Hodag

Another cryptid, this one of American vintage, to torment hapless treasure seekers courtesy of the Kingmaker Adventure Path.  If you do want to maintain the local legend flavor of the hodag as presented in the rulebooks, start dropping references to it early—that way it will make a satisfying cap to low-level PCs’ development arc.  Otherwise, it’s a great wandering monster, lizardfolk mount, exotic pet, gladiatorial combatant, proto-dinosaur, or dragon thrall…and with Int 7, it’s by no means stupid.

An enchanted paddlewheel boat steams up and down the length of Brambleguard River.  Once a popular floating casino, the mindless boat still keeps roughly to its old schedule long after its owner was knifed in port, stopping here and there for a night to lower its gangplanks and pipe phantasmal sounds of music and laughter through the air.  Enough rubes wander by to keep the paddlewheel’s new “owner,” a lazy hodag, reasonably well fed.  The beast’s desire to avoid the sun means it always manages to return up the gangways before dawn breaks and the boat slips away.

On a newly discovered continent, colonists live uneasily next to the couatl-venerating native tribes of the region.  When several settlers wind up missing, the colonists blame the natives and the natives blame the hodag.  Having formed a friendship while locked in the stocks, a colonist rogue and a native gunslinger resolve to settle the matter.

Gregory needs help.  An entire village watched him spear a hodag through the heart—the lucky result of a clumsy fall, a long lance, and a true strike spell.  Now hailed as a dragon slayer, everyone—including his fiancée—expects him to drive off the hodag’s much larger mate.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path 32 84–85 & Pathfinder Bestiary 3 148

I’m not a huge miniatures guy, but hodags are a great argument for them.  Half the fun of fielding a monster with the toss special ability is getting to slide your players’ minis around to show just how far they got hurled.