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A Phase Ungoliant is a brutal, less subtle killer and cousin of the well-known Phase Spider. Where the Phase Spider prefers to bite a foe and then return to it's plane to watch the poison claim a life, the Phase Ungoliant is content with enjoying the company of others of it's kind, gathering around unsuspecting victims, and ferociously biting at it, inflicting their strange poison and ripping it to shreds as onlookers watch in horror as he disappears and reappears with more and more injuries.
They are also capable of rather poor, droning flight, which, for some reason, is audible on the Material plane.
Phase Ungoliant CR 7
XP 3,200
Phase ungoliant
Large magical beast
Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +6
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Defense
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AC 19, touch 12, flat-footed 16 (+3 Dex, +7 natural, -1 size)
hp 73 (8d10+32)
Fort +10, Ref +9, Will +3
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Offense
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Speed 30 ft., climb 20 ft., fly 30 ft. (poor)
Melee bite +12 (2d6+7)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
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Statistics
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Str 20, Dex 17, Con 18, Int 7, Wis 13, Cha 10
Base Atk +8; CMB +14; CMD 27 (35 vs. trip)
Feats Ability Focus (generic ability), Improved Initiative, Power Attack, Skill Focus (Stealth)
Skills Climb +18, Fly +2, Perception +6, Stealth +7
SQ blinking poison, ethereal ambush, ethereal jaunt
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Special Abilities
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Bite—injury; save Fort DC 20; frequency 1/round for 8 rounds; effect; poisoned player is under effects of blink spell; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Constitution-based.
A Phase Ungoliant is fully capable of striking any creature that warps to and fro from the ethereal plane in a quick shimmer. Their poison destabilizes their matter and sends them frequently between their, and the material planes of existence. As a Phase Ungoliant is often Ethereal, this means that it can attack said blinking creature while it warps, but the creature has 20% concealment towards it.
Another issue of this spell is the difficulty of both escaping, and saving said person. The poison, however, is supernatural, and the blink cannot be dispelled via Dispel magic. Any spell that might heal the poison, however, takes into account the dispel concealment, as below in the spoiler.
School transmutation; Level bard 3, sorcerer/wizard 3
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S
Range personal
Target you
Duration 1 round/level (D)
You “blink” quickly back and forth between the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane and look as though you're winking in and out of reality at random. Blink has several effects, as follows.
Physical attacks against you have a 50% miss chance, and the Blind-Fight feat doesn't help opponents, since you're ethereal and not merely invisible. If the attack is capable of striking ethereal creatures, the miss chance is only 20% (for concealment).
If the attacker can see invisible creatures, the miss chance is also only 20%. (For an attacker who can both see and strike ethereal creatures, there is no miss chance.) Likewise, your own attacks have a 20% miss chance, since you sometimes go ethereal just as you are about to strike.
Any individually targeted spell has a 50% chance to fail against you while you're blinking unless your attacker can target invisible, ethereal creatures. Your own spells have a 20% chance to activate just as you go ethereal, in which case they typically do not affect the Material Plane (but they might affect targets on the Ethereal Plane).
While blinking, you take only half damage from area attacks (but full damage from those that extend onto the Ethereal Plane). Although you are only partially visible, you are not considered invisible and targets retain their Dexterity bonus to AC against your attacks. You do receive a +2 bonus on attack rolls made against enemies that cannot see invisible creatures.
You take only half damage from falling, since you fall only while you are material.
While blinking, you can step through (but not see through) solid objects. For each 5 feet of solid material you walk through, there is a 50% chance that you become material. If this occurs, you are shunted off to the nearest open space and take 1d6 points of damage per 5 feet so traveled.
Since you spend about half your time on the Ethereal Plane, you can see and even attack ethereal creatures. You interact with ethereal creatures roughly the same way you interact with material ones.
An ethereal creature is invisible, incorporeal, and capable of moving in any direction, even up or down. As an incorporeal creature, you can move through solid objects, including living creatures.
An ethereal creature can see and hear the Material Plane, but everything looks gray and insubstantial. Sight and hearing on the Material Plane are limited to 60 feet.
Force effects and abjurations affect you normally. Their effects extend onto the Ethereal Plane from the Material Plane, but not vice versa. An ethereal creature can't attack material creatures, and spells you cast while ethereal affect only other ethereal things. Certain material creatures or objects have attacks or effects that work on the Ethereal Plane. Treat other ethereal creatures and objects as material.
