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Please review, critique, and enjoy. Thanks!
Hungerhaunt
This gaunt spirit lurches towards you clutching its stomach and groaning.
HUNGERHAUNT CR 8
XP 4,800
CE Medium undead (incorporeal)
Init +7; Senses blindsense 120 ft., Perception +24
DEFENSE
AC 22, touch 22, flat-footed 18 (+8 deflection, +3 Dex, +1 dodge)
hp 90 (12d8+36)
Fort +4, Ref +7 , Will +9
OFFENSE
Speed fly 40 ft. (good)
Melee touch +13 (1d8 ability damage) plus ravening
Special Attacks ability damage, empty jar, snicker
STATISTICS
Str --, Dex 16, Con --, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 16
Base Atk +9; CMB +13; CMD 32
Feats Dodge, Flyby Attack, Improved Initiative, Mobility, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus (touch)
Skills Bluff +18, Fly+18, Perception +24, Sense Motive +16, Stealth +26; Racial Modifiers Perception +8, Stealth +8
ECOLOGY
Environment any
Organization solitary or gang (3-6)
Treasure standard
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Empty Jar (Su): A hungerhaunt can attempt to merge with a living creature through its empty jar ability. This works similar to a ghost's malevolence. A Will save with a DC of 19 is required to resist. The hungerhaunt that is successful will always seek out food to eat, and will gorge itself by eating for 10 +1d10 rounds, at which point it is sated, and the creature is nauseated. If sufficient food is not available, the possessed creature will attack another creature to eat it. After satiation, the hungerhaunt will attempt to empty jar to a new creature. The hungerhaunt can be expelled from a creature with remove curse or break enchantment or similar magic. Hungerhaunts can do this a number of times per day equal to their Charisma bonus.
Ravening (Su): Hungerhaunts attack with a melee touch that does ability damage. This attack always targets a creature's lowest ability score. When that score is 0 the hungerhaunt's attack will target the next lowest; this continues until the victim is dead. In addition to the ability damage, the hungerhaunt's touch is ravening. Roll d4 for the following results:
1) Fatigued or exhausted
2) Sickened or nauseated
3) Shaken, frightened or panicked
4) Half-blinded or blinded
Once a result is obtained for a given target, subsequent touch attacks advance the condition, as indicated, e.g., sickened becomes nauseated. A given creature cannot be subject to more than one condition from a single hungerhaunt. Once the ultimate condition is reached, further touch attacks only serve to give ability damage. Conditions last until healed naturally or magically. Half-blinded creatures can only move at half speed, cannot charge or run, take a -4 penalty to attack rolls and Reflex saves, and all opponents have concealment (20% miss chance). Undead, constructs and plants are immune to ravening.
Snicker (Sp): Once per day, a hungerhaunt can snicker. This laughter is a sonic attack that effects all in a 30 ft. radius from the hungerhaunt. Affected creatures must stop what they are doing, seek out food and start eating for 1d4+2 rounds. A Will save vs. DC 19 allows a creature to ignore the snicker. Creatures immune to ravening are also immune to snicker.
Hungerhaunts are the undead spirits of creatures that died from hunger or malnutrition. They are typically humanoid, but other creature types can become hungerhaunts. They make their lairs near large amounts of food, whether pantries, larders, and kitchens, or near farms or herds of livestock. They are frequently found in areas of famine and pestilence.
Anyone? TL;DR? Had to grab a sandwich instead?
Alright, I'll give it a try. I hope I don't come over as too rough or discouraging.
First, the monster's description is too short and bland. I want more information on how these creatures were originally created, what motivates them, how they behave towards living creatures, how they hunt, if they can communicate, etc. Are they victims of a curse or some form of injustice (like ghosts) or are they inherently evil? One of the creature's abilities implies that it can be sated at least temporarily - how does that work? Could mortals enter a pact with a hungergaunt, allowing it to feed while possessing a living body in exchange for other services?
There are also some logical problems: If the original creature died from famine, why is the undead's lair near large amounts of food?
Second, the monster's abilities need some work. Rules language is very cluttered (you might take a look at existing monsters to get some instructions for clear and concise language).
Empty Jar: The name is not really fitting and the description is unnecessarily long. Just reference the ghost's malevolence and add the sentence about eating/nausea. Nausea needs duration and Fort save DC.
Ravening: These conditions feel very generic, and random effects are especially bad - choose one and stick with it. The rules for starvation suggest fatigue/exhaustion. Targeting the lowest ability score is unprecedented and doesn't make much sense. I would go with Strength damage. Nonlethal damage would work as well. A keyword-search in the PRD shows up several hunger-related spells, monsters and abilities - you might want to check them out.
Snicker: Needs action type. Again, the name is not very fitting (what does snickering have to do with hunger?)
Also, what is the hungergaunt's weakness?
All in all, this seems like a ghost-variant, which isn't a bad thing (I could imagine several other ghost variants, determined by the circumstances under which the original creature died).
