#critterfolk

Hey D&D adventurers and MTG fans! Ever looked at the adorable, fierce, and utterly charming world of Bloomburrow and thought, "I wish I could play a campaign there?" Well, at MadLabGames, we've been brewing up some ideas to bring the verdant lands and courageous critter-folk of Bloomburrow straight to your D&D 5.5e table!

We're beyond excited about the possibilities, and we wanted to share a little sneak peek of how you can start integrating the spirit of Bloomburrow into your next adventure. Get ready to ditch the dragons for a bit and face down some truly monstrous toads! 🐸💥

1. New Race: The Stoic Badgerfolk 🦡🛡️

Badgerfolk are known for their unwavering resolve, their practical skills, and their deep connection to the earth. Perfect for tanking hits or crafting ingenious traps!

Badgerfolk Traits

Ability Score Increase: Your Constitution score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score increases by 1.

Age: Badgerfolk mature at a similar rate to humans but can live considerably longer, often up to 150 years.

Alignment: Badgerfolk tend towards lawful alignments, valuing community, tradition, and hard work. Many are good-aligned, but some can be gruff and set in their ways.

Size: Badgerfolk typically stand between 1 and 2 feet tall and weigh between 25 and 40 pounds. Your size is Small.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Darkvision: You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Stalwart Hide: Your tough hide provides a natural armor of 13 + your Dexterity modifier. You can use this natural armor if you don't wear other armor. A shield's benefits apply as normal while you use your natural armor.

Burrowing Prowess: You have a burrowing speed of 10 feet. You can only burrow through loose earth or sand.

Grounded Resolve: When you are subjected to an effect that would move you against your will, you can use your reaction to reduce the distance you are moved by 10 feet.

Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice. (Perhaps "Burrow-speak" – a guttural language of the earth?)

2. New Monster: The Grinning Toad of the Great Fen 🐸😈

Not all creatures in Bloomburrow are friendly! The Grinning Toads are apex predators of the fens, known for their surprisingly swift leaps and paralytic venom.

The Grinning Toad of the Great Fen Large Beast, Unaligned

Armor Class: 13 (Natural Armor) Hit Points: 45 (6d10 + 12) Speed: 25 ft., swim 30 ft.

STR 16 (+3) DEX 12 (+1)CON 14 (+2)

INT 2 (-4)WIS 10 (+0)CHA 5 (-3)

Skills Perception +2, Stealth +3 Senses Darkvision 60 ft., Passive Perception 12 Challenge 2 (450 XP)

Amphibious: The toad can breathe air and water.

Standing Leap: The toad's long jump is up to 20 feet and its high jump is up to 10 feet, with or without a running start.

Actions

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8 + 3) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned for 1 minute. While poisoned this way, a creature's speed is halved. The creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.

Tongue Lash (Recharge 5-6). Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: The target is grappled (escape DC 13). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the toad can't use its Tongue Lash on another target. The toad can use a bonus action to pull the grappled creature up to 10 feet closer to itself.

3. Bloomburrow Adventure Hook: "The Stolen Seed-Hoard" 🌰🐿️🚨

Need a quick one-shot or a kick-off for a longer campaign? Try this!

"The Annual Seed-Hoard Festival of Atheria is just around the corner, a time of feasting and sharing the bounty of the land. But disaster has struck! Overnight, the community's meticulously gathered winter seed-hoard, enough to feed the entire village through the cold season, has vanished! A frantic Squirrelfolk elder, Squeaky Nutkin, approaches the adventurers, eyes wide with panic. The tracks lead towards the murky Great Fen, a place whispered to be home to giant, malevolent toads..."

Potential Leads: Following the tracks, questioning nervous voles, finding tell-tale signs of large amphibian activity. 🐾

Challenges: Navigating the treacherous Great Fen, avoiding Grinning Toads and other monstrous amphibians, perhaps outsmarting a cunning predator who orchestrated the theft. 🌲 Swamp encounters!

Resolution: Recovering the seed-hoard, confronting the thieves (maybe not just toads, but cunning ravens or even a rogue badgerfolk!), and restoring hope to Atheria before winter sets in. 🙏🥕

What Are YOUR Bloomburrow D&D Ideas? 🤩👇

We're just scratching the surface here at MadLabGames! We'd love to hear what Bloomburrow-inspired races, monsters, or adventure hooks you'd love to see brought to life for D&D 5.5e.

Would you play a cunning Foxfolk Rogue? 🦊

What kind of terrifying weasel beast would you unleash? 👹

What grand quest would lead you across the Valley? 🗺️

Critterfolk Playable Race: Otters

Otters live in small clans, usually made up of immediate family and children. Many clans live on the shore of rivers throughout the region. Clans trade and interact with each other on a regular basis, and there is often a central hub where many clans will meet to celebrate holidays, trade and bargain, or hold performances. Several clans can make up a community that spans for miles, and communities will come together to defend their territory and homes from threats.

