Plant is always a type of monster you can pick for Favorite Enemy or other such feature, but there isn't enough plant monsters around to justify it. So does anyone have any cool plant monster ideas or uses to make them more than just fodder?
I had an idea for a mini campaign about a Wizard/Alchemist who turns a jungle into a living abomination of monsters, with exploding thorn bushes and giant vine snakes and such. Havn't put any work into it yet but if anyone wants to use the idea they can!
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Infested Roper; Treat it as a plant, and it has spores that can take control of people.
Giant Pitcher Plant; It's a trap! Charms nearby creatures and compels them to get into its acid maw.
Grasping Vines; They grapple and damage. Maybe they're spiny or poisonous.
Plant-Men; Swamp-Things. Pollen powers. Slow but can teleport around vegetation.
Dynamite Plants; These yellow glowing things look like great sources of light, and the monsters seem afraid of them! Let's pick one up... BOOM!
Brain-Leaf; Parasitic Plant that latches onto people, turning them into zombie-like creatures under their control. Frightening visage as the hapless victim's brain becomes exposed over time by the acids secreted by the brain-leaf.
Moss-Monster; Tall, with shambling vines for legs, no real torso, and a mouth at the bottom of each "foot". Yikes!
Spider-Flower; It's a giant flower that's poisonous to the touch, releases noxious spores when angered, and crawls around like a spider.
In the monster Manual, there 2 or 3 types of Myconids
In Volo's Guide to Monster, there are Vegepygmy (CR 1/4), Vegepygmy Chief (CR 2), Thorny (CR 1) (all some sort of mould creatures) and Wood Woad (CR 5).
Not a lot, but depending on the campaign it might be worth to focus on how to defeat these monsters.
Also I just think most rangers just don't specialize in gardening.
The same could be said of picking oozes, if you pick oozes as your favored enemy, you have to accept the campaign might not be based around the lord of slime. Similarly if you pick celestial, most campaigns don't involved purging the material plane of the divines influence. For widest utility I would imagine many rangers grab undead or a combo of Human and Orc/Elf/Dwarf. But your favored enemy is also about flavor, what your characters history is, regardless of how handy it will be.
There's been a few plant monsters through the years of D&D. Tapping into the earliest editions' statistics makes for an easy conversion to 5E, so don't limit yourself to just pure 5E material. I still use obliviax moss.
Since I friggin love Circle of Spore Druids and I REALLY prefer Symbiotic Entity over Beast Shaping, I really wish I would be able to Shapechange into a vast array of fungi based monsters someday.
So I would really love the game to officially have elementals/demons that are Fungus based that would help expand the lore of either the Myconids OR Zuggtmoy herself. I'm fairly new to D&D so I don't really know how to homebrew proper stats. if any of you guys think its a good idea, feel free to tinker with it~
(And a Mushroom Diety that ain't evil would be great too.)
In addition to everyone else suggestions don’t forget you can just take an interesting sounding monster and make it a plant, or somehow controlled by one.
I have been using a number of animal templates to make topiary monsters. Plant looking dire wolf becomes the creature from Lady in the Water. Taking a dragon as a start point make something that breathes spike growth. I enjoy just having interesting themes for creatures.
I have found myself doing this for a lot fae creatures as well mostly using fiends and angels as a jump off point.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Read A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony. There are a number plant antagonists in there. In fact JK Rowling stole the idea for the Whomping Willow from there
This is an old article wizards had on forested areas and new monsters for them. They also had some for swamps, deserts, arctic, jungle, mountains, underdark, and sky areas with new monsters, spells, and items for each. Will require updating to 5e, but should help you out.
I also remember an old adventure module where a wizard tried to play at Druid and tried to reincarnate himself into a kind of celestial lotus but botched an turned himself into a shambling mound and sicced something like yellow musk creeper on the village.
5E doesn't really mess with "templates" for monsters like prior editions did, but its a good approach to whipping up new monster variants on the fly. I think if you took any beast, and did something simple like give them resistance to bludgeoning and vulnerability to fire, you could probably just call that a "vine wolf" or whatever and call it good on the fly. See also the issue with generating non-humanoid zombies and skeletons, a DM is always tacitly invited to create their own monster statblocks to fill unmet needs, but the 5E system could really accommodate making it a lot more turnkey if it had a concept of "templates" to play with.
5E doesn't really mess with "templates" for monsters like prior editions did, but its a good approach to whipping up new monster variants on the fly. I think if you took any beast, and did something simple like give them resistance to bludgeoning and vulnerability to fire, you could probably just call that a "vine wolf" or whatever and call it good on the fly. See also the issue with generating non-humanoid zombies and skeletons, a DM is always tacitly invited to create their own monster statblocks to fill unmet needs, but the 5E system could really accommodate making it a lot more turnkey if it had a concept of "templates" to play with.
