Bestiary Horrid Animals

Today's focus Horrid animals; below you find an adjustment to make your own horrid animals for your players to face, two example horrid animals along with an advanced animal companion option.

Horrid Animals were originally created by the Gatekeepers to be living war machines against Xoriat planar invaders. They now can be found in the wilds of Droam, the Shadow Marches, the Demon Wastes, and the Eldeen Reaches.

Horrid animals tend to be partially scaled versions of their counterparts or plated while having spike-like growths on either varieties. They are overly aggressive and stubborn.

This adjustment is applied to creatures with the animal trait, usually the giant, dire or megafauna versions but almost never a bug. These are guidelines and might need to be fine tuned for your new creature.

• Increase the creature’s level by 1.

• Increase creature’s AC by 2, Fort Save by 2, and Athletics modifier by 2

• Add to Saves, +1 against Make an Impression, Request, Coerce, Command an Animal or similar checks.

• The creature gains Immunity acid.

• The creature’s Melee Strike gains extra acid damage based on its Starting level using the chart below. If the creature has more than one Melee Strike, choose one that seems like a primary attack (usually a jaws or claws based Strike).

Starting Level	Acid Damage
1 or less	1d6
2-4	1d8
5-15	2d8
16-19	2d8 and 1d6 persistent
20+	3d6 and 2d6 persistent

HORRID RAT       CREATURE 0

| N | SMALL | ANIMAL |

Perception +5; low-light vision, scent (imprecise) 30 feet

Skills Acrobatics +5, Athletics +4 (+6  to Climb or Swim), Stealth +5

Str +1, Dex +3, Con +2, Int –4, Wis +1, Cha –3

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AC 17; Fort +8, Ref +7, Will +3; +1 against Make an Impression, Request, Coerce, Command an Animal or similar checks.

HP 10; Immunity acid

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Speed 30 feet, climb 10 feet

Melee [one-action] jaws +7 (agile, finesse), Damage 1d6+1 piercing plus 1d6 acid plus filth fever

Filth Fever (disease) The sickened and unconscious conditions from filth fever doesn't improve on their own until the disease is cured. Saving Throw DC 14 Fortitude; Stage 1 carrier with no ill effect (1d4 hours), Stage 2 sickened 1 (1 day), Stage 3 sickened 1 and slowed 1 (1 day), Stage 4 unconscious (1 day), Stage 5 dead

Horrid Rat

HORRID GORILLA CREATURE 4

| N | LARGE | ANIMAL |

Perception +8; low-light vision, scent (imprecise) 30 feet

Skills Acrobatics +9, Athletics +13, Stealth +7

Str +4, Dex +2, Con +3, Int –4, Wis +1, Cha –2

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AC 21; Fort +14, Ref +9, Will +6; +1 against Make an Impression, Request, Coerce, Command an Animal or similar checks.

HP 45; Immunity acid

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Speed 30 feet, climb 30 feet

Melee [one-action] fist +11 (agile, reach 10 feet), Damage 2d6+4 bludgeoning

Melee [one-action] jaws +11 (reach 5 feet), Damage 1d8+4 piercing plus 1d8 acid Frightening Display [two-actions] (auditory, emotion, fear, mental) The horrid gorilla beats its chest in a terrifying display. Creatures within 30 feet must attempt a DC 22 Will save. While a creature is frightened by this ability, it is flat-footed to the horrid gorilla.

Critical Success No effect and temporarily immune for 1 minute. 

Success The creature is unaffected.

Failure The creature is frightened 1.

Critical Failure The creature is frightened 2.

Horrid Gorilla

ADVANCED ANIMAL COMPANION OPTION

Horrid

| Rare |

This option meant for those who are part of or have association with the militant druid order of The Gatekeepers or at least are from the regions (Droam, the Shadow Marches, the Demon Wastes, and the Eldeen Reaches) that you can usually find this dangerous creatures.

If you select a feat that allows you to pick nimble or savage animal companion you instead can pick Horrid representing your Horrid animal growing fully into their dangerous state.

A horrid companion increases their Constitution modifier to 2, and their Strength, Wisdom, Dexterity modifiers by 1. Their unarmed strikes do 3 addition damage of acid. The horrid companion gains Resistance 5 acid. Increase their proficiency in Athletics and unarmed defense to expert. They also learn the advance maneuver for their type and their attacks count as being magical for the purpose of ignoring resistances.

Once again a special thanks to the Discords that I share these in and serve as a spring board for my ideas but an extra special thanks to Quinn Murphy on this one.

Can PF2's Beastkin be Eberron's Shifters

 So something different today, this is not a conversion. This is an examination of PF2’s versatile heritage Beastkin found in Lost Omens Ancestry Guide or here. Simple put, can we use them to be shifters in your PF2 Eberron game? (If you looking for my current Shifter conversion you can find it here.) Off the bat I am going to say…maybe?

Do they potentially have the same general feel? Sort of. Paizo’s specific chosen direction I think pulls away from Eberron’s shifters more than moves toward them. If you decide to use them I think you have to ask yourself some questions on how you add them into your Eberron campaign.

(Just want to remind the reader I mostly speak from a 3.5 Eberron perspective.)

Now I believe in the Eberron ‘rule’ of “If it is in DnD it is in Eberron.” though of course replace DnD with PF but that doesn’t mean we can’t put restrictions on it or modify it.

Rarity and Versatile; are you going to follow these parts of the heritage? In Eberron Rare seems pretty high and most likely be treated as uncommon or common. Versatile certainly doesn’t fit as they are established as having ancestors but simple enough to restrict it to humans like half or half orcs but you can easily leave it open to give your Eberron more of a twist. Though some corners of the lore mention Orc shifter one offs.

Ancestry Feats; do you allow all the Beastkin feats? Do you allow all the human feats or whatever ancestry you allow? Beastkin is rather ‘thin’ in feats but that is the same for many versatile heritages as they also have their ancestry to tap into for these. Higher level feats reflect what the Weretouched Master unlocked (ECS pg 85). Some feats seem out of place to a Shifter like Fey Influence granting fey magic and odd extras to the form or Critter Shape that allows you to take on a small or cub animal like form. Of course cutting out feats makes that list smaller so you have to weigh everything for yourself.

Change Shape/Animal Selection; this is where a lot of things break down for trying to use Beastkin as shifters. What I think the more minor thing is first is that hybrid form is more default and either form can be held indefinitely while the shift is certainly meant to be temporary and akin to raging. Bigger thing is they very much want you to pick a specific animal instead of having wider themes (including insects) and they all give a bite attack. While the insect thing is easy to ignore I think the exclusive bite loses a lot of shifter flavor while casual transforms sort of also.  This is where my heart gets broken and Beastkin falls apart for me. I think they are great in flavor for Pathfinder/Age of Lost Omens but Eberron it becomes a bit of a failure for me but also can see other GMs embracing it.

With that all said I think this is great frame work for something. Perhaps a Shifter Redux conversion is in order (specially with some people’s Power concern about the current one) or perhaps figuring out how to make a variant Beastkin that fits shifter more? We will see.

Thank you for your time and I hope this proves useful to you and your party! If you like support what I do please consider joining my Patreon or sending me a Ko-fi. A special thanks to the Eberron Discord Communities and an extra special one to ChaosOS for proof reading this entry; check out his works on the DM’s Guild. https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?author=Joseph%20Meehan