Monstrous spider
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| Dungeons & Dragons creature | |
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| Monstrous spider | |
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In the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy role-playing game, a Monstrous Spider is one of the most common types of Giant spider. No one is quite sure which real-life spider they are based on, although many, including a lot of D&D developers believe them to look somewhat akin to a Tarantula crossed with an Australian House Spider. The creatures themselves range in size, like most Giant spiders, between the size of a dog to the size of a house. They are greyish-black in color, hairy, have 8 red eyes, are heavily yet sleekly built, and are highly dangerous and powerful. In their tail is a small but deadly stinger.
[edit] Characteristics and habits
Monstrous spiders dwell both underground, and in deep, dark forests. Two different varieties exist; the hunter and the web-spinner. Hunters roam about, either on the forest floor or on the walls and ceilings of a cavern, searching for prey, while the web-spinner stays in the one place and creates traps which it hopes prey will eventually stumble into. Hunters can spin webs to act as lairs, but only web-spinners can make tricks and traps out of them, sling them, drop them, use them as a weapon, ETC...
Whether the hunter has found prey on the ground or the web-spinner has prey trapped in its web, they seem to have similar killing tactics. They lurk either in the shadows, the tree tops, on top of a rocky overhang, and slowly lower themselves on strands of silk before leaping in and biting. A web-spinner might toss a web net over the prey first. Monstrous spiders are poisonous, and their bite causes an amount of corruption to the prey depending on their size. Web-spinners can also squirt webs as an attack, hunters have sharp, powerful jaws, and both types can cause damage by kicking prey with their legs. Whatever they kill, they eat. Monstrous spiders are highly sensitive with their webs, and can sense anything which touches them. Though often solitary, they sometimes gather together into large groups, all sharing a megaweb and forming a highly dangerous force against anything which wanders into their midst.
Githyanki, Orcs, Goblins, Undead and other such lowly, evil races often use Monstrous spiders as mounts, and attack creatures.
There are bound to be Monstrous spiders serving the goddes Lolth
Monstrous spiders cannot speak, and they are regarded as neutral in alignment.
| Dungeons & Dragons creatures | ||
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Creature types: Aberration • Animal • Construct • Dragon • Elemental • Fey • Giant • Humanoid • Magical beast • Monstrous humanoid • Ooze • Outsider • Plant • Undead • Vermin |
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Categories: Dragonlance creatures • Eberron creatures • Standard creatures • Undead creatures • Spelljammer creatures • Greyhawk creatures • Forgotten Realms creatures • Extraplanar creatures |
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Lists of dragons: Chromatic • Dragonlance • Gem • Metallic • Planar • Other |
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