New Oe/1e/BX Monster: Mind Hunter

This week's new monster comes at the request of Art Braun who commented on my June 3 post, "The Mind Hunter and Red Ether sound interesting." My apologies to Art for not publishing this last week as promised, but client demands and an unnamed personal project sidetracked my blogging schedule last week.

Before we dig into this week's new monster, I have to admit the headline is a bit misleading. It's really more of a Oe/1e monster, since it possesses psionic abilities. That means it's not so BX-friendly (though I have thoughts for a BX psionic rule-set, but don't see finishing it up for at least a year). You could strip the psionics away and still have a pretty nasty monster, though. The image was inspired by an old public domain comic book cover (Strange-something-or-other, I can't recall exactly; it's been a while since I drew this).

MIND HUNTER

DESCRIPTION Mind hunters are spectral beings from the lower planes of hell that roam the prime material plane in search of sustenance in the form of the sanity and intelligence of sentient beings. They appear as a shrivelly-skinned, vermin-gray figure with the head and brow of an ape, sulphurous eyes, a semi-canine mouth, long humanoid arms with taloned fingers, and the lower body of a segmented worm. Because mind hunters are spectral beings, a +1 or better weapon is needed “to hit,” The unmistakeable stench of a mind hunter’s presence smells like the moldiness of antique bones mixed with the fearsome reek of newly decaying carrion. The visage of a a mind hunter is such that it can cause a form of vertigo to anyone viewing it (save vs. spells) that will halve a character’s movement and cause all “to hit” rolls to be at -2 for 3-7 turns. A mind hunter’s main form of attack is to dig into a victim with its claws (1-4 points each), while attempting to bite its victim’s head. On a successful bite, a mind hunter does 1-6 points of damage. Furthermore, for any natural damage roll of 6 on a successful bite, the victim’s intelligence is reduced by 1 point. Each melee round after striking (with its bite), a mind hunter will drain 1 additional point of intelligence from the victim (regardless of the initial damage roll) until the victim or the mind hunter dies, or the victim has been reduced to a vegetative state (INT of 0). Mind hunters have the following psionic abilities: domination, hypnosis, invisibility, energy control, and mass domination. Mind hunters are able to summon 1-8 gargoyles once per day, and the following spells or attack forms have no effect on mind hunters: charm, sleep, cold, electricity, insanity, and poison.

Oe/1E STATS FREQUENCY: Very rare NO. APPEARING: 1-3 ARMOR CLASS: 2 MOVE: 12" HIT DICE: 8 % IN LAIR: 20% TREASURE TYPE: Nil NO. OF ATTACKS: 3 DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-4/1-4/1-6 + special SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below SPECIAL DEFENSES: See below MAGIC RESISTANCE: Saves as 8th level magic-user INTELLIGENCE: Highly- ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil SIZE: M PSIONIC ABILITY: 150 Attack/Defense Modes: D, GHI BX STATS ARMOR CLASS: 2 HIT DICE: 8** MOVE: 120' ATTACKS: 2 claws/1 bite DAMAGE: 1-4/1-4/1-6 + special NO. APPEARING: 1-3 SAVE AS: Magic-user: 8 MORALE: 12 TREASURE TYPE: Nil ALIGNMENT: Chaotic