Hypodermic Spider

This week I ran another Gus L mini adventure, the Star Spire which features glass spiders as the primary antagonists. 

Gus describes transparent spiders with venom visibly sloshing around inside their bodies. A very cool image! It started me thinking and I came up with a slightly different take that I really like:

I should have drawn eight legs

The Hypodermic Spider 

# Appearing: 3-12

HP: 1

Size: Like a biggish dog.

Attacks: 1x per round. 1d4 damage + special.

Special: On a hit, roll a d6.

1: Head - 2x damage, face paralyzed, speech is impossible.

2: Body - 2x damage

3 - 6: Limb paralyzed and unusable.

Each player draws a little figure and marks paralysis

Breaking the central toxin basin: Save vs paralysis.

Commentary

This was a fun monster to run. For my group it hit both the right creepy, needle-phobic aesthetic and the right level of mechanical complexity. When characters' faces got frozen, describing their awful glitched-Zoom-call expressions were great comedic moments.

Despite being easy to kill, the spiders created a real challenge for the players as character's bodies became increasingly paralyzed and trying to smash the arachnids (within a constrained area) without getting splashed with toxin was tricky. After the fight, getting around the dungeon with partial paralysis was challenging in a way that made revisiting areas feel fresh.

Overall, very happy with the result.