Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Spiders from Stonehell

A little while back, I asked whether I should stick to pure Labyrinth Lord for the sequel of Stonehell Dungeon or allows additional material from the Advanced Edition Companion to sneak in. The majority of you confirmed that my inclination to us the original book's material as a basis and fill in the blanks with my own creations was the correct one.

Limitations are remarkably useful in the creative process. Without a large population of canonical monsters to fall back on, one must make them from scratch. When I needed a beefy spider for the lower levels of Stonehell, one different from the standards encountered higher up in the former prison, the following spun a web in my head and came chittering out of my ear to plop down upon the page. Meet the glider spider:

Glider Spider
No. Enc: 1d4 (1d4)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120’ (40), fly 60’ (20’)
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 5
Attacks: 1 (bite)
Damage: 1d6, poison
Save: F3
Morale: 8
Hoard Class: VII

Glider spiders are huge, albino arachnids averaging 10’ in diameter. Web-spinners, they hunt in a peculiar fashion. Glider spiders form parachute-like sails out of their silk and ride the thermals until they spot their prey. They then drop atop the unsuspecting target with a 50% chance of surprise, paralyzing them with their venom. They can also throw webs as the spell.

Glider spider venom immobilizes its victim, paralyzing them for 2d4 turns. The victim seldom survives that long, as the venom dissolves the internal organs of the prey, automatically inflicting 1d4+1 damage each round. A save vs. poison negates both the paralysis and damage, but the toxin is strong and imparts a -2 penalty to the saving throw.

4 comments:

Taketoshi said...

Wow, that's a tough one considering you can encounter up to 4 at a time.

I'll be interested to see how it fares against a party--I imagine many would lose at least one member to a successful ambush by these on their first encounter.

Christopher said...

I like this a lot! Parasailing spiders! This is totally getting added to my wandering monster tables. Thanks!

David Key said...

Very cool! Will be adding this to the campaign at some point.

Michael Curtis said...

You know that I'm immune to my own creations, right? That's in my social contract.