Water Fiend [Lesser Mercenary]

A water fiend is a squat, grotesque humanoid with a frog's face, warty yellow skin, and gliding flaps of skin beneath its arms. It speaks by telepathy.

It fights with two claws for 1d8 each and a 1d10 bite, adding two 1d4 foot rakes while gliding. A gland under its tongue lets it squirt foul yellow fluid for 1d10 damage; the target must also save vs. poison or sleep for 1d8 rounds, and nothing short of magic will wake him before the poison fades. Water fiends eagerly attack anything they think is easy prey but turn cowardly against an equal or stronger foe.

Like all their kind they teleport without error at will, and they often dimension door upward to start a glide. Their other powers include water walking (as the ring), dimension door, create water, darkness 15' radius, and conjure elemental, which works only near a large body of water and calls up a 12 HD water elemental that battles on their behalf with no need for control. Twice a day each can try to gate in one more water fiend, succeeding 50% of the time. Water-based attacks deal them half damage, or none on a successful save, and only +1 or better weapons can harm them.

They swim the river of the underworld with memories intact, roaming in bands of at least 10 wherever that river touches the lower planes, and they like to live in water, fire, or lava, though they turn up anywhere. Their skill at amphibious, underwater, covert, and guerrilla fighting earns real respect, and they cash it in for extra pay or a bigger cut of the mortal life forces a job brings. Greater fiends could compel them but prudently indulge their demands instead.

Unusually for their race, water fiends love the endless war between demons and devils and gain strength from the fear they spread among mortals. Several of their organs are excellent spell components and potion ingredients. A live one, very hard to take, may fetch 2,500 gp in some corners of the Prime Material, or perhaps in the great planar city; a dead one still brings over 1,000 gp.