Mushroom men are rotund, pale fellows who live underground. They grow throughout their life and come in all sizes, from 3’ tall to 9’ tall. While they all have different shapes, they all have cute little button eyes, blunt limbs, and very little other anatomy.
Lvl 2-4 Def none No Attacks
Mov slow Dis friendly*
Telepathy - Small mushroom men (Lvl 2) are only able to communicate simple thoughts “I help. Please wait. Heal you.” They’re also unable to understand any words longer than 1 syllable.
Medium mushroom men (Lvl 3) and larger are able to form complete sentences. This telepathy is broadcast only (not two-directional). Mushroom men can’t understand the words that you are saying, and usually aren’t interested. They can understand drawings, though.
Friend Zone - 10’ aura that deals 1d6 friendship damage (emotional damage subtype) stacking up to a maximum of 3d6. Charisma save for half. Critical damage (that brings you to 0 HP) doesn’t kill you but causes you to to be charmed by all mushroom men, and treat all of their suggestions as suggestions. Friendship damage heals at 3 HP every 10 min if you have real friends nearby (to talk sense to you) and 3 HP per day if you have no friends. Gas masks give +4 to the save.
I’ve been doing some weird stuff with emotional damage. See Appendix C: Emotional Damage, and Appendix C: Charm. If everyone is charmed by Friendship Spores, it’s a TPK (sorta). |
Confusion - Big mushroom men (Lvl 4) can create an confusion effect by wiggling their fingers and making a wowowowow noise. Up to 3 creatures within 50’ must make a Cha save or become confused. This confusion effect only lasts as long as the big mushroom man continues wiggling his fingers and making the noise. You also get a new Save each time the confusion effect makes you do something you would never do (attack a friend, hurt yourself, run into a dangerous situation). You can also end the confusion effect by chopping off his hand (-4 to your attack roll, deal at least 4 damage) or silencing him somehow. They have a pretty big mouth, but maybe if you threw an apple right down his throat he’d choke on it (-8 to hit).
Only 3 creatures can be affected at a time. If 1 creature is currently affected, the mushroom man can only apply this to 2 new creatures on the next turn.
Mushroom Syrup - If a mushroom man is killed without any slashing or piercing damage, mushroom molasses can be harvested from its body.
Reaction Roll (2d6) |
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5- | Ravenous | Friendly. Absolutely insists on helping you. |
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6-8 | Hungry | Friendly. Wants to help you, but will be scared off by anger or threats. |
9+ | Well-Fed | Friendly. Wants to help you. You want me to stay 30’ away? That’s cool. |
+1 or +2 if the party is obviously extremely hostile. For example, wearing the heads of dead mushroom men as hats. -1 or -2 if the party is obviously in need of help. |
Common Knowledge
They are famously non-violent and known to be friendly. Being near them creates a pleasant high, a bit like MDMA. However, there are rumors that mushroom men maintain huge amounts of slaves in their hidden cities, which seems difficult to rationalize against their ponderous brand of friendliness. Most people are either in one camp or another.
Underworld explorers will tell you that mushroom men are vile and exploitative. They absolutely have secret slave camps, where they use their powers of beguilement to force people into working for them. They pretend to be friendly, but are absolutely evil.
People who have escaped from the “slave camps” will tell you that’s not true at all. Mushroom men actually do think that they’re helping you. And then they’ll probably get tears in their eyes as they tell you that they have never been happier than when they lived with the mushroom men.
Tactics
Their primary tactic is group hugs. They’ll try to surround you and hug you for as long as it takes for you to hug back. The second best tactic is just to walk into the middle of the party, in order to catch as many people as possible in their Friend Zone.
Mushroom men are friendly. They’ll walk right up to you and ask you if you need help. Do you need food? Do you need a guide?
Your players will immediately notice that they’re taking emotional damage and will (correctly) want the mushroom men to get the hell away.
But why? You’re injured. You’re confused. We have medicine. Let us take care of you. You’ll be happier. Come here. We’ll come to you. Let us help. Let us help you.
