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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Leatherhead" data-source="post: 8561589" data-attributes="member: 53176"><h3>Balhannoth (MTof)</h3>The Balhannoth resembles a roper, without eyes. But they function more like a super-powerful mimic with mind-reading powers. Their entire shtick is to change the shape of their layer into something that your party is looking for (such as a resting place, treasure vault, etc) and then use it’s powers of teleportation and invisibility to separate the party from each other, eating them one by one. The Balhannoth supposedly feeds on fear and despair, but it has a bite attack and large fanged mouth, so I find such claims to be a little suspect. Maybe it just uses fear as a garnish? Because if it did feed off of such negative feelings, it wouldn’t want to kill anything. It would just stick creatures in a hole they can’t escape from till they died from starvation, and feed off the bad vibes from the other side of a wall or some other totally boring and safe thing like that, because they totally have the power to do so.Which brings up a problem with the Balhannoth. It’s not that I can’t see how they set traps and feed, it’s more like I can’t see why they would ever willingly fight.As a legendary CR 11 monster, the Balhannoth is smarter than an animal, and just a little dumber than a humanoid. It can kinda-sorta read minds from up to a mile away, then they can kinda-sorta reshape reality to make their lair look similar to whatever that mind wants (This is not an illusion! However, a routine inspection will reveal the area to be fake in some fashion). After this lair is shaped up, they send out a psychic ping that makes creatures think “Hey, that thing I want  is probably around here somewhere!” Then they wait for the hapless creatures to come into their trap, where they hang from the roof, totally invisible.Once a target gets into range, they can teleport it into a slippery oubliette for later, or grapple it and then teleport both itself and it’s snack up to the ceiling where it can make a quick escape via a side cave. Or it could teleport to any number of places where the target simply cannot run from them, and the rest of the group cannot easily find them. They could be hundreds of feet in the air above the party when the encounter starts. A lucky pull would allow them to chow down for a few rounds before help arrives to interrupt their dinner.  When the help does arrive, it only gets in a turn of combat before the Balhannoth teleports away with dinner, or teleports the offending party away for more time to eat.While it’s attack routine is a fairly standard bite + two tentacles (that can be used to grab). The Balhannoth has some incredible actions available to it due to being a Legendary CR 11 monster with a Lair. It can turn selectively invisible, which means unless it’s actively attacking you, you won’t be able to see it, even when it’s eating your friend. It can teleport itself and it’s grappled dinner as a legendary action, and it can teleport any target it senses with it’s 500’ of blindsight as a lair action. This offensive teleport could even be used to drop targets from the air, if no pit is available. It technically has a lair action that lets it reshape the lair, but that actually takes 10 minutes to fire off, so it’s almost never actually going to happen in the middle of combat.Basically, it acts like a trapdoor spider, if that spider had the power to teleport.The only changes to the Balhannoth, other than giving it’s powers proper names, were lowering the damage of it’s Bite attack. (Which subsequently lowered the damage potential of it’s Multiattack) and the Multiattack no longer has the option of 4 tentacle attacks instead of biting.</blockquote>

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