Abyss Bat

An abyss bat looks like a huge bat dead for weeks: tattered wing leather, spanning about twice the body length, droops from bare bone, and the head is a fanged skull with glowing red eyes. A long forked tail trails behind; in the two greater breeds it is barbed and used as a weapon.

Six breeds (I-VI) are known, maybe not all, and none can be told apart by sight.

Lesser abyss bats (Types I-IV) claw twice and bite each round, and each breed has a signature attack usable three times a day. Type I: a cone of cold (sized for an 11th-level wizard) for 5d8; immune to cold spells, half damage from electricity. Type II: a 10-yard fire cloud, range 30 yards, 5d6; immune to fire spells, half damage from acid. Type III: a 5-by-60-foot lightning bolt, 5d6; immune to electricity, half damage from cold. Type IV: an acid glob, range 30 yards, 5-foot radius, 5d6; immune to acid, half damage from fire. A save halves any of these.

Lesser bats are harmed only by silvered or enchanted weapons and hate light: light or continual light burns one for 2 points per caster level and imposes -2 on its attacks and saves inside the radius, and a sunray (or a wand of illumination's sunburst) deals 6d6. Magic resistance applies, but if it fails the bat gets no save.

Greater bats (Types V-VI) add a barbed tail lash. Type V can frenzy once a day for one turn: +2 to hit and damage, AC 2 points worse, immune to fear and blind to illusions. It can dispel magic twice a day as a 14th-level caster and trace a symbol of pain in midair once a day. It takes half damage from fire, cold and electricity, has natural free action against web, slow, hold and the like, cannot be charmed, and ignores spells that weaken its body, such as ray of enfeeblement or fumble; even prayer will not lower its attack and damage rolls.

Type VI casts spells as a 9th-level wizard, saves vs. spell and vs. rods, staves and wands as an 18th-level wizard, and is immune to spells of levels 1-3. Once a day each, one per round, it can use wizard eye, project image, mirror image, flesh to stone, dispel magic, and both polymorph self and polymorph other. It can wield wizard magic items its claws can manage, such as wands, but cannot wear robes or cloaks.

Lesser bats roost in leaderless, anarchic flocks in caves of the Abyss and the prison plane. They avoid tanar'ri and other strong planar beings but gang up on weak ones such as manes and twisted demons.

Greater bats live alone in remote Abyssal pits, see every other creature as food (lesser kin included), and deal with powerful tanar'ri only as equals and only when they must.

A cruel demigod of the mortal world somehow brings both kinds into his realm, apparently through Abyssal gates in his capital, and the greater ones at least must serve under some unknown bargain. They guard his castles, track fugitives, and buzz towns with a blast of breath to cow the locals.

Lesser bats scavenge and pick off the weak, sometimes pressed into a tanar'ri's feud with a rival; greater bats are predators that least and lesser tanar'ri dread.

Lesser bats hoard pretty things: 3d6 random gems and 1d4 jewelry per nest, plus a 10% chance per bat of one magical item small enough to carry in the beak (no weapons or armor; DM's call). A greater bat's lair holds a 20% chance of 1d6 x 1,000 gp, plus 1d2 x 1,000 pp, 1d6 gems, and 1d6 magical items at 50% each, at least one item guaranteed.