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Credits

Writer: Joe CrowCover Artist: Thomas DenmarkInterior Artists: Tom Galambos, ThomasDenmarkCopy Editor: Joseph GoodmanGraphic Designer: Joseph Goodman

www.goodman-games.comgoodmangames@mindspring.com

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Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2Chapter 1: Physiology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2Chapter 2: Social Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5Chapter 3: Cultural Habits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7Chapter 4: Combat Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12Chapter 5: Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Firesworn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17Leafsinger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18Treeherd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20Woodwarden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23New Feats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24

Chapter 6: Treant Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25Magic Seeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25Living Magic Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25New Spells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

Chapter 7: Campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29Appendix 1: New Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31

Blasted Treant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31Deep Treant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33Forsaken Treant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35Hollow Treant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37Brambleshadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38Withered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40

Appendix 2: New Monsters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41Eater-of-Souls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

Appendix 3: Sample NPCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

Be sure to look for the rest of the Complete Guide series!

Available now:Complete Guide to Wererats (GMG3001)

Complete Guide to Drow (online only) (GMG3006)Complete Guide to Doppelgangers (GMG3000)Complete Guide to Velociraptors (GMG1002)

Complete Guide to T-Rex (GMG1003)

Available soon:Complete Guide to Liches (April 2003) (GMG3003)

Complete Guide to Beholders (June 2003) (GMG3004)

If you like this book, you might also be interested in these:

Monsters of the Endless Dark: Wanderers Guild Guideto Subterannean Organisms (d20 monster manual)

(March 2003) (GMG4000)

Dungeon Crawl Classics (retro-style d20 adventures)Idylls of the Rat King (GMG5000)

Lost Vault of Tsathzar Rho (May 2003) (GMG5001)

Aerial Adventure Guide SeriesVol. 1: Rulers of the Sky (GMG2000)

Vol. 2: Sellaine, Jewel of the Clouds (GMG2001)Vol. 3: Monsters, Magic, and Sky Ships (GMG2002)

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IntroductionIn the depths of the forests, the treants walk, silent and

powerful. Ancient beyond reckoning, these protectors of thewoodlands are the shadow that haunts the dreams of any whowould despoil the natural world. Revered by druids and elves,their wisdom is legendary, as is their wrath against axe-wield-ers and fire-starters.

This book is a complete guide to treants, offering role-playing tips, treant-specific prestige classes, cultural insights,mythology, combat strategies and variant templates for treantsand other plant creatures. It includes sample NPCs as well asrules for playing treants as PCs. While this book covers the tre-ant’s traditional role as guardian of the forest in great detail, italso focuses on a different side of treants: their dark impulses.Background and game stats are presented for a variety of un-dead and otherwise dark treants, including hollow, blasted, andforsaken types.

For reference, here is the standard treant stat block as pre-sented in the MM.

TreantHuge Plant

Hit Dice: 7d8+35 (66 hp)Initiative: -1 (Dex)Speed: 30 ft.AC: 20 (-2 size, -1 Dex, +13 natural)Attacks: 2 slams +12 meleeDamage: Slam 2d6+9Face/Reach: 10 ft. by 10 ft./15 ft.Special Attacks: Animate trees, trample, double damage

against objectsSpecial Qualities: Plant, fire vulnerability, half damage

from piercingSaves: Fort +10, Ref +1, Will +6Abilities: Str 29, Dex 8, Con 21,

Int 12, Wis 15, Cha 12Skills: Hide -9/(+7 in forests), Intimidate +8,

Knowledge (any one) +8, Listen +9,Sense Motive +9, Spot +9, WildernessLore +9

Feats: Iron Will, Power Attack

Climate/Terrain: Any forestOrganization: Solitary or grove (4-7)Challenge Rating: 8Treasure: StandardAlignment: Always neutral goodAdvancement: 8-16 HD (Huge); 17-21 HD (Gargantu-

an)

Chapter 1: PhysiologyTreants, sometimes called treelords, belong to a small but

diverse group of plants known as herbae vividum, animatedplants. Unlike most members of the plant kingdom, animatedplants are capable of independent motion and in many casesact more like animals than plants. As one of the most commonintelligent plant species, treants often serve as intermediariesbetween the green world of the forest and the red world of thetool-using races.

