Monster Monday - Shrowd

Within the impenetrable darkness, the band of adventurers pressed together. The fighter carried his shield to protect his companions while the rogue readied her paired daggers. Low prayers emerged from the cleric, and the wizard calmly whispered the strategy to her trusted companions. Two pairs of pinkish eyes glowered in the dark, circling as they sought a chink in the defenses of the party. Suddenly, they came bounding forward in perfect tandem, a pair of towering creatures that resembled crows pulled into a horrid form. As they drew close, one was clearly physical while the other almost seemed to be made of the very darkness it attacked from. Just before they could land upon the adventurers, the cleric finished his prayer and light like that of a sun suddenly flared up overhead, leaving the shrowds shrieking in agony.

Shrowd from Dauntless

This callous corvid keeps conceivable conquerors confounded with crepuscular clones and cataclysms that can collapse characters into corpses if they aren't careful.

It's been a minute since I made one of the denizens of Dauntless, but the shrowd was a request that I was happy to answer, as you can see over on the video for it!

This towering terror resembles a crow that controls darkness and shadows. Its ability to manipulate such forces led to me making it a beast but I also used the shadow trait. Overall, I built the shrowd as a skirmisher though its design might be a little different than usual. It comes with a high Armor Class and a low pool of Hit Points. Typically, umbral behemoths such as the shrowd are susceptible to radiant damage. I have built radiant behemoths before, but I represented their damage through a mix of electricity and fire, which didn't feel right as a weakness for the shrowd. I instead settled on giving it Light Blindness, letting players potentially crippled the shrowd and neuter its high attack bonus by leaving it dazzled.

For its slightly more potent powers but starting simple, the shrowd has Crepuscular Crash. While featuring a substantial Speed, the skirmishing shrowd doesn't feature a large array of movement abilities with this being a substantial contribution to that role as a creature. However, this is used to chase after fleeing prey and is based off of the shrowd's slam from the air. Normally, this deals damage, but I decided against that this time to make something a little different as damage is by no means lacking in its kit. Case in point, the shrowd has Cast Corruption to hurl bolts of vile darkness that deal unlimited use area damage with a high DC. In-game, these can afflict a Corruption status which deals damage overtime, so the failure effect causes afflicted creatures to take persistent void damage. Then, while it might not seem like it at first glance, Shadow's Flight is its next easiest ability to cover. This does play into its skirmishing a bit as it creates a dark duplicate of the shrowd that soars through others to deal limited use area damage at a high DC. The limitation of affecting only a single creature per flight is based off of the shrike-like swoop that it has its shadow perform.

In addition to these more specialized abilities, the shrowd also features darkness as an 8th-rank spell with a high DC. This means that its able to create areas of darkness that limits the vision of creatures unless they possess greater darkvision - like the shrowd itself. Getting back into its abilities proper, Doom Sphere is up next. With this, the shrowd creates a sphere that features a low Armor Class, a decent Hardness, and Hit Points on par with the extreme damage of a shrowd's Strike. This sphere gathers in power over the course of three rounds before detonating in an immense area. In Dauntless, this would leave those caught by it at exactly 1 Hit Point, which felt a little off when working it into Pathfinder. What I did instead was have it deal limited use area damage at an extreme DC, but then also inflict doomed. If a character critically fails, they're even left doomed 3, which means in the case of most characters, if they ever get to dying, they are immediately slain. Just like how taking a hit while at 1 HP will also leave you downed. A lot of thought went into representing the Doom Sphere, but it isn't quite as complex as the final ability in the shrowd's arsenal, its Shadow Clone. This totally originally named ability covers the shrowd's ability to create a foul facsimile of itself that it can sic on others. I had to rework this a few times to get it where I was fine with it. It has less Hit Points than the Doom Sphere but otherwise superior defenses and is limited in the abilities it can use. Aside from Strikes, it really only has access to Crepuscular Crash, Cast Corruption, and the ability to Cast a Spell for darkness. Nevertheless, this makes for a fearsome foe that can become a full flock if there's more than one in the fight.

PF2e Shrowd

Blue's D&D Shrowd

ENCOUNTER HOOKS

Foul Fowl: Shrowd are best run as night encounters or underground - places or times where they don't have a chance of triggering their Light Blindness. This could make them terrifyingly lethal night ambushers to drop on your party, which I actually almost want to caution against, but it could be fun to have one starting to stalk the party and build up paranoia over a few nights as they catch glimpses of it at night or see its eyes glowing in the dark. If they continue to behave as normal, the shrowd could be sprung upon them as a reminder to be wary of the dark but if they start preparing for a potential encounter at night, the shrowd might pull back in search of easier prey.

Shadow Boxing: A particularly cunning shrowd make unleash its clone upon players as it hides just out of sight. Furthering this concept, it may set up a Doom Sphere as well, letting it gather in power as the heroes busy themselves with simple simulacrums unless they search out the creeping corvid.

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Have a monstrous Monday!