Howler

Howlers are enormous four-legged brutes with heavy, ox-like backs and scales glinting through matted red fur. Around their apelike faces the fur thickens into a quivering ruff of quills. Their forefeet are lumpy knots of thick, crushed fingers, their hind feet hooves. To cry, a howler rocks back almost upright, throws its muzzle skyward, purses its lips into a round O, and wails.

Cruel but cowardly scavengers, howlers rarely attack groups larger or stronger than their pack. They pick out a weak victim and try to keep the rest away, fleeing if they can't. That same cowardice makes them ruthless once committed: the whole pack throws everything into the kill.

The opening rush and the round after it are the deadliest. Charging, they raise their neck quills into a spiny shield that improves their AC to 3. A charge of 120 feet or more gives +2 to hit and double damage, and they ignore morale checks while charging.

In melee they bite and slash with their raised quills, which reach only foes at their front flanks and strike at -2. A hit drives in 1d4 quills for 1d4 damage each, and the victim saves vs. breath weapon per quill; each failure leaves a quill stuck, costing -1 on attack rolls. Pulling quills out takes 1d6 rounds and deals another 1d3.

Howlers live only in the tunnels of the plane of howling winds, avoiding settlements and narrow passages in favor of the vast curving galleries that serve as its plains. Packs hold from 2 to 20 bulls, females and kits, with the bulls guarding the rest, so few are met in a typical fight. As word of a migrating pack spreads, the plane's other inhabitants brace for misery.

Their howls act like the plane's maddening winds: everyone within earshot, indoors or not, checks as if exposed to them, though a howler can never push anyone past Stage 3 (Hysteria), and those already at Resignation show all their tics. The effect follows a howler to other planes. Mercifully, like dogs, they howl only at times: when lonely or stabled apart from masters, during rut, when territory is challenged, or when cornered, at the DM's discretion.

Some tunnel dwellers capture and tame them as riding and pack beasts; a howler carries as much as a draft horse and handles the twisted passages far better. Some wizards claim the howls encode planar secrets, while others say those wizards have simply been howled mad.