Adult treants can range in height from sixteen feet to morethan sixty-four feet tall, though often as much as a third of thisheight is made up of the crown, a wide protrusion of leafybranches extending from the treant’s head. The tough, flexibletissues that make up most of the internal structure of the tre-ant’s body are nearly as dense as the wood of an ordinary tree,and so a treant’s weight can range from 5,000 to more than300,000 pounds.

Though roughly humanoid in outline, treants have little incommon with humanoids, physiologically speaking. The headand the crown make up about two fifths of a treant’s height,while the thick legs often make up less than one fifth. A treant’slong, thin arms, located at the midpoint of the torso, are usual-ly more than long enough for the treant to touch the groundwithout bending over. The rigid, bark-like skin and powerfulinternal fibers that comprise most of a treant’s torso and limbscan twist with surprising ease and speed. Bending is muchmore difficult, except at the shoulder and multiple elbow jointsin the arms, and the hip joints of the legs.

Thick, root-like toes extend in all directions from a treant’sfeet, digging into the ground for support and pushing it alongat surprising speed. Treants’ hands usually have between sixand thirteen long twig-like fingers, with at least one opposabledigit per hand. These fingers can fold into a knotted fist capa-ble of dealing blows of tremendous force, and can also dig intowood, stone or metal with surprising speed, causing great dam-age.

Treant faces most often resemble human faces, althoughoccasionally they include the facial features of other humanoidspecies if these are more common in the region. They can in-clude features from non-humanoid creatures if the dominanttool-using race nearby is non-humanoid, though this is rare.

Treants generate humanoid speech using a hollow sound-ing chamber located in the middle of their bodies. Treants com-municate with each other in a much more complex fashion,using their sounding chamber as well as creaks, groans,rustling leaves, and specialized pollens to speak Treant. As aresult, Treant is a difficult language for humanoids to under-stand, let alone speak.

Like ordinary plants, treants derive most of their suste-

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nance by rooting themselves in the soil and basking in the sunlight. They spend between six and twelve hours a day like this,resting in a meditative state. While resting, they are virtually indistinguishable from ordinary trees.

Treant reproduction is a complicated process. Though treants are hermaphroditic, and capable of self-germination, they mostcommonly gather in small groups of three to five to germi-nate a sapling and raise it. Treants can livefor up to five thousand years, and ru-mors of even older treantsexist. They are physical-ly mature at aboutthree hundredyears of age.

There arethree commonvarieties of treants.Trueheart treants,the most com-monly encoun-tered variety,closely resembleoak trees and dwell indeciduous forests of the lowlands and hills.The second most commonly encountered typeare the Evergreen treants, who resemble pine trees andusually frequent coniferous forests in rocky, mountain-ous areas. Taller than the Trueheart variety, they arerenowned for their intelligence, though they’re not asphysically powerful as their more common relativesare. Waterborne treants are the least commonly en-countered, being found primarily in swampywetlands. They resemble willow trees, and areknown to be remarkably persuasive.

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Treants are, by nature, a solitary species. While they dogather in small groves from time to time, these groups tend tobe temporary. Of course, for such a long-lived race, temporarycan mean several hundred years. Treants focus much of theirattention on their own territories, rather than concerning them-selves with direct social interaction. Often months or some-times years will pass without face-to-face contact between tre-ants with neighboring territories. “The Green comes first” is acommon saying, and treants who neglect their forests to spendtime “chattering like squirrels” acquire a reputation as unreli-able wastrels.

