Dread Witch

“Fear cuts more deeply than any sword, consumes more completely than any spell. It rages like a confl agration, burning away the fl esh of the weak, burning the weakness out of the strong. Fear is power, and that power is mine.”

—Illyra Zorren, dread witch, to her fi rst apprentice

The dread witch is a spellcaster who manipulates fear as readily and effectively as other casters manipulate magic itself. Drawing power from her own fear, she can cause even the brave to run screaming into the night or drop to their knees and beg for mercy. A dread witch is at her most dangerous when cornered and overpowered; at high levels dread witches are among the most terrifying of opponents—literally.

BECOMING A DREAD WITCH

The path of the bard or sorcerer is the most efficient way to become a dread witch. Most dread witches are innate spellcasters, and their various abilities based on force of personality (that is, Charisma) make such spellcasters more effi cient. Wizards can become dread witches as well, with the proper course of study, but it doesn’t come to them quite as easily. Charisma is the primary requirement, in order to make the most effi cient use of her class features. Intelligence is useful for skill points (and for spells, if she is a wizard). As always, Constitution grants hit points, the better to survive frightening circumstances.

Entry Requirements

Saving Throws: Base Will save +4

Skills: Knowledge (arcana) 3 ranks

Spellcasting: Ability to cast cause fear and scare

Special: Must have suffered at least one fear effect against which she failed her save

CLASS FEATURES

Dread witches sacrifi ce a level of spellcasting advancement in order to gain immense power over fear itself—both their own and that of others. Spellcasting: At every dread witch level except 1st, you gain new spells per day and an increase in caster level (and spells known, if applicable) as if you had also gained a level in a spellcasting class you belonged to before you added the prestige class. You do not, however, gain any other class benefit a character of that class would have gained. If you had more than one spellcasting class before becoming a dread witch, you must decide to which class to add each level for the purpose of determining spells per day. Master of Terror (Ex): Your fear-based spells become more potent. The save DC of any spell you cast with the fear descriptor increases by 1. This bonus stacks with Spell Focus. Furthermore, add the spells bane and doom to your arcane spellcaster list as 2nd-level spells. In addition, you become adept at making people uneasy with the right word, expression, or gesture. You gain a bonus to all Intimidate skill checks equal to +2 per class level. Unnatural Will (Ex): You gain Unnatural Will (see page 124) as a bonus feat, even if you do not meet the prerequisites. Absorb Fear (Su): Starting at 2nd level, you can turn your own fear, whether natural or mystical in origin, into extra power for your spells. (See Dread on page 59 for more on nonmagical fear.) Any time you are exposed to a condition that could make you shaken, all your spells function at +1 caster level; if the condition could make you frightened, they function at +2 caster level; if panicked, they function at +3 caster level. These bonuses last for the duration of the fear effect, or for a number of rounds equal to your Charisma modifi er, whichever is less. (Of course, if you fail your saving throw against the condition, you might not be in a position to use the bonuses, but you do have them.) These bonuses are treated in all ways as though you had failed the save. In other words, if you are subject to a spell that causes panic on a failed save but only frightens those who make the save, you gain the bonus from being panicked even if you make the save. You can, instead of gaining these bonuses, choose to cast a single extra spell; this casting does not use up a spell slot. You must make this choice the instant you are subject to the fear effect, and once you have made your choice you must cast the spell within a number of rounds equal to your Charisma modifi er. You can cast an additional cantrip if shaken, an additional 1st-level spell if frightened, or an additional 2ndlevel spell if panicked. If you are subject to a second fear effect while still enjoying the effects of the first—either the granted benefits or holding the extra spell—you must decide whether to keep the original effect or replace it with the new one; you cannot benefit from more than one fear effect at a time. Fearful Empowerment (Su): Starting at 3rd level, once per day you can add the fear descriptor to any spell you cast that has some sort of visual manifestation. For example, you could apply it to a fi reball, to a summon monster spell, or

Table 5–5: The Dread Witch Hit Die: d4

Class Base Fort Ref Will

Level Attack Bonus Save Save Save Special Spellcasting

1st +0 +0 +0 +2 Master of terror, Unnatural Will — 2nd +1 +0 +0 +3 Absorb fear +1 level of existing spellcasting class 3rd +1 +1 +1 +3 Fearful empowerment 1/day +1 level of existing spellcasting class 4th +2 +1 +1 +4 Delay fear, greater master of terror +1 level of existing spellcasting class 5th +2 +1 +1 +4 Fearful empowerment 2/day, horrific aura, +1 level of existing spellcasting class reflective fear

Class Skills (2 + Int modifier per level): Bluff, Concentration, Craft, Intimidate, Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (the planes), Profession, and Spellcraft.

