Monster Monday: Gallimimus & Ornithomimus - They're Flocking This Way

Today's Monster Monday is a two-for-one deal: ornithomimus and gallimimus, two fast, bipedal dinosaurs that ran around in herds. You may remember gallimimus from this scene in Jurassic Park.  Can a druid have a gallimimus companion and ride it around?  Of course.

Struthiomimus by Nobu Tamura, via Wikimedia

Ornithomimus stands slightly taller than a man, and reaches lengths of 12 feet including its tail.  Gallimimus is much larger, easily reaching 20 feet in length, with some specimens reaching 26 feet.  Together, these two dinosaurs are the most recognizable of a group of dinosaurs called ornithomimosaurs.  These dinosaurs tend to be lightly built, nimble, and very fast - Struthiomimus may have attained speeds of 50 miles per hour.  They are recognizably ostrich-like in shape, with long legs and long necks.  Like many species of dinosaurs, ornithomimosaurs were feathered.  Unlike other more familiar theropods, like tyrannosaurus and velociraptor, ornithomimosaurs were not fierce hunters.  Their diet is still under debate, but it is likely that they were omnivores, snatching up small mammals and reptiles, munching on insects, and pulling soft buds and leaves off of trees.

There are many species of ornithomimosaur.  The stats for ornithomimus work just as well for struthiomimus or archaeornithomimus, while the stats for gallimimus will serve for beishanlong as well.  Smaller ornithomimosaurs like anserimimus, sinornithomimus, pelicanomimus, rativates, and garudimimus can be simulated by applying the Young simple template to the ornithomimus stat block.  The largest ornithomimosaur - the odd-looking but gigantic and terrifying deinocheirus - will require its own unique stat block, but that is a Monster for a different Monday.

 by Nobu Tamura, via Wikimedia
Beishanlong, a large ornithomimosaur rivaling and perhaps exceeding gallimimus in size.

I went back and forth many times over what size category these dinosaurs should be in.  Strictly by the numbers, ornithomimus is closer to horse-sized than man-sized, and should be a Large creature, while gallimimus is as long as an orca and might belong in the Huge size category.  Ultimately, though, I opted to make ornithomimus a Medium creature and gallimimus Large.  For one thing, without its tail, ornithomimus is roughly the size of an ostrich, which is already statted up as a Medium creature.  The dinosaurs also just aren't very powerful compared to other Large and Huge monsters respectively.  What really convinced me was that making ornithomimus Large would mean it could serve as a mount for Medium creatures.  While very light jockeys can ride ostriches in real life, I can't imagine a scenario involving an armored adventurer getting onto an ornithomimus resulting in anything other than horrible hip injuries for the poor dinosaur; on the other hand I can easily imagine humanoids riding gallimimus - probably because I read Dinotopia so much as a kid.

Ring Riders by the great James Gurney

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Riding Hummingbird, the Fast Fey Flying Mount

Today's Monster Monday is the riding hummingbird, a man-sized hummingbird bred and ridden by small fey races because of their incredible speed and maneuverability.  I even made stats for giant hummingbird animal companions for druids, because why not?

Magnificent Hummingbird (Eugenes fulgens), by Mdf, via Wikimedia

There aren't enough flowers in the Prime Material Plane to support these sugar-crazy beasts in the wild, but the fey realms are a different story.  The High Humming Stables of the Seelie Court are well stocked with barrels of sweet nectar from magically enhanced blossoms.  Dashing little scouts ride these magnificent ruby-throated birds in teams of three in the van of the Faerie King's armies.  And every spring, the best hummingbird riders compete in a tournament - a twisting test of speed and maneuverability where riders catch rings with their lances from bird-back along a shifting three-dimensional aerial obstacle course.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Giant Otter and Dobarcu

For today's Monster Monday, we've got two big otters.  The giant otter is a man-sized Amazonian animal known to eat piranhas, black caiman, and anacondas (and now it can be your animal companion!).  The dobarcu, or otter king, is a bloodthirsty creature from Irish folklore that hunts the most dangerous game - man!

Photo: Frank Wouters via Wikimedia

I first learned of giant otters from a professor of mine who told stories about his research studying black caimans in the Amazon.  He mentioned that it was dangerous to go bathing or swimming there, not so much because of the caimans or the piranhas, but because of the giant otters.  They're fast and deadly, and they like to gang up on larger prey.  Modern giant otters range from 3.3 to 5.6 ft. in length, but before they were overhunted for their fur, large males could reach 7.9 ft.

Dobhar-cú (water hound) is the Irish word for otter, but folklorists and cryptozoologists (folklore enthusiasts who pretend to be scientists) use it (or the anglicized form 'dobarcu') to refer to a little-known creature from Irish mythology.  Also known as otter kings or an Irish crocodiles, there are stories of monstrous otters thinly spread all over Ireland and nearby islands.  The most famous and most detailed account goes thus:

In 1722, in Glenade (County Leitrim, Ireland), a woman washing laundry in the stream was attacked by a great beast.  Her husband went looking for her and found the dobhar-cú resting on her mangled and bloody body.  He grabbed his gun and shot it, but as it died it cried out for its mate, who came rushing up from the water looking for vengeance.  The man (perhaps with his dead wife's brother) fled on horseback to a nearby town 20 miles away, but the monster pursued him (or them) and he (or the brother) stabbed it with a spear (or dagger).  

The victim's tombstone still survives, with a carving of the monster getting stabbed:

No, it's not - as I first though - a dire scotty dog:
the bit at the front is a disembodied hand stabbing the beast.

Other accounts of dobarcu give its strange white-and-black coat, the fact that it can only be killed with silver like a werewolf, the idea that the beast's hide protects its wearer from drowning, and the story that anyone who kills a dobarcu will die the next day.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars.

4 Rules You Probably Aren't Using Correctly (And Why You Should)

You know the problem with rulebooks?  There's just so many darn rules!  I know how it is - some rules are just too complicated or time consuming to enforce.  Maybe you were a new GM and you jettisoned those minor rules that just slowed things down.  Maybe you were running a game for some new players and you didn't want to scare them away with these extraneous rules.  And then you sort of let them slip away, because the game worked just perfectly without them.

Well... I think it's time to re-evaluate some of those rules.  I've played a fair amount of D&D in my time, and I've read of and heard a lot of other peoples' stories as well.  From the experiences of myself and others, I've identified a few rules that often get ignored (not all the time - very possibly not even in your games - but often).  Now, I totally understand why these rules don't always get used: I've neglected many of them myself.  But they were written for a reason, and I think they might benefit from a little extra love.

Monster Monday: Honey Badger and Dire Honey Badger

In celebration of my 50th blogpost, today's Monster Monday is the honey badger, the fierce predator that just takes what it wants.  Honey badgers, also known as ratels, are quite distinct from actual badgers, and they deserve to be statted up separately.  They are known for their resistance to poison that lets them fight and eat cobras and bees, the loose skin on their neck that lets them keep attacking whoever tries to grab them, and the fact that when they attack they go straight for the nuts.

source

I am also including the Dire Honey Badger, also known as al-girta, a fierce, man-eating honey badger the size of a black bear.  Al-girta is the name for the honey badger in southern Iraq, where they made headlines in 2007 thanks to a rash of reported attacks in Basra by mysterious man-eating monsters that turned out to be regular, not-man-eating honey badgers.  The locals blamed occupying British forces for the animal attacks, leading to my favourite quote from the Iraq War: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."

And of course, I've made it so that you can have a honey badger/al-girta as an animal companion.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars.