Guest Post by Pliny The Elder

Print PDF

 I mean DISPLACER KLAUS brought me this and he says it's from Pliny The Elder and who I am to doubt that chuckling rascal?

GREATER HOOT-BEAST

 The lovely and solemn Hoot Beast roams the plains , sustained only by smells . It is thus dependent on the numerous wild flowers and fragrant trees in the pyrrhous  lands. Unusually it does not  sniff the flowers like a thoughtful man or suckle at them like the bee, it instead draws them down their scent from the wind, numerous leagues away from the source.

It is thus provoked by unpleasant smells , sometimes chasing down and trampling the source of them , though when encountering the dense reek of man's settlements they will flee .

The nomads of the Pyrrhous  Plains lure them with perfumed youths and shear the wool from them after the winter months which they use for many purposes,  most notable their spherical hats, which they keep birds of various martial and social purpose.

SATAN

Here is a Satan , its appearance here has been crafted wading through a vast river of soul chyme where it plucks the juicey congealments that have made it through the mastications of the Gnawing Gates.

A Satans size is variable , and is known to be both like a common wading bird and a striding colossi. Its temperament is like most in New Plymouth ; cruel and disagreeable.

It is provoked by hats of all kinds and will make great fuss before commencing violence, plucking at limbs and flinging such grasped great distances .  It however is known to vastly over-estimate its ability to riddle

TABULARAPTOR

 This bird is fierce king of the Pyrrhous Plains and unlike other avian, strikes not with beak or claw but its flattened body, which is like a single blade.

A eagle or hawk will descend directly on its quarry , but the Tabularaptor will descend first at distance and come low , slicing through leg. It returns then when exsanguination  has rendered the struck into a stupourous placidity .
Its method thus forewarns by the falling of grass and stalk at a short distance.

Its nests are not made in cliff but hollow tree, rolling itself like scroll to rest such in.

The Nomads here thus fear dead trees yet strangely do not take measures against them. It is said that they owe their freedom from horse raiders to the Tabularaptor, as a single walker can lie prone evading the bird , but a ridden horse has no such recourse and will surely be victim .

The borders of the plains are indeed marked with short towers , constructed with horse skull and bisected femur to serve as grim reminder of the bird's great feast that was the end of every cavalry lead expedition here.


HUSKY GOBBLER


A simple sand sifting beast, that travels in herds among the many dead rivers along the plains.

None of its dead form can resist decay, crumbling to dust in days. Therefore no part of it can be used for construction or craft.

It is said that raising a Husky Gobbler on food that is not the silt on which it customarily consumes will mean it will not have this property .

The theory is that rocks have a "solid essence" giving them their form , and as fire has cold as its opposite, the silt has an "erosive essence" which is stored in the Husky Gobbler's body.

Indeed the nomads will serve the meat as poison to those that abuse their hospitality.
Eaten, such meat will sustain for a day or 2 , but then create 5 times the hunger it abated, causing such horrors as men eating all their clothing and then biting their own fingers off.

While peaceful , harassing the Husky Gobbler will cause it to sneeze a fine dust with such force , that skin will be abraded off muscle and muscle off bone.

VERY BAD PIG
 


It is stupid except when it is cunning, and cowardly except when it is audacious.

It is so appalling that it vomits from its rear and coughs up dung like a cat does hair.

Rank corpses arose its carnal passions and a Very Bad Pig sow will need to anoint itself with the most putrid of decays in order to distract the male from shit-fighting.

It is said that it was made with all that is terrible of the bear , wolve, cur , boar and bigamist.







 Updated to have sources and change the name of purple plains to pyrrhous plains because that was a place holder that I went with and then went , nah yeah that's fine , and then 20 minutes later hated it

art sources:



Hoot Beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrauchenia
(originally Robert Bruce Horsfall)

Satan
https://store.safariltd.com/collections/sale/products/wild-safari-wildlife-spoonbill-figurines-224829


 Tabularaptor:
it's a Argentavis magnificens and the image is everywhere 


 Husky Gobbler:
stock art of platybelodon herd , originally by Corey Ford

Very Bad Pig
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daeodon
by Jay Matternes

Thinking About WarBeasts

Print PDF

I opened a post on g+ to talk about ludicrous warbeasts and I'm still thinking about them:



Thinking about the problem of having someone or thing super into killing but still caring about fellow army members and the chain of command. 