On a positive reaction roll, they’re receptive to people who tell them to get the hell away.
On a negative reaction roll, they will insist. They’ll wobble over to you and start putting healing salve on your wounds. You might chop them with your sword, but they will just keep advancing with their arms over their heads, exactly like a friend would, telling you to be calm. (The Total Defense action gives them +2 to Defense.)
Small mushroom men (Lvl 2) can’t even be reasoned with. Larger mushroom men are able to have a conversation about it.
You probably won’t run into Large (Lvl 4) mushroom men until you’re close to their home. Expect mushroom men to be more determined at that point (-1 or -2 to Reaction rolls). Large mushroom men have a confusion effect which can rapidly complicate combat with a couple of unlucky rolls.
Discussion: Emotional Damage
Because friendship spores attack the same resource as everything else (your HP pool), they’re not too different from other types of combat encounters. You can conceptualize it as a fire aura that deals fire damage to everyone within 10’, and it wouldn’t be too different.
Mushroom people are at their most threatening when they’re able to surround you and give you the group hug of death. They’re slow and have terrible defense. They can feel a little bulky when you’re stabbing them–even the small ones have 2 hit dice, so they won’t be dying in a single hit. And of course, you can increase their numbers as much as you want.
If it’s not already clear, their Friendship Spores have the potential to TPK a party pretty quickly. If the whole party is suddenly surrounded by even 3 of the small mushroom men, they’ll all be taking 3d6 emotional damage every turn, which is sort of like a small fireball going off in their midst every turn.
And unlike other types of damage, this damage isn’t mitigated by armor or fire resistance spells, so players have few options besides staying the hell away from those mushroom dudes.
Emotional damage is real damage, as far as TPKs are concerned. The only thing that makes it potentially “gentler” than other damage types is that it heals on its own. If you have 5 allies reassuring you, you basically regenerate 5 HP every 10 minutes, which is nice.
On the other hand, if you’re alone, and you’re still carrying some emotional damage from an encounter with mushroom men, that damage won’t heal at all. This is as intended. Social threats require social cures.
Still, if you’re DMing for a small table (2-3 players), you might want to tweak how fast characters recover from emotional healing.
Encounter Design
Mushroom men work well as wandering monsters, or as a dungeon faction.
A group’s first encounter should be in a location where it is easy for them to escape. As soon as they see that they’re taking emotional damage from being near mushroom men, a sane party will simply run away and buy some ranged weapons.
After they know the stakes, you should devise encounters in a way that’s challenging. Cramped corners, pincer attacks where the party can’t run away, things that suddenly move the party closer to mushroom men (or vice versa), things that make ranged attacks difficult, and things that make escape difficult.
A horde of mushroom men should be threatening at most levels, especially if there are mushroom men behind you that prevent a swift retreat (even 1 mushroom man can temporarily block a hallway).
And we haven’t even considered the illusion ability that Large mushroom men have, which is a good way to sneak mushroom men up close to the party, or prevent the party from retreating when they really should.
These encounters can be mixed in with less aggressive mushroom men (perhaps they got a positive result on the reaction roll) who are happy to keep their distance, and are genuinely helpful.
The confusion thing can get pretty deadly if you have more than 1 Large mushroom man in a single combat. I recommend deploying multiple Large boys very rarely, or maybe never (depending what levels you’re designing for).
Lairs and Encounters
The classic one might be a large chamber, with 2-3 small groups working nearby. Clearly in earshot, but placed on opposite ends of the chamber so that if you attack one group, the other one might cut off your retreat.
Another example might be a hallway. Down the hallway are a couple of closed doors, and at the end of the hallway is a mushroom man(s) doing something against one of the walls. Harvesting mushrooms, maybe. If you run up quickly, you can stab the mushroom dude in the neck before he turns around. However, dashing past the doors and starting combat will alert the mushroom men in those rooms, who will then enter the hallway behind you, cutting you off.
