Retch Palm Death

There was a time in my role-playing career during which I believed that D&D 2nd's Complete Book of Humanoids was a godsend to players. I used it to create several characters for one-shot campaigns started by Gavin, none of whom outlasted any of their party members. Finding out how Gavin would kill off my most recent creation became a calendar event at every session.

A couple of my long-dead characters still evoke snickers today. The most popular of the lot was a lizardman fighter who had an Intelligence of 10 and got Bestial Appetite 3 at character creation. In short, he was a 6-foot-tall bipedal lizard who thought with his stomach and could outeat a creature four times his size. He fell in with a party that more or less treated him like a slave, though he gained his allies' respect after eating some hobgoblins that lost to them in a fight. He lost it almost as quickly when the party ran into a retch palm. Its fruit lowered his Strength and caused him to puke up his meal, but my lizardman would not be deterred. He struck the tree with his staff, hoping that something edible would fall from its branches, but was only hit by more fruits and became even weaker as a result. While the rest of the party sought a way to wash off the stench of the explosive fruit, my lizardman went hunting. He had a Strength score of 1 and was too weak to don his armor or lift his staff, but he was nonetheless convinced that a squirrel he ran across would be easy prey. He crawled after it as it dashed into a thicket, where he found several more squirrels. In a display of uncharacteristic boldness, they decided to attack him rather than flee to the treetops. They beat him on the initiative, and his mediocre Dexterity and lack of armor made him an easy target.

About a two minutes later, I was lamenting my lizardman's death at the incisors of the merciless squirrels.

Submitted by: Devin