Suggest Uses for this Creature

[Hell_Born]

There is a creature I have been working on developing at another D20 forum, and I was wondering both if it would be possible to "transplant" a specimen to Ravenloft and, if so, how I should actually use it.

The creature is called a Reaver of Souls. Depending on how you look at it, it is either an Ethereal Undead, some kind of Energy Elemental, some manner of Farspawn, or a combination of the three. In appearance, it resembles an incredibly emaciated humanoid (basically it has no internal organs, thus its stomach is nothing more than skin stretched over the front of its spinal column), the skin stretched incredibly tightly over musculature. Its eyes glow with ghostly light, its feet resemble cloven hooves and its hands are tri-fingered claws.

The creature exists normally in the Ethereal Plane. Unlike most such creatures, it can only enter the Material Plane at certain points. Whilst on the Material Plane, it constantly loses health (at least 1 HP/hour) and it needs to feed on life energy to regain this health. A Reaver slain on the Material Plane is instead transported to the Etheral Plane, where it is restored to full health and cannot materialise again for an hour. If slain on the Ethereal Plane, it reforms again after 24 hours. Only something like a Wish or a Miracle can permanently destroy it.

Reavers feed on souls. As a full-round action, they can devour the soul of a recently slain (1 round/HD) or helpless creature, healing themselves by 1D6 points per HD of their victim. A creature whose soul has been devoured cannot be resurrected by anything less than a Wish or a Miracle. Reavers can also "drain" health whilst grappling a subject, draining HP and healing themselves by an equal amount. A victim who dies in a Reaver's embrace also has their soul devoured.

Though this would make them fearsome predators of the living, Reavers are actually better classified as Necrovores- they prefer to hunt and feed upon the undead. Though they don't actually need to feed upon the Ethereal Plane, most instinctively hunt down and devour low-ranked Ghosts and other such Ethereal Undead as a matter of course. Upon the Material Plane, Reavers favour hunting intelligent undead- vampires are apparently a delicacy.

Most Reavers are essentially Chaotic Neutral in alignment; their lack of need (and generally desire) to interact with living beings and the fact they are more driven by impulse and whim preventing them from being considered Chaotic Evil. Of course, there are exceptions- some Reavers enjoy killing mortals, ripping them apart with their claws and then devouring their souls, while others actually act as self-declared "protectors" of living beings, staking out a territory and devouring all undead that enter that area. Reavers are Solitary creatures.

So what do you think?

[Jester of the FoS]

It occupies a very similar role as a Grim Reaper ('Loft specific beastie that's been around since 2E) but there are differences. Could have a role, something new or different.

How does it kill undead? Instant kill? Or the same 1HD/round (wouldn't that act as an energy drain on the living)?

[NeoTiamat]

Actually, I think the most interesting thing here is the aspect of the Reaver as the guardian.

It would be quite interesting to have a Reaver decide to adopt a village or something similar and destroy all undead (or all other monsters as well, perhaps?) and in general protect it. The villagers may only have stories of some sort of guardian angel, and might even placate it somehow (don't ask me how).

I'm not quite sure what you can do with this just yet, but it's definetly a cool idea.

Can you give us a bit more information on them, most notably how they are created/born/appear? They don't seem to be natural creatures, and knowing a bit more on their lifecycle (or lack thereof) would help.

[Hell_Born]

Jester; we haven't actually finished ironing out the rules, but basically it slays physical undead by simply fighting them until they're dead/helpless, and then using its "Devour the Soul" ability. Its "Thirsting Caress" (vampiric grapple) doesn't work on any physical undead. Against Ethereal undead though, which the Reaver has the ability to always physically strike without any chance of missing due to etherealness, Thirsting Caress forces it to take a Will save for each round the grapple is maintained, with a cumulative DC. Failure means that the EU "slips" and is swallowed into oblivion.

NeoTiamat; like I just said we haven't finished putting them together, but I think the basic explanation is magical creation- a custom ritual spell or a Wish cast on/by a sentient humanoid who is consumed by hatred towards the undead and wants little more than revenge. For example, a man who just saw his entire village -including his family- slaughtered by vampires and becomes so desperate and enraged that he is willing to become an undead in order to fght them. This means that Reavers are extremely rare, and they normally deliberately avoid each other- not just because their powers don't work on other Reavers.

[CorvusCornix]

I like NeoTiamats idea! To expand a bit more upon it: the village this Reaver guards is suffering from quite a lot of undead and has been for some years now, maybe some sort of necromancer at work. So far the villagers have developed a whole bunch of stories how they were saved by said Reaver in some kind of desperate situation. What they don't know is that it just was plain luck, the reaver didn't actually try to save them, he just came to feed at the right time. What if somehow now his "food supply" runs dry, for example because some heroes put a stop to the necromancer's work? What if the Reaver now decides to begin hunting the living, because there's no more other food around? How would the villagers react if this supposed angel suddenly turns against them? Right after some unknown heroes told them they had saved the village? What did those heroes do to our guardian angel to turn him mad?

[norms29]

can we get a quick show of hands to see who recognizes where this thing came from, because non of the replies so-far indicate that you do.
except jesters comment about the Grim Reaper

now for my take, I think this thing fits into ravenloft pretty well. although I would want the rules close to the source material. I.E. "thirsting caress" might be willing only, I'm not sure (I never answered that question when I played) . and it will only materialise in specific locations (an important strategic consideration if it wether it were friend or foe). maybe even special abilities it can gain by defeating 'higher order' undead (probably won't come up, but makes good backstory for salient abilities).

ps. where is this other forum?

[Hell_Born]

I wondered when someone would recognize this norms29. I deliberately left the wings off because, well, they were a feature of the original being who became the Reaver and thus wouldn't be intrinistic. This was supposed to be a species inspired by Raziel, not a direct D20 translation of Raziel.

Actually, in the game, you could drain humans who were hostile to you- in fact, that's how you made them non-hostile; kill only vampires and, if confronted by guards, sap enough of their health that they become temporarily exhausted, but not enough to kill them. Then they start seeing you as being friendly. That's why I made Thirsting Caress a Grapple-based attack, because in the game you need to grab living humans to drain them. Also, I mentioned in my first post it can only materialize in certain places.

To answer your question... the Giant in the Playground forums.

[norms29]

went back and reread the initial post, I missed that line the first time

and like I said, I wasn't sure about the draining thing, I when I played the game I never pissed the humans off, and by the way, you don't have to exaust the guards to make them non-hostile, you can just turn and run the first time you encounter hunters (it comes well before you go to the city) if you don't fight (the will shoot on sight the first time) then the secopnd encounter goes peacfully