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Monster Monday - Slasher Tormentor

The wizard froze, her eyes going wide as she gazed at a lithe, elfin figure standing across from her. A gentle smile perfectly matched her memories of her father - until it began to crack. Black-taloned fingers slipped from his mouth, two hands pressing against each side of his mouth and forcing it open. His smile remained, the warmth in his eyes suddenly disconcerting as his cheeks began to split in a horrid display. Darkness welled from the growing seam as she shook, a hideously thin figure pulling itself out from within. Blood-soaked and covered in viscera, the creature ripped free from the corpse of her father, casting it aside and focusing a black, hollow visage upon her.

Back in action and picking up traction! I'm still in the mood for Halloween so I tapped into my love for horror movie villains to bring you all the slasher tormentor. A while back, I built the slasher brute, inspired by the likes of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, as a threat for small isolated communities. Likewise, the slasher tormentor takes on aspects of more cerebral and manipulative slashers like Freddy Krueger and Pinhead from Hellraiser. Where the brute was, for lack of a better term, a brute, the tormentor is a caster and manipulator with a focus on spellcasting. Its spell DC and attack are in between high and extreme, and have a focus on creating fear and heightening it. The most notable spells are its at will spells, like a 1st-rank fear, mind reading, and nightmare. Of those, mind reading may seem a little strange, but that is part of the tormentor's ability as a manipulator. This lets it find the pressure points in a target for it to press upon to draw out their pain and also find a form that it can take on with Change Shape.


While it can use this effect to take on a myriad of forms, it likes taking on the forms of people from the pasts of others to haunt them - and to use Gruesome End. This lets it seemingly kill its assumed form while revealing its own, giving a chance of inflicting sickened on a target with a more potent effect against somebody tied to its changed shape. Revealing its true form does cause it to reveal its Frightful Presence, an effect based on its greater tie to its progenitor - The Dark. This uses a moderate DC and is a pretty standard ability, another area effect that it can use to try to debuff foes. Like the slasher brute, the tormentor has the Fixate ability. While for the brute, this created an effect akin to a precision ranger, the tormentor is based a bit more on the new vindicator edge with its fixation taking a penalty on saves against the tormentor's effect. So the tormentor is likely to want to use this while still under an assumed form so that its Gruesome End and Frightful Presence can trigger against the target.


The tormentor is a sort of evangelist and priest of the deity that spawned it, which provides it with a greater tie to it, which is expressed in a few mores. The more obvious features are Gaze Into the Abyss and Revel in Terror. First of those, Gaze Into the Abyss is a single action that allows it to focus fear in a creature, preventing it from reducing its fear or even sending it fleeing on a critical failure. Alternatively, if the heroes manage to inflict the frightened condition on the tormentor, it triggers the tormentor's Revel in Terror. In the eyes of the tormentor, this fear brings it closer to its god of terror, taking a little inspiration from the masochism of Pinhead though geared more towards the tormentor's themes.


Pathfinder 2e:

There were some fun spells tapping into the PF1e version of the slasher tormentor with notable callouts being cruel jaunt letting it more easily chase down frightened foes and horrific doubles giving it a fear-themed mirror images effect. Other than that, its pretty straightforward lift of its PF2e version. It does lose out on Revel in Terror because creating an effect like that in PF1e is much more complicated, but it does keep fixate. This is a bit closer to the effects of the slasher brute's fixate from 1e as the spell effect from its 2e version felt strange to implement here. Unfortunately, its gruesome end doesn't have that greater effect against those its assumed form has history with because it degrees of success aren't as much of a thing a Pathfinder 1e.


Pathfinder 1e:

Blue's D&D 5e:

ENCOUNTER HOOKS

Party Terrors: While attending a gala, one of the heroes spot somebody from their past - a lost loved one, an old friend, something of that sorts. This person keeps disappearing into the crowd so that the hero never catches up to them. However, when the hero is off on his own or at least leaving the event with his adventuring party, the figure approaches again, and reveals themselves to be slasher tormentor through a gruesome end. The tormentor intends to turn the adventurer and their party into offerings for its dark god, viewing their power as a challenge and more delectable sacrifices.

House of Horror: The heroes are in a city that has been plagued by a series of gruesome murders and investigations lead to them battling against a series of brainchilds. Pushing deeper can allow them to discover that these appear to be sprouting from shared nightmares across the city within certain areas. At the center of this is an abandoned mansion or ruined church or something of that sort. If the heroes explore this site, they find a slasher tormentor that has been using its ability to weave nightmares to create brainchilds with the intent of sinking the city in terror, all for The Dark.


I'm also back at it with the videos, so please let me know what you think of this one and if you have any suggestions on things to improve.


If you're interested in joining the discussion on what creatures/builds I'm working on or just discussing your own homebrew works, check out our Discord! If you want to get some teasers or help us get to our yet unlisted milestones for extra content, check out the Twitter.


Have a monstrous Monday!

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