Those are encounters designed to give mushroom men an advantage in surrounding the players. It certainly isn’t necessary.
Mushroom men can come in small groups or large groups. They can also be accompanied by allies.
If enslaved befriended humans are with them, expect them to make up for the deficiencies of their mushroom buddies. They’ll have bows, at a minimum. If you want to make them more challenging, give them smoke bombs, caltrops, and snares.
Mushroom men also tame flying worms, which pair well with mushroom men because the worms are faster (to catch what the mushroom men can’t) and because they can entangle your legs, giving the mushroom men time to surround you and hug you.
Dungeon Design
If you want to make mushroom men into a dungeon faction, you can decide if you want them to show up as squads, a small base that fits the dungeon, or a large base that is basically The Mushroom Zone. Large bases will have adjacent camps for their friends to sleep in. They’ll have a lot of friends.
If the base is smaller, they’ll probably still have some friends with them.
If you encounter a dungeon NPC, you might encounter them later after they’ve been befriended by the mushroom men. Maybe the NPC even told the mushroom men where to find you. You sounded like you’d be a really good friend.
Mushroom men don’t necessarily alter the dungeon, but (1) they grow mushrooms everywhere, and (2) they are a strong colonizing force. Feel free to evolve the dungeon by showing more and more factions falling under the sway of the mushroom men, right up until the end when Goblintown sends an expert arson team and burns it all down while shrieking about zombies.
Psychology
I once got into a discussion with some friends about the ethics of keeping dogs as pets. The interesting part of that argument was the idea that dogs can’t really consent to be our pets, because we’ve literally bred them to love us. Consent doesn’t really apply to dogs because we took away their faculties to allow for consent.
That’s kinda how it is with mushroom men and humans.
Mushroom men really, honestly believe that they are doing you a favor when they put you in the Friend Zone. If you would just be their friend and come live with them, you would be happy.
They don’t have slaves. What a dumb idea. They have some human friends that help out by working in their mines, sure. But they help out by feeding the humans and giving them a place to sleep.
And the humans are so happy to work in the mines. When a mushroom man walks up to the shacks where the humans live, all of the humans are so happy to see him. They crowd around and shake his hand. Give him hugs. Kiss the side of his big mushy face. Grinning from ear to ear.
Compared to the other humans that they see, the other humans are miserable. Sick, hungry, diseased. The humans that they’re friends with are healthy and happy. They live longer lives. When they get an infected tooth, the mushroom men will gently anesthetize them and pull it out.
So, no. It’s not unethical to use their spores to befriend a human. Is it unethical to tame a dog? Take it home and feed it? You’re insane.
They also don’t fear death, and many of them are strong believers in reincarnation. They have a poor pain response, and are often referenced by bragging torturers.
Culture
They don’t call it enslavement. They say “I am your friend.” or “Let me do it for you”.
“Come, let’s go camping.” Or maybe: “Why do you hurt me? I forgive you."
Mushroom men live in colonies. They enslave befriend every intelligent race that they come across. They know that this sometimes makes those other races angry, but their anger is unjustified. If they could just see how happy everyone was at their colonies, they would stop trying to kill the mushroom men. The world would be such a better place if everyone was their friend. Friends don’t hurt friends.
They have a rich culture, with its own mythology. They believe that the world was formed when God died, and all sorts of creatures grew from his corpse. Mushroom men grew from the eyes, since they see the clearest. Dwarves grew from the hands. Humans grew from the tongue. They don’t believe in elves.
They have their own set of gods, all of which seem to map to emotions, rather than endeavors or types of morality. They don’t believe in evil. There are only good people, and confused people.
Ecology / Biology
Mushroom men don’t really have a gender. Or actually, they have four, but there’s not any associated social roles or physical differentiation. The four genders are split along two axes (e.g. 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B) but they don’t have pronouns (or any spoken language). To engage in sexual reproduction you need someone who varies along exactly one of those axes (not two, not zero).