Ethereal Clarity (Ex) Phase Ungoliants are used to harming creatures that blink between planes, and suffer only a 20% miss chance against blinking targets.
Ethereal Ambush (Ex) A Phase Ungoliant that attacks foes on the Material Plane in a surprise round can take a full round of actions if it begins the combat by phasing into the Material Plane from the Ethereal Plane.
Ethereal Jaunt (Su) A Phase Ungoliant can shift from the Ethereal Plane to the Material Plane as a free action, and shift back again as a move action (or as part of a move action). The ability is otherwise identical to ethereal jaunt (CL 15th).
Flight (30 feet, Poor) You can fly!
Low-Light Vision See twice as far as a human in low light, distinguishing color and detail.
Power Attack -3/+6 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
What do you guys think of this thing? Is it an improvement over our beloved annoying spider, or does the blink make it much easier to kill?
Leng spiders are horrifying, but I find this thing to be different from them, as well as a comfortable middle between the 2 :D
There are problems with how the blink spell works since it mistakenly says ethereal creatures are incorporeal which is not true.
The will save is also wrong. It should be a +4
What is this:
Climbing (20 feet) You have a Climb speed.
Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white vision only).
Is that what the player gets if he fails the save?
The phase spider moves at 40, so this one should also.
If you are going to give it skill focus stealth you should rearrange the skill points its stealth score is higher. Right now it is a wasted feat.
As it stand this creature actually seems less dangerous than a phase spider. The con damaging poison is actually something that is scary.
Your spider also does not do any more damage than a phase spider.
Maybe bump its strength up since it only gets one attack.
Go back to the con poison. A 20 percent miss chance is not likely going to help much.
Many parties will figure out that they can ready actions to take care of the Ethereal Ambush, if the GM uses hit and run tactics.
I would give the monster an ability that allowed it to phase out as an immediate action to avoid the readied actions, but I would limit it. Maybe it becomes available again every 1d4 rounds. Doing it every round would be too annoying most likely.
Allowing it to spit venom as a ranged touch attack might also help.
There are problems with how the blink spell works since it mistakenly says ethereal creatures are incorporeal which is not true.
The will save is also wrong. It should be a +4
What is this:
Climbing (20 feet) You have a Climb speed.
Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white vision only).
Is that what the player gets if he fails the save?
That was Herolab's way of saying that the creature has Climbing 20 and Darkvision 60. The player doesn't get that, rather, they get the blink poison.
The phase spider moves at 40, so this one should also.
A Phase Ungoliant is a lot less agile than a normal phase spider, and suffers the movement speed reduction as a result.
If you are going to give it skill focus stealth you should rearrange the skill points its stealth score is higher. Right now it is a wasted feat.
I agree with Skill Focus Stealth not being as handy, or useful, as I'd expected. As a result it's been replaced with Furious Focus, to use with it's bite attack for a total of +16 damage, which falls into proper damage for a Cr 7
As it stand this creature actually seems less dangerous than a phase spider. The con damaging poison is actually something that is scary.
Your spider also does not do any more damage than a phase spider.
Maybe bump its strength up since it only gets one attack.
No need for that with the replacement of Skill Focus with Furious Focus
Go back to the con poison. A 20 percent miss chance is not likely going to help much.
Whether the creature is actually incorporeal or not, it still visibly takes on ghost like properties and *is* on the ethereal plane for the duration of the spell, blinking in and out. This means that the Ethereal jaunted spider is completely capable of biting it while it's in that state of blinking.
Many parties will figure out that they can ready actions to take care of the Ethereal Ambush, if the GM uses hit and run tactics.
Ready actions work, unless that person has been afflicted with the blink poison, which activates immediately, at which point the still-ethereal spiders can dog-pile them without shifting onto the material plane, which is the main fear of fighting them.
I would give the monster an ability that allowed it to phase out as an immediate action to avoid the readied actions, but I would limit it. Maybe it becomes available again every 1d4 rounds. Doing it every round would be too annoying most likely.
That's the original phase spider in an absolute nutshell, though. The one saving grace of these creatures is that, on surprise round, they full attack. Then if they win initiative again, they phase back and move away. In the Ungoliant's case, they phase out and hit them with a standard attack, and chase the person who's been blinked until it dies while remaining invisible.
