Skeleton, Swordbreaker

Tougher than a typical animated skeleton, these undead are raised from skeletal remains that have fossilized.

Any creature that has been dead for more than 100 years and that has a skeletal structure can be animated as a swordbreaker skeleton. When a creature is animated as a swordbreaker skeleton, it retains its statistics except as described below.

  • Type. The skeleton’s type changes to undead, and it no longer requires air, food, drink, or sleep.
  • Alignment. The skeleton’s alignment changes to lawful evil.
  • Armor Class. The creature has a natural armor class of 13 + its Dexterity modifier.
  • Ability Scores. The skeleton’s Intelligence score is reduced to 6 (–2), if it was higher, otherwise it retains its Intelligence score. Its Wisdom score changes to 8 (–1), and its Charisma score changes to 5 (–3).
  • Damage Vulnerabilities. The skeleton is vulnerable to thunder damage.
  • Damage Resistances. The skeleton has resistance to piercing and slashing damage.
  • Damage Immunities. The skeleton is immune to poison damage.
  • Condition Immunities. The skeleton is immune to exhaustion and the poisoned and petrified conditions.
  • Senses. The skeleton gains darkvision with a radius of 60 feet.
  • Languages. The skeleton understands all languages it knew in life but it can’t speak.

SPECIAL TRAITS

  • Bones of Stone. The swordbreaker skeleton’s bones have fossilized and become stony. Most weapons shatter against these bones, but the fossilization makes the skeletons more susceptible to magic that harms stone or that causes concussive bursts of sound.
  • Undead Nature. A swordbreaker skeleton doesn’t require air, food, drink, or sleep.
  • Fossilized Bones. Any nonmagical slashing or piercing weapon made of metal or wood that hits the swordbreaker skeleton cracks. After dealing damage, the weapon takes a permanent and cumulative –1 penalty to damage rolls. If its penalty drops to –5, the weapon is destroyed. Nonmagical ammunition made of metal or wood that hits the swordbreaker skeleton is destroyed after dealing damage.
Section 15: Copyright Notice

Tome of Beasts 2. © 2020 Open Design LLC; Authors Wolfgang Baur, Celeste Conowitch, Darrin Drader, James Introcaso, Philip Larwood, Jeff Lee, Kelly Pawlik, Brian Suskind, Mike Welham.

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