to any visual illusion, but not to charm person, since that spell does not directly create any visual effect. Creatures targeted by a spell modified by fearful empowerment must make a Will save (DC equal to 10 + your class level + your Cha modifier) or become shaken for 1d4 rounds; this is in addition to any other effects the spell might have. Your save DC bonuses from master of terror apply to this spell. At 5th level, you can invoke this power twice per day. Delay Fear (Su): Starting at 4th level, you can choose to delay the onset of any fear effect you impose on someone else, such as by casting a cause fear spell. You can delay the onset up to a number of minutes equal to your Charisma modifi er. You must determine the onset time when casting the spell, and you cannot later change your mind. Similarly, you can delay fear effects affecting you. If you fail your save against a fear effect, you can delay its onset for a number of rounds equal to your Charisma modifier. You still gain the advantages granted by the absorb fear class feature, even though you are delaying the negative effects. You can invoke this version of delay fear twice per day.

Greater Master of Terror (Ex): Beginning at 4th level, the increased difficulty of all save DCs against all spells you cast with the fear descriptor increases from +1 to +2. In addition, your fear spells are now so potent that they can even affect individuals normally immune to fear, such as paladins, although the subject still gains a saving throw to resist the spell’s effect. Only a target whose HD exceed your caster level by 4 or more is immune to your mastery of terror. For instance, if you are a sorcerer 7/dread witch 4 (overall caster level 10), a paladin of 14th level or higher is immune to your fear spells. Horrifi c Aura (Su): At 5th level, you radiate an aura of terror. Creatures with 6 or fewer HD must succeed in a Will save (DC equal to 10 + your class level + your Cha modifi er) or remain shaken as long as they are within 10 feet of you. A creature who successfully saves is immune to your horrifi c aura for 24 hours. Creatures of greater than 6 HD are unaffected. Once per day per point of Charisma modifi er, you can channel this aura into a potent touch attack. Creatures struck by this horrifi c touch attack who fail their Will save (see above) are panicked for 1d4+1 rounds; creatures who succeed on their save are shaken for 1 round. This touch attack, unlike the standard aura, functions against creatures of any HD and can even affect individuals normally immune to fear.

Refl ective Fear (Su): At 5th level, any fear effect against which you successfully save is immediately targeted back at the source. You still gain the benefits of absorb fear. If the source of the fear effect fails its save, everyone else who might have been subject to the fear effect (such as your companions) immediately gains a second saving throw to shake off the effects, as they observe the object of their fear itself grow terrifi ed. PLAYING A DREAD WITCH You are a practitioner of the occult arts who truly believes that fear is the most potent of all emotions. Controlling your fear enables you to more effectively channel your spells. Fear gives you strength and focuses your mind in a way that nothing else can. You actively seek out dangerous experiences, for only through dread can you forge your mind and soul into the keenest of weapons. You are neither foolhardy nor suicidal; you just recognize that overcoming danger is the most direct path to knowledge and power. You probably give your companions the creeps, since you consider fear just another tool or experience and are frankly not bothered by sights and events that other people consider disturbing in the extreme. (Or at least, you try to appear unbothered.) Dread witches have no organization or guild to speak of. Each practitioner follows a tradition with its own line of descent, as masters pass their secrets and techniques on to apprentices. Dread witches recognize one another as fellow students of a demanding discipline but other wise feel no strong connection with othIllyra Zorren, er members of the prestige class. Dread Witch Sorcerers and bards who stumble upon the secrets of fear magic do not share any sense of camaraderie; dread witches who once were wizards, and who must deliberately choose to embark upon this path, sometimes feel a stronger bond.

Combat Dread witches make use of the same general combat tactics as most arcane casters—that is, stay back from melee and use your spells to either destroy opponents or enhance your companions’ abilities. As you gain power as a dread witch, however, you acquire options that standard casters do not possess. By exposing yourself to danger, you make yourself more powerful, all the while letting your enemy believe he has the upper hand before you suddenly turn the tables. Combining standard

Illus. by R. Gallegos

offensive spells with fear effects enables you to drive dangerous foes away from your companions or possibly maneuver your foes into an ambush. At higher levels, you can protect your allies from fear effects and sow chaos in enemy ranks by striking them with delayed fear effects. With a sufficiently long delay time, the enemy might be completely ignorant of the source of their terror, failing to associate it with you and your companions. This strategy can ruin any sort of coordination or tactics they might attempt, leaving them open to counterattack and other disruptions. In addition, your various fear effects are useful as interrogation techniques, especially considering your hefty bonuses to Intimidate checks.

