Barghest
CREATURE 4Typical barghests are ravenous gluttons of life who feed and grow on the fat of mortals, their bodies changing in ways none can predict as they use the flesh and blood of their victims to achieve grisly transformations into greater barghests. Barghests often make use of their shapechanging abilities to rule tribes of goblinoids or to discreetly hunt in rural areas in the guise of unnaturally intelligent wolves. They do not work well together, as each barghest wants all the kills for itself; cannibalism is the typical result of too many barghests in one small area.
Barghests are lupine fiends with goblinoid faces and humanoid hands. They stalk the Material Plane in search of souls to sate their demonic hunger. Eons ago, barghests dwelled in the pits of Hell and served Asmodeus, but after Lamashtu abducted and adopted the four most powerful of their kind to serve as pets (and in time, as a pantheon of hero-gods worshipped by evil goblins), barghests' loyalties and philosophical nature changed significantly. Today, while barghests retain their connection to goblinoids, they serve none but their own appetites.
The barghest takes on the shape of a goblinoid (a goblin, hobgoblin, or bugbear) or a wolf, or it transforms back into its true form. When the barghest is a goblinoid, it loses its jaws and claw Strikes, it becomes Small if it is a goblin, and its Speed changes to 20 feet. When the barghest is a wolf, its Speed changes to 40 feet and its jaws gain Knockdown. Each individual barghest has only one goblinoid form and one wolf form.
Effect: Wolf Shape
The monster changes its shape indefinitely. It can use this action again to return to its natural shape or adopt a new shape. Unless otherwise noted, a monster cannot use Change Shape to appear as a specific individual. Using Change Shape counts as creating a disguise for the Impersonate use of Deception. The monster's transformation automatically defeats Perception DCs to determine whether the creature is a member of the ancestry or creature type into which it transformed, and it gains a +4 status bonus to its Deception DC to prevent others from seeing through its disguise. Change Shape abilities specify what shapes the monster can adopt. The monster doesn't gain any special abilities of the new shape, only its physical form. For example, in each shape, it replaces its normal Speeds and Strikes, and might potentially change its senses or size. Any changes are listed in its stat block.
Once per month, a barghest can spend 1 minute to devour a corpse, gaining a permanent +1 status bonus to its checks and DCs. Each subsequent time it feeds, this bonus increases by 1. The fourth time a barghest feeds, it sheds its skin and mutates into a Greater Barghest, and the status bonus ends.
Effect: Feed