Encounter: Dust Bunny

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

Looking to create some monsters that create various afflictions, so I decided to maybe just trying to go down the list of afflictions to see what would be interesting. Just straight browsing the list, the very first affliction is "Coughing/Sneezing" and the first good idea that came from my friends when I asked them was a "Dust Bunny". So... that's where I am at. Let's try to play up the annoyance aspect and force multiplier aspect by making a monster that is easy to defeat, but also has a good possibility of ruining someone's day before it happens.

Mechanics

As always, I like to aim low when designing my monsters. I mean, I think it is easier to scale a weak enemy into a serious threat, than it is to tear down a serious threat into something more accessible. I also like scaling via CER. Weakish enemies run the gamut from 1-30, the high end of the that being about the point where enemies start going from insignificant annoyance to something to consider for a lot of low powered Dungeon Fantasy characters.
To start with, afflictions take a big bite out of my CER budget usually, so let's see what that costs first. Coughing/Sneezing is a +20% affliction, Well, this one is weak so it only takes a 4-point bite out of our budget. Thinking this thing is something of a nonliving being, maybe more of a haunted mischievous spirit, it probably has homogeneous injury tolerance. That's worth another 8. Let's see what we are working with so far.

Attack Skill	0	Active Defense	0
Affliction	4	Damage Resistance	8
Damage	0	Health	0
Fatigue Points	0	Hit Points	0
Move	0	Will	0
Total Offensive Rating (OR)	4	Total Protective Rating (PR)	8

OK; he's a "bunny" so let's give him annoyingly quick move and evasion. It's kinda unnatural, so let's give it some fragility too. Brittle gives us -3 on the Damage Resistance. Let's add in some "Fur" for DR though, giving us 1 back, for a net of -2.

Attack Skill	0	Active Defense	4
Affliction	4	Damage Resistance	6
Damage	0	Health	0
Fatigue Points	0	Hit Points	0
Move	4	Will	0
Total Offensive Rating (OR)	8	Total Protective Rating (PR)	10

OK, we are close to the happy medium of my wide band now... I need to apply some of the nominal stuff like attack skill and damage that everything has, then we can play around with some leftover points if we didn't blow the budget yet.

Attack Skill	4	Active Defense	4
Affliction	4	Damage Resistance	6
Damage	1	Health	0
Fatigue Points	0	Hit Points	0
Move	4	Will	0
Total Offensive Rating (OR)	13	Total Protective Rating (PR)	10

You know what? I like these numbers. Gives some nice wiggle room for customizing it further, but it has enough to solidify its key mechanical characteristics. Let's look at its stats.

ST: 10	HP: 10	Speed: 7
DX: 14	Will: 10	Move: 10
IQ: 6	Per: 13
HT: 10	FP: 10	SM: -4
Dodge: 10	Parry: 8	DR: 1

Bite (14): Reach C, 1d-3 Crushing
Dust Spray: Shoots a 3 yard long, 3 yard wide cone of dust into the air in front of it. Roll HT to resist, or start coughing and sneezing lowering DX by 3, IQ by 1, and ruining stealth. +1 to resist if not facing the right direction, and +3 if wearing protective breathing gear. Characters that do not breathe are immune. Coughing and sneezing lasts for margin of failure minutes.
Explosive Puff: When it takes damage, it expels a dust cloud with a radius of 1 yard per 3 HP of received damage (Damage less than 3 HP has no effect.) If the attacker is in range, he or she rolls at HT-4 to resist. Other incidental casualties roll HT to resist.  +1 to resist if not facing the right direction, and +3 if wearing protective breathing gear. Characters that do not breathe are immune. Coughing and sneezing lasts for margin of failure minutes.
Traits: Fur, Trickster (12), Sadist (12), Injury Tolerance: Homogeneous, Doesn't Eat, Doesn't Breath, Doesn't Sleep, Fragile (Brittle)
Skills: Brawling-14, Traps-12
Class: Spirit

Fluff

This is a malevolent prankster spirit that gets its jollies by making people feel gross and cough. They love messing with people who think they are being sneaky by blowing a puff of irritating dust in their face. For the most part, they can't very well be truly defeated without some kind of exorcism; destroying its body just frees up the spirit to possess more filth and dust. Luckily for delvers, it is very fickle and annoyed easily, and usually gives up eventually anyway, searching instead for a new target. A particularly pernicious individual might go from trap to trap as it is defeated, upping the ante each time.

Other Notes

Giving it knockback blowing powers might be an interesting twist. Pairing it with a sleeping powerful enemy could be a funny trap setup. An annoying prankster that likes to hide in small tunnels and breathe on the party at twists and turns in every tunnel could make a funny recurring attack.

Precis - A weak enemy that loves traps and making people cough and sneeze.