Clerics equal healing and support, so how would you use the drow priestess of Lolth as the drow head boss? If you’d find out, enter our web, and wish your loved ones farewell.
The drow priestess of Lolth has quite a number of spells and abilities, many of which she can actually use to good advantage, and in interesting ways. She has enough that I’m forced to give an entire article to her basic tactics, and place my traditional combat encounters in a follow-up article.
The drow priestess of Lolth has five attacks that are possibly worth using, and four good support spells.
Attacks of the Drow Priestess of Lolth
Scourge Whip
Unusually for a spellcaster, the priestess’s basic attack is actually worth using. It will do more damage against a single target than any of her spells (although her spells are better if she can catch at least two PCs in the area of effect).
As the priestess herself is fairly vulnerable, this is only a good option if she can catch a single PC at a time. My combat encounters will be built around that.
Insect Plague
As well as being an excellent source of damage, this serves as a way to keep the party split up. They are hardly likely to walk back through a damaging spell to get back together. The fact that it effectively locks off part of the battlefield means that it can completely transform any combat, and it’s a rather nice means of blocking pursuit.
I will explore all this more when giving my combat encounters in the following article.
Conjure Animals 2024
Conjure Animals is really two different spells, depending on which version you’re using. The 2024 version is like Insect Plague, except more powerful. It does the same damage at level 4 that Insect Plague does at level 5, and it can be moved for the cost of an action.
It does have a downside of covering less area, but that shouldn’t matter so much considering that it can be moved. Nor is ten feet in every direction all that little.
The fact that it can be moved means that the players can’t afford to be near each other. It also raises the strength of all the other strategies I mentioned above, and will discuss in the combat encounters.
As an aside, while the spell lets you decide what animal fills the zone, the drow priestess will obviously be using spiders.
Conjure Animals 2014
If you’re using this version, the priestess will use it to conjure up two CR 1 giant spiders. While a CR 1 wouldn’t normally be worth mentioning in a battle involving a CR 8, the giant spider’s Web ability makes quite a difference.
If you’re using this spell, the priestess will start the combat out of sight, and will concentrate on spawning new spiders every time one gets killed. You will need some type of urgency to keep the players moving, as otherwise they can just group up and outlast the priestess’s spell slots.
As long as they’re forced to keep moving, with no time to cut their friends free of the webs, the giant spiders will force them to split up, and the drow priestess can slip behind and attack them one by one with her scourge whip.
Ray of Sickness
This almost didn’t make it into the list of spells that aren’t worth using, but the fact that it inflicts the poisoned condition isn’t nothing. Even so, it’s there mostly for when the drow priestess can’t reach a PC, at least without exposing herself to other attacks.
Ray of Sickness can be cast at higher levels for a little extra damage. If you’re using the 2014 version of Conjure Animals, I’d limit Ray of Sickness to level 2 spell slots, as the priestess needs to be able to spam multiple uses of Conjure Animals.
If you’re using the 2024 Conjure Animals, you don’t need half as many uses of the spell. A single use of the spell creates a zone that can be moved around, and hopefully won’t be easy to dispel. I’d go as high as level 4 with Ray of Sickness, as long as she doesn’t use up her last level 4 or level 3 spell slot on it.
Summon Yochlol
This is easily her most powerful attack, should it succeed. It needs a section of its own, which I’ll place after the support spells.
Support Spells of the Drow Priestess of Lolth
Mass Cure Wounds
This is quite a nice spell, and worthy of its place at the top of the list. It does require that a large number of targets needing healing are within a sixty-foot radius, so she’ll only be using it in a large-scale combat.
To roleplay an evil person using healing, have her do it with a look of disdain. She isn’t healing them out of compassion; she’s healing them to throw them further into the combat, and she’s irritated that they’re so incompetent as to need her assistance.
Freedom of Movement
This is useful to keep herself from getting tied down and killed, especially as she needs to keep out of the players’ sight in order to survive. The greatest threat to any spellcaster is being grappled or otherwise constrained, and Freedom of Movement makes that impossible.
