Hound Fiend [Lesser Mercenary]

A hound fiend looks like a huge, half-insect bulldog sheathed in chitin plates, with enormous jaws and short, stocky forelegs. It has two rows of teeth, one horizontal and a vertical set just behind, and a nasty barbed tongue often hangs out. It has no eyes; its nostrils are raw, gaping holes in the front of its skull. It speaks telepathically to any creature of semi-intelligence or better.

Smell and hearing give it the equivalent of sight out to 240 feet, unaffected by darkness or normal invisibility, and it is never surprised. Spells with visual effects, such as glitterdust, hypnotic pattern, or phantasmal force, do nothing to it. It can be 'blinded' only by combining a strong stench, like stinking cloud, cloudkill, or burning naphtha, with truly deafening noise; ordinary shouting is not enough.

It claws twice for 1d6 each and bites for 3d4+3. A natural 19 or 20 on the bite crushes the target's armor, though magical armor gets a save vs. crushing blow. Instead of those attacks it may lash its tongue at a target up to 20 feet away, like a frog or chameleon, for 1d6 damage; the victim must save vs. paralyzation or be stuck fast in the slimy barbs. Next round the fiend hauls him in for an automatic bite unless he succeeds at a bend bars/lift gates roll. Allies pulling him loose need a combined 34 Strength, or they can hack at the tongue with slashing weapons (AC 4, 15 hit points).

It ignores acid, poison, iron weapons, and normal or magical fire, takes half damage from poison gas and double from cold, and is harmed only by +1 or better weapons. Besides the standard mercenary fiend powers, it can use darkness 15' radius, fear, and passwall at will, one at a time, plus cloudkill and shout once per day each. Once daily it may try to gate in 1d4 more hound fiends or 1d3 soldier fiends, with 50% success.

Though among the weakest of their race and less common than soldier or clatter fiends, hound fiends are prized. A pair can transform a company's effectiveness by feeding scouting reports to its overseer or winged fiend commanders, and greater fiends often keep several as guards, assassins, or retrievers, or saddle them as fearsome mounts for scholar and mastermind fiends. Too dim to scheme, they are the most loyal of their kind and will obey to the death. They know they are favorites and use it to bully soldier and water fiends. Between contracts they roam the lower planes' foul wastelands hunting weaker creatures to torment and kill.

Some claim hound fiends are made from especially brave soldier fiends, but there is little proof. They are common in the gray wasteland and on the volcanic plane. A hound fiend's tongue, used in certain binding and trapping spells, sells for about 1,000 gp to the right buyer.