(Which has been the biggest barrier to the creation of "war-drugs" . You increase anything that makes a solider better at killing you also advance the "will shoot own troops and disregard orders slider" )

So you breed a war-goat , and its fearless and will fight anyone ; how to you get it not to fight your own troops, or even advance in the right direction?

 If you train the animal to have a trigger response to certain stimulus , it risks discovery and exploitation by the enemy.

 Dumb animals are more easy to have doing stuff reflexively and ignoring context , a giant beetle will charge when the pheromone flag is waved near it regardless of the presented danger of the enemy. 

However if the rider is unable to wave the corresponding Halt pheromone flag the beetle will keep advancing off the battlefield , into fires or even off cliffs. 

A smart animal will integrate context into its commands, however it will have to be more motivated by the training than its sense of self preservation.

 At some point it could be more afraid of the enemy than its learned fear of the rider.

 Fear isn't the only motivator however.

 Hunger and Caring are the other big motivators in animal attacks. 

Hunger is presents some problems because predators do not take unnecessary risks. You hear about people fighting off a bear or a lion with a couple of punches to the snoot because of this. 

Most predator attacks on prey animals result in the prey getting away, predators won't push a fight that doesn't immediately go their way. They can't afford to 

. If you've ever had a pet cat that gets into fights , you'll have had to go to vet at some point to get infected bites and scratches and seen how disabling they can be.

 In the wild there is no vet, a predator gets a broken tooth, a puffed up face obscuring an eye, a cracked rib, there's a high chance they won't be able to feed themselves and then starve to death 

(unless they can survive on scavenging kills and smaller normal substandard food like insects or lizards) 

So a warbeast motivated by hunger isn't necessary going to ignore its self preservation , unless its starting to get hungry enough to weaken it.

 Also once it kills something , it is likely to want to eat it right away. 

And then there's the ever present threat of it choosing to eat something closer. 

There's a couple of interesting and d&dable work-around that could happen here though:

The attached army is could be just not food , skeletons have no meat, treemen or funguys neither, or might be exploiting a known allegory; the kuo-toa use thorny-tigers , and thorny-tigers are allergic to seafood . 

Which is something they would want to keep secret , to prevent the enemy hacking up kuo-toa and throwing them into the maw of the Kuo-toa .

 Another is the attached army to the war beast coats themselves with scent that the war beast has learned to never want to eat. 

Stealing (and using) and/ or replacing the scent would be an tremendously effective sabotage .

The scent could be instead be an attractant, thrown on or previously associated with the enemy to make the enemy perceived as food. 

Insects are a good subject for this, being extremely controlled by pheromones. 

Leading on from this and into another hunger solution is using a beast that doesn't eat meat and making it believe the enemy isn't made of meat and instead the food of the beast. So the subtle scents of dry and rotting wood are applied sneakily to the enemy army . 

Then the giant termite warbeast would mindlessly chew through their troops , spitting out the mangled carcasses just as soon as it swallows them . Or a half lobotomised starving great ape tearing up these delicious smelling "fruits" but unable to find the source to satisfy its hunger 

Stupid beasts or highly drugged /motivated are needed for this strategy , otherwise they would get frustrated and stop

Expanding on this  “Tantalus”  strategy is preventing satisfaction by making a hole in the throat or stomach so the bolus tumbles out as quickly as its eaten.

Some plasticity in the beast, disposable attitude toward it , or fleshy magiks/sciences are required for this. Also again, the  animal to be dumb, drugged or brutalised enough to not be aware of the futility . Or not be an animal that is happy to immediately eat its own vomit.

Some war beasts could have such a prestigious appetite that the typical killing they will do on a battlefield wouldn’t threaten to gorge them to the point of physical impairment 

Alternatively to cutting holes in the valuable war-beast is having it vomit up what (who) it just ate , which could be an additional weaponised behaviour (via acid, temperature of the  bolus,  or just the sheer force of the projection)  .
The vomiting could be the result of drugs, modifying the stomach to not accept solid food , or a mechanic device triggering the gag reflex.