Despite this apparent isolation, treants maintain an elabo-rate communications network, using migratory birds, animals,and insects to carry messages across vast distances. Treantscall this the “Vine of Tales.” These messages are transmittedvia specialized pollens that travelling creatures can carry forthousands of miles, sharing the information they bear withhundreds of treants. These pollens are secreted at will by tre-ants, and are almost impossible for non-treants to intercept andunderstand, as few species have the sensory apparatus to per-ceive them, let alone decipher them. As a result of the Vine ofTales, very few treants are more than six months out of touchwith treant society.

On the smaller scale, most treants do maintain some socialties with treants in adjacent territories. Every few months or so,neighboring treants will meet on the border of their respectiveterritories and spend a day or two catching up on recent events.Larger forests can contain many territories, and periodically allthe treants of a specific area will gather for a “moot” to social-ize, discuss larger issues, and plan serious business like thegreatly feared, but necessary, controlled burns that keep theforest’s underbrush from collecting to dangerous levels. Thesemoots take place every two or three years, and can last for sev-eral weeks.

A treant’s territory can range from five to fifty milesacross, depending on the terrain and population. Territories inareas with large, active populations of humanoids tend to besmaller, making it easier to respond to the problems inevitablycreated by “axe-wielders,” as treants often call the tool-usingraces. Monitoring and maintaining its territory is the primaryfocus of a treant’s life.

Oddly enough, the borders of these territories are fairlyloose, being defined more by a mixture of consensus and con-venience than by rigid adherence to specific geographicalmarkers. Treants who neglect their caretaking duties often find

their territory gradually absorbed out from under them, as theirneighbors take over maintenance duties for the areas adjacentto their own territories. Treants “uprooted” in this fashion aresubject to a great deal of social pressure from their fellows tomend their ways. Often an older treant will unilaterally assumea mentoring role for one of these uprooted deviants, sometimesspending hundreds of years attempting to correct the misguid-ed youth.

Occasionally, some darker force will overshadow a treant,leading it onto paths from which it cannot be rescued by moralpersuasion or social coercion. Whether rotted by some internalbitterness of spirit or corrupted by an external evil, a shadowedtreant can become a powerful force for evil, as its close con-nection with its territories can corrupt the very fabric of theland. The usual response by its fellows is ostracism, followedby a careful readjustment of the surrounding territories to min-imize contact with the aberrant treant. So long as the corrup-tion is contained within its territory, little further action will betaken. Should the shadowed treant begin to encroach on itsneighbor’s territories, eventually they will band together to re-strain the expansionist deviant.

Among treants, age, experience and wisdom determine so-cial dominance. The physical measure of this experience andwisdom is the health and upkeep of the treant’s territory. Tre-ants do not express their leadership in hierarchical terms; infact they have no kings, chiefs, or formal offices of any recog-nizable kind. Often, it is difficult for an outsider to tell whichparticular treant in a group is the leader. How much weightother treants give to its opinions and how often they seek outits advice are the only real clues to who is in charge of a givenarea. Even then, should the burdens of leadership distract theelder from its duties to its own territory, the cloak of ad hoc au-thority can quickly pass to another. “Prune one’s own branch-es first” is a popular treant aphorism. After all, how can youtrust the advice of someone who cannot maintain his own landsproperly?

Fortunately, the glacial pace of treant social politics pre-vents this informal system of leadership from interfering withrelations with outside societies. By the time a given elder hasfaded from the political scene, many generations have passedamong the mayfly races. Even among the druidic circles thatmake up most of treantkind’s social contact with other races,the extended lifespan of the treefolk means that much of treantpolitics goes unnoticed.

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Shepherd, Shield, and Singer:Treant Classes

Outsiders who study treants often remark on the similaritybetween the three primary classes that treants take (treeherd,woodwarden, and leafsinger) and certain classes of theyounger races (druid, ranger and bard). When asked, treantssay that the answer is simple; in the dawn of time, treantstaught these skills to the elves, who taught them to the otherraces.

The most common class for a treant to take is treeherd.Nearly all treants will take a level or two in this class beforethey settle down and take on the lifelong responsibility fortheir territory. Their knowledge and mastery of all aspects ofthe forest define them. Though they focus on the welfare of theplants in their domain, animal life is a part of their dominion,at least where it impacts the green world. Gardeners withoutpeer, they are the core of treant life.

Though there are fewer woodwardens than treeherds, theyare the class most often encountered by other races. If the out-sider is not careful, the woodwarden may be the last encounterof any kind that they experience. Fierce protectors of the greenworld, they often take a proactive stance toward intruders.Stealth, power, and keen knowledge of their foes define thesewarriors.

Though they are more likely to wander freely than theirother kin, leafsingers are rare enough that few outsiders en-counter them. Even so, their knowledge of the outside world isunparalleled among treants. Keepers of knowledge, masters ofnegotiation, weavers of illusion, leafsingers are the voice of thegreen world.

Seeds, Thorns, and Flowers:Treant Groves

While treants ordinarily maintain their territories as indi-viduals, occasionally a small group will gather together in oneterritory for a period of time for one reason or another. Thesegroves can remain together for hundreds of years, until the rea-son for their assembly has passed. Most often, the treants whomake up a particular grove are neighbors, but occasionally agrove will include treefolk from distant forests who’ve becomeacquainted through the Vine of Tales.

There are three basic varieties of treant groves.

Seedling Groves

The most common is called a Seedling grove. Seedlinggroves are normally formed around an older treant, who ispreparing to pass on. The elder treant contacts a few of itsneighbors and occasionally one or two distant acquaintancesand proposes that they gather and form a Seedling grove. Thisis seen as a great honor, and it’s extremely rare for a treant toreject such an invitation. Occasionally, the neighbors of a tre-ant who died unexpectedly will form a Seedling grove in orderto raise a replacement.

Those invited to join usually merge their lands into onelarger territory, allowing other neighbors on the outskirts to ac-cept temporary charge of the outer areas. Treants travellingfrom farther away will generally divide their lands among theadjoining territories for the few short centuries that they’ll beaway.

Most Seedling groves consist of three to five treants ofvarying ages, who’ll remain together for three or four hundredyears while they raise their sapling. These groves are nearly al-ways made up of the same subspecies of treant. At least one ofthem will be a leafsinger. The focus of attention for all of themis, of course, the healthy raising and proper education of thesapling. A sapling is never left alone; two or three of its parentsremain with it at all times, answering its incessant questions,demonstrating proper forest management, and recounting edu-cational tales and homilies. As the sapling grows older, it is al-lowed to visit neighboring treants in the care of one of its par-ents, expanding its horizons and making friendships that willlast for thousands of years. The subjects of these visits wel-come the newcomer gladly, sharing personal forestry tech-niques and homespun wisdom with the young treant and re-joicing in the renewal of their kind. Toward the end of its child-hood, a sapling may be introduced to a particularly trusteddruid grove, where it can study the humanoid races in theirmost balanced and reliable form.

Once the sapling has reached maturity and ventured out onits wandering time, the parents slowly part and go their sepa-rate ways. Occasionally, a parent from a distant forest will trav-el with its wandering scion for a time, on its way home. Theparents will remain close friends for the rest of their long lives.Although it is extremely rare for the same group of parents toproduce more than one scion, often one will include a partnerfrom a previous Seedling grove when it comes time to raise itsown replacement.

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CoverTitle PageIntroductionChapter 1: PhysiologyChapter 2: Social StructureChapter 3: Cultural HabitsChapter 4: Combat StrategiesChapter 5: CharactersCharacter ClassesFireswornLeafsingerTreeherdWoodwarden

New Feats

Chapter 6: Treant MagicNew Spells

Chapter 7: CampaignsAppendix 1: New TemplatesBlasted TreantDeep TreantForsaken TreantHollow TreantBrambleshadow CreaturesWithered Creatures

Appendix 2: New MonstersEater-of-Souls

Appendix 3: Sample NPCs

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