[Tome of Trees] No seriously, just fluff.
Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 9:30 pm
The Plantinomicon: Stuff That Isn't Supposed to Move, But Does
"What happens if I burn the forest down?" "Trust me, you don't want to find out."
D&D is magical universe full of Magic. And the Nature is always alive. No, not just the animate plants, Gaia will kick you in the nads. Every forest is Lothlorian or Fanghorn to some extent, because it is all modeled off the Black Forest, and we want our forest to be alive.
The same holds true of mountains, deserts, tundra, and anything else.
Biology
Things are creatures, or they are objects. And all plants are creatures. That means all plants, even trees, even roots, have wisdom and charisma scores. But plants and animals are all part of nature. And nature is gaia, and therefore, it's all one big network, sort of.
Creature types are Kinds. Yes we hate creationists too, but D&D is created, and so every plant is descended from the same plant spore that was created totally separately than the animal spore and the humanoid spore. And how do these things work? Lamarkian descent. When a Plant gets lots of sunlight, it becomes more like a tree, and passes that on. When a Plant gets uprooted a lot, it disperses it seed before it dies, and those plants can move.
This same rule applies to all other D&D creatures except constructs, undead, and vermin. So this removes some of the "A Wizard Did It" from D&D, but not all, because a Wizard still did Vermin and undead and constructs. The Owlbear is totally a Bear that needed night vision, and to break tortoise shells or something. The Owl look is conicidental.
Plants
Plants mostly just sit around chilling in their total conscience. They are the origional pot heads, because their heads are sometimes literally made of pot. Most Plants have no Int score and just sit around waiting. This does not mean that they can't do anything, or won't. Undead (Some kinds) follow their nature by destroying life, and Plants follow their nature by chilling and relaxing all cool. When you enter a forest, it doesn't bother you until you bother it. But plants do have this pogram. It's called growing everywhere. If you start chopping or burning, they just grow back over it, and expand a little bit. But if you start limiting growth, they start creating Shambling mounds and Treants until you get the picture.
So the natural state of Plant/Humanoid interactions is not a coexistence. It's a cyclical struggle. The Trees keep encrouging on the city/town/fields, and you keep chopping them down. Eventually, they keep growing back so fast and closer and closer so you have to burn large chunks down, and that's when things get nasty. When you start attacking plants, they become plants that attack back. And then the Adventurerers are called in to put down the mean trees so you can burn the forest back a lot. When you do this, all the remaining trees are assholes. At this point, You have concentrated asshole enviroments, which for some reason everyone thinks is guarding treasure.
And since this is D&D, they are. Asshole Forests are ones reduced to their core, and the Core of every forest is built on magical Gaia energy. And that Energy is totally a welling of awesome that can be harvested. Gaia energy is totally not used as a currency by anyone, mostly because fey will attack you on site for that shit, and it doesn't work outside the material plane. But it can be used as components for crafting items in the Wish economy level.
Nature That Isn't Plants
So what about the Frostfell and the Sandstorm and the Sotrmwrack? Gaia. She's a whore, and she'll do anyone. Tundra and Desert are legitamate vessels for Gaia energy that follow the same pattern. Deserts make everything hotter, and Tundras make everything colder, and both of those try to grow the same as plants. But basically, when you want to fight them, you do it with Fire and Water, and then you have to call the adventurers to come kill the monsters that are created to eat you for bringing fire and water.
Adventuring in the Wilderness
"Why am I so hungry, it's only been like, five minutes?"
Adventurers eat a lot. But you seriously never have to care about that again past level 7. So let's face it. Spells and immunities and shit make adventuring in the wilderness a lot like adventuring in a city that happens to have really annoying citzens who want to eat you past level 7.
So rules for these sort of things are going to be simple, but awesome.
1) Tempature. Hot enviroments make you hotter. You take fire damage in a desert. Use Sandstorm rules if you have them. They don't suck. Otherwise, use very little fire damage ticking very rarely to make your point. FR 5 should save you from the most horrible natural desert.
Cold stuff does cold damage. Use Frostburn, doesn't suck. Same generalization as above.
2) Thirst, Hunger, and sleep. The average adventurer needs 8 hours of sleep, two meals a day, and water every 4 hours to be at full condition.
If you miss a meal or water period, or get only 4 hours of sleep, you must make a DC 10 Fort save. For every succeeding period you miss after making the save make another save at +2 DC. If you fail the save, it resets.
If you get no sleep, the DC is 15. Each successive missed sleep period is at +2 to DC. The DC does not increase if you sleep four hours, but you must still make a save.
If you fail any of these saves, you immediately become fatigued. If you are fatigued and fail a save, you become exhausted. If you are exhausted and fail a save, you die. Tough shit.
To cure your fatigue or Exhaustion from food or water, you need only eat two full meals in the same day, or drink enough water for a day. For sleep, you need to sleep for 12 hours.
This Fatigue and Exhaustion is cured by spells or items that do so. And the DCs reset when it is done so.
3) Wandering around and getting lost.
PHB/DMG rules are pretty good for this. DC 20 Survival to locate north, find a map.
Poison and Disease
"Stay away from it's claws. And it's Mouth. And really, just yeah..."
Poison is way to expensive and sucks. This is largely fixed by the Book of Gears once the Wish economy sets in. But in the meantime...
Poison: Poison is hard to find and annoying to have, but it's cheap. Cut all Poison prices by a fourth. Poison DCs scale based on amount, Using two doses increases the DC by 2, but takes two actions to apply. This caps at 5 doses, after that extra poison is useless. Poisons still do what they do.
