Everyone does rats, bats, spiders. But what about centipedes?
There’s this really cool spell in D&D called, “Creeping Doom.” I used to love this spell on my Druid because of the absolute chaos it causes. Not to mention the massive carpet of centipedes. Unfortunately, the spell doesn’t seem to be in the SRD anywhere as far as I can tell. Boo.
BUT, I liked this idea so much it actually became the start of an entire dungeon crawl which I will drop at a later date once I work out the map and the rest of the homebrew monsters.
Created for Dungeon Crawl Classics. Usable in any #OSR or #D20 compatible games.
Venomous Centipede Carpet: Init +5; Atk swarming bite +1 melee (1 plus venom); AC 11; HD 4d8; MV fly 40’; Act special; SP bite all targets within 100’ x 1.7 MILE space, half damage from non-area attacks, venomous (DC 5 Fort save or additional 1d4 damage); SV Fort +0, Ref +10, Will -2; AL N.
This is a massive carpet of venomous centipedes that stretches all the way back to the hole in the ground from which they were summoned. The carpet occupies a 100’ x 1.7 MILE space and inflicts its bite damage on everyone within that space. Any creature bitten must make a Fort save or also suffer from a venomous bite. The bugs take half damage from any attack that is not an area effect (i.e., swinging a sword is not nearly as effective as launching a fireball onto the carpet.)
This is the hook for the dungeon: The group will wake up to villagers screaming and freaking out as their village has been overrun by venomous centipedes. The creatures themselves aren’t that large, but they crawl onto everything and anything in sight. The origin of the carpet is a gigantic hole in the ground a couple of miles from the village. It’s going to be up to our heroes to brave the carpet of centipedes, or go around it to stop whatever unleashed this plague of multi-legged vermin on the land.
Jeff's Game Box 