Elephant

An elephant's hide is thick, loose and wrinkled, sparsely tufted with stiff gray bristles. Its most famous feature is the long trunk, which serves it as a nimble grasping limb.

In a fight an elephant can bring five attacks to bear: two tusk stabs at 2d8 each, a trunk squeeze for 2d6, and two stamps of the forefeet for 2d6 apiece. It can engage as many as six man-sized foes at the same time, but no single opponent can be targeted by more than two of these attacks. The trunk is never used on anything bigger than an ogre, and an elephant will not grab an object that could injure its trunk, such as something bristling with spikes. Fire terrifies elephants.

These plant-eaters roam peacefully in mixed herds of bulls, cows and calves. A herd of 10 or more includes 1-4 young, each 20% to 70% grown. Older bulls dominate the herd's firm pecking order. When a senior bull loses a challenge to a rival, he is driven out and turns into a dangerous rogue. A lone rogue attacks 90% of the time and has at least 6 hit points per Hit Die.

Young elephants are often caught and trained. They serve well as pack animals, and armies use them as war mounts and living battering rams. Each tusk is worth 100 to 600 gp, roughly 4 gp per pound, and regions with large herds usually support a busy ivory trade.

This prehistoric forerunner of the elephant is bigger and wrapped in a dense, woolly coat. Mammoths are far more aggressive and need much less provocation to charge. Their heavier tusks fetch 50% more than an elephant's. Outside a Pleistocene campaign they are rare and turn up only on subarctic plains.

The mastodon is another Pleistocene ancestor, once ranging from subarctic to tropical plains. It is larger, shaggier and somewhat longer than a modern elephant. Outside a Pleistocene setting mastodons are rare and live only on subarctic plains.

The oliphant is a living descendant of the mastodon, shaggy-haired, with downward-curving tusks. Its trunk is too short to use as a weapon, so it can fight only four man-sized foes at a time. Oliphants are smarter than elephants, lack their cousins' panic at the sight of fire, and are very aggressive. Well-fed, trained oliphants grow larger than wild ones, reaching 10+5 Hit Dice, and make superb war beasts with a morale of 10. Their tusks run smaller, at 100 to 400 gp apiece, at about 4 gp per pound.