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Jade_Tarem
2007-02-10, 03:04 PM
... there's not much there tonight.
In the jungle, Wizards of the Coast,
put nothing there, toniiiiiight.


Did anyone else notice that? There's no jungle environment in the DMG. I found this out right before my party of lvl 15's entered a jungle area and I was looking for a list of random encounters. Ouch. I think I ended up going with colorful monsters, which the party steamrolled.

So, running a different campaign, the party in this one may run into another jungle, and I want to be more prepared. There are some obvious answeres, like:

Tigers, Indian Elephants, various giant vermin, maybe the purple worm, succubi posing as exotic natives (i know it's a generalization!), evil hunter types, and so forth, but it would be nice to hear some other ideas, for more magical and exotic monsters that fit the jungle environment.

hewhosaysfish
2007-02-10, 03:17 PM
I demand dinosaurs!
RAARR!

clericwithnogod
2007-02-10, 03:25 PM
Beyond the animals and creatures themselves as combat encounters, the environment itself can be an encounter or make an encounter much more dangerous.

In a lot of ways, a jungle can be as constrictng as a dungeon. With multiple layers of overhead cover and dense ground vegetation, you can be essentially squeezed into a narrow file at any point and/or forced to hack your way through. At the same time, there can be remarkable geographical diversity such as sudden chasms, rivers and waterfalls that are all but invisible until you're right upon them. The layers of the fauna above ground level combined with caverns beneath make for all kinds of interesting options for development of "levels."

Poisonous insects, archnids and snakes on the ground, in bushes and trees function in the same vein as traps more than combat encounters. Not to mention the standard quicksand/sinkhole stuff and man-made animal traps....and of course the fact that those not from the region haven't developed a resisitance to the funky diseases and fungi of the area.

Saithis Bladewing
2007-02-10, 03:37 PM
Dinosaurs?

Humanoids with class levels?

Quietus
2007-02-10, 03:44 PM
Almost anything that works in a Forest setting can work in a Jungle setting; Poisonous creepy crawlies, snakes, and the like are always fun. Add in the odd magical beast (A rainbow colored bird that shoots color spray sounds fun!), and some plant creatures (who wants to deal with some assassin vines? Not me!).

Also, I'd play off of the natural dangers, as well. For example - a sudden chasm/cliff is always fun if the PCs aren't prepared for it, and throwing something big that can bull rush at them in that area makes for a fun adventure. Or better yet, annoy them by placing some flying creatures that don't need to come to land near that. Snakes in rivers are always a joy, or you can use hippopotami, or crocodiles.

Make a race of pygmis that can shoot poison darts! Ranged, easy to hide, and highly annoying. Jungles are a wonderful place to start breaking out the fort saves in force.

Orzel
2007-02-10, 03:48 PM
A jungle setting is a forest setting with more monkeys and fort saves.

Khantalas
2007-02-10, 03:48 PM
There are jungle races in Unearthed Arcana, but nothing about jungles.

I demand a Junglescape book for my jungle game.

Thiel
2007-02-10, 03:49 PM
Make a race of pygmis that can shoot poison darts! Ranged, easy to hide, and highly annoying.
Hafling rogues with blowguns ftw

Captain van der Decken
2007-02-10, 03:53 PM
Assassin vines sound like a good idea.

Isn't warm forest basically jungle though? You know, being the place all the leopards and apes live.

Wizzardman
2007-02-10, 03:58 PM
Having run a game entirely in a jungle, I would recommend:

Snakes, insects, shambling mounds, and Yuan'Ti.

Jack Mann
2007-02-10, 04:03 PM
In game terms, a jungle is a warm, dense forest.

Khantalas
2007-02-10, 04:06 PM
But warm deserts and cold mountains / deserts / plains get their own books. Our warm forests deserve one, too.

Who
2007-02-10, 04:08 PM
They should do a book for jungles like Stormwrack

Jack Mann
2007-02-10, 04:14 PM
I'm sure it's in the line of environmentals. Greenstorm, or Leafwhisper, or something like that. Possibly it'll even be the next one after Dungeonscape.

Thomas
2007-02-10, 04:49 PM
Jungle = forest, yes. Or should they have evergreen and deciduous forests as separate terrain types, too?

I'm definitely looking forward to a forest/jungle terrain book; it's bound to happen. I've loved the three so far, but frankly forests are more prominent and just as unique an environment in fantasy RPGs.

Attilargh
2007-02-10, 04:52 PM
Leeet's seee... I'm going to need a jungle encounter chart or two pretty soon myself, so why not. I'll give it a shot. Can't be that hard.

Attilargh's Jungle Encounter Table I (EL 6)
{table=head]d% | Encounter | Average EL
| 2 3rd-level Wild (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elf.htm#wildElf)/Jungle (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/environmentalRacialVariants.htm#jungleElves) Elf Ranger NPCs | 5
| 1d3+2 Apes (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ape.htm) | 6
| 1d2 Giant Constrictor Snakes (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/snake.htm#constrictorSnake) | 6
| 1d4+2 Deinonychus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dinosaur.htm#deinonychus)| 7
| Dire Tiger (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/direTiger.htm) | 8
| 2d4 Piranha Swarms (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/LikdZboAmZOKxrp5uD0.html) | 7 |
| Megaraptor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dinosaur.htm#megaraptor) | 6
| 1d3 Giant Crocodiles (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/crocodileGiant.htm) | 6
| 2d4 1st-level Jungle Halfling (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/environmentalRacialVariants.htm#jungleHalflings) Rogue NPCs | 5[/table]

Bah, someone else can do the percentages. Me need sleep, badly.

