Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga looks like an old woman with a wrinkled face, white, tangled hair, and bony limbs. Her face is hideous to behold, with a long, warty nose, eyes that gleam with evil intelligence, and false teeth forged from iron.
Baba Yaga dresses in shapeless black garments and wears shoes that often squeak, announcing her arrival. Although she pretends to hobble around, walking with the aid of a stick, she is amazingly quick, strong, and agile.
Baba Yaga is evil, but her outlook tends to be neutral. While she has her own best interests at heart, she tends to attack only hose who pose a threat to herself, to her hut, or to its contents. Thieves are especially unwelcome.
Beings who are polite to Baba Yaga (she prefers to be called "Grandmother") and who respect the contents of her home find her willing to converse with them. She is difficult to deal with, being ill-tempered, impatient, and rude. However, she is a font of knowledge of all things magical, and is bound to know a number of spells that are unknown on any particular world, and she is willing to exchange her knowledge for wealth or services. She also owns a vast quantity of magical items, some of which she may be willing to trade.
PCs seeking knowledge should tread warily, however. Each question asked of Baba Yaga (if answered) ages the questioner by 1d10 years. The character might not realize that she is aging until her companions remark upon her changed appearance, or until the aging causes a change in ability scores. The "lost" years are permanently transferred to Baba Yaga-who uses them to extend her already unnaturally long life span. If questioned about the aging, Baba Yaga replies: "People who know too much grow old before their time."
Although she is evil, Baba Yaga has a soft spot for the young girls who are sometimes sent by their families to live in her hut as servants. Baba Yaga usually does not harm the girls, even if their alignments are good. She always makes them work hard and is often short-tempered with them. Only if they vex her severely will she punish them. Punishments commonly take the form of sending them home without the magical item she usually gives to those who have acted as her servants for two full years. She was especially harsh with Ilya, the serving girl who disobeyed a direct order. Even then, Baba Yaga did not kill the girl, but merely turned her into a hedgehog.
It is rumored that Baba Yaga acts this way because she remembers her own servitude-centuries ago-to the powerful female wizard who taught Baba Yaga her first magical spells.
Nevertheless, Baba Yaga is no fool. She is highly suspicious and trusts no one-even her most favored henchmen. She is especially cautious with the creatures she summons from the outer, elemental, and negative energy planes to do her fighting for her. She keeps these servants bound with magical spells and always keeps a wary eye on them with her scrying devices.
==Special Abilities==
Baba Yaga has a number of special abilities that are independent of her spell-casting abilities.
Due to her great powers and evil nature, Baba Yaga emits an aura of fear that affects all creatures who approach 30 feet of her and fail to save vs. spells at a -3 penalty. It is similar to 4th level wizard spell fear, except that it does not cause its victims to flee in panic (although there is a chance they will drop what they are holding, see the spell description in the PHB for details).
Instead of fleeing, the victims cower at Baba Yaga's feet, begging for mercy. Should Baba Yaga choose to grant it, she casts a geas on the victim and assigns some arduous task of the DM's choosing. There is -6 penalty to the saving throw against the geas due to fear. Deviation from the task causes the victim to temporarily lose 1d6 points of intelligence, due to extreme fear, until the task is resumed. Failure to complete the task within the allotted time causes the victim to become insane.
Baba Yaga prefers to let her minions (creatures drawn from other planes) do her fighting, while she stands back and casts spells. If forced into melee, however, she can attack with her iron teeth or with her fingernails, which are as strong and sharp as claws. The filth that has collected under her nails makes them deadly; anyone hit by one of Baba Yaga's claw attacks must save vs. Type F poison.
If wounded, Baba Yaga regenerates three hit points each round, regardless of what caused the wound; she can regenerate damage from weapons, fire, acid, or disease. If her head or one of her limbs is severed, the severed member floats nearby and continues to fight or cast spells, until it gets an opportunity to rejoin the body. The time needed for a head or limb to reattach itself is determined by the hit points dealt by the severing blow. For example, if Baba Yaga's head were severed by a blow that inflicted 12 points of damage, the head could be reattached in four rounds.
