Estimated reading time: 16 minutes
Sometimes you need a change from all the orcs, goblins, or undead. Maybe you want to surprise your players, the plot might require different foes, or you just want to have some lighthearted fun. Wherever your need comes from, we’ve got your back with Monster Produce!
I’m talking about monsters based on fruits and vegetables. While you can find plenty of plant-based enemies in the rulebooks, produce is generally not as well represented. Maybe the notion really is silly, and has a place only in parody games. That is up to you to decide after you’ve finished your veggies, I mean this post. There’s also a little treat waiting for you at the end!
The How and Why?
As with all monsters you probably want to know a little more about them than just the stat block. Why would there be vegetables attacking people, and how they came to be? Let’s look at some possibilities.
Your killer tomatoes can be natural or artificial. Maybe spontaneous is a better term than natural. Anyway it means that no deity, magic user, or scientist created them. A magical field, some kind of mutagen, or even plain fantasy evolution, might have created monsters out of these plants. They are probably tied to a place with precise conditions. Like a magical spring or the impact site of a meteorite. These conditions might not be replicable, or they might be (and this might be of interest to certain parties). There might be a “Plane of Produce” where every fruit and vegetable has its monstrous counterpart. These can either be summoned, or maybe they appear when certain conditions are met.
On the other hand we have artificial veggie monsters. They have been engineered by an alchemist of some sort, probably with botanical leaning. They might also be the result of a spell gone wrong (or right), creating dependable (or not) minions from household supplies. A deity might have sent them as a punishment, or as a boon to the faithful.
And what are the pros and cons of vegetable and fruit monsters? It’s hard to generalize, as they can vary widely. Being essentially plants they have different anatomy than animals. They might lack weak spots, though this might also differ across produce types. Slashing damage might be fine, but piercing and/or blunt damage might not work as well on most. Imagine stabbing a raw potato with a fork. Or hitting a celeriac bulb with a stick. On the other hand they might have unique weaknesses. Salt comes to mind, anyone who ever cooked vegetables knows that they release water and soften when salted.
Depending on their origin, these animated greens might still be edible, or at least usable in some manner. I remember fondly the amazement I experienced as a kid when screamers in Dungeon Master yielded edible slices. Woody tissue might be a rare material for crafting. And of course whatever toxic, hallucinogenic, or healing substances found in the original plant might be present. Possibly even more potent in these enhanced specimens.
Veggie Varieties and Fruit Forms
After deciding their origin, we need to choose the shapes and forms of our Horticultural Horrors. The configuration will determine their stats and roles, and might be linked to their origin. I imagine it’s more likely a mutagenic serum would create a massive onion crawling on its roots spreading poison clouds, than little onion people with arms and legs and smiling faces. The latter might be the work of magic, or a deity.
The first type of our typology (type I) is an animated version of the base fruit or vegetable, possibly weaponized by transformed leaves, vines, husks, shell, whatever applies. Fangs, claws, and other animal parts might also be present. It may or may not have a face, often it will have no eyes. Size might differ from one normal for the fruit or veggie to monstrously enlarged specimens. Animated pumpkins lashing vines around, or man-eater plant proxies (giant bell peppers sitting on their plant waiting for suitable prey to come along) fall into this type. Killer tomatoes would fit here as well.
Then there is the aggregate type (type II). Here a bunch of type I specimens become fused or form a reversible colony. This not only increases the mass, but could also lead to the development of new abilities, an increase in intelligence, or even sentience.
The next type (type III) is roughly humanoid (IIIa) or animal-shaped (IIIb). The base fruit or vegetable will get arms and legs, and at least a face if not a whole separate head. They might easily range from cute to creepy. Type IIIa will include mandrake, various fruit and vegetable sprites, Oddish, or Mr. Potato Head. Type IIIb would resemble an animal or a broader animal group (e.g. dog, turtle, lizard).
Type IV is fully humanoid to the extent that the original fruit or vegetable is not readily identifiable at first glance. It’s not an apple with arms, legs, and head stuck to it, but a delicious person made of apple-flesh.
Putrid Potatoes
Have you seen those memes with potatoes that have spent way too long in the cupboard and started reaching out for soil and your soul? Look them up if you haven’t. Add to that the often misshapen forms of the tubers and you’ve got a set of attributes ready for monstrification. And what if those potatoes were the size of a man or larger, as in the collage below?
The potato idea was used in the 2011 roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor by Gaslamp Games. Large levitating potatoes with sprouts and eyes (type I) bearing names such as Evil Magic Potato or Enchanted Plaguetato plague your steps from the beginning. They can cast magic missiles or other spells, depending on the tier. It’s certainly a nice execution, one of the best Produce Monsters I’ve seen, actually.
