help finding a ghost/undead monster with grab-ish power??

[thegrumpyyoungman]

i'm designing an encounter for a game i'm dm'ing on saturday that involves the players going through a defiled temple. they are going to be going through a trap door into a standard size room that will have an altar with a statue type item they are looking for. there will be murals on the wall depicting basically instructions on how to use the statue for various reasons in my campaign.

the premise behind this particular room is that while the temple has been defiled (used to be for Erathis, now it's worship of Orcus...i ripped parts of this adventure from the Dead by Dawn adventure in Dragon mag) EXCEPT for this one particular room. its basically been left untouched as the cultists that have done the defiling, discovered this room and the statue and they are trying to figure out how to take it...but it's protected by a magical ward or runes or something.

anyway, the setup is that the players will enter the room and see corpses of cultists lying close to the statue or in various positions of death as they were unsuccessful in retrieving the statue. the encounter will be that the players will attempt to get the statue, but the spirts of the fallen in this temple are protecting this area and will attack the players. i'll have some wights or something attack them..but i want a little something extra. so here's the deal:

first think of original legend of zelda game (NES) in the first level where the blue grabby hands are coming out of the walls and grabbing link. what i'm wanting to do is that once the players attempt to take the statue, 4-5 monsters attack, but the room will be surrounded in spirit forms to act as a "you can't escape kind of thing...Lord of the Rings Return of the King-esque. i during the encounter i want the "spirit wall" or whatever to attack and i'll roll a d10 or d6 or something to make it random, but a couple of spirits will come out of the spirit wall and attempt to grab a player in it's line of movement and take it into the spirit wall. this is where i need help!!!

i need help with the mechanics of this as well as monster selection. i want to make the wall have a turn in initiative order to attempt to take the players into the spirit wall some how. if they get sucked in, they have to perform endurance checks or um...some other kind of mental endurance check in order get out of the spirit realm.

HELP!

 

[Neonchameleon]

What level? Zombies are the classic grabby-undead, or mummies. But the level's very different. (As a rule spirits ghost but don't actually grab - a part of the whole insubstantial thing).

 

[thegrumpyyoungman]

What level? Zombies are the classic grabby-undead, or mummies. But the level's very different. (As a rule spirits ghost but don't actually grab - a part of the whole insubstantial thing).

well the players are level 5...but since the spirit wall thing won't necessarily be a true monster, more like a hazard or trap/obstacle...it doesnt really matter necessarily what the level is. i mean, it DOES, but you know...it won't really have hit points. i'll have something where the players can perform some kind of act to calm the spirits or whatever. thats also where i'm looking for help.

so i guess need more of an idea of what POWER to use, and i'll adapt the spirit wall accordingly.

 

[thegrumpyyoungman]

so i just had another thought...what about giving the players the option of either:

A: trying to fight the spirit wall and if they are grabbed...more attack minded apporach (brute force)

B: trying to calm the spirits and prove that the players are not like the cultists/undead beings that have defiled the temple

moral choices!! only thing is....i need help fleshing out the details. help!

 

[interwyrm]

What level? Zombies are the classic grabby-undead, or mummies. But the level's very different. (As a rule spirits ghost but don't actually grab - a part of the whole insubstantial thing).

Cut the hp in half, add insubstantial. Should work fine.

 

[mudlock]

There's a ghoul lurker in MM2 (Acolyte of Vecna, or something?) that a pair of awesome grab-and-prone and stab-you-in-the-face powers, that might also give you some ideas, and isn't a brute like most zombies and mummies.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=97257]thegrumpyyoungman[/MENTION]
The monster you're looking for is the Howling Famine Spirit, a level 28 brute from Elder Evils, with the ability to grab a PC and momentarily remove them from play inflicting ongoing damage all the while. Not sure what level you're running, but you could tone this power down for your spirit wall setup.

 

[Doombybbr]

you could just make one- no. 1 rule of the improvisational dm: if you do not have the monster you need MAKE THAT MONSTER.

 

[thegrumpyyoungman]

you could just make one- no. 1 rule of the improvisational dm: if you do not have the monster you need MAKE THAT MONSTER.

i ended up creating my monsters for the spirit wall. as you can see below i took a bunch of cotton and put it around the map to be the spirit wall, and then i took a couple of old Heroquest mummy mini's and put cotton on them to be the spirits that came out to grab the players. i rolled a d8 three times and that designated where the spirits would come in. i really only succeeded once in grabbing one of the players and pulling them into the spirit realm so to speak. i made the player make a will check and when he failed, i did 14 psychic damage. the players loved it