"The material presented here is a community original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games."
Flaming Skulls are semi-corporeal undead with the appearance of -- as expected -- a flaming skull, usually a human one. Flaming skulls fly at high speed, biting prey with a weak but armor-ignoring bite.[1]
They are dangerous nuisances, likely found in unholy sites or necromancers' lairs, and are most vulnerable to area-effect spells, or being bonked in the head by a shield.
Psychology: Flaming skulls are driven by catharsis and love punishing interlopers, although they can only do this by biting. They do not negotiate, and have no fear of being blasted back to wherever they were summoned. Because of this, they can be "baited" into making risky attacks.
Stealth: They a hard time hiding in the dark, but some can lower their flames to almost nothing. Some can turn their flames off and pass as an ordinary skull (such as on a wizard's desk, or hiding amongst skulls in catacombs).
Unholy: Flaming skulls are more vulnerable in holy areas and can be weakened by an adventurer with True Faith or Power Investiture (treat as double damage). Regular water doesn't affect them, but Essential Water and strikes from water elementals can douse them, putting them into a dormant state. Holy Water might even destroy them entirely.
Humor?: Flameskulls are creatures of high emotion and low inhibition. Remove Indominable for the purposes of amusing/distracting the creature (e.g. lame puns and slapstick comedy). While in this amused state, a Bravery spell will break the creature out of its cycle of anger. You may ask it a question or two, then it disintegrates.
Flaming Bite (14): 2 points burning. Cosmic attack, ignores all DR.
Traits
Doesn’t Breathe; Doesn’t Eat or Drink; Doesn’t Sleep; High Pain Threshold; Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Indomitable; Injury Tolerance (Diffuse); No Fine Manipulators; No Legs (Aerial); Unfazeable.
No one knows if flaming skulls are necromantic creations bound to a caster, or wandering spirits who loathe mortals. In fact, they can easily be both--a ghastly, gaseous entity summoned by dark magic, often breaking free of its novice summoner's bonds, and wandering the countryside, looking for travelers to harass.
Tactics and Countertactics[]
As Diffuse creatures, flaming skulls are resistant to most attacks that aren't area-effect, cones, or explosions. Mages with explosive spells will be particularly useful against Flaming Skulls. As an odd side effect--possibly because they're made of magical fire--flaming skulls have no particular resistance to burn damage, and would be somewhat vulnerable to torches, as they would do 1 cr and a 1 burn follow-up.
Fanon Tactics -- The Flighty and The Bitey[]
In some legends, flaming skulls rely much more heavily on their bites, and at a peculiar cost. These Flaming Skulls do 2 burn on an initial hit, and burn through targets by holding onto them at ST 7, doing 3 burn each turn they are not removed, and inflicting a -2 DX penalty on their prey's other attacks, for being very distracting. While they are grappling, however, they count as Unliving instead of Diffuse, and can be damaged by all manner of attacks.
Due to this key difference, Flaming Skulls tend to behave in one of two ways. Wandering, unbound Skulls tend to be flighty, using their Stealth skill to lower their flames to nearly nothing, swooping in silently and biting at characters before slipping away behind narrow passages. Bound skulls, used by necromancers, diabolists, etc, tend to be bitey, being single-mindedly focused on biting a target for as long as possible, just to give its master a chance to strike.
Short Version[]
Flaming Skulls do 2 damage on a bite, but can hold the bite as a ST 7 grapple, doing 3 points the next turn
While biting they inflict a -2 DX penalty to their prey, but become Unliving, making them vulnerable to attack
Wandering skulls tend to be cowardly, looking for things to bite, whereas bound skulls are berserkers, willing to die as long as they can burn a mortal on their way out.
Trivia[]
Flaming skulls should probably use the Low Ceiling limitation for their Flight advantages. Flaming skulls might wander too far if they can fly straight up into the clouds.
