1d20 Pseudo-Fictional Plants

hanging man orchid

1d20	Pseudo-Fictional Plants
1	Monkey Flower. A yellow, five-petaled flower, said to look like the face of a laughing monkey. Grows around hot springs and volcanic plains. The stems can be stewed to increase one’s heat tolerance for a few hours. Tastes bitter and musky.
2	Bleeding Tooth. An off-white, asymmetrical fungus that grows on the temperate forest floor. Secretes a dark red, bitter fluid easily mistaken for blood. Can be “““milked””” for its pigment, which acts as a human/animal blood substitute in certain rituals (devils and outsiders can’t tell the difference, but animals can).
3	Rockrose. Evergreen plants with pink and white flowers native to chaparral regions. When pressed, the fruit bursts violently, emitting tiny sparks capable of lighting small fires. The seeds grow best in wet ash.
4	Touch-me-not. A shade-loving creeper with pink and white flowers. When touched, it retracts into a bud, then signals nearby flowers to do the same. Distance of signal travel is based on force of impact. Used by hunters and fae alike to pinpoint activity in the forest. Sometimes cultivated by eccentrics as short-range noiseless communication systems.
5	Corpsevine. A hanging creeper with a heavy ballast-like fruit. The vine contains a fluid which smells of decomposing meat, attracting seed-spreading scavengers when the fruit falls (or a machete cleaves the vine). This fluid can be drained and bottled as an insect/wandering monster attractant.
6	Miracle Berry. A red berry found in warmer climes. Chewing these berries makes everything taste like the sickly sweet berry for 1d4 hours.
7	Sandbox Tree. A jungle tree bearing fist-sized brown seed pods. The pods explode with a loud crack when ripe (or thrown), sending seeds ricocheting at high velocity in all directions. Functions mostly as a noisemaker, but could deal damage per DM fiat.
8	Gympie-Gympie. A plant with broad, serrated leaves and magenta berries. Covered entirely in tiny hairs containing a potent neurotoxin, except for a few stiletto-like red thorns at its base. The toxin causes intense, debilitating pain at the point of contact, lasting 1d4 years if untreated. 1d4 rodent corpses are impaled on the thorns, driven in agony to fertilize the plant.
9	Mirror Orchids. A nearly translucent five-petaled orchid, but you’ll never see them like that. Smell like oranges or apples. Grow near pools of clear water and mimic the shape/color of the last living creature reflected in the water after 1d4 hours. Taste like glass.
10	Bat Flower. A dark purple flower with many long, hanging filaments that exclusively grows on dungeon ceilings. The flower and its seeds fall upwards rather than towards the floor. Small objects wrapped in its filaments do the same.

a bat flower
it even looks like an OD&D monster

1d20	Pseudo-Fictional Plants
11	Well Moss. A thick, scratchy green moss often found clinging to wet stone. It sticks to everything except metal, and can be used to scrub metal objects clean. It does, however, stick to human hands (gross), as well as silver and other outsider metals.
12	Skeleton Flower. Tiny, six-petaled white flowers with huge green leaves the size of buckler shields. All parts of the plant turn translucent when wet and revert when dry. Entirely odorless and tasteless.
13	Bladderwort. A carnivorous yellow flower which floats above water. Traps and digests prey in fist-sized “bladders”, which can be harvested and filled with air (after being cleaned of organic debris). Half as effective as normal air bladders.
14	Rusty Duckweed. Tiny green plants that quickly grow over water and metal. Edible, but you’d need to skim a small pond for a decent ration. Proliferates quickly (1 ration/hour) if you “feed” it silver (1 sp -> 1 ration). Dies when it dries out.
15	Bear’s Head Tooth. A rare white fungus that grows on the sides of dead trees. Extremely delicious if cooked properly, a delicacy wherever you find it. Serves as a catch-all offering to anyone with a sense of taste: nobles, faeries, infernal patrons, etc. all love the stuff.
16	Victoria Lily. A giant water lily which can grow up to 10 feet in diameter. Can support one small, unarmored humanoid, but anything more will plunge right through. The red underside of the lily is covered in small spikes to dissuade fish from eating it. Holds its shape enough to be a great hat but a crappy shield.
17	Butterwort. A fist-sized, carnivorous plant with sticky leaves for catching small insects. Once stuck to a surface, the butterwort sticks until it dries out and dies. Easily uprooted. Occasionally blooms into a delicate purple flower.
18	Sloth Moss. An unassuming green algae which readily clings to animal hair and skin. Completely harmless. If properly cared for and allowed to flourish, sloth moss will disguise its host as a plant with its chemical language, protecting them from the ire of Shambling Mounds and Snapdragons.
19	Strangler Fig. A parasitic plant with broad pointed leaves and necromantic origins. Uses its roots to drain nutrients from its organic host (tree trunks/plant roots/corpses), enveloping them in a wooden husk. The roots are stiff and lightweight, even after the host has long since decomposed. Its fruit are large, gummy, and full of tiny seeds, one of which will grow into a close approximation of the host organism. Smart adventurers won’t allow corpse seeds to grow.
20	Walking Palm. A palm tree standing on spear-like roots. Moves at a glacial pace, or at a walk if no sighted creatures are looking directly at it. Can be guided with fertilizer and rich loam. Capable of galloping when infuriated, goring anything in its path with its roots.

