Shelob
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ruleslawyer
Registered User
The suggestion on the Middle-Earth d20 website is to use a 20 HD monstrous spider with the fiendish template. Not bad, if you ask me.
I might give her DR 15/- and make her REALLY deadly, since Tolkien mentions that swords could not pierce Shelob's hide "not though Elf or Dwarf should forge the blade, nor the hand of Beren or Turin wield it." It's Shelob's own strength (23) that drives Sting into her.
I might give her DR 15/- and make her REALLY deadly, since Tolkien mentions that swords could not pierce Shelob's hide "not though Elf or Dwarf should forge the blade, nor the hand of Beren or Turin wield it." It's Shelob's own strength (23) that drives Sting into her.
Celebrim
Legend
This is one of those questions that really has no good single answer. The real answer is 'Find a power level appropriate to the power level you feel is appropriate to ME as you wish to portray it.'
Some people feel that Aragorn is an Epic Level character. Others feel he is 20th level, or 15th level, or even 9th level.
Shelob should be appropriate in power to the character you wish to have challenge her. I personally feel that a 20HD gargantuan fiendish monstrous spider is about right, because I see 3rd. age middle Earth as a low power grim and gritty campaign environment. But, if you want the characters of the Fellowship to be closer to Epic level, then take a gargantuan monstrous spider and give it the Paragon template. Or if you feel the hobbits were between 3rd and 6th level at this time, then make Shelob a normal gargantuan fiendish monstrous spider.
Really whatever you want to do is fine. You could conceivably argue that she is half-fiend (by virtue of being at least in part a Maia). You could use unique stats for her and assume she is a Maiar in spider form. You could for a really low level campaign (Frodo begins play as a 1st level halfling Aristocrat and sam as a 1st level commoner) just make her a normal monstrous spider.
Some people feel that Aragorn is an Epic Level character. Others feel he is 20th level, or 15th level, or even 9th level.
Shelob should be appropriate in power to the character you wish to have challenge her. I personally feel that a 20HD gargantuan fiendish monstrous spider is about right, because I see 3rd. age middle Earth as a low power grim and gritty campaign environment. But, if you want the characters of the Fellowship to be closer to Epic level, then take a gargantuan monstrous spider and give it the Paragon template. Or if you feel the hobbits were between 3rd and 6th level at this time, then make Shelob a normal gargantuan fiendish monstrous spider.
Really whatever you want to do is fine. You could conceivably argue that she is half-fiend (by virtue of being at least in part a Maia). You could use unique stats for her and assume she is a Maiar in spider form. You could for a really low level campaign (Frodo begins play as a 1st level halfling Aristocrat and sam as a 1st level commoner) just make her a normal monstrous spider.
ruleslawyer
Registered User
Amen, Celebrim.
One nitpick: Shelob isn't a Maia, being the spawn of Ungoliant, which is something other than Vala or Maia.
Shelob does actually strike me as being easier to stat out in D&D terms than pretty much any other entity that crops up in LotR. She's just a big spider with a really tough hide that repels even magical weapons to some extent (it's well-established in The Silmarillion that elven and dwarven weapons are often magical). With these factors in mind, just make her Huge or Gargantuan and give her monstrous spider stats; the "fiendish" is just for flavor, really.
One nitpick: Shelob isn't a Maia, being the spawn of Ungoliant, which is something other than Vala or Maia.
Shelob does actually strike me as being easier to stat out in D&D terms than pretty much any other entity that crops up in LotR. She's just a big spider with a really tough hide that repels even magical weapons to some extent (it's well-established in The Silmarillion that elven and dwarven weapons are often magical). With these factors in mind, just make her Huge or Gargantuan and give her monstrous spider stats; the "fiendish" is just for flavor, really.
Celebrim
Legend
Well, I counter your nit pick. 
