Whats the key to coming up with fun and interesting animals in a high fantasy setting?

Whats the key to coming up with fun and interesting animals in a high fantasy setting?

Or period for that matter what should I take into account other than;

>Habitat
>Food
>Predator

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Animals should either highlight the tone of the area they're in
>fluffy, friendly animals in safe areas; scary, vicious animals in dangerous areas; fluffy, friendly animals that suddenly become scary, vicious animals in cliched areas

present a challenge for the PCs
>animal wants to eat them; animal is defending its territory by murdering them

or present an opportunity for them
>delicious animal can be hunted and offered as a food bribe; flying monsters can be tamed and used to cross a gulf

You could also take into account
>Lifecycle
>Effects on its environment
>Strange quirks/behaviors
>How it's viewed by nearby cultures
>Origin

Noted are there things biologically wise I have to also consider? In terms of a creature's physical charecteristics

Like the OP picture for example

>The Mossbacked thumper are herd like creatures. Their distinctive moss-like coverings a result of their exaggeratedly long amount of time spent in the shades grazing and resting. This substance grows more frequently and in much greater amounts on the females backs. It has been observed that the growth of flowers from the female's backs occur during mating season acting as a pheromone of sorts. The dorsal opening releases a less potent form of this pheromone allowing the female to be tracked down by mates and family members should she be separated from the herd. The flowers are prized for their aphrodisiacal and detoxing nature. Many a incense are created from the harvest glands directly beneath the dorsal opening. The People's of the Bloodgrass plains are known to boil the female Thumper's moss to ward away evil spirits and attract watchful protectors.

>>Habitat
>>Food
>>Predator
You're literally already off base. In high fantasy creatures should serve as allegory for whatever meaning you are trying to communicate.
The forest guardian is a huge an powerful beast because the forest is huge and powerful.
Orcs and irredeemably evil raiders because they represent uncivilized barbarism and how it threatens society st large.
Not saying you shouldn't consider realism things for versimillitude, but designing a high fantasy monster with a base of reality serves no purpose to the overarching narrative or motif if the setting.

Well, if you are going to use evolutionary logic, and you don't have to in fantasy settings but it can be a nice touch, you can remember to factor in things like the effects of predation/predatory behaviour on the placement of sensory organs.

If you want a high fantasy setting, you're going to need more than just that. High fantasy is a little more magical and a bit crazy - you can have things like thunderboars or insect dragons or shit like that. So you can think of what the biome is like, what seems plausible to throw together, what would make for a fun encounter.

A simple trick is to just throw a couple different animals together in some way. It can also help to think how nearby civilizations could domesticate and make use of such animals - or not and how they'd deal with them or hunt them.

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Impact on the economy.

Is this game? Reared for slaughter? Is it a pack animal? A mount? Is it hunted for furs, or other body parts? Kept for companionship? Does it have some other use, or no use at all?

A lot of the time I cannibalize ideas from mythology and folklore and then throw them in with some of my own ideas and mechanics for the actual encounter I want to be present. For example, here's a thing my group started fighting last week, and is still currently fighting this one.

>Large mammalian creature, about the size of a sedan. Covered in coarse, somewhat mossy fur like that of a boar with a rotund, kind of flat body. Has the head of a tapir, and is much lighter than it looks.
>However, it hosts a dozen limbs, each multi-jointed and spindly, as well as vaguely resembling wood in texture. They're still flesh, but the hide is camouflaged in its pattern to look like bark. At the end of each limb is a four-fingered grasping hand, ending in nubby claws. These limbs are nearly four times its height in length, but warp and curl as they move, resembling angular tentacles.
>The creature produces no sound with its movements, though it still makes sound when it collides with things, and can produce a puff of somnolent smoke from its trunk that dazes and tranquilizes those who inhale it. It also can produce a thick web from the palms of its hands.
>The creature feeds on dreams, and lives in tall redwood or pine forests, where it flits through the trees just under the canopy, finding sleeping prey to extend its silent arms down and grab. It then takes them to its lair, where immobilized in web and kept repeatedly asleep, it feeds on their dreams until they expire from starvation.

It's basically a mish mash of a baku, a spider, and a zeppelin that came about because the party had been awake all night on the run and I wanted an encounter that would interact with that somehow.

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>Sexual Dimorphism

Yes
This
More o this

I don't even know if that's what it is, man. It might just be adult and juvenile forms.

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High fantasy creatures don't always have to be an allegory or a theme

There's levels to your high fantasy and themes

>Behavior and methods
How does it act? Is it a lone hunter or a pack grazer? Where in its habitat does it rest and eat? How does it acquire its food?
>Is it natural or not?
If it is 'natural' any interesting features it has should have a purpose; be it defense, food gathering or mating related.

This; those themes aren't always going to be relevant. Sometimes a barbarian is just a barbarian, and also having the forest guardian just representing the forest misses the majesty and awe of nature - the forest guardian is large and powerful because nature is large and powerful, not in that it represents nature. Subtle difference.

If everything has to fit into a theme, there's no room for things to just 'be.' How are you supposed to make snails with acid instead of mucus thematically relevant? It honestly sounds frustrating to imagine, as a player, that the strange salamander-like creatures with roots trailing from their tails represent the duality of nature instead of just being 'this awesome thing my GM thought up.'

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Actually give them a place in the ecology of the world instead of doing "ELELELELELMAO THEY EXIST ROLL INITIATIVE"
They need to be more than just punching bags with teeth, think of them like real animals

>high fantasy
>caring about food, habit, predators

Unless the answer to any of those is lava you fucked up.

Look at how monster hunter handles them and do the same, it's the only fantasy-esque setting where i found myself actually giving a shit about the creatutes.

>Whats the key to coming up with fun and interesting animals in a high fantasy setting?

Combine animals with the various aspects/roles of heavy machinery, artillery, or other various weapons/large vehicles.
Once you've done that: redesign, polish, and contextualize the creature in such a way so that it could feesible find food, reproduce, and survive in whatever environment you placed it in.

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The MH concept, I see.
Barioth a cute.

Give animals supernatural abilities or powers that are extremes of what animals already do.
>Some animals are small and fast to avoid getting eaten
>Those animals can now teleport, turn invisible, or create pocket dimensions to hide from predators. Their tiny bones can be worked into special runes to expend the interior space of a house without changing the exterior; etc.

Make predators extremely dangerous in the same manner. It's not a real animals unless it's a combat encounter all its own.

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What in Australia am I looking at

It's the Ulazoo.

It's a giant flightless bird. It can grow human arms with weapons every round in combat, plus a few extra if it doesn't attack. It gets to attack with all these arms every round, plus can block incoming attacks with the arms as well.

It doesn't take damage if you chop the arms off. The weapons it makes rot at the same rate as the meat, but can be used like normal weapons until then.

It's the weird, really scary monster I'm proud of. Partially based on pic related.

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Currently my players are trying to get the attention of a colossal anteater in order to deal with a Formian hive that's been encroaching on their territory. The issue is doing enough damage to beat its armored spiny shell.

Why not wait for it to sleep and hit the underbelly
Scatter some traps that annoy it once it awakens and starts thrashing around

Trudvan art is fucking great.