Coral People

[Tanuki Tales]

So, if you had a race of sapient "Coralfolk", what type would they be? Monstrous Humanoid, Aberration, Construct or Undead?

[Inevitability]

Going with monstrous humanoid here. As long as they're not unnatural, undead, or unliving, I can't see how the other three types would fit.

[Tanuki Tales]

Going with monstrous humanoid here. As long as they're not unnatural, undead, or unliving, I can't see how the other three types would fit.

They could be living constructs though.

[Necroticplague]

Depends on what abilities they have. Seeing as they're alive, they're not undead or constructs. If their main abilities are combat brute abilities (high STR, good natural armor), or otherwise relatively mundane EX abilities, Monstrous Humanoid. If they have some more exotic powers, then they're Aberrations. For an example of this continuum, go from Human to Goliath to Elan.

[BowStreetRunner]

While it would be heavily dependent upon their ecology as explained within the specific setting, if I were to introduce Coralfolk in my own setting I would make them type Fey with the subtypes Aquatic and Swarm that occupy a Living Construct body. While the living construct remains intact most of their swarm traits are suppressed, but if the body is destroyed they revert to their swarm state.

[Tanuki Tales]

While it would be heavily dependent upon their ecology as explained within the specific setting, if I were to introduce Coralfolk in my own setting I would make them type Fey with the subtypes Aquatic and Swarm that occupy a Living Construct body. While the living construct remains intact most of their swarm traits are suppressed, but if the body is destroyed they revert to their swarm state.

There's a template for that.

Hivenest Monster, Dungeonscape.

[daremetoidareyo]

maybe they just spray their children onto certain types of plants. The plants then fester with coral polyps until they uproot and begin walking around as the different polyps synergize to become one coral minded sentient being.

[Extra Anchovies]

I think they'd be best typed as Plants, but of the options in the OP I'd say Monstrous Humanoid. They're not aberrations because corals are natural to the material plane, and they're not undead because they're alive. If the creatures are just the mineral skeletons without any living polyps, then they'd likely be constructs.

[Tanuki Tales]

I think they'd be best typed as Plants, but of the options in the OP I'd say Monstrous Humanoid. They're not aberrations because corals are natural to the material plane, and they're not undead because they're alive. If the creatures are just the mineral skeletons without any living polyps, then they'd likely be constructs.

Why plants? They're clearly animals. :smallconfused:

I also think Aberration is being discredited too easily, as it only requires a bizarre anatomy. Sure, they're usually lovecraftian horrors from the Far Realm, but if it's a living endoskeleton piloted by a colony of lifeforms acting as one singular consciousness, with no discernible anatomy, I think you could qualify it.

[Necroticplague]

I think we'd need a bit more information as to the nature of these coral-men before we could give a really good answer.

[Tanuki Tales]

I think we'd need a bit more information as to the nature of these coral-men before we could give a really good answer.

I'm just spit balling; I was cleaning a book shelf and there's a few coral pieces and I thought "what would coral people be?". I figured they'd be ambulatory, humanoid shaped reef colonies. -shrugs-

[Waker]

The reason why Aberration isn't getting chosen is largely because coral is a natural living thing. Sure, it being unlike our biology makes it somewhat strange, but not necessarily alien. Pretty much everything that has the Aberration type is literally an alien (Neogi), from a drastically different environment (Aboleth from the primordial past, Mind Flayers from the future), horrifying creations gone wrong (Chuul) or are literally just from weird dimensions. When you look at all of those, Coralfolk wouldn't be all that much weirder than say a Treant.

But my vote would be for Monstrous Humanoid.

[Malimar]

Why plants? They're clearly animals. :smallconfused:

It's unclear enough that I had to look it up -- you're right, coral are cnidarian animals. But being of the kingdom Plantae is far from a requirement for the Plant type -- many Plants are fungi. In the end, I probably wouldn't put coralfolk in the Plant type, but it's not an outrageous suggestion.

