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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pinotage" data-source="post: 2712037" data-attributes="member: 15194">Evolutionary Monsters and the Great BeyondWe all have our ideas of where monsters come from - some are created by the gods, others evolve and mutate along lines that strengthen their change of survival. Natural selection can often play a key part in developing a creature to become what it is today. And with the whole process of change you can have a lot of fun. Monsters as written don't have to be static - a creative DM can often look forward as well as back for a slightly different creature with completely different abilities.Take a simple example. The chuul could easily be thought of as a more evolved from of a crab. A normal crab goes through several stages of natural selection, growing stronger and tougher to eventually end up as a chuul. One could even imagine that certain crabs evolved symbiotic relationships with anemones, for instance, eventually incorporating the paralytic tentacles into the creature's body to form the Chuul. If you expand along these lines, you can come up with combination creatures that may look like chuuls but are more like crabs, or even those that have underdeveloped tentacles and look like crabs.The same is true if you run in the opposite direction - what would be the ultimate natural feature that a chuul could evolve into to make it more effective at what it does? How does the chuul hunt for its food, and how could it change to make it stronger. Taking a look at the ecology of a chuul and attempting to understand its way of life may make for some interesting ideas as to what is beyond the chuul. Simple examples include bonuses to Hide, such as a camouflage ability, or increase paralytic ability. One could even go further as to suggest that mindflayers originated from the chuul as the epitome of its evolution.There is a lot of material to explore in taking evolutionary paths for monsters both back and forth. Interesting creatures can be created with different abilities but perhaps with the appearance of a particular subspecies. Next time your party faces a chuul, will it have limited psionic abilities like a mindflayer? Thinking in terms of evolutionary ecology provides ample surprises for players and the chance for DMs to develop fantastic ecologies for creatures in a campaign. Trying to link creatures together in an evolutionary sense can often open up interesting ideas and new critters, as well as sensible ecologiesEdit: As another example on the chuul, one could imagine that the ankheg evolved from a chuul, attempting to develop a spitting paralysis rather than relying on close-up tentacles in a grapple.Selection: E.N.Critters: Berk's Wasteland</blockquote>

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