So; I see a lot of dire animals in the 3.5 books; is that a template or what; can anyone point me to the rules that say how to upgrade an animal to a dire anmial; is that a template; and advancement or what; anyone know?
That's an interesting question, but the answer is "No, it's not a template." I think the follow-up must then be "Why not?", to which the answer can only be "Dunno, just isn't." It really seems a little counter to the spirit of 3.x, now that I think about it. However, the dire animals are all individual creatures developed with no set unifying formula, except to generally take the namesake creature and make a very similar, yet much stronger, version. However, the amount of power bestowed by this advancement varies wildly. Look at a dire rat, which is CR 1/3, versus a dire tiger, which I believe is CR 8. Now compare that to the base creature. A rat is CR 1/8, so I suppose technically the CR advancement would go 1/8, 1/6, 1/4, 1/3. Once you get into fractions, CRs seem to change by increments of two in the denominator. Examining that, the dire rat has increased three "CRs." That's actually comparable to the dire tiger, which advances four CRs from the normal tiger's CR of 4. But in truth, there's no real comparison between moving a creature up through the fractional range of CRs, and moving another up four full increments. Also compare the boar (CR 2) and the dire boar (CR 4). That only advances the creature two CRs (although it also doubles it, which I believe is the same for the tiger and dire tiger, so that might be getting more to the matter; but it doesn't hold as well for the CR 4 brown bear and the CR 7 dire bear).
There is no template or unified code printed anywhere, to my knowledge, about how to turn a normal animal into a dire animal. I don't even think Green Ronin's "Advanced Bestiary" touches this issue (which is a little odd), but I could be wrong on that point.
Yeah, they are just different animals. Asking how to take a tiger and upgrade it to a dire tiger is like saying how to take a leopard and upgrade it into a lion.
So; I see a lot of dire animals in the 3.5 books; is that a template or what; can anyone point me to the rules that say how to upgrade an animal to a dire anmial; is that a template; and advancement or what; anyone know?
The specific answer is that Dire Animals, in the modern sense of the word anyways, are creatures that inhabited the Earth in the Pleistocene Epoch (Dire Wolf particularly). Since D&D adopted these creatures, they've taken some liberties and introduced some that didn't exist.
Since they are completely separate animals, no template would cover these.
However, as a player of a fantasy game, I see no reason why there shouldn't be a template to create these.
You have to understand why "Dire" isn't a template. These critters are, fundamentally, elements of previous editions translated into 3e and expanded a bit. As such, my guess is they follow the general power of the original animals and so don't fit a regular template applied to their modern equivalents.
Another difference between normal animals and dire animals is that normal animals get good Fort and Reflex saves and dire animals get good Fort, Reflex AND Will saves. In addition to being stonger, quicker, and tougher than normal animals, dire animals also tend to be more charismatic.
There is a Dire Animal template as OGL
Tome of Horrors Dire Animals is a free PDF by Scott Greene of Necromancer games HERE
thanks for all the feedback; I have a Pleociene era; ice age sort of place in my world; and was wondering how to make dire animals that are not already in existance; dire birds; dire snakes; dire cockroaches; anything and was wondering; I have looked though lots of source books but couldnt find a rule or guide; so; off to check that last posts link.