I love using sharks, playing them as indifferent -- unless anyone is bloodied. The sharks seem lazy and ambivalent on the way in, but are suddenly frenzied and voracious on the way out!

The giant weasels hit the group hard tonight. Dropped one character to 0 hp pretty quickly and hurt two others enough to force the group into a short rest after just 1 encounter. The most painful part though was the Pauly Shore jokes that came from this battle.

Giant Weasel's are the badlands' deadliest predator in my DCC campaign.

In AD&D I did all the time. Normal animals, Dire animals, Prehistoric Animals, the works.

In my Mythras Conan game, all the time.  One of the scariest things they've fought so far is a 20ft saltwater crocodile.

I use natural animals when appropriate. However, I run them like animals, so it's not particularly common for them to want to attack/fight a group of humans (or demi-humans), and if they meet stiff resistance they tend to flee at the first opportunity. Depends on the animal and the situation. A bear sow could very well attack ferociously if she thinks her cubs are threatened. Offhand, I recall encounters with wolf packs, crocodiles, snakes of various sorts, bears, baboons, apes, sharks, boars, bats, rats, tigers, etc.

Crocs and gators are excellent. I'm also particularly fond of giant water-dwelling snakes and serpents.

In a pirate-based campaign I ran once, the players fought one with a head the size of a BMW from their sloop; it ate one PC and nearly dragged another into the watery depths, but in a very badass underwater struggle he managed to slay it by gouging out its eyes with his blade then slicing into its rubbery throat as the others fired blindly into the water at it. The players were VERY proud of their win, and insisted on keeping its head mounted on the ship as a trophy and shipping the valuable snake skin back to civilization to sell (although one PC used some to make a fancy cloak and boots). They also ate well for weeks!

Why is there this weird attitude that any animal which doesn't exist in real life is "unnatural" or "magical" and therefore doesn't count as a natural/normal animal, but physically impossible giant versions of real animals and Jurassic Park-style fake featherless dinosaurs are totally fine?

If you actually read medieval bestiaries, then you will notice that 1) medieval naturalists believed in tons of completely wrong things about nature, and 2) they believed all sorts of ridiculous fancies like unicorns, manticores and bonnacons were real natural creatures and not unnatural magical abominations.

Not to mention anything to do with speculative biology. All sorts of crazy stuff can exist in reality based on our understanding of physics and biology. Bizarrely, the ecology of fantasy campaign settings is surprisingly boring and vanilla aside from the monster manual pastiches that are relegated to the "unnatural monster that needs to be destroyed" bin.

I fail to see how griffins and owlbears and centaurs and whatever are unnatural abominations that have to be destroyed, but house-sized spiders and Indominus rex are vegan-certified^TM.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1112965I fail to see how griffins and owlbears and centaurs and whatever are unnatural abominations that have to be destroyed

I don't generally run it that way. I even count owlbears as Beasts and let the Druid Wildshape into one!

Quote from: S'mon;1112969I don't generally run it that way. I even count owlbears as Beasts and let the Druid Wildshape into one!

Yes, I imagine that most DMs have that level of common sense. I don't understand why the rules make an (often inconsistent) distinction between historical and fictional animals.

The owlbear is (as of 5e) labeled [monstrosity]. As the name implies a monstrosity is supposed to be some horrible unnatural monster, but it includes owlbears, griffins, and centaurs. Meanwhile, the tressym and winged snake are labeled [beast].

There isn't a consistent logic for what type to apply to creatures. And, for some bizarre reason, any given creature is only allowed to have one type as opposed to having all the types it makes sense to have. At least if I'm reading the rules correctly; the game doesn't seem to break if a creature has multiple types.

Anyway, I've had plenty of fun world building settings in which fantastical creatures are domesticated. Barnacle goose trees, vegetable lambs, riding ostriches, riding griffins, manticore choirs, etc. I don't understand why that doesn't feature more often in fantasy stories.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1113043Yes, I imagine that most DMs have that level of common sense. I don't understand why the rules make an (often inconsistent) distinction between historical and fictional animals.

The owlbear is (as of 5e) labeled [monstrosity]. As the name implies a monstrosity is supposed to be some horrible unnatural monster, but it includes owlbears, griffins, and centaurs. Meanwhile, the tressym and winged snake are labeled [beast].

There isn't a consistent logic for what type to apply to creatures. And, for some bizarre reason, any given creature is only allowed to have one type as opposed to having all the types it makes sense to have. At least if I'm reading the rules correctly; the game doesn't seem to break if a creature has multiple types.

Anyway, I've had plenty of fun world building settings in which fantastical creatures are domesticated. Barnacle goose trees, vegetable lambs, riding ostriches, riding griffins, manticore choirs, etc. I don't understand why that doesn't feature more often in fantasy stories.

"Monstrosities are monsters in the strictest sense: frightening creatures that are not ordinary, not truly natural, and almost never benign. Some are the results of magical experimentation gone awry (such as owlbears), and others are the product of terrible curses (including minotaurs and yuan-ti). They defy categorization, and in some sense serve as a catch-all category for creatures that don't fit into any other type."

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1113061"Monstrosities are monsters in the strictest sense: frightening creatures that are not ordinary, not truly natural, and almost never benign. Some are the results of magical experimentation gone awry (such as owlbears), and others are the product of terrible curses (including minotaurs and yuan-ti). They defy categorization, and in some sense serve as a catch-all category for creatures that don't fit into any other type."

That doesn't address my complaint at all. I've read that before and I've made this complaint several times in the past too without ever getting a satisfactory answer. How are owlbears and centaurs monstrosities if the druids make friends with them? If the rules/fluff was remotely consistent, then the druids would be leading crusades to exterminate all owlbears, centaurs, griffins, and other monstrosities.

The writers don't adhere to their own definitions, so their taxonomy is arbitrary, inconsistent, and worthless. The only good thing about the rules is that monster types don't have rules attached so you can change them easily. The first thing I did was throw the monstrosity type in the garbage where it belongs. It's a worthless catch-all category because the writers were too lazy to make something sensible.

I mean, it says right there that it's a catch-all category. It's just the "other" category for creatures.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1113146I mean, it says right there that it's a catch-all category. It's just the "other" category for creatures.

Then it's not a good taxonomy. It's lazy.

How would you categorize centaur or owlbear? I am curious.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1113148How would you categorize centaur or owlbear? I am curious.

I see the argument that centaurs may be a natural part of a fantasy world. But I can also see an argument that they are still unnatural in some way and some kind of magic is involved in their existence. That magic may allow them to reproduce the same way natural animals do, yet still be an unnatural animal.

Also something to consider, does a spell like "Animal Control" work on humans? If not why? What is the logic of your setting? Answering questions like that will tell you if centaurs are a natural animal or not.

Also, druids need not oppose anything unnatural. And again, do druids special abilities work on humans? If not, why not? Again, does that help answer why the can or can not affect centaurs or owl bears?

Now I agree that various editions of D&D may not have really given thought to the answers to these sorts of questions, and a good GM will give these sorts of questions some thought and possibly change the lists of what is affected by certain magic and abilities.