Cure Wounds
This is for when she’s lying low, sneaking around, or otherwise not using her action in any case. It means that she can drag the combat out for quite a while, as her HP can be replenished. In a combat situation, it isn’t worth it. The players can knock off HP faster than she can afford to regain it.
This is a spell that can be cast at higher levels for extra effect. See Ray of Sickness for which higher-level spell slots are available. The rules for Cure Wounds are the same as for Ray of Sickness, except that the drow priestess will use lower-level spell slots first, if she can afford the time.
Protection from Poison
This spell has a lot of potential. What you want to have her do with it is set up a situation where there’s poison affecting the area. She’ll be highly resistant, and her enemies will be at a disadvantage.
(She’ll be able to protect one or two high-value minions, but the others will have to suffer. Oh well, it will help them realize that she’s superior, so all’s well.)
The downside is that she doesn’t have an area-of-effect poison spell, so you’ll have to place a non-official hazard. Or doesn’t she? While she doesn’t have a poison effect, two of her possible allies do.
The Drow Mage and Poison
The drow mage has cloudkill. You can look at his article for ways to use it, but one that I didn’t cover is for the priestess to make her escape after she’s betrayed them.
Cloudkill obscures the area, so all she needs to do is arrange with him to cast it on her signal, and then she can duck out while the players all struggle to escape the area with no visibility and damage each turn. See my final Cloudkill encounter in the drow mage article.
The drow mage can send a quasit to spy and tell him when to cast it.
The Yochlol’s and Poison
The yochlol 2014 has the ability to turn into a gas form which can inflict the poisoned condition on anyone in it. This seems useless—although I found a way to use it in my yochlol article—as it can’t do damage while in that form. The priestess is one way to use it, as the poisoned cloud gives her an ideal way to escape being cornered.
The yochlol 2024 has a reaction that lets it escape after taking damage, and inflict the poisoned condition on anyone it lands near. Protection from Poison isn’t really needed for this, although it does mean the yochlol can come to the drow priestess’s aid and doesn’t need to worry as much about hurting her.
How to Use: Combat Tactics of the Drow Priestess of Lolth
To sum up the drow priestess of Lolth’s combat tactics:
To start with, if she has enough advance warning about the combat, she’ll cast Freedom of Movement on herself. It’s good enough to be worth the spell slot, but doesn’t last long enough for her to automatically have it available at all times.
For the next step, if you’re using Conjure Animals 2014, she’ll cast Insect Plague if she can hit half the party, or if placing it in the middle of the combat zone will inconvenience the players more than it will inconvenience her. Afterwards, she’ll start conjuring up giant spiders, summoning up new ones when one gets killed.
With Conjure Animals 2024, she’ll use a mostly similar tactic. She’ll start by casting Conjure Animals, probably with a level 5 spell slot. She’ll use her turn to move it when she can hit at least two PCs with it, assuming she can avoid her own forces. She will use it despite it hitting her own forces when she judges it worth it.
Regardless of which version of Conjure Animals you’re using, when she doesn’t need to use it, she’ll sneak around the battlefield trying to hit individual PCs with her scourge, provided she can do so without getting herself killed. She’ll use Ray of Sickness if the danger is too great.
When she’s below half HP, she’ll duck into cover so she can heal herself with Cure Wounds, and if she sees a good opportunity worth using Mass Cure Wounds on, she’ll do so.
Protection from Poison is situational, and depends on her allies or on whether you’re going to put poison in as a hazard.
And Then a Yochlol Appears! How to Handle It
A discussion of how to run a scenario when the fight gets a yochlol dropped into it.
One of the weirdest parts of the 2014 Monster Manual was the decision to let a CR 8 creature summon a CR 10. How can it do so and not become a higher CR?
The only decent answer is to say that since the yochlol gets unsummoned if the priestess dies, they considered that as balancing out the encounter. Unfortunately, that’s very limited relief. She now has a yochlol defending her, after all.
