Sentient trees guarding the forests | Dungeons & Dragons
Happy Holidays! Let’s get festive. Nothing says “holly jolly” like sentient trees! Actually, this is
going to be the first mostly peaceful creature we’ve covered this far. Now that’s something to get festive about!
Treants are huge magical plants that were once normal trees that became awakened under the right circumstances. They dwell in forests, meditating in a state that’s indistinguishable from that of a normal tree. Then, should harm come to their surroundings, they wake and go on the attack, relying on heavy handed strikes and animating neighboring trees to assist. Treants can commune with nature and wildlife, often sending them out great distances to deliver messages. Their innate connection with the natural world allows for them to sense changes miles away, just by picking up on subtle clues. Treants are wise, recognizing that people need firewood and food from the forest and really only enact harm upon people once they’ve committed gross harm to the area.
While the holidays are upon us, having a Treant in your monster rotation is totally on theme. But, like every fictional monster, I got some questions that need answering. So, let’s start investigating. Of course, we’ll be applying real life science to fictional creatures. So, much like Krampus, believe in as much or as little as you want. Also, we’ll be specifically looking at the Monster Manual’s Treants, not Ents from The Lord of the Rings, or Treants from World of Warcraft, or Treants from Wizard 101, or Treants from Borderlands 2, or Maokai and Ivern from League of Legends, or the – yeah alright you get it. There’s a lot of walking, talking trees!
Treants are based off of Ents from The Lord of the Rings, but we’ll be sticking with Dungeons and Dragons, not Spriggans from Skyrim, or the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter, or Groot – okay I’m done for real.
Treants can get up and start walking and have the same speed as a human: 30ft
Treants can commune with nature, animating plants to ambush threats and carry out messages
They can go dormant and wake up
They can siege, dealing double damage to buildings and objects (how’s that for eco brutalism? No? Too obscure of a joke?)
Alright, this seems really normal on paper. However, by the end of this, we’re going to take everything we’ve learned, make a Winter Treant enemy, and think about things we could loot from them. We’re going to talk a lot about the nature of trees, concluding how these creatures could do the things they do with an explanation more than just magic.
Let’s go!
Treant Movement
Treants can walk pretty fast! 30ft is the speed of a normal human, and for their huge size and weight, I was honestly expecting them to move half as fast. Then again Treebeard did absolutely book it to Isengard with two Hobbits on him – I’m getting sidetracked.
According to the Monster Manual, when trees begin to “awaken” into Treants, they undergo physical changes. They gain that iconic, aged face, branches that bend downward to turn into arms, and the most important things, the division of their lower trunk into two parts to make legs. Great! This echoes something we see in nature called codominant stems. When the apex buds of a young tree grow at the same time, they both chemically act as the tree’s leader. Hence why you’ll see trees that look like they have a seam splitting the two, or trees that have a U-like fork. Codominant stems tend to be the same diameter and start at the same point of the tree. (Rayzor's Edge Tree Service, 2021).
Since both stems try to produce a full canopy, codominant stemmed trees tend to have a lot of branches. This is exactly what we see with Treants. However, codominant stems aren’t that great. Since both parts think they’re the leader, the tree doesn’t produce double the roots in order to compensate for a second stem. Codominant stems aren’t really attached to each other and even grow bark in the narrow place between the two stems, making them even more weak. This is due to the narrow upward angle of the two stems when they grow. Now, this is not what we see with Treants. They’re quite rotund and adopt a wide legged stance. But, I think it seems pretty reasonable to think that a meditating Treant looks like a tree with codominant stems, just upside down to allow for leg movement and upright posture when needed. The fact that they’re huge helps them maintain balance – they aren’t narrow and susceptible to things like wind. Their codominant stems give them lots of branches for arms, and Treants seem to be able to produce more than two arms, as seen in their artwork. Pretty straight forward stuff backed by science!
A Big, Strangl-y Root Hug
Okay, I know what you’re thinking: roots. Yes I know, “if Treants can get up and walk around, where do the roots go?” Well, looking closely at the artwork provided by the Monster Manual, we can see that the roots actually wrap around each of the Treant’s legs. Sooooo, the roots have to like pull themselves out of the ground first before the tree can begin movement. Then it wraps around the legs of the Treant. Looking at them again, we can observe that they don’t walk on their roots. They seem to walk on their trunks. It’s not like they have octopus tentacle looking roots on each trunk leg.
