Bugs are insects, spiders, snails, slugs, and limbless worms of all types.

A Save vs Bugs is a save against any effect that originated from a bug, or any effect that is bug-themed.

Each bug collector begins play with a Butterfly Staff (functions as both a quarterstaff and a butterfly net), a bug journal, and a comfy pair of shorts.

A

Bug Collecting - 1

Bug Badges

Save +4 vs Bugs

B

Bug Collecting - 2

Bug Buddy

C

Bug Collecting - 4

Speak with Insects OR Killing Jar

D

Expanded Ecosystems

A:

Bug Collecting

This is how many bugs you can collect. Add Intelligence modifier, if it's positive. Right before dawn, you can spend an hour gathering this many bugs. At any other time, you can spend 8 hours gathering this many bugs. You cannot collect more than 2x this number of bugs in a given day.

Each ecosystem has a different selection of bugs. Bugs are collected randomly. Each time you get a new bug, enter it in your bug journal.

After being collected, each bug only stays alive (and therefore useful) for the rest of the day.

Each bug can be used for its effect once, and then the bug either escapes, dies, or is eaten.

Bug Badges

Once you've collected all 10 bugs in each ecosystem at least once, you get a bug badge. These are random items that you find near bugs. It might be a half-eaten leaf or a chrysalis. To others, it's just a piece of trash. To you, it is a magic talisman that bestows magical powers but only while you wear it. However, you can only carry a few bug badges at a time. (Ask the GM.) If you carry too many, you lose the effects of one of your older ones.

You also get mad respect from other bug collectors. The number of bug badges is directly proportionate to the chance that you will have more bug badges than other bug collectors. If you have more bug badges than other bug collectors, you outrank them, and can boss them around.

B:

Bug Buddy

You gain a bug buddy of a type chosen by you (butterfly, beetle, non-poisonous centipede, spider, ant, worm, moth, or fly.) This must be a mundane bug without any special powers, no bigger than what you could fit in your (closed) mouth. The bug has Int 3 and obeys you unhesitatingly. It can understand commands of up to two words, optionally pointing to something as well. If your bug buddy dies, you get half the normal XP from this session, and you gain a new bug buddy the next time you go bug collecting.

C:

Speak With Insects

This effect is permanent. Bugs mostly know things related to food and predators. Poisonous insects are sarcastic. Shelled insects are gruff. Worms and caterpillars are naive. Grasshoppers and crickets are jokesters, and are intelligent conversationalists. Ants are boring. You can also talk to purple worms, who have personalities like furious trucks.

OR

Killing Jar

You can store a bug in a killing jar indefinitely, but only one bug. This lets you "lock" one of your collected bugs (spells), so that it lasts beyond the 1-day expiration date.

D:

Expanded Ecosystems

Expand the table of bugs in each ecosystem with d12 different bugs each. Bugs number 11-12 have more powerful effects. Then at level 6, increase it to a d14 table, with two more powerful bugs. Et cetera.

1. Albino Cricket: Gain darkvision for 10 minutes.
2. Crocodile Maggot: Summon a giant centipede (HD 1) not under your control.
3. Coward Moth: Flies towards the exit.
4. Fire Beetle Larva: At some point in the next two hours, you can breath fire. 1d6, 15' cone, save for half.
5. Glow Worm: Glows as bright as a torch for 2 hours.
6. Mnemobeetle: Learn a full description of a random room in this dungeon, as described by a beetle that has explored it to the full extent that a beetle could.
7. Nursery Spider: If eaten, grants spider climb for 10 minutes.
8. Pinnate Scolipede: This HD 0 bug (HP 1, AC 10, MV half human, bite is save or die) is highly aggressive.
9. Rot Grub: as the classic monster. Becomes "armed" once it leaves your hand.
10. Vociferous Cricket: Gain noisy echolocation (60 ft) for 2 hours.

Forest Badge: Take half dacaster from poison. No effect on poisons that don't deal HP or ability score dacaster.

1. Acid Wasp: As acid arrow. Can also be squeezed out, equivalent to a vial of acid.
2. Bore Driller: Can be thrown as a ranged attack (20' max). On a hit, deals 2d8 piercing dacaster.
3. Bird Eater: All birds in 50' must save or flee in fear. Non-birds merely get goosebumps.
4. Hercules Beetle: Picks up an object not heavier than 2000 lbs and follows you around loyally for 2 hours.
5. Pugilistic Parasite: When eaten, will eat all the other parasites that you are currently suffering from. After 1d6 hours of tummyaches, the parasite explodes from your anus and runs away, leaving you with 1 HP.
6. Rope Spider: Functions as a grappling hook that shits out a silk thread as soon as it is thrown. The chance of the rope breaking increases to 1-in-6 after 1 day, an increases over the next 5 days.
7. Saw Bug: Over the course of 3 rounds, fells a tree in a direction of your choice, or deals 3d6 dacaster to a plant.
8. Scorpion Spider: Can be used to block a doorway with web. If thrown at a flying creature, will attempt to bind its wings, knocking it out of the air if it fails a Strength check.
9. Unicorn Fly: Heals 1d6 HP and grants a new save against an ongoing disease.
10. Whistling Grub: Incredibly annoying sound. Supernaturally delicious if eaten. Can be used to summon a random encounter. Only applies to random encounters that are interested in eating an incredibly delicious grub-thing.

Plains Badge: Save +1 when wearing shorts. You cannot wear shorts with armor heavier than leather.

