Shambling Mound
CR 6, N Large Plant
Senses: Perception 11, Darkvision 60, Low Light Vision
Speed: 20 ft., swim 20 ft. Skills: Athletics 11, Stealth 8
Languages: Common, Sylvan
Ability Scores: Str 21 (+13), Dex 10 (+3), Con 17 (+11), Int 7 (+1), Wis 10 (+3), Cha 9 (+2)
INIT: +0 CP: +6 HP: 67 (9d8+27) SA: -- DC: 19
AC: 19 Touch: 9 Flat-footed: 19 [+10 Natural, -1 Size]
SR: -- Vulnerable: -- Resistant: Fire 10 Bypass: --
Immunity: Electricity, Poison, Psychic Effect Immunity: Enchantment Spells, Illusions, Mental Effects, Paralysis, Polymorph, Sleep, Stun, Suffocation, Starvation
Power Attack (ex) - A Shambling Mound may choose to take a penalty to its attack roll (up to -5). For each point of penalty, the Shambling Mound does one extra point of damage. The Shambling Mound must decide to use power attack at the beginning of its turn and it applies to all attack made until the start of its next turn.
Regeneration (ex) - Shambling Mounds heal at a fast rate, gaining 10 hp back each round. They can even regrow lost parts of their body if they are brought together within 1 hour of severing. They cannot be killed while their regeneration is still active. Regeneration can be suppressed by certain types of damage.
Attacks
- Melee (Natural) - 2 x slams +10 (2d6+5 plus constrict). Reach: 10 ft. Constrict - Each time the Shambling Mound successfully hits an opponent, it can make a grapple check as a free action to see if it holds its opponent. If successful, the creature is grappled. On any successful grapple check (including this initial one) the target automatically takes bludgeoning damage equal to the damage typically dealt by this attack.
Cleave (ex) - As a standard action, the Shambling Mound can make a single attack with a melee weapon at its highest attack bonus. If it hits, it deals damage normally and can make another attack against a foe adjacent to the first. The Shambling Mound may continue making as many attacks as possible provided opponents are adjacent and in range. Using cleave, causes the creature to take a -2 penalty to AC until its next turn.
Environment: temperate forest or marshes
Organization: None
Treasure: standard
A mass of tangled vines and dripping slime rises on two trunklike legs, reeking of rot and freshly turned earth.
Shambling mounds, also called shamblers, appear to be heaps of rotting vegetation. They are actually intelligent, carnivorous plants with a fondness for elf flesh in particular. What serve as a shambler's brain and sensory organs are located in its upper body. Shambling mounds typically have an 8-foot girth and stand between 6 and 9 feet tall. They weigh about 3,800 pounds. Shambling mounds are strange creatures, more akin to animate tangles of creeping parasitic vines than single rooted plants. They are omnivorous, able to draw their sustenance from nearly anything, wrapping their creepers around living trees to draw forth the sap, sending rootlets into the soil to absorb raw nutrients, or consuming flesh and bone from crushed prey. Shamblers are frighteningly stealthy in their native environments. Blending in with the surrounding terrain, they can lie in wait for days on end without moving, waiting patiently for a potential meal. A shambler could be almost anywhere at any time, attacking without warning and not caring whether it leaves any survivors, so long as it acquires its next meal. Shambling mounds normally lead solitary, nomadic existences in deep forests and fetid swamps, although they can also be found underground living among damp fungal thickets. Disturbing rumors persist, however, of shamblers gathering in strange congregations around great earthen mounds in the depths of marshes and jungles, often during the height of violent electrical storms. Their reasons for doing so are unknown, and many sages have wondered whether there is some obscure and alien purpose at work.
