I can see that I’m going to have to do better, though, so let’s try these:
In some versions of the game, members of the thief class have a special ability that lets them accurately identify the number and type of creatures in a room by listening at the door. A wise thief, however, supplements this ability with the use of a small brass cone with a metal screen over the end – not because it grants a bonus to the roll, but to ward off ear seekers, a species of insect that lives in door lock mechanisms and burrows into your brain via your ear canal when you listen at the keyhole.
Explorers of the Lower Planes may at times find themselves set upon by screaming, disembodied human heads with great bat-wings where their ears should be. Though their bite is fearsome, their deadliest weapon is, in fact, their kiss. Unless cured through powerful magic, the victim of a kiss becomes progressively dumber over the next few days; once the curse has run its course, the victim’s head sprouts wings, detaches, and flies away.
One published setting takes place in a city whose caretakers, a mysterious order of flying blue monks, communicate via illusory rebuses. The gamemaster is advised against simply describing the content of their dialogue, and is instead encouraged to present the players with actual rebuses to solve. For GMs who lack the knack for quickly coming up with rebuses, the text instead suggests conveying their dialogue via a quick game of charades.
Another published setting, while otherwise adhering to the mould of traditional high fantasy, introduces dinosaur-people from another dimension as playable races. Their voices are too high-pitched for humans to hear, and lacking the ability to produce facial expressions, they instead express emotions via scent. Curiously, one race of dinosaur people qualify for the paladin class, which the setting otherwise restricts to humans.
D&D typically awards treasure for successfully completing encounters via dice rolls on large lookup tables. In several iterations of the game, in addition to gold coins and magic swords and other fantasy staples, these treasure tables notably include a giant mechanical lobster. Requiring two people to operate, this lobster is highly resilient, deadly in combat and capable of self-contained underwater travel. Owing to how treasures are generated, the lobster can at least theoretically appear as a reward for any encounter, with anything, anywhere.
Now, which – if any – of those do you think I just made up?
Well, I know the heads are real, and pretty sure the lobster is, too. (Google confirms)
Ear-seekers, vargouilles, dabus, saurials, and the Apparatus of Kwalish. He didn’t make any of those up.
Quite so. Let’s try a few harder ones, then:
The monster manual for one version of the game contains an entry for “Fungus”, which – as expected – presents several varieties of fungal beasties. However, it prefaces this with a meandering lecture about the biology and lifecycle of ordinary mushrooms, including a “Combat” subheader that remarks on the dangers of improperly stored rations.
In addition to the expected swords and axes, the weaponry chapter of the game’s first edition provides stats, illustrations and price lists for a bewildering variety of obscure polearms, including the bardiche, bec de corbin, fauchard, glaive, glaive-guisarme, guisarme, guisarme-voulge, halberd, lucern hammer, military fork, partisan, ranseur, spetum, and the enigmatically named Bohemian ear-spoon.
Early versions of the game justified the total absence of female dwarves in first-party material by suggesting that dwarves reproduce via spores.
In lieu of the resurrection spells accessible to high-level clerics, high-level druids have access to magical reincarnation, which conjures the deceased’s spirit into a newly created adult body of a randomly selected species. While the standard races – human, elf, etc. – are represented on the species lookup table, it also includes such entries as “wolf”, “owl” and “badger”.
Prior to the game’s third edition, dolphins were listed without comment as Lawful Good.
No tricks this time – one of these actually is bullshit. But which one?
Looks like everything except the dwarf spores checks out. I figured it was either that one or the dolphins, but lo and behold, dolphins are actually Lawful Good.
i'm very gay. i'd like a few dollars. 