General Rules: Monsters - War-Worm

War-Worm (from Dungeon Crawl Classics #29: The Adventure Begins)
Small Aberration

Hit Dice: ½d8+1 (3 hit points)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 20 feet, burrow 10 feet
Armor Class: 13 (+1 size, +1 Dexterity, +1 natural); touch 12, flat-footed 12
BAB/Grapple: +0/-6
Attack: Bite +0 melee (1d4-2, bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing, 20 x2)

Full Attack: Bite +0 melee (1d4-2, bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing, 20 x2)

Space/Reach: 5 feet by 5 feet/5 feet
Special Attacks: Blood drain, infest
Special Qualities: Darkvision 60 feet
Saves: Fortitude +1, Reflex +1, Will +2
Abilities: Str 6, Int 5, Wis 10, Dex 13, Con 13, Cha 2

Skills: Hide +9, Move Silently +8

Feats: Skill Augmentation (Hide and Move Silently)
Environment: Any
Organization: Swarm (2 - 24)
Challenge Rating: ¼
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always chaotic evil
Advancement: -

Rising from the blood-soaked earth of battlefields to stalk the living, war-worms are the souls f warriors trapped in the bodies of tormented aberrations. A war-worm resembles a two-foot long chitinous worm with the head of a fanged, human warrior. The bite of a war-worm is fearsome, allowing the worm to tunnel through soil and tear apart armor. The worms leave trails of slime wherever they slither; this acid is slightly acidic, and over the years war-worm warrens will slowly grow larger, eaten away by slime.

The worms hunger for one thing: The blood of the living. They hunt exclusively at night, rising from the earth and swarming sleeping victims. The frequency of their attacks increases after rainstorms, when the ground is wet and easier for the worms to burrow through.

The horrid creature appear most often at the place of a massacre or slaughter, or any place where a large number of souls died senselessly.

Combat
When forced into melee, war-worms try to overwhelm their prey with numbers.

Blood Drain (Ex): A war-worm can suck blood from a living victim with its fangs by making a successful grapple check. If it pins the foe, it drains blood, inflicting 1d4 points of temporary Constitution drain each round the pin is maintained.

Infest (Ex): A creature slain by a war-worm's blood drain rises as a war-worm zombie 1d4 days after death. The zombie is host to 2d12 larval war-worms that slowly consume the corpse. After 3d20 days, the zombie collapses, devoured from the inside, and the mature war-worms go in search of living prey.

Home     Three Worlds     Monsters