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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jolly Giant" data-source="post: 1374512" data-attributes="member: 5278">ThriffixAdvanced Fiendish Feral Colossal Monstrous SpiderColossal Magical Beast (Evil, Extraplanar) Hit Dice: 60d10+360 (960 hp)Initiative: +6 (+1 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative)Speed: 40 ft., climb 20 ft.AC: 21 (-8 size, +1 Dex, +18 natural)Base attack/grapple: +45/+73Attack: Bite +52 melee (8d6+21+poison, 19-20/x2)Full attack: Bite +52 melee (8d6+21+poison, 19-20/x2), 2 claws +50 melee (6d6+7, 19-20/x2)Face/Reach: 40 ft./30 ft.Special Attacks: Smite Good, Improved Grab, Poison, Pounce, Rake, Rend, WebSpecial Qualities: Damage Reduction 10/magic, Darkvision 120 ft., Fast Healing 5, Maximum Hitpoints, Cold and Fire Resistance 10, SR31, Tremorsense Saves: Fortitude +37, Reflex +21, Will +23 Abilities: Str 39, Dex 13, Con 20, Int 3, Wis 12, Cha 2Skills: Climb +22*, Hide -11*, Listen +1, Move Silently +5*, Spot +1Feats: Improved Initiative, Multi-attack, Improved SR x3, Weapon Focus (Bite), Weapon Focus (Claws), Weapon Focus (Web), Improved Critical (Bite), Improved Critical (Claws), Virulent Poison, Deadly Poison, Ability Focus (Poison), Ability Focus (Web), Improved Natural Attack (Bite), Improved Natural Attack (Claws), Improved Toughness, Improved Web, Fling Enemy, Multigrab, Iron WillClimate/Terrain: Lolth’s Realm (The Abyss)Organization: SolitaryChallenge Rating: 29Treasure: StandardAlignment: Chaotic EvilPossessions/treasure: Thriffix really has no possessions, but in the Arachnid Menagerie lays the remains of many former victims, and there are plenty of valuable items littering the ground there. Of course, finding what was once a magical fullplate armor shredded like cheap parchment can be unnerving. Finding a powerful magic greatsword isn’t that bad, until you stop to wonder what happened to its former owner…Pounce: Thriffix can make a full attack after a charge.Rake: If Thriffix holds an opponent in her front claws she can make two more claw attacks with her second pair of legs.Rend: If Thriffix hits an opponent with both claws she rends him, dealing an additional 12d6+14 damage.Smite Good: Once per day Thriffix can make one normal melee attack against a good creature and deal +60 points of damage.Maximum Hitpoints: Perhaps a tiny bit of Lolth’s divine essence got transferred to Thriffix when she was created, or maybe not. Either way, Thriffix has the maximum Hitpoints possible for her hit dice.Poison: Initial damage 2d8 STR, secondary damage 4d8 STR. Fortitude DC 49 negates.Tremorsense: Thriffix can sense any creature touching the ground in a 60 ft. radius from her, or over any distance if the tremors are transferred via her webs.Web: Eight times per day Thriffix can shoot out a sticky 20 ft. radius web as a standard action. This functions like a net-attack (+31 on the attack roll); with a 10 ft. range increment and maximum range 50 ft. The web has 20 hp/5 ft. square and damage reduction 5/-. To get free from the web an entangled creature must either make a DC 49 escape artist check or break the web with a DC 53 strength check.A single strand is strong enough to hold two colossal creatures. Thriffix can move along her own webs at her climb speed without getting entangled. Skills: Thriffix has a +8 racial bonus to climb checks, and can always choose to take 10 on climb checks. She has a +4 racial bonus to hide and move silently checks, or a +8 bonus if making those checks while in her webs. Description & TacticsThriffix’s is one of Lolth’s favorite pets. She’s the biggest, baddest spider in a realm that’s chock full of big, bad spiders. Her body is pitch black with no markings, and is covered with thick, coarse hairs. Only her multi-faceted eyes seem to reflect any light at all.Her fangs are huge, even for a spider of her size, and have some nasty-looking serrations. A vile, greenish-yellow venom seeps constantly from each of them. Each of her eight long, spindly legs end in needle-sharp, piercing claws. The claws, like her fangs, are serrated and seem to big even for her.Her lair is in a labyrinthine network of caves, tunnels, chasms and gorges within Lolth’s own realm. All sorts of nasty spiders can be found there, from tiny black widows to… Well, to Thriffix, basically! Lolth refers to the place as