You were eaten by a Grue

[lurkerwithout]

So here's a rough draft of the HackMaster Grue.

#Appearing: 1-12
Movement: 15
HD: 3
AC: -1
#Attacks: 3
Damage: d4+4/d4+4/d8+4
SA: Pounce attack, surprise 9 in 10
SD: surprised 1 in 10
MR: 30%
EPV: 1850
Morale : 15
* Enhanced hearing and scent, weak eyes
* Leap up to 60' and hit for x2 damage
* Will flee from even weak light
* Scale walls like a lizard, carnivores who prefer the taste of elves or humans
* Subteranean

Treasure: C in lair
Hide good for magic leather (armor, clothing, etc). Meat stringy and tough, but edible.

What's a Grue?

1. The Grue is a sinister, lurking presence in dark places. Its favorite diet is adventurers, but its insatiable appetite is tampered by its fear of light. No Grue has ever been seen by the light of day, and few have survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale.

Comments

[faerlyn-darkelf.livejournal.com]

When I played my MUD, we used to get eaten by Grues down in the catacombs where we had to go get eggs.

My only quibble

[ellakite.livejournal.com]

I had always thought of grues as being solitary creatures, as the text adventures always warned you "It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." Admittedly, there was one Infocom adventure -- I think it was ZORK III -- where you had to walk through a dark room filled with grues at one point... but that was definitely the exception.

Re: My only quibble

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

There was at least one Zork choose-your-adventure book and I remember it had a picture of the Adventurer surrounded by big toothy maws just
out of the range of his lamp...

But for me # Appearing is always a way to ramp an encounter up or down to fit the party, rather than a fixed random number...