Advancement

Since dread witches have no formal organization, no true recruitment occurs. Spontaneous arcane casters such as bards and sorcerers discover they have an aptitude for fear spells, and either advance on their own through trial and error or seek out individual dread witches from whom they can learn. In the case of wizards, an apprentice might discover that her master studies an odd discipline of magic, or she might read of dread witches and seek one out to learn his secrets, or she might come across an old spellbook left behind by a dread witch. In the case of an apprenticeship, it is the elder dread witch who decides whether an applicant is worthy, and she can set whatever conditions she chooses.

Training as a dread witch is much like advancement in any other arcane class, save that the student is inevitably exposed to more dangerous situations, illusions, and fear effects, the better to familiarize her with her own fear and enable her to control it.

Resources

Other than the arcane versions of bane and doom, which wizard-based dread witches can only learn from other dread witches, there is nothing for which you must go to another dread witch.

DREAD WITCHES IN THE WORLD

“Creepy as an undead spider, powerful as all Hells—and crazy bastards, the whole lot of ’em. Only thing scarier than facing a dread witch across a battlefi eld is having one fi ghting beside you.” —Tolliver Withers, former adventurer, now sheriff of the halfl ing community of Fairnuff

The dread witch is a viable addition to any setting but is particularly appropriate to a horror campaign. Dread witches are a logical result of spellcasters dwelling in a world of great danger and fear, and they represent an occult and scholastic effort at not only controlling that fear but harnessing its emotional energies. If your campaign involves horrors from other worlds, such as the strange alien entities of the Far Realm, the fear magic of the dread witch might be tied into those forces. Alternatively, it might bear some relation to psionic studies, or to the arts practiced by fearsome and emotion-manipulating creatures such as mind flayers or the quori. For players, this prestige class provides an opportunity to take advantage of the fear their characters experience, using it to empower a character and become a bogeyman to the monsters rather than the other way around, without weakening the mood of the game itself.

Organization

No universal organization of dread witches exists, though many individuals believe one does. This belief stems from the mysterious persona of many dread witches, the knowledge and abilities dread witches share, and superstition, which attributes guilds or cabals to many powerful casters. Common folk often treat dread witches accordingly, assuming that each knows of (and supports) the activities of her fellows and has met them all personally. Occasionally, some ambitious dread witch has attempted to take the various solitary practitioners and masters of this diffi cult discipline and forge them into a true organization.

Every effort to date has failed; dread witches seem little disposed to band together. Given the difficult situations required to advance their mastery of the craft, most dread witches prefer to travel and practice with companions of varied skills. Furthermore, although the techniques of the dread witch differ from those of other spellcasters, the majority of their spells do not, making it unnecessary for most dread witches to spend much time in the company of their fellows. Still, some continue to try to build an organization. The famed dread witch archmage Illyra Zorren, acknowledged in arcane circles as one of the most potent masters of dread magic alive, is the latest to attempt to unify this widespread and scattered discipline. She has trained half a dozen apprentices in the course of her long life, and each of them is devoutly loyal to Zorren herself and to her dream of a united organization of dread witches. Combined with a few others who have sporadically joined her over the years, Zorren leads a cabal of slightly over a dozen members. Though hardly a true guild, this does represent the largest known assemblage of dread witches. Zorren, now quite aged, is rumored to be seeking the ritual for lichdom so that she can continue building her society.

NPC Reactions

Most people know nothing of the difference between dread witches and standard arcane casters. Such folk react to the dread witch no differently than they would to any other spellcasting character, although they might feel uneasy in her presence for reasons they cannot defi ne. Those who know of dread witches, however, tend to regard them with no small amount of suspicion and—appropriately enough—fear.

Not only do dread witches study a strange school of magic, they deliberately toy with the emotions of others. They invoke terror and chaos with their magic and draw power from experiences that would set others to huddling in the corner. Many of these people assume dread witches are evil, or at least uncaring and manipulative, and react accordingly.

The average individual who knows of dread witches but has no reason to disbelieve the public perception begins any interaction with a known dread witch as one step less friendly than normal. (For instance, someone who is normally indifferent to strangers would instead be unfriendly.) Such individuals never begin interaction with an attitude better than indifferent.

Many normal wizards and sorcerers distrust dread witches due to their strange methods of manipulating magic. Certain monsters that have abilities to cause fear or otherwise manipulate emotions consider dread witches to be serious threats, and either avoid them or hunt them down.

DREAD WITCH LORE

Characters with Knowledge (arcana) can research dread witches to learn more about them.

DC 10: The dread witch is an arcane caster who focuses on the manipulation of fear.

DC 15: The dread witch is not only skilled at causing terror in others, her own power increases when she’s frightened.

