Converting monsters from Dragon magazine

[Cleon]

I'd like to keep the high Cha, but I'm willing to duplicate the 17 in Wis.

I see no reason to reduce the blindsight range, since the original had 60-foot range. It's not like it benefits greatly due to ranged attacks or whatnot

That's OK by me, as is freyar's 1d8 Constrict.

Could it do two-handed strength bonus with Constrict (1d8+7 instead of 1d8+5), since it uses both arms?

 

[Cleon]

Shall we work on the cart?

OK, the most important thing is to make the name of the SQ a dreadful pun...

I'm thinking the ankou will need an innate plane shift power in order to return to Hades during daylight hours and load corpses on its extradimensional cart. I made it a full-round action so it's not that not usable in combat as a "pop into reality" ambush like some ethereal beasties have.

Cart Off the Dead (Su): An invisible, intangible cart drawn by an equally spectral horse or ox follows the ankou wherever it goes, a gift from some netherworld god. The cart and its draft animal can be heard by beings on the material plane, and leaves cart-ruts and hoofprints as a sign of its passage, but it exists on the astral (or ethereal?) plane and may not be damaged by or harm creatures on the material plane. If creatures enter the astral plane using plane shift or similar spells they can see the cart of the dead normally and attack it. The draft beast has the statistics of a fiendish bison or a fiendish heavy warhorse.

An ankou piles the bodies of those it slays onto the cart using its plane shift power. Every dawn, the cart returns to Tartarus with any corpses it carries, the absence of a body would obviously prevent the use of raise dead or an easy determination of the fate of the victim.

Plane Shift (Su): An ankou can shift between the prime material and the astral plane as a full-round action.
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[freyar]

That's pretty good. Astral makes sense, since it has to get to Carceri, and I'd go with fiendish heavy warhorse. Plane shift at will?

 

[Cleon]

That's pretty good. Astral makes sense, since it has to get to Carceri, and I'd go with fiendish heavy warhorse. Plane shift at will?

That's what I was going for. I can add an explicit reference to the spell.

Come to think of it, it also needs to be able to plane shift into Carceri, I'd better add that too.

Plane Shift (Su): An ankou can shift between the astral plane and either the prime material plane or Carceri (or vice-versa) as a full-round action. Unlike the plane shift spell, this at-will power does not allow the ankou to shift other creatures between planes, although it can shift while carrying or wearing any inanimate object(s) it can lift.

The ankou routinely uses its Plane Shift power to load the corpses of its victims onto its Cart Off the Dead, and to unload them into Carceri.
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[freyar]

The last paragraph could go in tactics or flavor, but I like that.

 

[Shade]

Plane shift looks good, but I'm wondering if the cart couldn't be simplified to something along the lines of phantom steed or unseen servant? They weren't supposed to be able to be attacked at all, and I'd rather not add the Astral/Ethereal dual-plane complexity.

 

[freyar]

Phantom steed, but invisible and sound-producing instead of the other way round? Then the ankou can plane shift it? Actually, I like that a lot.

 

[Shade]

Do we want it to be able to be drawn into battle, like the phantom steed, or be true to the original text that it cannot be attacked (but can be dispelled with certain spells)?

 

[Cleon]

Plane shift looks good, but I'm wondering if the cart couldn't be simplified to something along the lines of phantom steed or unseen servant? They weren't supposed to be able to be attacked at all, and I'd rather not add the Astral/Ethereal dual-plane complexity.

I thought about doing it that way, although I was thinking of mordenkainen's floating disk rather than the spells you mentioned, but I decided I liked the idea of fiendish astral ox-carts better. Still, if that's what you prefer we could do something like instead:

Cart Off the Dead (Su): An ankou is followed everywhere it goes by an invisible cart pulled by an equally invisible ox or horse. The cart and its beast of burden produce noise and leave a trail of wheel-ruts and hoof-prints like a normal horse- or ox-cart would. The Cart of the Dead can travel over any terrain without any penalty, even rolling across or through water, and can carry a load of up to 1000 pounds. Neither cart nor beast can be damaged by any weapon or spell, although it can be dismissed from existence by an exorcism, dispel evil or a similar higher-level banishment spell. The ankou can resummon a banished Cart of the Dead the following night.
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EDIT: Forgot the resummoning bit, so I added it in.

 

[demiurge1138]

I like Shade's suggestion of no battle with the cart, but dismissing it is possible.