Sidenote: Plants don’t like being stepped on or chopped for lumber, but they don’t get mad either. To infuriate a plant so much that it uproots itself, you need to really get vulgar and personal, speak their language, and present an existential threat to everything the plant loves and holds dear.

monkey orchid

Use these plants to add dynamic environments to a dungeon, spice up your travel time, or give the tree-hugger herbologist player something to get excited over.

 

Oh, and if you have flowers in your dungeon, you’ll probably want some pollinators.

Melhemeret’s Mole
HD 0 (HP 1)  Defense unarmored  Claws 1d4
Move 5  Dig 10  Int 2  Morale 2
Special can smell color

A furry, fist-sized mole with paws like shovel blades. It is nearly blind, but can “smell” brightly colored objects through the earth. It consumes its own weight in grubs and beetles each day, but has a particular taste for flower nectar. Often accidentally digs into dungeons, lured by colorful gems and the belongings of fallen adventurers. Named after the infamous illusionist who bankrupted the Dashiran military with counterfeit gold.

Burrowbees
HD 2 (swarm)  Defense as leather  Sting 1dX (where X is the swarm’s current HP)
Move 2  Dig 1  Fly 15  Int 8  Morale -
Special blindsense

White bees with red eyes. They burrow through dungeon walls at half speed by spitting up acid and digging with their overdeveloped mandibles. They dig sprawling hives in dungeons with flowering vegetation and supplement their diet with anything that wanders into their thousands of tunnels. The queen is huge, about the size of a small dog, and buried behind 10 feet of rock. If you manage to avoid getting stung to death she might be willing to barter (of course she speaks Common, why wouldn’t she).

No morale; they’ll die for their hive. Their intelligence is their queen’s intelligence. A wooden door might stop 1 bee, but it won’t stop a swarm for more than 2 rounds.

1d4	Burrowbee Queen Loot (roll twice)
1	Royal Jelly. A month’s supply for 10 gp (doesn’t count as a full meal). Consuming Royal Jelly every day leads to the development of various facial features common to the region’s nobility (at least 3 elements that fit your setting, e.g. blue eyes/attached earlobes/Hapsburg chin). +1 Cha if eaten every day for a month, +2 Cha if eaten every day for a year (doesn’t stack). The people will be more likely to believe your claim to the throne.
2	A yellow leather-bound spell book. Contains Grease and Grow Beard. She’s not sure where she got it from, but she’s sure she doesn’t need it. The inside cover says that it’s 15 years overdue at Our Lady Sorrow’s Library.
3	The Maguffin Rose. An extremely rare and delicate flower in a glass vase. It’s worth 60 gp aboveground, but she’ll give it to you for 5g or a favor. Doesn’t need sunlight, but must be watered every 2 hours. Refracts light like a prism through its crystal leaves. Try not to drop it, you clumsy clod, or the stem will shatter and it will be worthless.
4	An Apiomancer’s Monocle. It’s a little sticky. Plant buds viewed through the hexagonal lens will bloom in 2 days time with no ill effect on the plant.

a male digger bee