All seeing. The Watching Stone cannot be flanked, as its head and main body is completely aware of its surroundings. It has 10 ft of truesight, and 80 ft of darkvision, with its senitive sensory nerves within its arms, it also gains 30 ft of tremorsense, increased to 150 ft of tremorsense within bodies of water.
Magical Anathema : The Watching Stone's biology and shocking similarities to the properties of Adamantine gives it advantage against saving throws regarding spells, magical attacks, and magical effects. Its attacks also ignore any and all immunities that its foes may have, downgrading them to resistances.
Agile Young: As a hatchling, the Watching Stone's hunting tactics revolve around sudden and rapid attacks against a lone target. While in this vulnerable state, they rely on a high level of agility to capture and kill their prey, and can squeeze into small holes and crevices to escape danger thanks to their lack of bones. Their tactics revolve around leaping onto the head or neck of a target, and then attempting to either suffocate or crush it, before dragging it into a hidden spot to rest and consume their catch.
Prioritized Survival: Like any other living creature, the hatchling will prioritize its own survival above all else, if it fails to attack its prey, or its prey manages to pry it off, it will flee without hesitation and into the nearest crevice.
Multiattack: The Hatchling can use either its Crush or slash attacks twice per turn.
Ambush: The Hatchling leaps up to 60 ft to a target's head. The target must make a strength saving throw of DC 18 to pull the hatchling off, if they fail, they are considered grappled and prone and the target takes 3D4+4 damage. The target can attempt to remove the Hatchling by making further saves, but each failure increases the strength DC by 2 if the target needs to breathe. So long as the Hatchling has grappled the target, the target cannot escape the prone condition.
Crush: The Hatchling attempts to crush a target it has grappled and/or is prone. If this target has a head, it takes 50% more damage as the head is the part being crushed. The attack has a +8 hit bonus with advantage, and deals 2D8+2 bludgeoning damage. This attack ignores immunity after 1 turn.
Slash: The Hatchling attacks with its clawed arms. +5 to hit, and deals 1D6+2 slashing damage.
Mist: The Hatchling creates a cloud of mist in a 10ft radius, increasing its stealth rolls and AC by 2 as it hides in the mist cloud.
The Hatchlings each have one legendary action per round, and can only use them outside of their turn as either a reaction, or at the end of another entity's turn.
Emergency Escape: Costs 1 Legendary Action. The Hatchling uses a legendary action to immediately leap 150 ft away and automatically succeed any saving throw. It also releases a burst of mist that reduces visibility of all creatures within 10 feet of itself by 30, and reduces perception checks by 3 while increasing its stealth rolls by 1.
Description
Its head is almost entirely made up of its hundreds of black beady eyes, its small body covered in a protective slime that protects it from the elements and the various toxins and pathogens that reside within the swamps it will normally reside in. its skin is a brackish greenish black in color, allowing it to better blend in with its surroundings and hide effectively within shadows even outside its normal habitat. It is highly intelligent despite being no more than a few months old. Hiding within streams, ponds, swamps, and heavily forested areas, these hatchlings will hunt as ambush predators against anything they believe they can kill within an acceptable risk. While they will mostly eat fish and small rodents, they can, and will, eat larger creatures if given the chance, as such things can keep them fed for a long time. Using their serrated tentacles, even these young watching stones can inflict devastating wounds and cut through armor in self defense, or catch prey to pull them into their demise. A Hatchling's greatest defense however, is their mist creating glands that they use to breathe both in water and air, and their ability to jump far distances to escape danger.
Though somewhat rare to find as their species will only lay clutches of a few dozen eggs every few decades or so, the vast majority of these hatchlings will survive to become roughly human-sized creatures, in the stage of life where they are at their most vulnerable as they can no longer rely on their ability to leap far distances to escape. They are often desired by mages for their natural ability to produce a misty fog for their escapes and even while breathing, as well as for their eyes being able to make potions which can grant superior sight even permanently. However, almost everyone who attempts to do this is eventually found and slaughtered by much older Watching Stones, often being found crushed by a boulder which flew into their homes, or heard screaming in terror amidst the roar of an enraged watching stone seeking vengeance for their murdered kin. So far, no one who goes out of their way to hunt the Watching Stone's for profit has lived longer than a decade, and their deaths are never peaceful. It is unknown how the Watching Stones are able to spread information about their species being hunted, and they likely will never reveal it.
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