Game Master Jason Bulmahn leads a group of five strangers (Gina DeVivo, Jeremy Steven Walker, Aki, Erika Fermina, and Rachel Seeley) who board a caravan heading to Lastwall, an ancient kingdom watching over the grave of a long-dead menace. Watch  Knights of Everflame every Tuesday!

There are a lot of iconic bad guys in the Pathfinder: Second Edition Bestiary. Orcs, liches and dragons are stuffed into the pages of the book ready to challenge players in battle and beyond. Heroes expect these kind of enemies, which is why Paizo has included some monsters that are a little more unusual. If players get goblins every time they enter a dungeon or skeletons whenever they kick open a crypt, things would get boring very quickly. Try an encounter with these creatures to catch your players off guard!

Leshy

These low level creatures are tricky fey spirits bound to plant bodies. They are often created as sentries to report back to bigger nature guardians such as druids or elemental spirits. Adventurers might run afoul of them by trespassing in a sacred grove or wandering through the orchard that serves as a town’s major food source. They also often ‘pop’ when they reach zero HP, offering a gross little parting gift for the slayer to handle.

Nilith

An evil psychic sloth doesn’t sound that terrifying, but these creatures from the Dreamlands use the psychic equivalent of “stop hitting yourself” on their opponents. Once they’ve grabbed a target with their vicious claws, they start to do psychic damage by inflicting nightmares, visions and all sorts of nasty ideas. The nilith might even show a terrifying future where the hero is torn apart in battle. These creatures are solitary in nature, working as an excellent foe in any games where they players are anxious about the outcome of an upcoming event. Are the visions of the nilith real? Or are they there just to distract from the vicious claws coming for their necks?

Warsworn

What’s worse than a zombie? A dozen zombies! What’s worse than a dozen zombies? This mass of hundreds of shambling corpses that attacks like a wave of bodies. The warsworn most often appears on the site of a horrendous battle by the gods of war or undeath. The warsworn does massive damage in melee combat but it also has a painful ranged attack that starts a vicious combo right out of a fighting game. Get hit and the character must make a Reflex save or get launched into the air to take falling damage on the way down.

Elananx

Cats and tabletop gaming go together like peanut butter and jelly. While some RPGs have shown that cats are more than a match for first level characters, Pathfinder has included this can to take on adventurers who have a few more levels under their belts. The cat gets an ability to move and strike with a single action and playing it like a rogue is a good idea to let it take advantages of bonuses for sneak attacks. But when it gets cornered it has a big trick up its sleeve. The Elananx can surround itself with a cloud of burning embers that only conceals itself, ninja smoke bomb style, but also inflicts some fire damage on anyone too close for comfort.

This post is sponsored by Paizo.

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Images Credits: Paizo Publishing, Geek & Sundry