I thought this up while examining a wasp nest over a cigarette.
"Winter Wasps"
So named because they absorb heat energy -- they actually are dormant during winter months, and a prolonged siege of below-freezing weather will kill them.
So, Magical Beasts with the Swarm quality, fire Immunity and vulnerable (double-damage) to cold.
A colony-hive would have d4 swarms, a sentry-hive d6+4, while a central or established hive could have upwards of 2d6+4...
Creatures adjacent to a swarm must make a DC [?] Fortitude save or take d4 nonlethal damage from the cold; cold-weather outfit would provide usual (+2?) benefit -- though wearing a cold-weather outfit in the tropical climates where winter wasps are found poses its own problems...
DC 11-12 Fortitude saves vs. their poison (1 Dex damage, immediate onset, 2 rounds, one save cures affliction).
Just kind of nasty, since the usual (area-effect fire damage) response to swarms is ineffectual.
They still wouldn't like smoke.
Feel free to file off the serial numbers and throw these around!
Hey, thanks, and you're welcome.
My current group is bogged down in trying to start a Dresden Files game -- which I am SO on-board with, love the series, find the system interesting and workable... but it's giving my D&D Dungeon Crawl Crew some fits, trying to figure out how to build what they want while trying on a new mechanic.
So I find myself waiting a lot, and not doing any gaming.
Which results in my clever ideas going to waste, unless I start showing them off here. :)
...and it's not like winter wasps are anything BIG; it just occurred to me that if you handed fire-immunity off to a swarm, it would be a "uh, what now?" moment, maybe leading to something interesting in the way of response. And I was looking at a wasp nest during winter (in FL, where you're on the climatological edge of the projected winter wasp range). So it all fell together neatly.
I just don't have a CURRENT use for the li'l buggers.