The
Bodak is our next item of consideration, a jolly unpleasant chap.
The art in the book is pretty good, I think. The feet are oddly huge, but the colours and textures on the Bodak and its wee modesty cloak are really great, suggesting an oily sheen, and with a really unnatural quality to its misshapen face and twisted wrist. I’d definitely call this guy one of the highlights of the horror-themed monsters in the book. My only real complaint is that the face is
so misshapen that it doesn’t immediately look humanoid at all; that undermines the body horror element (being turned into a monster!) somewhat.
There is not a lot of room for comedy with these guys. The Bodaks are created by Orcus - that loveable scamp - who uses them as sort of like his bishops: they go out, preach to the faithful, and relay back to him everything that they see and hear. They first came about when Orcus converted the seven Hierophants of Annihilation, which is a pretty great title, into very powerful versions of these; those seven can create Bodaks just by looking at people. However, most Bodaks are now created by a willing cultist of Orcus cutting runes into their chest and saying the naughty words. There is lots of potential here, with those seven Hierophants, and I think that they are being presented to the DM on a plate as a solid campaign hook: hunt down the seven! If it wasn’t for Orcus already getting stats in Out of the Abyss, I’d think that this was a preview of a future Undead-themed Adventure Path.
The idea of cultists of the Demon lord of undeath is the centre of potential plots for these guys, I guess. You can simply toss them into a graveyard or mausoleum as a critter to kill - which is fine, they’re pretty interesting to fight - but to drive a plot they’ll probably work best in conjunction with creepy cultists. One could serve as the transformational moment when the players realise that they’re dealing with something really big: following some murders, they find some dudes wearing robes, who they kill without much difficulty, but then in the inner sanctum of the cultist’s lair they are faced with a truly powerful undead, demonstrating that something big is afoot, and that the cultists they fought had a connection to
real power. Then the players could find another branch of the cult, with a Bodak relaying the booming voice of Orcus out to them, praising their dedication - and urging their greater efforts ‘for the great night of victory to come’…
The Bodak has bits of its old personality left. It also has a soul that is (technically speaking) really busted, and thus it is
really hard to resurrect them; this, in conjunction with the unwilling transformations suggested by the Hierophants of Annihilation, leads me towards a plot where an NPC of some kind gets turned into one against their will, and the players have to go through hell and back (literally) to save them.
Mechanically, the Bodak is a bit of a glass cannon. Its defences are not great, although it has plenty of resistances to keep it up. However, it has a whole bevy of abilities that really punish things for getting close to them. They’ll be pretty simple to run - use
Withering Gaze on its turn to try and kill the party Wizard, for example - but they do LOADS of damage on other people’s turns depending on how they do things, between
Death Gaze and
Aura of Annihilation. The (high damage) gaze is handled like the Medusa gaze, and nobody will be happy if they fail the save by 5 and get put into death saving throws right away, while the Aura just straight up does 5 damage to everyone that ends their turn near it. Ouch.
These are guys that will die almost instantly if the party can shoot them for a turn or two, or cause panic and mayhem if they use their Stealth to hide and get the drop on the party. I would definitely try to use them in cramped quarters, and combine them with Wights with bows to try and force the party to move into melee. Overall, I think that the Bodak is a dangerous customer; they’ll make for an excellent early-campaign boss, with the players fighting one at say level 3 or 4, in a tough and savage fight, and then serving to let the players demonstrate their increasing power by turning up as the easily-slain minions of other, more powerful, undead.