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| Select thy snack |
Some proper dungeon bushtucker. Hey, don’t be squeamish, it's free HP.
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While quick to eat they are somewhat bilious, (especially for the inexperienced dungeoneer) - you can only eat a number of these critters (or portions) equal to your level every ten minutes*. Excess consumption causes HP loss instead of gain. The format is name, description, amount healed per portion (usually the whole creature but some can be divvied up, some must be) and number appearing (No app:). They all go bad after a day.
These varmints can tie into something like the ‘dungeon provides’ result of Wondering Monster’s Tweaked Encounter Dice. Eating these critters does not provoke an encounter check (unless otherwise stated).
D20 dungeon critters you can just snatch up and gulp down
1. Cake Bug
- The crème de la crème of dungeon critters. A nine-legged, soft-bodied organism the exact same size, shape, texture and taste as a stodgy, praline and caramel cake. 6 HP or up to six servings of 1 HP. No app: 1d2.
2. Pygmy Cave Dodos
- Little squawking featherless oafs that run in circles. You could fit two in the palm of your hand. Bloodless, dry and stringy. 1 HP ea. No app: 1d6.
3. Cracklers/Poppers
- Bright pink termites that crackle in the mouth and their fat wine-red grubs. Cracklers: 1 HP per dozen, Poppers, 2 HP ea. No app: 1d4 dozen Cracklers outside the nest, inside the nest are 2d6 dozen Cracklers and d20 Poppers. Digging them out may take some time.
4. Bogtart
- A spontaneously generated homunculus. They play dead when spotted. About a mouthful. Tastes like cherry pie, gushes green ooze when bitten. 2 HP. No app: 1.
5. Vecna's Feathers
- Squamous, silvery moths. Rest on tombs and soak up the evil energy. Just grab them out of the air, then twist and pull. Tastes like vinegary porridge. 1 HP ea. No app: 2d6.
6. Orc Fingers
- Callous green caterpillar-things, roost under rocks and scatter, clumsily, from light sources. 1 HP per 3. No app: 1d4*3.
7. Molasses Slime
- The runt of the dungeon slime genus. Small, slow, about as acidic as an orange - sweet and cloying in the back of the throat. 2 HP ea. No app: 1.
8. Miasmatic Minnows
- Filtering out the tainted dungeon air, these tiny fish float like sparkling teardrops - just inhale sharply and swallow. 1 HP per cloud/shoal. No app: 1d4 shoals.
9. Waiffles
- Bone white fairies that want to be eaten. They’ll try to force themselves into your mouth, begging “eat me, eat me” in their squeaky little voices. Considered bad luck to eat but this is just an old wives tale. Taste and texture like fresh candy floss. 1 HP each. No app: 1d6.
10. Spitworms
- Like anemones blooming from the wall, they’re tubular, blue tinted polyps with little yawning fishmouths. They spit harmless neon slime territorially. The texture is like pani puri but the taste is pineapple. 1 HP ea. No app: 2d6.
11. Headless Gecko
- Eponymous appearance, about an arm's length, mossy skin, completely silent, slow, no head, no survival instinct. Actually a kind of motile fungus. Low on nutrition and flavour but very filling. 2 HP or 2 portions of 1 HP. No app: 1.
12. Danglers/Larval Apes
- Found on the ceiling, an oxblood-coloured, segmented log with a crude face like a smiling emoji and vestigial paws and tail. A solid, organless mass like a chewy sweet - gummy texture, biltong taste. They’re very heavy. 5 portions of 1 HP. No app: 1d4.
13. Snoufflé
- Like a cross between a shaggy snufflesome sea-slug and a buttery croissant. About the size of a swiss roll. 3 HP or three portions of 1 HP. No app: 1.
14. Flavour Cubes
- Near-transparent tumblesome cubes - will grow into gelatinous cubes if not eaten. Jelliful and eye-wateringly sour. 1 HP for small Cubes, 2 HP for big ones - however, one can only eat 1 every ten minutes. No app: 1d10 small, 1d4 big.
15. Garloids
- Like geoducks, found nestling in damp corners or the underhang of boulders. Make good pets but remember to water them regularly. Each Garloid is 3 portions of 1 HP. No app: 1d4.
16. Dungeon Cucumbers
- Like a headily coloured choral reef, flowing, wedged, into the cracks of dungeon walls. These molluscs tongue the air for motes of dust and metaphysical dungeon energy. 1 HP ea (3HP if fried). No appearing 2d20.
17. Flat Rats
- Like a featureless velvet-furred pancake that ripples around the dungeon floor nibbling up detritus. Taste and texture like chicken schnitzel if you ignore the downy fur. 2 HP. No App: 1d12.
18. Wormhead Toads
- About the size of your palm. Delectable but the toxic ones look indistinguishable from the good ones. 1d4 HP ea but if 4 is rolled, take 4 HP of damage instead. No app: 1d4.
19. Stirge Husks
- The infamous Stirge, grey, dead and dried out. Packed with protein, it’s not unlike eating a dried (albeit red veined) apple. 2 HP ea. No app: 1d8.
20. Skull or ‘Helmit’ Crab
- With paper thin shells and delicious insides, these translucent crabs house themselves in the skulls of the dead, preferring helmeted heads. 1 HP or 3 HP if fully broken out of the skull, though this may take time. No app: 1d4.
1d4 critters you really don’t want to snatch up and gulp down
Combine with the previous table, rolling a wacky d24 to add a learning curve to dungeon critter foraging.
1. Grave Tadpoles
- Little glistening black spots near-futilly wiggling across the hard stone floor. A cabbagey, fishy taste. Heals 0-1 HP but induces a deathlike coma for 10 minutes, one awakens early upon receiving damage. No app: 1d8
2. Witchcap Wasps
- Finger-sized orange and grey wasps with black witch-hat shaped mushrooms growing from their head or thorax. 1 HP ea but one cannot sleep for 24 hours after ingestion. No app: 2d4.
3. Stewing Gnomes
- Grey-purple coneheaded octopi that, perched high up on their tentacles, ambulate like tiny waddling penguins. Strongly emetic when eaten raw. After vomiting one cannot eat anything else that day. Only good for stewing. No app: 1d4.
4. Bloodsnipper
- These beaky, crimson-scaled fish move and behave just like rats, scurrying about the floor on its membranous fin-legs. They scream loudly when grabbed, provoking an immediate encounter check. 1 HP ea. No App: 1d10.
Optionally: Each character can roll a d20 to determine their favourite flavour of critter. A PC can eat an unlimited number of that particular critter, ignoring the normal level restriction. You can also roll for whatever critter the characters like least though I’m sure they’ll do that naturally.
