I need a hive threat race, something native and natural
Maybe some rules or advice, I'm considering using slugs and snails if there isn't something that's already built.
Currently I want something that just naturally expands.. not undead, it has to be part of nature and non-fungal, preferably of insect-like or slug-like nature and arriving from underground.
I'm willing to convert 3.5 but i'd need OGL products at the moment and would prefer first party, Does anyone know of anything?
Your assistance would be much appreciated.
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Just use giant ants. Or bees. Or just normal everyday happy japanese hornets.
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Thriaie, or however you spell it? They're a hive of insect people, though they are more peopley and able to have conversations with the party, which might not be what you're looking for.
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Spiders, you can make em hive-like and you have a pretty easy way of making ambience with the webs and the million different sizes they come it allows everything from small swarms to gargantuan sized behemoths.
Add the fun with poison, crowd control in form of webs, and you have some undead variant with the deathweb.
So there is enough in the spiders to make for a very interesting campagin with their varied skillsets over the spieces.
Akatas: they're otherworldly abberations that bite you and infect you with larvae that turn you into a zombie, before the larvae grow into more adults.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 4
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Last year I designed some xenomorph creatures for Pathfinder! They're here!
The Tyranids.
Put the zerg to shame. Tyranids have guns.
Well, even without guns theres a reason to why the Hydralisk and Lurkers have been hated for years....before SC2 came out...
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Xiticix have guns...
Kruthik and Kythons fit the bill. One is an race created by demons (abberations), the other is a race of hive-like monster that only hunt the living. Together they fight crime!
But seriously, MM 3 I think had Kruthiks, but Book of Vile Darkness has Kythons.
Kythons: "six or seven feet from snout to tail and it was easy to see how they could be confused for massive lizards, but these were no lizards. They had to weigh at least a couple hundred pounds each and walked on two powerful legs. Leathery chitinous plates covered their entire body as if they wore plate armor. Their forearms were almost mantis-like and their mouths were filled with rows upon rows of sharp and deadly teeth. They glistened red.”
They speak infernal/abyssal.
I once made what I call the Chimantis.
I used the basic idea of unfettered eidolons to make a fully evolvable swarm, with a couple of basic creatures and the kit to make your own specialized creatures.
I've used giant spiders in game. One of the few times I've seen players shudder. A lot of people just hate them.
Formians.
Reflavor so they aren't lawful/extraplanar, and maybe make them evil just for simplicity.
You don't even have to make them evil, just completely misunderstanding the nature of non hive-mind organisms. They kill without repent because the killing of a non-queen is meaningless; they have no problem rending limb from body, because that's what they do with their own dead as they recycle the material (and they may not even recognize that the person whose limbs they're rending isn't dead yet).
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Here is an idea- eidolons that capture people, drag them back to a hive, drug them up with venom, and then brainwash them and turn them into summoners. They then force the new summoners to bond with more of their kin, and then leave them glued to the walls (with something pumped into them so that they can't sleep, since that unsummons the eidolons).
This of course has key advantages. The creatures will be effectively immortal. They will also have a limited range that can occasionally be extended with spells. They can be slightly adapted and you can make specialized units as the party faces higher and higher level threats.
And you of course get the body horror of seeing the victims glued into the hive, and have to deal with the obvious solution (killing them off). Or rescuing them, I guess....if we aren't going to be all atmospheric and take ques from the horrible, horrible things in movies.
The Tyranids.
Put the zerg to shame. Tyranids have guns.
The zerg were just a tyranid rip-off anyway. Frankly - the whole of starcraft was a 40k rip-off.
(Human marines in armored suits & space - check / Anchient alien phychics - check / Hive mind bug monsters - check Etc)
Both the tyranid and zerg are rip-offs of the bugs/arachnids from Starship Troopers (the book), so get over your fanboy-ism.
Protoss and tau are both just generic alien tropes. Better tech? Check. Phychic? Check. Smooth ships? Check.
Space-based soldiers in armour is in Starship Troopers too, and early works.
I'd adapt Xenopterids to your purpose... mostly by adding some sort of base intelligence and maybe class levels if that's what you are after.
Read their description. It is the creepiest thing in the world.
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Pretty sure according to gaming history, starcraft was originally made as a w40k game, except for some complicated reason, Blizzard lost the license and kept going with making the game.Really? I knew that was true of Warhammer / Warcraft. I didn't realize that it was also true of 40k / Starcraft.
That's a popular myth.
Old dorky Tyranids came first (early 90s). They had mercenaries and cults and actually talked to people via their diplomat race.
Starcraft (1998) featured the Zerg, which thematically were very much similar to a lot of the classic hive swarmy alien tropes. Their visual design bore little similarity to the Tyranids of the time.
The 'Nids got a redesign (1999+), and suddenly appeared a lot more Zerg-like, especially gaining lots of prominent crests like the Hydralisk. A new unit, the Ravener, is particularly notorious for the similarity.
If you want to say people are ripping off other IPs, in this case it's back and forth between Blizzard and Games Workshop.