Might take a look at proper encounters after I wake up.

Closet_Skeleton
2007-02-10, 05:01 PM
The Jungle settings in Forgotten Realms are Chult and Mazca. I think Eberron might have a jungle full of Drow or something? Not sure what 3.5 stuff exists for Chult and there's nothing on Mazca.

Thomas
2007-02-10, 05:06 PM
That's Maztica.

goat
2007-02-11, 09:37 AM
It'll be hot, and either raining, or so humid it might as well be.

If you're feeling cruel, ask any bow users what they've been doing with their bowstrings. Give everyone a weight penalty for their sodden clothes.

Swarms. Lots and lots of swarms. Lots of things with poisonous attacks. Make supplies go off quickly. Purify food and water should be essential.

JellyPooga
2007-02-11, 09:45 AM
Don't forget the hallucinogenic/poisonous properties of certain tree-frogs...randomise between tasty fun and deadly poison! What larks!

Does being extra hot and sweaty, bitten by various insects and standing ankle deep in a pool of rancid water count as being distracted whilst trying to cast Purify Food and Water? In my world it does. Heh heh heh. Concentration checks for all!

Oh and that humidity can't be good for the fighters Plate Mail...hope he brought a cloth and oil to keep it clean. You'd be surprised how quickly that stuff rusts if you don't look after it...

DaMullet
2007-02-11, 11:54 AM
Have you ever read Redliners by David Drake? It's a futeristic look at colonizing an alien planet. The main characters crash land in a crater full of 'smart' plants. There's plants whose seed pods are dangerous explosives, plants that when disturbed release spore clouds, plants that shoot out sharp spikes, plants whose entire surface is covered in a thick sap, which acts as Sovreign Glue and a mild acid, all kinds of stuff.

Essentially, if you can come up with a good excuse for the forest to be "alive," just take all the traps you'd use in a dungeon setting and make them more Biological in nature.

OcoM
2007-02-11, 12:06 PM
Jungle is a dense forest in a hot climate.
In D&D it is described as a Warm Forest.

daggaz
2007-02-12, 10:10 AM
I made a giant jungle zone for a MUD i used to play.

It was hot, humid, heavily forested, and it rained half the time. There were areas of heavy swamp, lakes, channels, many islands (with different beasties vying for control), and some mountainous ridges that lifted out of the soup into a cloud forest kind of environment.

Down in the bottom I had snakes, (all sizes, the smaller the more poisonous usually), crocodiles (normal and giant), giant wasps, piranha swarms, giant slugs, stirge swarms, slimes and molds, myconids, spiders (normal and giant), will-o-wisps, trolls, chuuls, 'tentacle monsters' (basically a homebrew monster with 5-10 tentacles that would seize people from their boats, pulling them underwater towards its mouth), and some other beasties, like jaguars, monkeys, things that were more mundane/nonaggro. Oh and a handful of black dragon wyrmlings with lairs scattered throughout the jungle.

Sentient races down low involved a tribe of lizardmen led by an evil lizardman druid, a tribe of primitive humans led by a shaman in constant struggle with the lizardmen, and a sunken yuan-ti temple populated by undead yuan-ti that drowned during the destruction of their temple, only to be raised again by their wizard-turned lich yuan-ti temple lord in a last ditch effort to preserve his life as the temple was destroyed. And I had a hag in there somewhere too, well hidden, as well as a few yuan-ti survivors led by a commander, and finally some sylvan elf scouts.

There was also a mature black dragon (the mother of the wyrmlings) who had deals with both the lizardmen and the lich. The lich had used a hasty and ill-prepared spell to gain his powers, and therefor needed a certain amount of black dragon blood every month to maintain the magic. In what basically amounted to a 'protection racket,' the lich allowed the lizardmen to exist, provided they pay a tribute of platinum each month during the new moon. The lizardmen got this platinum from a tribe of kobolds (they had invaded their island, enslaving the kobolds and forcing them permanently into their primitive mines, found in the center of the island), and each month they pushed a raft of raw (yet fairly pure) platinum into the center of the lake, directly above the temple. The lich then traded this platinum for a small amount of the dragon's blood.

There was a newly arrived green dragon as well, who posed as a shaman and led the humans, and was beginning preperations for the extermination of the black dragons, starting with the brood. (this is where any PC's first came into the story).

Higher up in the cloud forest, which was reached by climbing trees (some of them giant) or using caves to ascend a long path of high-cliff steps along a rocky ridge, I had different animals. The ground was drier here, and on the way up you met more ape-like animals, basilisk lizards (along the rockier part of the ridge line), some grey-renders (and they had some smaller friends I forget what), giant ants (a whole colony hidden underground), a tribe of ogres, and finally a tribe of sylvan elves living in the lofty tops of some truly giant trees, along with a hive of giant honeybees and rookery of giant eagles.

Man. Jungle settings are the best.

talsine
2007-02-12, 10:28 AM
I miss playing my human barbarian. Called him Taron, or some such. ahem...

Anyway, Jungles are more than just "warm forests" they've got more life and biodivericity than any other single place on a planet save the oceans. reptiles, avians, mamals, insects, all of them have a place. As do my favorite NPC race the Yuan-Ti (YAY SNAKE PEOPLE!!). Your probebly better off doing a little bit of research and building your own jungle stuff than looking for pre-built stuff, but thats almost always true. It depends mostly on how much time you plan on spending there. If its not much, ala the PC's are jsut passing through, then use the forest tables and if something that doesn't fit comes up, just pull something along those lines that does fit.