Porton Working Draft
Porton
Colossal Elemental (incorporeal)
Hit Dice: 24d8+96 (204 hp)
Initiative: +0
Speed: Fly 30 ft. (6 squares, perfect, cannot run)
Armor Class: 4 (-8 size, +2 Dex), touch 4, flat-footed 4
Base Attack/Grapple: +18/—
Attack: Void touch +12 touch (void field)
Full Attack: Void touch +12 touch (void field)
Space/Reach: 40 ft./30 ft.
Special Attacks: Dark lightning, void field
Special Qualities: Blind, deaf, immunities, immunity to temporal effects, imprecise blindsight, negative energy affinity, spell resistance 21, susceptibility to energy damage
Saves: Fort +18, Ref +10, Will +8
Abilities: Str —, Dex 15, Con 18, Int —, Wis 11, Cha 10
Skills: —
Feats: —
Environment: The skies of Gnibile (see below)
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 14
Treasure: None
Alignment: Neutral
Advancement: 25-48 HD (Colossal)
Level Adjustment: —
A disc of shimmering nothingness hangs in the sky. It's size is vast - maybe as wide as you could throw a dart or hammer and as tall as an ogre. There's no visible substance to it, just a twisting distortion in the air like the heat-haze above a furnace. It could just be a weird weather phenomenon, but it doesn't seem to be moving with the wind.
Portons are strange entities that exist by drawing energy from negative elemental planes. They are effectively autonomous, self-generating gateways to the various negative elemental planes. It is unclear whether a porton is "alive" in any conventional sense, for they are insubstantial beings without anatomy or organs. Anything that "touches" a porton risks being sucked through its gateway to one of the negative planes it feeds upon, maybe lost forever.
Portons are mindless beings who are unable to sense anything much smaller than itself. They wander the sky at random, virtually insensible to their surroundings. Portons fly continuously, never touching the ground. Indeed, if one should land the ground would likely disappear into a negative plane. Portons always fly in a horizontal orientation; their disc is never tilted.
A porton can focus negative energy into deadly bolts that look like lightning, if lightning were utterly black. They reflexively shoot these bolts at anything that obstructs their passage. Portons seem to lack any sense for self-preservation. Even if a powerful foe does potentially deadly injury to a porton, it will carry on doing whatever it was up to before the attack began; its only reaction is to blast the intruder with black lightning, just as it would any other obstacle.
It is unknown how – or if – portons reproduce. Some extremely powerful undead can order portons to follow simple instructions, possibly via a secret spell or feat.
A porton is weightless, approximately 100 feet in diameter, and 8 to 10 feet thick.
Combat
Although a porton can perform the Run action or make double moves, it very rarely does so. They just fly leisurely along, even if in the middle of a frenzied battle, using their black lightning against any object or creature that interferes with their travels. Portons rarely target humanoids with their black lightning because their blindsight is incapable of seeing creatures smaller than an elephant. A porton will only use its touch attack by accident or if compelled to by another creature, such as a powerful lich.
While a porton does not wittingly "fight" it is also incapable of retreat or surrender; it will continue projecting Black Lightning until any irritants in its way have been removed or the porton is destroyed.
Blind (Ex): Portons are immune to gaze attacks, visual effects, illusions, and other attack forms that rely on sight.
Dark Lightning (Su): As a standard action, a porton can unleash two beams of negative energy that resemble bolts of black lightning. Dark lightning has a 750 ft. range and strikes unerringly, even if the target is in melee combat or has less than total cover or total concealment. Each beam does 20d6 points of negative energy damage (Fort DC 26 half damage). The save DC is Constitution-based.
Deaf (Ex): A porton is completely incapable of perceiving sound, and is thus immune to language-dependent effects and sonic effects dependent on hearing. The creature has adapted to this limitation and thus suffers no penalty on initiative checks because of its deafness.
Immunities (Ex): In addition to the standard immunities of an elemental (poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, critical hits, flanking, and spells that restore souls to their bodies such as raise dead), a porton is immune to disease, death effects and mind-affecting attacks.
Immune to Temporal Effects (Su): Portons are immune to transmutation spells that allow spell resistance and affect the porton's flow of time. These include haste, slow, temporal stasis, and aging effects (including magical ones).
Imprecise Blindsight (Ex): Portons have a mysterious ability to perceive objects or creatures within a 1000 feet range, but this sense can only clearly "see" massive objects. Imprecise blindsight works like normal blindsight against targets that are Gargantuan size or larger. It works like blindsense (50% miss chance, which does apply to Dark Lightning) against Huge targets. Targets that are Large or smaller are undetectable to a Porton's blindsight.
Negative Energy Affinity (Ex) A porton is healed by negative energy and harmed by positive energy as if it were an undead creature.
Susceptibility To Energy Damage (Ex): A porton's incorporeal subtype never protects it from energy damage. For example, a porton's incorporeality gives it a 50% chance to ignore the 3d6 bludgeoning damage from an ice storm spell, but it does not ignore the ice storm's 2d6 cold damage. The porton's spell resistance still applies.
Void Field (Su): Portons form a natural conduit to the Negative Energy Plane. Any creature or object that touches a porton must succeed at a DC 22 Will save or be instantly gated to the Negative Energy Plane (at the DM's discretion, the destination could be any plane with the major negative-dominant trait). Weapon attacks that hit the porton (including ranged attacks) do their damage to the porton before they must resolve the Will save against the weapon being gated away. The save DC is Charisma-based.
A creature or object that continues to contact a porton (because it's grappling or impaling the porton, for example) must succeed at this Will save on each subsequent round of contact or be sucked into the Negative Energy Plane.
A porton can expose another creature or object to its void field by making a successful touch attack.