Example of that last  one could be some poor bastard who has to hang off the neck of the beast and jam a long rod down its throat, a festering bit of wire jutting out of the flesh leading to the muscle group that a minor shock is applied to, or a gross polyp that is caressed.

Excessive vomiting might tax the creature's stomach acid and/or cause teeth corrosion, which could be exploited as an attrition strategy by an opponent; sending waves of cannon folder or even domestic animals repeatedly at the war-beasts so they eat and puke until they lose their teeth and become unable to digest food .

A really simple solution to all of this that I could of said at the start but I just remembered  about now is “Surplus Killing” .  If a war-beast behaves likes  this when excessive prey is in front of them they will kill without eating or only eating the choicest bits.

( aka “fox in the henhouse” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing )

The concept of a warbeast that carves its way into enemy lines , stopping to quickly pluck out livers or hearts is a striking one.

Caring is the other motivator. I’m jamming together territory  defending , mate /kids protection and dominance displays all in this character.

In all these there is something that the beast is prepared to risk or even sacrifice itself for.

In the wild this can make herbivores or otherwise not hostile animals even more dangerous than predators. Hippopotamus and wildebeest are some of the biggest killers in Africa because of this. 

The hippopotamus doesn’t get “full” and not interested in killing you. As soon as you are threatening its territory (or babies) it wants to kill you. It wants to kill your boat , it wants to kill your dog , it wants to kill you. 

Territorialness could be exploited by an army if the war-beast understands its territorial by smell , everyone in the army anoints themselves in pungent fragrance and the war-beast thinks of the army as “it’s”.  A better fit would be for the smell to mean the that the army was the young of the warbeast. 

The scent could be just thrown into an area, the warbeast then staying in that area and menacing everyone coming near it. Only when the scent disperses could the warbeast be approached and rejoined into the army. (Its own scent glands would be removed so it can’t reapply a scent)

Getting more ludicrous there could be an actual structure or section of land carried by the army to trigger the warbeast territory. 

It might be impossible or logistically prohibitive to have the entire army believed to be the warbeasts young, so maybe just a bonded rider or solider. Which is an obvious weakness and macguffinable. 

If the attached army is to be seen as mates to protect , some poor bastard might have to wear custom costume/armour and have the warbeast mount them , the rest of the army can get by in just being soaked in the urine of a in-heat female. 
 Unless large fake animals are made for this purpose , perhaps being formerly a religious statue or totem carried by the army for divine protection, before its other use was discovered and awkwardly religiously explained as not terrible.

Dominance: something about the enemy could trigger the warbeast to attack to prove its bestness. Most dominance conflicts don’t involve the full capacity of the creatures involved, stags rarely try and gut each other or kick out eyes. But the reduced aggression is most likely more than enough to kill and maim, such as an headbutting goat or stag or a neck whipping giraffe.

In-order to have the attached army not be seen as a threat the uniform of the attached army could some how appear to be showing a submissive posture; helmets with the toward pointing horns of a losing giant stag beetle for example. Or a ritual rolling on the ground and showing the belly before the beast, disguised as ritual madness as not to be understood and copied by the enemy army.

Repeating myself a little here but if the warbeast is just so fucked up on drugs, brain surgery, psionic control or parasites,  it could be made to see the enemy as something desirable to it , either food , mates, or even an environment; panicked burrowing beasts seeing troops flesh as soft soil or making  giant parasites choose hosts that are far smaller than usual.

Otherwise placid beasts could become terrifying warbeasts this way , the giant sloth lumbering towards those "delicious leafs surrounded by troublesome thorns"

This might be very unstable way of manipulating the beast, requiring highly trained and knowledgeable individuals and/or luck.

It's worth noting that in a way an animal should always be considered to be in an altered state.
A dog does not see the world and is responding to very different information than you are in the same situation. War-elephants were recorded as afraid of the scent of camel.