[AlanBruce]

I also think Aberration is being discredited too easily, as it only requires a bizarre anatomy. Sure, they're usually lovecraftian horrors from the Far Realm, but if it's a living endoskeleton piloted by a colony of lifeforms acting as one singular consciousness, with no discernible anatomy, I think you could qualify it.

I played a game not too long ago, RE: Reveltaions, which takes place in a luxury ship and where a virus has turned the people and creatures on board into marine based aberrations.


There is actually a coral filled area in the ship and a file that explains that a small coral grew to immense proportions and started walking away.



http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/residentevil/images/1/12/Draghignazzo.png/revision/latest?cb=20150414050156&path-prefix=es

If you notice, it has coral based appendages and a carapace that has been exaggerated to sprout thorns, which can be found amongst some marine life forms deep below the sea.

Notoriously hard to damage in game due to its heavily armored body, this could translate into high Natural Armor, DR, or both.

Placing him here because some people were saying aberrations cannot be related to coral, but if you want to, they can.

[Honest Tiefling]

I think abberation is being chucked out is because we can wrap our head around the idea of little animals helping out their bros and forming a colony. It's natural, and far older then us. If anything, a bunch of hairless apes gibbering at one another over imaginary concepts like 'freedom', 'laws', and 'art' is a lot weirder in terms of the natural world. Simply taking a natural thing and calling it unnatural isn't really a good idea (especially if you have any biologists in your group), because it doesn't do the concept of aberration justice.

I think an aberration CAN be related to coral, just as well, the ol' squidface speices are kinda like bipedal octopi. But I think they need more to them then simply following a perfectly natural creature. Work the idea. Make it horrifying. Put your own spin onto it.

[Cerefel]

I think living construct is pretty accurate, as far as traits and immunities go, even though they're technically animal.

[Malimar]

On thinking more, I would probably actually go with Vermin, perhaps with the hivenest sort of thing mentioned upthread. Jellyfish swarms (Stormwrack) are vermin, and jellyfish are the closest living relation to coral.

[BowStreetRunner]

On thinking more, I would probably actually go with Vermin, perhaps with the hivenest sort of thing mentioned upthread. Jellyfish swarms (Stormwrack) are vermin, and jellyfish are the closest living relation to coral.

I looked at vermin at the outset, but dismissed the idea of vermin due to the Mindless trait. I likewise dismissed Animal due to the trait Intelligence score of 1 or 2.

[ExLibrisMortis]

If you start with vermin or animal and add intelligence, you end up with a magical beast.

[atemu1234]

TBH, it depends on origin.

A naturally arising race of coralfolk? Probably monstrous humanoids.

Made by a wizard in the form of constructs? Well, constructs.

Formed from coral and living flesh? Aberration.

[Necroticplague]

TBH, it depends on origin.

A naturally arising race of coralfolk? Probably monstrous humanoids.

Made by a wizard in the form of constructs? Well, constructs.

Formed from coral and living flesh? Aberration.

This. Type is related to the "why" more than the "what" for a lot of the types.

[Inevitability]

If you start with vermin or animal and add intelligence, you end up with a magical beast.

Not always. The Vivacious template, for one, has a minimum of 3 intelligence but always changes the base creature to Outsider.

[Malimar]

If you start with vermin or animal and add intelligence, you end up with a magical beast.

That's a common interpretation, but isn't actually reflected in the rules anywhere. We know that if you add Intelligence beyond 2 to an Animal, it stops being an Animal, because "no creature with an Intelligence score of 3 or higher can be an animal", but the rules never actually say what it becomes as a rule; there's only some examples of Animals gaining Intelligence and becoming Magical Beasts via gaining templates that specify or becoming familiars or whatnot.

