Blood Rose [Plant]

Each blood rose has a dark green stem crowned by a flower of pure white. From the base of the bloom hang slender, thorn-studded tendrils, limp as willow fronds. Once it has fed, threads of red creep across the white petals until the flower blushes crimson. The plants have no mind and cannot communicate.

To anyone unfamiliar with it, a blood rose patch looks like ordinary wildflowers, and it stays perfectly still until an animal reaches its heart. Then, all at once, the tendrils whip out, slicing bare skin and letting blood run into the dirt where the roots can drink it.

A patch is as many feet across as it has plants, so twenty roses cover a 20-foot circle. Each plant attacks once, and each hit inflicts as many points as the victim's Armor Class, never less than 1. The patch can engage as many man-sized creatures as it has plants. Escaping the whirling vines is like escaping entangle, with the save shifted by how far the plant count sits from 10: 13 plants mean -3, 8 plants mean +2.

Attacked as a whole, the patch has the combined hit points of every flower and attacks and saves according to the total, so ten plants fight as a 10 HD creature. A single plant targeted on its own has only its own Hit Dice. Blunt and piercing weapons deal just 1 point per hit, while slashing weapons, fire and most other attacks work normally. Salt water is deadly to them: each gallon poured on the patch deals 1d10. Someone coated in salt is attacked only once, after which the plants recoil in pain and leave that person alone.

Blood roses grow in high mountains and stony badlands, where plant life is reduced to straggling weeds and scattered pockets. Starving animals there are driven to graze on them, and only the thickest-skinned succeed; the others become food themselves. Some say dark beings of the misty dread realm deliberately plant them in mountain passes to screen cave mouths from nosy adventurers.

They reproduce like other flowers, pollinated by insects that pass safely through the patch. A blood rose picked while still pure white is said to ward off certain undead, vampires in particular. Picked roses last only 1d4 days, and neither replanting nor artificial feeding saves them; each one needs its patch to live.