Negative LA-Assignment : Resurrection, but no diamond here

[Beni-Kujaku]

Avalancher

The avalancher: when you absolutely, positively want to use the environmental hazards rules without it feeling (too) forced.

That Breath of the Wild's Guardian-looking monster is best known for its eponymous ability to cause avalanches, even though it's probably its least useful trait as a PC. They can emit sonorous hums (not the spell) that destabilize rocks on a slope and create a rock slide to bury their opponents. The flavor text says that they can ride their avalanche, but considering they usually "hunt" on cliff sides and they aren't immune to fall damage, I'd say that's unlikely.

The best part about this monster in my opinion is that it's specifically stated to be delicious to eat, to the point that some people go hunt CR 5 monsters just to be able to eat them. Others are stated to "herd" them in plains, which makes roughly as little sense as locking up vampires in cages, considering they have both a burrowing speed and transmute rock to mud. Ya gotta work for yer high quality meal, goddammit!


- Large size, 6 Magical Beast RHD, weird that it isn't an aberration or an elemental, but I'll take the full BAB, thank you very much.
- +12 Str, +2 Dex, +10 Con, -6 Int, +2 Wis, +0 Cha. +8 natural armor. Welp, that is a beatstick if I ever saw one. The hit to int hurts, but otherwise those are decent, if expected, stats. +8 natural armor is pretty good.
- 40ft movement speed, 10ft burrowing, all-around vision, immunity to bludgeoning (!). These are... Really good, in fact. A bit of mobility is nice for a fighter-type and a lot of creatures only have one slam, or unarmed strikes, to deal damage. Unfortunately, this immunity doesn't extend to partially bludgeoning damage, such as a bite. Still, these traits help a lot.
- Avalanche, Transmute Rock to Mud: Avalanche is nice, but two saves and this kind of restriction to use (sloped terrain, unstable rocks) make it pretty unlikely to ever see use. TRtM, however, is some really nice BFC at low level, and will be invaluable to improve the avalancher's utility.
- Only one slam, no arms. Ouch. That's really what brings the avanlancher down. One level of Monk is all but necessary, and one or two of totemist would also not be superfluous to make use of its strength.

In the end, this is clearly much stronger than the rhino, and more on par or slightly stronger than the brown bear (+2 BAB, immunity to bludgeoning and TRtM against +6 Str and two more natural weapons). 5 RHD, DLA-0.


I didn't know this monster, and honestly it feels interesting enough to put in a game, maybe as support for a boss or just on a cliffside to try and bull rush people over. As a PC it's... less interesting, to say the least, but may still make for some funny plays. Next time, we'll rate the impaler of the battlefields, the strongest shrubbery there is, the Battlebriar!