The spear of jagged crystal shattered inches from the head of the barbarian, his gaze flashed towards the source only to find his attacker already gone. His gaze flashed around the battlefield only for him to cry out in pain as a spear pierced into his back. He whirled on his attacker, who nimbly ducked under the blow. The strange creature’s skin was mottled and shifting hues, but more bizarre than that was its physiology. It was as though two men had been fused together, connected back-to-back as they whirled about the field, disappearing only to reappear elsewhere. Two sets of arms plucked new crystal-made spears from thin air as they regarded the party recovering from the ambush. Before it could launch into the fray once again, the ranger fired a swift shot in his direction. As the arrow soared through the air, the spear lodged in the barbarian thrummed and glimmered and suddenly the brawny warrior was in the place of the bizarre creature and shouting as the arrow bit into his flesh.
Finishing out the year is a monster that I originally developed alongside my brother. This monster is inspired by Janus, a Roman god of transitions, doorways, and the like and reimagined as a race of interdimensional bounty hunters. They live between the planes, dwelling in a sort of limbo and leaving when tasked to hunt down interlopers. These efforts are at least a little facilitated by their extreme Survival and their Teleportation Sense, a unique sense that allows them to track creatures between dimensions or even teleportation effects. Once they've found their quarry, they're pretty capable combatants - their claws are high attack with low damage while their spears are moderate attack with moderate damage - but each of these Strikes come with additional effects. It can use it claws to Grab a creature while its spears Impale those struck by it, leaving the spear imbedded in their flesh. This serves as a sort of tuning fork for the jannite, making it more susceptible to teleportation effects and also letting the jannite more easily chase it down.
Having a creature Impaled makes it much easier for the jannite to use Dimensional Drag to steal its target away from its companions as its translocate, and the rest of its spells, only use a moderate DC. The jannite can also forcibly separate interlopers from its target with Rift Rend, which functions akin to a Rend but instead of dealing additional damage, it allows the jannite to teleport a creature with a high DC Will save. To help it pull off this action, it has Twinned Strikes, which might be a tiny bit overtuned, but is intended to play off of its dual-faced nature. This uses the flourish trait so that it can't overuse this ability and instead try to get off two claw Strikes for Rift Rend when its actions are a little hampered. Finally, the jannite reaches a bit into the past of Pathfinder First Edition with Hostile Juxtaposition, its final ability to forcibly move creatures and coming in at a high DC. This is a very powerful effect that both saves the jannite and potentially hurts the party and the jannite, again playing into its two-headed nature, has the chance of doing it twice per round thanks to its Foresight, which is based on the rogue's Preparation. However, this has a relatively short range and also specifically requires a creature to be Impaled, which was specifically intended to be something that heroes could remove without issue. In the Monster Mash, the players would even remove spears from each other to cut off the jannite's ability to use this effect. With all the teleportation in the jannite's design, it uses Teleportation Tactics, taking advantage of its ability to attack from any angle to throw enemies off-guard. Speaking of which, the jannite's two-faced nature grants it All-Around Vision, making it impossible to flank the creature and get if off-guard from that effect.
Pathfinder 2e:
My brother and I originally designed the jannite for Pathfinder First Edition but I lost our first take on it so I had to rework it a little bit. Most of what you see in its design is trying to recreate its capabilities from Pathfinder Second Edition, but given how PF1e functions and the bizarre physiology of the jannite, its attacks are a little weird and come in four different combination - claw and spears, all spears, all claws, or thrown spears. Manifest spear becomes a swift action to facilitate this slightly, letting it create a spear and still get off a full attack. Given some of the writing and the like in PF1e, it was much easier to have impale effect spells of the teleportation subschool, which led to me having rift rend recreate the effects of jester's jaunt. This might seem less effective than the PF2e version, but movement is much more taxing in PF1e so even though it has to set them somewhere safe, this is still very effective. It may seem as though the jannite lost out on its teleportation tactics, but that actually comes in through the jannite's feats. Dimensional Dervish lets the jannite split up the distance of its dimension door to make a full attack while Dimensional Savant means that it can flank from the spaces that it teleports into, even with itself. It takes this as an option rather than having something that makes enemies flat-footed as that is a far more powerful effect in PF1e.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Hunt Across Dimensions: This is a pretty standard way to encounter the jannite. This occurs after the heroes have gone on their own dimension-hopping adventure and likely managed to upset some important figures. Whoever they have managed to piss off has hired a jannite or a few to hunt them down. These jannites are capable hunters who know to wait for their prey to tire themselves out and may take advantage of their numbers and teleportation powers, and confusion to make it difficult to determine just how many of them there are.
Flashpoint Ferryman: The heroes must make it across dimensions, but lack a means of doing so with ease. They end up finding a way by making contact with a jannite living on the Material Plane who is in self-imposed exile after failing to hunt its targets. While willing to help them, the jannite is only willing to do so if they help it complete its final hunt. This features less of an encounter with the jannite though it might attack intruders until they prove themselves, which sparks the suggestion of helping with its hunt.
Once tasked with taking a target, this teleporting terminator tears through treacherous territories, teeming terrains, and terrifying turfs, tracking the team till they tire and then taking them to task.
I'd appreciate it if you check out the video, the last one of 2024! If you're interested in joining the discussion on what creatures/builds I'm working on or just discussing your own homebrew works, check out our Discord! If you want to get some teasers or help us get to our yet unlisted milestones for extra content, check out the Twitter.
Have a monstrous Monday!
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