Sundered Woman

Medium fey, chaotic neutral

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
12 (+1) 20 (+5) 12 (+1) 10 (+0) 18 (+4) 14 (+2)

Armor Class 18 (natural armor)
Hit Points 44 (8d8 + 8)
Speed 40 ft.
Saving Throws Dexterity +8, Wisdom +5
Skills Acrobatics +8, Perception +8, Stealth +8, Survival +8
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 18
Languages Sylvan
Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)

Special Traits

  • Innate Spellcasting. The sundered woman’s innate spellcasting ability is Wisdom (spell save DC 15). The dryad can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
  • Magic Resistance. The sundered woman has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
  • Magic Weapons. The sundered woman’s weapon attacks are magical.
  • Nimble Escape. The sundered woman can take the Disengage or Hide action as a bonus action on each of its turns.
  • Speak with Beasts and Plants. The sundered woman can communicate with beasts and plants as if they shared a language.
  • Tree Stride. Once on her turn, the sundered woman can use 10 feet of her movement to step magically into one living tree within her reach and emerge from a second living tree within 60 feet of the first tree, appearing in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of the second tree. Both trees must be Large or bigger.

Actions

  • Wounding Touch. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6 + 5) slashing damage. The target cannot recover hit points lost by this strike until it takes a short or long rest.

Reactions

  • Lithe. When hit by an attack roll, the sundered woman can make a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check with the result of the attack roll as its DC. On a success, the sundered woman takes no damage from the hit.

Tactics

Sundered women tend to avoid direct combat or even ignore the presence of others – until the search for their home is interfered with, when they can lash out. Others seek to lure intruders into traps to find out if these foreigners were the ones who destroyed the local forest.

When attacking, they prefer thick forests where they can dart from the cover of one tree to the next, using their nimble escape and tree stride features together.

From a distance, these creatures appear to be beautiful women, nymphs or hamadryads. Up close, one sees that deep wounds mar their flesh.

Their injuries do not bleed, though, and their flesh rejoins and splits in new places as they move. Most sundered women seem oblivious to their grotesque appearance. They tend to wander lost in the forest, searching for the one tree that is their partner but never finding it. Anyone or anything that gets in their way or interferes with their search is subject to their wrath.

Sundered women vary widely in personality and purpose. Some are little more than agents of destruction, bent on inflicting harm on whatever they encounter. Others seem kindly, but tend to break at the first moment of stress.

War Victims. Some of the oldest children of the forest still suffer from the titans’ influence over the world, even all these years after the creators’ defeat. Throughout the Scarred Lands, wherever titanspawn or the lords’ own hands have afflicted magical woods, dryad-kin have suffered. Where forests have been leveled, charred or corrupted by unholy influence, they have been driven to madness. Kept alive by some cruel twist of fate or unknowable will, the refugee fey have been twisted into a mockery of their former beauty. Without the trees to which they were bound, the wood spirits suffer a confused, wrathful and wretched existence, ostracized from their homes and forced to exist alone and afraid.

Beyond the Forest. It is even possible to encounter one of these lost women outside the woodlands. This creature is the saddest of all, however, because her forest home has been completely decimated, or she has become so lost that she no longer knows where her home might be. These individuals are perhaps the most dangerous sundered women, for they have lost all bearing on the reality they once knew. Unfortunately, they might also be the only ones who could relate the fate that befell their homes, and what has become of any titanspawn responsible. Sundered women can also be vastly knowledgeable of the world in which their trees grew and may speak of events hundreds of years past – if they can be communicated with and understood.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Creature Collection 5e Copyright 2020 Onyx Path Publishing, Inc.