Asexual reproduction usually only occurs when mushroom men are under great stress, such as starvation or warfare. Chronic stress creates a weird anti-libido in them, which drives them to seek out a lonely place, seclude themselves in a dark corner, and turn into a knotted sack of throbbing mycelium. The mushroom men call this process “making lonely”.
Four weeks later a squadron of smaller mushroom men will hatch out of this sack. These little guys are all haploids (they only have one set of chromosomes), and are unable to reproduce asexually a second time. This is also why these mushroom men will look so diverse and weird, compared to other mushroom men. They’re called “lonely togethers”, and they never fully integrate into the rest of mushroom society. If you meet any solitary, independent mushroom man, he will always be a “lonely together”.
One type of social structure are the bachelor bands. In a bachelor band, reproduction usually takes place as part of a festivity. The two dads will swap genetic material. In about 6 weeks, 1d4 babies will sprout from their backs.
Another social structure is the queen mushroom, which is both ruler and residence. A giant mushroom is the “queen” to the colony, while a second giant mushroom is the “princess” to the other half. Two queens are necessary because each mushroom man can only mate with half of the other mushroom men, on average. Because of this, the two queens need adjacent sex typings (e.g. 1A and 2A).
The queens are powerful bastions of psychic power while simultaneously being an apartment skyscraper. They aren’t dictators as much as they are consensus builders. All mushroom men societies are communist.
While there isn’t a hierarchy between the “queen friends” and “princess friends”, there is a social gap, and most mushroom men associate with the same type of mushroom men. Those that mingle too much with the other type are suspected of being a little “lonely”.
They have farms, mines, and domesticated animals. (Domestication is actually extremely easy for them.)
Loot
Mushroom Molasses - A popular delicacy on the surface world. Many people have heard of it, some have tasted it, and very few actually know that it comes from mushroom people instead of mushrooms. Inspires mild feelings of friendship. Small mushroom men yield 1 vial, medium yield 2 vials, and large mushroom men yield 3 vials. Each vial is worth 30s.
You can make a lot of money collecting mushroom molasses.
Mushroom Scrumpy - A type of liquor made from mushroom molasses. You’ll need a distillery, though. If you drink at least 3 drinks, you are charmed by everyone else who has had at least 3 drinks from the same bottle.
All Sorts of Mushrooms - If you have a sourcebook with some weird mushrooms in it, they probably grow it on one of their farms.
Puff Grenades - Creates an opaque cloud 20’ in diameter. Deals 1d4 poison damage to anyone who begins or ends their turn in a cloud. Can be thrown about 20’ accurately. Grown on the “impolite farms”.
"Snake Toy" - A ring. If you are suffering from a poison, you gain a bite attack that spreads it. Also gives you +2 vs poisons. If you bite a creature with the same poison that it used on you, it is not immune.
Mushroom Shield - As a normal shield. When sundered, it releases a cloud of poison in front of you, dealing 2d6 poison damage, in addition to the regular benefits of sundering your shield. Grown on the “impolite farms”.
Purple Reed - Organic blowgun, single use. Target is poisoned (1d6/rnd) and confused. Save negates, but each effect has a separate save. Another product of the “impolite farms”.
Fungalungus - If thrown against a hard surface, it instantly bursts into a huge hemisphere of foamy fungus, 10’ in diameter. Useful for blocking hallways, or creating platforms (if you throw it against a wall). Not very durable, but it can support a person. Takes 1 person about 4 rounds to hack, pull, and kick their way through it. Another product of the “impolite farms”.
“Camping Pillow” - It is just a big, gross bean bag made from a mushroom man. Yes, he’s still alive. Luckily you don’t have to feed him–he eats your skin flakes. The reason it’s so comfortable has to with the Mycoflex pockets that trap air, but also with the psychic field projecting feelings of coziness. Camping Pillows are worth 500-1000s on the surface, but they’re extremely unwieldy to carry, and they die if they get wet. They starve unless someone sits in them every day.
Can mushroom men grow their bodies into other shapes? No, just bean bags.