DC 20: The dread witch can evoke fear in others through apparently mundane spells, or cause someone to grow suddenly terrified long after she’s cursed him. The more dangerous the situation in which she fi nds herself, the more potent her magic becomes. Alternatively, similar information might be learned through bardic knowledge checks, or Gather Information checks made in wizards guilds or high-magic communities.

DREAD WITCHES IN THE GAME

It’s not difficult to work a dread witch into an ongoing campaign. Their numbers are few, they are largely scattered, and their techniques do not appear, on casual inspection, to be all that different from those of other arcane casters. It’s entirely possible that dread witches have always existed, part of an ancient tradition, and the PCs have simply never encountered them before. Alternatively, the study of terror magic might be a new art, perhaps introduced by research wizards in response to the appearance of taint in the campaign world or by a sorcerer who found she had spontaneously developed defenses against fear effects. Dread witches are most useful when the PCs frequently engage in combat with large numbers of slightly weaker opponents (rendering the dread witch’s fear effects most potent) or when the PCs face challenges slightly above their normal range (rendering the dread witch’s spells more powerful). Be certain to include a reasonable number of such encounters, or battles against fear-causing creatures, to give the dread witch the chance to shine.

Adaptation

Dread witches excel in campaigns that make use of the various fear and dread rules presented in Chapter 4. In games that do not use those rules, the class becomes a bit less effective because less fear means fewer fear effects to empower her class abilities. In these circumstances, the DM might consider creating more situations that invoke the dread witch’s fear abilities or allowing the empowerment to last for longer periods.

Sample Encounters

The PCs are most likely to encounter dread witches in highmagic communities, where people have access to esoteric types of knowledge, or in rural or wilderness areas affected by taint. Most dread witches are adventurers, so anything that draws the PCs’ attention might attract a dread witch as well. Evil and ambitious dread witches often use their abilities to browbeat and control others, so the PCs might encounter one as the leader of a band of marauding humanoids or a growing cult.

EL 8: Suhnak Olun, a hobgoblin dread witch, and his followers (6 standard hobgoblins) have invaded a small village on the borderlands. He has the townsfolk wrapped tight in a grip of fear, both magical and mundane, and their only hope of rescue comes from the outside.

Suhnak Olun CR 7

Male hobgoblin sorcerer 5/dread witch 2 LE Medium humanoid (goblinoid) Init +1 Senses darkvision 60 ft. Listen –1, Spot –1 Languages Common, Goblin, Orc, empathic link AC 13, touch 11, flat-footed 12 hp 3 (7 HD) Fort +4, Ref +2, Will +6 (+ against fear) Speed 30 ft. (6 squares) Melee masterwork spear +4 (1d/×3) Base Atk +3 Grp +3 Atk Options Silent Spell, Still Spell Combat Gear dust of illusion, potion of cure light wounds, potion of jump Sorcerer Spells Known (CL 6th, 7th if shaken, th if frightened, th if panicked): 3rd (4/day)—major image (DC 17) 2nd (6/day)—bane (DC 16), doom (DC 16), minor image (DC 16), scare (DC 16) 1st (7/day)—cause fear (DC 15), ray of enfeeblement (+4 ranged touch), shield 0 (6/day)—dancing lights, detect magic, ghost sound (DC 14), mage hand, message, prestidigitation, touch of fatigue (+3 melee touch, DC 13) Abilities Str 10, Dex 12, Con 16, Int 13, Wis , Cha 17 SQ familiar, share spells, master of terror (+1 to DC of fear spells) Feats AwarenessB (if familiar within 5 ft.), Silent Spell, Spell

Focus (illusion), Still Spell, Unnatural WillB Skills Bluff +7, Concentration +, Intimidate +10, Knowledge (arcana) +, Move Silently +5, Spellcraft +6 Possessions combat gear plus bracers of armor +2, masterwork spear, spell component pouch

Hawk Familiar

N Tiny magical beast (augmented animal) Init +3 Senses low-light vision Listen +2, Spot +14 Languages empathic link, speak with master AC 20, touch 15, flat-footed 17 hp 20 (7 HD) Resist improved evasion Fort +2, Ref +5, Will +2 Speed 10 ft. (2 squares), fly 60 ft. (average) Melee talons +6 (1d4–2) Space 2-1/2 ft. Reach 0 ft. Base Atk +3 Grp –7 Atk Options deliver touch spells Abilities Str 6, Dex 17, Con 10, Int , Wis 14, Cha 6 Feats Weapon Finesse Skills Hide +11, Listen +2, Spot +14

CR —

EL 18: Illyra Zorren focuses largely on her goal of assembling a true order of dread witches, but of late she has also