I’m a fan of spooky things. Scary games, scary movies, scary unsolved mysteries that keep me up at night while I ponder just what might have happened. They’re great! It’s part of the reason I like monsters as much as I do. I love looking for the next scary thing to creep me out. Among some of my favorite things are the Resident Evil series of games. They’re filled with scary things and really interesting monster designs! In honor of scary monsters and scary moments, like zombie dogs jumping through windows, I statted up a Resident Evil monster. Let’s take a look!
Tyrant CR 8
XP 4,800
N Large aberration
Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +13
DEFENSE
AC 22, touch 12, flat-footed 19 (+3 Dex, +10 natural, –1 size)
hp 105 (11d8+55)
Fort +8, Ref +5, Will +7
DR 5/—
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft.
Melee claw +15 (2d12+14)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Special Attack impale
STATISTICS
Str 24, Dex 15, Con 20, Int 7, Wis 10, Cha 11
Base Atk +8; CMB +16 (+18 bull rush); CMD 29 (31 vs. bull rush)
Feats Awesome Blow, Cleave, Great Cleave, Improved Bull Rush, Power Attack, Weapon Focus (claw)
Skills Climb +21, Perception +14
Languages Common (cannot speak)
SQ massive claw
ECOLOGY
Environment any
Organization solitary
Treasure none
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Impale (Ex) As a full-round action, a tyrant can attempt to impale a foe on its massive claw. It makes a claw attack against a creature. If the attack would hit and the result of the attack also exceeds the creature’s CMD, the creature is impaled. An impaled creature is grappled, shares a space with the tyrant, and takes 2 points of bleed damage every turn it remains impaled. The impaled creature can attempt to break free with a successful combat maneuver check or Escape Artist check as if escaping a standard grapple. While it has a creature impaled, the tyrant can still move and attack normally; the creature remains attached to its claw and moves with the tyrant. A tyrant only applies its Strength modifier once to its claw damage (2d12+7) while it has a creature impaled on its claw.
Massive Claw (Ex) A tyrant applies twice its Strength modifier to claw damage.
The tyrant is a mutated life form created through the injection of a specialized virus. This virus typically reanimates a dead creature, creating undead. In rare cases, however, it also mutates a living creature into a more powerful or twisted version of its original self. Tyrants are one such creature. Created in only the rarest of situations, a tyrant mutates and improves on the human form, granting increased strength, size, and resilience. Additionally, the mutated human’s body reshapes, growing an enormous claw in place of a hand. This claw allows a tyrant to slay its foes with ease. Afterward, these slain creatures usually reanimate as zombies, having been infected with the same virus. Multiple reports of tyrants seem to imply that tyrants mutate and manifest in a variety of ways, suggesting that there are multiple types of zombies or that the process of creating a tyrant has become perfected over time.
Monstrous Origins
As far as big final bosses go, the tyrant is one of the most memorable ones, at least for me. This hulking monstrosity breaks out of its giant vat and, depending on how things play out, immediately impales someone! That is something you don’t forget! In the games, the tyrant is just a big, strong monster. However, it’s the strongest one you’ve seen at that point and, if it’s your first time fighting it, is almost as scary as everything else you’ve seen combined. There’s not much to the tyrant in terms of special abilities, but I wanted to make sure it could impale PCs as this is such an iconic attack from the games. Rather than try to complicate things by having multiple attacks required or some other messy system in place, I opted for what I provided here. It’s simply one roll that you check against both AC and CMD. This means it will likely succeed at its attempts to impale when it does so, but I feel that the shock of the attack the first time it succeeds will be worth the slightly unfair mechanic. I intentionally made the impale attack a full-round action to both help emulate the slow, imposing walk of the tyrant and to allow PCs to more easily keep their distance when fighting. The only other aspect was the tyrant’s damage, which I shored up with the tyrannosaurus’s massive bite ability (a favorite of mine for making sure damage values meet the recommend amounts). I opted to use d12s instead of d6s because the sight of multiple d12s for damage seems a lot scarier and the “swingy” aspect of the damage allows PCs to take a few more hits here and there. Fans of the game know that the T-002 series of the tyrant isn’t the only one that exists. I feel that this stat block is a perfect starting point for other tyrants or tyrant-like creatures, like Mr. X or the Nemesis.
That’s it for this week! If you end up introducing a tyrant into your game or you have any request for a future Monstrous Physique, please drop me a line at KnowDirection@hotmail.com.
