THE CLICKER
Welcome back to our Monster of the Week series! For those of you who are new, Monster of the Week is where we dive into a published or homebrew NPC your players can encounter in their games. While we commonly use D&D, we cover all aspects. This week, we’re taking a closer look at an eerie and unsettling creature from the fantastic game series (and now HBO series) of the post-apocalyptic world of the Last of Us. The creature for this week is The Clicker. TO turn towards our cosmic roots, we are looking at a stat block for the Clicker for Call of Cthulhu 7E. We struggled to find a stat block that suited the Clicker, so this week will be slightly different! But before that, what is a Clicker?
Where did the Clicker come from?
The Clicker has its origins in the post-apocalyptic, post-cordyceps world of The Last of Us. If you’ve seen an explosion of mushroom-themed ads or influences in shows, there is a very good chance it was based on the 2013 game, or the recent show!
The Last of Us is an emotional survival horror game that often deals with themes of violence, loss, revenge, and most importantly (at least for a Call of Cthulhu 7E adaptation!) – its survival horror elements. Created by a fungal infection similar to Cordyceps, the Clicker represents the result of the infection’s advanced stages. These creatures can be identified by their armoured split-skull appearance, often creepily thin and blind, using clicks to identify their surroundings. They navigate their environment using this form of echolocation, producing the clicking sounds that give them the name Clicker.
Stat block
Normally we feature stat blocks from others, but this time we’ve tried to give make one we felt filled the gap we noticed!
You can access the stat block from here, but we will discuss it more below.
Main features
Clickers are driven to infect others and attack anyone who isn’t infected without discrimination. We picked out a few features we felt must be incorporated into a stat block to fit the theme of the Clickers:
- Echolocation: Clickers have a very high Listen roll, and get a bonus die when players have recently moved.
- Infection Spores: Clickers lairs have released spores that can infect players on failed a CON roll. Chances of this should be low to not outright doom PCs. In addition, spore exposure without masks and protection can lead to Spot Hiddens and Stealth suffering a penalty dice as their eyes burn and coughing occurs due to inhalation of the spores.
- Fungal Resilience: Clickers have armoured sections to their bodies. We recommend at LEAST the head but you can roll or choose some additional areas. Don’t have the whole body covered though, as other creatures in the Last of Us have these boons. Any area you are protecting should have it’s own HP pool that must be exceeded before that body part can be hit to result in damage to the Clicker. Any other damage done to a Clicker suffers -1 in soak until the armoured layers are removed.
Encounters and Implications
Encountering a Clicker should be a disturbing experience for your investigators that should stick with them for the rest of their short, traumatic lives! When they come face-to-face with this creature, a Sanity roll is required (1D3/1D6). Failing this roll may result in Sanity loss, reflecting the psychological impact of witnessing such a nasty creature (or at least should do until an investigator gets used to seeing them). Anyone suffering from a sanity bout could even gain a phobia of fungi or a mania where clicking sounds send the investigator into a nervous state. There’s plenty you could do and we’d love to hear what you can do!
Wrapping up
Incorporating the Clicker into your Call of Cthulhu 7E game can create a great body-horror experience and allow you to introduce some new homebrew mechanics like infection to the cordyceps. The Last of Us games and TV shows have many events you can base a tense and atmospheric game, so definitely check those out!
I firmly believe the Clicker is one of the coolest zombie-like creations of recent gaming history and deserves a place at your table! Drawing inspiration from the games/ show and the Lovecraftian mythos, this creature can challenge investigators’ survival instincts and sanity in ways that will likely break them! Whether your players are familiar with the “The Last of Us” series or not, the Clicker is sure to leave a lasting impression and that’s why we’d like to hold it as our most recent Monster of the Week.
Thanks for stopping by and if you liked the homebrew let us know!
-KJ