Unnatural acts provoke unnatural hungers, and depravity follows perversity in a cascade. Dark powers watch for the growth of evil in mortals’ hearts, and they reward such creatures with great power to nurture the black bloom of their wickedness. Cannibalism garners a particularly abhorrent “blessing.” Ravenous creatures are living beings that have eaten the flesh of their own kind and been cursed with a supernatural hunger for more. A ravenous creature must continue to eat the flesh of its own kind or starve to death. Most ravenous creatures welcome this burden because of the power it brings them.
“Ravenous creature” is an acquired template that can be added to any living, intelligent creature that has eaten the flesh of its own kind (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A ravenous creature uses all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here.
Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature +1.
Alignment: Usually chaotic evil.
Attack: The ravenous creature retains all the base creature’s attacks, and its weapon and armor proficiencies. These attacks retain the same primary or secondary status they had for the base creature. If the base creature possesses at least one mouth but has no natural attack with it, the ravenous creature gains a secondary bite attack with each mouth.
Damage: If the ravenous creature gained bite or claw attacks from the application of this template, the base damage for each is as given on the following table.
|Size||Bite Base Damage|
The ravenous creature retains all the base creature’s special attacks and gains those described here.
Any creature of the same kind as the ravenous creature takes a –2 penalty on saving throws against the ravenous creature’s spells and special attacks.
The ravenous creature retains all the base creature’s special qualities and gains those described here.
A ravenous creature does not age.
So long as the ravenous creature has fed upon the flesh of its own kind within the last 24 hours, it has fast healing 10. Feeding on a creature of its own kind that was killed within the last hour heals all ability damage and ability drain the ravenous creature has taken.
The ravenous creature gains damage reduction 5/—.
A ravenous creature has darkvision to a range of 60 feet.
A ravenous creature gains a +2 bonus on damage rolls against creatures of its own type (i.e.; humanoid) and a +2 bonus on Bluff, Perception, Sense Motive and Survival checks when using these skills against creatures of this type. Against a creature of its own kind (its specific race), each of the bonuses increases to +4.
A ravenous creature can see twice as far as a human in moonlight, starlight, torchlight, and other conditions of poor lighting.
A ravenous creature can eat other food, but only the flesh of its own kind satiates its hunger. It must feed upon the flesh of a creature of its own kind at least once every three days or it suffers the effects of starvation, as outlined in the Core Rulebook. When the ravenous creature’s nonlethal damage due to starvation equals its Constitution score, it dies.
Once per hour, a ravenous creature can move at ten times its normal speed when it makes a charge.
Abilities: Increase from the base creature as follows: Str +6, Dex +4, Con +4.
Organization: Same as the base creature or solitary.
A ravenous character favors whichever class the base creature does.