Killer Rabbit / Tabletop Games

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• Bulldogs!: Urseminites are essentially Ewoks with an extra-bad attitude, looking like living teddy bears with not even much in the way of natural weaponry but having a deserved reputation as little psychos who, to quote their description, "revel in vice". There's a not implausible in-universe theory that they're the result of an experiment in domestic genetic engineering gone horribly wrong...and they can be player characters.
• The Dark Eye: Death squirrels resemble black squirrels with unicorn horns, and are dangerous ambush predators that hunt by waiting in trees until prey passes below — say, for instance, a human or an orc — and then jumping down to stab them to death with their horn.
• Deadlands: The Weird West features jackalopes, which are evil and carnivorous versions of the infamous "rabbits with antlers" from Wild West folklore. They kill their prey by cursing them with bad luck, then stalking them until they suffer a fatal accident. It also has "Dusters", which resemble dust-covered, scrawny versions of small harmless mammals — squirrels, cats, rabbits, whatever — who can evaporate all water around themselves. But killing people by drying up all their water in the desert isn't enough for them. See, if a Duster can touch a living creature — like, say, a human — it can suck all the water out of that creature, mummifying them alive...
• Dungeons & Dragons
  • The common housecat in 3.5 is a serious threat to all 1st-level characters, even those with class levels. This is because all successful attacks deal at least one point of damage, and cats get up to three a round. A level-appropriate encounter of four stray cats can easily wipe out a 1st-level party, especially if the cats use their racial stealth bonuses to launch a surprise attack. This is why 1st level Commoners don't walk down alleyways at night. First edition cats have higher damage bites (1-2) and automatic "rake" attacks — if the cat hits with its combined claw attack for 1 dmg, it automatically hits with both rear claws for 1-2 more damage. Five damage will severely injure or kill most 1st-level, first edition PCs — the absolute maximum being 15 for a dwarven fighter who rolled well. As for your first level mage, five damage will flatline 90% of them — only max hp/max con bonus allowing survival till the next round.
  • The original Arduin Grimoire, a very early third-party supplement, included among its bestiary a creature called the "killkitten". Resembling normal kittens, these beasts are actually cunning pack predators whose hollow claws can inject a paralytic poison. Their normal procedure is to set one of their number as bait to attract a potential victim by acting like an injured kitten, while the remainder of the pack lurks, hidden, nearby. When the unsuspecting schmuck picks the "kitten" up, it paralyzes him with its venom and the rest of the pack swarms and eats him.
  • Tibbits, a playable race introduced in Dragon magazine, are Small humanoids who can shapeshift into a Tiny housecat form at will. While said form's combat options are limited to a bite and scratch attacks that deal minor damage, remember the joke about D&D housecats above, and that Sneak Attack damage applies regardless of how little damage a weapon or natural attack deals. One tibbit illustration in the Dragon Compendium thus shows a man facedown in a pool of blood with a metric ton of cutlery jutting from his back, and a glowering kitty crouched on top of him.◊
  • Kobolds, having low HP and a reputation for cowardice, are frequently slaughtered in the open by first-level parties. They're also known for their trap-designing prowess, meaning that a clever DM can make a trap-filled death maze that can frighten well-prepared parties. The most popular recount of this happening is "Tucker's Kobolds," named after a particularly nefarious DM.
  • The 3.5E Monster Manual IV introduces skiurids, evil squirrels from the Plane of Shadow. The life-draining shadows they can create have No Saving Throw to avoid them, so enough shadow-squirrels can subject even mid-level parties to a Death of a Thousand Cuts.
    Gruthark: Go ahead. Laugh. I did, once. Once.
  • The giant shrew, a critter from Basic D&D, looks like a normal-sized grayish rat but can do a pretty good Vorpal Bunny impression on low-level adventurers.
  • Quite a few fey arguably qualify — the well-known nymph, for example, has one ability you don't hear about too often: if you happen to catch a sight of the nymph naked, she can force you to make a fortitude save or die on the spot. Other kinds of fey are more "harmlessly cute" than the nymph, but tend to have a wide range of powerful magical abilities. Very few fey are harmless. In fact plenty of them will do horrible things to you given the chance.
  • The wolf-in-sheep's-clothing is a monster that resembles a small white rabbit, sitting on a log. In truth, the rabbit is a simple decoy used by the real monster — the "log" — to lure prey.
  • A rust monster looks something like an oversized cricket, and isn't particularly vicious, but one touch from its antennae can make metal weapons and armor crumble to rust. Many adventuring parties would rather fight monsters with a higher CR that don't leave them more vulnerable to everything else in the dungeon.
  • The al-mi'raj is obviously based on the Mi'raj (see the "Mythology" section on the main page), and appears as a bunny rabbit with a unicorn-like horn on its head. Said horn deals the same damage as a dagger, said bunnies travel in herds, and al-mi'raj lack any sense of fear and respond to disturbances by charging. This means a group of the little bunnies can subject a low-level party to a Death of a Thousand Cuts. And then there's their 2nd Edition incarnation, aka "blink bunnies," or "experiment 72" to the gnomes of Krynn — these al-mi'raj can teleport, and a percentage of them are also powerful psychokineticists, sometimes called "bunnies of the Abyss."
    1d4chan: Sound like overkill? Well, imagine being attacked by a whole herd of pissed-off rabbits with daggers on their heads that keep randomly teleporting around. Now imagine that 1-in-10 of those little bastards is using psionics to throw shit at you, lift you off of your feet, throw fireballs around, and either set your gear on fire or make it explode as you're wearing it. They earned the name fair and square.
  • Brain moles, which absorb energy from psions to turn them into life, and which spread a psionic disease. They're not hugely lethal, but their challenge rating is still about on par with that of a level one warrior.
