Broken Arrow's page

Hey all,

I've put together a pretty nasty haunted mansion for my players to explore and almost finished stocking it. The mansion has a good ol' food lift running from the kitchens on the ground floor to the top floor.

The play I'm hoping for is; the PC's look around the room, one of them approaches the lift and triggers the spider's tripwires. The spider leaps out, snatches the PC and disappears back into the shaft in the blink of an eye.

As there's no stats for a trapdoor spider that I can find, I've built my own. I'm looking for advice on a suitable monster feat to achieve the intended effect.

Trapdoor's Strike
If the intended prey in unaware of the spiders' presence and triggers the tripwires, the spider may move up to it's speed and bite in the surprise round. If the prey is at least one size smaller, it may instead move up to half it's speed, snatch the prey with a successful combat manuever check and move back into it's lair as part of it's surprise round. The prey gains the grappled condition.

I know the wording is still a little loose - but any thoughts on the basic idea, mechanics or "fairness". The spider will be CR5.

After reading MM's rant on his players being (for want of a better word...) idiots and screwing up his campaign, I was inspired to start this thread -

What are some of the coolest ideas you've had that your players screwed up?

My Contribution;
I once spent a week designing a side encounter (a door way to a pocket plane) that was fully kitted out, awesome custom traps, full descriptive environment, a sweet boss encounter (complete with humourous twist) and a nice selection of booty. I was so proud and couldn't wait for the PC's to enter the unmissable, strange looking doorway that their normal curiosity would compel them to enter...

They saw it, they argued for half an hour about entering and they f*$$%&*%# well decided to keep walking!!