Welcome to Frightful Fridays: Halloween Edition! Theodric and his associates find many unusual images that beg to be turned into monsters for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, so I'm hoping to turn this into a regular feature. The first offering is based on the image of the creepy assassin bug, which uses its victims as armor and as a convenient place to hide so it can ambush other prey.
Stay tuned for the next monster a week from Friday!
Giant Assassin Bug
This large, brown
insect has an elongated head with a distinct narrowed neck, long legs, and a
prominent, segmented rostrum. It has a pair of corpses impaled on spiky
bristles jutting out from its abdomen.
Giant Assassin Bug CR 3
XP 800
N Medium vermin
Init +1; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +5
Defense
AC 15, touch 11,
flat-footed 14 (+1 Dex, +4 natural)
hp 30 (4d8+12)
Fort +7, Ref +2, Will +2
Immune
mind-affecting effects
Offense
Speed 40 ft.,
climb 20 ft.
Melee bite +7
(2d4+5 plus poison)
Special Attacks
poison, stridulation
Statistics
Str 19, Dex 12, Con 16, Int —, Wis 13, Cha 9
Base Atk +3; CMB +6; CMD 17
Feats Improved
InitiativeB
Skills Climb +11,
Perception +5, Stealth +5, Survival +5; Racial
Modifiers +4 Perception, +4 Stealth, +4 Survival
SQ corpse armor,
corpse camouflage
Ecology
Environment any
terrestrial
Organization
solitary, pair, gang (3–6), nest (7–12)
Treasure none
Special Abilities
Corpse Armor (Ex)
A giant assassin bug may take a standard action to pick up a corpse and use it
as natural armor. Every Medium corpse (or two Small corpses) it attaches to
itself provides an additional +1 natural armor bonus, up to a maximum of +4.
The assassin bug does not benefit from smaller or larger corpses. A typical encounter
with a giant assassin bug starts with the creature having enough corpses to
give it AC 16.
Corpse Camouflage
(Ex) An assassin bug gains a +8 bonus to its Stealth checks when it buries
itself under at least two Medium creatures’ corpses.
Poison (Ex) Bite—injury;
save Fort DC 15; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; effect
1d2 Con; cure 2 consecutive saves.
The save DC is Constitution-based.
Stridulation (Ex)
An assassin bug rubs its rostrum against ridges in its prosternum to produce a
frightening sound. All creatures within 60 feet of the assassin bug must
succeed at a DC 11 Will save to avoid becoming shaken. A victim who succeeds at
the save is immune to that particular assassin bug’s stridulation for 24 hours.
This is a mind-affecting fear effect, and its save DC is Charisma-based.
A giant assassin bug is no different from the considerably
smaller, normal version of the creature…with the disturbing exception that it
is large enough to grab a fallen member of an adventuring party and use the
corpse as a shield against the corpse’s former allies. A typical specimen is
five feet in length (excluding the six-inch rostrum) and weighs about 100 pounds.
Much like the normal assassin bug, the giant version preys on
large arthropods, and characters may interrupt a single assassin bug (or a
group) tearing through a giant ant hive. The creature relies on its rostrum to
deliver a powerful bite that also injects its prey with a liquefying poison. An
assassin bug fighting multiple foes will switch to a new opponent when it successfully
bites one. When any of its foes die, the assassin bug instinctively moves to
grab its dead victim as impromptu armor by impaling the corpse on its otherwise
harmless spikes.
Occasionally, an enterprising necromancer employs giant
assassin bugs as weird allies to the mindless undead he creates. A bug hides
among decaying zombies and sometimes bears a couple of the creatures on its
spikes as writhing armor. The bug is, of course, immune to channel attempts
used to harm undead creatures, and once the bug has feasted on the liquefied
remains of its victims, the necromancer has more corpses to replace any fallen
zombies.