The closest thing we can get to this in actual factual nature is when a tree’s roots “girdle” around its trunk. This is usually the result of when trees get planted too deep and their roots grow up towards the surface to look for water and oxygen. The roots then give the tree a, uh, nice, warm hug that slowly cuts off the flow of nutrients from the roots to the branches and from the leaves to the roots (Girdling Roots, n.d.).
Alright, I think we can make an educated fantasy guess and say that Treants plant themselves into the soil pretty shallowly. Treants seem to be very stationary unless seriously provoked by something heinous. We see in the Monster Manual that they prefer animating nearby plants to ambush intruders, rather than dealing with the threat directly by waking up and moving around. There’s no reason to get up and fight when your trees can do it for you, right? Plus being rooted unless absolutely necessary lets Treants be constantly aware of their surroundings and pick up on events and dangers happening far away, as stated in the Manual. They’re in constant contemplation, for days, months, even years. I think it’d make sense for Treants to have most of their roots close to the surface so that they can willingly and efficiently girdle it around themselves, should they need to wake up. Treants, being wise protectors of the forest, might not need to feed off of the soil for nutrients anymore, which removes the main purpose for roots. They could have evolved past the need for nutrients like that. Instead, perhaps, their energy comes from nature or life itself. That’d match “Natural Recovery,” which Circle of Land Druids get at level 2, regardless of which biome they pick.
Tree Nap Time
This next topic will take less than a minute to explain. Ready? Treants can become stagnant and wake up because it’s a play on how real life trees go to sleep in the winter and wake up in the spring. They do this because winter is so rough with its frigid temperatures, lack of sunlight, and that most adequate water is frozen as frost or snow (Cooke et al., 2012, #). When the days become shorter, the trees produce a hormone called abscisic acid, which – you’ve guessed it, regulates sleepy time and causes the leaves to fall off. I propose that the release of abscisic acid in Treants (because they’re still trees after all!) is what causes them to look indistinguishable from a normal, faceless tree until they need to be active.
Boom, bam, moving on to how they communicate with nature and animate plants.
Trees and Mushrooms, BFFs for Life
To talk about plant communication, we first have to talk about mushrooms and the mycorrhizal network. Now, I will be the first one to say, mushrooms are indisputably, unquestionably, terrifying. This is no exception. So, plants can talk to each other normally using infochemicals – plant hormones and organic compounds produced by local bacteria. However, this largely hinges on the amount of infochemicals being produced in a large enough quantity to be read by the receiving plant once the chemicals pass through the soil matrix. Fragile material moving through large amounts of soil – yeah they can do it, but it’s a bit tough because of how the chemicals degrade as they move through soil (Barto et al., 2012).
Introducing: the mycorrhizal network! Made up of mycorrhizal mushrooms, these are fungi that form symbiotic relationships with plants. These networks are large interconnected pathways created from mushroom hyphae (branch-y, fibrous filaments of mushrooms since they don’t have roots similar to what we associate plants having) that join up with the fine root tips of plants and trees. These mushrooms don’t form a symbiotic relationship with just one plant, oh no, they form it with many. See, because of this relationship, the mushrooms ask for photosynthates (things produced via photosynthesis, such as sugar) from the plants, and the mushroom gives back nitrogen, phosphorus, and you guessed it, create a better environment for infochemicals to survive in (Grant, n.d.).
The tree sends out communications through the network such as distress signals about drought and disease, alarms about insect attacks, and pump nutrients to damaged or younger plants in the area. Wow, that sounds exactly like what we see Treants do. If we even look hard enough at the artwork, we can see mushrooms growing on the plant. Sure, that’s probably cosmetic. However, the point still stands that there is a scientific reason for Treants to communicate with plants, more so than just using magic.
