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Mr. Avaritt, although your professional expertise obviously allows you to pick up on errors in representations of real-world versions of the creatures you work with, the people in WotC and other companies must not have your knowledge-base to work with. this seems to me to be the obvious answer and one you could possibly help them with by posting a corrected version of the same monster for their perusal or even publish it yourself.
I know if they ever need assistance with fire sprinkler systems and their component parts - I am there !! :^) All I am saying is: don't be angry with their/our ignorance - show us how to make the monsters behave better and/or appear more realistic.
thanks,
F.Whited
Who is to say that the evolutionary/magical influence that caused them to become giant insects didn't also change other aspects of there biology, like giving moths teeth or ants poisonous jaws. DnD is a fantasy setting. d20 Modern is WOTCs real life setting.
thanks,
Pat Jacobs
They probably did it to make entomologists angry. Game designers love that.
Question: Why are Vermin in D&D so Stupid?
Answer: They have an intelligence score of less than 3.
As for why they are protrayed so differently in the game than they are in real life...
1. It is a fantasy game.
2. Giant vermin are like this in real life... but they have more ranks in hide.
3. It is a fantasy game.
4. Not all the game designers are entomologists. The ones that are work for Bug-Eyed Scary Monsters.
5. It is a fantasy game.
The giant moth would not be all that menacing if the only thing it could do was lap the dew off your lilly.
In a recent Dragon Magazine the featured a city in the shadow plane. The city watch rode giant moths which bite. I have news for you moths and butterflies are harmless.
Not on the Plane of Shadow, obviously.
But that would kind of make sense for a plane that's a dark, nightmarish reflection of 'reality,' wouldn't it?
Contributor
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I am a professional entomologist and an avid D&D player. Here is my queation. Why do D20 magazines portray insects so erroniously and goofy. In a recent Dragon Magazine the featured a city in the shadow plane. The city watch rode giant moths which bite. I have news for you moths and butterflies are harmless. They can't bite you and it is not because they are so small. It is because their mouthparts are like a garden hose. They lap up nectar from flowers, the worst they can do is be mad at you.
Ants are another one, they are perceived as having poisonous jaws. This is bulls**t! Ants are closely related to bees and wasps many of them have stingers and others spray poison.
The short answer is that none of us on Dragon's staff are professional entomologists.
I didn't even take biology in high school and my college biology credit was fulfilled with Environmental Biology. I know the technical difference between an insect and arachnid, but that's about the limit of my bug knowledge. (Well, okay, that and when they hit my windshield they look like little tiny paintball explosions.)
I have pretty much no idea how a bug works.
As far as how vermin are portrayed beyond the pages of Dragon? I have no control over that.
Sounds like they've got an article void you could fill, Avaritt. ;-)
Sounds like they've got an article void you could fill, Avaritt.
There you go Medesha... always looking on the bright side.
You make Brian (ie Life of) smile!Or at least whistle. :D
:-)
I'm a firm believer in, "At the end of the journey, the pessimist may be right, but the optimist has a better time getting there."
Oh yeah, Mr. Avritt? Well, why don't you submit an article about vermin, Mr. Entomologist guy?!?!?
Seriously, it would be cool. Write about bugs found in the really real world that have abilities that we laymen are unaware of.
I was watching National Geographic today and learned about a type of ant that takes over other ant colonies through mimicking the pheromones of the target colony's queen. Now if only the giant version had enough gumption to take over an out of the way human settlement...
Or stats for giant versions of new and interesting bugs, like walking sticks ("Did that tree just move? AIIIIEEEEE!!!")? I'd like to see that.
But no matter what you do, realize that nothing you produce will ever be as cool as that lizard that shoots blood out of its eyes. =)
I agree with Vern. I'd also like to know why "Vermin" i.e, insects, arachnids, and so on, with the exception of formians, are always depicted as "Evil".
Who says spiders and scorpions are evil?
I agree with Vern. I'd also like to know why "Vermin" i.e, insects, arachnids, and so on, with the exception of formians, are always depicted as "Evil".
Who says spiders and scorpions are evil?
I would'nt say that they are depicted as evil, so much as they are depicted as being menacing.
