Combat - Quick Contest of Attack vs Active Defense

[Tuk the Weekah]

Originally Posted by GameBuddah

In preparation for tomorrow's game, my wife and I ran through the first encounter of "I Smell a Rat." She was playing the Swashbuckler, and I was playing a Giant Spider.

She wiped the floor with the Spider - the Spider didn't land a single hit.

If anyone has any additional insights into tuning this combat tonight or tomorrow morning, I would be most appreciative.

Have you considered changing the tactics used by the spiders? Not all spiders are active hunters that rush their prey, like typical jumping spiders, or ambush, sting, then wrap their prey, like typical wolf spiders. Interesting options include:

• Bola spiders - they spin a line of silk with a sticky blob at the end of the line. They 'throw' the blob at prey, then reel them into close combat for the stinging.

• Net-casters - some spiders pre-spin a small net between their front legs, then lie in wait to attack prey. They lunge forward to net the prey, then bite the prey when snagged in the net.

• Trap-door spiders - they hide in pits in the floor, covered by web-silk that has detritus (leaves, dirt, whatever is in the environment) stuck to it to make it look like the ground. When the victim trips a signal line, the spider attacks from its hiding place.

• Deceptive spiders - some spiders mimic the movements of prey to attract other spiders and then lunge at them when they think they are attacking their prey. Other spiders are known to spin 'decoy spiders' out of silk to sit in their webs and attract predators whom they themselves sneak attack.

These are all different tactics used by real-world spiders that you could exploit. Perhaps you could have a 'deceptive' spider use both a decoy spider made of silk and the desiccated body of a former adventurer, positioning the corpse to look like it is getting attacked by the decoy. The party attacks the decoy, and their weapons get stuck in the web of the decoy. Then the 'deceptive' spider drops from the ceiling/canopy where they were hiding, manipulating the web movements of the decoys like a puppeteer.

Perhaps the spiders work in concert with some creature that can mimic sounds (like the real-life lyrebirds) who could mimic the sounds of people being attacked (including would effects and screams) who then share in the spoils. The sounds make the decoy trap that much more effective. There are some, admittedly not a lot, of interspecific cooperative hunters in the real world, so you aren't required to make either animal highly intelligent or their species to make it work.

Good luck!