Dire Petting Zoo (3.5e Sourcebook)/Introduction

= Introduction =

Why Bother?
The entire Animal Type in the 3.5e rules really lacks anything interesting besides dinosaurs. And, although dinosaurs are really cool, their main interest comes from the fact that they can do almost supernatural stuff. The basic imaginings used for anything other than dinosaurs in the animal type is pretty lame. Besides that, most of the animals really aren't balanced well for their CR. With all the magical monsters around, a big brute that has no laser eyes or frost farts really doesn't cut it.

What this sourcebook aims to do is provide some challenging dire animals that can be used as monsters. They will have abilities that verge on the supernatural.

Problems with the Animal Type
The animal type contains beasts that are mostly clustered around the low to mid Challenge Ratings. This would be fine if type were only used to construct monsters, but there are some items, spells, and class abilities that depend on type. Particularly with class abilities, this makes them a trap in the long term for a player. A ranger that picks favored enemy: animals will have some stuff to fight up until level 8 or so and then all of the sudden, they have to go find Jurassic Park just to make their class features seem relevant.

Luckily, I have a simple solution. Make animal a subtype of magical beast. Any class feature that depends on the animal type will instead offer magical beast. Any item or spell will only affect the animal subtype. That way, your ranger can be a beast hunter, which includes animals. Your druid won't be able to cast Animal Growth on a Chimera, however.

The Nature of Dire
The word "dire" in D&D with respect to animals is generally defined as something more ferocious and bigger than others of its kind. I'd like to extend that definition a bit. D&D worlds have magic in them. Magical monsters exist all over the place. A dire animal is what happens when an animal born with a trace of magic. It becomes twisted, fierce, and bloodthirsty. All of its animalistic traits and skills are amplified to a supernatural extent.

As a result, a dire rat doesn't just carry some mundane disease. It carries disease packed with supernatural power: the kind that has an immediate effect and can kill even the strongest of men in a matter of days. A dire shark has such keen senses that it can pinpoint the exact location of blood in the water from miles away.

The point is, dire animals should be worthy monsters to fight. They are savage and deadly and supernaturally powerful.

As a rule of thumb, dire animals tend to be four times as powerful as regular members of their kind.

Legendary Animals
Legendary animals are a different breed from dire animals. Where dire animals have a brush of the supernatural, legendary animals are infused with it. One might consider a legendary animal to be more a magical monster than an animal, which is undoubtedly true. They certainly share the mannerisms and habits of their normal animal cousins, but they are incredibly more powerful and intelligent to the point of sentience.

Legendary animals are leaders and protectors of their kind. Even usually solitary creatures will follow a legendary animal leader and the leader's offspring are often either legendary themselves, or dire animals. They are not as bloodthirsty as their dire animal offspring, but still remain territorial.

A trademark ability of legendary animals is their "Call of the Wild". They are able to teleport members of their pack to their location, regardless of where the pack members currently are.

Animals with Treasure
Another part that I found significantly lacking with the animal type was treasure rewards. After a session of fighting fourteen dire rapebeasts in an epic battle, you would get a brand new level gain, which is great, but also have reduced CWBL. You would end up behind the amount of treasure you should have for a character of your level, which kinda sucks.

As such, I have tried to make magic items that can be easily harvested by killing dire and legendary animals. These items are basically allowing you to gain a bit of the magic that was infused in the animal.

Balancing Creatures at the Correct CR
Credit for the numbers used as a guideline for making the dire animals in this sourcebook goes to Ghostwheel. He created the following table, which is used to generate stats for monsters that should be balanced for a rogue level party.


 * AC is based on a SRD fighter with 16 base str. Touch AC is normal AC - party level, minimum of 12 + size modifier, and flatfooted AC is normal AC -2.
 * Attack is based on a fighter with 14 dexterity at first level, chain shirt (level 1), chainmail (level 2), full plate (level 5), and mithral full plate (level 10)
 * HP based on a "standard" combat rogue (no Craven or anything like that) (takes 4 rounds to kill with 50% misses)
 * Damage based on a d10 character with 14 con (takes 8 rounds to kill with 50% misses)