Lightning Absorption. Whenever the vine shambler is subjected to lightning damage, it takes no damage and regains a number of hit points equal to the lightning damage dealt.
Grasping Vines. The vine shambler can have up to six vines at a time. Each vine can be attacked (AC 15; 10 hit points; immunity to poison and psychic damage). Destroying a vine deals no damage to the vine shambler, which can extrude a replacement vine on its next turn. A vine can also be broken if a creature takes an action and succeeds on a DC 15 Strength check against it.
False Appearance. While the vine shambler remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from a vine-covered stump or snag.
Multiattack. The shambling mound may make four vine attacks and use Reel OR two slam attacks, and a Bite action.
Vine. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 50 ft., one creature. Hit: The target is grappled (escape DC 15). Until the grapple ends, the target is restrained and has disadvantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws.
Reel. The vine shambler pulls each creature grappled by it up to 25 feet straight toward it. If this brings a creature within 5', the shambler may use its Bite attack on it.
Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) bludgeoning damage. If both slam attacks hit a Medium or smaller target, the target is grappled (escape DC 15).
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 22 (4d8 + 4) piercing damage.
Engulf. If the vine shambler succeeds on a Bite attack against a Medium or smaller creature grappled by it and within 5, it is Engulfed. The engulfed target is blinded, restrained, has total cover against attacks and other effects outside and unable to breathe, and it must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw at the start of each of the shambler's turns or take 22 (4d8 + 4) acid damage. If the shambler moves, the engulfed target moves with it. The shambler can have only one creature engulfed at a time.
Description
A vine shambler moves slowly through bleak swamps, fetic bogs, dismal marshes, and waterlogged rain forests, consuming any organic matter in its path. This decaying mass of preternaturally sentient vegetation is usually a combination of rotting stumps or snags festooned with moss and ferns. When at its full height, it can be nearly 10' tall and 5' wide.
Unnatural Life. A vine shambler results from a phenomenon in which lightning or fey magic invigorates an otherwise ordinary swamp plant. As the plant is reborn into its second life, it chokes the life from plants and animals around it, mulching their corpses in a heap around its roots. Those roots eventually give up their reliance on the soil, directing the shambler to seek out new sources of food.
The instinct that drives a vine shambler is its central root-stem, buried somewhere inside its ponderous form. The rest of a shambler consists of the rotting heap that it simultaneously accumulates and feeds on, which protects the root-stem and animates to smash and smother the life from any creature.
The dense mass of a vine shambler's body shrugs off the effects of cold and fire. Lightning reinvigorates the root-stem, strengthening the shambler and bolstering its consumptive drive.
Despite its monstrous form, the vine shambler is a living plant that requires air and nourishment. Although it doesn’t sleep the way an animal does, it can lie dormant for days on end before rising to hunt for food.
Weakening Vines. A vine shambler has six nubs set along its body, through which it extrudes hairy adhesive vines that bond to whatever they touch. Each vine sends out hair-like growths that penetrate a creature’s flesh and sap its strength, so the victim can struggle only weakly as the shambler reels it in. If a vine is cut through or broken, the shambler produces a new one to replace it.
A Resurgent Menace. If a vine shambler faces defeat before an overwhelming foe, the root-stem can feign death, collapsing the remains of its mass. If not subsequently killed, the root-stem beds down in the shambler’s remains to slowly regrow its full body, then once again sets out to consume all it can. In this way, vine shambler infestations long thought destroyed can recur time and again.
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Posted Feb 17, 2019Playtested against a party of 5 7th level characters. Balanced pretty nicely.