Pardal

Built like a jaguar and about as big, the pardal wears that cat's colors in reverse: a sleek black coat sprinkled with tan or orange spots. Its claws and fangs are smaller and less impressive than a jaguar's, and its belly tends to sag, so it rarely looks like much of a threat.

Pardals neither stalk well nor fight well. They hunt as though success were guaranteed. A hungry pardal simply wanders until it finds suitable game, whether monkeys, pigs, or even other predators such as wolves or wild dogs, then ambles toward it openly in a way that reads as indifference. To dimmer herbivores, that loose belly can make a starving pardal look recently fed.

Once within 30 feet, its spots begin to slide across the black fur. Any creature in range that so much as glances at the cat must save vs. spells or be caught as by a hypnotic pattern for 2-5 rounds, or until something dramatically disrupts the group.

The cat then picks the tastiest of the entranced animals and walks up to stare into its face. Any creature already caught by the spots sees the cat's golden eyes start to spin wildly, and unless it saves vs. spells, without modifiers, it is held as by hold monster. This hold is stronger than the pattern, keeping the victim frozen even while it is being killed and eaten, and like the spell it can only be broken with dispel magic or more powerful magic.

The violence of the kill releases everyone else from the pattern. So do loud noises, bright flashes, a bigger predator showing up, or harm to any animal besides the chosen one, any of which might happen naturally or through meddling adventurers. Any creature of Intelligence 2 or better quickly learns to keep away from a pardal, however lazy it seems, but animals of Int 1 forget quickly, so a pardal can usually hunt the same herd again within a few weeks.

Forced into an actual fight, the pardal is feeble for its size. It is weaker than other great cats, cannot rake with its hind claws, and, unused to resistance, usually flees persistent attackers. Its powers work only when it is hungry, so a well-fed pardal is an even easier target.

It is also resistant to mind tricks of its own sort. Charm, hold and hypnotism magic fails against it completely, and purely purely visual phantasms like phantasmal force simply do not work. Illusions aimed at other senses fare better: it saves at +6 against improved phantasmal force and +4 against spectral force, while illusions with no visual part at all affect it normally and it saves against them at -2.

Like the jaguar, the pardal spends much of its life in the trees, but mostly asleep, waking only to make its effortless hunts. It does not defend a territory and tolerates other predators, even other pardals, unless game runs too thin for two, in which case it either kills the newcomer the next time hunger strikes or moves on.

Pardals are solitary and meet only to mate. Half are female; a female's lair sometimes holds a single cub, but they mate so rarely that 75% of lairs have just the one occupant. Cubs take two years to mature, and until then their hypnotic tricks are clumsy (victims save at +4). Since an adult can feed two as easily as one, this hardly matters.

Pardals sit at the top of their food chains, as even other predators fall to their powers. Their numbers do not rise and fall with the local game; only a sharp drop in all prey would threaten them, so they feel little pressure to exploit good years.

Hunters hoping for magical trophies will be disappointed. The eyes lose their holding power the instant the cat dies, and wearing its hide grants nothing. A perfect pelt still brings up to 2,000 gp from wizards, who need it as the main ingredient of a robe of scintillating colors or similar mesmerizing items. A live pardal can fetch up to 4,000 gp, since an animal immune to charm monster and hold monster is almost impossible to capture and rarely seen in menageries. Adults are lazy enough to tame easily, about as far as a house cat, if the trainer is immune to their powers, but they never become fully domestic and cannot be taught to attack on command. They make a curious ornament in a wizard's tower, but a poor companion on the road.