Ettercap (4e Race)

Ettercap

Guarding the mother by artomz, on Flickr

Cunning hunters and trappers who have an affinity with spiders.

Racial Traits

Average Height: 5'10" - 6'10"

Average Weight: 180 - 280 lbs

Ability Scores: +2 Constitution, and +2 to Strength or Dexterity

Size: Medium

Speed: 5 squares

Vision: Normal

Languages: Common

Skill Bonuses: +2 Stealth, +2 Nature

Web Walker: You ignore movement effects of spider webs and difficult terrain related to spider swarms.

Poison Resistance: You have resist poison 5 + one-half your level.

Arachnid Kinship: You can communicate with eight-legged natural beasts such as spiders and scorpions. You are considered a spider for effects relating to that keyword.

Spider Bite: You can use spider bite as an encounter power.

Spider Bite	Ettercap Racial Power
You lash out at your foe's vulnerable rear with your poisonous fangs.
Encounter  Martial
Minor Action	Melee 1
Requirement: You must have combat advantage against the target.
Target: one enemy
Attack: Strength + 4 Vs. AC
Hit: 1d6 + Strength modifier damage and make a secondary attack against the same target.
Secondary Attack: Constitution + 2 Vs. Fortitude.
Hit: 1d6 + Constitution modifier poison damage.
Special: Increase the primary attack to +6 bonus and 2d6 + Strength modifier damage at 11th level, and to +8 bonus and 3d6 + Strength modifier damage at 21st level. Increase the secondary attack to +4 bonus and 2d6 + Constitution modifier damage at 11th level, and to +6 bonus and 3d6 + Constitution modifier damage at 21st level.

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Play an Ettercap if you want...

• To sneakily defeat your foes with traps and poisons.
• To be friends with spiders.
• To be a monsterous and primitive hunter.
• To be a member of a race that favors the Fighter, Rogue or Warden classes.

Physical Qualities

Ettercaps are bipedial with long arms, a pot-belly, short legs and hairy skin. With a stooping gait and hunched shoulders they are still around six feet tall. Their clawed hands have thumbs and three long fingers. Two large poisonous fangs protrude downwards from the sides of their mouth. Their jaws are lined with sharp teeth. At the base of their spine they have a silk gland like that of a spider.

Their bodies are covered by tufts of thick, wiry, black hair, and their skin is dark and thick. Ettercaps' heads are almost equine in shape, but they have large reptilian eyes, usually blood-red in color.

Ettercaps do not have a formal language. They express themselves through a combination of high-pitched chittering noises, shrieks, and violent actions.

Though usually only one ettercap is encountered at any time, on rare occasions a pair of ettercaps can be found together. The pairs encountered are always mated couples, though the female and male appear to be identical. Ettercap young are abandoned as soon as they are born, so adults are never encountered with young.

An ettercap eats any meat, regardless of the type of creature from which it comes. Upon capturing a victim, the ettercap poisons it so it cannot escape; once the creature is dead, the ettercap immediately devours as much of the corpse as possible. Typically, an ettercap can consume an entire deer or a large humanoid in a single sitting. Anything remaining after the ettercap has gorged itself is left for scavengers.

Playing an Ettercap

Ettercaps naturally have a life of solitude in the deepest parts of forests. That choose to become adventurers must have a rare quality such as curiosity, better-than-low intelligence, a desire for companionship, a divine calling or some form of arcane influence. Ettercaps are hoarders. A life beyond the nest may have started with interest in bits of equipment left from adventurers ensnared in their webs - the realization that blades can be wielded, that armour can protect.

As a primitive race, they are not well liked amongst civilized communities. Tenacious and gregarious ettercaps eventually learn the common tongue and perhaps find a home in human settlements, where their silk-weaving skills are found to be useful.

In combat, ettercaps prefer to set devious traps and ambush their prey rather than fight face to face. A surprised foe is one that can be bitten quickly with a poisonous bite. If forced into a straight fight, an ettercap adventurer will seek to use maneuvers that blind, daze or knock foes to the ground.

Ettercaps often have a giant spider or scorpion as a pet. There are several ways to handle this in the game:

• A sentinel druid or beastmaster ranger may state that their animal companion is a giant spider or scorpion.
• An arcane familiar.
• Your DM may allow a companion character in the form of a giant spider or scorpion. Note that such companions take a share of the XP and are usually used to fill a role missing in the party.
• You may have a giant spider or scorpion as a henchman; see Appendix 1 of Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium.

Ettercap Characteristics: Primitive, unscrupulous, sneaky, cunning

Male Names: Tripfang, Fellmoon, Weblord

Female Names: Recluse, Stingleaf, Orb-beam

Ettercap Adventurers

Three sample Ettercap adventurers are described below.

Bolete is an ettercap fighter. Woodsmen from the nearby town were dutied with burning out the ettercap web lairs encroaching on their logging sites. Bolete was just hatchling with an unusual lime-green cross pattern on her back. She was easily captured by one woodsman who wanted to take her back as a souvenir. At first she was a family pet - a kind of guard dog - but within three years grew too large to keep. The town militia adopted her, since she was a useful deterrant, and she begin to learn rudimentary words to express her desires. By ten, she was routinely helping her masters fight away savage beasts from the surrounding farmland. One day, as a jape, the guard captain stuck a pot helmet on her head and gave her a spear to hold. She took to the idea.