However I appreciate the help and the change!
Phase Ungoliant CR 7 (Revision 2.0)
XP 3,200
Phase ungoliant
NE Large magical beast
Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +5
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Defense
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AC 19, touch 12, flat-footed 16 (+3 Dex, +7 natural, -1 size)
hp 73 (8d10+32)
Fort +10, Ref +9, Will +4
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Offense
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Speed 30 ft., climb 20 ft., fly 30 ft. (poor)
Melee bite +12 (2d6+16) (Furious Focus) +12 (2d6+7) on AoO's
Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
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Statistics
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Str 20, Dex 17, Con 18, Int 7, Wis 13, Cha 10
Base Atk +8; CMB +14; CMD 27 (35 vs. trip)
Feats Ability Focus (generic ability), Furious Focus[APG], Improved Initiative, Power Attack
Skills Climb +13, Fly +2, Perception +9, Stealth +3
SQ blinking poison, ethereal ambush, ethereal jaunt
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Special Abilities
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Blinking Poison (DC 20) (Ex) Bite—injury; save Fort DC 20; frequency 1/round for 8 rounds; effect; poisoned player is under effects of blink spell; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Constitution-based.
Climbing (20 feet) You have a Climb speed.
Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white vision only).
Ethereal Ambush (Ex) A phase spider that attacks foes on the Material Plane in a surprise round can take a full round of actions if it begins the combat by phasing into the Material Plane from the Ethereal Plane.
Ethereal Jaunt (Su) A phase spider can shift from the Ethereal Plane to the Material Plane as a free action, and shift back again as a move action (or as part of a move action). The ability is otherwise identical to ethereal jaunt (CL 15th).
Strong Jaws (Ex) For the purposes of Furious Focus, a Phase Ungoliant's Jaws function as a two-handed weapon.
Blink Clarity (Su) Phase Ungoliants are used to harming creatures that blink between planes, and suffer only a 20% miss chance against blinking targets.
Flight (30 feet, Poor) You can fly!
Low-Light Vision See twice as far as a human in low light, distinguishing color and detail.
Power Attack -3/+6 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Hm.
Why not have the poison ALSO act as a, well, murdering poison? As it is it just means you're putting the Blink spell on an enemy, which is... frequently beneficial.
The main purpose for the blink spell is to make it to where the spider can quickly dogpile a single enemy with ethereal plane shifted friends. It's actually very unbeneficial against these particular enemies because. If these creatures were meant to attack alone, I would put the poison back, but the sheer damage from them dedicating attacks to a single enemy (4d6+32 a round against level appropriates is scary) and more than enough in my eyes. However, in the future, if these things get killed too easily by players, I'll likely give them the poison back.
What I'm going for is a "Relentless" form of the phase spider that isn't a hit and run type. I want this variant to be a merciless, unforeseeable force.
As they are huge, only 4 at a time(6 if you are a very nasty GM) can dogpile the target. The best defense would be bringing a single bead from a necklace of fireballs and point blanking it into the face of one of the spiders each time. If you bring the whole necklace, they are all going off at once, so you had better have some fire resistance.
One thing I've thought of for making scarier Phase Spiders was to give them one more hit dice, giving them what they need for Vital Strike.
Step 1) Phase in
Step 2) Vital Strike
Step 3) Phase out.
I agree with Skill Focus Stealth not being as handy, or useful, as I'd expected. As a result it's been replaced with Furious Focus, to use with it's bite attack for a total of +16 damage, which falls into proper damage for a Cr 7
Furious Focus is not legal, but I do understand that sometimes it is good to break the rules.
Ready actions work, unless that person has been afflicted with the blink poison, which activates immediately, at which point the still-ethereal spiders can dog-pile them without shifting onto the material plane, which is the main fear of fighting them.
I was talking about the rest of the party, that is not blinking. :)
Vital strike does indeed sound scary, but the "Strong Jaws" ability that allows Furious Focus makes up for that. Theoretically the +2 from being invisible and having surprise rounds make up for the lack of bonus, but I like to keep things simple, number wise. Then again, with FF, the to-hit is even higher and the damage even more consistent, so Vital strike might just be the better idea, since it has only 1 attack... that might actually be for the better.