The Eagles Are Coming
Before we talk about eagles, let’s take a moment to talk about trolls. They’re ugly. They regenerate. Everybody and their grandma knows that you’re supposed to finish them off with fire. This makes Mr. Troll the poster child for “adventure precedent.” All but the most inexperience players know to light the torches when a troll comes calling, and you can’t blame them either. This is the sort of metagaming that you have to include. I mean, what are the players supposed to do, stand around and pretend that they don’t know this dirt common piece of lore while the troll keeps getting up and wailing on them? Rather than being the kind of GM that goes, “No guys. You wouldn’t know to use fire,” I suggest that this is precisely where you want to try subverting expectations.
Imagine for a moment that you’re the GM. You want to challenge the players, but Mr. Troll is a solved encounter before he even hits the table. Why not invent a troll subspecies with a weakness to cold or sonic damage? You might go with one of the classics and apply the half-dragon template, making the troll immune to fire. I wound up doing something similar in my own game, giving some armor of fire/acid resistance to a troll boss. It was a proud moment watching the table turn immediately to problem-solving mode, using dimension door to teleport the armor off the big bad. While questionably legal, this is 100% the kind of thinking you want to encourage in your players. Creative solutions are fun, and if they work it makes players feel like a million bucks. Using known quantities like regenerating trolls, but twisting the circumstances away from the commonplace, is a great way to make these moments happen.
As for Prof. Tolkien’s eagles, the same sort of thinking applies. The world is a strange place, and might not resemble the familiar stereotypes from literature. You might run across evil unicorns, good undead, or a dragon in need of rescue from a wicked princess. This is not about breaking the rules of the game world, but about keeping your players on their toes. Just make sure not to subvert expectations too often, or you risk losing the surprise. Every once in a while though? Sure. Go ahead. Turn those kindly eagles into rapacious rocs. Chances are your players don’t have Knowledge (ornithology) anyway.
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The same can be said for dragons… Well, the most common types of dragons, anyways. Metallic scales or chromatic hues are always sure signs of what type of dragon something is.
Being in a dragon themed campaign, one is bound to come across a lot of “everyone should know this”moments, but I can be sure that there will be times where everyone is tilting their head trying to figure out what gimmicks come with a dragon that ISN’T known by everyone.
Hell, next thing we know,we’ll be encountering dragons who have magicked their scales to a different color, and then wondering why our fireballs aren’t working on that white dragon over there…. Or why the white dragon is breathing fire.
A white dragon with some kind of element-altering necklace would be rock solid. Hell, you could just give it a few elixirs of dragon’s breath to get the same effect.
As for the dragon’s color, gold villains are certainly possible within Pathfinder:
http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Kwislingyr
And I’ve read at least one Pathfinder novel with a green dragon that became an ally of the party:
http://paizo.com/products/btpy8u7i?Pathfinder-Tales-Queen-of-Thorns
Sure they’re still “just a dragon” of that color mechanically, but within the story they become more than “this gold dragon is automatically our ally” or “this green dragon is a dumb brute.” That alone makes them interesting.
That just reminds me of a strip in the ADVENTURERS! webcomic. The party is wandering through the Ice Cave and extolling all the fire-based weaponry they purchased and how it will literally melt the boss. Then they come across a RED-colored dragon who announces itself as “the fire dragon of the Ice Cave!”, and the party flees in terror. Cue next panel, and the dragon is smirking and we see cans of red paint in the background.
After a dungeon full of things like firebreathing and psychic ants, I think my players will probably be pretty happy running into things they at least know what to expect from out of character.
Also, not sure if this counts exactly, but I did have a plan to put Straw, Wood, and Fabric Golems in a campaign once. Also Stone Golems that would act more like the Angels from Dr. Who. (Though they’d still just crush things, not timey whimey them.)
Also in the setting I use for my D&D campaigns (I’ve got multiple different lands on multiple different planets planned as well as a general cosmology), the angels are also a bit different. You’ve got your generic brand angels which are just a thing any god can make and will serve whatever god is around telling them to do things and then you’ve got more powerful ones that take on traits similar to their god either through long service or an expenditure of power on the god’s parts. This means some day I may have players bewildered to encounter an Angel of Asmodeus. (In one campaign a player once summoned a sort of “shadow” of an Angel of Lolth. Even at a fraction of the power of the real deal it absolutely wrecked everything in the fight. Cosmologically they were basically invoking the power of the angel the way a cleric more normally invokes the power of a god for spells, but the effect is limited to just making a “low power” summoned duplicate.)
