for the hippogriffs (we'll keep the eggs to breed mounts for cavalry--so they get to be domesticated rather than exterminated), then for dire wolves, then for the winter wolves, then for the wyverns, then for the bulettes, then for the behirs, then for the Remorhaz, then for the dragons." You could even make "Great White Hunter" a prestige class. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />On another note, you might as a DM go through the Monster Manual and pick out a few of those "big predators" that have been hunted to extinction and put in-game references to their extinction into adventures. "In those days, dire bears/dragons walked the earth." The players will be expecting to find some dire bears/dragons then hiding in an obscure valley, ready to swoop down in tremendous groups and destroy civilization because that's what happens in fantasy stories. Dragons were a myth in Dragonlance then they came back with a vengeance. You could go along with this, knowing that there will be a payoff when they finally confront the insane wizard/druid who is resurrecting the monsters of the past or when, in the tropical valley in the midst of the distant ice-covered mountains they encounter the last of the dragons, or when they find the undead dragon, or you could surprise them and stick to your guns. They find the bones of the last dragon inside its trapfilled lair, along with the remains of the hero of the ages past who slew it in single combat. Now, it is the age of men. The age of dragons is past and will not return.I've always assumed that adventurers, armies and mercenaries don't wipe them out. In Greyhawk, Turosh Mak and the orcs of the Pomarj have a pretty good hold on their territory, the North Kingdom (and probably Ahlissa too) uses orcs as soldiers, gnolls and other humanoids conquered the Bone March, and other humanoid tribes under Iuz's banner have had quite a bit of success in the Shieldlands, Tenh, etc. So, the humanoid armies come from exactly the same place that the Carthigenian armies that kept menacing Rome came from: the empires and cities they control. If they were to be wiped out, they wouldn't come back but so far, nobody has wiped them out.That's entirely possible. If you ask why they keep coming out of the cave system, there's plenty of possibilities: an expanding empire keeps pushing more and more humanoid tribes out into the sunlit realms, the really big D&D predators (which everyone knows are worse in the GenericBigCaveSystem) are breeding too quickly and pushing them out, or perhaps, like the Goths, Visigoths, etc. they smell the blood of decadent and decaying surface civilizations in the water and have come to claim their share of the loot. (Of course that only works if the surface civilizations are actually decadent and decaying).</blockquote>

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