D&D 3E/3.5 [3.5E][Vile]New undead: the rectifier

Hashmalum

Explorer
OK, this is the first monster I've made for 3.5E (and the first new monster I've made in quite a while). So I'd appreciate any feedback you have to offer, especially about the mechanical aspects (as the first 3.5E monster I've made, these might very well be off) and the CR--the 3.5E MM assumes that you're starting with a CR and designing a monster to match, but I went the other way around. And one more thing--anyone have a 3.5E update of the morfiend that was posted here a while back?

Rectifier
Medium Undead
Hit Dice: 6d12 (39 hp)
Initiative: +5
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Armor Class: 15 (+1 Dex, +4 natural), touch 11, flat-footed 14
Base Attack/Grapple: +3/+5
Attack: Club +6 melee (1d6+2 plus mental ability drain) or staff +6 melee (1d6+2 plus mental ability drain) or punch +6 melee (1d4+2 plus mental ability drain)
Full Attack: 2 clubs +4 melee (1d6+2 plus mental ability drain) or 2 staves +4 melee (1d6+2 plus mental ability drain) or 2 punches +4 melee (1d4+2 plus mental ability drain)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Create spawn, mental ability drain, spell-like abilities
Special Qualities: Darkvision 60 ft., flurry of blows, fury, regeneration 1, undead traits, vulnerability to alcohol and drugs
Saves: Fort +2, Ref +3, Will +2
Abilities: Str 14, Dex 12, Con -, Int 10, Wis 5, Cha 7
Skills: Intimidate +11, Hide +5, Listen +10, Move Silently +5, Search +9, Spot +10
Feats: Ability Focus (hold person), Improved Initiative, Weapon Focus (club, staff, or unarmed strike)
Environment: Indoors or underground
Organization: Solitary or order (2-12) plus 0-5 zombies per rectifier
Challenge Rating: 3
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always lawful evil
Advancement: 7-12 HD (Medium)
Level Adjustment: -

This bald-pated man is horribly emaciated, with his long, drab, brownish robes hanging stiffly from his body. His skin is chalk-white, and his severe features are twisted in an appalling scowl. His bony right hand tightly grips a dark iron rod.

Rectifiers are corporeal undead formed when a petty, narrow-minded, hateful fanatic who was obsessed with preventing others from "sinning" dies, but cannot let go of its twisted need to force others to comply with its rigid code of morality. Having "no life" (and hating everything good about life) when alive, it's hardly surprising that such a person should become a lifeless, life-hating undead. As such, a rectifier has an obsessive hatred of all living creatures that do not slavishly conform to a warped version of its monastic dictates, and will go into a fury and savagely beat any creature it sees eating, consuming alchohol, smoking, using any form of drug, showing any form of fatigue including sleeping, gambling, joking, laughing, talking too loudly, talking at all when not spoken to, or even being near members of the opposite sex. Being an undead creature that never feels the slightest need to eat, drink, rest, relax, experience love, or have sex, rectifiers have lost whatever minute knowledge and understanding that they may have once had of the limitations of the human condition. In fact, rectifiers will never even admit that they have actually died, even to themselves. (They are likewise incapable of admitting that their zombie slaves are undead.) Rectifiers are not just the natural enemies of the living; they also loathe many other types of undead, such as ghouls, vampires, and morfiends.

Most rectifiers were once members of monastic religious orders, and thus are usually found in temples and monasteries, but they have also been known to arise in households and orphanages run by dour fanatics. A rectifier always returns to the scene of its petty tyranny upon its death and will never thereafter willingly leave it; most rectifiers rarely or never left their monastery or temple even in life, preferring to shun contact with the "wicked" world, and in undeath their inflexibility of thought becomes even more pronounced.

A rectifier is the height and weight of a human, albeit an abnormally skinny one.

Rectifiers speak whatever languages they knew when they died (usually only Common).

Combat
Rectifiers enter combat without fear and attack until they are destroyed, their opponents are beaten into submission, or their opponents have fled the rectifier's haunts. If the rectifier was a member of a religious order prior to its death, it will always attack any member of its own religious faith who opposes it first and to the exclusion of all others; it reserves its deepest loathing for such individuals, who it regards as backsliders and traitors. Any individual foolish enough to surrender to one of these monsters (a prospect that becomes more appealing as the character's Wisdom and Intelligence wither under the monster's assault) will be horribly tortured as "discipline"; rectifiers display an utterly depraved and unholy glee in mutilating genitals, but they also greatly enjoy gouging out eyes and tongues and sewing bodily orifices shut. Unlike other many other undead, they have no fear of or special vulnerability to fire; in fact, they enjoy using fire in torture and to burn "heretical" and "obscene" books and scrolls.

