The man jerked and twitched, like a puppet pulled up by its strings, his mouth stretched into a rictus grin as he tumbled into a foppish bow. He reeled back up, revealing the grievous wounds that had been torn along his arms and belly. Blood seeped from them and as it trickled down, small tendrils began to writhe and lift upward. Soon, the tendrils grew as the blood poured heavier, rising into long tentacles lined with small hooks. They flickered about wildly before grabbing at the edge of the wounds and pulling free until a tentacles mass of blood splattered against the ground. As the body collapsed to the floor, its strings cut, the pool of blood trembled and rose into a whirling shape of hooked tentacles, fangs, and raptor-like claws. It snarled with malicious glee as it turned its fanged grin upon the horrified party.
Art by Sethmonster
The sanguine slime is an original monster that I originally designed for my personal setting where they serve as servants of the god of bloodshed and violence. As such, they are animate puddles of blood who seek to rip and tear hideous, bleeding wounds into their victims and then slither their way inside to puppeteer their body. As a servant of an evil god, the sanguine slime is an outsider but has slime-like properties, being made of blood, such as an immunity to critical hits. A slime employs a pair of raptor-like talons, based off of the first shape their god took, as well as a series of writhing tentacles equipped with barbs, which were inspired by the Humboldt squid. It uses its powerful talons and bloody rend to rip gaping wounds into its victims before latching onto them with its tentacles, which had to be modified so it could grapple Medium creatures. From there, it can maintain a grapple to inhabit veins. This is the sanguine slime's main bread and butter, the primary mechanic that inspired me to build this as a creature to begin with. Figuring out all the balancing of it was a bit difficult, but I think I got it figured all out. While characters grappled in this manner can't escape normally, they do get an automatic save to expel the sanguine slime from their body. Even when ensconced in such a way, the sanguine slime takes half the damage its victim takes, meaning it still isn't entirely safe. The slime can also launch barbed spikes that lodge themselves in targets and keep wounds open. The barbs make removing them dangerous, potentially inflicting bleed if characters fail their check to extract them. I keep the DC for the save and skill check low since the sanguine slime is able to launch four of them in a round as a full-round action.
I envision the sanguine slime moving similar to the aliens from Edge of Tomorrow/Live.Die.Repeat, its body in a constant whirl of violent motion, so I leaned more into its Dexterity rather than Strength. Since it still wants to grapple creatures, it picks up Agile Maneuvers, and increases its chances of inflicting bleed with Improved Critical (claws) and Bleeding Critical. It was a pretty standard feat selection for it and I ended up falling back on the tried and true classic of Improved Initiative when I started running out of ideas. Finally, to complete its ooze-like nature, the sanguine slime is both amorphous and has compression. I referenced the omox demons for some of this creature's abilities, another fiend with ooze-like powers.
Pathfinder 1e:
It doesn't seem to get mentioned in 1e, but slimes in 2e distinctly tend to lack vision, and I decided to follow that route with the sanguine slime. It instead uses an innate ability of Blood Sense, always able to determine the location of creatures with blood, whether they are live or dead. It carries the classic immunities of an ooze along with their lower AC with slightly higher HP. It can restore its health with Succor From Slaughter, incorporating blood from their victims into their own form. In the course of testing the creature, the players suggested giving the sanguine slime a more consistent way to inflict bleed, which led to the inclusion of its Thrashing Tendrils aura. This aura deals minor damage initially and has the typically moderate DC for its level to increase players' chance of success, and only inflicts bleed on a failure. Most of its other abilities match those of its 1e version and follow the same ideas as them. It has blood vendetta to unleash as a spell in hopes of inflicting bleed. It makes use of all this bleed with Predator's Advantage, an ability stolen from raptors in PF2e (which is in turn a reference to the original god that made them in my setting).
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
In the Blood: The heroes hear stories of murders of sorcerers of some note within an area and are soon asked to investigate – either by other families of sorcerers or possibly out of self-interest if they party has a sorcerer. If they look into the deaths, they quickly discover that all the victims have been found drained of their blood. However, there is little blood left at the scenes although it has been spirited away. As the heroes track these killings, possibly even tracing the descendants of renowned heroes in the area to see if they carry their magic, they come across the culprit – a sanguine slime that has been collecting the powerful blood of sorcerers. Stronger than usual and equipped with magic, the sanguine slime has no plan of stopping and is more than willing to slaughter the heroes if they stand in its way. Alternatively, it may fight until realizing it is outmatched and retreat to hunt more sorcerers to increase its power.
Bled Out: The heroes have been hired to wipe out a clan of feral vampires dwelling within a cave. However, when they arrive, they find that most of the vampires have been wiped out. Diving deeper, they discover that the vampires, in their savage glee, incidentally called forth a sanguine slime. It has been tearing through their clan, leading to one of them possibly seeking the help of the heroes. Whether they trust the vampire to aid them in the sanguine slime is up to them and how loyal the vampire remains is up to the GM.
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Have a monstrous Monday!
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