Editing Aranea (section)

===Special Abilities===
In spider form, aranea have AC 7 and never wear armor. In humanoid or demispider form, they have the base AC of the emulated race (AC 10). Aranea have infravision with a range of 60 feet. They can take proficiency in animal handling and animal training for spiders, the ability being applied to spiders with an Intelligence of 1 or more. Because of their other abilities and their involvement with the creation of the [[Red Curse]], aranea do not receive an initial Legacy. However, when they reach maturity, they must wear [[cinnabryl]] or suffer the detrimental effects of a randomly chosen power. An aranea can gain Legacies by becoming an [[Inheritor]].

Aranea change shapes with ease. The ability is automatic, learned within a few weeks after birth, and is not limited in duration or number of uses per day. However, an aranea trying to maintain secrecy will assume demispider form no more than three times per day, as per the Legacies, and the creatures never assume spider form among non-aranea. It takes one round to change from humanoid to demispider, demispider to spider, or vice versa. Thus, changing from spider to humanoid or the reverse takes a minimum of two rounds.

An aranea in humanoid form is effectively a member of the race emulated, and has any special abilities of that race. For instance, an aranea in [[lupin]] form has excellent senses of smell and hearing. In all cases, though, the aranea follows the character class and level restrictions for aranea.

In essence, an aranea has two real identities. The creature's true race cannot be determined unless someone actually watches the change into spider form or has some way to read the character's mind (or possesses some other extraordinary means). Even a true seeing spell is generally useless, because it allows the recipient "to see all things as they actually are," and aranea of the Savage Coast actually have dual "true" forms. If a true seeing spell is used on an aranea in demispider form, it reveals either the arachnid form or the humanoid form (equal chances). Note that the identify species spell was invented by aranea, so it is useless against them. (The aranea use the spell to ferret out spies and ensure the security of special meetings.)

Though the aranea's shapechanging ability was originally gained through arcane means, neither form is magical, so a dispel magic spell cast on an aranea in humanoid form does not cause it to revert to spider form. If cast on an aranea in demispider form, dispel magic can (if a successful roll is made, using the aranea's level or Hit Dice as the value for the opposing caster) cause the aranea to change into humanoid or spider form (again, equal chances).

The shapechanging ability gives aranea partial immunity to polymorph spells, as with [[Therianthrope|lycanthropes]] and [[doppelganger]]s. (They can resume their normal form after being affected by the spell for one round.) Aranea are easier to hit and take extra damage from weapons enchanted with bonuses against shapechangers (such as a Sword +1, +3 vs. Lycanthropes & Shapechangers). Shapechanging does not heal wounds an aranea has taken. When killed, an aranea stays in the form held just before death.