Copyright 2008 Wizards of the Coast

Bats are tiny nocturnal mammals who feed on fruit and insects… but those aren’t the bats we’re talking about here. These bats are proper monsters.

The Lore

We get two different bat species here. Both are Medium, meaning they’re the size of an adult human and have enough wingspan to get that bulk airborne.

Fire bats are Elemental Beasts (fire), which are native to the Elemental Chaos but spread to the world through natural passages between the two planes and took root here. In much the same way cats migrated to Australia on ships and became a danger to the ecosystem, I guess.

Shadowunter bats are apparently native to the world. They’re descended from normal bats who happened to live in places where necromantic energies from the Shadowfell leaked through, and those energies mutated them.

Both types of monstrous bat have Int 2 and are Unaligned. They take well to domestication, and so might be found as pets and guard animals for people or intelligent monsters, particularly those that share origins with them. In fact, the Fire Bat lore entry specifically mentions azer, which gives credence to my theory that the azer used to be Heroic-tier opponents who got upgraded to Paragon at the last minute.

The Numbers

Organizing monsters alphabetically by name means Bats are actually the first real Heroic-tier creatures we’ve run across in the book. Angels had an Heroic-tier variant but it was kind of a footnote among a bunch of more powerful individuals.

Shadowunter Bats are Level 3 Lurkers that have 38 HP and fight as skirmishers. They’re quite clumsy on the ground, but fly with speed 8. It appears they attack with a wickedly barbed tail, which has a bonus to attack and does extra damage in dim light or darkness. They can use it in a Flyby Attack, moving their speed and making a tail attack at any point (and not provoking opportunity attacks when moving away).

Hm… if one or more of these attack the party, I’d expect them to do so in an area that’s entirely shrouded in dim light or darkness. You’d think that this would allow them to get the bonus damage all the time, but PCs are likely to be carrying their own bright light sources in these places. So they’re going after the rogue who’s scouting ahead without a light source. If domesticated, their owners should probably employ some trick to neutralize the party’s lights.

Fire Bats are Level 3 Skirmishers with 60 HP and 10 fire resistance. They fly as fast as shadowunters, and are as clumsy on the ground. Being bats that are on fire, their attack is a touch that does fire damage and ongoing fire damage. Their version of the flyby attack allows them to shift 4 squares and make an attack against anyone they touch on the way.

The sample encounter is level 3, a party of goblins and their two shadowhunter bat pets.

Final Impressions

Functional opposition for when your party ventures into bat country. I think the fire bats work a little better, since the shadowunter’s bonus damage is too fiddly. Changing it so that they only need to start their turn in dim light or darkness to get the bonus would make them work better.

Since they’re only level 3 regulars, the math bug doesn’t affect them all that much.