Brian Murphy convinced me to leave elephants in my monster manual as a way to signal to players that they are no longer in fake medieval Europe. I read a bit about war elephants on Wikipedia and seeing how interested my players are in buying war dogs, war bears and armoured velociraptors, I need to add some extras items for them to buy... have your players used elephants as mounts? I have better armour (1000 gp), light ballista (500 gp) and a howdah (500 gp).
#Monsters #Old School #RPG
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Go whole hog. Elephant-drawn siege towers. Catapults. Trunk guards (battering ram). Tusk jewelry. Canopies and archer platform. Banners. Elephant-mounted cannons (historical). Giant spell-focusing crystals for mounted magi. Lich-elephants. Trunk-morning stars. Telepathic control helmets. Elephant-optimized healing syringes.
– Luka Rejec 2016-11-01
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And if really going “whole hog” then maybe... WAR BOARS!
– Edgar Johnson 2016-11-01
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DIRE WAR BOARS WITH POISON DART LAUNCHERS IN THEIR HAIR! Mastodontic Tusks!
– Luka Rejec 2016-11-01
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Actually ... in my current setting I replaced elephants with “quadrodonts” ... four tusked mastodons with bad intentions.
– Luka Rejec 2016-11-01
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Not elephants per se, but Ceratopsian cavalry was rather popular and I generally treated it the same way as elephants on the battlefield. Generally with howdah and missile armed troops (or as a mobile spell-casting platform for magi). Their horns weren’t very effective against smaller targets like humanoids, but they were reasonably good at trampling them. Enemy troops facing them had to test morale or break (at a big penalty if they had not encountered them before). They themselves were less likely to panic than elephants.
Logistics was difficult because of the sheer amount of food they needed to eat. Their digestive systems were not particularly competent and their normal food was poor quality palm shrubs (often specially imported from their home island). Giving them high-energy foods like grain risked bloat and the death of the animal. Usually they were purchased from the lizard-men inhabitants (I’d say natives except that they had plate armour and long pikes [cf *Saurians* for *C&S*], so were often better equipped than the human visitors), or magically controlled. The trained ones were much better to have, because magical control can always be broken, especially in war.
I also used Bantha from *Star Wars* quite a lot, except they were longer and had eight legs. They were never used in warfare because they were much too slow. They were used by caravans quite a lot, especially cross-country, because they could carry a lot. Compared to the various Ceratopsians and elephants they were actually very efficient when it came to using food. Although they occupied a role much more similar to yaks (especially given where they were mostly found [mountains rather than sandy deserts, although rather arid terrain]).
Don’t forget the elephant makes a handle all-terrain bulldozer - especially when extracting quality timber from the jungle. Even if they do eat a lot.
And don’t forget to add anti-elephant spikes to castle gates in regions where they are common. It was common to use them to push open castle gates and this tended to discourage them.
[In *City State of the Invincible Overlord* games it was quite common to seeing a neanderthal riding a mastodon. Much like that cartoon character. But they weren’t really equipped for much except for being the neanderthal hero’s mount (and friend).]
I’m actually not sure where the elephants went in my games. I suspect they mostly hid from people looking for them (at least the African elephants), as the Ghost People (given for how silently something that big can move). In which case they would have been an intelligent species. But I didn’t really have an Africa analogue. [I’d much rather run an entirely African game using *Nyambe* or *Spears of the Dawn*.]
Although I have vague memories of War Sloths being tried at one point, with a howdah on gimbals, so they could use their claws. [That’s giant ground sloths (*Eremotherium eomigrans*) by the way, in case there was a sudden doubt as to the utility of war sloths.] I think the project died due to their comparative rarity. Besides by then the players wanting weird war mounts generally invested in custom chimera (the generic term for any magically blended animal construct).
[Ah! War Beetles. The big ones...]
– Ian Borchardt 2016-11-01
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And speaking if lich elephants there was the necromancer Delecti in Dragon Pass (Glorantha) who sewed brontosaur legs to a whale’s carcass and then animated the result. That went down well when players caught sight of it...
– Ian Borchardt 2016-11-01
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Edgar Johnson, I hope my boar entry satisfies... Giant boars used by dwarves and halflings as mounts. Demon boars à la Princess Monoke (also in the Lab Lord book). I haven’t thought about selling metal spikes for teeth and tusks, yet...
– Alex Schroeder 2016-11-01
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I imagine that boars probably don’t need too many accessories for their tusks.
– Edgar Johnson 2016-11-01
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Although sheathing them will help stop them breaking when they are used against armoured individuals.
– Ian Borchardt 2016-11-01
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Well, my D&D combat is simple enough to not provide for breakage, fumbles, and all that. 🙂
– Alex Schroeder 2016-11-01
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How about they just look good then?
It’s all background colour anyway. You have a war boar then you sheathe the tusks. Doesn’t need to have an actual game effect. Just part of the standard furniture you put on a war boar. Just like you don’t really need to go into excruciating detail on how a horse is shoed, caparisoned, and generally cared for (although I’ve been in games that did take this to an extreme). [1]
Plus they are probably easier to enchant the sheathes if you want magic war boar tusks...
[1] Then again, given most RPG player’s attitudes towards horses - take them out of the stable/garage with all the gear on them from last night, gallop them up the highway to your destination, whilst they graze on the free grass at the side of the road, etc – one can sometimes understand the frustration of anyone that has ever had to deal with the delicate beasts...
– Ian Borchardt 2016-11-01
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Hahaha, well said. Both regarding the decoration and the horses.
– Alex Schroeder 2016-11-01
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My players have used elephants, mostly when they wanted to make a big entrance.
If you’re looking for some historical uses of elephants in combat, their big contribution has usually been in scaring the pants off the enemy. Horses especially dislike elephants if they’re not used to them. However, elephants themselves are not terribly aggressive most of the time, and have to be goaded, drugged, and fooled into trampling enemies.
But hey, that’s the boring Real World (tm) and not our fantasy worlds, where you can have your highly trained war-elephants going toe-to-toe (er, tusk?) with ogres, giant spiders, dragon turtles or whatever! Honestly, that’s the way I generally run it, because it’s easier and makes the elephants cooler.
– Brian Murphy 2016-11-01