Another game in which you can fight animated potatoes is Void Tyrant by Quite Fresh, a 2019 roguelite for smartphones. There you face Potators, humanoid potato figures (type IIIa) who look like, surprise, potatoes with arms and legs. Apart from trying to bash in your skull they hand you potatoes that clutter your card deck. Not the greatest of concepts, but it fits the not too serious tone of the game.
Callous Carrots
They don’t look especially menacing, do they? What if they’re two metres long with centipede-like legs and mandibles? And we can extend this category to other Apiaceae to include parsley and parsnip. If you’ve ever grown parsnip you might know that it contains furanocoumarins. These are compounds that react with your skin under sunlight and cause inflammation. See the potential there?
Carrots have also been utilized in Dungeons of Dredmor, taking form of an upturned carrot walking on its leaves (type I). They appear later than the potatoes, so presumably they are more powerful, but I haven’t met them yet.
There’s a secret object and puzzle game called Seekers Notes, mainly for phones. It’s not combat oriented, but there are enemies you have to beat to advance the story and grind items. There are changed seasonally, and in Spring of 2025, the theme was apparently Vegetable Uprising. One of the enemies is Rebellious Carrot, a type IIIa carrot with humanoid features, holding a pitchfork. You need a special peeler to dispose of it in the game. Although cartoonish, this is a solid example of what this article is about.
A different take can be seen in Seven Kingdoms, an RTS by Enlight Software. In this 1997 game we find the Fryhtans, a collection of monster races. One of these are the Karrotten, a type IV species of magically created carrot-people. Not much background is provided, but it shows that even in an otherwise mostly serious setting there can be place for monster veggies.
There’s also a nice example of what are presumably mutated carrots in Magic: the Gathering set Unfinity. We see what looks like a worm or naga, a tentacular beast, and a sort of hydra. So two of type IIIa and one type I. The card says they have Deathtouch, which is an ability that makes damage lethal no matter the amount and the toughness of the defender. This could mean they are venomous, so we get once again to the produce monsters’ potential toxicity.
Terrible Tomatoes
The main stars of several parody B movies, killer tomatoes are one of the less usable produce-based monsters. It would be very hard to use them as they featured in the movies (or at least the first one, of which I have seen a few minutes) in any kind of at least partly-serious campaign. Even in parody games you could do better. In Attack of the Killer Tomatoes they are just enlarged tomatoes that beat people to death. A better way to use tomatoes would be to treat them as any other fruit or vegetable mentioned in this article – even type I could be done better than that.
The Sun-Zapped Tomato from Seeker’s Notes (see above) is a better example. It’s a levitating giant tomato with an annoyed look. Due to the nature of the game we don’t have any stats. It is described as an ever-complaining bore declaring itself king of the patch. Maybe this one could be an NPC instead of a monster? To banish it you need a special Tomato Salt, so there we have a weakness as well (salt!).
Below is nice type IIIb tomato monster found in an art asset pack I bought. It resembles a spider, or the spider-head things (from The Thing). The image doesn’t indicate scale, but I think it would make a nice monster whether tomato-sized or larger. I would lean towards it being quite large, with the tomato part being perhaps 5-6 feet in diameter.
Pitiless Pumpkins
A classic, animated pumpkins and pumpkin-based monsters are a staple of Halloween-themed content. Pumpkins come in many shapes, enabling a lot of variety, but the most iconic Connecticut field pumpkin is probably the one that comes to your mind right now. It’s not uncommon for pumpkins to be “enemy-sized” even when they aren’t enlarged somehow. Pumpkins also grow on vines, so you don’t have to worry about having to explain why they possess limbs – they’re modified vines, of course. I’ve seen examples of types I and IIIa, but it’s not hard to imagine a type II as well. Type IV, or pumpkin people, are quite common in fiction, though they are usually some other sort of monster, such as fey or undead. I won’t give pumpkins any more space, because although I like the idea very much, it’s very ubiquitous across genres and media.
Perilous patissons
Patissons or pattypans or are a sort of summer squash that used to be quite popular in Central and Eastern Europe. They have a curious shape resembling a pie or a flying saucer, and there are also “fingered” cultivars. Belonging to the Cucurbita family they offer pretty much similar option as pumpkins.
Until recently I believe there were no patissons used as a base for a creature. That changed with this blog post by Paizo, so kudos to them and a memo to myself not to loiter when I write (I started writing this in January 2024). The Pattypan of Gold Bits is presumably a gourd leshy by Pathfinder 2e taxonomy, i.e. a plant creature summoned by a fey or a druid. Or type IIIa when keeping to the categories of this article. Gourd leshys are actually a fine solution to this type of monster produce. You just have to change a few bits if you want a different vegetable. Maybe borrow fungus leshy’s Spore Cloud for a onion-based leshy.