Alchemy & Gastrology
Mushroom men are probably what Underworld cuisine is most famous for. They are delicious, and they saute quickly when sliced thin, soaking up lots of flavors. The feet are the tastiest part.
The most famous result of mushroom cuisine is the Mushroom Link ability. This requires 1 dose of mushroom syrup for every serving you intend to make.
Vivisection Results | Cooking Results |
★ | Mycolamina - A strange little gland that gives you +2 to taming any animal. It smells foul, so few animals will want to eat it unless it’s mixed in with a large volume of other food. Stacks up to +6, but must be used within 24 hours of harvest. | Mushroom Link. All damage you take is split evenly among everyone who shared the meal. This can’t reduce anyone below 1 HP. This effect ends on you after you have given away 6 HP in this way. Others may remain linked. |
★★ | Flobbergult - A magical emetic. If eaten by a spellcaster, they must cast a spell every round at their highest possible strength until they can no longer cast any spells. They must cast all of their spells once before they can cast a spell a second time. No save. | As above, except 9 HP. |
★★★ | Hyperganglia - Ingredient in a telepathy potion. | As above, except 12 HP. |
Crafting
Mushroom Cap - A leatherworker can craft a wide hat that gives you a +1 (★), +2 (★★), or a +3 (★★★) bonus to saves against the negative effects of mushrooms and mushroom mushroom creatures (including mushroom men). If you want to start taking Mycology as a skill, you get an equivalent bonus to your Int roll as long as you wore the mushroom for at least 90% of the session. It also prevents you from wearing a helmet and makes you look like a giant dork. Seriously, a small one is like 3’ wide.
Discussion
Mushroom men are fun because they can be really easy to kill, or they can fuck you up. You might have a couple of easy encounters and that’s okay. As soon as a confused player runs into a triple mushroom hug it can get exciting fast.
I know that the Large mushroom men have a complicated version of confusion. Why not just have them cast confusion? Then you don’t have to worry about throwing apples down throats, and how many people he can throw his spell at on the next turn?
I like the wiggly finger version of confusion because the mushy can attempt to confuse more people on the next turn, and it (hopefully) makes it clear to the players that there are more options that just dealing damage (which they were going to do anyway), which hopefully is an interesting decision. BUT if you disagree and want something similar, just change it to: confusion spell, max 3 targets, requires concentration.
Lastly, I know that the charmed condition is sometimes challenging for groups to navigate. I recommend allowing charmed players to act however they want, as long as they can justify why their character would do that. Flimsy justifications are okay! Call it cognitive dissonance if you want. The only requirement is that (1) they cannot harm their friend, or (2) interfere with their friends goals except in self-defense or the defense of their friends.
Variants & Reskins
Confusion Dudes - Swap out the Friend Zone for a Zone of Confusion.
Hallucination Dudes - Swap out the Friend Zone for a Zone of Hallucinations.
Mindslavers - Swap out the Large myconid’s confusion for the ability to dominate a single target.
Fungal Zombies - Myconids can raise corpses as fungal zombie servants. (This probably doesn’t mesh with the Friendship Zone ability, so maybe drop it or swap it out with something else.)
Larger Mushies - A Large mushroom man is already pretty rotund, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t have larger and larger mushroom men.
Mushroom Wizards - If you want to give mushroom men some spellcasters, good thematic spells are confusion, illusion, color spray, fog cloud, charm person, suggestion, telepathy, dominate person, phantasmal terrain, fungus growth (as plant growth). They also make good necromancers, so you could reflavor in that direction, too.
Mushroom Bombs - Swap out the Large myconid’s confusion for the ability to grow mushrooms on any surface within 50’. The 3 mushrooms must all fit within a 20’ radius. After one turn, they explode and deal damage (or cause confusion, hallucinations, friendship. . . whatever you want). Players can kick the mushrooms over to kill them but it takes an action. For a higher level version, increase the number of mushroom, or allow the Large mushroom man to do this every single turn.
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