Oct 4
spider minion attack encounter #dnd
In my first D&D adventure that I ran a week last Tuesday I decided to warm up myself and my adventurers by having them travel to the main destination of the game via some spider infested woods. I used the King's Road map by Gale Force Nine to save some time with setup and started the party at one end of the road, explaining that they were surrounded by spiders loitering the carapace above and that the graveyard they were heading too was just beyond the end of the road.I had them roll initiative and then allowed each character to move in turn. After each move I made a saving roll, which if failed spawned a spider minion. The saving roll was modified depending on how quiet each character was being. For instance, Cal the rogue was moving stealthily and passed each save, but Malewrath the wizard decided to cast some light and immediately attracted the attention of a spider.
As this encounter proceeded a few minions were spawned, dropping down on the characters from above. As the spider dropped from above it got a free attack.
Malewrath was able to take out most of the spiders with a single magic missile hit, no problem, with Cal stealing a kill from Bryagh the Dragonborn Barbarian, right near the end.
After the first spider had been killed I had narrated that the nearby Minotaur Paladin, Musk, had been covered in "spider goo". Since the party were getting through this encounter so quickly (not a bad thing), I decided to play out the spider goo thing. The Minotaur got a couple of extra coverings of spider-goo during the encounter, so I decided that he was covered in so much goo it was slowing him down. This seemed to go well and didn't last too long as they were near the end of the encounter anyway. During their short rest before the next encounter Malewrath cast a spell to clean Musk up, and onward they went in to the graveyard ...
