The puffer has two forms, when active it resembles a cross between a crocodile and a scorpion and when dormant it appears like a tightly stretched balloon – a featureless sphere floating wildspace with a diameter up to 40 feet. When a puffer lands upon an asteroid or ship it becomes active, a most terrible killing machine, often leaving a wasteland in its wake. It has a mouthful of sharp fangs and a poison stinger in its tail, which is keeps curled over its back, ready to strike a foe in any direction.
A puffer can propel itself slowly when in dormant state by exhaling a small trickle of air. It cannot approach spelljamming speed, of course, but it can sense any ship or other large object with 100 miles. The puffer slowly approaches the object and, if it can catch it, lands and immediately becomes active. A puffer can make some 5–10 attempts to land somewhere before its supply of air is exhausted. If this occurs before it can land, the puffer dies in space without reproducing.
Combat: A puffer can fight only in active mode. It can be slain when dormant, if characters reach it in wildspace. As soon as a puffer comes into contact with more than one ton of air, however, it becomes active. When in active mode it attacks with its bite and stinger.
Poison (Ex): Those struck by the stinger must roll a successful fortitude save (DC 20), initial damage 1d4 temporary Strength, secondary damage 1d4 temporary strength.
In the Spheres Puffers spend most of their lives in the ultimate seclusion — the eternal dark and cold of wild space beyond the outmost planets. Once in its life, however, a puffer tries to land. After landing, it must kill some creature to serve as host for its eggs. After it lies its eggs, it then returns to wildspace to die.
These diminutive puffers have stingers every bit as lethal as the adults. Each of them seeks a warm-blooded animal as a victim, which they attempt to sting to death. If successful, the little puffer devours the kill, growing quickly as it does so. After the meal, it slowly begins to inhale air, inflating until it is a dormant ball some 30 to 40 feet across. Then, with an expulsion of air, it shoots slowly into wildspace at non-spelljamming speed, where it will spend the next years or even decades.
Puffers cannot survive the extreme of a fall from space to a full-size D planet, nor can their air-blown drives carry them from a planet to space. Thus, they confine their activities to ships, asteroids, and other small objects in space.
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Puffer, © 1990 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
d20™ System, Conversion of Puffer ©2002,
Mark Doolan
Image by
Ron Pollard
Original Source: Monstrous Compendium #7
Puffer