Monster Monday: Vampiric Creature Template

For today's Monster Monday, we have the vampiric creature template. No gothic horror campaign is complete without howling wolves and blood-sucking vampires. If you're pressed for time, why not combine the two? With the vampiric creature template, you can grant the most terrible of beasts the abilities of the mighty and mysterious vampires, from vampiric cats to vampiric dragons. The possibilities are nearly endless!

Presented below, along with the vampiric creature template, you will find example stat blocks for a vampiric wolf and a vampiric saber-toothed tiger. Imagine a vampiric chimaera with three fanged maws. Think of the implications of a vampiric elephant - would it suck blood through its tusks? (yes). 

As Halloween approaches, d20 Despot will continue to post seasonally appropriate monsters. You might want to stock up on ammunition and board up your house before next week's monsters arrive en masse to claw at your door.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Chordopod, Bony Tentacle Beast

Today's Monster Monday is the chordopod, an undead monstrosity that takes the rough form of an octopus or spider made of bones. At its center is a large skull-shaped head formed from twisted and distorted bones, while its many tentacles or legs are long spinal columns which whip and curl and crawl. 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.

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.

Monster Monday: Drop Bear - Australian Tall Tale

Today's Monster Monday is the drop bear, a big mean koala that plummets out of the trees onto its hapless prey. Unlike regular koalas, these drop bears are carnivorous predators with a taste for human flesh. It's still pretty cute, though.

modified (by me) from a photo by JJ Harrison on Wikimedia

Drop bears were a joke that Australians played on outsiders, building off the fact that Australian fauna is terrifying and deadly. It is unclear whether this is an original Australian settler tall tale, or if it originated from a joke Australian aborigines played on the invading whites, or even if it might come from some Australian aboriginal myth. We know from the yara-ma-ya-who that the Australian aborigines were no stranger to reddish mythical creatures that come down from trees to mess people up.

In combat, this monster has a pretty solid opening move - it drops from above onto its presumably flat-footed prey, and if it hits with any of its three attacks it takes no falling damage and inflicts half of the falling damage it would have taken to its target. If hunting a lone target, this gives the drop bear a solid chance of knocking it out so that it can drag it up the tree to feed at its leisure. If fighting a group of targets (say, an adventuring party), the drop bear might be able to knock out the most dangerous looking one, giving it a chance to drive off the others with its clumsier, less gravity-aided attacks.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Armored Grave - This Armor Shall Serve as My Epitaph

Today's Monster Monday is the armored grave, a knight buried in his armor, its once-gleaming plates now bursting at the seams with hard-packed grave dirt and the putrescence of decay. These are the tanks of the low-level undead world.

Buried in their armor, these ritually-prepared undead take on a new body of hard-packed grave dirt, granting them an additional layer of protection. Compared to ordinary skeletons and zombies, armored graves are invulnerable, unstoppable death machines.

Just to kick things up a notch, an armored epitaph is a slightly stronger armored grave which has Intelligence and feats and which isn't staggered.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Vampiric Skeleton

Today's Monster Monday is the vampiric skeleton, a skeleton that sucks blood. These aren't the skeletons of vampires: that's not how vampires work. But they could be the skeletons of a vampire's victims, or creatures who died in a vampire's evil castle, or just of beings who were buried in a particularly evil area charged with necrotic energies.

This is a variant of the skeleton template, so it can be applied to anything that has a skeleton. Blood-sucking ogre skeleton? Sure! Vampiric skeletal wyvern? Sounds good to me. Bloodthirsty badger bones? Yeah, okay, but the alliteration might be a bit much.

Presented below are the vampiric skeleton variant template and two example vampiric skeletons: a human and a dire wolf.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

This human skeleton has been deformed by dark energies. Sharp fangs grow from its gaping mouth.

Vampiric Skeleton, Human   CR 1/2

XP 200

NE Medium undead

Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +0

DEFENSE

AC 16, touch 12, flat-footed 14 (+2 armor, +2 Dex, +2 natural)

hp 6 (1d8+2)

Fort +2, Ref +2, Will +2; +4 channel resistance

DR 5/bludgeoning; Immune cold, undead traits

Vulnerability sunlight destruction

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft.

