Dinosaurs are fascinting because they're a) big, b) dangerous (usually) and c) extinct. In a world filled with strange magical creatures, dinosaurs could very easily come across as large and rather boring reptiles.
In addition to the terror-inspiring behemoths who are Larger Than They Appear in land rover mirrors, I'd like to see some small, clever dinosaurs. They were evolving toward pack animals with fairly complex social behaviors, so I'm in favor of taking evolution a few steps further. Not sentient dinosaurs, of the scaly humanoid variety, but truely alien creatures that are cunning and creepy--the kind of creatures that make you wonder, with dread, how much they're capable of doing. Consider some of the more intelligent birds, such as ravens, or maybe those with imitative abilities, such as parrots. Small but vicious carnivores that can mimic the sounds of their prey could offer a great little trap for evil DMs to employ.
Megaraptors with thumbs and language skills, problem solved. ^_^
clipped British accented voice from around the corner, seemingly from within a pit "Oh bother, I do believe I've broken a leg. Care to lend a chap a hand?"
Player characters move forward, point character peers over the edge into the pit. Surprise round as raptors 'decloak' and attack! "Humanoids, one decent ventriloquism, gets them every time."
Sounds of snacking on live chow ensues.
Personally I think the more the better. Or have a monster book for historical monsters.
1) dinosaurs
2)age of mammals
Axebeaks, mastodons, direwolves,,sabre tooth cats, etc etc
3) Mythology??
..and don't forget the aquatics.
And Megatherium... "king of beasts" if he could be bothered :)
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Megaraptors with thumbs and language skills, problem solved. ^_^clipped British accented voice from around the corner, seemingly from within a pit "Oh bother, I do believe I've broken a leg. Care to lend a chap a hand?"
Player characters move forward, point character peers over the edge into the pit. Surprise round as raptors 'decloak' and attack! "Humanoids, one decent ventriloquism, gets them every time."
Sounds of snacking on live chow ensues.
Sounds like the description of kobolds to me, only I think they're in the book already. ;)
In my little corner of the universe, the Troodon is the likely ancestor of koboldkind rather than dragons. The whole dragon thing is just PR/creation myth.
So, let us assume that there will be dinosaurs in the Pathfinder Bestiary. A relatively safe assumption, since every edition of the game's core monster book has had them since 1st edition, yes?
So, working on that assumption, I would love to hear folks answer the following questions:
1) How many dinosaurs is the right amount to do a good show of it?
2) What four dinosaurs would you hope to see in the book more than any other?
3) How important is it to maintain all five dinosaurs from the MM? Can we get away with just one dromaeosaurid (probably the deinonychus), with the assumption that one can make a megaraptor by simply advancing the deinonychus?
4) If #3 above is true, would it better to replace the deinonychus with the velociraptor? Velociraptor is more well-known these days, and it's easy enough to say that a velociraptor advanced up one size category is a deinonychus.
5) Dinosaurs don't have to be boring. They don't have to simply be hit points and a bite attack. Currently living animals have a wide range of biodiversity, with special attacks like poison, constriction, electricity generation, stunning attacks, ranged attacks (like tarantulas flicking poison hairs, archerfish spitting balls of water, or cobras spitting poison), and the like. Would it be too strange to give some dinosaurs a bit more flavor by giving them attacks that aren't necessarily supported by the fossil record?
6) Is there anything in particular with how dinosaurs have been stattud up in the game before that rubs you the wrong way that you'd like to see changed?
1) Enough to build a campaign world or a part of it... :D
2) At least an entry for each of the major known groups of dinosaurs with which adventurers could interact... It make no sense putting in a microraptor, but hadrosaurs and ankylosaurs could do, for example...
3) The five entries in the 3.5 MM are in effect... only four... Elasmosaurs and Pterodactyls are NOT dinosaurs, so they should go under their own entry (they where other completely different reptile-style orders of animals)...
4) Instead of substituting a dinosaur with another, it should be better to make a single entry with multiple "sizes" of the same "model" of dinosaur, just like has been made with serpents, sharks, scorpions and other animals...
A small-sized raptor is a velociraptor, a medium-sized one is a deinonychus, a large-sized one is a utahraptor, but they are all built the same way...
A T-Rex is only the biggest of a series of "carnosaur-style" dinosaurs, climbing up from small to huge size (the bite-specialist carnivores)...
Sauropods go from Large to Gargantuan size...
Etc...
5) Fossils give quite a lot of tactics and special attacks to each type of dinosaur: raptors made mass jumping rending attacks (maybe their sickle claws caused bleeding or aided in grasping their prey), the big carnivores had big crushing and ripping bites and powerful kick-and-trip techniques, hadrosaurs and sauropods slammed with their tails and crushed under their front legs, ceratopsids could impale or stampede their enemies, ankylosaurs and stegosaurs had heavy armor and spiked mace-tails capable of massive damage, etc...
Special qualities are important too: an ankylosaurs had body spikes that could passively hurt a melee attacker, advanced raptors had low-light vision, T-Rex had scent and a limited kind of tremorsense, etc...
There is no need to invent something strange to pimp the dinosaurs, imho...
6) Apart from separating plesiosaurs (both long and short-necked varieties) and pterodactyls from true dinosaurs, there is another thing that needs an upgrade, in my opinion... FEATHERS...
Almost all coelurosaurs, the group including raptors and T-Rex, where feathered dinosaurs, and among coelurosaurs are the only dinosaurs that survived the K-T Mass Extinction: BIRDS...
