Negative LA-Assignment : Resurrection, but no diamond here

[Beni-Kujaku]

Brood Keeper (and Lava Swarm)

Maybe it's a weird question, but do you own a vermicomposting worm bin? That's a bin with several "floors" covered with dirt, on which earthworms live that is supposed to replicate the natural soil. You put organic waste on the top floor, and the worms eat it and progressively change it into fertilizer, that you can use afterwards for your garden. It's a great thing to have, but pretty disgusting when you open it to put some food and the worms come crawling out. The brood keeper comes equipped with the same thing on its back, being a living uterus able to open its back to reveal its larva.

In terms of other abilities, however, it's really sad. It's a hot-potch of every low-level abilities that you could find on regular animals, which is not inherently bad, since they synergize decently good, but you really lack too much utility and overall stats to thrive in mid-to-high level plays. Also... What does the poison do? The brood keeper's statblock mentions that there is poison on its bite, but I can't for the life of me find what damage it deals. I don't know, is there an errata I missed? It might qualify it for Venomfire, though.

- Huge Magical Beast, 22 RHD. You are a beatstick. That's what you do. So full BAB is good.
- +14 Str, +6 Dex, +14 Con, -4 Int, +6 Wis, -2 Cha. +14 Natural armor. That's... pretty low for such a high-RHD creature, but in mid-levels, that would be decent. Good repartition for a beatstick. Having 10 Int would be nice, though.
- One bite, 2 claws, Pounce, Rake (four claws), Improved Grab, Rend, 60ft movement speed. Wow. That's... a lot of attacks. That's a great way to use your high strength and BAB. And you can even choose a mouthpick weapon, but you're not even forced to to be efficient. Honestly, a level of monk (not two) or unarmed swordsage (not as much a problem as it is for others to lose one claw attack) will make the brood keeper a great PC.
- Evasion, SR 4+HD, DR 5/-, fast healing 5. I mean... okay? These are great abilities to have, they really are, but why? DR/- is rare on monsters, and generally reserved for elementals and amorphous creatures. There is nothing in that creature's lore to explain all of that.
- Fear. When you rend somebody (so, normally in the first round of combat), everybody makes a Will save or is frightened for 1d10 rounds. Even if they succeed, they're shaken for 1d4 rounds. That's really good. Considering how fear effects stack, this may very well become a free action AoE frighten for 1d4 rounds in most fights.
- Larva Swarm. The larve swarm is pretty bad, but summoning a 22 RHD swarm at mid-level may be really useful.


There's a lot of things here. Fear is great and doesn't cost an action, and you can just muscle through most encounters with so many attacks. I don't think it's as good as a kraken (even though the brood keeper is surprisingly more versatile despite its low intelligence), but it may be good with 11 RHD. Maybe even 12 RHD, to be conservative. Less Str and worse body shape than a cloud giant, but more abilities, way more attacks and more abilities, including the ability to attack flying opponents.

Larva swarm

The swarm has 22 Magical Beast RHD, but since it can't natively attack, it doesn't help it. However, Evasion and Fast Healing 1 are great for something that can't easily be healed with magic. SR equal to its HD is interesting but not game-changing, and your natural armor is pretty bad, especially for something that still takes half-damage from weapon damage, a bit offset by your +14 Dex.
It suffers from all the worse drawbacks of being a swarm (no item, no non-AoE buff, -8 Int, no somatic components...) and doesn't have immunity to weapon damage. It may still make an acceptable cleric, with its +6 Wis and flying speed, but even with all the goodies it gets and its 5d6 swarm attack, I can't give it more than 5 RHD.


There is a distinct lack of lore on the creature of this book. This is what you get when the next edition throws all existing lore out the window and the following one has litterally ten times fewer sourcebooks than 3.5.
Fortunately, a few monsters have still been adapted, including our next one, the Cadaver Collector, also featured in 5e's Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes!