Antimagic Susceptibility. The Shroud is incapacitated while in the area of an antimagic field. If targeted by dispel magic, the Shroud must succeed on a Constitution saving throw against the caster's spell save DC or fall unconscious for 1 minute.
Immutable Form. The Death Shroud is immune to any spell or effect that would alter its form.
Damage Transfer. While it is grappling a creature, the Death Shroud takes only half the damage dealt to it, and the creature grappled by the Shroud takes the other half.
Swarm. The undead swarm beneath the Death Shroud can occupy another creature’s space and vice versa, and the swarm can move through any opening large enough for a Small humanoid. The swarm can’t regain hit points or gain temporary hit points.
Turn Immunity. Undead under the dominion of a Death Shroud are immune to effects that turn undead.
Innate Spellcasting. The Death Shroud’s innate spellcasting ability is Intelligence. The Death Shroud can innately cast the following spells, requiring no components:
At will: mage hand (the hand is invisible)
2/day each: speak with dead, magic mouth
1/day: animate dead (indefinite control of created undead)
Multiattack. The Death Shroud makes three attacks: three Slams, or one Smother and two Slams.
Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 0 ft., one target in the swarm’s space. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) bludgeoning damage, or 8 (1d8 + 4) bludgeoning damage if the swarm has half of its hit points or fewer.
Smother. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one Medium or smaller creature. Hit: The creature is grappled (escape DC 14). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, blinded, and at risk of suffocating, and the Death Shroud can't smother another target. In addition, at the start of each of the target's turns, the target takes 11 (2d6 + 4) bludgeoning damage.
Description
The Death Shroud is a rare consequence of wayward necromancy from a miscast raise dead spell that leached onto burial cloth. The small scrap of fabric hit by the spell transforms into an awakened creature which quickly tears itself free, often taking a limb or two with it. This bizarre construct has the uncanny ability to animate and control any corpse it covers, and its collection is ever growing as it follows the aftermath of a typical adventuring party.
Strangely this creature can develop an accord with adventurers as it leaves trinkets and gold at their campsites as thanks for their contributions. As its intelligence increases with its amassing hoard, a Death Shroud will crave rarer creatures to add to its collection, and may make specific requests for the party. Large Shrouds have an uncanny knack for gleaning lost memories from the dead, and will happily trade valuable information and spells for a pristine corpse.
Previous Versions
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10/4/2019 3:22:54 PM
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Posted Oct 23, 2019This thing... holy cow this thing is one of the most unsettling monster ideas I've come across. Can you imagine a party creating one of these, it growing in power as they do. That nightmare that haunts them and reminds them of just how much blood they've shed; morbid but useful, until you realize, too late, that it is too strong to break free of, and too powerful to ignore it's request for yet more corpses.
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Posted Oct 24, 2019Tasty
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Posted Nov 3, 2019Fantastic!
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Posted Dec 8, 2019I so want to play a pact if the undieing warlock with this as it Paton.with some kind of dark right to send rare monster corpses to his master as payment for his power
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Posted Feb 23, 2020I just did some retooling for my own personal taste/satisfaction to beef up this creature a bit. Added claw attack back from its tiny form and made all of its attacks reach out to 5 ft instead of just smother. Gave it strong DC for smother and damage when healthy and weakened attacks and smother when at 1/2 HP max or fewer. Also, based on the description and the art, this is not a swarm of small to medium sized corpses, but more of a mass of limbs, torsos, heads, partial corpses, and some full bodies bound together magically under the cloth of this creature. So, I agree that it should have mechanics similar to the beneficial effects of the Swarm classification, but maybe not the negative ones. No HP heal is rough and means this thing is eventually being whittled away to nothing, even if there's months between battles/skirmishes. That is incredibly frustrating and really hampers how foreboding or helpful this creature can be.
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Posted Jun 11, 2020I really wanna see a huge version of this :D
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Posted Jun 28, 2020well tehcnically it does regain HP everytime it adds a corpse to its swarm, swarm do not regain HP by healing, but they do regain more HP by adding more to the swarm itself.
so technically, it can heal by just adding more to itself. after all, nothing stops the monster from adding more corpse to its swarm to regain mass. the same way nothing stops any other type of swarm from just adding more to themselves.
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Posted Aug 24, 2020my question is, at what point does a tiny death shroud become a large death shroud? how many bodies does it need?
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Posted Oct 7, 2020It becomes medium when it gets its first humanoid corpse and large when it gets ten as stated of the small stat block