Pigeontoad

Pigeontoads are odd egg-laying hybrids: a toad's body with leathery wings and a bird's taloned feet. Most are olive green above, fading to pale yellow underneath, with grayish wings tinged green and black beak and feet. When startled they croak much like an ordinary toad.

Each pigeontoad picks a single foe and attacks with a pair of clutching claws plus a pointed beak. If both claws land in a single round, it has hold of the victim, and claw damage then applies automatically every round until the creature dies; its beak gains +2 to hit against a held target.

Roughly 15% of flocks are venomous, and venomous and harmless flocks never intermingle. A poisonous bite inflicts its normal damage plus an equal amount of poison damage (a 3-point bite deals 3 more). On a failed save vs. poison, the victim's Strength and Constitution each drop by 1 point every turn. Once both reach 1, the victim cannot move and dies in 13 to 24 hours unless someone neutralizes the venom.

Swamps are their usual home, though they also live in dark woods near pools and occasionally underground, always close to water. They prefer warm regions but turn up in cooler ones too. Adults avoid the water except to breed and nest in hollow trees, stumps and thickets.

Each spring a female drops 10 to 100 eggs into the water, and predators eat at least three quarters of them. The young look like tadpoles whose stubby wings work as fins and measure about 3 feet at hatching. Growth starts slow, but by late summer they can make short flights, and by fall's end they are full-sized and either rejoin the flock or, if enough survive, start a new flock and seek fresh nesting grounds. They live 3 to 5 years.

A flock menaces nearby settlements. It usually eats snakes, lizards and other marsh life but will kill and eat pets, livestock and people, attacking all together and fearing humans only in large numbers.

Pigeontoads have no treasure worth mentioning. Lizard men, however, relish their jelly-like egg masses and sometimes tame small flocks, keeping them as guards and as a supply of eggs.