Tuesday, January 2, 2024

1d6 Variant Crushrooms

In the last Felltower session, the PCs wounded a Crushroom . . . and it began shrieking!

In Felltower, I like to mix the great old-school misery of shriekers - giant wailing mushrooms - with the new-school misery of ambulatory aggressive carnivorous mushrooms.

If you like old-fashioned killer fungi, you can add all sorts of "fun" features to Crushrooms. Some ideas? Roll 1d.

1) Shrieking. Monsters with this prefix emit a loud shrieking, whistling, hooting, or wailing sound (pick one!) when disturbed. What counts as "disturbed" varies by monster type but being hit definitely counts. Remove Mute, if present. Add Penetrating Voice. Some also have Compulsive Behavior (Shrieking) (9) and just make lots of noise.

2) Corrupting. Crushrooms that bite a limb or extremity can rot it immediately. The victim must make a HT roll or be affected as the spell Wither Limb, including the 1d toxic damage. Crushrooms will spend the next turn tearing the withered limb off and devouring it, giving the victim a chance to escape with the rest of their limbs or extremities intact. This effect is mundane, not magical - ignore Magic Resistance or mana levels!

3) Jumping. Jumping Crushrooms can leap yards equal to their Move. They love to jump on to foes; treat this as a Pounce.

4) Puffball. When injured, the crushroom blows off a bloom of spores in a 2 yard area. Treat as the spell Pollen Cloud, but the effect is non-magical. Lasts 1 second per point of injury inflicted.

5) Hallucinogenic. Anyone touching or touched by a crushroom - being bitten by one counts! - must roll HT or suffer the Hallucinating condition. Every subsequent touch gives a -1 to this roll . . . and who is to say this isn't addictive?

6) Speedy. Nothing says cheating like making a slow monster fast. Doubles the Speed of the Crushroom (and thus Move) to 8.

Of course, you can always make them intelligent, potion-making types, but that's been done elsewhere.

4 comments:

  1. This is some good stuff. I love me some aggressive ambulatory adventurer's foot. Now I want to go check out DFM3 and see what other yummies might be keeping in idiom with these guys. Heck, now I kind of want a book of fungi...hint hint HINT.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not sure if SJG would want one, but if not them maybe Doug would.

      Delete
  2. In theory I'd be interested, but for some reason the dedicated bestiaries attracted many vocal naysayers. "Why would I ever need a whole book just of snakes/bugs/plants?"

    It would make a fantastic contribution to a future Big Bestiary Sequel, should that be something folks would fund.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oddly I get equal use out of the specialized books as to the mixed monster groups. But I only buy one copy so my vote is not so critical.

      Delete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...