Magical Menagerie for a circus (lvl 6 encounter)

[DMwithoutPC's]

I am planning a great festival as the setting for an upcoming arc, and one of the points of interest there i want to be a magical zoo/ animal circus. I wondered if the playground had any suggestions for what animals could be placed in it, that would pose an interesting challenge to a group of lvl 6 medium power level characters.

The animals will probably be lead loose at some point and roam the festival grounds.

Do you think I should go for magical creatures? Or are Lions, Tigers and Bears (oh my!) scary enough of an encounter allready. I'm worried that they wouldn't make the animal circus feel special enough.

[Uncle Pine]

Serpent Kingdoms has a wide variety of Tiny to Medium exotic snakes with a CR between 1/2 and 2 (and even a CR 5 Large two-headed horned viper if you want something with a little more oomph).
FR books in general usually have a bunch of intriguing critters in there: Shining South has beguilers (magical mice the size of dogs with prehensile tails, CR 1) and rattelyr dragons (wingless cobra-headed dragons with a somewhat unthreatening breath weapon (2d6 for a very young one, which is Small and CR 3), Silver Marches has giant crows and red tigers, Underdark has chameleon creatures (because why have a dire bat in your circus when you can have a chameleon dire bat?), and so on.
Rust monsters are also always nice to throw to a party (CR 3).
Flying monkeys are a classic.
Spellwarped (MMIII) is a cool template that can easily turn any common critter into something worth of a circus: a spellwarped unicorn (CR 4), for example. I imagine this as a neckless, twisted unicorn with a flowing pale mane and chitinous grey skin, with swollen eyes to the side of his mouth and its horn protruding from its throat Alien/pharyngeal jaw (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharyngeal_jaw)-style. Crawling on all four (something like this (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_gallery/MM35_PG216.jpg)) in an extremely unnatural way for a horse in case the imagery isn't already creepy enough. This could double as a plot hook if the PCs decide they want to help the poor thing to find a forest to live in as an actual unicorn instead of being horrified by it and killing it dead on sight.

My suggestion is to not overdo it: if you throw a dozen extravagant creatures at once to your players, chances are each species won't be as intriguing and given as much attention as if there were less of them. So choose your magical creatures carefully and don't be afraid to have mostly normal animals with only a few exotic ones, or try to pace the multitude of magical beast introducing them gradually so the party isn't overwhelmed.

[gkathellar]

My suggestion is to not overdo it: if you throw a dozen extravagant creatures at once to your players, chances are each species won't be as intriguing and given as much attention as if there were less of them. So choose your magical creatures carefully and don't be afraid to have mostly normal animals with only a few exotic ones, or try to pace the multitude of magical beast introducing them gradually so the party isn't overwhelmed.

I generally agree. On the other hand, this particular adventure idea sounds like a chance to cut loose a bit.

Maybe choose three or four good beasts to focus on both before and after they get loose, initially setting them up as some of the menagerie's best attractions and then later introducing fights with them.

A secondary question is whether the OP wants the magical beasts to be strictly of animal intelligence or not. Depending on your group, the latter option might lead down a very different story path than what you have in mind. On the other hand, animal intelligence is really limiting, since a lot of the best magical beasts are full sophonts. (Reflecting on it, that seems like a real design mistake. It'd be convenient - from a DMing and story perspective - if more of them were animalistic.)

[DrMotives]

When they get loose, they don't have to be all special. In the "Last Unicorn", there was a traveling sideshow menagerie where most of the caged monsters were normal animals that had illusions making them look like monsters while in cages; a lion was made to look a manticore, a boa as the Midgard serpent, etc. Mixed in were 2 real monsters, the unicorn from the movie's title, and a harpy.

So maybe if the pcs laugh off a large dog with an obvious prosthetic 2nd head, they'll be more surprised when another circus animal turns out to be an actual hell hound.

[DMwithoutPC's]

thanks for the suggestions!

A mix of natural and supernatural creatures is probably a good idea. Allows for focus on whats special.

About the intelligence thing... I was debating that allready. On the one hand i find the moral choice interesting, and i wonder what they would do with it. The party does include a druid....

On the other hand, there is allready a lot of other things going on in this arc, and i don't want to clutter it with needless storylines. So I think I'd prefer animal intelligence.

As for illusion to make the animals more monstrous. While interesting idea, Illusion is allready going to be a major part somewhere else in the festival, so I don't want to apply it here as well, i think. I wanted this to be a bit more straight forward brawling, with just the issue of if they are going to try to contain the creatures without killing them.

Allthough I suppose, The Illusion would not really be part of this encounter, just a set piece.

Thank you for the responses, and I will look into the sources and creatures that were mentioned!

[Malphegor]

Tarrasque Tamer would be a big hit at a circus.

It's actually an illusion and some lesser creature (I don't know, a wolverine? Honey badger? Something dangerous but comparatively tame compared to a KAIJU sized thing) is wearing a collar that projects a false but very realistic Tarrasque image around it, but from the audience's perspective it looks like, somehow, the real deal is on stage, being fended off by a funny looking man with a chair and a whip.

[TalonOfAnathrax]

What is "medium power level"?
Could they handle incorporeal enemies? Tiger ghosts (or Telthors) who still obey the woman who tamed them in life sounds like an excellent circus thing, as well as an interesting encounter.

Otherwise I like to use Dinosaurs for this kind of thing. Sure they can't use magic, but they're definitely unusual!

[Palanan]

I would suggest a girallon as the capstone of the encounter. It's CR 6 on its own, and fits the circus theme well enough for a "savage monster from distant lands," without actually breathing fire or going incorporeal, etc. I could see a circus keeping a girallon captive more easily than some of the more overtly magical creatures mentioned.

[Saintheart]

Isn't there a 'sinister carnival' sort-of encounter/scenario somewhere in WOTC? This sounds familiar from somewhere...

[Algeh]

You can also put a tactical twist on it if instead of trying to fight the animals after they get loose, the PCs are supposed to re-capture them for some kind of reward from the circus. This can change how challenging it is to deal with some types of creatures substantially, and also is something most characters aren't built around trying to do, so you'd probably want to choose less powerful creatures if you went that route.