Consuming Creature (CR varies)[3pp]

Sometimes when a creature kills and consumes another more powerful creature it gains some of that creature’s power. Such creatures are now filled with the instinct to find more and more powerful opponents and consume their flesh in order to gain some of their abilities.

Creating a Consuming Creature

Consuming” is an acquired template that can be added to any corporeal creature with a bite or engulf attack that has killed and consumed another creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A consuming creature uses all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here.

Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature +2 plus 1 for every 2 ingestion points (see consume).

Alignment: Any non-good.

Armor Class: The base creature’s natural armor bonus increases by +2.

Hit Dice: For every 2 ingestion points (see consume) the consuming creature gains one additional racial Hit Die.

Special Attacks: A consuming creature gains the following special attacks.

Consume (Su)

Once per month, as a full round action, a consuming creature can devour the corpse of a creature that it killed and that had a CR no lower than the consuming creature’s CR -4. For every 5 HD the consumed creature has the consuming creature gains 1 ingestion point (minimum 1).

For each ingestion point the consuming creature gains one of the consumed creature’s extraordinary, supernatural or spell-like abilities (Except for spell casting, which is never gained). Unlike abilities gained via the consuming curse (see below), these abilities are not limited to universal monster abilities or class features. An ability gained via consumption uses the same statistics as the consumed creature, except for calculations dependent on specific ability scores or total Hit Dice (such as save DCs) in which case the ability uses the consuming creature’s appropriate statistic.

For example, a consuming creature that gains the energy drain ability of a consumed wight gets energy drain 1 level, but uses its own Charisma modifier for the save DC.

Consuming Curse (Su)

If a consuming creature makes a successful bite attack or successfully engulfs a creature, the victim must make a successful Will, or the victim becomes cursed with the consuming curse.

Consuming Curse: Bite or engulf—injury, save Will negates, onset immediate; frequency 1/day; effect cursed creature loses one of its universal monster abilities or class features that is not spell casting (determine randomly). The consuming creature that inflicted the curse gains the lost ability (see consume for details on consumed abilities).

The consuming creature keeps any abilities gained via the consuming curse until the cursed creature is killed or destroyed. The consuming creature must be killed or destroyed before the curse can be removed. The save DC for the consuming curse is Charisma-based.

In addition to gaining a cursed creature’s abilities, the consuming creature automatically succeeds on all saves gains the evasion ability and stalwart feat vs. the cursed creature’s remaining abilities, spells, and spell-like abilities. Physical attacks, effects without saving throws, and magical items still affect the consuming creatures normally.

Quicken Special Attack (Ex)

A consuming creature can quicken any one extraordinary or supernatural attack (Expect its consume special attack) once per round. A quickened special attack is a swift action. It can perform another action, even using another special attack, in the same round as it activates a quickened special attack. A special attack whose activation time is more than 1 round or 1 full-round action cannot be quickened.

Abilities: Str +4, Con +4, Cha +4.

Feats: A devouring creature with spell-like abilities or that gains spell-like abilities gains Quicken Spell-Like Ability as a bonus feat. Whenever it gains an ingestion point it can change the quickened spell-like ability selected by this feat.

Special Qualities: A consuming creature gains the following.

Consumption Bonus (Su)

A consuming creature gains a circumstance bonus equal to half its ingestion point total to its BAB, saving throws, and skill checks.

Making a Consuming Creature

The consuming creature template offers nearly unlimited opportunity to give a monster the abilities of any other one. Because of this, a consuming creature needs more work than usual to prepare. The template naturally lends itself to fly out the monster’s history and its new role as a consuming creature. The GM must decide what creature(s) the consuming creature has eaten and what abilities it has gained. As usual for templates with so many possible options, the GM may need to adjust the final creature’s challenge rating so that the final monster is appropriate for its CR.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Advanced Bestiary, Copyright 2014, Green Ronin Publishing, LLC; Author Jeff Hersh, Developer Owen K.C. Stephens

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