B is for... Bees (Giant or otherwise)

When RPGs mention giant bees, that usually means REALLY BIG, as although a real swarm of normal sized bees makes me run like a little girl, you can't really fight something 2-5 cm long with a sword or a bow. Not with much effectiveness.  Better off with a fly-swat.

Mind you, an insect 5 feet long is a little beyond the pale, as they say... How does it fly?

I'm imagining something about 2-3 ft long, that flies with difficulty (kind of like a bumblebee) and has mutant huge flowers, or something equally exotic to feed from.  Not really dangerous by itself, if you can avoid the stinger. But the colonies, with several hundred of these things, and a queen that's a few metres long, are very dangerous places to wander around. They usually occur in open caverns, huge dead trees, under cliff overhangs - terrain that suits them, not humans...

Which is part of the reason I've decided that all healing potions need some sort of honey as a key ingredient.  Normal, weakish healing potions (that peasants use) have normal honey (along with a few other more challenging ingredients) as a base.  The stronger, 'normal' healing potion, that adventurers like to cart around, obviously has Giant Bee honey as the key base ingredient.

In Dragon Warriors, health potions can only be brewed by a sorcerer and the base cost is 200 gold crowns for ingredients.  Other costs I have seen from other systems are around 100 - 200 'gold coins', so that's a good figure.  Even though I usually divide treasures by 10 to 20 times when converting D&D amounts.  I think roleplaying is better when you can't buy everything you want, and sometimes even better when you can't buy everything you need.

Adventuring parties use a fair few potions.  Most seem to be either gifts from satisfied customers or are found in ancient tombs and ruins.  The sanity of drinking the later ones is always a little dodgy... [I'll have to think up a table, taking into account spoilage and fermentation.]  These potions are usually very expensive as they require rare substances and specialised knowledge.  Therefore, making friends with your local temple/alchemist/mage and making an arrangement where you supply some ingredients and get the common potions for cost makes sense for everyone.

Which means that a trip to the Giant Bee Caverns in between adventures should be a lucrative option, which also involves hiding where you are going so the locals don't clean the place out in the meantime...