D&D 5E Phase Spiders and Surprise

Ok perhaps surprise can be achieved but man i hate gotchas so much!!

Plaguescarred said:

Ethereal Jaunt's bonus action..

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But the set up, per the OP, is that they are ethereal at the start of the encounter

Imaro said:

But the set up, per the OP, is that they are ethereal at the start of the encounter

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I agree only fools and dead men don't change their minds !

I think it's more likely for the spiders to attempt to Stealth and gain surprise that way. They have a +6 stealth and a 6 int. Unless they've encountered armed adventurers before they are likely to treat them as "normal" prey - most creatures don't have a high perception, so +6 stealth is good enough to successfully hide most of the time.

If they start off on the Ethereal Plane, they get automatic surprise, but they have to spend their bonus action phasing in, which means they can't phase out until their next turn. If they beat the PC's on initiative they get to attack twice and phase out, but if the PC's beat them on initiative they are vulnerable on turn two.

If they manage to use stealth to surprise the PC's, they can attack and phase out on the same turn, then phase back in out of sight (around the corner, behind a rock, etc) and attempt to stealth again. Rinse, repeat. Essentially managing to get free rounds of attacks as long as they can manage to stealth successfully.

Plaguescarred said:

I agree only fools and dead men don't change their minds !

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I guess there are a lot of undead posters around us here on ENWorld then

Plaguescarred said:

I agree only fools and dead men don't change their minds !

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And for that, you get XP from me.

Lucas Blackstone said:

Whoops, yeah, I wasn't clear that "they" meant the PC with the feat, not "they" as in the entire group of PCs. It could easily look like I'd meant the whole party.

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Well, "they" is normally plural, so you see why people thought so.

(Yes, I'm aware there is a singular they, but you can't expect people to understand you are using it as such when you've just used a collective noun)

Caliban said:

I think it's more likely for the spiders to attempt to Stealth and gain surprise that way. They have a +6 stealth and a 6 int. Unless they've encountered armed adventurers before they are likely to treat them as "normal" prey - most creatures don't have a high perception, so +6 stealth is good enough to successfully hide most of the time.

If they start off on the Ethereal Plane, they get automatic surprise, but they have to spend their bonus action phasing in, which means they can't phase out until their next turn. If they beat the PC's on initiative they get to attack twice and phase out, but if the PC's beat them on initiative they are vulnerable on turn two.

If they manage to use stealth to surprise the PC's, they can attack and phase out on the same turn, then phase back in out of sight (around the corner, behind a rock, etc) and attempt to stealth again. Rinse, repeat. Essentially managing to get free rounds of attacks as long as they can manage to stealth successfully.

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Well, assuming you consider Int 6 to be low (which is arguable), I would think the spider would simply assume it will one-shot any adventurer. After all, they are pretty much indistinguishable from regular Commoners and other low-HD humanoids that never withstand even a single hit...

A spider that just stealths is inherently much more vulnerable than a spider that spends its time on the ethereal plane until it finds something yummy on the material plane. To me, that's what separates phase spiders from regular spiders.

I'd say the likeliest tactic for a phase spider about to attack a party of adventurers is to
1) follow the party (a trivial task, since stealth and detection is not a concern)
2) wait until one party member is behind the others (ideally when he goes off to take a leak or something, but I can imagine spiders being impatient)
3) phase in and attack, fully expecting it to become paralyzed - note: with no chance of raising an alarm!
4) wrap it up in webbing (if that's what Phase Spiders do?) or simply grab it, and phase back at its leisure
5) profit! (meaning "dine well")

Your idea that it should save its bonus action to phase out already presumes the spider will need a quick escape. But I would think a successful predator would far prefer to attack something where a quick escape isn't needed; where it's signature ability can be used to guarantee non-detection and surprise instead.

Offense > defense, and all that. Especially for something as vicious as a spider.

Of course, the real reason for my objection is a metagame reason: many groups have a high-Perception member, and I would hate for them to surprise and insta-kill a phase spider of all monsters...!

A couple of points (all IMO, of course)

1) The PCs are surprised at the start of combat.
2) A spider cannot grapple a PC then jaunt to the ethereal plane with the PC. If it could it's ethereal jaunt ability would say that.
3) I don't think it is intended that the spiders can jaunt to the material plane and remain hidden long enough to attack with advantage. Perhaps if they spent an action hiding, but I'd still use the +6 to their stealth and _maybe_ give them advantage on the first try if circumstances would normally allow for hiding. Gaining automatic surprise on most creatures is already pretty strong an ability for a CR 3 critter.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using EN World mobile app

I ran a combat with phase spiders for my campaign. It was fantastic, but there were gray areas of judgement.

They shifted in (thus visible) and moved up to their prey and attacked. Some players were surprised, others were not. I used the spider's Passive Stealth as a threshold.

If they were ganged up on one PC, they hung around and fought. If one of the strong PCs got the drop on them they phased out and re positioned to re attack.

The main benefit of the phasing was:

1. Potential surprise at the beginning
2. Ability to move freely and re position.


Was good times.