In a recent Dragon Magazine the featured a city in the shadow plane. The city watch rode giant moths which bite. I have news for you moths and butterflies are harmless. They can't bite you and it is not because they are so small. It is because their mouthparts are like a garden hose. They lap up nectar from flowers, the worst they can do is be mad at you.
Okay, I have a question for YOU then, Mr. Wizard. If moths can't bite, then how do they keep eating my sweaters? Do they lurk in the closet with tiny little tools and whittle away the threads when the door is shut? Unless they exude some sort of acid that only affects cloth, this aspect just stumps me.
Ants are another one, they are perceived as having poisonous jaws. This is bulls**t! Ants are closely related to bees and wasps many of them have stingers and others spray poison.
Once, in grade school, I was in a new town with a dry, hot climate, very different from what I was used to. During recess, I saw some ants with large reddish heads that were bigger than their brown, thin bodies. I was fascinated, so I picked one up, then gathered about 8 of his fellows and held them in the palm of my hand. After about a minute of this, the ants had had enough of my shenanigans... suddenly, as one unit (this is the scary part) all 9 ants bit the palm of my hand at the exact same moment. Needless to say, I was anxious to let them go, although some of them had to be picked out of my hand with a sharp penciltip. I bring this story up because, for days afterward, my hand was red and infected with a serious rash, and it burned for sometime afterwards. Now, I may not know about bugs, but that sure sounds like the aftereffects of poison to me. ...and just for the record, it was their mandibles that were stuck in my hand, not their butts. If you know what kind they were, I've always wanted to know.
I had this crazy theory in line with the thoughts of a few others. D&D is fantasy, A giant spider couldn't even support it's own weight. "Vermin" of most varieties like almost every critter in D&D simply cannot exist in our world and shouldn't be expected to. Though I would love to see a Conjurer summon up a Fiendish Giant Spider that just collapsed in on itself or some Huge Moths that can't do anything just fall out of the sky but the fact is they aren't real or even close to it. They are fodder for players and handy sources for poisonous glands and venom sacs. I have all sorts of ridiculous bugs that some of the cultures in my setting hunt or even farm as food. None of them could exist and none of them are real. When was the last time anyone has seen a wasp fire a magic missle?
The giant moth would not be all that menacing if the only thing it could do was lap the dew off your lilly.
actually I find that VERRY menacing... no giant moth is licking my Lilly!
First of all, the "real" world is pretty awesome and full of exotic creatures.
The best designers do their homework and make monsters both cool and with some reasonable semblance of the real creature it's based on. Designers who are basing a creature on a real-world animal and don't do their research are both lazy and foolish.
Ants are another one, they are perceived as having poisonous jaws. This is bulls**t! Ants are closely related to bees and wasps many of them have stingers and others spray poison.
I'm *not* a professional entomologist, but common experience indicates that some ants can deliver poison through a bite. I'd be very surprised to learn that zero ant species can do that. Technically, they don't have "poisonous jaws", but the game effect would be the same.
I can't answer for the rest of the south eastern part of the US, but it sure feels like fire ants can bite. I would fifth or sixth the recommendation that you write an article, re-addressing the attack possibilities of vermin in D&D--perhaps a "new" discovery that's lain dormant for so long.
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Here's an excerpt from the designers' notes from Nat Sims' forthcoming Masters and Minions book /Rage of the Remorhaz/:
"The remorhaz hive is loosely based on an insect hive, but it has many differences from real insects. My late grandfather, Dr. Robert Metcalf, was a renowned entomologist, and would probably have been ashamed of my mutant hybrids. In my defense I can only argue that magic has strange influences on biology: I just record what I see. Like bee and termite hives, the remorhaz ecology has a general hierarchy of larvae, worker, drone, and queen, but no mundane hive insect has a second stage resulting in a metamorphosis to a flying form. Nor do lepidoptera, the natural moths and butterflies, live in a hierarchical society."
Readers of d20 Filtered may remember the preview of flying stage of the remorhaz: the colorfully fractal-winged haz moth from the Monster Rampage feature in issue #3.
A moose once bit my sister. Nasty things, moose bites.
ASEO out
Playing tag once in the woods, at the wee age of 7, I blindly ran through a web containing a spider akin to the dreaded banana spider. Unfortunately, I ran through the spider, which attached itself to my face. Thing was as big as my face. Trust me when I say to you, spiders are indeed evil. *shudder*