Firtarn is an ettercap warden. Deep in the slyvian woods, he got caught up in a particularly stubborn series of goblin raids against the local wood elves. The goblins happened to be the first to be caught in his lairs, and he developed a taste for goblin flesh. He began to be known amongst the elves as Carake'orn - the "fang in the trees". Although he defended the sacred groves by happenstance, he was approached by the dryad there who taught him how to draw from the primal spirits. Firtarn is a vicious, brave defender of the forests.

Trapdoor is an ettercap thief. His egg hatched in the sewers under a sea port, perhaps lost from a shipment of exotic animals. At first the underground waterways were cozy and he gorged himself on rats and hoarded shiny metal things. After his first molting he skulked into the above world at night and over time discovered that some of the shinies were "coins" and that others were "blades". Observing a particular kind of human people, he saw that one could use the "blades" to stab other human people in order to gain more "coins". And one gets to keep the blades. Tentatively Trapdoor began his new career.

Ettercap Feats

Heroic Tier Racial Feats

Name	Description
Silkcraft Expertise	Your silk becomes translucent and you wield it efficiently and quietly.
Silkcraft Mastery I	You produce silk at an increased rate. It becomes keen-edged - better able to find chinks in armor.
Web Reaper	Ettercaps are practiced at quickly dispatching foes entangled in their web-nests.

Paragon Tier Racial Feats

Name	Description
Baneful Bite	Your venom becomes more neurotoxic and regenerates rapidly.
Silkcraft Mastery II	Your silk cuts deeper. Your traps are more devious.
Spider Climb	You learn to use your sticky webbing to traverse walls and ceilings.

Epic Tier Racial Feats

Name	Description
Silkcraft Mastery III
Web Net	You learn to use your sticky silk webs in conjuction with your immobilizing powers.

Ettercap Racial Utility Powers

When your ettercap character gains a class utility power after 1st level, you can forgo taking a power granted to you by your class. Instead you gain a ettercap utility power of the same level or lower. For items created through a Silkcraft power, see the section "Ettercap Silkcraft" below.

Web Silkcraft	Ettercap Utility 2
You spin webs from your silk glands.
Daily
Move Action	Personal
Effect: When you use this power, select one of the following effects: You create four throwable webs, with which you, and only you, are proficient. They lasts until the end of the encounter, or 5 minutes. When you hit a target with your web, the target is immobilized until the end of your next turn. In addition, you have a +2 enchantment bonus to attack and damage rolls with the web. You create a close blast 3 zone until the end of the encounter. Squares in the zone are filled with spider webs that are difficult terrain. Your web walker racial trait allows you to traverse this normally.

Cord Silkcraft	Ettercap Utility 2
You secrete a thin, tough, silvery cord from your silk glands.
Daily
Move Action	Personal
Effect: When you use this power, select one of the following effects: You create a garrote-like weapon, with which you, and only you, are proficient. It lasts until the end of the encounter, or 5 minutes. Whilst wielding the cord in two hands, targets you grab have a -2 penalty to escape. Each turn you successfully maintain the grab you have combat advanatage against that target for the purpose of attacking again with the cord. In addition, you have a +2 enchantment bonus to attack and damage rolls with the cord. If you are a rogue, you can use the cord with the sneak attack class feature. You create a tripwire, formed in a straight line between your current square and an obstacle up to 5 squares away. You may make a stealth check for the purposes of hiding the tripwire from creatures from whom you have total concealment or superior cover. Creatures must beat your stealth check with their Perception (active or passive) to spot the tripwire. Creatures that enter a square containing a tripwire must make a saving throw to avoid being knocked prone, and the tripwire is no longer hidden.

Virulent Poison	Ettercap Utility 6
Your bite delivers a toxin that lingers in your foe.
Daily  Martial
Free Action	Personal
Trigger: You hit with the secondary attack of your spider bite.
Prerequisite: Spider bite racial power
Target: The target hit by your spider bite
Effect: The target also suffers 5 ongoing poison damage (save ends).

Aggregate Silk	Ettercap Utility 10
You excrete sticky webs to block passageways and seal shut openings, allowing you to escape from dangerous foes.
Daily
Standard Action	Area Wall 4 within 10
Effect: You create a wall of contiguous squares filled with aggregate silk. It can be up to 8 squares long and up to 2 squares high. The wall's area blocks movement and line of sight and lasts until the end of the encounter. Attacks against the wall automatically hit. The wall has 100 hit points, and attacking any square deals damage to the entire wall. It has vulnerability 5 to fire. Doors, chests (and other objects that can be opened) that are in or touched by the wall are glued shut. If the object is already locked or stuck, this adds 5 to the break DC; otherwise a DC 20 Strength check is required to break the object open. This effect persists until the object is broken open.

Summon Spider Swarm	Ettercap Utility 16
You let out a hiss. Thousands of spiders - wolf, hobo, funnel-web and more exotic kinds - emerge from the surrounding vegetation and cracks in the ground. The arachnids move at your bidding, eager to overswarm any foes that blunder too near.
Daily  Primal
Minor Action	Ranged 10
Effect: You summon a medium spider swarm in an unoccupied square within range. The swarm takes half damage from melee and ranged attacks, has vulnerability 5 against close and area attacks. It has a speed of 5, climb 5 (spider climb) and benefits from your web walker racial trait. It has a +2 bonus to AC. If an enemy begins its turn adjacent to the spider swarm, it is slowed and grants combat advantage until the end of your next turn.
Special: The rules for summoning can be found in Arcane Power, or at the WoTC site.

Ettercap Silkcraft

One-handed weapons

Weapon	Prof.	Damage	Range	Weight	Group	Properties
Web	+2	1d6	5/10	1	Flail	heavy thrown, offhand
Cord	+3	1d4	-	1	Light blade	high crit

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