This material is Open Game Content from a 3PP Source
FESTROG CR 1
NE Medium undead
Init +1; Senses Darkvision 60ft. Scent; Listen +1, Spot +1
DEFENSE
AC 14, touch 11, flat-footed 13 (+1 Dex, +3 natural)
hp 13 (2d12+5)
Fort +0, Ref +1, Will +4;
Immune undead immunities
OFFENSE
Spd 30 ft. (50 ft. on all fours)
Melee bite +4 (1d6+3 plus feed) and 2 claws -1 (1d4+1)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Special Attacks Diseased Pustules, Feed, Trip
TACTICS
Before Combat Festrogs use their scent ability to detect and track down living opponents. They stalk prey cautiously and intelligently, attempting to gain the perfect position to charge and tackle their query.
During Combat Consummate hunters, festrogs drop to all fours, barrel down on their opponents, and latch on with their teeth. Using their trip attack, they knock targets prone and feed on them. Once a festrog tastes living flesh it is oblivious to all other creatures and continues attacking that creature until it or the opponent dies. Bolstered by temporary hit points from feeding, it shrugs away attacks while relying on its rupturing pustules to ward off assailants.
Morale Festrogs are fearless, hunting and feeding until destroyed.
STATISTICS
Str 17, Dex 13, Con —, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 11
Base Atk +1; Grp +4
Feats Track
Skills Climb +4, Hide +4, Jump +8 (+12 on all fours), Listen +3, Move Silently +4, Spot +3, Survival +5
Languages Common
SQ Scent, four-footed run, undead traits
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Diseased Pustules (Ex): When the festrog takes damage from a piercing or slashing weapon, its boils rupture, squirting the attacker with pus-like fluids. The noxious secretions carry a potent contact disease that causes those infected to break out into painful necrotic boils (DC 11, incubation 1 day, 1d4 Con).
Feed (Su): Every time a festrog makes a successful bite attack it feeds on its opponent’s flesh and gains 5 temporary hit points.
Trip (Ex): A festrog that hits with its bite after making a charge attack on all fours can attempt to trip the opponent (+4 bonus) as a free action without making a touch attack or an attack of opportunity. If the trip fails, the opponent cannot attempt to trip the festrog.
Four-Footed Run (Ex): A festrog can run on all fours at speed 50 if it doesn’t hold or carry anything in its hands. When running on all fours it is treated as if it had the Run feat.
ECOLOGY
Environment Any land or water
Organization solitary, pair, gang (3–5), or pack (6–11)
Treasure None
Festrogs are aberrant undead creatures spawned by the spontaneous death and mutation of corpses caused by the release of negative energy associated with planar bleeding, the destruction of potent artifacts, or even certain magical attacks by powerful undead. Sometimes called dog-ghouls for their ability to run on all fours, this name often causes opponents to misinterpret their abilities and grossly underestimate their intelligence.
Ecology
A festrog is a deformed ghoulish humanoid wrapped with tight bands of muscle, so powerful it appears to have warped and contorted the creature’s bone structure. The creature bears a human-like face with an elongated skull and a tremendous lower jaw filled with serrated shark-like teeth. Driven by unearthly hunger to consume living flesh (though it will eat carrion or long-dead corpses if it cannot find fresh meat), the festrog hunts constantly. Whatever it devours merely decomposes in its stomach, giving it a slightly gas-bloated appearance. Its tainted, corpselike flesh is disease-ridden and covered in hundreds of welted boils, some swollen to the size of a halfling’s fist.
The create undead spell can create festrogs as if they were ghasts. The caster must be able to cast contagion, have access to that spell in a scroll or other magic item, or work with another caster who has access to the spell; creating the festrog expends the prepared contagion spell, uses an appropriate spell slot, or a charge from the magical source. If the corpse to be animated died of necrotic boils (the disease that festrogs spread) the contagion spell is not necessary.
Habitat & Society
Festrogs inhabit remote areas near those places where they were slain. Most gather in small tribes, based on whatever
loose affiliations they might recall from when they were alive, and choose dwellings in sunless areas easily defended with group tactics. Like ghouls, they tend to skulk about graveyards, though they prefer ones with tombs and mausoleums so the can hide during the day. They hunt nocturnally in packs, preferring open areas like plains, farmlands, or open forests where they can track down prey with few places for them to run or hide. These packs wander semi-nomadically, often traveling miles beyond their dwellings in the pursuit of mortal flesh.
Variants
The entropic power of negative energy often produces a strange variety of mutations. While the diversity of these effects doesn’t warrant creating new stat blocks for each variant, there are specific details worth noting.
- Mountain Festrog: Adventurers journeying to remote locations high in the mountains report encounters with festrog-like undead formed from the warped flesh of more primal creatures such as ogres, hill giants, and trolls. Their social and hunting behavior is similar to normal festrogs, though they possess far less intelligence and apply only minimal use of organized tactics. When attacking opponents, they sometimes break into a bizarre feeding frenzy, becoming almost impossible to stop. Mountain festrogs are Large (including all normal modifiers for this size change), have two additional hit dice, and have Intelligence 2 or 3 at best.
- Living Festrog: These abominable variants remain partially alive, stuck in a half-transformed state between life and undeath. Some experience no symptoms of this change for weeks, then spontaneously become ravenous for fresh meat and rapidly gain their monstrous abilities. They are identical to standard festrogs except they have the aberration type instead of the undead type. The turn undead ability repels them like a fear effect but cannot destroy them outright. They cannot heal naturally but negative energy heals them. Perhaps more frightening than normal festrogs, living festrogs require food to survive, thus they hunt even more frequently and voraciously than their undead kin. If killed, the creature may rise as an undead festrog the next night.
- High Festrog: On occasion, when a powerful human transforms into a festrog, he retains enough of his former memories to retain his former class abilities. Such festrogs continue to develop their character classes, and often evolve into powerful undead adversaries. Thankfully, there exist only a few reports of encounters with high festrogs.
- Beastkin Festrog: Not all festrogs arise from the corpses of humanoids; sometimes the corpse of an animal or a more unusual quadruped is sufficient. The natural posture for these festrogs is to be on all fours, but they can stand on their hind legs and use their simple clawed hands to manipulate things in the manner of humanoids. Most beastkin festrogs are barely more intelligent than common animals but the stranger ones tend to be as cunning as a typical festrog made from a human corpse.
- Vampire-Festrog: While there are no festrogs known to possess true vampirism, there are some who hunger for blood rather than meat. These vampire-festrogs may be the result of humanoids turned into vampires or vampire spawn in an area conductive to forming festrogs. They flush bright red when they have fed recently, fading to a bruised blue-black when deprived of their favorite food. Some vampires (particularly nosferatu) use them as “hounds” to hunt prey or guard their lairs. Vampire-festrogs given a steady supply of vampire blood tend to gain fast healing and turn resistance like their masters.
