The wizard grimaced and swatted at the stinging insects plaguing her as she tried to keep her incantations straight. Her gaze was focused on the giant bronze-shelled insect that harassed her companions. Resembling a giant wasp but with pincer-like claws, it was surrounded by more of the swarm, a progeny that saw it as mother and home. The fighter and rogue suffered the strings to strike at the nimble beast, but with a word from the caster, they darted away from it – seconds before the small red bead exploded beneath the insect. As the flames cleared, the beast and its swarm were gone, apparently consumed by the fire. A sigh of relief escaped the wizard only for the hairs to raise on the back of her neck as a buzzing drone filled her ears and a barely perceptible, shimmering shape closed in on her from the side.
Insect monsters are cool and it’s been a little while since I did a creature from Dauntless, so I decided to combine those together and put together the kharabak for this marvelous Monster Monday. A darting danger to the derring-doers of Dauntless, the kharabak is surprisingly a terra behemoth, which lends to its electricity weakness. It is otherwise largely designed as a skirmisher – its got a high AC but only low Hit Points and comes swinging in with a high bonus. Its Strikes mostly deal low damage due to ranged capabilities or the agile trait and other power though it does come with a high damage sting.
While the kharabak resembles a wasp, its sting lacks any venom. Instead, its claws can inflict the Wounded status, which causes the bearer to take more damage in Dauntless. Obviously, I can’t call it wounded in Pathfinder, but I still worked this in through its Tear Open action, which functions akin to the Rend action, requiring two successful consecutive Strikes. Then rather than dealing extra damage, it inflicts the target with a weakness that is gonna be more useful if the kharabak has allies – or has its Summon the Swarm active. But before we talk about that, I want to discuss the Scything Claws ability. This is a very simple action, basically resembling a Flurry of Blows with the way it suffers from MAP and has the flourish trait, but it being a single action potentially means that the kharabak can Scything Claws, follow it up with Tear Open, and then still have an action to Fly and stay aloft as flying creatures must. Another action that helps it out in this regard though is Slicing Flight, based on zigzagging flight pattern it will sometimes do while swiping with its claws. This has both of its attacks at the same MAP but means that each of them must target a different enemy while also letting it fly, giving it some excellent action compression.
From among the kharabak’s more sensational abilities is the aforementioned Summon the Swarm. These swarms in Dauntless are localized to its thorax, but that’s harder to represent, which led to me setting it as a 15-foot emanation that it has to activate. It deals below unlimited use area damage at a moderate save DC and causes creatures that fail to take persistent piercing damage, representing the swarm status from Dauntless. This status is why it applies the fatigued condition as the swarm status interrupts sprinting and similar actions. Once the kharabak’s taken enough hits, it has Unnatural Camouflage that allows it to become invisible. I was initially wary about the design of this ability before I remembered that the minute-long invisibility is 4th-rank, available at 7th-level – and this is an 11th-level creature. It makes it substantially more dangerous but as knocking the kharabak down reveals it in Dauntless, it also loses its Unnatural Camouflage when it gets hit with a critical success.
As for the gear, I’ve been sitting on the concept of a hive bomb for a while, inspired by the crazy, outdated theory of spontaneous generation. It’s also just a super fun idea to throw beehives at people. But this is the first time I’ve made a bomb like this, so let me know how I did – or if I accidentally made an already pre-existing bomb. There’s so many of them to keep track of at this point.
Pathfinder 2e:
While the Pathfinder Second Edition version is limited to using its Unnatural Camouflage when its at half health or lower, since it only does this when it rages, I simply gave the 1e kharabak vanish. This is a much shorter duration that doesn’t have the perma-invisibility effect, but invisibility feels much stronger in 1e, and is why I was hesitant there. I changed its aether blades back to an ability mostly because it’s a hassle to make up ranged attacks in 1e though I liked the idea of keeping with it able to unleash them in a flurry, since it has two claws. This lets it unleash two non-overlapping lines with some decent area damage. Its summon the swarm is a little bit wider, given the higher base speeds of 1e, but deals less damage as it was easier to define the swarm that sticks to players as a poison, dealing Constitution for the damage it deals and Dexterity for the way it interferes with certain actions. I mentioned rend in the design of the 2e kharabak in relation to Tear Open and in this version, it ends up replacing it. Finally, it has Flyby Attack and Mobility for some of its skirmishing capabilities or Hover for when it just wants to stay in place.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue’s D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
It can be a little difficult defining encounter hooks for creatures from Dauntless where their world is even stranger than the one in Monster Hunter. At least in MH, they live in a setting where the world is all in one piece. But Dauntless, the world is shattered floating islands, which makes it a little harder to put together options for especially when lore is as scant as it is in Dauntless. The kharabak is an evasive enemy that can make it difficult for enemies to even face it head-on and likely works best at a random encounter where it doesn’t really have goals to work towards. The idea of it being tamed by a creature to be used as a minion also works and perhaps, it could even be ridden in combat by a creature that has some sense of kinship with it, such as a thriae.
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Have a monstrous Monday!
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