This creature gives off light with the approximate brightness of a candle, and appears to be a shimmering cloud of filaments, tendrils, and whips of eerie mist. The form of the thing continuously roils and billows like a cloud, and it is eerily silent.
Ectoplasm (ghost Ooze) CR 5
XP 1,600
N Large ooze (incorporeal)
hp 47 (5d8+25)
Fort +6; Ref +2; Will -4
Melee incorporeal touch +3 (1d8 Strength damage)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Base Atk +3; CMB +5; CMD 16
Skills Fly +7
Environment any
Organization solitary
Treasure none
Many encounters with glowing, ghostly spheres can be attributed to ectoplasms rather than restless spirits. An ectoplasm, sometimes called a ghost ooze, is a faintly glowing orb of immaterial substance that lurks in catacombs and cemeteries. Although incorrectly assumed by most to be some form of incorporeal undead, ectoplasms are quite alive. Ectoplasms dwell in places of the dead because they consume dead flesh, slowly dissolving decaying bones and skin and absorbing the nutrients directly. The strange irony of the ectoplasm is that a cemetery âhaunted’ by these creatures is almost certain to be free of any corporeal undead; the ectoplasm makes a meal of them as soon as it discovers them.
Ectoplasms are not undead and cannot be turned by clerics.
Although its primary diet consists of the dead, an ectoplasm is also a threat to the living. An ectoplasm attacks anything within the range of its senses that disturbs it. An ectoplasm that encounters a living opponent attacks for a few rounds before attempting to escapeâit senses that it can get no sustenance from the opponent. If it finds an undead opponent, an ectoplasm continues to attack until it or the opponent has been destroyed.
Ectoplasm from the Tome of Horrors Complete, Copyright 2011, Necromancer Games, Inc., published and distributed by Frog God Games; Author Erica Balsley.