Rectifiers invariably employ blunt weapons (including their fists) in melee combat; typical weapons are clubs, staves, and iron rods (treat as clubs). They are simply unable to resist the compulsion to smash the objects of their hatred with brute force.

Create Spawn (Su): Any humanoid reduced to zero Intelligence or Wisdom by a rectifier's ability draining attacks dies and is instantly reanimated as a zombie under its control. The zombie will unfailingly obey its master's verbal commands until its destruction.
Flurry of Blows (Ex): This works as the ability of a 1st-level monk (see the Player's Handbook page 40). The rectifier will always use this ability when it gets to take a full attack action.
Fury (Ex): When confronted with living creatures that are gambling, drinking, using drugs, making love, or eating heartily, or when confronted with a character of the same religious persuasion as the rectifier was in life who disobeys it, a rectifier will enter a berserk fury. In this state, it gains +4 Strength, a +2 morale bonus to Will saves, and turn resistance +2. It also suffers a -2 penalty to Armor Class, may not use its spell-like abilities, and must attack the creature or creatures that have made it so angry. This fury lasts until all the creatures that triggered the fury have fallen or left the rectifier's habitat.
Mental Ability Drain (Su): Living creatures hit by a rectifier's fists or a bludgeoning weapon attack by the rectifier must make two DC 15 Fortitude saves; one is to prevent taking 1d4 points of permanent Intelligence drain, and the other is to prevent taking 1d4 points of permanent Wisdom drain. The save DC is Strength-based. On each such successful attack, the rectifier gains 5 temporary hit points.
Regeneration (Ex): Chaotic and holy attacks deal normal damage to a rectifier. All other damage is converted to a special form of subdual damage, which affects the creature normally despite its undead nature. If a rectifier loses a limb or body part, the lost portion regrows in 3d6 minutes. The creature can reattach the severed member instantly by holding it to the stump.
Spell-Like Abilities (Sp): At will--putrefy food and drink. 1/day--hold person (DC 12), silence (DC 10). Caster level is equal to the rectifier's Hit Dice. The save DCs are Charisma-based.
Vulnerability to Alcohol and Drugs (Ex): Alcohol or a drug in liquid form splashed on a rectifier, or even water used to prepare a drug (mordayn tea, for example, or water from a hookah pipe or bong) inflicts damage as if it were acid. A source of tobacco smoke or drug fumes (such as dreammist vapor or devilweed smoke) within five feet of the creature causes it to become nauseated until the source is removed.
Skills: A rectifier has a +4 racial bonus on Hide, Intimidate, Listen, Move Silently, and Spot checks.

Putrefy Food and Drink
Transmutation
Level: Clr 0
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 10 ft.
Target: 1 cu. ft./level of food and water
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Will negates (object)
Spell Resistance: Yes (object)

This spell makes wholesome food or water foul-tasting, spoiled, and inedible; creatures eating spoiled food or drinking fouled water vomit (Fortitude save against the spell's DC negates) and receive no nourishment or refreshment even if they manage to prevent vomiting. Holy water and similar food and drink of significance is spoiled, but the spell has no effect on creatures of any type or upon magic potions.

Note: Water weighs about 8 pounds per gallon. One cubic foot of water contains roughly 8 gallons and weighs about 60 pounds.

Edit: Added Base Attack/Grapple stats. Added putrefy food and drink for the sake of completeness.
 
Last edited:

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demiurge1138

Inventor of Super-Toast
Well, it's certainly a unique concept... :D
Great concept, solid mechanics, but you sound just a wee bit bitter in the description. "Having "no life" (and hating everything good about life) when alive, it's hardly surprising that such a person should become a lifeless, life-hating undead." Just a pinch bitter.
But I like it, even if I doubt I'll ever get a chance to use it.
 


Hashmalum

Explorer
Cheiromancer said:
Why did you go for regeneration rather than fast healing? You could say that chaotic and holy damage must be healed at the normal rate.
To make it difficult to permanently destroy. Once you down an undead with fast healing, it's destroyed. If you down an undead with regeneration, however, it continues to regenerate and will eventually get back up. The "harder-to-kill-than-a-cockroach" aspect makes the undead more loathesome, if not necessarily more fearsome.
 


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