  • Thought eaters are dopey Ethereal Plane creatures that look like floating platypuses with a hollow gaze. They slowly devour the intellect of their prey, over time turning them into drooling vegetables. While it's more of a parasite than a fighter, the thought eater is nevertheless a terrifying threat as it's extremely hard to detect due to spending most of its time in another plane.
  • The zorbo is a creature that, in its 1st and 2nd Edition incarnations, looks like a particularly surly koala. Unfortunately, zorbos are carnivores, like the taste of human flesh, and have the ability to absorb the defensive qualities of their surroundings. By rubbing up against wood, stone or metal a zorbo can improve its Armor Class, while if it hits an adventurer wearing magic items like a ring of protection or bracers of armor, said items' magic bonuses will be temporarily transferred to the zorbo, while the item itself crumbles to dust.
  • Dragonlance has the mandibear, which is essentially a giant red panda. They're frequently described as looking like oversized stuffed animals, but despite their herbivorous diet, mandibears have vicious teeth and claws, and are violently territorial, chasing down and ripping apart any intruders.
  • Dragon #176 introduces a number of joke monsters such as the death sheep, creatures that resemble regular woolly sheep except for mouths filled with venomous fangs. They're bloodthirsty carnivores that attack everything they can find, fearing nothing and fighting to the death.
• Gamma World has a hilariously literal version with the Hoops, a race of bunnymen who "want to be the master race" and who can turn metal into rubber by touching it.
• GURPS Illuminati University includes lethal versions of rats and squirrels.
• Hackmaster:
  • The Killer Bunny is featured as a random encounter in this game. This creature is extremely dangerous, doing 100 Damage every hit. The cute looking rabbit is known to cause a Total Party Kill. Any adventurer that has ever survived such a random encounter will run for their lives or at least be very cautious whenever they unexpectedly encounter a cute bunny.
  • The Carnivorous Fairy looks like a standard "pixie" type fairy, being a small (3-6 inches tall), adorable-looking Winged Humanoid, but is a homicidal, sadistic, insatiable cannibal that will gladly risk life and limb to feed on warm flesh ripped from just-living prey. Whilst they prefer the flesh of other fairies first and foremost, they will happily eat other humanoids if that's what's available, and they relish torturing their prey before eating it.
• HoL: Wastits are small, cute waddling soft creatures resembling animated teddy bears that will suddenly "explode into a maw of teeth the diameter of a whale's privates". For added fun, until they attack they're almost indistinguishable from wastems, completely harmless creatures that are the primary food source of HoL's inhabitants.
• In Nomine: Haagenti's default form is a three-foot-tall furry gremlin. A three-foot-tall furry gremlin who's killed and eaten two Demon Princes singlehandedly.
• Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot: Plenty of the weapons fall under this. Included:
  • Quite Irascible Diffractable Cheese Balls.
  • (Bitter-Sweet) Chocolate Covered Anti-Matter Raisins.
  • Europan Robotic Titanium Termites.
• Pathfinder:
  • The almiraj is a rabbit with a unicorn horn that, when provoked, becomes a whirling, acrobatic, carnivorous dervish of death that cripples prey by stabbing out their legs and then eating them alive — a necessity, as its horn petrifies creatures that it slays.
  • Gimcrak the quasit from the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path. He's an Ugly Cute Ken doll-sized demon in a tiny leather BDSM outfit. Why's he wearing all that black leather? Because he has 10 levels in assassin, and he's scarily good with his tiny little knife.
• Red Dragon Inn: Zot the Wizard has a literal killer rabbit in the form of his familiar Pooky. A later expansion even makes Pooky playable as a stand-alone character.
• Role Master: Due to its mechanics (open ended attack rolls and instant death criticals), any creature in can fit this trope. Your level twenty badass fully armoured dwarf warrior can get his throat ripped out by a single rat with a lucky set of dice rolls.
• Shadowrun: Most of the creatures that shapeshifters start out as are pretty dangerous on their own (lions, bears, eagles, etc.), but a fox magician character can lead to a cute little ten-pound fox hurling fireballs.
• Starfinder: Skittermander whelps (children who haven't become fully sapient yet) are basically Crites, albeit just feral and hungry rather than malicious. If one discounts the disturbing bitey umbilical cords, they look rather like eight-legged kittens.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Catachan Barking Toad is a large, sad-looking amphibian sometimes dubbed the "Ronery Toad". If attacked, hurt or even surprised, it explodes into a cloud of obscenely virulent toxins, killing absolutely everything for miles around and poisoning the earth so that nothing will ever grow there again.
  • Ptera-squirrels are flying rodents found across many worlds of the Imperium. They're normally fairly harmless, but on occasion will undergo a mutation that causes them to put on a lot of extra muscles and become very aggressive and voraciously carnivorous.
  • Rogue Trader features the Catachan Face Eater, a carnivorous creature that looks quite a bit like an ordinary washcloth.
• The Witcher: Game of Imagination comes with few, most notably:
  • Cockatrices are turkey-sized mixes of lizard and pheasant, looking mostly like the latter. Doesn't sound intimidating? One can easily sneak up and peck out kidney or spine of their victim with with a single strike. One success more than required during the attack roll, and it will reach a vital organ with its peck, dealing an additional 3d6 damage and another d3 from bleeding each round. That's enough to kill or incapacitate a character. To make matters worse, it has enough Sneaking skill to easily ambush a character, thus making it even easier to strike a killing blow.
  • Echinopses are almost like porcupines. The only difference is that they can shoot a few of their spines for a very short distance. If those spines hit anything, they break and migrate deeper. It's not only painful, but also requires an operation or strong magic healing to remove them. Untreated, such wound will eventually kill a character via sepsis.

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