Melee 2 claws +2 (1d4+2), bite -3 (1d6+1 plus blood drain)

Special Attacks blood drain (1d2 Con)

STATISTICS

Str 15, Dex 10, Con --, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 14

Base Atk +0; CMB +2; CMD 14

Feats Improved Initiative^B

Gear broken chain shirt

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Blood Drain (Ex)

When a vampiric skeleton hits with its bite attack, or if it grapples a foe, it inflicts 1d2 points of Constitution damage on its target. The vampiric skeleton heals 5 hit points or gains 5 temporary hit points for 1 hour (up to a maximum number of temporary hit points equal to its full normal hit points) each round it drains blood.

Sunlight Destruction (Su)

When a vampiric skeleton is exposed to direct sunlight (not the effects of daylight or similar spells), it cannot attack and is staggered. On every subsequent round of exposure, the vampiric skeleton takes 1d4 points of fire damage.

ECOLOGY

Environment any

Organization any

Treasure none 

Monster Monday: Fomorians - Horrific Giants of Irish Mythology

Today's Monster Monday is the dreaded fomorian, a race of deformed and hideous man-eating giants that were the inhabitants of Ireland before the Irish.  Well, they were the first inhabitants of Ireland, then the Firbolgs came, then they were both conquered by the Tuatha Dé Danann, and so on, but you get the picture.

The Fomorians by John Duncan, 1912 - via Wikimedia

Fomorians are generally depicted as having all manner of crazy mutations; some of them have one arm, some of them have one leg, some of them even have a goat head!  The king of the Fomorians back in the day was the dreaded Balor (modern Irish spelling: Balar, which I use to avoid confusion with D&D's Balrog knock-off), who had a single eye that destroyed all that he gazed upon, wilting crops, blasting through rocks, and laying waste to armies.  He was finally killed when his grandson, the half-tuatha-dé-danann-half-fomorian Lug, struck him in the eye with a slingstone so hard that it exploded out the back of his skull and killed twenty-seven warriors who were standing behind him.

Fomorians have been statted up for Pathfinder in Bestiary 4, as a type of titan.  I'm presenting my own take on them here, partly because I will never run a campaign in which a CR 22 monster shows up, and partly because my interpretation is a bit more in line with Irish mythology and D&D legacy.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday - Embalming Ooze and Pickled Zombie Template

Earlier this week I released a one-shot nautical horror adventure called Horrors of the Floating Garden.  Some of the monsters therein are pickled zombies, the reanimated corpses of preserved biological specimens.  I neglected to include the template I created for pickled zombies, so I'm presenting it here along with a sample pickled dire rat and an entirely new monster that creates pickled zombies out of the corpses of those it slays.

The curators at the British Natural History Museum insisted that this was not the star spawn of Cthulhu

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Ichthyosaurs - Prehistoric Sea Monsters

"Two prehistoric sea monsters in a row?  What is your problem, d20 despot?" you might be asking.  To that I say "Shut up, sea monsters are awesome.  Especially when they're prehistoric.  It's not my fault you don't run more aquatic caveman campaigns."

"I'm sorry," you might reply, "I won't complain anymore that you are spending so much of your free time making awesome monsters and giving them to me for free."

Wow, what a great segue into some site business before we get started on today's Monster Monday.  Last week, I put d20 Despot on patreon and asked you to tell me what kind of rewards you would like to see for backers.  If I don't get any feedback by the end of the month, I'll default to the 'occasional gifts of random content' option, with a distinct probability of me adding more rewards tiers when I'm less busy/actually have backers.  So go on over and leave your feedback, or sign up to Patreon and become a backer of d20 Despot!