And Vermin doesn't even have a "no creature with an Intelligence score can be a vermin" line, so making a non-mindless Vermin should work the same as making a non-mindless ooze with the Sentry Ooze template. Sentry Ooze remains Ooze, so a non-mindless Vermin should remain Vermin.


I looked at vermin at the outset, but dismissed the idea of vermin due to the Mindless trait. I likewise dismissed Animal due to the trait Intelligence score of 1 or 2.

I'd just go with the "unless otherwise noted in a creature’s entry", note in the coralfolk entry that they have an intelligence score and lack the Mindless trait despite being Vermin, and call it a day.

[Gallowglass]

So, if you had a race of sapient "Coralfolk", what type would they be? Monstrous Humanoid, Aberration, Construct or Undead?

Depends on what you are envisioning.

Coral are actually little polyp like sac creatures that generally live in large colonies and they each extrude calcium carbonate to form an exoskeleton for protection. because they swarm or group together, those individual exoskeletons merge into a unified reef.

So is your person a single coral polyp who has build an ambulatory exoskeleton around itself? Then I might call it a aberration because its not really humanoid so its not a monstrous humanoid and its too smart and too alien to be the D&D concept of animal (even though it is an animal in real life, I'm not discussing the dictionary definition of animal but the D&D monster type of animal)

Or is your person a colony of multiple polyps who have a merged "reef" exoskeleton that is abulatory? First blush is to make them a swarm, but I'm probably NOT make it a swarm, not because it isn't a swarm but because it doesn't exhibit the abilities that D&D/Pathfinder associates with as swarm. They aren't going to fill a 10' space and do swarm damage and distraction, they aren't going to be immune or resistant to the types of things swarms are generally immune or resistant to and they aren't going to be vulnerable to the things swarms are vulnerable to.

Should I make it a construct? Well it has SOME characteristics of a construct, but not all of them. There is a living puppeteer inside that ambulatory skeleton after all. One that isn't immune to the things constructs are immune to, even if the shell has certain characteristics of a construct.

So I don't know. If I decide that, when broken free of the skeleton, I would let the polyps move and act like a swarm then I would make it a swarm when outside the reef body and a half-construct when inside the reef body. Half-construct is nice for this because it has the right parts of the construct creature type that I want and has the vulnerabilities I want. If I decide that the polyps just die when exposed through destruction of the skeleton, then I'm going to go with a base aberration build with a long homebrew writeup for how the reef body works.

What will happen to your polyps if the skeleton is cracked or broken? Do they die? Do they have the ability to squelsh away to build a new skeleton?

[Zaq]

I guess it depends on just how much emphasis is given to the "coral" and just how much is given to the "people." And even then there's some latitude.

I mean, D&D races can get pretty darn weird without necessarily losing the Humanoid type. Maenads have crystals growing out of their skin (and they leave little sparkling crystal flakes behind them), and they're Humanoids. Illumians are literally made out of words, and they're Humanoid. Hadozee are basically apes with glide-wings, and they're Humanoid. Rilkans have reptile scales growing in weird patches all over their bodies, and they're Humanoid. Changelings are, well, you know how they work, and they're Humanoid. Asheratis can burrow in sand and glow under their own power, and they're Humanoid. So I don't see anything terribly crazy about having a Humanoid race that has coral growing on them; maybe they have coral instead of hair, or maybe they've got it studded all over their bodies, or whatever.

That said, if you turn up the emphasis on the coral (making them seem less like humans who happen to have coral incorporated into their bodies and more like a coral colony that's been sculpted into a roughly humanoid shape), you could get away with making them be Monstrous Humanoids, but that isn't the only option. I could totally see them being Fey, I could see them being Outsiders (though you can make basically anything be an Outsider), or I could see them being Elementals if you tied them to the Plane of Water. I personally wouldn't make them Aberrations unless there was a strong fluff reason behind it (usually with them being a created and unnatural race), but it wouldn't be impossible.

Basically, you could pretty much get away with whatever typing you like as long as you justify it.