Ethereal Jaunt. As a bonus action, the spider can magically shift from the Material Plane to the Ethereal Plane, or vice versa.
Spider Climb. The spider can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check.
Web Walker. The spider ignores movement restrictions caused by webbing.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 7 (1d10 + 2) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 11 Constitution saving throw, taking 18 (4d8) 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.
Description
A phase spider possesses the magical ability to phase in and out of the Ethereal Plane. It seems to appear out of nowhere and quickly vanishes after attacking. Its movement on the Ethereal Plane before coming back to the Material Plane makes it seem like it can teleport.
This monster, if used cleverly, could possibly pose a fairly big threat to even higher level parties of adventurers, due to their ability in order to phase in and out of reality. It could single out the toughest looking adventurer, biting it and then phasing into the Ethereal plane, appear again the next round, bite again, disappear, and repeat. It could jump out at an unsuspecting party from all manner of directions, even through walls of fire and solid doors. This strategy could effectively whittle away at a party over time. Something fun to throw at your players as a DM to mix things up.
Update?
The only thing is it's a bonus action to move in or out of the ethereal plane. And you only get one of those per turn. So you can't reappear, attack, then disappear again in the same round. So, every other round it would be vulnerable.
So, it can teleport between dimensions to appear in places you wouldn't expect?
I think that's just a normal spider.
this is epic
You sadistic DM
I don't get why these guys were relegated to the back of the Monster Manual given that they're fairly iconic DND beasties.
It could however emerge from the ethereal plane hiding behind something, then in the next turn attack and disappear; a cruel DM could run these as the most terrifying enemy a party will ever face… 😈
DM used one to transport my level 3 PC to the ethereal plane (because he ruled that it could do it if it was grappling me). how am I supposed to deal with that?
i love the phase spiders they just look so cool!
Kinda makes me think of the Dr. Who monster whose name escapes me. While this seems cool, I think just memory wiping and 6 seconds of blindness are a sufficient buff to the poison.
Gonna give my players 3 of these things at once just to mess with them (I'm only gonna tell them the're fighting 1)
😈me with unlimited use of etherealness
i want to die i was fighting 7 giant spooders 1 of which is this thing at level 4 party god i 1 shot 1 of us in the fisrt turn
In one of my first campaigns, I gave these creatures their own unique language and allowed my players to tame one, learn that language over time, and use it as a mount. The amount of regret experienced as a result of this thing's phase ability is so immense that I had dreams of the thing finally dying (and also I allowed it to be an additional summon for one of the Find spells which just made it worse honestly).
I just happened upon this girl a few hours ago. I knew my players were going to fight some kind of spider soon, I just didn't know which one(s). After looking through the spiders and sizing them all up, I couldn't not choose this special girl. I did, however, tweak her a bit to serve my needs.
Firstly, I gave her a cone web attack for obvious reasons. The web only served to restrain the players and gunk up the terrain around them to cause movement difficulties. I like to get my players really think about how they would approach an enemy in combat. A straight line isn't always the best route. Secondly, I changed the phasing ability around a bit to make the combat scenario a challenge but not a frustrating one. When she phased, she did so in a manner that caused her to be intangible rather than out right invisible or removed from the field of battle. They could see her but couldn't touch her, like a hologram. Furthermore, her phasing ability extended to a 15 ft sphere around her that affected anyone that came into range of it. So basically, ranged attacks and magical effects that originated from outside the sphere had no effect on her. If they wanted to attack her, they had to get in close to be on the same dimensional plane as her. Lastly, I gave her some growth hormones like a good Chaos DM should and made her size Huge with 100 hit points.
I should confess that a) I'm a new DM and b) I DM for my 3 young adult children whose characters are pretty OP at level 5.
Combat lasted 5 rounds and they had a great time with this one. I'll likely bring her back one day with an upgrade or two as I didn't have the chance to really use her bite to the full extent.
The campaign is a combined version of DoIP and LMoP, which I tweaked HEAVILY. The spider is the Banshee Agatha's pet because I felt like she needed one.
Also, no need to point out all the things I did "wrong" as 1) your opinion means nada to me and 2) I use the rules of this game as soft guidelines rather than laws set in stone. :-)
Also, also I really love the art for this creature and the unique abilities! A+ and two thumbs up!
It's more of a foreshadow if you have a party member using blink or an adventure traveling through the ethereal plane. Also they can't drag people there but they can drag anything dead. The desease are considered objects in DND.
I use this monster as a killer for a murder mystery plot
There are a couple of Dr. Who monsters that remind me of this, but I think the one you're thinking of is The Silence. (They're the ones that wipe your memory when you look away from them.) However, there were a couple spider villains in Dr. Who, and I think one of them might have had reality shifting powers.
I imagine these guys hunting style much like jumping spiders except their "jump" is the ethereal jaunt. Jumping spiders don't create elaborate webs designed to ensnare prey, instead they use their webs as anchors when jumping off things or to minimize risk of being blown away. Phase spiders could do the same by attaching a special web to anchor them to the material or ethereal plane. While it doesn't give them any extra abilities, it does give them just a bit more flavor for how they actually work. It could also be a weakness against a creature that can somehow see the web through truesight or something. Maybe the anchor can be severed to cause the creature to lose its ability to return in the spot they want or even flinging the creature off into the ether. Just an idea.
As for the webwalker trait, I think its there so they can be used with other spiders that do spin web lairs so there's already webs around or just let them spin a web lair themselves. Just because they don't use the webs to trap prey in combat doesn't mean they can't have sticky lairs.