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.
Vine Webbing. The webs this spider makes are indistinguishable from thick vines unless touched.
Treeskin. While completely immobile, this spider and its legs are indistinguishable from thin trees.
Dryad Toxin. While inflicted by the poison of this spider, a creature's flesh becomes soft and mushy, like moss. Travelling difficult terrain or moving more than 15 feet in one turn can cause 2d4 inches of flesh to slide off, dealing 1d6 slashing damage for every inch that falls off. They are also vulnerable to slashing and bludgeoning damage for the duration, and emit a foul stench which is detectable 100 feet from the creature.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +11 to hit, reach 10 ft., one creature. Hit: 17 (2d8 + 9) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 19 Constitution saving throw, taking 45 (9d10) 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 3 hours, even after regaining hit points, and is paralyzed while poisoned in this way.
Stomp. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 20 ft., one creature. Hit: 21 (2d10 + 11) piercing damage.
Web (Recharge 5–6). Ranged Weapon Attack: +12 to hit, range 50/110 ft., one creature. Hit: The target is restrained by webbing. As an action, the restrained target can make a DC 17 Strength check, bursting the webbing on a success. The webbing can also be attacked and destroyed (AC 12; hp 14; vulnerability to fire damage; immunity to bludgeoning, poison, and psychic damage).
Description
The Canopy Spider is a hulking, 8-legged beast, so large that it disguises itself as trees using its brown legs and dark green body. They are dreaded by hunters and travelers, and rewards for a kill quest of one commonly go into the hundreds of gold pieces.
Forest Lords. Canopy Spiders commonly group into families of as little as two spiders, and as large as twenty individuals, and control up to 200 square miles of forest territory. They typically only web on the edges of their territory, given how large it is. They also linger, evenly-spaced, across these webs, so they can relay what they have to each other spider. If one is killed, the others immediately take action.
Interspecies Warfare. Canopy Spiders from different colonies may occasionally mate for life and form their own colony, but far more commonly they begin fighting for dominance. Such battles usually last for days given the scale of the territory, and adventurers flock to the aftermath sites to collect as much material from the slain spiders as possible.
Lair and Lair Actions
The lair of a Canopy Spider is one that is shared between as little as one and as many as nineteen other Canopy Spiders. They consist of long expanses of forests made of thin-trunked trees, and webbing disguised to look like vines. The colonies of Canopy Spiders are shaped like rings. The webs of a Canopy Spider tend to be prime locations for other, smaller spiders to nest, since they're too insignificant for a Canopy Spider to detect, let alone care about, while they also keep smaller pests out of the lair, such as rats or small birds. A Canopy Spider encountered in its lair has a challenge rating of 13.
Lair Actions
On initiative count 20 (Losing initiative ties), the spider can take a lair action to cause one of the following effects; the spider can't use the same effect two rounds in a row:
- The spider rapidly throws around their vine-like webbings, forcing any creature that is medium or larger and not another spider to make a DC 17 Dexterity saving throw, becoming restrained on a failure, with the restraining webbing having the same stats as the spider's Web attack. If the creature is already restrained, then the DC to escape is increased by 3 and the HP of the webbing restraining it is doubled.
- The spider calls forth a swarm of hostile spiders. A Swarm of Insects (Spiders) are called forth within 120 feet of the Canopy Spider and take initiatives just after the Canopy Spider which called them. They flee after 2 rounds or when the spider uses this action again, and they do not drop experience.
- The nearby webbing is cut loose from the battle, causing cocooned animals to fall on top of nearby creatures. All creatures which are below a tree's leaves, aside from Canopy Spiders, must make a DC-15 Dexterity saving throw, taking 12 Bludgeoning damage on a failure.
Regional Effects
The forest around a colony of Canopy Spiders exhibits clear changes because of the Canopy Spiders' massive nests, falling into the categories of several effects:
- The vines in the forest within 5 miles of a colony of Canopy Spiders become very sticky and overgrown, making areas plentiful in these vines difficult terrain and, if a medium or larger creature is walking there, attract the spider.
- Larger creatures, such as cattle, boar, wolves, and bears, grow less and less common the closer to the lair you get, effectively disappearing completely about half a mile from the nest.
- The flora inside of the colony becomes highly overgrown due to lack of predation, with trees and grass growing twice as large and artificial structures being decayed by rapid growth, including roads, wells, and fences.
When the colony is eradicated, the overgrown flora remains, but all other effects fade after 2d4 weeks.
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