Understanding how the warbeast perceives the world could open up exploitations. Ruiner-Crabs will ignore anything red, glyptodonts poor vision means they can't make out spears and are unafraid of charging a pike formation , battleworms move toward high pitch noises.  

ANYWAY
some of the best ideas from the thread are:

mine:


Advanced force of burrowing animals, turning a plane in a treacherous field of foot/hoof sized pot holes. Attached army uses giant centipedes as warmounts so they don't care




Huge Knife Ball pushed by giant scarabs. the knife ball has some necromantic device inside it so it crudely animates any corpses stuck to it.

The corpses cling and stab and the ball katamari-damacys to frightening sizes as the battle progresses


Skeleton elephant full of poison snakes, strike out at anyone coming near it




Rust monsters with wasps nests grown all over them.



matryoshka war dogs: they contain consecutively (wet , fleshy, viscerally coloured smaller dogs. They can do a reaching bite where the dogs telescope out from the biggest ones mouth, exchange brute force for numerically superiority, or survive otherwise lethal blows that fail to reach the inner dogs




"ratmen" actually made of rats, that pile up on top of each other until they make a plausible at a distance human shape. More for information warfare than anything as they can show up near anywhere and be mistaken for an actual military unit. Can even steal clothing and armour and disguise themselves further

Advanced version could be a rat army that travels as rats , carrying some building materials and small tools. Then using whatever is around they make walking rat operated warmachines , for example a horse size quadruped formed of tied together bone with farm tool tusks and damp leather hide

A army of intelligent rats would prob do far more damage just fouling supplies, sabotaging equipment, and starting fires, but these rats have this thing about proving they are more than vermin and so do this weird shit with rat junk-mecha


Ian Reily:


I still think an animated wicker man is the most fun siege weapon. Not strong enough to batter down walls, it probably has to clamber over them, setting things alight. You shoot it to put your guys trapped inside out of their misery, or bring in fire hoses to try and de-animate it





Beloch Shrike:






Massive behemoth beasts with acidic semen. Jacked off by teams using a system of canvases and pulleys until they fire their ejaculate artillery across the battlefield.

Here's the thread anyway:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/117530730718880672228/posts/JqTdbvXfKCG

Sewers Tables That I meant to do awhile a go

Print PDF I've been  needed to do this for awhile .
THINGS THAT ONE CAN FIND IN THE UNDERGROUND SEWERS

Cults:
1. Sublime Broiling: worship moon milch | semi real illusions
2. Glory Meat: worship a spherical flesh elemental | transform in to brutish hulks
3.Whistling Night: Construct "deep listening pits"to hear the "whistling between the stars" Wear bird masks with whistle beaks | summon nightgaunts
4.The Bell Drowners. They drown bells. The music of a efficiently drowned bell is rather unsettling |ultrasonic abilities
5. The Stabbers : so divination by reading organs, but if you change the organs (With dexterity,  speed and special knives like olive pitters) before the reading you can change the future. In theory | Surgical instruments, weird internal damage and fate interference
6. The Gigglers: like those people that have organized therapeutic  laughing sessions but have the doctrine that laughter is more therapeutic if the environment is extremely unfunny. Set up tableau that are either horrifying or absurdly banal. | Piranha flails
7. Essentialists: The human body has unnecessary parts that can be removed for greater efficiency. And replaced with beans. | Explosive seed projection, plant monsters
8. The Bombers: bonsai pyrotechnics. Try to blow up exaclty one thing like hope or disapproval. | bombchus


The cult is currently:
1. ceremonys
2. plannings
3.going to war
4.recovering after defeat
5. Out doing non-cult stuff
6. flipping the fuck out









Gangs of Thieves
1. Second story gang with trained squibbon grappling hooks
2. Midgets that disguise themselves as children
3. Fagan with mind control fungus hats and his child slaves
4. Conjoined Twins with a cadre of trained monekys
5. gas spore prostitutes
5. Graverobbers , also dabble in blackmail via a Speak With The Dead ritual they stumbled upon
6. Kidnappers, use blow darts with paralyzing poison from a rare species of bat found here
7.Spys and blackmailers, specialize in disguise themselves as plants
8. Snatch and grabbers , ride trained climbing goats

