Baneling (4e Monster)

Banelings, a relatively recent strain added to the swarm, morph from zerglings following a brief chrysalis phase. In their new form, the baneling's claws have shriveled and become vestigial as swollen sacs filled with volatile chemicals forms on nearly every surface of their bodies.

Typical banelings can only waddle awkwardly, but many have evolved the ability to tuck into a tight ball and roll around the battlefield. This is accomplished by repurposing their vestigial claws and growing additional hooks around their bodies, allowing them a sure grip at any angle and on nearly any surface.

The creature's only form of attack is to trigger a reaction within its chemical payload that causes it to explode with devastating force and shower the immediate surroundings with searing acid.

Baneling Tactics
Banelings are even more straightforward than their zergling kin. They scuttle over to the nearest foe and trigger their chemical payload as soon as possible, showing no regard to their own well-being. They most often attack from hiding, making use of their burrows, since their bulk makes them clumsy and slow. If a foe is foolish enough to attack them in close quarters, banelings will attempt to trigger before slain.

Tumbling Baneling Tactics
Tumbling banelings act exactly as their slower cousins, except that they tuck and roll, using their new-found centrifugal hooks to advance toward foes much more quickly than they would have waddled.

Splitterling Tactics
A splitterling resides at the peak of its suicidal evolution. Burdened with additional sacks of a more potent and gooey acid, this monstrosity is able to shower a wide area with its parting gift, bogging down those unfortunate enough to survive, coated in its clinging gore. They don't survive long, as kin of the dearly departed easily catch and devour even the most stubborn of prey. Due to its blood frenzy, the additional bulk of its payload does precious little to slow its deadly approach.

If that wasn't enough, the splitterling has evolved a decentralized nevous system which allows it to survive horrible damage and keep rolling. A blow that would cause a lesser baneling to detonate instead serves to split the creature into two smaller specimens, each of which is immediately capable of independent action. As a result, slaying a splitterling from afar becomes a much more challenging task.

Baneling Lore
A character knows the following information with a successful check.
 * DC 15: Banelings are horrid, suicidal Zerg. They waddle awkwardly toward their foes, releasing the volatile elemental forces within their bodies as they draw close, exploding in a gout of clinging acidic gore.
 * DC 20: Established hive clusters can enhance their banelings with centrifugal hooks, allowing them to tuck-and-roll toward their targets, affording their foes that much less time to react.

Encounter Groups
Banelings are encountered with other zerg or infested.

Level 7 Encounter (XP 1,500)

 * 6 Banelings
 * 2 Zergling hordes
 * 1 Hydralisk

Level 25 Encounter (XP 34,450)

 * 6 Splitterlings
 * 2 Frenzied zergling hordes
 * 2 Hunter killers