But we have skeleton and zombie templates for making non-humanoid skeletons and zombies. The biggest problem with them is that almost all beasts are immune to both, since they'd drop to Int 0 or less and spontaneously die, but you could easily houserule that their mental stats can't drop below 1 so you could have zombie sharks and skeletal rats and the like.
The Skeletons entry discusses that non-humanoid skeletons exist, but it doesn't provide template rules, just gives you a Skeleton, Minotaur Skeleton, and Warhorse Skeleton. All are vulnerable to bludgeoning and immune to poison, exhaustion, and poisoned... so you could certainly draw some inferences about how to put a new skeleton type together, but there isn't a direct description of a template modifier.
Same with Zombies, which gives you a Zombie, Ogre Zombie, and Beholder Zombie as examples, but does not provide a flat template that would let you do something like make a Zombie Brown Bear off the cuff.
The MM Introduction has a section which makes it sound like the book was intended to have multiple templates to apply:
MODIFYING CREATURES
Despite the versatile collection of monsters in this book, you might be at a loss when it comes to finding the perfect creature for part of an adventure. Feel free to tweak an existing creature to make it into something more useful for you, perhaps by borrowing a trait or two from a different monster or by using a variant or template, such as the ones in this book. Keep in mind that modifying a monster, including when you apply a template to it, might change its challenge rating.
For advice on how to customize creatures and calculate their challenge ratings, see the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
But... there just really aren't that many. From what I can see.... there's:
I think there was some sort of design philosophy shift partway through writing the MM, because you would think that things like skeletons, zombies, "dire", "spectral", etc. would have been more abundant and useful templates to provide than... dracoliches, which may as well just be "use the adult/ancient dracolich statblock but add a breath based on its living form" or something.
Sorry to double post but you can also check out the homebrew here and on Pinterest, I found at least 5 different homebrew plant monsters there for 5e.
You may also wish to expand your idea. Have you considered throwing some new insect monsters to go with your plants? One of my buddies made a plant based dungeon and one of the monsters was essentially a plant based ogre zombie with an insect swarm turning him into its hive (if you’ve played hunt you may know what this looks like). Or Cordyceps style zombies like out of the last of us, count as plant, not undead maybe require fire or poison instead of radiant to put down?
Plant is always a type of monster you can pick for Favorite Enemy or other such feature, but there isn't enough plant monsters around to justify it. So does anyone have any cool plant monster ideas or uses to make them more than just fodder?
I had an idea for a mini campaign about a Wizard/Alchemist who turns a jungle into a living abomination of monsters, with exploding thorn bushes and giant vine snakes and such. Havn't put any work into it yet but if anyone wants to use the idea they can!
Infested Roper; Treat it as a plant, and it has spores that can take control of people.
Giant Pitcher Plant; It's a trap! Charms nearby creatures and compels them to get into its acid maw.
Grasping Vines; They grapple and damage. Maybe they're spiny or poisonous.
Plant-Men; Swamp-Things. Pollen powers. Slow but can teleport around vegetation.
Dynamite Plants; These yellow glowing things look like great sources of light, and the monsters seem afraid of them! Let's pick one up... BOOM!
Brain-Leaf; Parasitic Plant that latches onto people, turning them into zombie-like creatures under their control. Frightening visage as the hapless victim's brain becomes exposed over time by the acids secreted by the brain-leaf.
Moss-Monster; Tall, with shambling vines for legs, no real torso, and a mouth at the bottom of each "foot". Yikes!
Spider-Flower; It's a giant flower that's poisonous to the touch, releases noxious spores when angered, and crawls around like a spider.
Well there are some:
In this application there are 5 (not counting monsters with CR 0): Awakened Tree, Treant, Shambling Mound, Twig Blight, Violet Fungus,.
In the monster Manual, there 2 or 3 types of Myconids
In Volo's Guide to Monster, there are Vegepygmy (CR 1/4), Vegepygmy Chief (CR 2), Thorny (CR 1) (all some sort of mould creatures) and Wood Woad (CR 5).
Not a lot, but depending on the campaign it might be worth to focus on how to defeat these monsters.
Also I just think most rangers just don't specialize in gardening.
The same could be said of picking oozes, if you pick oozes as your favored enemy, you have to accept the campaign might not be based around the lord of slime. Similarly if you pick celestial, most campaigns don't involved purging the material plane of the divines influence. For widest utility I would imagine many rangers grab undead or a combo of Human and Orc/Elf/Dwarf. But your favored enemy is also about flavor, what your characters history is, regardless of how handy it will be.
