Grimfrog
- Armor Class
- 4 [15]
- Hit Dice
- 6
- Attacks
- Attack (special)
- Special
- swarm attack, splitting, surprise, sunlight/water limits
- Move
- 12 Swim 12
- HDE/XP
- 6/400
Description
Grimfrogs are vicious carnivorous frogs. An individual grimfrog looks like an ordinary small green frog, at least until it opens its mouth and shows off its fearsome array of interlocking flesh-shearing teeth. However, the real danger of grimfrogs is that they attack in swarms. Because of their small size and innocuous appearance, grimfrogs surprise on 1-3 on 1d6 even if they have been noticed by their potential victims (unless such victims are already familiar with grimfrogs).
An ordinary swarm of grimfrogs consists of one individual per hit point. They attack by jumping onto a victim and biting any accessible flesh. If a grimfrog swarm scores a hit, it does 1 point of damage plus 1 additional point for each point the attack roll exceeds the victim's armor class (but never more than the number of surviving grimfrogs in the swarm).
A swarm may split into two or more swarms of roughly- equal numbers, dividing the swarm's hit dice between them; no smaller swarm will be formed that has less than 10 hit points, so for example a swarm having 20 hit points can divide into no more than two smaller swarms. A swarm will usually split in this way if there are several potential victims close together.
Since attacking grimfrogs literally climb around on the bodies of their victims, any attack against a swarm which has engaged a victim will also hit the victim if the attack roll is higher than the victim's armor class. Grimfrogs are soft and squishy, and gain their relatively high armor class from their small size and quick movements; a Alter Time (Slow only) spell will reduce the armor class of the swarm to 11.
Grimfrogs will not wander far from water, nor will they stray into sunlight, though neither situation will cause them any immediate harm.
Source note: This creature is converted from The Basic Fantasy Field Guide of Creatures Malevolent and Benign – Omnibus Edition, 1st Edition Release 4, © 2010–2025 Chris Gonnerman, R. Kevin Smoot, James Lemon, Matt Sluis, and Contributors. The Basic Fantasy Field Guide textual material is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International; this page adapts that creature to White Box.