Exotic Encounters: Carbuncles

The Pathfinder Bestiary, and the long line of monstrous encyclopedia that came before it, do a great job of attacking the problem of providing game statistics and mechanical information for a very wide variety of creatures. There are a lot of strange creatures from fantasy novels and movies, from ancient mythology, and, as time went on, from the twisted minds of game designers and even GMs, for that matter. Anyone today who tried to go about creating an extensive bestiary of all the different cool and interesting fantasy monsters could fill three or four volumes with three hundred monsters each, and still have a long way left to go, with fans crying out for various "forgotten" monsters to get some attention. That kind of breadth doesn't leave a whole lot of room for depth, and that's where Exotic Encounters comes in.

There are all kinds of reasons why you might not want to use a monster stat-block straight from the core rules. For one thing, if your players have a habit of browsing through such books, or are long-time veterans who know the basic ins and outs of most fantasy staples, you may need an unusual stat-block just to throw them a curve ball and teach them that they can't count on their out of character knowledge to take all the mystery out of the game. Alternatively, many GMs can recall a time when they wanted to make use of a certain monster in their game, only to find that it was a few CRs too high or low for what they had in mind.

Exotic Encounters takes a single, iconic monster, and creates three new variants on that theme. These variants aren't simple tweaks, and are more than simply advancing or removing Hit Dice, though that occurs as well. Each of these three variations on the monster's theme has a specific, flavorful goal in mind, and a role to play, and their statistics entries are gently massaged in order to make them fit those roles. Further, each of these variants comes with brand new specially-crafted special abilities, which are unique to Exotic Encounters and not found anywhere else.

This particular installment of Exotic Encounters focuses on the carbuncle. These cute and quirky creatures from the Pathfinder Bestiary 2 (and other non-tabletop-gaming-related sources, before that), are certainly odd, but don't make particularly threatening foes…until now. The first new carbuncle presented in this book is the monstrous carbuncle (CR 3). An oversized, predatory carbuncle, these roving, predatory creatures share their smaller cousins' weakness to magic, but turn their empathic abilities into a deadly weapon, frightening their prey into making foolish mistakes. Monstrous carbuncles also have the ability to create copies of themselves to aid them in hunting elusive or difficult prey. Next, the gilded carbuncle (CR 5) is more intelligent and has greater magical power than the average carbuncle, and they can reflect certain spells back at their caster. They are also able to drain spell power from other creatures with their ruby horn, and use their empathic power to reflect the pain of being attacked back upon their attacker. Finally, the lunar carbuncle (CR 18) is a huge, oversized carbuncle with potent mental powers, including the ability to enthrall foes at great distances, and to steal the spells of nearby spellcasters. Lunar carbuncles are also able to fire powerful beams of energy from their forehead gems, which not only damage victims but interferes with their ability to use magic.