Although she is untrained in psionics, Baba Yaga has one very powerful psionic wild talent. She is protected at all times (even when sleeping) by the mind blank devotion with a power score of 16. Baba Yaga has both normal vision and infravision.
Baba Yaga has a magically enhanced sense of smell,. By merely sniffing a character or monster, she has an 80% chance of detecting alignment. She also has a 90% chance of detecting place of origin (home world), and a 75% chance of detecting invisible or hidden creatures by their odor. All these powers have a range of 30 yeards. Baba Yaga has complete control over the duration. of daylight and darkness on any of the Prime Material Planes she visits, and can cause the sun to rise and set at will.
Baba Yaga's has the power to feed upon the spirits of those who die in her presence. To do this, she must touch the corpse within 10 rounds after death occurs. The victim must save vs. death magic at a penalty of -6 or his spirit is tterly destroyed. If the spirit is destroyed, the victim cannot be raised from the dead, resurrected or reincarnated. Eating a spirit takes one round and restores Baba Yaga to full hit points.
==Immunities==
Baba Yaga can be hit only by magical weapons. While inside her hut, she cannot be harmed by weapons metal weapons. All metal weapons (magical and normal) pass harmlessly through her. When she ventures outside her hut, she loses this immunity.
Due to her high Wisdom score, Baba Yaga gains a +4 bonus to saving throws vs. spells that attack the mind. Her Wisdom also gives her complete immunity to the following spells: chaos, charm monster, charm person, command, confusion, emotion, fear, feeblemind, forget, friends, fumble, hold monster, hold person, hypnotism, magic jar, quest, 
ray of enfeeblement, scare, suggestion.
Due to her high Intelligence score, she is immune to illusion spells of 7th level or less.
Due to her fantastically high Constitution score, Baba Yaga cannot be killed by poison. Should she fail a saving throw vs. poison, suffers only an extra 2d6 points of damage rather than being killed.
Her high Constitution also gives her a +2 to all saving throws vs. spells that cause damage to the body through wounds, disease or instant death (for example, 
breath of death, contagion, cause disease, 
cause light/serious/critical wounds, death spell, destruction, disintegrate, energy drain, finger of death, power word, kill, 
vampiric touch). Because her normal saving throw vs. spells is 4, she can only be harmed by these spells if she rolls a 1 on her saving throw.
Even though Baba Yaga is from another plane and is evil, she cannot be banished by means of a dispel evil spell. Nor is her hut affected by this spell.
Finally, Baba Yaga resists fire as if she were wearing a ring of fire resistance, and resists cold as if she had used a scroll of protection from cold (but without the 30-foot-diameter sphere; the protection applies only to herself).
==Wizard Abilities==
Baba Yaga is a 25th level wizard. She can use spells that require contact with another plane when she is outside the hut-or when she is within one of the areas that specifically allows contact with a particular plane. She is a master at the art of summoning, and has a number of these spells in her repertoire (banishment, conjure elemental; dismissal; ensnarement, gate, invisible stalker; 
monster summoning I-VII, shadow monsters; summon shadow). While she is inside the hut, she prefers to instead memorize spells that are useful against intruders.
When the PCs enter the hut, Baba Yaga has the following spells memorized and ready for use:
: 1st level: grease, light, protection from good, shocking grasp, sleep.
: 2nd level: detect invisibility, ray of enfeeblement, spectral hand, Tasha's uncontrollable hideous laughter, wizard lock.
: 3rd level: dispel magic, haste, slow, vampiric touch, wraithform.
: 4th level: contagion, fumble, minor globe of invulnerability, polymorph other, shout.
: 5th level: cone of cold, feeblemind, Leomund's lamentable belaborment, teleport (x2).
: 6th level: disintegrate, geas, project image, repulsion, veil.
: 7th level: forcecage, reverse gravity, spell turning, sequester, statue.
