Fantasy Monster: Strawman

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Strawman

A silhouette of a man made of tightly bound straw.

CR 1; XP 400
N Medium Construct

Init +0; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +0

Defense
AC 12, touch 10, flat-footed 12 (+2 natural)
hp 15 (1d10+10)
Fort +0; Ref +0; Will +0

DR 5/slashing; Immune construct traits

Weakness vulnerable to fire

Offense
Speed 30 ft.

Melee 2 slams +2 (1d4+1)

Statistics
Str 12, Dex 10, Con —, Int 11, Wis 11, Cha 11
Base Atk +1; CMB +2; CMD 12

Feats Blind-Fight

Skills Craft (baskets) +4, Profession (farmer) +4

Language understand Common

SQ create strawman, farmer, fragile, semblance of life

Ecology
Environment rural
Organization solitary, pair, or village (3+)
Treasure standard

Special Abilities

Create Strawman (Su) Strawmen make more of their kind whenever they can, weaving new strawmen bodies out of available straw, cord, and pieces of old rags. It takes six, twelve hour workdays to create a new strawman, and up to three strawmen can work together on a single new strawman.

Farmer (Ex) Strawmen treat Craft (weaving) and Profession (farmer) as class skills.

Fragile Strawmen are much less sturdy than other Constructs of comparable size, and receive only half the regular bonus hit points for their size category.

Semblance Of Life (Su) When the creation process includes significant amount of personal clothing, the resulting strawman has a semblance of a somewhat bland (usually) humanoid being fitting the local population, gaining +20 bonus to Disguise checks made to pass as one of local denizens, and is capable of actual speech, knowing the dominant local language. If strand of hair, a handful of bodily fluids, or a piece of humanoid bone is used in the creation process, the newly created strawmen looks (and sounds) like a copy of an individual whose bodily matter was used and gains +20 bonus to Disguise checks to pass as that individual. Such strawman also inherits +4 bonus in four skills that the original individual had (those count as one skill rank in each, making it trained skills, with all four skills counting as class skills).

Strawmen are constructs made from straw, hay, and rags that obsessively build more of their kind once they find supplies of those materials. While they are not aggressive, they are stubborn and quite unwilling to stop until the available supply is converted to more of their kind.

Occasionally a small group of strawmen can settle in abandoned farms or even depopulated villages, where they create more of their kind, and some might even deliberately cultivate and harvest grasses and even grain just to have more straw.

When not having supplies to make more, strawmen are usually mimicking lives of simple farmers, going through the motions of farming—which is occasionally used by actual farmers who "hire" them as farmhands, though they need some supervision to avoid harvesting growing plants for straw before the grain is ripe.

Some people are worried by the strawmen tendency to create more and more human-like strawmen, causing suspicions there is a much more sinister secret behind their spread.