How do you feel about mimics, ropers, gelatinous cubes and other monsters designed for D&D solely for the purpose of having foes that take advantage of a stereotypical 'dungeon' environment?
Don't you feel like a lot of these creatures are just a little silly? Like, cloakers that disguise themselves by blending on coat racks as ordinary black cloaks, really? Creatures like these have no right to exist outside out of OSR dungeon crawlers.
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>Creatures like these have no right to exist outside out of OSR dungeon crawlers.
Phew, I'm safe.
They're really dumb unless there's an in universe explanation. The safest, but not only option is that they were intentionally created for this purpose
I mean you can bitch but to make a Veeky Forums favourite Dungeon Meshi does a great job building up an ecology out of these strange monsters and using it to fuel a story and adventure.
So sure, they're a little silly. It's up to you if you want to abandon them for that or try to make it work.
It seems silly to you because you're looking at a high fantasy dungeon crawl setting with the expectation that it's not a high fantasy dungeon crawl setting. In D&D settings there's dungeons and magic everywhere, and the world has been like that since time began. Wizards, gods, tricksters, and other things create life at will for their own designs, so the existence of monsters designed specifically for use in dungeons isn't 'silly' so much as 'natural consequence of the setting'. If you're a wizard with a dungeon keeping your treasures (for whatever reason), why wouldn't you create a hallway where every floortile is secretly a monster, or rope handholds over a climbing section that are actually monsters? The things you're describing are good and effective designs that most adventurers won't be able to see and deal with until they're attacked.
>real life animals develop immensely complex behavioral and physiological patterns and responses that can totally change their evolution as a species, putting them in lockstep generation after generation
>a creature that can disguise itself as a shadow or cloak, or appear invisible, in a dungeon is too stupid to play with
wew lad
Evolutionary scale. A roper that evolves to look like stalagmites is okay, because stalagmites have been around for hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Something that evolves to look convincingly like human clothing or some other product of artifice in ten thousand years or a little more is just silly.
What if the setting has incredibly powerful magicians to intentionally create them or the creator gods of the universe just decided that evolution should be faster than it is in our world
Why? In a fantasy world people might really have been going into dungeons for that length of time. Most of these things were intentionally designed anyway.
Except life in high magic settings like D&D isn't strictly made through natural selection. A lot of monsters in the MM are explicitly created by wizards fucking around with life for their own designs, and things like mimics/ropers easily fit into the wheelhouse of "shit wizards would make to guard dungeons".
I bought a D&D supplement called "using monsters as characters".
Yet at the very end it has an unrelated appendix about archetypes.
There were rules to make any creature "gelatinous".
This picture (from that very book) was the example: a gelatinous bear.
But you could make a gelatinous dragon, or a gelatinous beholder, or really a gelatinous anything with it.
It stuck with me as really silly and really fun. Then again, the other archetypes (insectoid, reptilian, symbiotic) were fun too.
Because he wasn't talking about artificial evolution, he was comparing them to actual evolution.
They're not any sillier than dungeons themselves. (So far as I am aware, nothing that actually exists resembles a D&D dungeon.) I'm rather fond of them.
I think it's cute that you think any of the creatures in D&D are unique. Most are based on established myth or regional folklore and as such have a basis in reality.
>Look at fantasy thing
>Strip away the reasons for it to exist in the fantasy setting and look at it through the real world
>wow, this is silly and doesn't make sense
woah, tell me more. It's almost like you're holding up a high fantasy setting to real world scrutiny even though perfectly reasonable reasons for it existing are present in the logic of the setting. It's almost like you could do that to fucking anything in any setting and it'd be silly.
What region is responsible for the folklore of translucent cubes of corrosive ooze that exist for the sole purpose of consuming intruders that make the mistake of stepping into them?
Some of them are, but others are just wacky shit some nerds thought up and that's one of the reasons D&D should be appreciated. You don't have to be derisive of everything, especially sincere creative effort.
It seems pretty smart from a wizards perspective. "Heroes" are greedy cunts. So creating artificial beings that look like chests ...makes sense.
It's not that silly. I mean, if you were a wealthy mage with a storehouse full of treasure, wouldn't you want to engineer things to protect it? What better than having a guard that looks like a treasure chest?
There are loads of cultures that have creatures like those, without sticking them in dungeons.
The guy clearly said "most".
Having said that, the Blob predates Gels by almost 20 years, so it isn't unique, either.
Silly? Sure.
So what? RPGs are mostly camp. It's amateur acting and story-telling through a not!board game where we change the rules whenever it suits us.
The whole thing is a little silly. Be ok with yourself, user.
The Blob is inspiration for oozes as a whole, yes. But the Gelatinous Cube is a very specific type of ooze with a specific role - being an almost invisible cube that occupies a corridor for wandering adventurers to walk into.
So a bear in a hallway is no longer a bear. Gotcha.
A translucent, almost invisible cube-shaped bear designed for the purpose of engulfing careless adventurers might be on the verge of not being a bear - or at least, a very specific and specialized bear to the point that dismissing it solely because it's a bear is ridiculous.