All self-promotion aside, today's Monster Monday is actually a 3-for-1 deal, because there is such a variety of Ichthyosaurs that I couldn't stat up just one.  So we've got your basic dolphin-sized Ichthyosaurus, your much larger, deep-diving, gigantic-eyes Ophthalmosaurus, and (as a variant option) your saw-nosed Eurhinosaurus.

Heinrich Harder (1858-1935) via Wikimedia

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars.

d20 Despot is Now on Patreon

I'm pleased to announce that d20 Despot is now on Patreon.  Mostly I'm pleased because that means you can give me money if you want.  'What is Patreon?' you may find yourself asking.  Patreon is a service that seeks to return to the days where artists were given patronage by great men and women who had a lot of money and enjoyed the finer things in life, only this time the artists are internet content creators and the patrons are their viewers (and you don't need to have a lot of money to do it).  It's sort of like an incremental, ongoing kickstarter.

"How does it work?"
If you aren't already on Patreon supporting all your favourite artists, go over and sign up!  Once you're signed up, head over to patreon.com/d20despot, determine how much you would be willing to donate to my cause, and click "Become a Patron"!

Sadly, I don't think their scripts can handle die rolls.

You can donate any amount you want (but I think any donation that adds up to less than 30 cents per month actually costs me money, so please don't do that).  In my case, you would be donating that amount per blogpost.  Don't worry: I won't start posting tons of new posts just to take all your money, and I won't count boring ol' newsposts like this one.  In fact, you can set an upper limit to your monthly donations just to be sure you won't go over budget.  And if you ever get tired of me, just cancel your patronage (note: please don't cancel your patronage).

Monster Monday: Illhveli, the Bad Whale

Today's Monster Monday entry is the illhveli, a bloated, undead whale carcass with the nasty tendency to explode.  I've also created a new zombie variant: the bloated zombie.

source: The History Blog

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2013 Jonah Bomgaars.
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Monster Monday: Chalicothere, Prehistoric Clawed Horse-Beast

Today's Monster Monday entry is the chalicothere, a prehistoric creature related to horses and rhinos with long, powerful arms and curved claws.

source: wikipedia

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2013 Jonah Bomgaars.

Sandbox Campaign Part 7: Kill Wighty

This is part 7 of my ongoing account of the sandbox campaign I am currently running.  Updates are frequent, if irregular, and at the end of each post I talk about one or more subjects pertaining to the adventure but more broadly applicable to all campaigns.  You can find the previous parts here.

After a 16-hour rest, the party followed the only path remaining: deeper into the tomb.  They discovered a bottomless tankard of ale in a sarcophagus and another room that was mostly destroyed by a cave in.  After passing through some rubble, they came to a large set of double doors.  Beyond them was a massive stone vault filled with dwarven sarcophagi, one wall broken out into an adjoining cavern by a collapsed pillar.  Prowling the rows of the dead were a small pack of ghoul wolves and two skeletal ogres dragging greatclubs.  At the far end of the room stood  a skeletal grizzly bear and a dwarven barrow wight adorned in ancient bronze chainmail and wrought torcs, bearing Orc-Gutter (+1 dwarven waraxe, deals additional 1d3 points of bleed damage to creatures of the orc subtype).  Beneath the ethereal blue lights that dimly illuminated the hall, he challenged the party: "I am Chief Krannax.  I was the first dwarf to walk these halls, and I will be the last."

Monster Monday: Lodestone Ooze

I know updates have been irregular throughout the infancy of my blog, so I am going to try to inject a little bit of regularity with a segment I'm calling: Monster Monday.  I chose monsters because you can always use more monsters, and I have an ever-growing Word doc with about 90 pages of homebrewed monster content.  All monsters will be Pathfinder-compatible and available under the d20 OGL.

Today's Monster Monday monster is the Lodestone Ooze, a dastardly slime that builds on the rules for magnetism I established in my post about magnetism spells.  This creature is a "gotcha monster" in the same vein as the rust monster or grey ooze in that it's attacks tend to damage the players' beloved equipment.

The OGL, PFSRD-compatible monster is available after the jump.
The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2013 Jonah Bomgaars.