The ranger pitched herself to the side as the bolt of acid hit where she had been standing moments before, splashing and searing her back. Pushing through the pain, she took cover behind the rock before sighting down the range. Nestled within a shallow valley was a lumbering insect, its abdomen grotesquely bulbous and raised into the air to fire the erupting orbs of acid. Scattered elsewhere across the battlefield leading up to the bile spewer were her teammates, hiding behind their own rocky outcroppings. She shared a nod with the barbarian, who had managed to get the closest to the oversized insect, before standing and unleashing a pair of arrows at the creature. As they streaked through the air and the creature’s attention jumped back towards, the barbarian erupted from behind his cover and raced alongside the missiles. He leapt into the air, lifting his axe over his head as he gave a savage roar.
I’m back on the building of bugs with this week’s bile spewer though I’ve named it the terminid spewer to keep it in line with the terminid charger and avoid it getting confused with other creatures. While it primarily serves as artillery, the spewer at least loosely follows the road map of a sniper. Its primary mode of attack is its bile blast, which has a high attack bonus and moderate damage, but can be modified with Artillery Stance. This stance immobilizes the spewer and leaves if off-guard, but doubles the range of its blast and changes the damage to high damage. It does also happen to add the volley and scatter traits, making this an ability that it can really bombard enemies with if they stay clumped together. Alternatively, if it has the actions available, the spewer can launch a Bile Bombardment. This takes three actions, four if you count the action it has to spend to get into its stance, but a spewer can instead save the actions and fire all at once. This feature is inspired by the Rolling Thunder effect of the bison, but rather than increasing damage, this concentrated firing increases the DC and area of the effect. Normally, this uses a high DC, but if enough spewers are working together, they can increase it to an extreme DC and it has that limited use area damage, which can really put the hurt on some enemies.
However, both of these effects afflict the spewer with a limit on its range – Artillery Stance has that volley 30 feet, which means that it takes a -2 on its attacks under 30 feet and Bile Bombardment flat out can’t be used within 30 feet. So when enemies close, that spewer has decent melee options, but also has its Acid Stream. When I looked at its effects, it appeared to be a line but my test subjects referred to it as a cone so I gave it an optional area effect. It uses unlimited use area damage, as it is the effect that the spewer takes its name from, with a high DC, which makes it a pretty basic breath weapon-type ability. If that isn’t enough and the heroes manage to slay the spewer, it has one final shot at vengeance – its Bile Burst. This is a death throes type effect seen on a number of creatures and since abilities don’t much more ‘limited-use’ than this, it has that higher damage but only a moderate DC, which is based on other death throes effects that I looked into. There is one passive effect that I haven’t discussed yet and that is its Adhesive Acid. Apparently, acid in Helldivers does a bit of damage ticks while also slowing the affected victims. This applies when a spewer critically hits with a bile blast or when a creature critically fails their save against one of its acid effect. This triggers that persistent acid damage and a penalty to Speed until they’re able to shake off the damage.
Pathfinder 2e:
The hard part of building a ranged creature in Pathfinder 1e is having to properly build out its ranged attack though the spewer and its bile blast were a bit easier. However, it lost out on its bile bombardment since it is something tied into the multi-action system of PF2e that would be difficult to translate over. It's a pretty basic design otherwise as the rest of it translated over fairly easy with the likes of Bile Burst becoming death throes, and many of the others simply having the same name. The unique aspect of the spewer, its feats, have a general focus on ranged combat with the likes of Deadly Aim, Far Shot, and Point-Blank Shot.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue’s D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Acidic Artillery: Having a squad of bile spewers suddenly raining down a bile bombardment upon the party from afar is a fantastic way to introduce them. The party may simply be traveling and have wandered too close to their nest, prompting them to emerge and open fire. The heroes must close on the bile spewers, potentially using cover and tactics to get to them their acidic adversaries, or else move out of their range as the spewers won't leave the nest they're protecting.
Bombard and Batter: The party comes up against a pair of a terminid spewer and charger that fight in tandem. While the spewer launches long-ranged attacks against the heroes, the charger uses its ability to launch enemies around the battlefield, keeping them from getting too close to the spewer.
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