Obnoxious Onions
If you cry while cutting onions, you might want to avoid these. All well known irritants, the Allium family offers several different candidates for new monsters. Onion, shallot, and garlic have large bulbs and long leaves, while leek, scallion, chives, and wild relatives such as ramsons, are mostly leaves.
There’s quite a few option with the onion family that can build on their irritating volatile compounds, whether in the form of a skin acting poison or noxious vapours. These can be released on demand or perhaps on being hit.
Onions have been used in Void Tyrant as well, in the form of Bulbors, a type IIIa monster. As with Potators, these little smelly fellows hand out vegetables while trying to kill you.
Apparently, there is a Malaysian animated series for kids called BoBoiBoy from 2011, where there’s a villain aptly named Onion Monster. Its powers include noxious gas.
Tormenting Turnips
Do you know what people used to carve Jack-o’-lanterns before pumpkins? That’s right, turnips or rutabagas. You might have seen photos of sweet little faces such as the one below. Imagine it with a little torso, arms, and legs, wielding improvised weaponry such as kitchen knives, meat tenderizers, or a good old shillelagh – a band of turnip goblins terrorizing the countryside makes for a nice low-level threat. They would fall under type IIIa.
Used in Dungeons of Dredmor their turnip-based monsters come with names such as Murderous Rutabaga or Ancient Rutabaga. They have some toxic properties that would perhaps fit better with radishes than rutabagas, but otherwise fit quite well into the overall theme of the game and its vegetable foes as a type I.
Swede is another name for rutabaga, and it’s been made into a monster by Czepeku for one of their battlemaps here. It looks like a man-sized type IIIa that’s been cut in half on a kitchen table. Hopefully it wasn’t friendly. While this is a very simple form of monster produce, it can be very effective as a foe. And also as an NPC, if you take inspiration from similar looking radishes (see below).
Ravenous Radishes
Radishes come in many forms – the small European red ones that are called summer or spring radishes, and the winter radishes comprising the larger varieties such as black radishes, daikon, and other Asian radishes. All of them are pungent and to some degree spicy, with European radishes being usually milder than the likes of daikon or black radishes. I believe we can bundle their relative, the horseradish, with the radishes, and let it take the first place in sharpness.
Sharpness is the key when we’re talking about radish monsters, so we have a similar arsenal as with onions. Radishes could however be sturdier built, and more earthy than leafy.
There are several examples from media where radish is used as a base for a creature. In the excellent Spirited Away by Studio Ghibli there’s the Radish Spirit, appearing as a large and benevolent bipedal daikon. Though it was a presumably unique spirit and not there to fight anyone, one can see the appeal of a hulking humanoid-shaped root vegetable. Either used as an NPC, or as a monster to be fought in a vegetable dungeon.
Lethal Lettuce
Lettuce, what a bland vegetable in itself. Add a bit of salt and vinegar and it’s more appetizing. Add some magic or mutagens and it’s a murderous organic drapery waiting for some unlucky soul to get too close. The leaves suggest engulfing foes, or flying, possibly both at the same time. Imagine a giant romaine lettuce flying through the night sky, dropping unsuspected on its prey, killing it by suffocation within the folds of its leaves. Or perhaps using some toxin or digestive acid, why not? Or the same lettuce hanging in the forest canopy above a path, waiting for solitary travelers.
The screen above is once again from Seekers Notes. The highest tier of vegetable monsters in the game is this type IIIa raging cabbage. It’s using an onion as a weapon, and to banish it you need a Gold Grater. It seems quite bulky, built like a golem. Usable as both an enemy and an NPC.
End of part I
There’s a lot you can do with produce as a base for your monsters, or even sentient species. While some players might dismiss them as too nonsensical, I believe when done right they can be an interesting way to liven up your bestiaries. As a DM you know your players (or at least you should), so you probably know what they will like.
These creatures, whether you’re using them only as fireball fodder, or as important NPCs, will broaden your options. You can base them on existing features of real plants, or add new traits that they have evolved or received. Make your party wade through ketchup for once instead of gore!
I would also like to announce that I am working on a produce-themed supplement, part of which will be a bestiary! CLICK HERE to get a free WIP sample!
So that’s it for part I! This article has been on my table for more than a year, and it was starting to get a bit stale. I also feel it would be better to put fruits in a separate article. Get ready for some fruity foes in part II!
Rashundai Games 