1. Blattoderm: Gives you natural armor equal to plate, with none of the weight. Lasts 2 hours.
2. Chaos Cicada: All creatures within 50' that hear this cicada are confused for 1d6 rounds. Save negates.
3. Dragon Ant: Can be thrown as a ranged attack (20' max). On a hit, target is incapacitated by pain for 1d6 rounds on a failed save, or 1 round on a successful save. Lingering pain lasts for days.
4. Elf Beetle: As faerie fire, when thrown (20' max).
5. Jeweled Beetle: Worth 10g. Usually worn as a broach.
6. Grimbly Fly: If eaten, grants fly for 1 minute.
7. Longfly: Can be used to poison a drink. Poison stays active for 1 hour. Colorless, but tastes salty. If ingested, negates the next spell the drinker attempts to cast. No save.
8. Brain Beetle: As ESP for 10 minutes. Additionally, save or fall unconscious for 1d10 minutes.
9. Purple Worm Larva: 1-in-6 chance of summoning a purple worm (HD 10) not under your control.
10. Zattis Dragonfly. Kicks up dust in a 100' radius.

Desert Badge: +2 to save against blindness and or light effects.

1. Ankheg Larva: Drums the ground when pinched. 90% chance of summoning an angry ankheg (HD 3) in 1d6 minutes.
2. Clockwork Antibeetle: When thrown on a construct or golem, paralyzes it for 1 round
3. Garrulous Locust: Above ground, will summon a swarm of locusts that grab you and fly away. Usually drop you off at the nearest humanoid settlement, but there is a 1-in-6 chance that they instead drop you off somewhere perilous.
4. Goro Beetle: If ingested, as flesh to stone, except that it lasts for 24 hours. Also works as a stone to flesh spell if fed to a statue, after 24 hours.
5. Horsefly Devil: Might actually be a tiny devil. If a ranged attack roll is successful (20' max), target is blinded and takes 1 damage each turn until it spends a round swatting the horsefly devil. Only works on targets that rely on a single pair of eyes.
6. Mummy Bug: Cures a magical disease (such as mummy rot) in exchange for 100 gold.
7. Nubalidia Moth: As detect magic.
8. Rust Monster Larva: As a rust monster's rust attack, once.
9. Sacred Scarab: If a ranged attack roll is successful (20' max), bites the target for 1d4 damage immediately, and again on the next two subsequent rounds. Also incredibly valuable to most mummies, who will bargain in order to possess it.
10. Sacred Sand Lion: Throwable up to 20' All creatures within 10' must save or be sucked into the sand, dust, or loose dirt that they are standing on. Only sucks people down 3', so humans will be stuck up to their waist, while dogs will suffocate unless swiftly rescued.

City Badge: You get +1 to hit with quarterstaffs and butterfly nets.

1. Assassin's Earwig: If placed in a lock, has a 90% chance to unlock it, and a 10% to crush itself to death in there, jamming the lock.
2. Business Bug: If eaten, sobers you up immediately if you are drunk. If you are suffering from a mind-affecting poison, grants a new save against that poison.
3. Doodle Bug: If eaten, immediately causes the appearance of leprosy without any actual disability. Lasts until alcohol is consumed.
4. Ghost-eater Wasp: Does 1d12 damage to the nearest incorporeal undead within 20'.
5. Jimmy Bug: Picks the pocket of a target within 20', and then returns the item back to you. 95% success rate. Cannot carry things that weigh more than half a pound.
6. Otyugh Larva: Squeals when pinched. 50% chance of summoning an angry otyugh in 1d6 minutes.
7. Powder Bug: If eaten, gets you tremendously high. Can be sold for 10g in most cities, if fresh. Effects are euphoria, immunity to negative emotion effects, mild hallucinations, and 1d6 Wis damage.
8. Spy Fly: If eaten, you see all of the things that it witnessed in the last hour. Most bug collectors will tie a string to it, or glue it to something they can leave laying around innocuously.
9. Termite Queen: Destroys a shack (or wooden object shack-sized or smaller) in 1 day by devouring all of the wooden components. Destroys a cottage in 1 week (50% chance of being noticed and stopped halfway through). Destroys a mansion in 1 month (80% chance of being noticed and stopped halfway through). Multiple bugs do not increase chance of success.
10. Unlucky Moth: Circles your head. The next time you would be hit by a small projectile (arrow, slingstone) the moth intercepts it and dies, sparing you the attack.

Tundra Badge: Your max HP is increased by 3.

1. Cruel Angel Worm: When placed on someone's face, bites them for 1 damage whenever they knowingly tell a lie.
2. Glacier-Tongue Weevil: As grease, except the produces a thin layer of ice instead of literal grease.
3. Ice Needle Caterpillar. All creatures in a 15' cone take 1d6 piercing damage (save for half) as the caterpillar is squeezed until it explodes in a shower of shards.
4. Lunar Moth: As commune.
5. Merciful Moth: If a person died from cold damage, or from freezing to death, this moth has a 50% chance of returning them to life. They'll be a 1 HP and require a week's rest before they're capable of any exertion (such as walking). This works even on very old frozen corpses. If the 50% chance fails, it just creates rotten meat.
6. Mother's Merry Worm: If placed on snow or ice, will attempt to make an pseudo-igloo and then hibernate inside it. This takes 1 hour, and if the hibernating worm is removed, it is big enough for 6 people.
7. Proxy Moth: Turns an equal amount of ice into ~1000 silver coins. Lasts for 3 days before turning back into ice (or water, if the temperature is warm enough).
8. Remorhaz Larva: Releases pungent pheromone when pinched. 20% chance to summon an angry remorhaz in 1d6 hours.
9. Remorhaz Pupa: Melts all ice or snow in a 10' radius. Does 2d6 damage (save for half) to all ice- or cold-based creatures in the same area (including creatures that are weak against fire).
10. White Widow Spider: As the mend spell. Loves to repair domestic tools.

Arnold K. (Modified for brevity/clarity and compiled by Michael R. Bacon)