Flail Snail

So, you probably already know that flail snails owe their Bestiary 3 existence to the genius (hubris?) of Misfit Monsters Redeemed—a book that tried to resurrect (and save from themselves) role-playing’s worst monsters.  But of all the monsters in that supplement, the flail snail actually seems the most plausible—mace-like antennae are no weirder than a stag beetle’s horns, and it makes sense that a magical world would breed creatures with innate defenses against it. (Plus, James Sutter’s take on the snails as Zen poets is an intriguing one…and they’re as smart as most linnorms.)  Flail snails are good to throw at cocky spellcasters—all the more so because of their challenge rating, which means that parties will likely encounter the gastropods right as they’re achieving their first big kaboom spells like fireball.

Sometimes a flail snail’s shell can cause spells to act in unpredictable ways.  A botched spell causes Melliflar the Gray to swap minds with a flail snail.  Now a party must protect Melliflar’s body while hunting down his mind, which finds itself trapped and losing focus amid the alien sensation’s of the snail’s body.

Sent to retrieve flail snail shells for an armorer, an adventuring party must face a druid who seeks to protect the beasts, a monk who seeks to commune with them, and morlocks who will eat anything the snail rout doesn’t absorb first.

A mite village lives on a cavern ceiling in a reverse gravity well.  The easiest way to travel there is by trained flail snail steeds.

—Misfit Monsters Redeemed 28–33 & Pathfinder Bestiary 3 118

In other news, this link is full of good music (starting around minute 2:30), but only good till midnight on Friday, 02/17/12.  Click accordingly.  Best results if you let load in Firefox and Save As an mp3, rather than playing off the Web itself.