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How different do you think the behavior of giant vermin is compared to their smaller counterparts? For example do you believe that giant scorpions still live solitary lives or do you think they might hunt in packs so as to more easily attack larger game? Do you think they are still cold blooded and if so how do you think the larger species manage to regulate their temperatures considering their environments? Also what do you think they are usually hunting in their environments considering that their normal foodstuffs would be no longer viable considering their size?
Right, because a world with magic underpinning its very existence follows precisely the same scientific and physical laws as we have.
There's absolutely zero way for monstrous vermin to have denser (and thus stronger) limbs than their tiny brethren. Giants could not have stronger bones, perhaps made out of different material or with a different chemical structure than our own bones.
These things are inviolate. Not only is there no possible way for us to be wrong about what exists in our own world, but there is no way for what exists in our own world to be different from that which exists in a make-believe one.
Stop imagining otherwise.
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Uh, whut?
Look, the real purpose of these things is to be slaughtered by adventurers or to destroy villages or something.
It's pretty obvious that Beholders and things like that depend on magic just to live.
But things like Giant Scorpions, Spiders, etc do just as much. If you are interested you can look up the scaling laws for natural organisms.
Something that has always helped me is that muscular power depends on the area (cross section of a muscle), whereas volume (and thus weight) go up with the cube.
So you have ants that can carry 10 times their own weight and whatnot, and elephants with legs like trees.
That's a long winded way of saying these giant size things are totally impossible physically.
So it's pointless to even speculate about how much food they need or hunting grounds, or anything like that.
Now if you are doing it for flavor that's something else. My take is that something that size has to be solitary (except for mating season maybe). They can't afford to share game with anything else.
Cold blooded, so they can only exist in certain environments, like deserts. I imagine some gigantic scorpion burrowed into the sand at night, and being very sluggish in the cold night desert.
No Giant Tarantulas or other bugs on the tundra either.
I might add that humanoid Giants as depicted are totally fubar. If they tried to take a step, they would break their legs and fall to the ground.
Until you add magic. That is about the only thing that could make the kinds of things we see in the books possible.
Just saying, don't shine too much science on these things. Good for flavor maybe, but the whole thing really starts to look dumb if you try to assign some sort of logic to it.
The problem with that logic is that using creatures as little more then slaughter fodder for PCs can lead to a loss of verisimilitude in the world and story you are crafting as players begin to wonder how these things exist in a space alongside other people and yet neither have completely eradicated each other. I mean seriously we've all had times when we've wondered who the hell lives in a forest/desert/wherever that seems to have a bad problem with giant arachnids that can only be handled by adventurers that randomly wander by. Trying to put some ecological rules to creatures like this helps build them out of that position of something woefully out of place in a story and make them feel more feasible and interesting to both the players and GMs on the whole. I mean hell look at goblins and bugbears from before paizo retolled them, goblins became these incredibly endearing psychos who ride giant rats with a god known for its lice and bugbears became nightmare fueled serial killers who get high on fear. The point of this is to try and help build some of that interesting narrative into creatures we usually don't think about like that but use all the time and make them more interesting on the whole for it.
But anyways off my ramble and back to the topic at hand what do you guys do in your own games to explain how the hell scorpions and other giant arachnids/insects are wandering around the world and yet haven't managed to completely depopulate/deforest it?
For much the same reason that dragons and whatnot can exist without scoffing everything within 100 miles. They eat less than you'd expect; prey species grow faster than you'd expect, not least thanks to natural magic, druids and fey; monsters kill each other in the absence of adventurers.
That's not to say that it can be solved perfectly, because it often doesn't make sense on lots of levels. But the simplest way is to make sure that there aren't more of them than you can reasonably justify.
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I'm very focused on ecology in my home games. If I make a dungeon, there's going to be a discernible food chain. Magical emanations => fungus => vermin => prey animals => predators => humanoids => monsters. I grew up watching nature documentaries and I use that knowledge (along with stuff I've learned over the years from various college courses) to try and make the weather, climate, and terrain believable. My favorite class is the Druid, so if I ever have a player make a Druid I want a framework in place for them to ask the local wildlife questions, and have meaningful responses.
But I recognize I probably go farther than any other GM I've ever met in that regard. Some go farther forming the political motivations of their countries, which I know little about creating. Everyone will focus on different aspects of their world more than the next GM.
Oh, I guess that's a bit of a tangent...
I generally see larger vermin performing the same behaviors as their smaller kin. Scorpions hunt alone, and eat as often as their little cousins. I don't see them as any smarter, despite having a physically larger brain, if that is what you were eluding to.
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I'm very focused on ecology in my home games. If I make a dungeon, there's going to be a discernible food chain. Magical emanations => fungus => vermin => prey animals => predators => humanoids => monsters. I grew up watching nature documentaries and I use that knowledge (along with stuff I've learned over the years from various college courses) to try and make the weather, climate, and terrain believable. My favorite class is the Druid, so if I ever have a player make a Druid I want a framework in place for them to ask the local wildlife questions, and have meaningful responses.
But I recognize I probably go farther than any other GM I've ever met in that regard. Some go farther forming the political motivations of their countries, which I know little about creating. Everyone will focus on different aspects of their world more than the next GM.
Oh, I guess that's a bit of a tangent...
I generally see larger vermin performing the same behaviors as their smaller kin. Scorpions hunt alone, and eat as often as their little cousins. I don't see them as any smarter, despite having a physically larger brain, if that is what you were eluding to.
Nahh I don't see them as any "smarter" perse more like more complex. The ones as big as horses are probably good hunting alone but some of the smaller ones ranging from small to medium though would probably have to adopt more complex behavior to be successful, like say hunting in packs in order to bring down larger game ranging from dogs upwards to maybe even the errant horse.
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I remember reading an old Dragon Magazine article about the "Ecology of the Hydra". One detail about them was that every time a Hydra ventured out of its lair it would have one head always looking up.
Hydras are a favorite prey item of Dragons.
Similarly, it doesn't matter if your Scorpion is Diminutive or Gargantuan, it is likely to be a prey item for something larger. Even the modern day Tarantula fears the paralyzing sting of the tiny Wasp that wants to lay eggs in its abdomen.
A "pack" of Scorpions will probably draw more attention to themselves than one venturing out at night to hunt by itself. But, the cool thing is, it's your world. You can devise any sort of social behavior you want.
I've just found that, even though it's a fantasy universe, your players are still grounded in their understanding of the real world. If you stray too far from that understanding, it can break their verisimilitude.
Human bone is about as strong as steel. If giants in a fantasy world have much stronger bones, I can definitely see their bones used to make stuff, no?