Ungoliant was certainly not a Valar, since that term is properly applied only to the Lords of the West and like Morgoth is forfeit of that title. And quite equally, Ungoliant shouldn't be counted amoung the Maiar, for that term is applied to the chief vassels of the Valar. However, Ungoliant is quite certainly a spirit of the class of beings called the Ainur, and those of the Ainur which made thier abode in Arda are in common usage called Maia - even often those who serve The Enemy who otherwise have no special name. Now, the origin of Ungoliant is not known, but many of the wise have said that she was in being and nature like the consort of Morgoth, for Morgoth was certainly from the beginning intended to be of the Valar, and for each Valar there was a corressponding Queen - a Valier. But as the love and devotion required for such a consort relationship is absent in both Melkor and Ungoliant it is not manifested in any mutual activity, save the one instance of agreed upon destruction described in story. For both Morgoth and Ungoliant are equally manifestations of the same destructive impluse in its masculine and feminine aspects respectively. For Morgoth wishes to consume the world by suffusing outward himself into all the world, making the substance of Arda, as it were, his 'ring' by which he may rule Arda, where Ungoliant wishes to consume the world by drawing all of the world into herself until there is not in the world but her self. Both are expressions of the love of self taken to its furthest extreme, so that in the end, they like Gollum both love and hate themselves as they lust after and despise all things.
Now it is not known by what manner the Valar spawn, for it is not given to them as of the Children of Illuvatar to have children. For the life that comes from the Hidden Flame comes from The One only so that no other being has in himself the power to fashion souls having independent life of thier own. So it is likely that in some fashion, the children of Ungoliant are shards of her former power, or that she corrupted some thing having independent life and caused it to splinter and recycle itself endlessly in spider like forms. But whatever the cause, it is clear that some power of Ungoliant has passed into her progeny, which makes them at least in part inheritors of the power of the Ainur.
Ungoliant was certainly not a Valar, since that term is properly applied only to the Lords of the West and like Morgoth is forfeit of that title. And quite equally, Ungoliant shouldn't be counted amoung the Maiar, for that term is applied to the chief vassels of the Valar. However, Ungoliant is quite certainly a spirit of the class of beings called the Ainur, and those of the Ainur which made thier abode in Arda are in common usage called Maia - even often those who serve The Enemy who otherwise have no special name. Now, the origin of Ungoliant is not known, but many of the wise have said that she was in being and nature like the consort of Morgoth, for Morgoth was certainly from the beginning intended to be of the Valar, and for each Valar there was a corressponding Queen - a Valier. But as the love and devotion required for such a consort relationship is absent in both Melkor and Ungoliant it is not manifested in any mutual activity, save the one instance of agreed upon destruction described in story. For both Morgoth and Ungoliant are equally manifestations of the same destructive impluse in its masculine and feminine aspects respectively. For Morgoth wishes to consume the world by suffusing outward himself into all the world, making the substance of Arda, as it were, his 'ring' by which he may rule Arda, where Ungoliant wishes to consume the world by drawing all of the world into herself until there is not in the world but her self. Both are expressions of the love of self taken to its furthest extreme, so that in the end, they like Gollum both love and hate themselves as they lust after and despise all things.
Now it is not known by what manner the Valar spawn, for it is not given to them as of the Children of Illuvatar to have children. For the life that comes from the Hidden Flame comes from The One only so that no other being has in himself the power to fashion souls having independent life of thier own. So it is likely that in some fashion, the children of Ungoliant are shards of her former power, or that she corrupted some thing having independent life and caused it to splinter and recycle itself endlessly in spider like forms. But whatever the cause, it is clear that some power of Ungoliant has passed into her progeny, which makes them at least in part inheritors of the power of the Ainur.
ruleslawyer
Registered User
Celebrim said:
I very much like your interpretation.
However, I don't think that Ungoliant is "quite certainly" one of the Ainur; she seems far more analogous to Milton's Demogorgon, a primal force (both creative and destructive, with her webs and her brood) existing outside the traditional dialogue between forces of good and evil.From The Silmarillion, Chapter 8:
Ungoliant therefore appears to have come from "the darkness that lies about Arda," not from Iluvatar's realm, and does not appear to have taken part in the Song of Creation. That makes her potentially something other than Ainur. True, the text states that Melkor "corrupted [her] to his service," which puts her in the same camp as Melkor's servant Maiar, but then she's not numbered among the forces of the Enemy described in the final passages of The Valaquenta. So it could go either way. Personally, I like the idea that Ungoliant is something different from the Ainur; JRRT, like Milton, implies that there are voids and abysses of formless chaos beyond Creation, and I enjoy preserving Ungoliant as an interloper from those realms.
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