The wizard fumbled down the hall as it shifted and buckled about her, the walls shivering and convulsing as she tried to keep up with her companions. She bounced off a wall and suddenly found her speed increasing only to realizing that the floor was tilting. With a grunt, she barreled into the armored back of the ranger and then found herself airborne to splatter into the mud outside the inn. As she and her allies righted themselves, the tavern rose from the dripping muck and earth, supporting itself upon limbs formed from the adjacent trees. Branches crashed through windows, twining through the structure as its entrance morphed into a fang-filled maw. The warm light that had once suffused its interiors began to flicker out until only two remained as a pair of enraged, glowing eyes that stared down at the heroes with hunger and rage.
The basis of this creature, and the art I used for it, is from the Hostile Hostel//Creeping Inn card from the latest set of Magic the Gathering. It was suggested to me by my brother, but as I was working out the concept for this creature, it ended up taking on a very different form than what was suggested by the card, leading me to make it into a distinct and original creature that draws inspiration from the Creeping Inn. I wanted to lean into some eldritch ideas with it and liked the idea of it being a mimic that grew beyond regular proportions after being fueled by contact with some elder mythos power, which is where the elder in its name comes from. This eldritch power has left the elder mimic with some potent defenses and a high pool of hp, but its base damage is somewhat lackluster to balance out its tankiness. Outside of its spells, I did want to give it a ranged option and rock throwing seemed both fun and thematic, but given its dismal Dexterity, I tried to raise its bonus to hit somewhat with Weapon Focus. Even so, it will probably want to target characters that are less protected than most. Speaking of its spells, most are designed to hamper foes or make its victims easier prey with modify memory specifically intended for the latter. For its spells especially, I really leaned into the eldritch theme I had going for it.
Outside of its abilities to become a building and staff itself, one of the mimics main abilities is its swallow whole, which differs from others as it uses its eldritch energy to trap its victim within extradimensional spaces inside itself that they have to escape before they can escape it. I thought this was a fun way to do this sort of ability, adding a maze effect to it, and I hope that all the writing for it makes sense. I think I caught everything important that I need to include for it, but there's a lot to the basic swallow whole ability, so if you think I missed something, let me know! Its final ability of note is its insidious drain souls, hopefully to weaken victims before they even realize something is amiss with it. I thought about trying to word this ability in the way to have the players not realize what was happening, but it was tough to do while keeping balanced, so I went with what I wrote and maybe there's still a chance that the PCs won't realize what caused their drain.
Pathfinder 1e:
When it came to designing the 2e elder mimic, the biggest change were its spells as I had to figure out what new ones to include to capture the feel of the ones that I really liked. Since it can't cast most of its spells 3/day now, I included some cantrips to go along with it and am kind of particularly happy with haunting hymn because I had been considering giving it some sort of ability to briefly unleash the souls captured within it as a damaging ability. While a little weak, it fits in nicely with that idea. The other big change was giving the elder mimic a reaction in the form of Glimpse Horrors Unknown, which I decided was more fun than just giving it an immunity to mental effects. This allows the elder mimic to share the eldritch sights it has seen or come in contact with somebody trying to mentally influence it and felt like a classic idea for the concept.
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Inn Trouble: The heroes are highly accomplished adventurers who are not unused to receiving gifts and the sort from others that have heard of them or been inadvertently helped by them. So it isn’t unusual when they receive a letter that not only offers them a place to stay but is willing to pay them to spend a few nights there, hoping to draw acclaim to their small inn by having great heroes stay there. The inn itself is a small and quaint structure very much off the beaten path, but the staff are friendly enough and welcome the heroes with open arms even if the food is a bit plain. However, the heroes are plagued by nightmares that night and some are likely to feeling up worse for the wear as they have just spent the night in an elder mimic that intends to gorge itself upon their souls unless they can realize what’s happening before it’s too late.
Church and Hate: After a long adversarial relationship with a cult dedicated to one of the great old ones, the heroes have tracked them down to an isolated fishing village built around a church. As soon as the heroes set foot in town, they are beset by their long-time foes and must fight through the town to the church. However, they don’t find anybody at the church waiting for them – instead, the church itself is an elder mimic and a cleric of a great old one that prepares to fight the heroes with the last of its parishioners.
Here are the cards that sparked the idea for this creature!
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Have a monstrous Monday!