With the ability to burrow, climb, and swim, these nimble monstrosities are all-terrain foes (I guess you're safe in the sky, unless one of them grabs onto the hull of your airship as you are taking off). I can see them bursting out of the desert sand just as easily as I can see them bursting out of the storm-wracked ocean or bursting through the troubled earth of a bloody battlefield. I guess I just picture them bursting through things.
Also in the stat-block below, a diseased variant that rises from the mass graves of plague victims and stalks through the streets of disease-wracked cities or the pestilential countryside, spreading filth and rot in their wake.
The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.
A grotesque head made of bones and distended
rotting flesh drags itself forward on six flailing spinal cord tentacles
Chordopod CR 6
XP 2,400
NE Large undead
Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +9
DEFENSE
AC 18, touch 11, flat-footed 16 (+2 Dex,
+7 natural, -1 size)
hp 75 (10d8+30)
Fort +6, Ref +5, Will +9
DR 5/bludgeoning; Immune undead traits
Defensive Abilities channel resistance
+4
OFFENSE
Speed 40 ft., burrow 20 ft., climb 20
ft., swim 40 ft.
Melee 6 tentacles +9 (1d6+3 plus grab),
bite +9 (1d8+3 plus energy drain)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft. (tentacles 10 ft.)
Special Attacks energy drain (1 level,
DC 18)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 10th)
3/day – widened darkness
STATISTICS
Str 17, Dex 14, Con --, Int 7, Wis 10, Cha 16
Base Atk +7; CMB +11 (+15 grapple); CMD
26 (can’t be tripped)
Feats Alertness, Blind-FightB,
Defensive Combat Training, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Lunge
Skills Climb +11, Intimidate +7,
Perception +9, Sense Motive +6, Stealth +5
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Tentacles (Ex)
The chordopod’s
tentacles are primary attacks that deal bludgeoning and piercing damage.
ECOLOGY
Environment any
Organization solitary, pair, mass (3-6)
Treasure standard
This twisted
undead abomination is the result of a great outpouring of negative energy in
places such as mass graves, battlefields, and shipwrecks where the remains of
many individuals are left to mingle and decay anonymously. It resembles an
octopus or spider, walking on six tentacles that are actually elongated spinal
columns. Its large head is skull-like in its features, though it is actually
made from many smaller bones and its cranium is a pulsating sac of rotting
flesh reinforced with ribs. These monsters exist to deliver to others the sort
of mass slaughter that initially spawned them.
Plague
Chordopod (CR +1): Plague chordopods grow out of the mass graves of plague
victims who are not given proper funerary rights. Their bones are charred and
still have scraps of diseased flesh hanging from them. Plague chordopods
deliver bubonic plague or some other virulent disease with their tentacle and
bite attacks, and they can cast cloudkill
(DC 18) once per day as a spell like ability centered on themselves.
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Plot Hooks and Encounter Ideas
- The adventurers stumble across a bone-choked battlefield littered with potentially valuable weapons and armor, but little do they know a huge undead monstrosity has formed under the blood-soaked earth and is waiting to strike.
- When their ship is cast upon a reef in a storm, the party must fend off a pair of salt-encrusted chordopods that have formed from the many ship-crews who have perished against those rocks.
- The ancient pharaoh's tomb is guarded by a squad of armored mummies, and his sacrificed household servants have formed together into a hideous undead amalgamation of tentacle-like vertebrae and gnashing teeth.
-your chordate d20 despot
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