Soft snarls rolled between rows of fangs as the khezu prowled across the ceiling of the damp cavern, breathing in deep of the new scents carried on the stale air. Below, partially submerged in muck and filth, the rogue pressed her wizened hand to the barbarian’s mouth, carefully studying the blind beast that stalked overhead. With painstaking slowness, she drew a simple but sturdy blade from its sheath but as metal edge whispered from leather, the serpent neck of the winged creature snapped backwards. Its drooling mouth opened wide and an ear-splitting shriek filled the enclosed cavern as the battle began.
This came from a request over on Twitter and while it isn't my favorite creature in its family, I had no problem taking a crack at the khezu from Monster Hunter! The key features of the khezu that I am looking to emulate with this design were its blindness, ability to wield electricity as a weapon, and at least a little bit of its creepiness. To start with that concept, I felt that it was fair to label the khezu as an aberration rather than a magical beast, animal, or dragon. From the top, we start with blindsight and the scent ability to cover its power to detect and zero in on foes within its territory. Perhaps blindsight is too much and for those that think it is, considering replacing it with blindsense and then switching its Horrific Gorging feat for Blind-Fight. Defensively, its hp is 3 points lower than the average and while he is vulnerable to the most common damage type in the game, as per Monster Hunter, he is completely immune to the second most populous damage type. Naturally, lacking eyes, the khezu is also immune to visual effects. The khezu is able to release radial shocks in a short distance around it, which I decided to reflect with the jolt ability, making it more of a defensive power.
The khezu is often found crawling across the ceilings of caverns, so naturally I had to give it a climb speed as well as expert climber, shamelessly stolen from the giant gecko. While a highly capable climber, the khezu is a clumsy flier. But since it already takes a penalty from Large, I decided to stick it with poor maneuverability mostly so that the skill wasn't just a negative. The bite is obviously the khezu's main form of attack, but in my research, there were many instances where the khezu would turn and smack a foe with its tail and so I included that as well, which did let me adjust the damage slightly. The inclusion of a grab ability comes more from a move that khezu gained in Monster Hunter Rise where it will hang from the ceiling, grab somebody, and then just shake them about in its jaws. To reflect that shaking, I included the constrict ability. Discharge electricity is obviously meant to resemble both its conical electricity attack as well as the far-reaching aura electricity attack but both implant and swallow whole are based less on game mechanics and more on lore and observed information.
The former came from when I was conducting research on the khezu and discovered that it implants its young in others, like parasitic wasps or other creatures. This is another reason that I included the grab ability with its bite so that the khezu can potentially pin its targets to implant them with its young. I was pondering exactly how to implement and briefly considered the idea of a disease before I stumbled on the gloomwing and found that it had a similar idea. The inclusion of swallow whole, and Horrific Gorging, comes from its cinematic scene in Rise where it slurps down a smaller monster. Finally, its ability to extend its neck is covered with its Lunge feat.
Pathfinder 1e:
The reason why I posted this late today is entirely this guy's fault. For some reason, the Word document that I have all my 2e monsters on freaked out this morning when I went to pull the khezu from it and screwed up all my formatting. I fixed what I could, but things were a mess and saving it as a PDF, from which I grab the individual pages, only screwed it up further. The reason why there is a huge gap at the bottom of the page is that even when everything fit on the page in the Word document, it didn't when I converted it to the PDF. So I had to really squish stuff down to make it fit on the PDF and then it wasn't taking up as much room. I have no idea what's going on with it.
Anyway, that's just me venting. On to the important stuff! Uncanny Climber replaces expert climber just as it did for the PF2e giant gecko, and Jolt gets a bit of a downgrade, being shifted to a reaction. However, it no longer takes an action to activate in the first place. So, win some, lose some. Rather than stick with constrict, since the wringing of a creature it has grabbed in its jaws ends with them being tossed aside, I blatantly borrowed Fling from the tyrannosaurus, which isn't the first time if memory serves correctly. Meanwhile, with the loss of the Lunge feat, I had to work in Ghastly Extension. I wanted to play in how startling it is, get a little bit of the creep factor as I mentioned, I decided to use the idea that it startles people the first time they see it, leaving them flat-footed. For the 2e version of the khezu, I did settle on having its Khezu Whelps be a disease this time around. While it can attempt to restrain a creature as before to Implant, I landed on another method with Stunning Shocks. This also plays into how the khezu functions in game where it will paralyze hunters with its shocks. This ability wasn't part of my original design but was something I added following a test of the creature - which also led me to slightly buff its AC.
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Cart Blanche: The heroes are hired by a merchant who detailed his latest foray through a shortcut resulted in him and his caravan being attacked. He describes a bizarre beast, which savvy heroes may be able to identify as a khezu, that slaughtered his usual crew and horses. He was knocked unconscious, but woke up with only a single bite wound. While feeling under the weather, he is eager to employ a band of heroes to fetch his goods so that he can resume business. However, before he can go into deeper detail, he topples over and khezu whelps burst from his corpse. These are Small khezu that are CR/Level 3 and lack the ability to implant young, but immediately seek to make a meal of the heroes as well. Once the heroes have slain them, they have the option of searching for the now technically unowned merchant carts, possibly earning them a nice windfall. Naturally, the khezu lairs near the trapped carts and attacks any prey that wonder close to them.
If you're interested in joining the discussion on what creatures I'm working on or just discussing your own homebrew works, check out our Discord! If you want to get some teasers, help us get to our yet unlisted milestones for extra content, or make a request like the one that prompted this monster check out the Twitter!
Have a monstrous Monday!
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