: 8th level: Bigby's clenched fist, binding, clone, mass charm, power word, blind.
: 9th level: crystalbrittle, power word, kill, prismatic sphere, time stop, wish.
Because Baba Yaga is such a powerful and well traveled wizard, the DM should feel free to alter her spelllist or to make up new spells.
==Priest Abilities==
In addition to being a powerful wizard, Baba Yaga worships the gods of magic, and is a 12th level priest. As a worshipper of magic, she has a number of granted powers: the ability to control undead (as a normal cleric), infravision, and the ability to shapechange up to three times a day, as a 7th level druid.
When the PCs enter the hut, Baba Yaga has the following priest spells memorized:
: 1st level: animal friendship, command, detect magic, detect poison, endure cold/heat, entangle, invisibility to animals, protection from good, remove fear. 
: 2nd level: enthrall, find traps, heat metal, hold person, obscurement, silence, 15' radius, speak with animals, trip.
: 3rd level: call lightning, cure disease, dispel magic, meld into stone, negative plane protection, remove curse, speak with dead.
: 4th level: abjure, cure serious wounds, detect lie, free action, imbue with spell ability, lower water, protection from lightning.
: 5th level: anti-plant shell, cure critical wounds, dispel evil, raise dead, spike stones, true seeing.
: 6th level: animate object, blade barrier.
==Thief Abilities==
Baba Yaga has a number of the abilities of a 10th level thief. She can open locks, find or remove traps, hide in shadows, detect noise, or read languages. She can also, to a lesser degree, move silently-although her squeaky shoes often give her away. Because she was not formally trained as a thief, Baba Yaga does not have any special abilities in picking pockets, climbing walls, or backstabbing.
Thieving abilities: OL 75%, F/RT 80%, MS 30%, HS 85%, DN 80%, RL 95%.
==Magical Items==
Because Baba Yaga has lived so long and traveled to so many different worlds, collecting magical items, the DM is encouraged to give her a wide range of these items to choose from. The DM should feel free to include magical items that the PCs have never heard of before, and to twist the descriptions of common magical items, giving them new forms, expanded or diminished powers, or special conditions for use.
A number of magical items are specifically mentioned in the area descriptions of this module; Baba Yaga knows the location and function of each of these items and can make use of them.
==Baba Yaga's Cauldron==
Baba Yaga's iron cauldron is similar to a carpet of flying. It can carry a single person (up to 150 pounds) and travel at a speed of 42 (MC B). It is controlled by the mental commands of the person inside it. But it also has additional magical properties-and a few quirks.
The first quirk is that Baba Yaga's cauldron of flying must hug the ground; it can gain an altitude of no more than 60 feet. If traveling across a region of tall trees, it simply forces them aside, uprooting them and leaving a wide trail in its wake. It must, however, detour around constructions that are more than 60 feet high (buildings, walls, etc.) The cauldron is also incapable of crossing a large volume of water such as a river or ocean. Any body of water less than 10 feet wide or less than one foot deep poses no problem.
The second quirk is that the passage of the cauldron often stirs up storms in the atmosphere above it. Each journey of the cauldron has a 25% chance of causing a violent magical thunderstorm (but one without any lightning, just thunder) even in a clear sky.
The cauldron protects its occupant against spells of up to 4th level in the same manner globe of invulnerability spell, Higher-level spells rebound from the cauldron as if it were protected by a spell turning spell (the cauldron has an unlimited capacity to turn spells).
The cauldron is protected against intruders with a fire trap spell. Anyone climbing in without dispelling the trap suffers 25d4 points of fire damage.
==Baba Yaga's Broom==
Whenever she travels in her flying cauldron, Baba Yaga takes her broom of track erasing along with her. The broom (traditionally called a "besom") has bristles made of twigs. It functions as a pass without trace spell, and it can erase the trail passage of devastation left by the cauldron's through a forest (uprooted trees spring back into place, undamaged).
Category:Creatures
Category:The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga Creatures