Hey there my name is AJ Pickett and I make videos about roleplaying games, and lots of
them, I upload twice a week with a livestream every weekend, you can also find me on Subscribestar,
Patreon and Discord, Facebook and twitter, also, there is an option to join the channel
as a member and I welcome any questions you have in the comments section down below, If
you like this video or this channel, I welcome you to subscribe to this channel and its very
friendly community.
"He that high growth on cedars did bestow, Gave also lowly mushrumps leave to grow" a
quote from Robert Southwell, from 'Scorn not the Least'.
The creatures we shall be investigating today are new to 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons,
featuring in the adventure sourcebook titled Wild beyond the Witchlight, but, the Campestri
first appeared in the month of May, 1993 in the pages of Dungeon magazine issue 41 and
the adventure written by Ted James Thomas Zuvich and illustrated by Terry Dykstra titled
'Old man Katan and the incredible edible dancing mushroom band', the campestri are derived
from the Myconids, which appeared in the Monstrous Compendium volume two for Advanced Dungeons
& Dragons 2nd edition in 1989, so the mushroom men were well established at that point, the
campestri were the swamp-dwelling surface world cousins of the Myconids, more or less,
but they have some unusual qualities that really set them apart.
In the adventure presented in Dungeon magazine, there is an old hermit who has been living
in a little stone cottage in the Glitchegumee swamp for the last 30 years, growing his own
noxious tobacco cigars and fishing in the nearby salty waters of the coastal swamp,
living a pretty good live, if you don't mind the smell of stagnant water and marsh gases.
But lately, thanks to a very old potion of Growth from a fallen soldier finally corroding
through its seals and leaking into a murky pond, some giant mosquitos about the size
of stirges have driven all the wildlife out of the swamp woods aside from the fish, a
Bog Monster, which very similar to a Shambling Mound but not very evil and with the intellect
of a small child who has nonetheless managed to train the mosquitos somehow, and a local
population of the mushroom-like Campestri.
Quite alarmed, the Campestri have been pestering the old man for a while, as they find the
hermits really, really bad cigars give off smoke clouds that keep the mosquitos away..
not that the insects are much threat to the Campestri, but they are really annoying and
the swamp will die without its full ecosystem.
The Campestri do their best to sing along with the old man, but unfortunately, the hermit
Katan is quite tone-deaf and always sings at the top of his lungs, so the campestri
song is also quite terrible to listen to and drives the old man's fish away.
Plus, the campestri are prone to playful pranks, such as stealing katan's clothes while he
is taking a bath, forcing him to chase the campestri, who only do it to keep their friend
the hermit fit and healthy.
It's a great adventure for low-level characters that can very easily be updated to 5th edition
and inserted in any campaign setting, plus it has all sorts of classic fantasy and actual
swamp creatures, encounters and some sneaky twists and turns to keep your players very
entertained.
Anyway, the Campestri from 28 years ago and today are very similar to each other, about
the only noticeable differences are that they have had their movement speed drastically
reduced and they have been given a bit of a boost to their individual intelligence,
but there is no mention about how a herd of 4d6 Campestri have a sort of collective intelligence
that is higher than each member of the herd.
Individuals are smarter than your average house cat, while the herd is capable of figuring
out more complicated stuff and developing quite a sense of humor.
Each campestri can grow to about two feet tall, some may possibly get larger but would
be rare, there are also smaller ones, their size is directly related to how many hit points
they can have, the larger they are, the more hit points they have.
Each looks even more like a mushroom than a myconid does, they have no arms, no legs
and either a red or purple colored cap with speckles on it, much like the Aminita mushroom
does.
They have two eyes and a mouth, they may have some sort of nose and they move around by
way of expanding and contracting their base root ball, which contains a great number of
little retractable root nibs, they don't have internal organs, their whole body is made
up of the same sort of spongy pale fungus stuff, however, they do have internal parts
that function like lungs and vocal cords and they do have digestive pockets mostly in their
lower half that contain a lot of dirt, as their diet consists of salty soil found in
salt marshes, salt flats and so on, where there is plenty of moisture, shade, dirt and
salt, they can survive, however, they are not creatures that go off exploring so, unless
some of their spores happen to settle in the right place, its rare to find them anywhere
other than coastal salt marshes, mangrove forests and swamps.
They eat salty mud and they are, as a result, quite unpalatable, however, they are not poisonous
and they are considered a delicacy by the Bullywug, who savour their very salty flesh,
I am told it tastes as salty as caviar, but with a very rubbery texture.
They are active during daylight hours, but are inactive under bright sunlight, they prefer
mild sun and shade, but tropical heat and humidity doesn't bother them.
Although they have a mouth, it has nothing to do with their digestion and they don't
eat with it.
