His Majesty The Worm Monster Mash: Dark Creepers

Dark Creepers are dungeon thieves who live to steal magic items. Dowries of arcane treasure are an essential part of Dark Creeper marriage proposals. Creepers who don’t steal are condemned to bachelorhood/spinsterdom, giving them a powerful incentive to rob adventurers. Turn out the lights, grab the goods, run as fast as you can.

 

DARK CREEPER (Sorcerous Minion)
Attributes: Swords 1 | Pentacles 4 | Cups 3 | Wands 3
Health/Defense: 3/0
Likes: Magic items, Magical reagents, Flirting
Hates: Bright lights, Foul smells, Spending the night alone

• Notes
• Dark vision. Dark Creepers can see in complete darkness.
• Scurry. On its turn, a Dark Creeper can Move 1 zone without spending a card.
• Lesser dooms
• Bad Little Hands. The Dark Creeper can Roughhouse to steal an item from a target’s hand or belt. They can stuff stolen items in their bag without spending a card, or use them on subsequent turns.
• Greater dooms
• Lights out. As an action, the Dark Creeper can discard a Greater Doom to extinguish all light sources in its line of sight. The lights can be relit with flint/steel or with a non-extinguished light. Magic lights are not extinguished.

Baxa

• Crawl Mechanics & Tactics
• Dark Creepers are stealthy and by default should get the drop on the Guild. If they can't steal magic items (because the Guild doesn't have any) they settle for magical reagents or just money.
• The first sign of trouble is when the light(s) goes out, regardless of how many pips it has left. The Adventurers don't realize they've been robbed until after they relight it.
• Initiate the Challenge phase and make the Creeper work for it if
• Someone has superhuman senses
• The Creeper steals an item out of someone's hand
• The players, out of character, say they're being robbed
• If the Creeper gets away with the loot, the challenge is tracking them down. Like the guy said on Counter Monkey, stealing something from the players is a guaranteed way to lure them somewhere. 
• Creepers are flirtatious. They're out here adventuring because they're looking for love. They don't want to marry you but they'll fool around. They like Dwarves best because of their big noses. Good looking adventurers just might persuade them to stick around when they could make a clean getaway with the loot.
• Variants
• Once Dark Creepers get married they usually settle down with their hoard. The whole point of gathering arcane items is so you don't have to work hard. But not everyone adjusts. Newlyweds go on heists together. Empty-nesters go through a midlife crisis and sneak out into the dungeon again.
• Married creepers work in pairs. They carry a couple items from the Wands and Swords sections of the treasure table and they know how to use them. Aside from that their motivations and behavior don't change.
• Loot & Alchemical Reagents
• Treasure: Dark Creepers wear 10GP x Major Arcana Discard in concealed rings, amulets and piercings.
• Bomb: Dip a Dark Creeper hand in wax, light it, toss it into a room and it extinguishes all light sources.
• Potion: Dark Creeper aqueous humors grant temporary darkvision. This is incredibly valuable and makes them understandably skittish around adventurers.
• Oil: Coat your hands in Dark Creeper tallow and you can steal items by Roughhousing, even if the other guy is wielding/wearing them.

Turnbull

 

THE MAKING OF

This is a monster stat block I made for the restocking table of my Pile of Blades dungeon but never got to use. I added the Tactics, Mechanics and Loot sections for the ongoing Monster Mash. Dark Creepers are one of my favorite classic D&D monsters.

 

I went back and forth on how much the Creepers should be able to get away with before the players get a chance to react. In His Majesty The Worm the players are supposed to control the terms of engagement most of the time, but if the monsters ambush them they get a free action that's supposed to be something other than dealing damage. Plus there are also Travel Events which can damage or destroy items out of the players' inventory without them getting any opportunity to react. Under this paradigm a little guy stealing your stuff is more than fair.