Creature Feature (Starfinder): Urban Prowler

Urban Prowler CR 5

NE Medium aberration
Init +5; Senses darkvision 60 ft., blindsense (scent) 30 ft.; Perception +16

DEFENSE

HP 65; RP 2
EAC 17; KAC 18
Fort +4; Ref +4; Will +10

OFFENSE

Speed 40 ft.
Melee claw +12 (1d6+4 Sl), bite +10 (1d8+2 P, critical bleed)

STATISTICS

Str +1; Dex +5; Con +2; Int +1; Wis +2; Cha -1
Skills Acrobatics +16, Athletics +11, Computers +11, Stealth +16, Survival +16
Languages Aklo, Common
Other Abilities tracker, compression

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Tracker (Ex)

Prowlers are supernaturally skilled at tracking prey. By spending a Resolve Point as a standard action, a prowler can enhance its senses to incredible heights, essentially allowing them to know exactly what creatures in the area did in the past. For one hour, a prowler can perceive all the actions carried out in a 60-foot radius from itself up to 24 hours ago. This ability does not grant it the ability to perceive creatures it normally could not using its ordinary senses. While this ability is active, the prowler has +10 to Initiative checks if there is a member of the opposing group within 60 feet of itself and on Survival checks to track, but takes -4 on its attack rolls and -2 to both EAC and KAC as it becomes confused trying to pick out a present creature amid the past images.

ECOLOGY

Environment urban
Organization single, prowl (2 – 6)

The prowler species is highly varied, with many subspecies and mutations adapted to different environments. However, while most are adapted to survive in highly varied environs, it is only the urban prowlers that are found in populated and artificial environments by nature.

Urban prowlers bear many of the typical physical traits common to all prowler subspecies. Standing on digitigrade legs, urban prowlers are shorter than most prowlers, averaging from three  to five feet in height. Though this does not grant them an imposing size, it does serve them better in the more restrictive environs of hallways and alleys. Their hands bear the vicious claws of all prowlers, but unlike most other subspecies, the claws of an urban prowler are retractable. This allows them greater dexterity with which to manipulate the technologies of their chosen habitats. Their heads are largely dominated by three eyes so close-set they could be confused for a single trinocular orb and a wide mouth filled with serrated fangs. The hide of a carrion prowler is bizarrely colorful even as they are near monochromatic.  Though this skin is largely in shades of grays, blacks, and browns to blend into a background of brickwork, metal, and glass, it also bears marks of brighter reds and yellows to help them blend into the colorful light cast by neon lights and signs.

Urban prowlers are uniquely adapted to hunt prey in a concrete jungle. Their bodies are highly specialized to allow them to move through cramped spaces. Notably, urban prowlers lack the spines and carapace armor seen on many other types of crawler, as such growths would snag on smaller openings and be difficult to compress. Their ligaments and connective tissues are highly elastic and flexible, which combined with joint-like structures in their ribcages and their ability to painlessly dislocate and relocate most of their joints, allows urban prowlers to squeeze through any space they can fit their skull through.

Though no prowlers can truly be said to be stupid, urban prowlers are certainly the most cunning of their kind. This cunning is not necessarily in their raw intelligence, but rather their understanding of other races and cultures. Dwelling among them, or at least within eyeshot, for most of their lives, prowlers pick put bits and pieces of how they function and learn to work around them. Despite this intelligence, they are still limited by the deeply ingrained instincts of their kind, forcing them to see everything in terms of a hunt. The nuances of relationships often baffle them, though many manage to think around this. While they cannot understand a parent’s love for their child or tell the difference between an insult and friendly teasing, they learn to experiment and determine how such outward signs serve as indicators for what their behavior will be like in dangerous situations, using this information gathered from early victims to plan their future hunts.

Due to this mindset, those who wish to interact with an urban prowler are best suited using pragmatic, no-frills language. Urban prowlers are perfectly capable of understanding concepts like pack-mates, prey, territory, and other such matters, and those who have had reputed encounters with them learn to recontextualize conversations in these ideas. In mechanical terms, urban prowlers are far more adept. An urban prowler is excellent at seeing logical results from inputs and tend to take quickly to coding and hacking, though some prefer to focus their learning on mechanical hardware rather than digital software.

Notably, this focus on the mechanical aspects of society, whether those machines are literal or metaphorical, makes urban prowlers some of the only prowlers to understand and use currency. The idea of exchanging tokens of designated value for items of a matching value makes sense to them, leading to a habit of looting corpses and robbing houses rather than just eating the bodies like other prowlers. This also makes urban prowlers the most common types of prowler to use manufactured items, whether technological or magical. Where other prowlers may loot the odd trinket or piece of armor, urban prowlers learn to shop.

When provided the resources, urban prowlers prefer to purchase small, easily concealed and moved items like knives, pistols, poisons, and small explosives. Though some may take a liking to sniper rifles to pick off prey from a distance  or high explosives to set up traps, most urban prowlers keep to their habit of infiltrating structures through small windows or ventilation openings to kill prey, and as such prefer tools of murder they can bring with them through such avenues. For this same reason, no urban prowlers purchase armor, as it restricts their range of movement and may even be too bulky to fit through certain openings. Urban prowlers who desire greater protection rather than tools to increase their stealth will instead seek skin-tight forcefields or certain flexible dermal armors.

Most urban prowlers are loners or stick to their own kind, but some fall in with groups from other species. These groups are often criminal in nature, people who have a need for someone with senses sharp enough to perceive the past. While some serve crime lords as interrogators and enforcers, rooting out snitches and double-agents, most work with assassin teams to track and eliminate targets. Urban prowlers deeply enjoy such missions and revel in the complex plans they can pull of with a group of varying skills, equipment, and capabilities, taking as much pleasure in the creativity of the plan as its success.



About nwright

A freelance writer for the Open Gaming website who looks forward to building plots out of monster entries for you to enjoy as a player or DM.

View all posts by nwright →

Submit a Comment