Treants are also akin to real life “mother trees,” older trees with bigger root systems that are connected to every tree in an area. Mother trees even favor their immediate kin, nurturing young saplings with nutrients from their own roots. An experiment was conducted between a fir and a pine tree regarding tree to tree communication, and the study found that tree to tree communication was ONLY possible with the mycorrhizal network present (Toomey, 2016). The mycorrhizal network really is the backbone for interplant communication, huh!
I say all this, but I propose that Treants animating plants is them transferring a mix of rich nutrients and a sprinkle of that magic that woke them up and made them Treants. I think that the rich nutrients and magic are sent over by the mycorrhizal network and are what give the animated trees the same stats as the Treant. However, I do think that it’s mostly nutrients that give them the “character” stats of a Treant (their Hit Points, Strength, Dexterity, etc. scores, resistances, and vulnerabilities) and the magic is what gives them things like their ability to walk and walking speed, their inability to speak and lack of a face, and the fact that they can’t siege. They’re like diet Treants.
The Acacia Tree vs Giraffes, Premiering Tonight at 7pm
Okay, I’m gonna keep it real. Treants are pretty…plain. They’re kind of vanilla. Honestly, there’s only so much you can do with them before it feels tedious. Now, that might be their gimmick – like they’re these big, lumbering trees, so of course you’re pretty much just fighting wooden walls. Treants, with their animated trees, are designed to overwhelm the party.
I get that, so here are some things you could do to spice them up a bit more:
So I said mushrooms are pretty scary, but trees are also up there as well. The acacia tree and giraffes have waged war on each other for ages. The acacia tree was getting eaten, right? So they said, “Hey, let’s create some spikes on our branches so the giraffe doesn’t eat our leaves, yo.” And what did the giraffe do? It evolved to have a prehensile tongue to avoid spikes. So the acacia, now rightfully upset, goes “Alright, new plan. We know you’re eating us, so we’re going to produce tannins to make us really annoying to eat. Not only that, we’re gonna alert all our acacia pals in the area, by releasing pheromones, that you’re in the area, and they’re gonna produce tannins as well!” And what did the giraffe do? It became faster than the pheromones could reach the plants downwind. Sure, they have to travel a bit to eat some good food, but it still worked out for the giraffe (Duncan, 2011). This has been episode one, "The Acacia Tree vs Giraffes," of the new show: Plants vs Herbivores.
Anecdote aside, here’s what I picture. Let’s briefly ignore that when a Treant animates trees, the AC is the same as the Treant’s. The party beats Animated Plant #1 (Treant’s can make 2), unaware that there’s a Treant in the area. Animated Plant #1 has an AC of 12. Well, now that it’s been attacked, it released pheromones alerting other plants that there’s an intruder. Animated Plant #2 now has an AC of 14. Or, you could have the Animated Plants have an AC of 16 and the Treant something greater than 16.
I also mentioned spikes. Perhaps the tree also has spikes, or some kind of defensive advantage. Who said Treants can’t be cacti? You could add additional piercing damage to their slam attacks at the cost of lowering the bludgeoning damage.
Treants also have multiple arms. Like, they can have more than two. It’s never explained why they need to have more than two arms. Not only that, the Treant I keep mentioning in the artwork has four arms, but it’s split into three in the front and one in the back. It's described vaguely that their “branches make arms;” so, who’s stopping you? Go absolutely ham on those slam attacks. Maybe you remove the rock attack in exchange for an eight armed Treant making four slam attacks a turn? Who’s stopping you? Saruman?
Underdark Treants. That’s it. Kidding, kidding, but for real, apparently before trees there were massive fungi. The Prototaxites from 420 million to 370 million years ago had 3ft wide, 26ft high trunks. Do it, make Underdark Treants that are Treants, but have Animating Spores from the Myconid Sovereign stat block. Whether or not these are trees or fungi are up to you. This is actually pretty intense, because Animating Spores can occur three times a day and can last up to five weeks, compared to the Treant’s, which is two a day that last for one day.
Looting a Treant
Alright, let’s tie all this up. So you’ve just cut a Treant down to size, and by that I mean zero Hit Points, let’s see what we can loot.
Treant Leaves: Treant Leaves are probably lush, green, and nutritious. I’d say that you could harvest enough to create rations from, though they’re probably quite bitter. Since Treants are very mature, perhaps eating the leaves or drinking a decoction from them removes a level of exhaustion, since they’re so healthy.
