d20 Goodman Games The Complete Guide to Treants.pdf

Credits

Table of Contents

Writer: Joe Crow

Cover Artist: Thomas Denmark

Interior Artists: Tom Galambos, Thomas

Denmark

Copy Editor: Joseph Goodman

Graphic Designer: Joseph Goodman

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Chapter 1: Physiology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Chapter 2: Social Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Chapter 3: Cultural Habits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Chapter 4: Combat Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

Chapter 5: Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Firesworn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Leafsinger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18

Treeherd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Woodwarden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

New Feats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24

Chapter 6: Treant Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25

Magic Seeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25

Living Magic Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25

New Spells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

Chapter 7: Campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29

Appendix 1: New Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31

Blasted Treant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31

Deep Treant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33

Forsaken Treant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35

Hollow Treant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37

Brambleshadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38

Withered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40

Appendix 2: New Monsters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

Eater-of-Souls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

Appendix 3: Sample NPCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

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Be sure to look for the rest of the Complete Guide series!

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Aerial Adventure Guide Series

Vol. 1: Rulers of the Sky (GMG2000)

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Introduction

Chapter 1: Physiology

In the depths of the forests, the treants walk, silent and

powerful. Ancient beyond reckoning, these protectors of the

woodlands are the shadow that haunts the dreams of any who

would despoil the natural world. Revered by druids and elves,

their wisdom is legendary, as is their wrath against axe-wield-

ers and fire-starters.

This book is a complete guide to treants, offering role-

playing tips, treant-specific prestige classes, cultural insights,

mythology, combat strategies and variant templates for treants

and other plant creatures. It includes sample NPCs as well as

rules for playing treants as PCs. While this book covers the tre-

ant’s traditional role as guardian of the forest in great detail, it

also focuses on a different side of treants: their dark impulses.

Background and game stats are presented for a variety of un-

dead and otherwise dark treants, including hollow, blasted, and

forsaken types.

For reference, here is the standard treant stat block as pre-

sented in the MM.

Treants, sometimes called treelords, belong to a small but

diverse group of plants known as herbae vividum , animated

plants. Unlike most members of the plant kingdom, animated

plants are capable of independent motion and in many cases

act more like animals than plants. As one of the most common

intelligent plant species, treants often serve as intermediaries

between the green world of the forest and the red world of the

tool-using races.

Adult treants can range in height from sixteen feet to more

than sixty-four feet tall, though often as much as a third of this

height is made up of the crown, a wide protrusion of leafy

branches extending from the treant’s head. The tough, flexible

tissues that make up most of the internal structure of the tre-

ant’s body are nearly as dense as the wood of an ordinary tree,

and so a treant’s weight can range from 5,000 to more than

300,000 pounds.

Though roughly humanoid in outline, treants have little in

common with humanoids, physiologically speaking. The head

and the crown make up about two fifths of a treant’s height,

while the thick legs often make up less than one fifth. A treant’s

long, thin arms, located at the midpoint of the torso, are usual-

ly more than long enough for the treant to touch the ground

without bending over. The rigid, bark-like skin and powerful

internal fibers that comprise most of a treant’s torso and limbs

can twist with surprising ease and speed. Bending is much

more difficult, except at the shoulder and multiple elbow joints

in the arms, and the hip joints of the legs.

Thick, root-like toes extend in all directions from a treant’s

feet, digging into the ground for support and pushing it along

at surprising speed. Treants’ hands usually have between six

and thirteen long twig-like fingers, with at least one opposable

digit per hand. These fingers can fold into a knotted fist capa-

ble of dealing blows of tremendous force, and can also dig into

wood, stone or metal with surprising speed, causing great dam-

age.

Treant

Huge Plant

Hit Dice:

7d8+35 (66 hp)

Initiative:

-1 (Dex)

Speed:

30 ft.

AC:

20 (-2 size, -1 Dex, +13 natural)

Attacks:

2 slams +12 melee

Damage:

Slam 2d6+9

Face/Reach:

10 ft. by 10 ft./15 ft.

Special Attacks:

Animate trees, trample, double damage

against objects

Special Qualities:

Plant, fire vulnerability, half damage

from piercing

Saves:

Fort +10, Ref +1, Will +6

Abilities:

Str 29, Dex 8, Con 21,

Int 12, Wis 15, Cha 12

Skills:

Hide -9/(+7 in forests), Intimidate +8,

Knowledge (any one) +8, Listen +9,

Sense Motive +9, Spot +9, Wilderness

Lore +9

Treant faces most often resemble human faces, although

occasionally they include the facial features of other humanoid

species if these are more common in the region. They can in-

clude features from non-humanoid creatures if the dominant

tool-using race nearby is non-humanoid, though this is rare.

Treants generate humanoid speech using a hollow sound-

ing chamber located in the middle of their bodies. Treants com-

municate with each other in a much more complex fashion,

using their sounding chamber as well as creaks, groans,

rustling leaves, and specialized pollens to speak Treant. As a

result, Treant is a difficult language for humanoids to under-

stand, let alone speak.

Like ordinary plants, treants derive most of their suste-

Feats:

Iron Will, Power Attack

Climate/Terrain:

Any forest

Organization:

Solitary or grove (4-7)

Challenge Rating:

Treasure:

Standard

Alignment:

Always neutral good

Advancement:

8-16 HD (Huge); 17-21 HD (Gargantu-

an)

nance by rooting themselves in the soil and basking in the sunlight. They spend between six and twelve hours a day like this,

resting in a meditative state. While resting, they are virtually indistinguishable from ordinary trees.

