Dybbuk (CR 8)
Medium Outsider (Chaotic, Evil, Extraplanar, Incorporeal, and Loumara)
Alignment: Always chaotic evil
Initiative: +5 (Dex); Senses: darkvision 60 ft., Listen +15, and Spot +15
Languages: Abyssal, Common, telepathy 100 ft.
AC: 21 (+5 Dex, +6 deflection), touch 21, flat-footed 16
Hit Dice: 10d8 (45 hp); DR: DR 10/good
Fort +12, Ref +12, Will +9
Speed: Fly 40 ft. (perfect)
Space: 5 ft./5 ft.
Base Attack +10; Grapple -
Attack: 2 tendrils +15 melee (touch)
Full Attack: 2 tendrils +15 melee (touch)
Damage: 1d6 Con
Special Attacks: Corpse possession, death touch, dybbuks gift, withering touch
Abilities: Str -, Dex 20, Con 20, Int 16, Wis 15, Cha 23
Special Qualities: immune to acid, electricity, fire, incorporeal traits, resist cold 10, SR 19
Feats: Ability Focus (death touch); Combat Reflexes; Dodge; Mobility
Skills: Bluff +19, Concentration +18, Diplomacy +23, Disguise +19 (+21 acting), Forgery +16, Hide +13, Intimidate +8, Knowledge (local) +16, Listen +15, Search +16, Sense Motive +15, Spot +15, and Tumble +18
Advancement: 11-20 HD (Medium)
Climate/Terrain: Any land and underground
Organization: Solitary
Treasure/Possessions: See text
Source:
Fiendish Codex I
A faint brush of cold, the fleeting scent of moldering lilies, and a sudden conviction of loss mark the passage of this indistinct shape. Its form is visible only as a flickering shimmer in the air accompanied by faint tendrils of pale smoke.
Disembodied intelligences spawned by the Abyss, dybbuks must possess the dead to work their evil.
Combat
A dybbuk avoids combat unless it is possessing a dead body or is unable to escape. When disembodied, it either uses dimension door and obscuring mist to hide or gain an advantageous position, or fear to scatter its foes. Once it narrows its foes down to a single target, it tries to kill its chosen victim at range with phantasmal killer. if this fails, it moves in to deliver a death touch.
A dybbuk has no access to the memories of the creatures it possesses. After taking possession of a corpse, a dybbuk will try to insinuate itself into society, relying on its Bluff skill to pass itself off as the individual or creature whose body it inhabits. For this reason, it prefers to possess the body of a creature whose death is still unknown to the general populace.
Corpse Possession (Su): A dybbuk that enters a square occupied by a corpse can, as a standard action, possess the body. It can only possess bodies of creatures of the following types: animal, humanoid, magical beast, monstrous humanoid, and vermin. The body cannot be headless or destroyed beyond recognition, and a dybbuk cannot possess a corpse in the area of a magic circle against chaos, magic circle against evil, or a similar effect.
A dybbuk-possessed body rises to its feet on the dybbuk's next action. The fiendish essence of the dybbuk restores the host body to its full hit points; old wounds simply vanish, and any conditions that might have once affected the host are removed. A dybbuk can inhabit such a body indefinitely, and the body doesn't age while possessed. If the possessed body is reduced to -10 hit points, the dybbuk is forced out of the body and into an adjacent square (or the nearest available space). Unless the body is beheaded or completely destroyed, the dybbuk can attempt to possess it again on its next turn.
A dybbuk-possessed body gains the benefits of its natural armor and any armor it wears, but not the dybbuk's deflection bonus to AC. The dybbuk adopts the statistics of the creature it is possessing but gains none of its extraordinary, supernatural, or spell-like abilities, nor can it use any of the possessed creature's Intelligence-, Wisdom-, or Charisma-based skills.
A dismissal, dispel chaos, or dispel evil spell cast on the possessed body immediately drives the dybbuk from the body into an adjacent square (or the nearest available space) and dazes the dybbuk for 1 round (no save). Without the dybbuk to inhabit it, the dead body collapses to the ground, lifeless.
Death Touch (Su): Once per day, a dybbuk can use a standard action to focus its unworldly energies and make a death touch attack against a creature. The dybbuk makes a melee touch attack; if the attack hits, roll 10d6. If the resulting number equals or exceeds the current hit points of the creature touched, that creature must succeed on a DC 23 Fortitude save or die. If the creature survives, it still takes 1d6 points of Constitution damage, and the dybbuk heals 5 points of damage (as if it had used its withering touch). A dybbuk can use its death touch even while possessing a body. This is a death effect. The save DC is Charisma-based and includes the +2 bonus from the dybbuk's Ability Focus feat.
