3.5 D&D Aquatic: The Dolphin?

[Talya]

For Aquatic campaigns, the notable lack of the dolphin as a creature type is a bit irritating.

Porpoise doesn't count. That covers a wide range of cetaceans much smaller than dolphins. (Just like it's too weak to cover the Orca, which has its own entry, despite being a dolphin.) For the dolphin, the porpoise entry has too low a dexterity, too low an armor class, and is too small (the 13' long, 1400 lb bull bottlenose scoffs at your porpoise entry.) Sure, you could just "advance" the porpoise to large size, but that would still be too small, inaccurately named and wouldn't work for animal companions.

Anyone ever seen any of the larger dolphins (despite them being of the family Delphinidae themselves, I'm not including Orcas, which do have their own entry, far too high level in the animal companion list) in any source?

[hamishspence]

well, there is the principle of creating a new creature, which is really just a maxed out porpoise, and calling it a Dolphin. In effect, advancing a creature, but calling it a homebrew creation (thus allowing it as an animal companion)

13' 1400 lb is the upper limit for a bottlenose- the Moray Firth population are that size. And, its pretty comparable in weight to a horse. Which is Large. Same would apply to other creatures in that size range.

[hamishspence]

aside from that, can't think of a source. None of the various 3.5 sources seems to cover Large cetaceans.

Scaling orcas down might work for the False Killer Whale, pilot whales, and Risso's Dolphin.

[UglyPanda]

I looked at the monster index and it says there are dolphin-riding elves in Stormwrack. In its entry in Stormwrack, it says porpoise. No, it does not make sense. If it were me, I'd just make an unholy hybrid of porpoises and sharks since dolphins are surprisingly mean-spirited creatures.

There is a notable lack of animals of every type. There are stats for bison and boars, but not for their domestic counterparts cows and pigs, who wouldn't be as good in a fight. You're forced to take the core animals and tweak them most of the time. The continuing lack of pandas also makes me upset.

[Talya]

If it were me, I'd just make an unholy hybrid of porpoises and sharks since dolphins are surprisingly mean-spirited creatures.

They certainly can be. A pair of dolphins can bludgeon to death an intrusive shark looking for a cetacean meal, too. (Should be spring attack with that 80' speed I guess, though that wouldn't be enough to keep them out of shark-range.)

[hamishspence]

In Arms and Equipment Guide it explains that porpoises are an exception to normal mount rules- the buoyancy of the water accounts for this. However, given their low Heavy load (173 pounds) their riders need to be lightly built.

The advancement rules can be handy for differentiating species, combined with feats. And by extrapolation, you can regress an existing creature one size and some HD, the same way.

Baleen whale reduced to Huge size- Minke.
Baleen whale advanced to Colossal with max HD- blue.
Large shark with Rapid Swimming and Run (run action can be used while swimming)- Mako.

and so on.