her ‘Arachnid Menagerie’, and one of her favorite ways of punishing those that have angered her is to throw them in there for her pets to enjoy.Lolth has taken advantage of the divinely morphic trait of the Abyss to limit the number of spells that function within the menagerie. It would completely spoil her fun if victims could just teleport out of it or fly over the heads of its denizens, so no spells with the teleport descriptor function within the menagerie. Nor does spells that affect movement in any way; such as expeditious retreat, spiderclimb, haste, airwalk, freedom of movement etc. Spells that would give you a new form of movement (climb, levitate, fly, swim or even burrow) or grants a bonus to climb or swim checks, likewise doesn’t work. What can I say; Lolth’s evil, and when she punishes someone she makes sure they suffer!A clever bard can probably tell you an epic or even sing you ballad of legendary warriors that has survived long enough to find a way out of the Menagerie, but then bards will tell you anything. If somebody did manage to battle (or sneak!) their way through it; Lolth, being the chaotic deity that she is, would be liable to do anything from striking them dead for spoiling her fun, to rewarding them for their achievement.Thriffix’s perhaps greatest strength in combat, besides her extremely potent venom, is grappling. Against a single opponent she’ll try to grab him with her fangs, dealing automatic bite damage each round while clawing him with her two front claws. She’ll initiate combat with a web attack. Whether that’s successful or not, she’ll follow that up with a charging pounce.Against a group of opponents she’ll first try to entangle as many victims as possible in her web, and then pounce on any that escaped the web. If more than one enemy escapes her web, she’ll grab one with her fangs and fling him at another (see page 34 of Savage Species for specific rules). Those caught in the web, she’ll pin to the ground with her claws. She can hold up to four huge or smaller opponents at the time, keeping one claw on each and biting whoever struggles the hardest to get loose.Thriffix's natural weapons are treated as magical weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.Design notes:I might have stretched the rules a bit with Thriffix, letting her have an INT-score. Minimum 3 INT, the fiendish template says, but the template wasn’t really intended for vermin. But then this no ordinary spider, Thriffix is after all a unique creation of Lolth’s.Once I’d decided to give her an INT-score, I figured the best way to handle her was to treat her as a magical beast all the way. She’s gained skills and feats as a magical beast, not vermin, but she’s lost the Mindless trait vermin normally has. After all, she can’t be mindless if she has an INT-score!Determining her CR was tricky, to say the least. Vermin don’t have feats, but as a magical beast Thriffix has gotten the appropriate amount for her HD, and that meant I couldn’t just follow the basic CR-calculation rules.The enormous gap between her attack bonus and AC also concerned me, and her damage reduction is worth nothing against high-level characters. What party in the high twenties doesn’t have magic weapons? I mean, even a wizard (of a level appropriate for Thriffix’s CR) can borrow the fighter’s back-up waraxe and have a very good chance of hitting her. Her fast healing isn’t worth much at that level either. I thought about various ways of increasing her AC, but they all felt distinctly cheesy to me. That’s why I decided to give her a tiny spark of divinity instead and gave her maximum hit points.Though she hasn’t yet been playtested, I’m guessing her extremely low AC (for her CR) might just help make her memorable. On the other hand I didn’t want her to be killed half-way through the first round of combat either, and with an AC like Thriffix’s enormous amounts of HP is the only solution.Of course, giving her maximum HP didn’t exactly make her CR easier to calculate… I eventually gave up my calculations, and just gave it an “educated guess”… I set it to 29, maybe a little too high, but I would rather have it a little too high than too low. I don't want to cause a TPK just because I can't calculate CR properly!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" /></blockquote>

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