Nightmare Creature

Nightmare creatures have an unnatural link to the most terrifying parts of the Dimension of Dreams, allowing them to turn others' dreams into nightmares and sow fear even in the waking world. Corrupted by their power, they become evil and use their abilities to torment their enemies and abuse creatures weaker than themselves. Eventually this dream connection corrupts the creature's appearance into a bizarre caricature of its original form.

A nightmare creature uses its ability to control dreams to confuse and frighten its target with horrendous imagery—visions of failure or betrayal and horrific scenes of murder and death. A nightmare creature may even allow the target to think it is in control of the dream or has awakened from a nightmare, only to snatch away that hope and send its target into a downward spiral of misery and self-doubt. The most wicked nightmare creatures tend to become ghosts if slain, returning again and again to haunt their chosen victims.

"Nightmare creature" is an acquired or inherited template that can be added to any creature with Intelligence and Charisma scores of at least 6 (referred to hereafter as the base creature). Most nightmare creatures were once aberrations, fey, humanoids, or outsiders. A nightmare creature uses the base creature's statistics and abilities except as noted here. If the base creature has 10 or more Hit Dice, it instead becomes a nightmare lord (see below).

Nightmare lords are especially powerful nightmare creatures who live in the Dimension of Dreams. They rule over lesser nightmare creatures in bizarre puppet courts staffed by the maddened and soul-shriveled husks of kidnapped dreamers. They have all the abilities of nightmare creatures, plus the following.

night terrors (DC 13)

Poison — Bite—injury; save Fort DC 15; frequency 1/round for 10 rounds; effect 1d2 Dex; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Constitution-based.

Traps — An ettercap is particularly skilled at crafting cunning traps with its webs. Deadfalls, nooses, and spear traps are the most common traps ettercaps build with their webs. An ettercap doesn't require gold to build its traps, merely time. Ettercap traps can be found here.

web (+8 ranged, DC 15, 4 hp)

feign death (DC 13)

Spider Empathy — This ability functions as a druid's wild empathy, except that an ettercap can only use this ability on spiders. An ettercap gains a +4 racial bonus on this check. Spiders are mindless, but this empathic communication imparts to them a modicum of implanted intelligence, allowing ettercaps to train giant spiders and use them as guardians.

Great Fortitude, Improved Initiative

Climb +14, Craft (trapmaking) +11, Fly +13, Intimidate +5, Perception +9, Stealth +15