Solution 1: Kill the Priestess
If you want to take this approach, I suggest having her approach the PCs. Normally a spellcaster should keep their distance and stay out of sight, as I outlined here, but perhaps she doesn’t want to look weak before a servant of her goddess, or perhaps she became overconfident.
Logically, she should duck behind cover when she takes too much damage in order to heal herself, but she’ll still be near enough for them to rush her.
This approach will be easier for your players to defeat if you’re using the 2014 Monster Manual. The 2024 yochlol can cast Web or Dominate Person on the same turn as when it attacks. It’s also highly mobile thanks to its special reaction. All this means that killing the priestess with it interfering will be a nightmare.
By my calculations, taking down a CR 10 and a CR 8 at the same time will require a four-player level 9 party at full health and resources. It might be lower for this situation, where they only need to kill the CR 8, but I’m uncertain if it will help enough. Even if it does, you’ll probably need the party to be at least level 8.
Solution 2: Split the [Enemy] Party
The other option you have is to have the drow priestess leave the battlefield after summoning the yochlol. She doesn’t feel that she’s needed any more, so she leaves to continue her plan, and leaves the yochlol behind to destroy the PCs.
The disadvantage is that it makes banishing the yochlol by killing the priestess impossible. The positive is that they only have to fight one enemy at a time, and a four-player party might be able to take on the yochlol at level 6–7, assuming full health and resources.
Solution 3: When all else Fails
If that fails, the next step would be either giving them a chance to run or taking them prisoner.
The first requires that they’re willing to run. Some players will catch on to the fact that they’re in over their heads by themselves, some will accept it if you tell them, but others will persist in attacking no matter what. If they do run, let them escape. It’s not like they messed up; they got unfairly unlucky. Let them find a hiding place or jump down a cliff into a river.
If they persist in fighting, the only real option aside from killing them is to take them prisoner.
When to Use: Drow Priestess of Lolth Summons Yochlol
Deciding when the drow priestess should take the plunge and summon a yochlol is itself tricky.
If she does it at the first opportunity, she runs the sizable risk of it failing. If that happens, she’s wasted a turn for nothing, and that tends to be fatal in D&D combat.
While not discussed in the text, we can also assume that she doesn’t want to summon a yochlol unless she needs it. They’re servants of her deity, and it would make sense that she’d lose favor, and maybe even have the yochlol turn on her, if she abuses her privilege to use it frivolously.
She can’t use it when she’s losing combat either. While it might seem that she’s got nothing to lose, she also has little to gain. If she’s low on HP, they’ll kill her and thereby immediately banish the yochlol. (Although if she can get to cover, she can probably heal herself, so this option isn’t completely off the table.)
Solution 1: Alliance with Yochlol?
This leaves two options. The first is to have her try to summon a yochlol before an attack against a target, such as the players. The only downside is that since it’s happening where the players won’t see it, you might as well give her a yochlol without her summoning it, the same way as you give any boss minions.
One answer to that would be if she attempts to summon it when she’s working with the players, prior to her betraying them. The players will have to discourage her from trying, as if she succeeds they have a chaotic evil demon who will tear through innocents as well as valid targets, and if she fails she might blame their influence for Lolth not wanting to help.
Solution 2: Betrayal by Yochlol
The other option also involves the players working with her. As they close in on the end of the campaign, the chance of her betraying them grows higher. Above I gave a whole bunch of ideas that focused on her not being there with them.
If she is with them, then logically the best way for her to betray them would be by pulling a yochlol out of thin air. Make sure they know it, and make sure that they need her enough that they’ll agree to risk it.
They’ll have to make their way through combat, and possibly through trapped caverns or other obstacles, while being careful not to give her an opportunity to slip off by herself for a short while. All she needs is for them not to see her, so that she won’t get in trouble if it doesn’t work.
Homebrew Summoning Suggestion
Either way, you’ll run into the problem that if she does try to summon a yochlol, only to flub the roll, you’ll have quite an anticlimatic letdown. It would be better to homebrew the summoning rules so that summoning a yochlol takes a full minute, keeping her from being able to do it in front of them, and is something she can only do a few times in her life, to prevent her from doing it all the time.
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