"Because, b**tch, I drink people."

What is it with undead keeping their guts as creepy wormlike weapons when they come to unlife? Between the mohrg, the bonedrinker, and arguably the skulking cyst, we could make an entire party of adventurers and call them the win-nards.

When you Create Undead on a goblin or bugbear's corpse, it animates as a bonedrinker, an intelligent undead with an inescapable craving for bones. The bonedrinker is what vampires would be if they drank bone marrow instead of blood. And if they lost most of their cool abilities and replaced it with bland "+X to Y" abilities. And had freakish tentacles coming out of their belly. Interestingly, the fact that only bugbears and goblins are changed into bonedrinkers is only due to tradition, and the book says that you could change other humanoids into bonedrinkers by slightly altering the ritual. It's just that the ritual is almost only known to hobgoblin casters, and those don't want to animate corpses of other races (which they consider as enemies) as pretty powerful undead retaining the mind they have in life (the ritual is said to be similar to the one creating mummies, which retains the base creature's mind, and the first bonedrinkers were created out of "fallen bugbear warriors", so probably on the battlefield. On the battlefield, there's no reason to not apply the ritual to all corpses available, except if the reanimated enemies have a chance to attack you). I "like" how they explain the origin of the rituals and the tradition of hobgoblin clerics, but they don't explain why in Baator, the bonedrinkers have tentacles sprouting out their chest, or why... You know... They drink bones.

Bonedrinkers have a few nice abilities, but not only do they not make a coherent whole, their number of RHD immediately doomed them to unuseability.
Regular Bonedrinker, 11 RHD:
- +10 Str, +4 Dex, - Con, -2 Int, +4 Wis, +4 Cha, +4 natural armor. These stats would be decent on a 4 RHD brawler. But you're a 11 RHD Undead.
- 2 tentacles, 2 claws, Improved Grab on the tentacles (and +4 on grapple checks), Pounce, and Bonedrink. Pounce is always good, especially with some natural attacks not linked to your hands. Improved Grab, on the other hand, is not that great on a Medium creature (since it will only affect Small or smaller creatures). Your main ability is keyed off grappling, and you're not good at grappling.
- Resistance 10 to cold, fire and sonic, DR 5/Silver or Good, Unholy Toughness (Charisma to HP), all pretty good abilities to have.

I believe something like 5 RHD is good here. Not awful intelligence, good natural weapons and Pounce, along with all the goodies of Undead without most of its drawbacks, but bad BAB. And DLA-4, because you have really nothing to do with Undead RHD.

Lesser Bonedrinker, 7 RHD:
- Compared to the greater version, 4 fewer RHD, -6 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Wis, -3 NA, and your energy resistances are only 5. You like your Str, so that hurts.
- One size category smaller, no +4 to grappling checks. Okay, now it's just sad. Your Improved Grab works only on Tiny opponents and you're litterally worse at it than a 1st level human warrior. Let's just say you're not gonna bonedrink your opponent anytime soon.

Well, nothing really interesting here except 4 natural weapons and Pounce. 3 RHD, DLA-2


Go out and get some vitamin D, folks! Osteoporosis is bad, and we don't need a reanimated goblin with tentacles to catch it in the real world. Next time, we'll review the Formian Quee... Er, the Brood Keeper!