A fairly spartan Friday, but at least its an interesting update. Sharns originated in 2nd Edition, but I never got exposed to them until 3rd Edition when people started abusing Polymorph effects in order to try and get ludicrous amounts of melee attacks, all the while ignoring the very obvious fact that you cannot change into a sharn, regardless of the method you choose.
Sharns are an iconic monster in Forgotten Realms, up there with malaugryms and the twenty-seven-or-so elf subspecies, but their appearance and special abilities havent stopped me from wanting to use them in my homebrew campaign.
Ecology of the Sharn goes through all the basic hoops, discussing origins, their bizarre physiology, and maddening psychology. The article wraps things up with tasty crunch, providing a new magic item, symbiote (graft), and two sharn variants. For the “normal” sharn, they added six modular powers that you can swap out with the normal rollout as they did with dragons in Draconomicon.
Its not a big article, but it provides a good amount of material for you to use. They didnt reprint the original monster, which is a downer for those that didnt get Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide but also dont adhere to the misconception that you cant crib material from other sources. I plan on injecting them into the adventure path I’m working on, as their origins and abilities help explain a few key things about the big-bad that I was having trouble figuring out.
Awful Good Games 