Iintesting ideas/monsters found in a Giant Spider Lair?

[solamon77]

In my hex-crawl campaign, the party ran across a Giant Black Widow Lair. Next game, They're delving down in there to hopefully save someone who was cocooned and dragged in (and come across some fantastic treasure). I'm trying to create an interesting and multi-layered battle, but can't think of any other monster that would fit thematically with the Giant Spiders (aside from the Spider Queen obviously).

The battle is designed to be a 6 hour epic fight and I want more than just 6 hours of Giant Spiders. Currently, the way it's set up, the fight is kind of like a gauntlet where they have to push their way forward about 200-300 feet through continuous battle in order to reach the Black Widow Queen at the far end and slay her. Then they have to fight their way back out. It's a game set in the 3rd edition . The party can handle challenges around CR 8-9. Does anyone have any ideas?

Also, aside from monsters, if anyone has any interesting ideas on surprising things (treasure for instance, or just something weird) they might come across down their, let me know. Thanks!

 

[Celebrim]

I used to have a pet widow. They aren't exactly social creatures and they don't leave much for scavengers, so to build a whole dungeon around one isn't the easiest thing. It sounds to me like you've got more of a Hobbit style fantasy spider thing going.

First of all, I'd use a lot of vertical terrain in this sort of dungeon. To me, it would be more like rappelling down hundreds of feet than walking back into it. I'm thinking a multi-drop pit, with webs and ledges on multiple levels. Maybe 200-300 feet long sure, but 300-400 feet deep. Major encounters can be divided among the main ledges. There'd be opportunities to use webbing plus debris (maybe and entire fallen tree trunk, caught in a web) as accidental bridges to cross from ledge to ledge, climbing opportunities, and so forth. Flying in a web filled environment would really not be recommended.

One advantage of that is that you can have narrow side passages outside the main pit that spiral down to lower ledges. That could open up non-spider encounters in that sort of location, particularly if your spiders are larger than human size for the most part.

A few monstrous centipedes of the smaller sort, lurking in out of the way corners hunting young spiders.
A few evil pixies of a particularly insectile disposition, living in harmony with the spiders.
A ghost of a prior victim, because a ghost wouldn't necessarily interact with the spiders in any fashion.
An egg sac that would burst to release a swarm of palm sized spiderlings.
An ettercap might be sheltering among its kindred. The party could find some of its traps in the back passages of higher levels, and then find the ettercap lair lower down.
An Aranea scholar might be sheltering among its kindred. An aranea with an extra 5 levels of sorcerer, so that it casts as an 8th level sorcerer, might be interesting, especially considering the terrain and the proximity of potential monstrous spider pets.
For color, a few giant crickets or other giant insects bundled up in a web and still occasionally twitching, and the mummified corpse of an ogre still bound in webbing.
If you want to go there, you could have a bit of a struggle going on between the spiders and parasitic flies that lay eggs on them. You could have PC's find that a couple of the spiders they kill had eggs laid on them, or fly larva buried into their bodies. The later they could be attacked by 18" long flies that try oviposit eggs into them. On the other hand, if the spiders have pixie and ettercap allies, this might not make as much sense.
You could have them find the corpse of a spider infested with giant horsehair worms (variant giant maggots).

A lot of this probably doesn't have nice easy stat blocks, but you can probably smith out some simple monsters and/or adapt them from things that are published.

 

[Imaculata]

You could also have some of the cocooned victims of the spiders come to life as undead. There are web mummies in Monster Manual 4 (page 165), and Web Golems in Monster Manual 3 (page 74).

 

[solamon77]

Brilliant guys! I love the ideas! A vertical nest is amazing! I especially love the idea of web mummies and parasitic flies! I'm going to try had to really gross them out with this. Think about how horrific it would be to actually descend into a giant insect pit.

Now that you mention it though, you're right, I shouldn't have gone with Black Widows. They're solo spiders. I picked the Widow because in the Bestiary 1, it lists them as the next step up from the generic Giant Spider. Oh well, too late there. I'll just claim they only "look" like giant black widows but are in fact a separate species entirely.

 

[Imaculata]

Take it one step further, and play creepy music and icky sound effects during their descend into the spider's lair. That will get them in the mood of things. There's a wealth of free sounds that you can download from freesound.org.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Just have the spider nest be the plug holding in something worse. They deal with the spiders fairly quickly, but now the caverns beneath aren't plugged and the <insert monsters here> can get out.

 

[amerigoV]

The web itself is a living thing and the spider (s) worship it as a god(des)

 

[Eltab]

- A team of Drow just happens to be here. They want to capture the spider / milk it for venom / make sure it's still effectively protecting their secret exit.
- Something that eats spiders is in a corner of the lair, licking its wounds so it can try again.
- Some of the cocoons that hold former victims have personal belongings in them (not treasure, but a plot hook to get involved with an NPC)
- Some cocoons buzz from time to time. You can let loose a giant fly / giant ant / giant wasp that will do whatever comes naturally.
- Giant preying mantis lives below the web and eats leftovers or escapees
- Something that does not stick to the web is trying to find the way out.

 

[Dioltach]

Giant frogs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmocleis_ventrimaculata

 

[Celebrim]

Giant frogs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmocleis_ventrimaculata

Perhaps. But if the same scale of, "It's too small to be my dinner so I'll ignore it", plays out with monstrous spiders, a spider that is 10 feet across would have a frog companion that is about a foot long. That might be big enough to eat a large fly, but would represent no real threat to the party. If it's big enough to be a significant threat to the party, it would probably be perceived as a threat to the spiders.

Unless of course all these spiders are like 30' gargantuan monstrosities.