Dragon Encounters

Three Ways of Running DnD’s Drider: The Temporary Parley Trap, Tactics of the Darkness Spell, and the Drider’s devastating sniper range tactic.

How to Use – DnD’s Drider Parley Tactic

Advantage of Knowledge of the Drow

The drider is the ideal monster with which to set up a drow campaign.

As a being who was once high up in their society, the drow has any and all knowledge that you might want the players to have. As a former member of a secretive society, the drider has all the reason needed to keep back information, allowing you to parcel it out at your own pace. And as a current outcast, the drider has all the motivation needed to plot against that society, even to the point of working with outsiders [temporarily].

Eventually, the drider will of course turn on them. You don’t want this to happen at the end of your campaign, as the drider probably isn’t the ideal final boss, but the drider doesn’t have to wait until then. Striking them early, and paranoia over the players doing likewise, is all the excuse needed to have the drider strike at a time ideal for you.

Betrayal Tactic – Striking Earlier than Expected

Let me explain. I hope to write a more thorough article on methods of enacting a successful betrayal when I reach the drow articles [the natural spot for it]. One lesson that I’ll mention here is that even knowing/suspecting a betrayal is coming, it can still be devastatingly effective if they expect it not to come until later.

The natural time for two forces working together under an uneasy truce to betray each other is after the common enemy is defeated. You can (and should) further reinforce this by having the drider discuss plans / make arrangements that it knows won’t happen, as it intends to betray the players first.

(A similar tactic would be to agree to trade three favors for three favors, then strike before the third. Make sure to give indications that third is important, and have some plan as to what is will be. If the players know that it doesn’t exist, the bluff is worthless.)

 

Combat Encounter 1 (difficulty 7)

Melee Tactics of DnD’s Drider

 

Many monsters with both melee and ranged options can be expected to switch mid-battle, perhaps depending on how the fight goes. The drider has no reason to do so.

It’s unlikely the players will ever close, given the range of the drider’s longbow or poison spray and the drider’s spider climb. Nor does it make sense for the drider to use the ranged attack until it draws close, as charging while firing seems weird thematically, as the ranged attack does as much or more damage than the melee attack, and as the drider can get in close fairly with Darkness and/or taking advantage of the twists and turns of the underdark.

While the longbow is the stronger of the drider’s weapons, it doesn’t feel right for a giant spider monster (I wonder if it only exists as an option because the drider is an elf). Poison spray does feel right, but as an occasional attack, not a constant one. As such, we’ll begin with melee, and ways to use Darkness.

Tactics of the Darkness Spell

Grappled Within the Bubble of Darkness

Have the drider cast Darkness over an alcove before the fight begins. (The underdark is already dark, so your players shouldn’t notice anything strange, even if they have darkvision.) As the combat begins, the drider will grapple one of the PCs and retreat into the darkness. (This is especially effective if this is how the drider betrays them).

What none of the players will realize is that the drider steps onto the wall as it enters the Darkness. At least one of the PCs will charge in after the drider, and will fall into a hole. The drider get to begin the combat with two of its enemies already out of commission.

(Describe the drider twisting and turning the grappled PC around as it moves, which will give you the excuse needed to explain why the PC didn’t realize the change in the elevation.)

Repositioning Inside Darkness

Darkness can also be used to allow for a tactical retreat. Have the drider cast darkness around itself as the PCs close with it, and scramble up the wall and into an alcove. Logically, the PCs should probably hurt each other in the confusion. Most games don’t have friendly fire, but it will still give the drider a few rounds worth of confusion to –

• take a bridge behind them or otherwise seal them in.
• Get into a position to ambush them, possibly by dropping a boulder on them as they come back out.
• Bring down boulders on them while they’re still fumbling around in the darkness. This one has the advantage that they might retreat in different directions thanks to the Darkness.

A Barrier of Darkness

In a case where the drider is far away from them and charging the players, have the drider cast Darkness in front of the PCs halfway through its movement. Then have the drider duck into a hiding place, perhaps a boulder, with the remainder of its movement.

The players will likely waste their turns shooting through the darkness blindly, wasting actions and possibly even spell slots. (Don’t forget to make a show of tracking damage). If they charge through, there’s a good chance the drider will be able to utilize the fact that it’s hidden to surprise attack them.

If you or they are a stickler for the rules, and want to say that a creature needs to take the hide action in order to count as hidden (I question whether it should be so, in a case like this, or whether that only applies when the cover is more questionable and/or it’s theoretically possible for the enemy to see the creature moving into hiding), have it use this to get around the fighters and attack the spellcasters.

