The short, rotund creature tilted its head as it waved its hands in strange patterns. Gritting his teeth, the barbarian focused his glare on the foe only for his eyelids to grow heavy. He blinked furiously, fighting against the sudden wave of tiredness that seized him. Taking a hand from his weapon, he rubbed at his eyes while he heard the sorceress yawn behind him. His eyes fluttered shut and as the darkness consumed his vision, his rage briefly abated. Almost as soon as the blackness formed, it was replaced by an idyllic landscape. He gazed towards the golden horizon until the figure he had just been facing in the waking world suddenly rose over it. The strange beast opened its mouth and suddenly the world around the barbarian began flowing into its mouth, the warrior struggling to keep his footing as the beast devoured his dream.
This addition was selected based on the requests from the Monster Monday Discord when I asked what other Pokemon folks might like to see. With its abundance of special attacks and higher Special Defense DC, drowzee was mostly designed following the spellcaster roadmap, including a moderate Armor Class and only a moderate attack bonus. I settled on the beast trait since the drowzee is based on the legendary baku, which is a magical beast in Pathfinder First Edition. It has Darkvision to hunt at night, since that's when most people are dreaming, and also has Dream Scent to help find those specific people. Naturally, as a character that uses the spellcaster roadmap, the drowzee is armed with an array of spells that use a high DC. He has a focus on mental damage and manipulation but more important is his sleep spell, based on the Hypnosis spell he starts with. I also slipped in a confusion spell, which exceeds his level slightly, but with both his Confusion and Psybeam move inflicting the confusion status, it felt necessary to include it. While sleep is based off of drowzee's Hypnosis from Pokemon, his Hypnosis ability is actually inspired by the veil of dreams focus spell and is intended to help him set up his sleep spell - changed to two actions since he doesn't have to sustain it.
Once drowzee has a creature asleep, he uses Rough Dreams to be able to deal damage with his mental spells since normally doing so would automatically wake them up. This instead requires the target to make a moderate Will save to do so, but still provides the opportunity. Drowzee can follow this up with his Eat Dream reaction, which provides him with some additional durability while mimicking the Dream Eater from Pokemon - which I discovered that the drowzee doesn't ever actually learn this ability naturally. It's a move that drowzee only learns from TMs despite being so heavily associated with it. Rounding out drowzee's kit is Forewarnings, inspired by its Forewarning ability. In-game, this allows it to learn the move of an enemy, which I interpreted as gaining a defensive bonus against a creature it focuses on. It also has a bonus against sleep effects based on its Insomnia ability.
Pathfinder 2e:
Given the drowzee's psychic typing, it employs psychic magic as its main means of menacing others with effects on mental manipulation. It's a fairly faithful following of my 2e design though its Insomnia uses a higher bonus as is appropriate for PF1e. With this focus on magic, Combat Casting is an important inclusion from among drowzee's feats.
Pathfinder 1e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Dreaming of Danger: People, or the party themselves, have been experiencing terrible dreams as of late - to the point where they are waking up with injuries. The heroes are asked to investigate, if they aren't the ones experiencing the situation themselves. By staking out the area where this is happening, the heroes discover that the source is a drowzee. The party may be able to convince the drowzee to stand down who is simply hungry.
Somnambulist Scuffle: For a more fantastical adventure, the heroes are already in their dreams when a drowzee begins manipulating the scenario. The heroes face shifting terrain and hazards that they must overcome to find the manifestation of the drowzee within their dream. Defeating it allows them to wake up and discover the knocked out drowzee not far away.
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Have a monstrous Monday!
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