Writober! Death Slug! Shadowdark Post-a-Day In October

This month is Drawtober: 31 drawing prompts related to the Shadowdark RPG, 1 a day, throughout October. But I’m borrowing the prompts for short essays. Today’s prompt is “Death Slug”.

The Death Slug is a creature from the new Western Reaches book. It is a palm-sized level 0 leech-like creature that does only one point of damage when it bites, but burrows towards the target’s heart and kills in 1d4 rounds if it isn’t killed first.

The point that jumps out most is that this creature is a throwback to old-school games. Basically, if you’re bit, you might have just one chance (if the 1d4 rounds is “1”) to hit it at AC 18 before you’re dead. Sure, if a party member is next to you they may be able to as well. But say your AC is 15–then there is a 25% chance it hits. And now you’ve got perhaps one 15% chance (maybe 25-30% chance if you have some attack bonus) to not be killed.  D&D wasn’t easy back in the day. Even if you’re 5th level or so, if it hits you and the roll shows it will reach your heart in one round and you roll poorly on that single attack, you die! (Maybe at 5th level you’ve got a +5 or even +7 to hit–against an AC 18 that’s less than 50/50.

And because the wording of the effect is “A living humanoid creature dies of this in 1d4 rounds…” the character doesn’t get the benefit of the dying mechanic to stabilize.

So is this good or bad?  It depends on what you’re going for.  If you’re trying for more of a ‘swords and sorcery’ or ‘low fantasy’ feel to your game then it is authentic. If you want a ‘high fantasy’ campaign you will want to adjust this.

Here are our previous Writober posts so far:

1. Torch – Rules for magic torch items (each is a single use magic effect spell like alarm or detect magic).
2. Skull – Goblin shaman who can turn victims’ skulls into ways to store spells.
3. Fiend – Lists of talents that Devils & Demons typically have for making your own.
4. Shadow – Easy ways to make other creatures into shadows.
5. Contagion – Discussing the purpose of diseases.
6. Valkyrie – A new 3rd party class.
7. Toadstool – A new 3rd party ancestry.
8. Witchlight – Alternate sources of “witchlight”.
9. Luck Token – Alternate ways a GM may allow a luck token to be used.
10.  Rage – The signature ability of a Barbarian class.
11. Altars – Ways to amplify priest spells into rituals when using an altar.
12. Pit Trap – Several ideas to spice up the good old pit trap.