>translucent, almost invisible cube-shaped bear designed for the purpose of engulfing careless adventurers
DRAWFAGS GET IN HERE
So the only reason you think Gels are unique and definitely not just oozes, which are just the Blob, is that they're a basic shape and a different opacity. Reaching pretty fucking far.
In that case, bears are just animals. Their shape, size and methodology means nothing. Bears, fish and birds are all just beasts. Who cares about surface differences? In the end, they're just animals and should all be treated in the same fashion, as they're just superficially different animals.
To be fair, that's a position a lot of people espouse.
there are silly, but DND is also a world with insane wizards/demons/powers creating specific monsters for specific purposes.
Thought this can't get any more mainstream with the nerd-culture references after the previous update, but here we go again...
I have an entire dungeon dedicated to mimics, you tell me.
>Don't you feel like a lot of these creatures are just a little silly?
They were created by asshole wizards with no sense of right and wrong, of course they're silly
Same with Owlbears
I legit cannot tell how much of Allison's pose is Abaddon flubbing it, as opposed to completely intentional because all she did was lift the sword up and basically drop it.
I'd imagine that's intentional. She's not a swordfighter, she's powertripping barista.
Do your various oozes and slimes fit this catagory?
Holy shit thats awesome.
I think the next panels implied she's just being marionetted around and fed god-roids by Incubus, and meanwhile her mind is screaming "what the fuck is happening what am I doing?" Because despite deciding to now be proactive she's still just some self-loathing sorority girl with issues who has probably never used any kind of weapon before.
Just another moment in Allison's drive to fuck up and make all the wrong decisions all the time.
They were designed as silly monsters.
>I bought a D&D supplement called "using monsters as characters".
wtf am I reading
do you mean the book "savage species" or did you buy some bootleg chinese copy with the wrong name from some nigga?
B-but bears ARE animals! They're a specific type of animal but still an animal.
You're not very good at making an argument.
i love gelatinous cubes
i have them be selectively bred over thousands of years by the various races to clean their dungeons
I like to call them Gummibears
It says in the template entry (under the 'level adjustment' subheading) that they lack the intelligence to be playable characters.
Yes, but they're just animals. Their size, shape and mannerisms don't matter. They're animals and that's all I need to know about them. From that fact, I know that I can judge them in the same fashion I judge all other animals.
I dunno how intentional it is on Abaddon's part, but I find it amusing that Allison is the archetypical self-insert fantasy protagonist, but fucks up absolutely everything.
I think the comic illustrates how to use them pretty goddamn well.
Do they belong in every dungeon? No, and neither do any other monster staples.
>insectoid bear
>reptilian bear
>symbiotic bear
>Reptillian Dingo Draconic Warlock
"Break out the butter, I'm gonna make toast!"
>real birds have been found mimicing human technology
youtube.com
>cuttlefish mimic artificial patterns
youtube.com
>mimic monster finds its way into a dungeon
>mimic basic surrounding objects
probably the only thing wrong with normal mimics is that they're a lone treasure chest found somewhere, so they'd stand out. If they're copying their surroundings, they should be found amongst other treasure chests.
...what is it referencing? Kirkbride? Gurka stuff?
Are there a bunch of black cloaks hanging around in your dungeons?
I like the gygaxian darwinism of creatures in dungeons environments evolving to better suit their environment either as predator or prey.
The adventurer is part of that ecosystem.
>symbiotic bear
What would it eat?
What's the image from?
The question is, what would it be symbiotic with
Maybe its just examples of extremely specialized camouflaging species'?
Like octopi that exist only to disguise themselves as one specific other fish/coral, to trick their prey of choice near them.
Think about it, maybe some base level of consciousness invaded a chest, so it became an animate version of itself that could hide in its chest-shaped shell like an armadillo.
Its not that far fetched to say its a similar kind of entity that is responsible for living shrubs and shit.
>They don't actually look like that, they're just able to influence your mind to make you imagine they're something that should be where you are
>They don't just live in dungeons
>Nobody ventures outside of the cities without enough people to have a constant 360 degree watch around the party because a horrifying predator could literally be any distinct object
Smaller species of animals that scavenge the bears kills
>small species runs past a bear with a medium sized predator
>large size bear says fuck you and murders it
>eats the big meaty bits, starts leaving
>smaller species eats the rib meat and shit the bear couldn't get to
>follows the bear
>sees another medium sized predator
>runs up to it, runs past the bear
>repeat
>eventually the bears notice the same lil boi species running past them before prey just falls into its lap
>they seek out the little chipmunk whatever things they would be
>thousands of years later, if you see a little chipmunk look at you and run away into the woods D O N T F U C K I N G F O L L O W I T
>They're really dumb unless there's an in universe explanation
There was a wizard. He was an asshole. He thought it was funny
I did my best by memory user, no bully
...
If I was a wizard I'd create a sentient chest that ate anyone that wasn't me.
Wouldn't you?
Except cloakers seem to be in reference to monsters from, "The Sunken Land," which was published in 1942, so...
They're adapted for a dungeon crawl tricks, sure (the first one is literally lurking among cloaks and blankets), But the inspiration is clear to the point that when the monsters from the story were statted for D&D they were literally called, "sea cloakers."
