Why are the conashellae & dunecrab considered animals instead of vermin like most other crustaceans?
Mutation from the Pristine Tower most likely.
Which “other crustaceans” are you referimg to? Can you give me an example creature and.a source?
There are not any other crustaceans in ToA. And i don’t see any in the 3.5e SRD monsters.
Monstrous Crabs in Stormwrack (pg 141).
Brine Swimmer in Sandstorm (pg 195)
Siege Crab in Monster Manual III (pg 157)
Giant Crayfish in Dragon_Magazine #321 (pg 60) (Paizo)
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Ok, so 4 creatures out of, say, 15-ish monster books? I’d call that rare.
I can’t personally guess why they’d be animals rarher than vermin - the MM3 is referenced in ToA with a list of “acceptable” monsters for DS, so they would have likely run across the Siege Crab when working on ToA (unless there were some 3.0e → 3.5e update shenanigans going on).
Probably just some wacky cognitive bias - we had a similar issue with the Dead Lands with bugdead arachnids. The bugdead template requires insect-like creatures, but somehow bugdead spiders seemed out of bounds - despite bugdead scorpions being an obvious yes and bugdead ticks being star-ed out in Terrors of the Dead Lands (all arachnids).
But if a member of the older team is around, I’d love to hear their thoughts.
I’m pretty sure that’s all the official crustaceans in 3e.
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Yeah, i believe that.
“The Official Crustaceans” is now going to be the name of the next secret society I make…
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Canon Crustaceans also works.
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If you feel like it would be better for them to be vermin, just change them to vermin. Otherwise, I’d say the key difference is usually something to do with intelligence and targetability with certain types of effects.
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