Maelephant

(From Planescape: Morte's Planar Parade - 2023):

Respected as guardians by villains across the multiverse, maelephants are Fiends with pachyderm-like heads. They can exhale toxic fumes that cause foes to temporarily forget their combat training, spellcasting abilities, and other skills.

Maelephants strike bargains with wicked spellcasters and entities of the Lower Planes, pledging to guard a site or object for decades. The Fiends fulfill their end of the bargain with unwavering loyalty, steadfastly tending to their posts per the terms of their agreement.

(From 3rd Edition Fiend Folio - 2003):

The maelephant is a powerful guardian fiend used to protect and defend the treasuries of fiends and wizards. 

The creature is humanoid in basic shape, standing 9 feet tall and weighing 800 pounds. A maelephant’s hands appear oversized for its body and are tipped with claws. Its head is similar to a small-eared elephant’s head, having a small mouth filled with tiny teeth, small rheumy red eyes, and a long, coiling trunk tipped with a long, thin spike. 

Originally created by powerful baatezu lords to serve as guardians, many maelephants escaped their servitude when their lords were deposed. Now each one travels the Lower Planes alone, driven by an overwhelming urge to protect and guard, though it has nothing of its own to protect. If a powerful individual can provide a maelephant with the great amount of living flesh it needs for sustenance, it readily agrees to serve as a guardian for that individual. 

Maelephants speak Common and Infernal. 

Combat: A maelephant fights to the death to protect its territory or its charge, and it never pursues intruders or thieves to a distance out of sight of whatever it is guarding. A maelephant is equally effective at holding the line and preventing passage into an area as it is at forcing intruders to retreat. A maelephant never leaves its post, and it immediately breaks off any attack to protect a new threat to its charge. It usually spends the first few rounds of combat using spelllike abilities to erect a defensive screen around its charge. 

Maelephants can be summoned using a summon monster VIII spell. 

Breath Weapon (Su): Three times per day, a maelephant can breathe out a cloud of noxious vapor 10 feet wide and 30 feet long. Victims within the area of the cloud must make a Fortitude save (DC 17) or suffer complete memory loss. Memory loss suppresses all of a creature’s ranks in its skills and its feats, and it prevents the use of any class abilities (including spellcasting). Currently prepared spells are not lost; they are simply not accessible to be cast. Racial abilities are retained. Additionally, the victim no longer knows who its friends and enemies are, doesn’t remember its past, and can’t even remember its name. The victim can create new memories, but each time it sleeps or rests, any new memories it has created vanish. This condition can be cured by any effect that cures poison (a heal or neutralize poison spell, for example); otherwise, it is permanent. 

Frenzied Charge (Ex): Once per minute, a maelephant can make a frenzied charge. During the round in which this occurs, the maelephant’s speed increases to 45 feet and it gains a +2 bonus on all attack rolls. This bonus stacks with any bonuses gained from making a charge attack. 

Improved Grab (Ex): If a maelephant hits an opponent that is at least one size category smaller than itself with a claw attack, it deals normal damage and attempts to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity (grapple bonus +18). If it gets a hold, it automatically hits with its trunk-spike. Thereafter, the maelephant has the option to conduct the grapple normally, or simply use its claw to hold the opponent (–20 penalty on grapple check, but the maelephant is not considered grappled). In either case, each successful grapple check it makes during successive rounds automatically deals claw damage. 

Spell-Like Abilities: At will—alarm, entangle, gust of wind, light, true seeing, warp wood; 3/day—blade barrier, baleful polymorph. Caster level 8th; save DC 12 + spell level. 

Defensive Stance (Ex): Once per encounter, a maelephant can adopt a defensive stance as a free action on its turn. In this defensive stance, the maelephant gains +2 Strength, +4 Constitution, a +2 resistance bonus on all saves, and a +4 dodge bonus to Armor Class. The following changes are in effect as long as the defensive stance lasts: HD 8d8+40 (76 hp); AC 24, touch 13, flat-footed 20; Base Attack/Grapple +9/+19; Full Attack 2 claws +14 melee and trunk-spike +9 melee; Damage claw 1d6+7, trunk-spike 2d6+4; SV Fort +11, Ref +8, Will +14; Str 24, Con 20; Concentration +16, Jump +17. These benefits persist for a number of rounds equal to 3 + the maelephant’s newly improved Constitution modifier, or until the maelephant moves. While in a defensive stance, a maelephant cannot use skills or abilities that require it to shift its position. A maelephant can end its defensive stance at will. At the end of the defensive stance, the maelephant takes a –2 penalty to Strength for the duration of the current encounter. 

Keen Senses (Ex): A maelephant’s sight is four times as good as a human’s. It has low-light vision and darkvision to a range of 240 feet. 

Outsider Traits: Maelephants cannot be raised or resurrected (though a wish or miracle spell can restore life). 

Fast Healing (Ex): A maelephant regains lost hit points at the rate of 2 per round. Fast healing does not restore hit points lost from starvation, thirst, or suffocation, and it does not allow a maelephant to regrow or reattach lost body parts. 

Scent (Ex): A maelephant can detect approaching enemies, sniff out hidden foes, and track by sense of smell.

(From Planescape: Monstrous Compendium Appendix I - 1994):

The frightening but fascinating maelephants guard the Lower Planes. They are large, roughly bipedal creatures with huge pachyderm heads that have a viciously barbed trunk.

Maelephants speak their own language, and many know the common tongue, as well.

Combat: Maelephants are immune to attacks from nonmagical weapons. They are never surprised and have infravision to 240’. Their senses of hearing and smell are double human norm. They regenerate 2 hp per round. When guarding, a maelephant need never roll morale checks. It fights to the death.

Maelephants attack with two claws (1d6 damage) and their trunk-spike (2d6 damage). If both claw attacks hit in the same round, the opponent is held fast (1d3 crushing damage per round and subsequent spike attacks automatically hit). The victim breaks free with a successful Strength check with a -5 penalty, or if the maelephant takes more than 12 hp damage while holding it.

Maelephants can charge into combat. This increases their movement to 18 and gives them +2 on all attack rolls for the first round of combat only.

Three times per day, a maelephant can breath a cloud of noxious vapor 10’ wide and 30’ long. Anyone caught within this cloud must successfully save vs. poison or suffer complete memory loss. The loss lasts until cured by a neutralize poison spell (slow poison has no effect). Because the gas must contact the skin to work anyone wearing clothing that covers at least 50% of the body gains a +2 bonus to the save.

Maelephants have an array of spell-like abilities they can use one a time, once per round: alarm, bind, blade barrier (3 times per day), entangle, gust of wind, light, polymorph other (3 times per day), true seeing, and warp wood.

Habitat/Society: Powerful lower planar creatures strike a bargain with a maelephant to guard an item or area, typically for a 100-year term. Most maelephants adhere with absolute loyalty to the terms of their agreement.

Ecology: Originally, the Dark Eight, the rulers of baator, created maelephants as servants. The Eight considered obedience paramount, and bred it into their behavior more powerfully than all other considerations. How these creatures multiplied and left the exclusive service of the Dark Eight is unknown. In the Lower Planes, when beings of power want something important looked after, they seek a maelephant.