To eat, they extend their lower body, digging into the ground, extend their root nibs and
exchange the soil they have digested with fresh, salty mud, this process results in
desalinisation and soil that is ideal for plant growth, so they are actually highly
beneficial creatures to have around, a fact not lost on farmers that are familiar with
them and the effect they can have, long term, on their environment, plus, aside from somewhat
annoying habits, they are quite harmless creatures that don't really hurt crops and livestock,
though animals don't much care for the noises they make.
Campestri are very sensitive to vibration and sound, this is reflected in their +4 to
the perception skill and a passive perception score of 14, they also have tremorsense out
to 30 feet, meaning they are able to sense objects and creatures near them while otherwise
blinded, and invisible creatures can be detected by them as long as those creatures are in
contact with the ground, which makes them very useful and alert creatures to have around.
A party of wise adventurers should keep an eye on the Campestri for any odd reactions
to things the adventurers have not noticed themselves.
Farmers, foresters, swamp folk, herbologists and so on will know that its worth putting
up with the little mushroom folks antics just for that benefit alone, as they narrowly escape
having their dead body hauled up a tree by a hunting jaguar, which also quite like living
in swamp forests.
This fine sense of hearing causes campestri to be captivated by music, they are able to
mimic sounds that they hear, happily singing along in their somewhat nasal, reedy little
falsetto voices, I mean, this is your perfect chance for the adventurers to stumble across
a bunch of tiny mushroom people, in the swamp, belting out a fantasy version of Justin Timberlake's
'Cry me a River'.. how is that not awesome?
Break out some Michael Jackson, a bit of classic BeeGees, some Cold Play, a bit of Jeff Buckley,
Frankie Valli, Smokey Robinson, you get the idea, they have high pitched voices which
can be really grating, but can also be very sweet-sounding, and they genuinely don't sing
to annoy people, they do it because they love it.
They just don't realise it scares off fish, startles livestock and can on very rare occasions,
shatter windows.
Campestri are not aggressive, they can thump something with a head Butting attack, they
have no bonus to hit one target within 5 feet and it only does one point of bludgeoning
damage, but they do have the ability to release a 5 foot cloud of spores once per day which
spread out to fill the small area, any creature that is not a plant, construct, elemental
or undead must make a DC 10 Wisdom saving throw, if they fail they will be incapacitated,
unable to take actions or reactions and their speed halved, this is felt as a slowing effect
which can last for up to one minute, however, a slowed creature can make another saving
throw attempt at the end of each of its turns.
Ending the effect, or the effect wearing off, does not grant immunity or a saving throw
bonus to any subsequent slowing spore effects, so a group of Campestri can work together
to blanket an area with spores for mutual defence.
A herd of campestri is also smart enough in a sort of unintentional way, to attract dangerous
creatures that will come to their defence, for example, campestri will gather berries
and nuts and deliver them to bears because they want to be friends, and the bears may
defend the campestri if they hear the little creatures making sounds of distress.
The mushroom folks may have all kinds of symbiotic relationships in their swamplands that are
not immediately obvious to anyone but the party ranger who knows that sort of environment
well.
In 5th edition, an individual campestri has an armor class of 12 and only 1d4 hit points,
with a speed of 5 feet per round.
In 2nd edition they had an armor class of 8 and 1d8 hit points, with a speed the same
as a human, 30 feet per round, also in 2nd edition their spore cloud covered an area
of 10 feet, not 5.
And it is noted that the campestri do understand what spell casting is, and they primarily
use their head butt attack to swarm a spellcaster, butting themselves against them in order to
prevent spellcasting.
5th edition has made the interesting adaption of groups of Campestri into a swarm, swarms
are treated much more like an individual made up of many parts, so they become resistant
to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, and have immunity to being charmed, grappled,
paralyzed, petrified, stunned, restrained or being knocked prone, also, the swarm can
occupy another creature's space and vice versa, and the swarm can move through any opening
large enough to accommodate an individual campestri.
The swarm is treated as having an armor class of 12 still, but now have 6d8 hit points and
they can attack with many head butts at the same time on the same target, still with no
bonus to hit but they collectively inflict either 4d4 bludgeoning damage when the swarm
is still as full health or drop down to 2d4 bludgeoning damage if the swarms total hit
points are reduced by half or more.
Their spore cloud is also bigger, covering a 20 foot radius, but it is still only once
per day and with the exact same effects.
Campestri can understand the common tongue but they don't really speak it unless they
are mimicking the sound of another creature, also, when a swarm is large enough there is
a small chance that they can temporarily deaden those beings closest to them by use of their
shrieking voices.
I think Campestri are cool little critters and highly encourage you to adapt and adopt
them into you games, they do tend to make excellent non-player characters and can be
incorporated as familiars as well, that tremorsense alone makes them well worth it.
Please hit the like button if you made it this far, subscribe if you like what I do,
check out my Subscribestar or patreon links for all the full scripts for these videos,
buy some Tee Spring merchandise, wear your geek with pride and As always, thanks for
listening and I will be back with
more for you, very soon.