Disease: Diseases are not slow acting constant poisons. That's bullshit. Diseases need to be something else. Suggestions are welcome.
"What happens if I burn the forest down?" "Trust me, you don't want to find out."
D&D is magical universe full of Magic. And the Nature is always alive. No, not just the animate plants, Gaia will kick you in the nads. Every forest is Lothlorian or Fanghorn to some extent, because it is all modeled off the Black Forest, and we want our forest to be alive.
The same holds true of mountains, deserts, tundra, and anything else.
Biology
Things are creatures, or they are objects. And all plants are creatures. That means all plants, even trees, even roots, have wisdom and charisma scores. But plants and animals are all part of nature. And nature is gaia, and therefore, it's all one big network, sort of.
Creature types are Kinds. Yes we hate creationists too, but D&D is created, and so every plant is descended from the same plant spore that was created totally separately than the animal spore and the humanoid spore. And how do these things work? Lamarkian descent. When a Plant gets lots of sunlight, it becomes more like a tree, and passes that on. When a Plant gets uprooted a lot, it disperses it seed before it dies, and those plants can move.
This same rule applies to all other D&D creatures except constructs, undead, and vermin. So this removes some of the "A Wizard Did It" from D&D, but not all, because a Wizard still did Vermin and undead and constructs. The Owlbear is totally a Bear that needed night vision, and to break tortoise shells or something. The Owl look is conicidental.
Plants
Plants mostly just sit around chilling in their total conscience. They are the origional pot heads, because their heads are sometimes literally made of pot. Most Plants have no Int score and just sit around waiting. This does not mean that they can't do anything, or won't. Undead (Some kinds) follow their nature by destroying life, and Plants follow their nature by chilling and relaxing all cool. When you enter a forest, it doesn't bother you until you bother it. But plants do have this pogram. It's called growing everywhere. If you start chopping or burning, they just grow back over it, and expand a little bit. But if you start limiting growth, they start creating Shambling mounds and Treants until you get the picture.
So the natural state of Plant/Humanoid interactions is not a coexistence. It's a cyclical struggle. The Trees keep encrouging on the city/town/fields, and you keep chopping them down. Eventually, they keep growing back so fast and closer and closer so you have to burn large chunks down, and that's when things get nasty. When you start attacking plants, they become plants that attack back. And then the Adventurerers are called in to put down the mean trees so you can burn the forest back a lot. When you do this, all the remaining trees are assholes. At this point, You have concentrated asshole enviroments, which for some reason everyone thinks is guarding treasure.
And since this is D&D, they are. Asshole Forests are ones reduced to their core, and the Core of every forest is built on magical Gaia energy. And that Energy is totally a welling of awesome that can be harvested. Gaia energy is totally not used as a currency by anyone, mostly because fey will attack you on site for that shit, and it doesn't work outside the material plane. But it can be used as components for crafting items in the Wish economy level.
Nature That Isn't Plants
So what about the Frostfell and the Sandstorm and the Sotrmwrack? Gaia. She's a whore, and she'll do anyone. Tundra and Desert are legitamate vessels for Gaia energy that follow the same pattern. Deserts make everything hotter, and Tundras make everything colder, and both of those try to grow the same as plants. But basically, when you want to fight them, you do it with Fire and Water, and then you have to call the adventurers to come kill the monsters that are created to eat you for bringing fire and water.
Adventuring in the Wilderness
"Why am I so hungry, it's only been like, five minutes?"
Adventurers eat a lot. But you seriously never have to care about that again past level 7. So let's face it. Spells and immunities and shit make adventuring in the wilderness a lot like adventuring in a city that happens to have really annoying citzens who want to eat you past level 7.
So rules for these sort of things are going to be simple, but awesome.
1) Tempature. Hot enviroments make you hotter. You take fire damage in a desert. Use Sandstorm rules if you have them. They don't suck. Otherwise, use very little fire damage ticking very rarely to make your point. FR 5 should save you from the most horrible natural desert.
Cold stuff does cold damage. Use Frostburn, doesn't suck. Same generalization as above.
2) Thirst, Hunger, and sleep. The average adventurer needs 8 hours of sleep, two meals a day, and water every 4 hours to be at full condition.
If you miss a meal or water period, or get only 4 hours of sleep, you must make a DC 10 Fort save. For every succeeding period you miss after making the save make another save at +2 DC. If you fail the save, it resets.
If you get no sleep, the DC is 15. Each successive missed sleep period is at +2 to DC. The DC does not increase if you sleep four hours, but you must still make a save.
If you fail any of these saves, you immediately become fatigued. If you are fatigued and fail a save, you become exhausted. If you are exhausted and fail a save, you die. Tough shit.
To cure your fatigue or Exhaustion from food or water, you need only eat two full meals in the same day, or drink enough water for a day. For sleep, you need to sleep for 12 hours.
This Fatigue and Exhaustion is cured by spells or items that do so. And the DCs reset when it is done so.
3) Wandering around and getting lost.
PHB/DMG rules are pretty good for this. DC 20 Survival to locate north, find a map.
Poison and Disease
"Stay away from it's claws. And it's Mouth. And really, just yeah..."
Poison is way to expensive and sucks. This is largely fixed by the Book of Gears once the Wish economy sets in. But in the meantime...
Poison: Poison is hard to find and annoying to have, but it's cheap. Cut all Poison prices by a fourth. Poison DCs scale based on amount, Using two doses increases the DC by 2, but takes two actions to apply. This caps at 5 doses, after that extra poison is useless. Poisons still do what they do.
Disease: Diseases are not slow acting constant poisons. That's bullshit. Diseases need to be something else. Suggestions are welcome.