Words to live by:
“Not everything can be firebreathing psychic ants.”
–Colin Stricklin, 2016
I’ve only ran into a troll once so far and I already hate them, even with fire. We could have just paid the toll troll and got cross the bridge, but no. The sorcerer just had to start a fight (his reasoning is that the troll was an extortionist and he couldn’t just leave it). The sorcerer goes down in one hit and we roll initiative. We get the sorcerer back on his feet, just for him to get knocked out again. The paladin got him off the bridge, the bard incapacitates the troll and the Cleric breaks the bridge, tipping the troll into chasm below. Thankfully the cleric and I (ranger) both rolled high enough to avoid falling in to.
Our GM revealed a few weeks later, that due to it’s regen, the troll got all it’s health back before hitting the bottom of the chasm and therefore survived the 20d6 of damage from the fall. Not looking forward to when/if that comes back to bite us in the ass. She also told us that it we hadn’t moved the sorcerer when we did, the troll would have likely kicked him off the bridge as she couldn’t think of any reason the troll wouldn’t have done it.
In the immortal words of Danny DeVito, “You gotta pay the Troll Toll.”
“Chances are your players don’t have Knowledge (ornithology) anyway.”
Ironically, all but one of my players are ornithologists.
So… Do they have any insight about the whole “why didn’t they just use the eagles” thing in Lord of the Rings?
Since they all work with big and powerful birds on a regular basis, and any bird strong enough to be ridden by a human is leagues more dangerous than anything they work with, it ultimately boils down to the 800lb gorilla question: If the eagles don’t want to fly to Mordor, who’s going to make them?
I gather that The Windlord Gwaihir does not respond well to raptor treats.
When dealing with large carnivorous raptors of that size, the difference between “treats” and “passengers” is a lot smaller than Gandalf cares to admit.
Not trying to be a smug jerk here, because I’m legit intrigued by this concept in a monster design sense: what would a non-carnivorous raptor look like?
Depends on your definition of carnivorous. If you’d accept a scavenging bird, it would most certainly be a vulture of some kind. Otherwise it would probably look like a parrot, at least with the beak structure.
Ooh… What about a raptor that hunts plant creatures? What would a roc designed to eat treants look like in terms of beak structure?
After discussing it with my players, they concluded our tree hunting bird could be one of three possibilities. Unfortunately, no real world bird actually eats wood, but these are our best guesses.
It would have overdeveloped feet, to grasp treants, carry them up high, and drop them onto the rocks below. That way they can eat the choicer soft bits on the inside without having to crunch through the hard exterior. This is how seagulls eat shellfish in real life, so it kinda applies.
A massive honking crushing beak, like the Large Ground Finch has (of Darwin fame). A tree presents a lot of the same problems as an equally sized nut, so a big beak would help it crush that pesky bark.
2a. Some birds (like the red-eyed vireo) steal strips of bark for their nests. They just land on the side and peel. I can only imagine how terrifying and excruciating this would be for a treant.
My personal favorite, the Sapsucker. It feeds on the sap of trees, so a roc sized equivalent would leave rows of perfectly arranged lance wound shaped holes ringing the treant.
So I’m re-reading to find all the trap-related strips since I’m aboot to enter the eponymous tomb of Tomb of Annihilation.
I just popped in to say that I have many grievances with the whole “Take the eagles straight to Mordor.” thing that the snarkiest parts of the internet always bring up when they want to show how much smarter they are than a fantasy book from the 40s.
You’d be flying over miles of enemy territory without a support-network, supply-lines, or backup. Meanwhile the enemy has legions of archers, and those dragon-things that the Nazghul rode. If you tried to just swoop in on eagles without having an entire army on the ground distracting the enemy you’ll die horribly. The eye of Sauron would see you coming if you had the ring, so the enemy would be ready for you.
/rant
My favorite breakdown on the subject: http://www.sean-crist.com/personal/pages/eagles/index.html