Excubitor (Chaperone Devil)

Family: Devils

Medium fiend (devil, shapechanger), lawful evil

Armor Class 17 (natural armor)
Hit Points 136 (16d8 + 64)
Speed 30 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
20 (+5)	17 (+3)	18 (+4)	10 (+0)	14 (+2)	16 (+3)

Saving Throws Con +7, Wis +5, Cha +6
Skills Deception +6, History +3, Intimidation +6
Damage Resistances cold; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks that aren’t silvered
Damage Immunities fire, poison
Condition Immunities poisoned
Senses darkvision 120 ft., passive Perception 11
Languages Common, Infernal, telepathy 120 ft.
Challenge 8 (3,900 XP)
Proficiency Bonus +3

SPECIAL TRAITS

• Shapechanger. The excubitor can use a bonus action to polymorph into a specific Small or Medium humanoid or back into its true form. Other than its size, its statistics are the same in each form. Any equipment it is wearing or carrying isn’t transformed. It reverts to its true form if it dies.
• Devil’s Sight. Magical darkness doesn’t impede the excubitor’s darkvision.
• Guarding the Principal. An excubitor can magically shield its principal (see sidebar) from the worst attacks. While the excubitor is within 30 feet of its principal, the principal shares its Magic Resistance trait.
• Innate Spellcasting. The excubitor’s spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 14). It can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
  • At will: dimension door (self only), shield of faith (principal only)
  • 1/day each: dimension door (with other creature), fireball, lightning bolt, private sanctum
• Magic Resistance. The excubitor has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

ACTIONS

• Multiattack. The excubitor attacks three times: once with its bite and twice with its claws. It can replace its bite attack with Swallow Evidence.
• Bite (Fiend Form Only). Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (2d10 + 5) piercing damage. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature, it is grappled (save DC 18). Until this grapple ends, the excubitor can’t bite a different creature.
• Claws (Fiend Form Only). Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6 + 5) slashing damage.
• Swallow Evidence. The excubitor grotesquely distends its jaws and attempts to swallow a Medium or smaller creature. A creature grappled by the excubitor must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw, which it can voluntarily fail. On a failure, the creature is swallowed and transported into an extradimensional stomach, and the grapple ends. While swallowed, the creature is blinded and restrained, and it has total cover against attacks and other effects outside the excubitor. The target takes 14 (4d6) poison damage at the start of each of the excubitor’s turns, although the excubitor can forgo dealing this damage. If the excubitor takes 15 damage or more on a single turn from a swallowed creature, or if the excubitor dies, it regurgitates all swallowed creatures, which fall prone in a space within 5 feet of the excubitor.

ABOUT

Excubitors are contracted to protect these important individuals from would-be law officers, knights, and other do-gooders. More than one would-be hero has nearly confronted a heinous villain only to first fall to that villain’s “secretary” a fiendish excubitor bodyguard, with fists like iron and an almost bottomless pit of a stomach.

An archdevil can assign an excubitor to protect a mortal as part of the contract signed by that mortal. Excubitors cannot create new contracts themselves. The mortal beneficiary of this contract is known as the “principal.”

Devils have a reputation for being diabolical masterminds, but not all of them live up to that reputation. Excubitors, also known as chaperone devils, are forged from the souls of mortals who aided and abetted the evils of others rather than committing their own atrocities. In Hell, despite their formidable power, excubitors rank quite low in the diabolic hierarchy as they rarely achieve any triumphs which they can truly call their own.