Treant reproduction is a complicated process. Though treants are hermaphroditic, and capable of self-germination, they most

commonly gather in small groups of three to five to germi-

nate a sapling and raise it. Treants can live

for up to five thousand years, and ru-

mors of even older treants

exist. They are physical-

ly mature at about

three hundred

years of age.

There are

three common

varieties of treants.

Trueheart treants,

the most com-

monly encoun-

tered variety,

closely resemble

oak trees and dwell in

deciduous forests of the lowlands and hills.

The second most commonly encountered type

are the Evergreen treants, who resemble pine trees and

usually frequent coniferous forests in rocky, mountain-

ous areas. Taller than the Trueheart variety, they are

renowned for their intelligence, though they’re not as

physically powerful as their more common relatives

are. Waterborne treants are the least commonly en-

countered, being found primarily in swampy

wetlands. They resemble willow trees, and are

known to be remarkably persuasive.

Chapter 2: Social Structure

Treants are, by nature, a solitary species. While they do

gather in small groves from time to time, these groups tend to

be temporary. Of course, for such a long-lived race, temporary

can mean several hundred years. Treants focus much of their

attention on their own territories, rather than concerning them-

selves with direct social interaction. Often months or some-

times years will pass without face-to-face contact between tre-

ants with neighboring territories. “The Green comes first” is a

common saying, and treants who neglect their forests to spend

time “chattering like squirrels” acquire a reputation as unreli-

able wastrels.

Despite this apparent isolation, treants maintain an elabo-

rate communications network, using migratory birds, animals,

and insects to carry messages across vast distances. Treants

call this the “Vine of Tales.” These messages are transmitted

via specialized pollens that travelling creatures can carry for

thousands of miles, sharing the information they bear with

hundreds of treants. These pollens are secreted at will by tre-

ants, and are almost impossible for non-treants to intercept and

understand, as few species have the sensory apparatus to per-

ceive them, let alone decipher them. As a result of the Vine of

Tales, very few treants are more than six months out of touch

with treant society.

On the smaller scale, most treants do maintain some social

ties with treants in adjacent territories. Every few months or so,

neighboring treants will meet on the border of their respective

territories and spend a day or two catching up on recent events.

Larger forests can contain many territories, and periodically all

the treants of a specific area will gather for a “moot” to social-

ize, discuss larger issues, and plan serious business like the

greatly feared, but necessary, controlled burns that keep the

forest’s underbrush from collecting to dangerous levels. These

moots take place every two or three years, and can last for sev-

eral weeks.

A treant’s territory can range from five to fifty miles

across, depending on the terrain and population. Territories in

areas with large, active populations of humanoids tend to be

smaller, making it easier to respond to the problems inevitably

created by “axe-wielders,” as treants often call the tool-using

races. Monitoring and maintaining its territory is the primary

focus of a treant’s life.

Oddly enough, the borders of these territories are fairly

loose, being defined more by a mixture of consensus and con-

venience than by rigid adherence to specific geographical

markers. Treants who neglect their caretaking duties often find

their territory gradually absorbed out from under them, as their

neighbors take over maintenance duties for the areas adjacent

to their own territories. Treants “uprooted” in this fashion are

subject to a great deal of social pressure from their fellows to

mend their ways. Often an older treant will unilaterally assume

a mentoring role for one of these uprooted deviants, sometimes

spending hundreds of years attempting to correct the misguid-

ed youth.

Occasionally, some darker force will overshadow a treant,

leading it onto paths from which it cannot be rescued by moral

persuasion or social coercion. Whether rotted by some internal

bitterness of spirit or corrupted by an external evil, a shadowed

treant can become a powerful force for evil, as its close con-

nection with its territories can corrupt the very fabric of the

land. The usual response by its fellows is ostracism, followed

by a careful readjustment of the surrounding territories to min-

imize contact with the aberrant treant. So long as the corrup-

tion is contained within its territory, little further action will be

taken. Should the shadowed treant begin to encroach on its

neighbor’s territories, eventually they will band together to re-

strain the expansionist deviant.

Among treants, age, experience and wisdom determine so-

cial dominance. The physical measure of this experience and

wisdom is the health and upkeep of the treant’s territory. Tre-

ants do not express their leadership in hierarchical terms; in

fact they have no kings, chiefs, or formal offices of any recog-

nizable kind. Often, it is difficult for an outsider to tell which

particular treant in a group is the leader. How much weight

other treants give to its opinions and how often they seek out

its advice are the only real clues to who is in charge of a given

area. Even then, should the burdens of leadership distract the

elder from its duties to its own territory, the cloak of ad hoc au-

thority can quickly pass to another. “Prune one’s own branch-

es first” is a popular treant aphorism. After all, how can you

trust the advice of someone who cannot maintain his own lands

properly?

Fortunately, the glacial pace of treant social politics pre-

vents this informal system of leadership from interfering with

relations with outside societies. By the time a given elder has

faded from the political scene, many generations have passed

among the mayfly races. Even among the druidic circles that

make up most of treantkind’s social contact with other races,

the extended lifespan of the treefolk means that much of treant

politics goes unnoticed.

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