Hope that helps.
Snicker: Needs action type. Again, the name is not very fitting (what does snickering have to do with hunger?)
Good stuff, Amanuensis; thanks.
First off, I was using the PRD as a template, so to speak, and the entries I looked at all had that short one-line intro. But to give an answer I'll say that hungerhaunts are inherently evil; their motivation is to eat ravenously by whatever means, which they are frustrated at in their incorporeal form; hence the empty jar ability. They see living creatures as the means to an end: their satiation, which is never complete, as they are spirits. As for entering a pact, I'd leave that up to individual GMs, but I'd say no; their satiation doesn't last long enough for them to make for any long-range plans in that fashion, and they are self-centered in the extreme. As for how they hunt and communication, they operate individually, even when more than one are encountered; it tends to be survival of the fittest.
Good point about the lairs vs. areas of famine; I'll have to clean that text up. Here goes:
“Empty jar” comes from the idea of an empty cookie jar; nothing to eat. Haven't come up with a better name, in part because I like it; but the text does need work. Here it is:
I agree that ravening needs to be tightened up, and that a roll of the dice needs to go. Make it more like the special attacks of the ghost; the GM picks for those. I disagree that targeting the lowest score doesn't make sense; hunger attacks your weakest aspect, makes it worse. Yes, it is unprecedented; but I think it goes with the concept of the monster. And when you think about it, everything in the game was at one point unprecedented. ;-) So here's a re-write:
As for snicker, well, Petty Alchemy gets it! That, literally, was my inspiration: a Snickers bar sitting on my counter. Maybe a little silly, but what the heck?
As for weaknesses, I don't have anything more specific than what the creature description implies. They don't do hit-point damage, they can be subject to positive energy as well as good and lawful effects, they are single-minded in their pursuit of food. If you have any suggestions, I'd like to hear them.
I think it became a little more like a ghost variant than I originally intended; but it doesn't have a home on the Ethereal Plane, for one. And it doesn't have all of a ghost's abilities, either.
Thanks again for the feedback!
I want to reiterate one point, because I believe it to be crucial for good design: random effects (or effects that appear to be arbitrary, for that matter) are bad. In some cases, randomness is a feature (rod of wonders for example), but in most cases, it is simply a bug.
A good monster has synergies between its abilities. If a monster can conjure a snowstorm, it had better be able to see through snow (the wendigo is an example of an otherwise cool monster that fails in this regard). If a monster has a debuff, it should have a save-or-die/save-or-suck ability as well (the astradaemon is a very cool example of a monster that achieves this). If a monster can inflict debilitating conditions, it should have a way to exploit these conditions. For example, a monster that causes fear could deal extra damage against shaken or frightened creatures.
A synergy of different abilities with a common theme also makes the monster more memorable and potentially dangerous. It may or may not be able to pull its stunt off, but it should instill surprise and shock in the players anyway - "It's a good thing we put it down before it started to..." (I can still see the face of the player who got targeted by an astradaemon's energy drain and then finger of death in the following round). As a GM, when I prepare an encounter, I'm looking for these sort of abilities.
And randomness does not allow for this kind of synergy. If a creature produces deeper darkness as a result of a random effect and can't see in the dark, it is screwed just like the players. And once the players figure this out, the monster becomes immediately less dangerous. It shows indecisiveness on the designer's part and the players can tell.
Also, if a GM were to ask me as a player about my character's weakest ability, I'd feel cheated. I'd be more willing to accept that a creature feeding on blood drains Constitution or that a creature feeding on memories drains Wisdom.
That is why I would encourage you to come up with tighter mechanics for the hunger theme.
And, as a sidenote, if snicker does not reference to a spell (suggestion, for example) it should be su, not sp.
OK; I think I get what you're saying, at least in part, and why the change to ravening I made wasn't enough of one. I modelled my edit after the ghost, where the GM picks from a list of special attacks; but those attacks are all different (corrupting gaze, frightful moan, etc.), whereas I was just giving a list for the single attack, ravening; hardly different than a die roll.
I see what you're saying about asking for the lowest ability score and feeling cheated. But as a GM, I would have that information already; so I would only need to look at my cheat sheet and tell player X what sort of damage his character is taking. I think that's fair, because everyone makes choices about their character. A player with a wizard doesn't feel cheated for having few hit points; he knows they have a weak hit die when he made the character. Also, he had a choice as to where he put his stats; one of them has to be the lowest. If it was his Constitution and he ran into a monster that drained that, he'd be in the same boat.
Furthermore, that targeting the lowest score isn't really random; its part of the design. Once the characters figure out what's going on - and there's no reason they will or should - its easy to predict what will happen next. Hopefully, that will lead to more the "oh s***!" reaction than "I feel cheated." Hopefully.
Thanks,
Phil
PS - Good point about Snicker (Su).