Friday, July 17, 2009

New Monster: The Toothripper

The Toothripper is an insidious creature which dwells on the outskirts of civilized areas, preying on civilized folk. It normally remains hidden and prefers only to attack lone travelers.

Rumors say that toothrippers were once humans, but their sadism caused the gods to curse them and give them their current form.

It appears as a semi-bipedal hedgehog, with thousands of sharp spines growing from its skin, giving it an armor class equal to leather + shield. It normally travels on all fours (about as quickly as a normal unarmored man), but when attacking it stands on its hind legs to attack with its front claws, which resemble pincers.

In combat, on a successful to-hit roll, the toothripper reaches its vise-like fingers into the victim's mouth and janks out a tooth. The victim may save vs paralysis to avoid this. If the yank is successful, this does d4 points of subdual damage (no real damage) and the victim permanently loses one point of charisma. If the saving throw is successful, the victim takes d4 points of real damage as the struggle to avoid the loss of the tooth exposes the inside of the mouth to the sharp barbs of the toothripper's spines.

After extracting each tooth, there is a 25% (cumulative) chance that the toothripper will be sated. However, it excretes a strange ooze which the victim ingests as it is being attacked, so if the toothripper is sated and voluntarily retreats at that point, the victim must save vs spells or will feel compelled to return to the location of the original attack in d4+5 days so the toothripper may feed upon him again.

There is a 10% chance with any encounter with a toothripper that it will be insatiably hungry. If this is the case, the toothripper will instead decide to attack during a round with its stinger, and if that hits the victim must save vs poison or sleep for d4 turns. If left alone with a sleeping victim for at least one turn, upon awakening the victim will have no teeth and a permanent charisma score of 3.

The toothripper's diet consists entire of teeth, so it will inflict no further harm upon a victim beyond extracting teeth.

8 comments:

  1. Your blog seem aptly named. Woe and lamentations. :)

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  2. My mouth hurts just thinking about it.

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  3. Hmmmm, may I assume this is an allegorical referance monster? Just how many times will a mad gamer return to the blog discussion where he last lost some teeth?

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  4. Apparently I'm not the only one who has nightmares about losing his teeth!

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  5. >>Just how many times will a mad gamer return to the blog discussion where he last lost some teeth?

    For the record, I made my saving throw and have not lost any teeth (well, I guess I'm -2 on WIS, but that's from many years ago). I failed my saving throw to avoid a return appointment though.

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  6. @ ze bulette: I had recurring nightmares about losing my teeth until I got dental coverage, ten years ago. No nightmares since!

    @ Jim:

    A cool monster, but the kind of thing that story-oriented players would hate...a monster that de-protagonizes the PC. Oh, sure, it doesn't kill you, but it makes you uglier and uglier. And what does an adult PC need to grow back his teeth? Regeneration? A limited wish? So low level (or broke) characters get stuck with a gap-toothed ugly character. That's like cutting off someone's ears man...you're making 'em look bad! Just mean, man...
    : )

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