Otters are also known for creating systems of aquaculture; farming fish, crustaceans and kelp are all common practices. Most of their food is fish based, but many staple dishes also contain shellfish, crustaceans (such as crab or crayfish) and kelp or other underwater plants.

While river otters tend to lead more stationary lives, sea otters tend to roam. Many famous sea captains are sea otters, with many tall tales of their adventures existing throughout the culture. Generally sea otters and river otters don't have any animosity towards each other, but conflicts between the species is not unheard of. Positive interactions are much more abundant, with trade (both in goods, cuisine, and culture) being quite common. There are many coastal ports that both species can often be found in regularly. These ports are an important intermingling place for otters.

River Otters live in homes called "holts". Holts often have an entrance only accessible by swimming. Most feature walls made of sticks and mud, or are sometimes built in fallen logs or between rocks. More central spaces are built either on secluded islands or outcroppings, or floating on the water's surface. Floating community spaces are commonly made with a wooden raft base and anchored to the bottom of the river with rope and rocks.

Sea otters live in communities called “floats”. Floats act as a communal living area in the bays that sea otters fall home. They often involve groups of fishing vessels and house boats anchored in the same general area.

Sea otters are notable for keeping tide pool farms. Large, netted dome structures are used to keep animals like urchins, clams and crabs from escaping into the ocean during high tide, and are accessible during low tide to collect various foods. Fishing is the most common hunting practice. Otterfolk, among others, have perfected the practice and it can almost be considered a form of agriculture.

River otters practice different methods of fishing along their rivers, often targeting different types of fish and crawdads. Fish and crustaceans are used in a plethora of different meals and, are prepared in a large number of ways. Because of trade among different species, fish is also popular among many land dwelling critterfolk. Kelp and seaweed farming is done by sea otters, and both products are popular as trade items. Seaweeds can be dried for storage and used to flavor many meals. Kelp can be used to make material goods, and is also used in sea otter culinary practices.

River Otter:

Size: medium

Speed: 30 paces

Swimming speed: 50 paces

Sliding: you can propel yourself across slippery surfaces with great efficiency. Across snow, ice, and mud your speed doubles.

Ability Score increase: your charisma and dexterity scores increase by 1

Sea Otter:

Size: medium

Speed: 25 paces

Swimming speed: 60 paces

Guardians of the Depths. Adapted to even the most extreme icy water, you have resistance to cold damage.

Natural armor: sea otters' incredibly thick coat of fur offers some protection against weapons. Your AC increases by 1.

Arm Pouch: sea otters have a natural pouch that runs under their forearms. You can conceal and carry 2 small objects on your body.

How it started:

Did you ever read this book?

And have you played this game?

Have you ever thought to yourself, “well dang I wish I could play dnd as a little mouse” (and then proceeded to not google anything to see if someone out there had already had this idea?) ((they have))

So you get the picture.

The world of critterfolk is an unholy, Frankenstein, home-brew abomination. This is a high fantasy world of small, sentient little critters. They quest, they fight, they cast spells and they fight monsters. They wear little clothes and tiny hats (maybe made of leaves, flowers, or perhaps an acorn). Mice, foxes, birds and even snakes exist together and along side of each other in incredibly adorable houses and miniature towns, tucked into the roots of trees and the underbrush of the forest.

This started as a simple wish to create playable versions (for dungeons and dragons 5th edition) of the different animals found in the redwall series, and quickly spiralled out of control. My end goal is to create playable races for as many different biomes and regions as i can, with each playable species having unique traits and features that are inspired by that animal's real life evolutionary qualities. For simplicities sake, I have started with those creatures found in the redwall books. As I expanded the world I was building, it has taken on a shape all of its own, and is no longer recognizable as “redwall”, even though that was the original goal. Most of the world building I have done at this point wouldn’t fit within the universe of the books.

(That being said, I have also been working on settings and now stat blocks for the Redwall universe, so fans of the series can still run a campaign within the setting. )

Before you ask me:

Why would you not simply create an entirely new game system?

I wanted to play dungeons and dragons. But also be a little mouse. Also I don’t think I am familiar enough with ttrpgs to create a new system.

What about the mouse guard? Isn't that game exactly what you are looking for?

While mouse guard is very cool and fun (as well as being a wonderful series of graphic novels) the system is not dungeons and dragons.

Ok, but what about Humblewood?

Humblewood is an incredibly fun 5e module! The world building is cute and the new subclasses are great. The world building is just not the exact flavor that I'm looking for (the bird folk have hands instead of wings, i'm not a huge fan of the deer based race, and there doesn't seem to be any options for mounts or alternate familiars/animal companions outside of their fire bats), and I specifically want to create a much larger pool of playable races, eventually beginning focusing on ecosystems outside of europe. You should be able to take the race stats that I have created and use them in a humblewood setting.

Isn't all of this a little bit excessive?

Oh yeah, for sure.

What are your qualifications?

