Converting monsters from Dragon magazine

[freyar]

Why don't we just boost the racial bonus for the Str check DC to burst the web (and add one for the Escape Artist DC)?

Incorporating the liquefaction:
Poison (Ex): Injury, Fortitude DC 16, initial and secondary damage 1d3 Con and 1d3 Dex. Victims killed by the spidercat's poison are liquefied and cannot be returned to life by raise dead. The save DC is Constitution-based.

I'd be ok with switching the damage to all Con, too, but I don't mind either way.

 

[Cleon]

Why don't we just boost the racial bonus for the Str check DC to burst the web (and add one for the Escape Artist DC)?

That'd be a decent compromise. An extra 4 points to make in +4/+8?

Incorporating the liquefaction:
Poison (Ex): Injury, Fortitude DC 16, initial and secondary damage 1d3 Con and 1d3 Dex. Victims killed by the spidercat's poison are liquefied and cannot be returned to life by raise dead. The save DC is Constitution-based.

I'd prefer it to state that their insides are liquified, something like "Victims killed by the spidercat's venom have their internal organs liquified so cannot be returned to life by raise dead, more potent magic such as resurrection is needed."

I'd be ok with switching the damage to all Con, too, but I don't mind either way.

My preference is for all Constitution damage, and I'd like the amount of Con damage to be increased so a single bite could kill most characters. It doesn't feel right to have a poison that turns its victims insides into mush to do a measly 1d3 Con damage.

Maybe 1d10 Con?

 

[freyar]

Your change to the poison is ok with me:

Poison (Ex): Injury, Fortitude DC 16, initial and secondary damage 1d6 Con. The internal organs of victims killed by the spidercat's poison are liquefied, so creatures killed by the poison cannot be returned to life by raise dead. Resurrection or greater magic works as usual, however. The save DC is Constitution-based.

I'd be willing to go up to 1d6 Con/1d6 Con, as indicated in my edit. That's what the wyvern has, and I believe it also used to be save or die in previous editions.

 

[demiurge1138]

1d6 Con initial and secondary is as high as I'm willing to go on the poison damage.

 

[Shade]

Updated.

Challenge Rating: x

A typical spider cat's body is 10 feet long. It weighs about x pounds.

 

[Cleon]

1d6 Con initial and secondary is as high as I'm willing to go on the poison damage.

I can live with that.

What about the Solidifying Web, is an extra 4 point bonus on the DC alright?

EDIT: Belay that question! Shade just updated the entry with +4/+8.

 

[Cleon]

Updated.

Challenge Rating: x

Well they're a fair bit nastier in melee than the CR5 Phase Spider - two more HD, three high-damage attacks, DR, SR and web.

Challenge Rating 6?

A typical spider cat's body is 10 feet long. It weighs about x pounds.

A phase spider's 700 pounds with an 8-foot body, so if it's uniformly scaled it'd work out at ~1360 pounds.

The SRD lion's 5-8 feet and 330-550 pounds, and the SRD tiger's 9 feet and 400-600 pounds, which scaled up to 1070-2640 pounds (lion) or 550-825 pounds (tiger).

So, anything from a (slim) 1000 pounds to a (robust) 1800 pounds would do as far as I'm concerned.

1200 to 1500 pounds?

 

[Shade]

Sounds good.

Updated.

 

[Cleon]

Sounds good.

Updated.

It's looking good.

The only error I can see in the writeup is a "Each 5-foot section has the hit points given on the table" in the Web description.

I'd suggest "Each 5-foot section has 14 hit points (16 hp for a Huge spider cat)" rather than a Large Monstrous Spider's 12 hits (14 for Huge).

A Huge Monstrous Spider is approximately as tough (8HD, 52 hp, Str 19, web DCs 16/20) as a Large Spider Cat (7HD, 59 hp, Str 19, web DCs 20/24), so I'd think its webs would have similar hit points.

Indeed, since a Spider Cat's web is "solidifying" and has DCs that match a Gargantuan spider's, I'd even consider 16 hps for a standard Spider Cat's web (18 hp for Huge).

Once the web HPs are sorted out I think we're done with this one.

I'm really enjoying these conversions, it's interesting to see all the different versions people come up with.

 

[Cleon]

Oh, and I forgot to to mention it doesn't have tremorsense 60 ft. like a Monstrous Spider.

There are other Spider-Monsters that lack tremorsense, such as the SRD Phase Spider, but I don't remember us discussing this.

I don't really care whether it has tremorsense or not, so I'll leave it to you.