Re:(TFT) Hymenopteran Version

[John J Hyland <johnnyboytmm@juno.com>]

---------- "rmorger" <rmorger@mail.ev1.net> writes:
MIMIC HYMENOPTERAN
QUEEN: ... She is a low level magic user and can cast Avert, Drop 
Weapon and Summon Myrmidon....  The normal nest/hive will have 
between one and three queens ...The queen lays between 30 and 50 eggs per evening/night 
---------------------------------------------------------

Very cool ideas, I especially like the Larva Thralls, as it gives a rationale for the warriors to capture rather than kill.

I am not a big fan of creatures with magic, but that is just a matter of personal taste, and your decisions on the spells is excellent.  I always thought of the intelligence as being different from human intelligence, and meaning more that the bugs learn, so they never make the same mistake twice.  And they identify the weak, and easily exploitable food sources right away.  Also with telepathy, they NEVER get in each other's way during combat, they are ALWAYS well coordinated but not using tactics in the human sense of the word.

I think a hive of these guys will be very expensive and very deadly too fast.  A hive supporting 3 queens at 50 eggs ea a night gets 50,000 new bugs a year.  Feeding that prodigious population will require the hunters to denude a large are of almost all life in a couple of years.  Plus in under 2 years the hive will be a military match for most large successful Kingdoms, with a standing army of over 100,000.

In my game of a decade ago, I had a very small (75-100 bugs)hive develop in a mountain region that was thinly populated with small independent mining camps/communities.

I had the queen lay an egg every 5-7 days, and an egg take 16 weeks and 200 Kilos of food to reach adulthood.  So feeding the babies required 1000 Kilos of food a month, plus another 1000 or so for the queen and the adults.  This puts a strain on the warriors to go out and get the food, and I determined that if the hive lost warriors faster than they were replaced and was held below a certain threshold, the hive would waste away and perish .  That is eventually what happened, without the hive location actually being discovered the party managed to eliminate it by killing 100+ warriors.

However, this was a well armed well financed, very efficient party of 7 characters in the 40+ point range, with about 6 henchmen.  They got lots of aid and support from the locals, and they still got beat up a lot of the time, and took over a year (off and on)to reduce the hive strength enough to do it in. 

My Bugs were a formidable foe for a strong party.  Yours I am afraid would pose a threat to many nations.

I might use them with a slower birth rate, and maybe a way for the thralls to transport a few larvae to spread the pain around.  Make it more of a sneaky invasion of the body snatchers threat, and less of an overwhelming force threat.

Anyway, thats just me, I like small scale threats, you may be looking to threathen to overrun a small city.

Regards,
John





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