So, if some of these dinosaurs are to be included in the game, let them be feathered like they really were...
Other genera of dinosaurs had some kind of feather-like feature too, for example the psittacosaur, a relative of triceratop, which had a fan of plume-like structures rising up along its tail...
The english section of Wikipedia has plenty of images and informations about many different kinds of dinosaurs that can be exploited to build a good and interesting base of these iconic animals in the game...
And don't forget to revise the other real animals too... They are very poorly built in 3.5...
In my little corner of the universe, the Troodon is the likely ancestor of koboldkind rather than dragons. The whole dragon thing is just PR/creation myth.
Troodon was feathered... This means that your cobolds are bird-like? ^^
James, don't forget these two little cool things that various animals do in real life...
- There is a desert reptile that squirts blood out of it's eyes as a means of scaring predators away...this could be REALLY cool if it were a touch attack that caused nausea....
- There is a form of shrimp or lobster from the ocean that has one massively overdeveloped claw that it can actually use to crack open a crabs shell...it (the overpowered claw) is compared to a bullet in it's speed and impact power in the way it pummels the crabs shell to crack it in one blow....Can you say Sunder? I knew you could!!!
I don't remember either of these two animals names...but the abilities are pretty cool nonetheless.
Creative Director
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James, don't forget these two little cool things that various animals do in real life...
- There is a desert reptile that squirts blood out of it's eyes as a means of scaring predators away...this could be REALLY cool if it were a touch attack that caused nausea....
- There is a form of shrimp or lobster from the ocean that has one massively overdeveloped claw that it can actually use to crack open a crabs shell...it (the overpowered claw) is compared to a bullet in it's speed and impact power in the way it pummels the crabs shell to crack it in one blow....Can you say Sunder? I knew you could!!!
I don't remember either of these two animals names...but the abilities are pretty cool nonetheless.
Horned toad and mantis shrimp!
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Director of Sales
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Horned toad ...!James, don't forget these two little cool things that various animals do in real life...
- There is a desert reptile that squirts blood out of it's eyes as a means of scaring predators away...this could be REALLY cool if it were a touch attack that caused nausea....
...
Don't forget Bulmahn. He does that, too, and it's pretty gross.
What do ya think of those abilities though? Think they might possibly get used?
Where ("Ware"): Preposition of location.
Were ("Wur"): Past tense of "are."
Example: The dinosaurs were hiding right where we thought they were.
Spelling aside, Mad Master had a really excellent post. I second his notions regarding special abilities: Ankylosaurs with passive damage against melee attackers is a must-have! Triceratopses should do lance-like charge damage. Etc. And, honestly, their mundane abilities are interesting enough without making them speak Common, or shoot laser beams, or whatever (although I'd still like to see them with spell resistance -- or at the very least immunity to mind-affecting spells).
Feathers are a non-issue with me; that's just descriptive fluff that doesn't change the mechanics. Likewise, although putting plesiosaurs, etc. in with dinosaurs is taxonomically incorrect, it's also extremely convenient, inasfar as DM's running an Isle of Dread adventure won't need to flip around quite so much.
Feathers are a non-issue with me; that's just descriptive fluff that doesn't change the mechanics. Likewise, although putting plesiosaurs, etc. in with dinosaurs is taxonomically incorrect, it's also extremely convenient, inasfar as DM's running an Isle of Dread adventure won't need to flip around quite so much.
Feathers could change all the images and the descriptive text of many kinds of dinosaurs and so change the visual impact of those entries on DMs and players alike...
There's an abyss between looking at a scaly reptile monster and looking at a warm-blooded feathered bird-like horror...Separation of plesiosaurs and pterodactyls is useful when we look at their environment: dinosaurs on land, plesiosaurs in water, and pterodactyls in air...
It's easier when selecting monsters for an encounter in a specific environment (even in the Isle of Dread ^^)...
It's easier when selecting monsters for an encounter in a specific environment (even in the Isle of Dread ^^)...
Hmm... good point. Seems like the best book would be on-line, and you could sort it alphabetically, or by type (Magical Beast, etc.), or by QR, or by environment. But then you'd lack that nice physical hardcover book, in which sorting issues will always exist, I suppose.
In the MM there are lists of monsters by CR and by Type/Subtype, in addition to the alphabetical order, so it's not difficult to sort mosters or find their page...
Feathers could change all the images and the descriptive text of many kinds of dinosaurs and so change the visual impact of those entries on DMs and players alike...
There's an abyss between looking at a scaly reptile monster and looking at a warm-blooded feathered bird-like horror...
I agree. I have a book called "Dinosaurs: the most complete, up-to-date encyclopedia for dinosaur lovers of all ages." It is full of feathered dinosaur artwork. Seeing some of the raptor dinosaurs presented with parrot-like colors and facial features is both awe-inspiring and scary.
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That's not a bad idea, actually... I also like how that gives a bit more variety in what happens when an ability score is reduced to zero.I'd certainly have a lot of fun roleplaying intelligent monsters or PCs whose Intelligence had been reduced to zero but who remained physically functional. That's much better than just lapsing into a coma or a torpor.
CR
0INT being pure instinct, no thought? I like that...
I'm a little too tired to read through all 269 posts, so apologies if it's been suggested before, but has anyone suggested a Thesaurus yet?
I was just going thru my PDF of the Bestiary.
They included EXACTLY the eight dinosaurs I wanted.
Here's my long-winded post from 9 months ago!
OK, so I know it wasn't all just for me, but still... I'm excited!