Stone guardian

A stone guardian was a rare variant of a stone golem.

Description
These constructs were medium-to-large in size, and made of hard rock. They seemed to resemble stone golems, and were also non-intelligent. Stone guardians could, thanks to the magical spells used in their creation, see and hear.

Combat
These golems attacked with their huge arms, slamming opponents with great force. They would never back down from combat, and would continue to attack until completely destroyed.

Stone guardians were impervious to normal missile attacks, and only took a small amount of damage from edged weapons. As well as this, they only took half the regular damage from fire, cold-based, and electrical-based attacks and spells. As they had no living body or mind, poisons and any sort of mental-based spells, such as charm, had zero effect.

Despite a large number of immunities, any spell that could transmute their stone-like forms would destroy them. Spells such as stone shape, transmute rock to mud, dig, and stone to flesh were fatal to such constructs.

Creation
Stone guardians were created by forming a base shape, similar to that of a human or an ogre, out of mud. The mud structure must then be supplied with a heart of stone. As with other golems, a powerful mage must cast several spells on the incomplete golem, in this case enchant item, wish (or limited wish), transmute mud to rock, magic mouth, and optionally, detect invisibility. If the optional spell was used, the golem was able to detect invisible creatures.

After creation, the golems had to undergo an activation sequence. Even accomplished wizards were subject to potential failure of activating a stone guardian, owing to the highly precise nature of such activation. However, particular rings of protection could be produced and given to allies, to stop them from being attacked by the golem. The effect of such rings had a 10-foot-radius (3.0 meters), so even more allies could be protected in a tight area. Each of these rings were attuned to only a particular stone guardian.

Specialty priests of Segojan Earthcaller, the gnome deity called Earthfriend, could temporarily create one of these creatures with a single spell.

Uses
Stone guardians were known to have been used as protectors of entrances to important buildings, particularly in Myth Drannor. Magical rings of stone could transform into empowered stone guardians upon the wearer's command.

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * Dragon #95, "Into the Forgotten Realms"
 * Novels
 * The Glass Prison
 * Video Games
 * Treasures of the Savage Frontier