Gas Spore

A bulbous body floats toward you. It has a central, unblinking eye, and a large maw filled with daggerlike teeth. Smaller eyes, attached to wriggling stalks, sprout from the top of the orblike body.

The gas spore is a highly specialized form of plant life originally created by ancient beholder mages. Since then, these prolifi c creatures have spread far and wide.

While a gas spore resembles a beholder in appearance, it is in fact a form of fungus. The creature is hollow, filled with a large volume of spores under terrific pressure.

A gas spore is typically about 8 feet across but weighs only 50 pounds.

Combat

Gas spores are mindless, but far from harmless. When they sense a nearby creature, they immediately approach and attempt to infest the creature with spores. A gas spore attacks by slamming into a creature with its body. Upon contacting a target, thousands of tiny filaments lash at the creature’s flesh and infest it with spores. As mindless creatures, gas spores pursue their selected target relentlessly until slain or until the target escapes beyond their range of sight. Even then, a gas spore continues to drift lazily in the direction it last saw its target.

Death Throes (Ex): A gas spore reduced to 0 or fewer hit points immediately explodes in a powerful burst of spores and foul-smelling gas. This blast affects all creatures in a 10-foot radius, dealing them 6d6 points of sonic damage and exposing them to the spores (see Infestation). A DC 12 Reflex save halves the damage. The save DC is Constitution-based. The spores are dispersed in this explosion and cannot be harvested thereafter.

Infestation (Ex): Any living nonplant creature that is damaged by a gas spore’s slam attack or its death throes must immediately succeed on a DC 12 Fortitude save or become infested with spores. An infested creature takes 1d4 points of Constitution damage upon becoming infested and an additional 1d4 points of Constitution damage every hour that follows as the spores rapidly grow and consume flesh. The save DC is Constitution-based.

These spores are similar to poison, and anything that delays, neutralizes, or prevents poisoning has a similar effect on the spores. Creatures immune to extra damage from critical hits or immune to poison are immune to a gas spore’s infestation.

When the victim’s Constitution is reduced to 0, it dies. Its body immediately dissolves into a formless mush that transforms into 1d4 Small gas spores over the course of 1 minute. Each Small gas spore has 1 Hit Die. These gas spores grow rapidly, gaining 1 Hit Die per minute until they reach their maximum size (10 Hit Dice).

Beholders, beholderkin, and creatures with beholder grafts are immune to gas spore infestation, and gas spores know intrinsically to ignore such creatures.

Beholder Camouflage (Ex): A gas spore’s appearance is so clever that it gains a +20 racial bonus on Disguise checks to appear as a beholder.

Flight (Ex): A gas spore’s body is naturally buoyant. This buoyancy allows it to fly at a speed of 20 feet. This buoyancy also grants it a permanent feather fall effect (as the spell) with personal range.

Harvesting Gas Spores

A typical gas spore yields 1d4 doses of usable gas spore powder with a DC 20 Craft (alchemy) check; failure by 5 or more results in the gas spore’s explosion and the destruction of its supply of spores (and possible infestation of the harvester). Gas spore powder is a dangerous poison that costs 500 gp per dose. Anyone who dies of this poison quickly deteriorates into 1d4 Small gas spores as detailed above under the creature’s infestation attack.

Poison (Ex): Contact, Fortitude DC 12, initial and secondary damage 1d4 Con.

Source: Lords of Madness, page 148. Corrected death throes saving throw from DC 10 to DC 12.