What are they doing?
1. Falling out violently
2. Counting spoils
3. Playing cards
4. Waiting for a meet
5. Leaving for a job
6. Hiding from retribution

Alchemical horrors

1. Homunculus swarm
2.gas-spore prostitutes 
2.Perpetually melting wax golem, keeps trying to turn into you. Kinda results in the death throes of the T1000
3.Stilt legged rats. YOu  think they are  swimming but they are really just walking.
4.Cimim: like a mimic but always appears as the most extremely unlikely and not particularly desirable thing relative to the enviroment. SO in a sewer, a feather 4 post bed or a roast chicken.
5.A centipede made from monkeys.
6.Monkeys made from centipedes.
7. Swimming mirrors. Possible harmless.
8.A symbiotic second skin. Now lurching around looking for someone to attach to. Not a good idea.
9.A giant tongue , studded with teeth.
10.Frog of Holding.



Lost Places
1.Bathhouse
2.Cold store
3.Arena
4. Zoo
5. Arsenal
6. Voluntary entombment cells
7. Elevator
8. Pumphouse

Enigmas
1. A blind basilisk with a seeing eye parrot. Parrot constantly whispering descriptions of the environment to it. Basilisk is intelligent and fairly benign. The parrot however is judgmental and suspicious. If the Basilisk gets a good enough description of you from the parrot it can still use its gaze attack, except without limits on range or line of sight. That is because the Basilisk has far too much knowledge of philosophy.
2.A Sundial with moving shadow corresponds to another worlds sun
3.crude shelves with books. Books have haphazard yet skilled bindings. Content is violent angular scribbling.
4.Statues hanging from chains around their feet, so the head remains in sewage
5. A ghost trapped in a crack in a wall. Crack is not really big enough for the violently distorted face crushed into it.
6. Luminous hissing roses
7.Storage room for a theatre.
 8.Childrens drawings on the walls


Critters
1.Squibbons
2.Glowworms
3.Starfish
4.Sewer Manatee
5.Pale Giraffe
6.Raccoon, cave adapted
7.Big moths
8. Diving Beetles
9. Bat eating spiders
10. Bats with symbiotic anemones  , with paralytic poison

Predators/roving locus of destruction
1. Wight
2.Flailsnail
3. Ogre
4. trogloraptor
5. Murder Weasel
6. Giant Crab
7. Harpoon tongued Great Eel
8. Alligator
9. Shambling mound
10.Hydra with heads that appear as giant rats from a distance.

Animals Mauling, CLOUD GIANT

Print PDF  The following is already been posted on g+ :
scroll down if you want to see picture of cloud giants and some mechanics stuff
"
 Animals are horrible and I love them. I love putting animal encounters in my games.
Notes about animals:
the difference between an animal and a monster is a monster always wants to kill you

Predators will want to kill you if they are hungry and think that they can get away with an easy meal. I think a lot of people have predators attacking well armed parties and sticking out combat that's going against them.

Which is fine because wahey the bears are just really angry in this world.

But if you wanna be more accurate about it, predators hate fights. In the wild a predator cannot afford to get injured, because even a minor scratch or broken tooth could mean  an infection preventing them from hunting, and then starving to death. If you heard about people fighting off a  bear by wacking it on the nose, this is why.
I can't remember the exact number,  (1 in 5 maybe) but a minority of lion attacks on prey animals actually result in a kill.  They are used to waiting for a better shot at something.

If they have brought down a large game (mostly they seek out prey in the range of 50 to 300 kilos) they will gorge up to 30 kilos in one sitting, sometimes then sleeping , before eating more. They will then go days without eating.

When starving they will take far more risks and consider going for much smaller prey (it's not as energy efficient).

There is inter predator violence as well, where predators will kill and not eat another animal which it shares an ecological niche.

Herbivores are only wanting to kill you if you are in the way of them passing on their genes. I.e they have kids and you are too close, or it's mating season and they need to defend a territory in order to get laid.
Hippos are notorious for being over zealous defenders of the tiny patch of river each male proclaims as his own. Cape buffalo and hippos kill more people in Africa than lions  because of this.

Note they do not need to be hungry to be aggressive, you just need to go near them.

(predators are also going to kill you if you come near their kids, except in some animal like komodo dragons, which have been known to eat their own kids if they don't get out of there fast enough after hatching)

Also a cornered animal is a dangerous animal.

Double also diseases or injections can make an animal violent and unpredictable. Some of these diseases maybe transmittable (rabies)

GAMEABLE BITS OF THIS BLATHER:

Have predators ignore, but still observe parties, then attack them when they look weak. IF they can't get an easy meal (Pack animals) they will try and isolate the weakest member of the herd to kill and carry away if necessary (halfling bard anyone). Jaguars are renowned for being able to sneak up to sleeping people and animals, kill silently with out rousing the others and then carry the victim up a tree to finish at their leisure. Tigers will sneak up to point blank range and then ambush from behind.

The presence of super-predators like displacer beasts could force other animals to attack dangerous prey (ie parties)

Animals might  try and warn you off before defending their young or territory (in the case of herbivores, predators have territorys but its more about the access to prey than just the physical environment), or they might just go you right away. If you run they are unlikely to follow , but will slaughter all of you if you do not leave.


ONE more thing:
This is my personal pixel bitch (okay as well as tree monsters taking more damage from fire)
claw claw bite attacks are stupid, okay the combat in d&d s meant to be abstract and especially if the round is a minute round, but still, it bugs me because multiple attack is a big deal mechanically and it seems annoying that it seems just merrily tacked on to monster stats (the infamous peasant killing house cats)
It's really jarring when its a 2 legged bird with a claw claw peck routine. How is it staying upright?
Like to me it seems like if one could double ones dagger damage by attaching another blade parallel  to the first.

A claw claw bite routine suggestions the animal is darting around like boxer , with the right and then with the left and then with .. the head? Bites do not have the reach of a claw attacks. The claws of big cats used to
either kill smaller game, or grab hold of prey and then finish with a bite (often suffocating by clamping on to the face). So I like to run it the animal attacks with a single claw attack (a swipe) the other paw staying on the ground for stability and leverage  or goes for a pounce (which does more damage, knocks you prone, but you can attack first if you have a longer weapon than the animal) and if the pounce is successful it gets a bite attack, and if the bite attack hits it inflict bite damage every round.

"

Here are some more mechanics I use in my games for animals and monster non-standard attacks and some stuff for how I cover situations that always come up

Charging:
Anyone running can be charging. This means you don't really bother to slow down at all before attempting to hit them. Both you , and the person you are trying to injury get +2 to their damage.(on each other).
IF both you and that other guy are charging into each other, yes it stacks.

Reach:
if you have a weapon with longer reach than someone , and you are trying to hit them before they are hitting you or someone within your reach, your attack resolves first, ignoring the initiative order.

If however, someone is attacking you , and is closer than your weapons functional range (as decided by d.m fiat or maybe someone weapon tags) before you can attack them you must make a successful attack roll to get them clear, (doing no damage) and then you can do your regular attack roll. This extra attack roll is a freebie and does not use up your action for the round.

Hit and running/swooping:
Some creatures naturally attack and move at the same time, like sharks or a swooping bird. In this case if you are not moving faster (i.e covering distance movement not reacting than them movement) (and flying in the case of the bird) you can't attack them unless you have a reach weapon , or get a better initiative result, and hold your action until they are in range.


Pouncing:
some animals pounce. This might count as less reach than your weapon but certain super leapers might (big cats) count as normal reach.
 Pouncing means if you attack them this round you get  +2 damage. If they hit they  get additional attacks, automatic damage each round or do more damage depending on the animal.

Cats: swipe with paws or pouncing. If they pounce  they inflict the damage for their bite attack instead, automatically inflict bite damage each round and make an attack on you each round with their back leg rake attack damage. Oh and you are prone


Disengaging: you are engaged with an opponent.  You want to get the fuck out of there. That's fine, but you are either going to have to engineer an opening or just risk it. Engineering an opening is you make a standard attack but instead of doing damage you can leave the melee.
Risking it means the opponent gets a free attack on you.


