Dinosaur I

The 'terrible lizards' persist on other planes and lost continents; listed frequencies apply only there, and elsewhere they are very rare at most. Descended from ancient thecodonts, they divide by hip shape into lizard-hipped saurischians (meat-eating theropods like tyrannosaurus, plant-eating sauropods like diplodocus, and dromaeosaurs like deinonychus) and bird-hipped ornithischians, many armored or horned, such as triceratops, lambeosaurus, ankylosaurus and stegosaurus.

Large species are drab, small ones boldly marked; most have pebbly hide, and some related reptiles have fur or feathers. Partly warm-blooded, they are slowed by a cold morning, though less than true reptiles. Brains are small, but many predators are cunning. Their bulk forces sauropods to graze almost constantly and carnivores to hunt nonstop and scavenge, and many herbivores defend themselves lethally with horns or armor. They live anywhere but frozen wastes, deserts and high peaks, form no societies and mostly abandon their eggs. Sages cannot say why they vanished on some worlds; where they kept evolving, they may have given rise to lizard men.

Built like a giant armadillo, this four- to five-ton grazer is mostly plating, flank spines and a knobbed tail it swings with crushing force when threatened. Its cousin the paleocinthus has tougher plates (AC -3) and a spiked tail instead of a club.

A clever pack hunter 12 feet long, 6 feet tall and 150 pounds, balanced by a stiff, strut-braced tail. It sprints and leaps at prey, a charge worth +2 to hit, biting and clutching while its hind talons rake for 2d6 total as one attack. It often jumps onto larger prey and clings while its feet keep tearing. The tiny night-hunting compsognathus and ostrich-like struthiomimus are weaker relatives.

This 10-ton sauropod feeds mostly on water plants near lakes and marshes, though kin roam fern prairies and open woods. It ignores small things but tramples anything in its way, or rears and stamps on threats, for 3d10, and its tail lashes for 2d8. The related brachiosaurus averages 75 feet and 90 tons and tramples for 8d10.

A thick, finned serpent whose neck is half its length, this strong, fast, agile plesiosaur attacks anything it notices, cruising head-high and snapping down on prey. Females bury eggs in shallow scrapes on sandy beaches.

A common crested duckbill with keen senses that walks on two legs and flees rather than fights, defending itself only with its tail. Nearly every carnivore hunts it. The related iguanodon adds sharp thumb spikes for 1-3 each.

Usually diving for fish, this toothless flyer will attack anything that looks vulnerable, gulping small prey and spearing larger victims with its 4-foot beak. Its furred body is barely man-sized and the whole animal weighs about 50 pounds, yet it can lift prey four times its weight. Crested relatives come in every size.

The dim 'plated lizard' thrives almost anywhere, often on plains or in jungle. Its back rises 8 feet and bears paired rows of leaflike plates that shed and absorb heat, and its tail has four or more bony spikes up to 3 feet long, worked by an enlarged nerve node near the hips. Sensing any threat, it ducks its head and keeps turning its rear toward the danger. Cousins include the dacentrus (spikes instead of plates) and the kentrosaurus (plates forward, spikes behind), all with spiked tails.

The biggest and fiercest horn-faced dinosaur is a 10-ton beaked plains grazer. A bony frill guards its 6-foot head, armed with two brow horns over 3 feet long and a shorter nose horn; head and neck are AC 2, the body only AC 6. It gores intruders and tramples smaller ones for 2d12, and herd dominance duels leave many with scarred heads. Monoclonius has one nose horn, pentaceratops adds cheek spurs to three horns, and styracosaurus has horns ringing its frill.

The tyrant lizard king weighs eight tons yet runs swiftly, with a head nearly 6 feet long and teeth of 3 to 6 inches. It is so stupidly savage that it may swallow a young triceratops's head whole and die within hours as the horns pierce its gut. It favors hadrosaurs such as trachodon but chases nearly anything, and an unmodified attack roll of 18 or higher means a man-sized or smaller victim is swallowed whole. It also smells out carrion and chases smaller scavengers away. Other carnosaurs may be smaller and quicker or have stronger arms.