Homebrew Plants Races a la "I am Groot"

[The Perilous Dreamer]

How would you write a homebrew plant race of Groot? Or any other plant from any type of environment?

[hengest]

I've seen these things more than once.

There's the classic Swamp Thing, originally a man transformed into a swamp monster and later re-interpreted as a plant creature infected by the "consciousness" of a dead man, still later reinterpreted as a plant elemental whose personality was built of the "template" of that of the dead man.

There's Medphyll, the Green Lantern from a species of sentient plants:




I'm sure there are others.

They're usually written more or less as humans or humanoid aliens, but with some "planty" concerns.

I suppose for gaming purposes you would want them to feel alien (and therefore not just a re-skinned elf or something), but not so alien that playing them becomes ridiculous.

I don't know Groot as a character so I won't comment.

I'm inclined, for purposes of this post, to think of a kind of humanoid representative not of all plants, but of a certain local species or genus. You might meet the "lady" of the roses of this valley...more later...

[hengest]

...you might meet the lady of the roses, or her brother, who speaks for the apples...something like that.



But that's not really a race designed for play, and mechanical tracking of everything that would affect the "plant-person's" consituents doesn't sound like tons of fun. Although if an army swept through and burned some orchards...maybe you would see how it harmed them. That would be easily decided with a mechanic, however.

[raikenclw]

Just a couple of thoughts:

For me, the essential features of a plant-based character would be three-fold:

1) Slower: Plant biology - based upon metabolizing carbon dioxide rather than oxygen - just does not process energy as fast as animal biology. So plant PCs will tend to be slower overall. While they might still be capable of bursts of high speed - like how a Venus fly trap can spring closed upon it's fast-moving prey - such bursts would necessarily be separated by significant recharge times.

2) Decentralized: Plants do not have major organs in the same sense that animals do. Therefore, it would be next to impossible to "crit" on a plant.

3) Unique Nutrition: While certain plants (the aforementioned Venus fly trap being a prime example) can use protein directly to provide nutrition, most do not have a digestive system in the same sense as animals. Therefore, a plant PC would likely require a certain minimum number of hours per day spent in strong sunlight, rich soil and/or mineral-laced water in order to remain healthy.

Of course, these are just my own opinions. But I think that these three features would serve admirably to separate a plant PC from a "regular" animal PC, at least for gaming purposes.

[oldskolgmr]

RuneQuest's Glorantha setting has all Elves as plantients!