Dybbuk's Gift (Su): Once per day as a standard action, a dybbuk in its natural form can impart a gift to a mortal creature by touch. A form of rage grips the creature as it gains a +2 profane bonus on attack rolls and weapon damage rolls. The effect lasts for 24 hours or until the target creature is affected by a dispel chaos spell. Until this point, the affected creature radiates chaos as if his alignment were chaotic. Furthermore, the affected creatures natural attacks and weapon attacks are treated as chaotic-aligned for the purpose of bypassing damage reduction. As long as the gift persists, the gifted character's eyes glow white.
The gift also creates an unwholesome bond between the character and the dybbuk. As long as the gift persists, the dybbuk can monitor the character's condition and location as if it had placed a status spell on that character. If the character dies, the dybbuk can attempt to possess his body as a standard action, despite any physical distance between the two (as long as the body and the dybbuk are on the same plane).
Accepting a dybbuk's gift is a chaotic act and could have repercussions on the recipient's alignment. A creature can attempt to resist gaining a dybbuk's gift with a DC 21 Will save. The save DC is Charisma-based.
Withering Touch (Su): A dybbuk's touch attack deals 1d6 points of Constitution damage as flesh and bone wither and die. Each time a dybbuk successfully damages a creature, it heals 5 points of damage to itself. A dybbuk cannot use this ability while possessing a body.
Skills: A dybbuk gains a +8 racial bonus on Hide checks.
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 10th): At will - dimension door, obscuring mist 3/day - fear (DC 20), phantasmal killer (DC 20), mind fog (DC 21)
Sample Encounter
Dybbuks are solitary creatures most of the rime. Multiple dybbuks are found near large battlefields or mass graves. Dybbuks have been known to fight each other over a single dead body, even if multiple other bodies of acceptable condition are available. A dybbuk cares as much about denying bodies to other dybbuks as it does about finding a good body to possess.
The Enthusiastic Gravedigger (El 8): A few days ago, the caretaker of a local cemetery passed away quietly in his home. His body was discovered soon afterward by a wandering dybbuk that had been drawn to the cemetery. The dybbuk possessed the dead caretaker and was delighted to discover his job would give it access to all manner of new hosts. Over the past several months, the dybbuk has engineered the deaths of several other people in the nearby town, using their bodies to work its evils before returning to the gravedigger's body. The strange plague of crimes in town committed by recently deceased locals has left the law baffled.
Ecology
A dybbuk in its natural form constantly scours its environment for a suitable host body. It knows that it can be killed when it is without a host and avoids combat as a result. Once it inhabits a body, it apes that body's normal activities, although this is more of a means to an end (finding a better body) rather than being indicative of any real need to eat, sleep, or otherwise behave as a living creature should.
Environment: Dybbuks are found in the Abyss at sites of great battles or near large graveyards. They are not fond of regions heavily populated with undead, since they have no use for bodies that are already animated.
Typical Physical Characteristics: A dybbuk is incorporeal and silent. The creature's basic shape is that of a writhing jellyfish with an indistinct humanoid face floating on the surface of its body. Scores of smoky tendrils trail from the underside of its body to a length of 5 feet. These tendrils braid and twist together, effectively forming two arms when needed.
Society
A dybbuk's driving need is its eternal search for a perfect body. To a dybbuk, a perfect body is one that is undamaged from violence, quite handsome or beautiful for its race, and has many links to its society's leadership. A dybbuk hopes to possess such a perfect body before anyone discovers the victim has died, so that it can go on living the victim's life without arousing suspicion. Once a dybbuk has found a perfect body, it allows itself to be overtaken by that society's sins and vices, plunging hedonistically into depravity until its body is ruined or it is otherwise forced to abandon its plaything.
Much of a dybbuk's existence actually consists of leap-frogging from lesser body to lesser body. It sees these bodies as stepping stones, with each transfer to a new body putting it closer to its intended target. A dybbuk typically has a specific person targeted as a perfect body and does what it can to get closer to this targeted victim, with the goal of either engineering the person's accidental death or catching the victim alone (in which case it uses its death touch to kill its target).
Typical Treasure
Dybbuks do not keep treasure. Once a dybbuk possesses a body, it generally retains any treasure or gear that creature had on its person when it died, but this is done primarily for appearances.
Dybbuk Lore
Characters with ranks in Knowledge (the planes) can learn more about dybbuks. When a character makes a successful skill check, the following lore is revealed, including the information from lower DCs.
| DC | Result |
| 20 | A dybbuk is a disembodied demonic spirit that can inhabit and animate dead bodies. |
| 25 | A dybbuk cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, or fire, and it is resistant to cold. |
| 30 | Killing a host body possessed by a dybbuk does nothing to hurt the dybbuk itself. Spells such as dismissal, dispel chaos, and dispel evil can drive it out of a body. |
| 35 | A dybbuk's touch can cause instant death. |