Aberrant Ambushes
Welcome again to Masters and Minions, where I strive to give you interesting NPCs and encounters that can be placed easily into your game. In this week’s encounter your PCs are ambushed by a group of aberrations.
While navigating a large subterranean cavern, the PCs are stalked by a small mob of cloaker assassins. The mob waits for the PCs to be off-guard before they attack.
This mob consists of 4 cloaker assassins.
Cloaker Mob Tactics
The cloakers start off the fight by moaning; two of them try to put the two most dangerous looking PCs into a stupor while the other two try to nauseate the remaining. Afterward, the first pair of cloakers attempt to engulf the two most dangerous looking PCs while the other two focus of the weaker looking PCs. The latter two cloakers usually both focus on the same target, moving to get flanking with each other whenever possible. If two or more cloakers are killed, the remaining ones flee into the darkness of the caverns.
Engulf (Ex)
A cloaker can try to wrap a Medium or smaller creature in its body as a standard action. The cloaker attempts a grapple that does not provoke an attack of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold and bites the engulfed victim with a +4 bonus on its attack roll. It can still use its whip-like tail to strike at other targets. Attacks that hit an engulfing cloaker deal half their damage to the monster and half to the trapped victim.
Moan (Ex)
A cloaker can emit an infrasonic moan as a standard action, with one of four effects.
Fear: All creatures in a 30-foot spread must save (Will negates) or become panicked for 2 rounds.
Nausea: All creatures in a 30-foot cone must save (Fortitude negates) or fall prone and be nauseated for 1d4+1 rounds.
Stupor: A single creature within 30 feet is affected by hold monster for 5 rounds (Will negates).
Unnerve: Anyone within a 60-foot spread automatically takes a –2 penalty on attack and damage rolls. Those in the area for more than 6 consecutive rounds must save (Will negates) or enter a trance, helpless until the moaning stops.
Cloakers are immune to these sonic, mind-affecting attacks. A creature that successfully saves against the cloaker's fear, nausea, or unnerve moans cannot be affected by that same moan effect from that cloaker for 24 hours. All the save DCs against a cloaker's moan are DC 23. Save DCs are Charisma-based.
Shadow Shift (Su)
When in dim illumination, a cloaker can manipulate shadows as a free action to create one of three effects: blur (lasts 1d4 rounds, self only), mirror image (CL 14th), or silent image (DC 17, CL 14th, save DC is Charisma-based).