I have none. Thanks for asking :)

I have a critique, suggestion and/or criticism!

Awesome! By all means send it my way!

I think this is bad/stupid/poorly done and I want to tell you.

No thanks! You can keep it to yourself

How it’s going:

This project is my interpretation and expansion of a universe of little woodland creatures. Wind in the willows, watership down, warrior cats, guardians of ga'hoole and most importantly redwall all play a part in the building and inspiration for this game.

Currently, I have detailed out a rather large list of playable races, created alternate versions of each of the planes of existence based on the Great Wheel Cosmology, and started detailing settings and maps of different locations. I have written a theology, pulling inspiration from several of the above works. Class options will mostly stay the same, with some edits to change the language of some traits or features. I may dabble in creating new subclasses in the future, but that is rather far down on my list. I have also been working on creating playable snake and bird races, each with their own set of specialized weapons and armor.

Though it pulls inspiration from many sources, the world building for this project is my own. This is very much me creating a world that I, personally, would want to play in. Please feel free to take what work I’ve done and build on it, change it, cherry pick aspects that you enjoy, and ignore those that you don’t. The only real rule of dnd is to have fun with your friends.

I’ll probably be uploading things in small chunks, and everything will be tagged with “critterfolk” if you don’t want to see it. I’ll do my best to detail all of the races, cultures, and other world building details that I have come up with. At this point, this is all still a WIP. I am currently running a short campaign within this setting, and I am making edits as I go. Critiques and suggestions are always welcome, please just be kind :’)

Thanks for reading!

What makes a critterfolk?

Using redwall as a loose guide, there are a few "rules'' for which species can be played and which cant. These include: 

size: the largest playable species thus far are wolverines and badgers; both animals are medium sized mammals. The larger the animal, the more difficult it is to accomadate them withen the worldbuilding. The size difference between a badger and a mouse is already quite large, but the size difference between a mouse and a bear is completely impractical. Having large playable species like wolves or bears also raises other questions- how does society compensate for both such large creatures and the tiny? If all of these animals are sentient, what is available to fill the need for mechanics such as mounts, familiars or animal companions? Im not going to tell you what you can and cant do- you may draw the line where ever you see fit.

tool and object manipulation: i would recommend staying away from hooved animals (such as goats or horses) and animals without the ability to manipulate objects (fish)

(birds and snakes fall into an interesting category; without proper arms to manipulate objects, how do we create a pc that can use weapons, cast spells or otherwise act withen the 5th edition mechanics. This does present challenges with giving them certain weapons; how do you imagine a bird would wield a sword, or a bow and arrow? How does a snake use any weapon at all? Ill tackle snake and bird mechanics later)

Critterfolk, whomst encompass the playable races, npcs and the world at large are the main focus of this game. Critterfolk are generally bipedal, use weapons and tools and communicate with each other and amongst the different species. They tend to be small in size, and may be preyed on by beasts or even other races. Contrary to Jacques writings, none of the critterfolk are inherently bad or evil. Predators and prey are equally capable of being any mixture of moral values.

Beasts incompass any animal who is too large or impractical to use as a pc. This includes large predators such as wolves, tigers or bears, as well as hooved mammals like horses or deer. Beasts can be used as mounts for pcs, food sources, or a source of conflict.

Invertebrates and fish are the 2 groups of animals that critterfolk both farm (for food or raw materials) or keep as pets (mechanically, familiars and animal companions).

(While for some critterfolk a large beetle may be just a small snack, for the smallest folk, like mice or shrews, large invertebrates make a sturdy mount)

Foods and Diet:

Hey, don’t animals like mice and moles get preyed on and eaten by animals like fox and weasels? 

Yes they do! This can be an interesting source of conflict in your game (think zootopia) but if this is not a theme or story you are interested in exploring there are other options. 

While carnivore and omnivore animals can technically safely consume other critterfolk, it is seen as taboo. There may be certain cultures or groups who practice hunting of other critterfolk, but it is uncommon. Carnivores and omnivores find protein in other places; fish, invertebrates, and beasts. Animals like badgers and hedgehogs have a mixed diet and often practice fishing or bug keeping. Larger carnivorous critterfolk may work cooperatively to hunt animals like boar or deer, and animals such as the Wolverine are capable of taking a beast on themselves. Some critterfolk may be scavengers, finding fallen beasts to pick clean. There are many explorable cultural differences that could be interesting and fun character backgrounds or storylines!

Languages: Languages are decided by taxonomic class. There are similarities across all critterfolk languages on the mortal plane. 

Mammalian, Avesian, Reptilian, and Amphibian (languages of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, respectively)

This is all a bit on the nose but that makes it easy to remember. i could sit and try to come up with more clever names, but that would just be more confusing than necessary.

Other languages: 

Common: same as 5e common, the universal language that most critters know how to speak 

Infernal: spoken by devils of the infernal plane 

Abyssal: spoken by typhonic beasts 

Celestial: spoken by the phoenixes of the celestial plane