Scraps of Tabletop Ideas

Excuse the presentation as this is more of a stream-of-thoughts thing as opposed to a revised thingy.

Here shall be collected thoughts and ideas for a potential tabletop setting. First, let's talk HP. After some thought, while I like HP... I figure if I would make a tf-focused tabletop, I'd probably use City of Mist's 'health' system. Wherein instead of HP, there's status effects and similar status effects stack onto each other. And once a status effect reaches a certain amount of stacks/intensity, it'll be a KO or permanent loss/death for the character in question.

So based on those tiers, a werewolf transformation would look like...

1 - Growing Fur

2 - Furry and Toothy

3 - Fur, Fangs, Claws & Tail

4 - More Wolf Than Man

5 - Full Werewolf

6 - Gone Feral

Where 1's just a minor inconvenience, 2 to 4 reduce your die's roll by their tier number, 5's a KO and 6 is perma-death or such. Spitballin' here so apologies for not elaborating on the exact details.

Anyway I'd probably call it Turning Tale or something, the game.

So for monster ideas, I would like to approach the concept from a sort of ecology-first perspective. And not strictly magical/TF limited. Trying to think of the monsters as things that evolved from nature and as such have their own ecological niches. While of course, allowing for the infusion of magic and seeing how that affect's a creature's survival strategy.

So let's talk plants. Beyond plants that just eat you, I imagine there are plants that grab the victim using their roots and over the course of hours or days, turn them into fruits! The fruits drop from the plant or tree and will proceed to be eaten by scavengers or herbivores, who would spread the seeds around, as expected. Then you can have less practical ideas like vines that wrap around a victim and then unravel the victim, essentially, but instead of threads they are pulled apart and unraveled into more vines. Like, all limbs and whatnot are replaced by vines first, and then the rest of the body, there's no ambiguity here. And of course one of my fave ideas, fuckplants or whatever, where the victim withers away into a helpless plant, due to some vector like pollen infecting them.

The scavenger/mushroom/decomposer niche can be occupied by goos, slimes, and goo-people of various shapes and varieties. While that might seem cute, these things can be quite vicious and voracious. Not always the fun kind of absorption, maybe even the painful sort with actual acid or other chemicals. I could imagine several rolling onto a battlefield to finish off any downed/wounded combatants still clinging to life.

There would be a land-mollusk niche, from the spectrum of snails/slugs to octopi. These would include mimics, which are basically snails or hermit crabs, but their shells mimic other shapes and materials. Probably explained away by magic or just really snazzy evolution. You could have ones adapted to mimic wood/treasure chests, ones for rock/limestone/shell, and so on. But, primarily an ambush predator, can survive a while in damp environments near a decent source of water, since it's still clam-like so not 100% terrestrial and has a risk of desiccating.

Then there can be a sort of basilisk or mollusk which injects victims with a paralyzing toxin, that allows the basilisk/mollusk to swallow them whole without repercussion. Inside the body, they will be trapped in a special chute or organ which would produce calcium. In the basilisk this would be their egg-coating chute or whatever while in the mollusk, this would be where they'd form their outer shell. So the calcium would accumulate onto the victim over the course of hours or days, while they remained paralyzed. Once that's all settled, they are spat back out but by the time that happens, and the neurotoxin's worn off, they are helplessly encased. This essentially makes for petrification but without having to be super magical. The encased victim can be a snack for later, or well they can be injected with some liquifying stuff like a spider would go about it, and then their offspring can be injected into the resulting goop or... Yolk.

And y'know generic unshelled mollusk or octopus analogue can be the land-squid or so on, y'know regular generic tentacle monster. Of course they can have some variety of neurotoxin or other toxic stingers to work with, so things remain spicy and interesting. Since this critter and mimics are related, they'd probably both have a strong toxin available. I can sort of imagine one being able to climb around using stalactites or otherwise fulfill a surprisingly monkey-like niche due to high intelligence and mobility.

I would also imagine there'd be colonies of parasitic worms and other invertebrates, leeches especially would be rather fun, especially if combined with the magical elements... Could lead to some interesting forms of draining.

And the last idea that returns to memory is... Gargoyles. Sort of fulfilling a pigeon-rock dove niche, since I imagine gargoyles would be adapted for stony mountainsides, cliffs, beaches. I feel like they would have to have a strong magic element, probably really would turn victims to stone rather instantly, along with being able to turn into rock themselves. 

If I manage to think up much more for monster ideas (that don't just rehash goblins and whatnot), I may make a followup post. 

For the matter of sapient vs non-sapient animals, I would imagine the primary races are canine/vulpine, feline, equine, rabbit/leporine, and the spectrum of two-toed ungulates (goats, deers, etc.)... And maybe humans? Dunno. Whereas mounts and pack animals can be based off of reptiles, avians, and the dinosaur-ish spectrum between them. Like choco--Terrorbirds, raptors, gators (they do not belly crawl so they're a decent mount in my opinion), and prolly a variety of scaly dino-like quadrupeds.