Giant Spider

Large beast, unaligned

Armor Class
14
natural armor
Hit Points
26
4d10 + 4
Speed
30 ft., climb 30 ft.
  • STR +2
  • DEX +3
  • CON +1
  • INT -4
  • WIS 0
  • CHA -3
Skills
Stealth +7
Senses
blindsight 10 ft., darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10
Challenge 1 200 XP · Proficiency +2

Traits

Spider Climb

The spider can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check.

Web Sense

While in contact with a web, the spider knows the exact location of any other creature in contact with the same web.

Web Walker

The spider ignores movement restrictions caused by webbing.

Actions

Bite

Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 7 (1d8 + 3) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 11 Constitution saving throw, taking 9 (2d8) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. If the poison damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, the target is stable but poisoned for 1 hour, even after regaining hit points, and is paralyzed while poisoned in this way.

Web (Recharge 5–6)

Ranged Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, range 30/60 ft., one creature. Hit: The target is restrained by webbing. As an action, the restrained target can make a DC 12 Strength check, bursting the webbing on a success. The webbing can also be attacked and destroyed (AC 10; hp 5; vulnerability to fire damage; immunity to bludgeoning, poison, and psychic damage).

How to run it

Spider Climb plus Web is the fight. The spider should never be on the floor. It restrains someone from the ceiling at 30 feet, retreats along a wall, and bites whoever is stuck. Web recharges on a 5 or 6, so expect to use it two or three times in a normal fight.

Web Sense means it always knows where anyone touching its web is, so it cannot be flanked or ambushed in its own lair. Play it as a creature that has already won the positioning battle before initiative.

Building the encounter

One is a fair encounter for a party of four at level 2. Two or three in a webbed cave is a hard fight at level 3 and a memorable one.

It needs vertical space and webbing to be itself. A giant spider in a flat empty room is a mediocre CR 1 monster; the same spider in a cavern strung with web is genuinely dangerous.

What to pair it with

More spiders, or a druid or drow who keeps them. Spiders and difficult terrain is really the pairing that matters, and the webbing provides it for free.

They also work well guarding something, since Web Sense makes them very hard to sneak past in their own territory.

Reskins

A climbing ambusher that restrains at range. Reflavour as a tentacled thing in a ruin, a fungal creature that entangles, or a construct that fires nets.

The web is the mechanic and the identity. Whatever you reskin into needs some way to pin a character in place from a distance, or you have lost the creature.

Commonly played wrong

The webbing has AC 10, 5 hit points and is vulnerable to fire, so a single burning torch frees a restrained character quickly. Players who work this out should be rewarded, not blocked.

The bite's poison has a nasty rider that is often skipped: if the poison damage drops the target to 0, they are stable but paralyzed for an hour. That turns a downed character into a hostage rather than a corpse, which is far more interesting.

Compared to others at this CR

At CR 1 the giant spider is the battlefield-control choice. The ghoul paralyses on a hit, the bugbear bursts, and the spider decides where everyone is standing.

It is also the only one of the three whose difficulty depends heavily on the room. In three dimensions with webbing it plays well above CR 1, and on a flat floor it plays well below.

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