Formian

2020-10-25T06:19:39Z

2605:A000:C78A:8900:3D0A:E403:EE00:A342: tweaked the link to the Abeil page since it isn't plural.

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'''Formians''' are a species of [[plane|extraplanar]] ant-like insectoid beings from the [[Multiverse]] of [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. Heavily associated with the Lawful planes, they are mostly concentrated on [[Arcadia]], the boundary-plane between Lawful Good [[Celestia]] and Lawful Neutral [[Mechanus]] - at least, this is the case in [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]]; in [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition]], they have begun taking over Mechanus, displacing the [[Modron]]s as the dominant outsiders of that plane.

A formian has an ant-like head and hindquarters, including four legs, but has a humanoid torso and arms, not unlike an invertebrate centaur.

Formians first appeared in the first edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual II, where they were presented as an otherwise ordinary species of intelligent creature from the Prime Material Plane. Full statistics for three main castes of formian were given; the workers (about the size of a large dog), the warriors (the size of a pony) and the myrmarches (the size of a horse). Special types mentioned as being found only inside Formian hive-cities were the male gymarches and the queen.

Formians were later expanded upon by the Planescape campaign setting expansion Planes of Law, in which they were described as one of the primary inhabitants of the plane of Arcadia, the Outer Plane of borderline Lawful Neutral/Lawful Good alignment.

In the Dungeons & Dragons third edition Monster Manual, formians were adapted to the new edition's core rules, in which they are presented as the exemplar species of the Lawful Neutral alignment. In the third edition version of the Manual of the Planes, formians are implicitly described as being the primary inhabitants of both Arcadia and the Lawful Neutral Outer Plane of Mechanus, which is in contrast to the earlier Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition, where the Modrons were the exemplar Lawful Neutral race and the primary inhabitants of Mechanus.

The Taskmaster caste of Formian is a man sized Formian that lacks the combat abilities of the Warrior but is able to use Dominate Creature as a spell-like ability. It is encountered with a slave creature.

Formians are absolutely bound by the law of their queen. Due to this, all but the highest ranking Taskmasters and Myrmarchs are merely slave-like pawns. For this reason, Formians are the only race of bug people in Third Edition that are explicitly unplayable; the [[Thri-kreen]] and [[Dromites]] have proper PC stat blocks in the ''Expanded Psionics Handbook'' and elsewhere, and the [[Abeil]]s appear in the ''Monster Manual II'' with a note from WotC saying "[[you can certainly try]]".

Amazingly, formians are not OGL-protected, so they have also appeared in [[Pathfinder]] - here losing their planar status and instead being an alien race that travels through space, founding colonies on new worlds and slowly trying to infest the stars. This would be picked up to make them a playable race in [[Starfinder]] where they have just ended a long war with the [[Lashunta]] on Castrovel.

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{{Starfinder-Races}}
[[Category:Pathfinder]]

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Formian