Tripwire Trap Inside Darkness

If the drider has allies, you can take advantage of the players charging into the sphere of Darkness even more effectively. All you need is for one drider ally to throw a rope to another on the other side, and you have a tripwire to knock the first PC to move through the Darkness prone (on a failed DEX save).

If you can set it up so that the PC who tripped already used half his movement before falling, he’ll be stuck prone until his next turn, giving the drider and his allies advantage on their next turn, and perhaps letting the drider’s allies throw a net over that PC. Even if he can get up, he’ll have wasted his turn, and all other players probably can’t get through the Darkness on one turn either, if they want to go carefully enough to not risk falling.

Another benefit of using Darkness this way is that it will leave your players paranoid of what might be inside a Darkness spell, so if the drider escapes and returns to cast Darkness again, there’s a good chance they’ll be hesitant to risk entering it.

 Hidden Ambush of Darkness

An even simpler way to combine Darkness and allies is to just have a normal fight, with the Darkness hiding an alcove in which the allies are hidden. It’s normal for the underdark to be dark, you should be able to mention an alcove cloaked in shadow in the middle of your description without it ringing too many bells, especially if the drider’s next actions distract from it.

 

Combat Encounter 2:  (difficulty 9)

Ranged Tactics of DnD’s Drider

What does a fight where the drider is focusing on its ranged attack look like?

To start with, you’ll need a battlemap. Pay attention to line-of-sight capabilities, which shouldn’t be too constrained. The drider is smart enough not to pick a range-based battle in an area with no more than a dozen or so feet of sight in any direction.

For a proper challenge, have the cavern be both wide and long, allowing both sides to circle the other. Otherwise, they’ll just rush the drider. Also, have a few walls/barriers that don’t reach the ceiling, which the drider can climb over, or climb onto a nearby wall to shoot over, but which will block the players. Make sure the players have a way around.

The Faerie Fire Spell

The go to spell for this one will be Faerie Fire. While the drider doesn’t technically need it, with 120 feet of darkvision, it will prevent the possibility of the players sneaking around and catching the drider unawares. Without it, this encounter will likely turn into a long game of hide-and-seek. (More accurately, Shadows in the Dark.)

Perhaps even more importantly, it will serve as an excuse for the drider to begin the battle close to the players, and it will let the players feel that they gain an edge when they manage to disrupt the drider’s concentration. The fight will be more than hard enough as it is.

Range of the Drider’s Distance Attack

The drider’s longbow has 150 feet of range before even suffering from disadvantage (2014 rules). It’s poison spray has a range of 120 feet (2024 rules). Even without the faerie fire, the drider’s darkvision will let it see them as far as 120 feet out. With the faerie fire, the drider can see further. By contrast, PCs rarely have more than 30 feet of darkvision.

The players’ options are to either retreat and wait for the Faerie Fire to end or to advance. Retreating will expose them to ongoing fire as the drider pursues. If they hunker down behind a wall, the drider should be able to circle around and hit them from a side. Besides, players never retreat.

Advancing will be a deadly enough. The players will have to spread out if they’re to corner to drider. The drider will attempt to move to the sides, so as not to be cornered and to gain vantages where even if one PC is close enough to see and shoot it, the drider will be out of sight of the others.

The Drider’s Stealth Tactic

In addition, the drider will be circling so as to try to take the players by surprise. According to the rules for an opponent that you can’t see, it could be that all the drider’s attacks should have advantage. I wouldn’t do that, as they will be able to see the arrows or poison spray coming. However, if the drider hits them from a direction that they don’t expect, it would make sense.

(If they insist that they are careful to always observe all the area around them, it would make sense that doing so would cost them something. Search is an action, and if you don’t want to cost them their action, it might make sense that trying to watch the entire area around themselves should at least cost them half their movement, as they can’t run and watch out at once.)

Once Faerie Fire ends, the drider can try to use its superior darkvision to continue picking them off one by one, or you can have it decide it’s bored of this strategy and attack in melee. (The fact that the drider is supposed to be mad, according to the flavor text, might be a useful excuse).

Darkness in a Ranged Combat

Darkness is good for an escape, if entering melee causes the players to swarm it and it seems to be taking too much damage. You can also use Darkness to cut off the sight to the PCs in back, so that it only has to fight the ones in front, or use it to let the drider circle around while they’re blinded so it can hit them from a new direction

Be aware that Darkness will force them to clump up more, as the effective area to fight becomes smaller.

