After the Designing Monsters Seminar on Sunday, I had to take a crack at designing a monster to go along with the inspirational piece of artwork that Kieran Yanner created while the seminar was going on.
The basic concept was a flying plant creature of a CR other than 6 (apparently, plants like being CR 6) that is native to tropical environments, namely jungle islands that pirates might want to explore or bury treasure on. So, here is what I came up with:
This brightly colored creature floats through the air suspended by two large gas bladders, its hooked beak and long stinger-tipped tail belies its predatory nature. Numerous tendrils hang limply below the creature, waving erratically.
Sporehawk
CR 1/2
XP 200
N Small Plant
Init +2; Senses low-light vision; Perception +5
AC 14, touch 13, flat-footed 12; (+2 Dex, +1 natural, +1 size)
hp 4 (1d8)
Fort +2, Ref +2, Will +1
Immune plant traits
Spd 10 ft., fly 30 ft. (good), Air Jet
Melee sting +3 (1d3-1 and poison) or bite +3 (1d4-1)
Str 9, Dex 15, Con 10, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 7
Base Atk +0; CMB -2; CMD 10
Feats Weapon Finesse
Skills Fly +12, Perception +5 Racial modifiers +4 Perception
SQ death burst
Environment warm forest
Organization solitary, pair, flock (3-12), cloud (13-32)
Treasure none
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Air Jet (Ex) Once per hour, as a full round action a sporehawk can move four times its fly speed in a straight line. This movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
Death Burst (Ex) When killed, a sporehawk's gas bladders burst, showering those near by with poisonous spore. Any creature adjacent to a sporehawk when it dies must make a DC 10 Fortitude save or be affect the sporehawk's poison.
Poison (Ex) injury or inhaled; save Fort DC 10, frequency 1/round for rounds, effect 1d2 Dexterity damage, cure 1 save
A sporehawk is the immature “seed” of a prismatic palm, hunting along the coastline and waterways of jungles dominated by their “parent” trees. Hunting in packs, sporehawks lie in wait among the leaves and vines at the edge of the jungle canopy, floating down from the treeline to stab exposed prey with its poisonous stinger, preferring this attack form over all others. If a foe proves too challenging, a sporehawk doesn't hesitate to use its air jet ability to run away. The flock carries paralyzed prey back to the waiting roots of their prismatic palm for the larger plant's consumption. The sporehawks themselves feed on the morsels and bits that fall away from the trees, slowly growing in size.
Most sporehawks are roughly three feet in diameter, the majority of their bulky form made up of the two large gas bladders from which they hang causing them to weigh only a few pounds. With their short, hooked beaks and bright, multihued coloration, some early explorers thought that sporehawks were somehow related to macaws because of these similar traits. Sporehawks have been known to linger around macaws and their nests, posing as one of the birds to lure in unsuspecting prey. Macaws tolerate their presence, even allowing sporehawks to rest in their nests, as the flying plants protect the parrots' nest from would-be attackers. More than a few poachers have thought to capture a macaw or steal one's egg only to become a meal to a flock of sporehawks and their rainbow palm.
Sporehawks grow slowly, gaining about an inch in diameter per year. Once a sporehawk reaches large size, it begins to change, its gas bladders swelling and a fiberous stalk starts grow from between them. Over the course of a few months, the sporehawk continues to grow quickly and mature into an adult prismatic palm. Because of this maturation process, sporehawks larger than medium are unheard of.
About one in twenty sporehawks is an alpha, gaining some of the powers of a prismatic palm while retaining its shape and size. These alpha sporehawks have the advanced simple template, can use color spray three times a day as a spell-like ability and have a Charisma of 12. An alpha sporehawk's caster level for spell-like abilities is 3rd. Alpha sporehawks are CR 2.
I'm working on the Prismatic Palm (an enormous floating predator that uses many of the same tactics as deep sea jellyfish but above the jungle canopy) and see this as a set of monsters that could work in well to a game where jungle exploration is key, especially if the PCs are unfamiliar with the region and its ecology.
Please, feel free to give feedback and critique. I'm posting this here to make my work better after all.
Just mixing a bit of science nerdery in with my fantasy nerdery, but why not:
In order for something (nonmagical) to float in air, it's usually got to be hydrogen or helium. Make it hydrogen, aka flammable gas.
Then, if the attack that caused the death burst was fire based, it could burn off all the poison spores before they infect anyone, but cause 1d6 fire damage in the same radius?
But that's all predicated on nonmagical. Clearly prismatic palms must be magical plants.
In order for something (nonmagical) to float in air, it's usually got to be hydrogen or helium. Make it hydrogen, aka flammable gas.
Then, if the attack that caused the death burst was fire based, it could burn off all the poison spores before they infect anyone, but cause 1d6 fire damage in the same radius?
That is a possibility. If the sporehawk were to do fire damage with its death burst, I think a vulnerability to fire would be in order. You know, burning hands this thing and it's going to go up like a Roman Candle. Makes it a bit more frightening to have around ships too (with lighting off the powder mag, and all that).
Thanks for the suggestion, Gruuuu.
Glad you appreciated it.
Also I really like the flavor here. Sounds like a nifty critter.
It sounds a lot like a polyp that eventually become an anemone.
I wonder about the symbiotic relationship with macaws. Like the clownfish with the anemone basically?