I love them, because it gives me free reign to spend way too much time thinking about the concept of a "dungeon" as a proper environment and ecology. The idea of the world having enough ancient ruins and dangerous locales that it develops predators and prey to fit those niches is fucking awesome to me. Even when you say its because of wizards or magic or outside interference, you can make a hell of a world when you add Dungeon as a biome.
I mean hell, a creature that exists and survives because it resembles a chest and eats things that try to touch it, if it evolved naturally, presupposes a ton of interesting ideas about the history of the world, and the cultures that exist within it, as well as how Dungeons work as a biome. It's fun to work with.
Wakfu, french cartoon.
Since we are on tg, I feel obligated to talk about "you should watch it because of worldbuilding or plot or something", but screw it.
It's worth watching for the animation alone.
Would be better to use subs with original audio track, english dub is atrocious, as far as I am aware.
Maybe the Mimic is a weird mix of the cuttlefish and a hermit crab. It wanders around, looking for boxes, hides inside, and mimics the shininess and color of generic loot-type items.
To hunt men though, they'd have to be poisonous if they were crustaceans. Otherwise, too easily smashed once the human figured it out.
>Don't you feel like a lot of these creatures are just a little silly?
No?
Half the fun (as a DM) is naturalizing them and explaining WHY and HOW these animals exist outside of the stereotypical Dungeon environment.... So your PC's can run into them in the wild and be caught off guard to hysterical/horrifying effect.
>Mimics
They don't "just" turn into chests; they turn into really any inanimate object they see other creatures interacting with on a regular basis. Mimics in the wild turn into hollow logs, stumps, BRIDGES (if they're big enough), rocks, etc.. Lapping up and chomping on anything unlucky enough to crawl into them.
>Gelatinous Cubes
Who or whats going to stop it in the wild? I'd imagine they'd exhibit an extremely simple lifestyle: moving in whatever direction and eating anything that they slid over, eventually doing cellular division once they got too big. WOULD anything in nature be able to stop them? I'm willing to nerf them in saying direct sunlight would probably dry them out and kill them (limiting them to damp forests and jungles), but beyond that it feels the only thing they have to worry about is salt and fire- two uncommon occurrences in nature.
>Ropers
There's literally nothing wrong with sitting in one place for a long time and eating whatever walks by- tons of successful animals already do this and is pretty much the bread and butter of almost every spider. They'd be severly limited in appropriate environments: canyons, rocky outcrops, caves, maybe abandoned urban areas.. And they'd probably life off of bats, birds, maybe fish if they got glued over a river.
They'd probably live a life not too different from a barnacle.. Both the half life enemy and the actual shellfish.
>Fire vs Gelatinous Cube
You know, the native americans used to set fire to the great plains every once in a while to make sure the grasslands grew and stayed fertile. Maybe the fantasy folk near wherever GCs are native to do that but instead of wanting MOAR BISON they want to keep the cubes away from their shit. Then they die off and the jungle encroaches and the cubes get in their old tombs and shit.
>all dem cave societies that don't even know what exists outside of their mountain range that they've dug out
>hollow islands
>damp patch of ground
>that's weird, it hasn't rained in a week
>step on it
>it starts moving up your leg
>it was a fucking gelatinous cube that dispersed on the ground so thin you thought it was water
>bitch you thought
>now you're fucking dead
dont step in puddles
You might like the manga Dungeon Meshi. The premise is that dungeons are self-supporting ecosystems with incredible biodiversity.
I adore Dungeon Meshi. Frankly, my dream campaign to run is basically a combination of Dungeon Meshi and Kuutei dragons, all stacked into an ongoing Black Company style plot of sellswords and politics.
Probably tack on Reign's follower system to whatever it is, so the players control the entire company but most importantly their player characters. I can dream.
>insectoid bear
Waiddaminute, that's just a bugbear!
Name one fantasy setting that actually runs off of evolution at any point. Like properly runs off it. Because last I checked the overwhelming majority of fantasy worlds are creationist in nature, usually pretty young too.
Knowing Abbadon, it is very intentional
What the fuck is this comic and why does it look like color vomit? Where can I read it?
Kill Six Billion Demons.
Kill six billion demons, I think. You can probably google it. I've never checked it out myself.
>How do you feel about mimics, ropers, gelatinous cubes and other monsters designed for D&D
typical D&D cancer. part of why D&D turns me off.
t. not a gamist
A gel is just an ooze, and inspired by the Blob. I don't know why you're trying to act like Gygax was original.
>why does it look like color vomit?
Because mimic guts are pink, apparently.
I thought I read somewhere that gelatinous cubes were created through magic fuckery as "dungeon sweepers" to keep the area clear of dead things and refuse.
If you find yourself in an ancient tomb with polished walls, smooth ceilings, and washed floors, clear of debris, it's a good bet the gelatinous janitor is nearby.
>Like, cloakers that disguise themselves by blending on coat racks as ordinary black cloaks
A wizard did it
Your Wizards were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
Magic, uh, finds a way
Fremen Crysknife (Dune)