[5e] Ettercap Race; Feral, Deep, and Jungle

"Ohs gods!" - Typical Deep Ettercap response to most any situation.

Ettercaps are an odd humanoid race with an affinity for spiders. Known for their monstrous appearance, bizarre personalities, and forgetful memory ettercaps are generally shunned by other races.

Affinity for Spiders

Ettercaps are well known for their love of spiders. In fact ettercaps think of themselves as spiders and refer to themselves as such. Ettercaps odd fixation with spiders causes them to keep such animals as pets and encourage them to nest in ettercap lairs. Some ettercaps use giant spiders as guard or war animals and the spiders themselves act in a manner not unlike a loyal dog to their strange masters.

Forgetful Memories

Ettercaps have very short memories compared to other races and tend to quickly forget even important details such as where their own lairs may be. As a result they have come up with various methods to deal with this dilemma. Feral ettercaps often leave a trail of fresh silk behind them to trace back to their lair. Deep ettercaps write any and all information they learn into books. Jungle ettercaps repeat important information to themselves over and over and the leader of jungle ettercaps who need to remember large amounts of information task the repeating to multiple underlings. Fortunately ettercaps are also very good at learning information and thus are able to quickly relearn whatever was forgotten. In addition their memory seems to not apply to things such as acquired skills or other various details. It's believed that what ettercaps can remember depends largely on the ettercap with some being not too dissimilar from humans and others being unable to remember what they were doing just a few minutes ago.

Abilities - Dexterity increases by 2

Age - Ettercaps have short lives and typically live till around 50 years of age. They reach maturity after around 10 years.

Alignment - Ettercaps have a natural tendency towards evil and neutrality. Good feral ettercaps are unheard of but good is slightly more common among other subraces. Deep ettercaps have the widest variety of alignment but still lean towards evil on average.

Size - Ettercaps are slightly shorter than humans on average. Medium size.

Speed - 30’

Darkvision - Like the spiders they cherish ettercaps can see well in the dark 60’

Spider Speaking - Ettercaps can communicate simple ideas to spiders as if they shared a language.

Natural Climbers - Ettercaps have advantage when making a Strength (Athletics) check to climb.

Languages - Ettercaps can speak ettercap and common. Ettercap is a strange language with a great deal of slurring 's' sounds interrupted by chirps of various pitch and length. As a result Ettercaps speaking other languages tend to add 's' sounds onto almost every word.

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Subraces

Feral Ettercaps

Monsters by all accounts feral ettercaps are dangerous denizens of dark forests and subterranean lairs. They are known for corrupting and destroying the lands of fey, turning them into nightmarish mockeries of what they once were.

Feral ettercaps are not playable. They use the stats provided in the Monster Manual.

Deep Ettercaps

Dwelling in impressive subterranean cities deep ettercaps are the most civilized of all ettercaps. Deep ettercaps have a love of knowledge and seek to hoard as many books as possible in their great libraries. Doing so allows the deep ettercaps to subvert their normally forgetful memory and allow them to recall their vast knowledge as needed. Deep ettercaps are reclusive and find great difficulty in both leaving their homes and dealing with other races. This problem is only made worse by the discrimination their kind faces from other races. As a result deep ettercaps are very rarely seen outside of their cities. When encountered outside they are generally doing so in the pursuit of knowledge; quietly recording every discovery no matter how insignificant.

Deep ettercaps are black or dark grey in coloration. They generally wear silken robes and hats made from their webbing.

Curious and Strange

Deep ettercaps rarely interact with other races but when they do it generally goes poorly. A large part of this stems from ettercaps misconceptions and confusions about other races. Many of these odd beliefs originate in folk tales, legends, and gossip that has spread over the years and been archived in their libraries as 'fact'. Still deep ettercaps are not entirely unfriendly to other races and tend to be impressed by manners, similar taste in food, love for knowledge, and not being wasteful.

Humans - “Humans are to halflings what ettercaps are to spiders. They get scared too easily and don’t finish their plates. The females are big and have hair on their faces and are very violent. Humans are unpredictable but some can be useful for business.”

Dwarves - “A dwarf is what happens when a human and a kobold love each other very much. Their memories make them like walking books you have to stab to get answers from. Dwarves are too angry and obsessed with money to be useful for other purposes though.”

Elves - “Like dwarves they can act like walking books but are hard to catch or surprise so they‘re hard to stab. Elves are best suited as people to trade for knowledge with knowledge. They have good manners and finish their plates so some make for friends.”

Halflings - “Halflings are spiders that think they’re human but they’re not so they’re small. They don‘t respond well to being taught how to spider properly and seem to take this as an insult. They won‘t be good friends with us until they start being more honest with themselves.”

Gnolls - “A bit of mushroom and ground centipede are what goes best with gnoll. The best meat is found along the lower legs.”

Keepers of Knowledge - Deep ettercaps may choose one of the following skills. They are proficient with that skill: History, Arcana, Nature or Religion

Webbing - A deep ettercap may fire webbing from his mouth. This is a ranged attack which upon hitting restrains the enemy in place, preventing movement. The target can escape with a strength check. The DC for the check is 8 + Constitution Modifier + proficiency bonus. Alternatively the webbing can be destroyed. The webbing has an AC of 10, 5hp, resistance to bludgeoning damage and immunity to psychic and poison damage. A deep ettercap may make use of this feature twice after which a short or long rest before using it again.

Web Crawlers - Deep ettercaps are immune to the effects of webbing and web attacks.

Superior Darkvision - 120’

Jungle Ettercaps

Less civilized than deep ettercaps but less wild than feral ettercaps jungle ettercaps form tribal societies in warm climates. Jungle ettercaps are feared mostly for their deadly venom. Savage and cruel jungle ettercaps are a menace not unlike orcs or goblins to those who unfortunate enough to live near them. As a result there is little to no information about their relations with other races. Most jungle ettercaps seen outside of their homes adventure in hopes of securing wealth or glory for their tribe but in rare cases they may be outcasts exiled from their tribe.

Jungle ettercaps are generally brownish in coloration though some are more yellow. They generally were little clothing.

Abilities - Constitution increases by 1

Cantrip - Jungle ettercaps may use the poison spray cantrip. Constitution is the spellcasting ability for this spell.

Poison Resistance - Jungle ettercaps have advantage on saving throws against poison and resistance to poison damage.