Cave Locust, Giant

Giant cave locusts are pale, cricket-like creatures that live underground. An average giant cave locust is 2 to 4 feet long. They are eyeless, depending on their sound-sensitive antennae, vibration-sensitive feet and a variety of touch-sensitive “hairs” on their legs to sense the environment around them.

These creatures eat subterranean fungus (including shriekers) as well as carrion; they are not predators, but if disturbed they will attack, shrieking loudly, biting, jumping wildly around, or spitting nasty goo.

All giant cave locusts in a group will shriek when disturbed, attracting wandering monsters. The GM should roll a wandering monster check each round that one or more cave locusts are attacking; if wandering monsters are indicated, they will arrive in 1d4 rounds.

Any giant cave locust that is engaged (adjacent to an opponent) will attempt to bite, doing 1d2 damage on a successful hit. This does not interrupt the monster's shrieking.

A giant cave locust can leap up to 60' horizontally, or up to 30' up. If one of these creatures is not engaged at the beginning of the round, it will leap toward one of the opponent creatures; roll a normal attack roll, and if the attack hits, the target creature takes 1d4 points of non-lethal damage from the impact.

Finally, a giant cave locust can spray a greenish-brown goo (its digestive juices) up to 10' away. Each giant cave locust can perform this attack just once per encounter. This spit attack will usually be reserved until they fail a morale check, in which case all remaining giant cave locusts will spit at their nearest opponent, and then all will attempt to flee in the next round. To spit on an opponent, the giant cave locust rolls an attack against Armor Class 11 (plus Dexterity and magical bonuses, but no normal armor value applies). If the attack hits, the target must save vs. Poison or be unable to do anything for 3d6 rounds due to the horrible smell.