Biting:
Some things can hang on once they bite you. This means anyone is +2 to hit them , but they inflict their bite damage each round but at one dice size smaller. Also see the dragging down rules, this might be applicable as well.

If animal is big enough , it can shake you around. This means you have to succeed in a strength check in order to do anything other than be shoke around.

Swallow whole:
Some big ass things will need to get a successful bite attack, and then on the next round succeed on another one to chew you a couple of time and swallow you.

Other animals will swallow you whole anytime they succeed by 5 or more on a bite attack.

Generally you then be suffocating and taking 1d6 per round acid damage. Cutting your way out requires a suitably size weapon and inflicting atleast 2 points of damage per hitdie on the monster to cut your way out. Some things will require a strength check to successfully inflict damage in that round (cause you are getting squished by muscularly  contractions)




Guarding:
You can also get a free attack on an opponent if you declare that you trying to prevent them from attacking someone or going somewhere, and in the course of this action they are going to be moving past or near enough to you , so that you have an opening. THis free attack is resolved before what ever they were trying to do happens.
If you just want to body check them, it's resolved like a pinning attempt.

Trample
If you are bigger than people you can move through where they are. They take 1d4 damage per size category bigger than them you are (so 1d4 for horse , 2d4 for bears etc) . This increases to 1d6 if they are charging. You may make a dex check (ref save, save vs breath weapon) to take half damage.

This counts as movement but your move is resolved after any attacks on you by the things in your way. And your attack is resolved after your trample.

Swatting:
If you are 2 sizes bigger than people you can go for distance when you hit them. Half the damage you inflict, but use the full amount x2 as the amount of feet they fly in a random direction away from you. If they hit something they take damage as per falling.

Sweeping:
Again if you are 2 sizes bigger than some people/things you can just attack everyone of the little bastards in area (rule of thumb your size mod X2 in square feet). Resolve your attack against everyone in that area, but halve the damage.

Drag Down:
Animals that hold on with a bite attack can drag you down. This means they are latched on and pulling you down. Each animal hanging off you gives everyone +1 to hit you. If there is enough animals on you that you could not carry them without encumbrance penalty you are now you are now prone (or assume it takes 2 dogs to pull down the average human and each strength mod you have increases the amount of dogs needed by 1).  In any case your movement is halved. If you attack the animal it is at +2, but if you miss them you are now prone.




Sigh. Oh and here is grappling..
Grappling.
Because it's gonna come up. Let's try and make this as painless as possible.
Okay so unless you have octopus appendages the opponent gets to attack you first. (the reach thing).

If they are so much bigger than you they get damage resistance, then you are not grappling them, you are climbing on them, and that is covered else where.

Then you get to attack them. If you succeed, they have to make their choice of either a strength or dexterity roll under check modified adversely by how much you succeeded the attack by. If they fail, they are now..
say what were you trying to do again?



Just tackling the motherfucker!:
Okay you are both prone now (must use move action to get up, -2 to hit, +2 to be hit). Happy?

Pin them!
Okay so starting on the next round they have to make a opposed strength check. If they succeed in 2 in a row THey are free! If they fail 3 in row they are now completely pinned and can't make anymore strength checks. If they have a dagger or claws or something they can attack you as normally, but they are still being grappled and assumed every time they lose a strength check they lose one attack option
FOR example if they pulled a boot knife on you they could be stabbing you until they fail a strength check, then you are hanging off that arm or whatever. But if they got a knife out for the other hand, then you would have to win another strength check to stop them stabbing you.

Choke them out: Okay they now are suffocating. They can attempt to break out each round with an opposed strength check , but they have until there constitution in rounds - however much you initially succeeded by in that attack roll before they pass out

Batter them:

like choking but inflict 1+strength modifer damage each round from banging their head into the ground, making them hit themselves, bear hugging etc. Succeed in a opposed strength to break free.  Each size category bigger than them you can improve that 1 to a 1d4 then a 1d6 then a 1d8 etc. So a bears bearhug will do d6+strength each round.


CLOUD GIANT:
I decided these are actually spooky owl moth headed guys who wear grey robes and descend down from the clouds on the mist and steal and eat people