From the darkness arises heavy, squelching footsteps partnered with the rattling of chains and strange, unknowable whispers. The barbarian tightens his grip on his axe and anxiously looks towards the rest of his party who stand similarly at the ready, their eyes probing the darkness when the advance suddenly stops. They held their breath in the silence before the barbarian cautiously steps forward. As he does, an anchor affixed to a broken chain that oily tentacles cling forward sails from the darkness, smashing into him. He grits his teeth as he stumbles back from the blow that he at least partially warded with the haft of his axe. The anchor rebounds and lands into the ground before the tentacles pulse and the figure emerges from the darkness, almost weightless. Its weight returns as it lands before them, steel-toed boots crashing into the earth as its immense bloated form towers over the party. Dressed in a strange suit that pulses and writhes with motion beneath, the party suddenly finds it hard to breathe as a single eye glares out at them from a bony face subsumed by semi-fluid tendrils.
Art by by Sethmonster (https://www.deviantart.com/sethmonster & https://twitter.com/SethGra80453135)
Breathless are monsters I originally designed for my own setting as dwarves within it are seafarers that still seek treasure in the depths of the ocean. Far from the world they know, there are numerous complications and threats they can face and loss of oxygen might be the prominent. Those that do end up drowning in the depths have the chance of coming across something in the watery dark that brings them back for its own purposes. I had this idea a while back and kept the concept in my notes until I finally found an artist for it. The core ability of the breathless is its drowned aura where it forces others to suffer the circumstances of its painful death. While it has the effects of most aura where a creature that makes a save can't be affected by it again, its last grasp allows it to entrap targets that threaten them and expose them to it again - or cut off what they have remaining. If it has a creature grabbed with those tendrils, it also gets the chance to constrict its target in addition to any other grapple actions it wants to do to it. To simulate the anchor I envisioned it carrying, I gave its weapons the stats of a pickaxe, but also wanted to give it options should it wind up disarmed - though admittedly one not quite as powerful. With those abilities, I still didn't feel like I was leaning in deep enough to its eldritch origins, so I included voice of the deep. I gave this a wider range to help counteract his slow speed, as it gives him a way to potentially slow down squishier targets and then close in on them while they're confused. In regards to his defensive abilities, I picked piercing as his weakness as that's what's needed to stab through his suit and the oily mass to get at the remains of his actual body.
Pathfinder 1e:
In building the 2e version, there wasn't a whole lot to change. I included the sickened condition with the Drowned Aura and purposely gave it a lower save given that it's a fairly deadly aura. In that same regard, I also lessened the remaining rounds of air that Last Grasp steals away because you have far less rounds of air in 2e than you did in 1e. For the 2e build, I decided to swap out its slam for agile tentacles that gives it another way to grapple its targets and then Constrict them. I still wanted to give it a way to close gaps so it doesn't get kited to death by PCs, and since I made Voice of the Deep more incremental, I decided to give it Anchors Away, a two-action attack that lets it get into melee with its victims.
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
From Below: The heroes are upon a boat sailing across the ocean, possibly even their own boat, when a crewmen from below runs up on deck saying something has broken into the below decks. As the most proficient defenders on board, the heroes are called to arms and descend to find a breathless crashing through the boat - and water filling quickly through the hole it entered through. Even as water threatens to sink the boat and steal away their battlefield, the heroes must force back the terror from below. However, its defeat is only part of the solution to the growing problem of the boat sinking. Once they've managed to thwart it, they must find a way to save the ship or at least as many resources as they can if they are going to use the dinghies.
Riches to Rags: The heroes are hired as bodyguards for a former sailor that came back with amazing riches from a recent expedition. While the entire crew is flush with newfound wealth, many of them have burned through it, but that isn't the issue that they are approached with. The sailor tells them that somebody has been killing the other members of his crew, one by one. Their corpses have been found inland but many of them appear to have been drowned when there's not so much as a puddle in the area. He fears that something is haunting his crew and begs them to make sure whatever is chasing the rest of his crew doesn't get after him. If the heroes convince their employer to share his secrets, they learn that his crew had a diver that had brought up a great treasure for them. But on a second dive for more, something had gone wrong and they had lost him. Rather than chance whatever danger was down there, they had left and returned to port with their haul. Now, that crew member has returned as a breathless driven by a desire for revenge.
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Until next time, have a Monstrous Monday!
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