Monster Of Legacy

"Monster of legacy" is an acquired template that can be added to any aberration, dragon, elemental, giant, magical beast, monstrous humanoid, ooze, outsider, or undead (hereafter referred to as the base creature).

The base creature must also have the following:

Intelligence 3 or more;
5 or more HD;
At least one supernatural or spell-like ability.

In addition, the monster must experience the same sort of dramatic event that paves the way for creating an item of legacy.

Monsters of legacy do not perform legacy rituals or pay for materials, nor do they incur any personal costs for their legacy abilities. No legacy feat (such as Least Legacy) is required to unlock their legacy abilities.

A monster of legacy uses all the base creature's statistics and special abilities except as noted here.

Special Attacks/Special Qualities: A monster of legacy retains all the special attacks and special qualities of the base creature. It also gains legacy abilities as described here.

To assign abilities, use the legacy ability menus in Chapter 4: Founding Legacies. Treat the monster as both an item of legacy and its wielder. It selects a number of ability choices determined by its total Hit Dice, as well as a choice from the omen menu. Use the following table to determine which menus it can choose from.

5-10 HD	11-16 HD	17+ HD
Menu A	Menu D	Menu C
Menu B	Menu E	Menu H
Menu C	Menu F	Menu I

In one of the examples given below, Shuluth the illithid is an 8 Hit Die creature. Thus, it could choose three abilities from Menu A, or one from Menu A and one from Menu B, or a single ability from Menu C. It doesn't have enough Hit Dice to make any choices from higher menus. It selected a mental omen (the threatening mental whispers) and three Menu A choices: deflection, mirror image, and see invisibility.

Of course, you should make whatever substitutions and modifications are necessary to indicate that an ability derives from the monster itself and not from a separate item. For example, instead of holding an item over its head to use fly (a Menu C ability), the monster might raise its arms, make flapping motions, or use some other equivalent gesture to activate the ability.

Challenge Rating: Adjust the creature's Challenge Rating based on the number of legacy abilities to which it has access. These increases are not cumulative with each other.

Legacy Abilities Awakened	CR Increase
Two or more least	+1
Iwo or more lesser	+2
Two or more greater	+3

Level Adjustment: Legacy monsters are never appropriate as player characters or cohorts. The base creature loses any level adjustment it previously had.

Sample legacy creatures

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