Sabreclaw
Image © TSR Inc.
[The sabreclaw first appeared in Sabre River, a Basic D&D module, and then was reprinted in the Creature Catalogue. And then in the Mystara Monstrous Compendium for AD&D, which is where this art appears. The sabreclaw is clearly an attempt to fill the design need of making minions challenging to high level characters, which is where their cumulative defenses came in. Since AC is much more scalable in 3.x and Pathfinder than it is in earlier or later editions, I gave it cumulative offenses as well. I did tone down its nastiest ability; originally, all members of a wing fully share hit points, so none of them die unless all of them die. Combine that with an immunity to 1st-3rd level spells in the original, and every fight with these is gonna be a bit of a slog. The transfer health ability is intended to capture some of that flavor without being nearly so hostile to the players]
Sabreclaw CR 3 LE Aberration This humanoid creature has greasy black fur over its body and leathery wings growing from its back. Its face is distorted, rugose and vaguely simian. Its left hand is prehensile, but its right is taken up with a single oversized claw.
Sabreclaws are unnatural creatures, created through fleshwarping to be soldiers without goals or desires of their own. Sabreclaws are found in squads, called wings, almost exclusively; a lone sabreclaw is likely to be the survivor of a destroyed wing, and is usually desperate, insane or both. Sabreclaws do not have a functional individual identity—they think of themselves as agents of their creator, and view other members of their wing the same way typical creatures think of their arms and legs as parts of themselves.
Sabreclaw wings fight en masse, dive-bombing a target and tearing them to pieces with their namesake claws. Their tactics are usually uncreative, but effective: gang up on a single target until it stops moving, move onto the next one. The more sabrewings are clustered together, the more effective combatants they become, and a sabrewing can even relay hit points to a wounded comrade to keep them in the fight longer. Whether a sabreclaw wing retreats to choose its battles, or goes out in a blaze of glory, depends more on the desires of their master than it does any tactical sense or personal choice for the sabrewings.
Unlike many fleshwarped monster, sabreclaws are created from non-sapient creatures, namely baboons. They are always made in batches—if a single sabreclaw awakens without a wing to call its own, it lashes out violently and uncontrollably. Fledgling fleshwarpers may view using animals to create fleshwarps as a lesser evil than transforming humanoids, but few creators are resolute enough to remain at that level of mad science. Indeed, sabreclaws are often used to gather “raw materials” by their masters. Sabreclaws are carnivorous, but require much less food and water than natural creatures of their size.
