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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Solarious" data-source="post: 4535523" data-attributes="member: 27346">Shadowrot Weeds - Fluff TBAShadowrot Weeds CR11Advanced Shadow Vampire BoneleafHuge Undead (Augmented Aberration)Hit Dice: 15d12 (98 hp)Initiative: +9 (+5 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative)Speed: 10ft, burrow 10' (soft earth and soil, optionally other types)Armor Class: 30 (-2 size, +5 Dex, +17 Natural), Touch 15, Flat Footed 25Base Attack/Grapple: +11/+36Attack: Slam +23 melee (2d8 + 13 + 1d4 plus Strength Drain), or Tendril +23/+18 (Improved Grab plus Constrict plus Blood Drain)Full Attack: 2 Slams +23/+23 melee (2d8 + 13 + 1d4 plus Strength Drain), or 2 Tendrils +23/+23/+18 melee (Improved Grab plus Constrict plus Blood Drain), or Slam +23 melee (2d8 + 13 + 1d4 plus Strength Drain) and Tendril +23/+18 melee (Improved Grab plus Constrict plus Blood Drain)Space/Reach: 15'/15' (20' w/ tendrils)Special Attacks: Constrict (2d6 + 1d4 + 13), Improved Grab, Razor Leaves, Blood Drain, Dominate Person, Create Spawn, Strength Drain, Bleed ShadowsSpecial Qualities: Darkvision 60', Illusionary Lure, low-light vision, Pervasive Sentience, Plant-like traits, Darkness, DR 10/ silver and magic, Cold and Electricity Resistance 10, Turn Resistance +4, Fast Healing 2, Shadow Form, Shadow Jump, Vampire WeaknessesSaves: Fort +9, Ref +12, Will +9Abilities: Str 38, Dex 20, Con -, Int 10, Wis 18, Cha 16Skills (Ranks, total modifier): Hide (18; +31), Move Silently (0; +13), Spot (9; +23), Listen (9; +23)Feats: Alertness, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Improved Natural Attack (Slam), Improved Grapple, Multigrab, Improved Multigrab, Large and In Charge, Rapidstrike (Tendrils)Blood Drain (Ex): Shadowrot Weeds can suck blood from a living victim with its tendrils by making a successful grapple check. If it pins the foe, it drains blood, dealing 1d4 points of Constitution drain each round the pin is maintained. On each such successful attack, the vampire gains 5 temporary hit points.Bleed Shadow (Su): Shadowrot Weeds can draw 1d4 + 1 Shadows out of Mabar by voluntarily shedding a few drops of blood and focusing the negative energy contained within so it will open pinprick openings into the plane of Endless Night. These Shadows arrive in 2d6 rounds and serve the Shadowrot Weed for up to 1 hour.Dominate (Su): A Shadowrot Weed can crush an opponent’s will just by looking onto his or her eyes using pseudo-blooms with eye-like organs within. This is similar to a gaze attack, except that the Shadowrot Weed must use a standard action, and those merely looking at it are not affected. Anyone the Shadowrot Weed targets must succeed on a Will save (DC 21) or fall instantly under the vampire’s influence as though by a Dominate Person spell (caster level 12th). The ability has a range of 30 feet.Create Spawn (Su): A humanoid or monstrous humanoid slain by a Shadowrot Weed’s energy drain rises as a vampire spawn (see the Vampire Spawn entry) 1d4 days after burial.If the Shadowrot Weed instead drains the victim’s Constitution to 0 or lower, the victim returns as a spawn if it had 4 or less HD and as a vampire if it had 5 or more HD. In either case, the new vampire or spawn is under the command of the Shadowrot Weed that created it and remains enslaved until its master’s destruction. At any given time a Shadowrot Weed may have enslaved spawn totaling no more than twice its own Hit Dice; any spawn it creates that would exceed this limit are created as free-willed vampires or vampire spawn. A vampire that is enslaved may create and enslave spawn of its own, so a master vampire can control a number of lesser vampires in this fashion. A Shadowrot Weed may voluntarily free an enslaved spawn in order to enslave a new spawn, but once freed, a vampire or vampire spawn cannot be enslaved again.Strength Drain (Su): Once per round, a Shadowrot Weed inflicts 1 point of Strength damage with it's Slam attack. Strength damage inflicted in this way grants the Shadowrot Weed 5 temporary hp.Darkness (Su): As the spell, 4/day (Cha mod).Fast Healing (Ex): A Shadowrot Weed heals 2 points of damage each round so long as it has at least 1 hit point. If reduced to 0 hit points in combat, it automatically assumes shadow form and attempts to escape. It must reach its bulb within 2 hours or be utterly destroyed. (It can travel up to four and-a half miles in 2 hours.) Any additional damage dealt to a Shadowrot Weed forced into shadow form has no effect. Once at rest in its bulb, a Shadowrot Weed is helpless. It regains 1 hit point after 1 hour, then is no longer helpless and resumes healing at the rate of 2 hit points per round.Shadow Form (Su): As a standard action, a Shadowrot Weed can assume shadow form at will, which grants it a +4 Competence bonus to Escape Artist, Hide, and Move Silently checks, as well as Concealment. The Concealment is suppressed while within the area of a Daylight spell.Shadow Jump (Su): a Shadowrot Weed may jump from shadow to shadow as if by means of a Dimension Door spell, but this transport must begin and end in some kind of shadow. A Shadowrot Weed may jump up to 100'/day, divided up as it desires.Vampire Weakness (Ex): As a normal vampire's weaknesses, plus light equivalent or greater than a Daylight spell causes a Shadowrot Weed to act as if sickened, as the condition. It also receives a -2 penalty on all saving throws to avoid light effects (including Flash Pellets).Constrict (Ex): A Shadowrot Weed may deal automatic constricting damage on a successful grapple check.Improved Grab (Ex): To use this ability, a Shadowrot Weed must hit with a tendril attack. It can then attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking attacks of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold and may constrict. A Shadowrot Weed may also opt to forgo the Constrict attack and instead attempt to establish a pin to burrow it's tendrils into the creature to use Blood Drain instead. A Shadowrot Weed may maintain a hold on a creature using only a single part of it's 'body' without penalty, thanks to it's Improved Multigrab feat.Razor Leaves (Ex): The off-white leaves of a Shadowrot Weed are surprisingly tough and razor-sharp. These leaves are the source of the additional 1d4 points of damage on Constrict and Slam attacks, and it is considered slashing damage.Illusory Lure (Su): A Shadowrot Weed can generate detailed but short-lived illusions, designed to lure prey into it's reach. These usually take the form of something valuable lying among the trunks, or an injured individual crying for aid, but it may differ depending on the information it has gathered through minions and servants. This ability functions as the spell Major Image (CL7), except this illusions lasts only for 1d6 + 1 rounds and the Shadowrot Weed must wait 1d4 rounds before using the ability again. Interaction with the illusions allows a DC 21 Will save (Cha based) to disbelieve.Plant-like Traits: Much of the advantages a Shadowrot Weed's unusual physiology grants over the average ambush predator is ecplised by it's undead traits. None the less, it takes a DC 15 Spot check to notice a Shadowrot Weed is anything but a normal copse; failure indicates creatures come close enough to get snared by it's limbs before noticing anything is wrong.Undead Traits: A Shadowrot Weeds has no Constitution score, Darkvision out to 60 feet, and immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects). Shadowrot Weeds have immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, and death effects. A Shadowrot Weeds is not subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability drain, or energy drain, is immune to damage to its physical ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution), as well as to fatigue and exhaustion effects. Negative energy (such as an inflict spell) can heal Shadowrot Weeds. Shadowrot Weeds has immunity to any effect that requires a Fortitude save (unless the effect also works on objects or is harmless). Shadowrot Weeds are not at risk of death from massive damage, but when reduced to 0 hit points or less, a Shadowrot Weeds immediately assumes Shadow form. Shadowrot Weeds do not breathe, eat, or sleep.Pervasive Sentience (Ex): While individual Shadowrot Weed buds function as individual creatures, it is but only a portion of a much larger whole. While Shadowrot Weeds are encountered individually, but they are not actually alone. Each Shadowrot Weed is part of a larger collective of weeds, with up to 1d6 + 6 others in the same reigon. Considered individuals because they are usually anywhere from 100 yards up to four miles from each other, they are in fact portions of the same creature, connected by miles of underground nerves and bound together by a single bulb of fleshy roots, tendrils, and leaves, encasing the cursed soil of Ashtakala that acts as the vampire-like Shadowrot Weed's coffin equivalent. Anything a single Shadowrot Weed experiences is known to the rest almost immediately.To truly destroy a Shadowrot Weed infestation, the bulb (a Large, vaguely egg-shaped thing that pulses and twitches) must be permanently destroyed. Since it lacks a mouth to fill with holy wafers and a head to behead, the usual method is to either to soak it completely in blessed oil and set it on fire (which permanently destroys it), or to spray it with holy water and impale it with three livewood stakes (which puts it and all attached Shadowrot Weeds into suspended animation as if you had staked a regular vampire). Since the bulb is relatively immobile and quite defenseless on it's own, the Shadowrot Weed collective put effort in finding an ideal place to hide it (sometimes within an existing tree's roots), and fight viciously in it's defense. Some Shadowrot Weed bulbs develop the ability to store a number of vampires or vampire spawn (enslaved by separate Shadowrot Weeds and contributed to the defense of the bulb, each vampire [spawn] counting against the individual weed's limit of enslaved spawn) within the soil it carries, a nasty surprise for anyone who seeks to end a Shadowrot Weed infestation. For such vampires or spawn, the bulb acts as their coffin, and leave and enter the bulb via their gaseous form ability.Sometimes, among learned sages who have heard many rumors and some fragmented facts about Shadowrot Weed, there are claims that ancient bulbs, after being nourished for centuries by it's Shadowrot Weed buds, becomes a potent Shadowrot Bloom of it's own... but such mutterings are pure speculation and are clearly the ravings of lunatics. Are they not?They surely must be... they have to be... aren't they?Shadowrot Weeds have a +12 racial bonus to Hide checks made in forested or overgrown areas. Shadowrot Weeds have a +8 racial bonus to Bluff, Hide, Listen, Move Silently, Search, Sense Motive, and Spot checks. Alertness grants the Shadowrot Weed a +2 bonus on Listen and Spot checks.</blockquote>

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