Body Snatcher

Gargantuan plant (fungus), neutral evil

Armor Class 19
Hit Points 264 (16d20 + 96)
Speed 40 ft., climb 30 ft., swim 30 ft.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
24 (+7) 12 (+1) 22 (+6) 13 (+1) 10 (+0) 10 (+0)

Saving Throws Dex +6, Wis +5, Cha +5
Damage Resistances cold, nonmagical weapons
Damage Immunities psychic
Condition Immunities charmed, fear, prone, stunned, unconsciousness
Skills Perception +5
Senses blindsight 60 ft.
Languages Understands all spoken languages, but can’t speak
Challenge 15 (13,000 XP)

Actions

  • Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +12 to hit (reach 5 ft.; one creature). Hit: 4d8 + 7 bludgeoning damage.
  • Tongue. Melee Weapon Attack: +12 to hit (reach 10 ft.; one creature). Hit: 3d6 + 7 slashing damage, and the creature must make a successful DC 20 Str saving throw or be grappled (escape DC 17). The body snatcher can grapple one creature at a time and can’t use its tongue attack while it has a creature grappled.
  • Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +12 to hit (reach 10 ft; one creature already grappled by the body snatcher’s tongue). Hit: the creature is pulled into the body snatcher’s space and swallowed (see below).
  • Spore Globule. Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit (range 40 ft.; one creature). Hit: 6d6 + 1 bludgeoning damage.

Special Traits

  • Absorb Cadaver. A creature slain by the body snatcher is immediately absorbed into its body as a bonus action. If the body snatcher is still alive at the end of its next turn, the cadaver is irrevocably destroyed. If the slain creature was Large, then its body takes 2 rounds to destroy, and a Huge creature takes 3 rounds. Creatures larger than Huge can’t be absorbed. If the body snatcher is killed before an absorbed cadaver is fully destroyed, then the body (or parts of it) it can be recovered from among the mounds of blight lichen.
  • Create Blight The body snatcher exudes a 10-foot-by-10-foot patch of blight in an area adjacent to itself. This patch is immediately eligible to be grown and directed as part of the body snatcher’s Hive Mind ability.
  • Hive Mind. A body snatcher can’t be surprised. In addition, a body snatcher is aware of all growths of blight within 50 miles. It can see everything within visual range of these patches at all times. It can direct the direction and speed of a patch’s growth (no action required) as long as that patch is in darkness, but it can control only one patch per round. A patch of blight that’s in complete darkness and under a body snatcher’s control can increase its size by 100 square feet per round.
  • Light Somnolence When exposed to bright light, a body snatcher becomes slow and lethargic; the effect is equivalent to a slow spell, and it lasts for as long as at least half of a body snatcher is in bright light.
  • Regeneration. A body snatcher heals 10 hit points at the start of its turn. This ability doesn’t function if any part of it was exposed to bright or dim light since its previous turn.
  • Swallow. A swallowed creature is blinded and restrained. It must hold its breath or begin suffocating. Two Large, four Medium, or eight Small creatures can be inside the body snatcher at one time. A swallowed creature is unaffected by anything happening outside a body snatcher or by attacks from outside it. A swallowed creature can get out of a body snatcher by using 5 feet of movement, but only after the monster is dead.

About

Environment Underground
Organization solitary

A massive lump of shadow, like a gargantuan hillock, shifts in the darkness and reveals itself to be a living creature. Its body is mostly torso and is roughly barrel shaped, with four elephantine legs and two long arms ending in three-fingered hands. A massive mouthlike opening dominates the top of its frame, from which extends a long, prehensile tongue studded with spiky growths at its tip. The entire beast appears to be covered in – or perhaps made of – a lumpy, lichenlike substance of tiny, leafy growths.

Body snatchers are massive overgrowths of ambulatory blight lichen that lurk within the deepest caverns. The conglomeration of lichen growths has taken on the form of a massive quadruped, but it shares no special affinity with that form and, in truth, its body possesses no internal organs or structures other than the undifferentiated blight of which is it composed. A body snatcher, like the blight that makes up its body, is at its strongest in absolute darkness and is debilitated by the presence of bright light. Its hivemind gives it a mental connection to and the ability to see through all growths of blight within 50 miles, and it is with this ability that it has managed to maintain observation of the lands above and its inhabitants since before the city existed. Through this observation, it has learned much of the ways of humanoids and has come to understand many of their languages. And it desires nothing more than to consume their bodies upon their deaths, directing its remote blight growths to do that whenever possible. The nutrients obtained from the consumed corpses help feed the growth of these blight patches, but something about these feedings is somehow transmitted telepathically back through the hive mind and serves some mysterious purpose for a body snatcher. It is for this reason that the dwarves gave a body snatcher its name, though none understand the full significance of the creature’s impulse to consume these corpses.

A body snatcher stands 25 feet tall. Even though it is made only of tiny lichen growths, these conglomerate quite densely so the creature weighs more than 30,000 pounds. It is well over a thousand years old and is probably much older, and it may well be immortal.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

The Tome of Blighted Horrors, © 2016, Frog God Games, LLC; Authors John Ling, Authors Richard Pett, Pete Pollard, Alistair Rigg, Jeffrey Swank, and Greg A. Vaughan.

Additional Credit Author Greg A. Vaughan, based on material by Richard Pett.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

The Tome of Blighted Horrors, © 2016, Frog God Games, LLC; Authors John Ling, Authors Richard Pett, Pete Pollard, Alistair Rigg, Jeffrey Swank, and Greg A. Vaughan.

This is not the complete license attribution - see the full license for this page