Drowning Faithful (CR 11)

Drowning Faithful CR 11

XP 12,800
CE haunt (50-foot radius)
Caster Level 11th
Notice Perception DC 23 (water runs from any exposed holy symbols)
hp 22; Trigger proximity; Reset special (sundown and midnight each day)

EFFECT

The haunt triggers when anyone passes within 50 feet of the lake while wearing or displaying a holy symbol, affecting any such targets with mass suffocation (Fortitude DC 23). A victim feels his lungs fill with water and then floats helplessly into the air a few feet above the ground, as if he had just plunged into an icy lake.

Targets begin drowning and floating in the air and cannot leave their space. A water breathing spell or the ability to breathe water does not protect a victim, but the haunt does not affect creatures that do not need to breathe. A successful DC 25 Knowledge (history) check recalls tales and how the source of the haunt goaded her victims to renounce their faith. A target who removes his own holy symbol is immediately freed from the haunt’s effect.

DESTRUCTION

Three clerics who renounced their faith nevertheless drowned in the lake. If their remains are recovered from the lake bottom and consecrated, the haunt is destroyed.