Treant Bark: Outer bark of trees helps insulate from cold and heat, and keeps the plant hydrated when the air is dry. You can weave with it, repair things, craft – I don’t know, a canoe. Several bark extracts exist, such as willow bark extract for lower back pain, and salicylic acid produced from both poplar and willow bark. You could easily grind it, soak it in water, and take the solids out to make a base for a Superior Potion of Healing.
Treant Heartwood: The oldest wood in the tree. This is your crafting wood. I’d think that the heartwood glows softly with life or has rivers of energy flowing through it.
Treant Sap: Tree sap is what keeps leaves turgid. It’s quite watery. Tapping an actual tree for sap yields about one to five gallons for an average tree every day. If you were to tap a Treant (I know, you’re supposed to tap live trees, but let’s use a little fantasy), you’d probably get one hundred to five hundred gallons. Maybe do something like: roll 1d100 and multiply the result by 5 to get how many gallons.
Treant Roots: Easy rope replacement. Since Treants siege, I’ll even say they could function like a grappling hook and bore into a building, letting you climb up.
Treant Hands: A nifty back scratcher! I bet it'd be worth Gold Pieces, especially in sets.
With that, here are some item ideas you could make:
Items You Can Make From a Treant
Talking Treant Necklace: A fellow forest enthusiast once said “If you press a leaf between dry sheets of paper, you can make an attractive and handy bookmark.” Here, you could do that to make a necklace. Up to you if they’re single use and you need a bunch of leaves or if you only need one. Dry out a Treant leaf to make a pendant that lets you cast Speak with Plants once per day. Either it ends then and there, or it recharges at dawn.
Treant Sap Syrup: Ingesting a tablespoon of syrup from boiled Treant Sap gives the user the forest wisdom of a Treant. The user can cast Commune with Nature without expending a spell slot. The effect lasts for an hour. If the user were to continuously ingest the syrup, make Constitution saving throws that get progressively more difficult to see if the user resists becoming ingrained in place for 1d4 hours.
Wood, Cutter’s Axe (get it?): A greataxe created from Treant Heartwood. Crafting takes 1d12 weeks and requires Woodcarver's Tools. You have a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls. When you use this axe to make an attack against metal armor, objects, or buildings, the attack deals an extra 2d6 slashing damage. Nature’s revenge, baby!
Treant Instruments – Using Woodcarver’s Tools, the user can craft an instrument they or someone in the party is proficient with using Treant Heartwood. Playing the instrument awakens plants in the nearby area, allowing the user to cast Wrath of Nature once per long rest. The instrument is treated as a magic item, the user must be attuned to the instrument (yes, pun intended with “a tuned”), as if to prove that they are one with nature.
Coniferous Treant (aka Winter Treant)
Trees come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but the Treant in the Monster Manual is distinctly a deciduous tree. Let’s make a conifer!
Follows the same stats as Treants
Resistance to Cold damage
Replace attacking with a rock for Conifer’s Quills
Add Pinecone Bombs
Conifer's Quills
The Coniferous Treant can shoot out its needles. Each creature in a 40-foot-radius, 20-foot-high cylinder must make a DC 14 Dexterity Saving Throw. A creature takes 4d10 piercing damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
Pinecone Bombs
The Coniferous Treant can drop Pinecone Bombs up to 60ft away. Each creature within 5ft must make a DC12 Dexterity Saving Throw or take 2d6 bludgeoning damage due to impact from the pinecone’s scales.
Treants: Final Thoughts
Treants are nature’s guardians. Although the Monster Manual says that they only appear in Forests, I think wherever there’s trees and magic, Treants can appear. We’ve covered the physiology of Treants, how they move, how they groove, and how they communicate. These creatures appear in several kinds of media, but in Dungeons and Dragons specifically, they can pose a powerful threat to any party. Would a Treant attack be nature’s wrath, eco brutalism, eco terrorism, eco… ouchies? Either way, the looming threat of a Treant always being present in your environment could make every campaign just a bit more terrifying.
Comments