There's been a few plant monsters through the years of D&D. Tapping into the earliest editions' statistics makes for an easy conversion to 5E, so don't limit yourself to just pure 5E material. I still use obliviax moss.
We all leave footprints in the sands of time.
Since I friggin love Circle of Spore Druids and I REALLY prefer Symbiotic Entity over Beast Shaping, I really wish I would be able to Shapechange into a vast array of fungi based monsters someday.
So I would really love the game to officially have elementals/demons that are Fungus based that would help expand the lore of either the Myconids OR Zuggtmoy herself. I'm fairly new to D&D so I don't really know how to homebrew proper stats. if any of you guys think its a good idea, feel free to tinker with it~
(And a Mushroom Diety that ain't evil would be great too.)
In addition to everyone else suggestions don’t forget you can just take an interesting sounding monster and make it a plant, or somehow controlled by one.
If you set your adventure and dungeon crawl in a completely forested setting, the plant monsters have a bit more function and meaning than just
hack&slash fodder. Dryads, Rangers, Halflings, Elves, and other forest based PCs also enjoy a terrain familiarity in campaigns like these.
I have been using a number of animal templates to make topiary monsters. Plant looking dire wolf becomes the creature from Lady in the Water. Taking a dragon as a start point make something that breathes spike growth. I enjoy just having interesting themes for creatures.
I have found myself doing this for a lot fae creatures as well mostly using fiends and angels as a jump off point.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
There's a metric spore-tonne of plants in Out of the Abyss - Zuttgmoy basically infests things making them into plant-zombies
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Venus fly trappers and a gympie gympie tree.
Read A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony. There are a number plant antagonists in there. In fact JK Rowling stole the idea for the Whomping Willow from there
http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040828a
This is an old article wizards had on forested areas and new monsters for them. They also had some for swamps, deserts, arctic, jungle, mountains, underdark, and sky areas with new monsters, spells, and items for each. Will require updating to 5e, but should help you out.
I also remember an old adventure module where a wizard tried to play at Druid and tried to reincarnate himself into a kind of celestial lotus but botched an turned himself into a shambling mound and sicced something like yellow musk creeper on the village.
5E doesn't really mess with "templates" for monsters like prior editions did, but its a good approach to whipping up new monster variants on the fly. I think if you took any beast, and did something simple like give them resistance to bludgeoning and vulnerability to fire, you could probably just call that a "vine wolf" or whatever and call it good on the fly. See also the issue with generating non-humanoid zombies and skeletons, a DM is always tacitly invited to create their own monster statblocks to fill unmet needs, but the 5E system could really accommodate making it a lot more turnkey if it had a concept of "templates" to play with.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
But we have skeleton and zombie templates for making non-humanoid skeletons and zombies. The biggest problem with them is that almost all beasts are immune to both, since they'd drop to Int 0 or less and spontaneously die, but you could easily houserule that their mental stats can't drop below 1 so you could have zombie sharks and skeletal rats and the like.
Wait, there are? Where?
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
In the monster manual
You say that, but I don't see it.
The Skeletons entry discusses that non-humanoid skeletons exist, but it doesn't provide template rules, just gives you a Skeleton, Minotaur Skeleton, and Warhorse Skeleton. All are vulnerable to bludgeoning and immune to poison, exhaustion, and poisoned... so you could certainly draw some inferences about how to put a new skeleton type together, but there isn't a direct description of a template modifier.
Same with Zombies, which gives you a Zombie, Ogre Zombie, and Beholder Zombie as examples, but does not provide a flat template that would let you do something like make a Zombie Brown Bear off the cuff.
The MM Introduction has a section which makes it sound like the book was intended to have multiple templates to apply:
But... there just really aren't that many. From what I can see.... there's:
There's also a couple of non-templates that modify a player character in a way similar to a template:
I think there was some sort of design philosophy shift partway through writing the MM, because you would think that things like skeletons, zombies, "dire", "spectral", etc. would have been more abundant and useful templates to provide than... dracoliches, which may as well just be "use the adult/ancient dracolich statblock but add a breath based on its living form" or something.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
huh, I could have sworn it was in there, apologies.
Templates may have to homebrewed then. Let’s see, for skeletons, immunity to exhaustion, resistance or immunity to poison, increase to dex…..
Sorry to double post but you can also check out the homebrew here and on Pinterest, I found at least 5 different homebrew plant monsters there for 5e.
You may also wish to expand your idea. Have you considered throwing some new insect monsters to go with your plants? One of my buddies made a plant based dungeon and one of the monsters was essentially a plant based ogre zombie with an insect swarm turning him into its hive (if you’ve played hunt you may know what this looks like). Or Cordyceps style zombies like out of the last of us, count as plant, not undead maybe require fire or poison instead of radiant to put down?