(I suppose the Drider could use Darkness, and aim through the darkness effect at the place where it hears they’re voices, then move away that same turn so they don’t know where to retaliate. The drider would suffer disadvantage for not being able to see the target, and with a ranged attack I’d be inclined to have some of them automatically miss, due to being shot at a place where the players aren’t standing.)

The Dancing Lights Spell

This spell is usable to get the players into a location of the drider’s choice, so as to ambush them. The players won’t go to where the Dancing Lights appear, but will circle around to somewhere that they can see the Dancing Lights and possibly attack. Anticipating how they’ll move in response is how the drider will manipulate them.

It’s also possible that they’ll ignore the lights, in which case you’ll have to proceed as though you didn’t cast them. Players are always assumed to be on the alert, so it’s not costing you anything.

 

Analyzing the Drider Spellcasting Variant

Spells of Limited Use

If your drider is a spellcaster, it has more options available to it. Very few of them will make much difference.

Divination, Clairvoyance, and Detect Magic are all divination spells. They won’t affect battle, except to give you a handy excuse to explain how the drider knew where to set its ambush. They’ll also be useful for when the drider is allying itself with the players, increasing the drider’s values by giving it more information to have available.  

Dispel Magic is situational.

Silence and Bane are both concentration, which means you’d have to sacrifice Darkness and Faerie Fire to use them, and they aren’t worth it. If those spells wear off mid-battle, they still aren’t worth the action it will take to cast them.

Poison Spray is thematic (?) and useless. Thaumaturgy can be used instead of Dancing Lights, or to set up the spell and make it more dramatic. It can’t be used together with it, as both spells require concentration.

We’re left with three spells that might be actually worth using.

The Freedom of Movement Spell

This spell isn’t very useful, but it doesn’t require concentration, which means the drider might as well cast as a just in case measure. (Unless you feel a need to reserve the spell slots for upcasting Dispel Magic or Hold Person [see below].)

In the ranged combat scenario, you could use this spell together with a river running through the middle of the underdark cavern where the combat takes place. The drider will be able to cross the river back and forth easily, and the players won’t (although I advise providing more than one bridge). The downside is that it will make an already difficult scenario even harder.

Hold Person Upcasting Potential

This can be upcast (cast with a higher-level spell slot) to target multiple PCs. If the drider does so, it can potentially lock down mid-battle in positions where they can’t see each other, and take them down one by one. (The drider has enough WIS to know their class, which should let it know who has high WIS and/or WIS save proficiency).

Personally, I feel that upcasting a spell to affect additional targets is generally OP. I also worry that this strategy will be boring/frustrating for the players. For both those reasons, I wouldn’t choose to use this strategy. It is tactically sound, however.

If you aren’t upcasting Hold Person, it joins the other concentration spells as not worth casting when the drider could be casting Darkness or Faerie Fire.

Sanctuary – The Drider’s Most Broken Spell

This spell is broken in a weird way. Sanctuary provides a lot of protection, and while it ends as soon as the drider attacks or casts a spell, it only takes a bonus action to cast, which means the drider can let it end by attacking and then recast it at the end of that turn. The only cost is a spell slot each turn, and the drider has spell slots to spare.

This is another option that will increase the difficulty of the encounter greatly, especially if most of your party don’t have high WIS and/or WIS save proficiency. I wouldn’t use this unless you’re ready to use the drider as a [high-level] boss, and I would increase its CR to 8 when using this strategy.

 

Summary: Six Encounters for DnD’s Drider

 

• A drider is a great way to provide information at the beginning of a drow campaign. The drider knows their society, and has reason to hate them. At some point, have the drider decide she got what she wanted and attack them as a boss fight.
• When attacking, have the drider cast Darkness and grapple one of them, dragging him into the Darkness. The Darkness will conceal a pit or well, which the drider will avoid by walking a wall, and the player giving into chase will fall into.
• The drider will advance on the players, casting Darkness as it moves, then finish its movement by ducking to the side. The players will waste their turn and spells, and the drider will circle them and ambush the spellcasters on later turns.
• When a combat goes against a drider, Darkness and climbing onto a wall is a good escape. If the players don’t realize where the drider went, the drider is in a good position to bring down boulders on top of them in subsequent turns.
• If the drider casts Darkness between itself and the players, and it has hidden minions they can stretch a rope through the Darkness to trip PCs running through, or set other traps. As a plus, the players will develop a paranoia of entering into a Darkness spell.
• Have the drider cast Faerie Fire, and then keep back and start shooting. The drider will be able to see them and not be seen, even if they use stealth. Spider climb means the drider’s highly flexible, as in hard to corner.