Into the Demonweb Forest, Part 5

And so the girls continued their trek through the spider-haunted forest. We got through one more fight last Sunday, and this time I pulled out another of my homebrew spiders. I again used the Ruins of the Wild dungeon tile set with my homebrew forest map, placing a couple of 10' x 40' chasms just off the path. This group of spiders just leaped from the trees with no subtlety or strategy.

1 tarantella (level 5 controller, 200 xp)
2 deathjump spiders (level 4 skirmisher, 350 xp)
5 crab spiders (level 4 minion, 214 xp)

I still haven't updated the tarantella to incorporate Mike Mearls' excellent slow/slide suggestion, so I couldn't take full advantage of the chasms. It didn't matter anyway because the tarantella got locked down by the paladin in round one and wound up hitting with its bite once in the entire combat, then missing the secondary (poison) attack. All in all, a very disappointing performance.

The girls are getting really good at killing spiders, especially the crab spider minions. The tiefling fire wizard unleashes fire shroud on them with great glee.

After the fight I again used Mike Mearls' "fancy" wandering monster skill challenge rules. This time even though the girls failed most of their rolls, I rolled a 6 on the encounter check and there was no encounter anyway. They decided to cover part of one chasm with leaves and branches, then rappel down into it and hide there for a long rest. This time they rolled much higher on their "don't attract wandering monsters" checks, and none of my multiple rolls during the night resulted in an encounter.

Analysis:
I wish I'd updated the tarantella and then actually affected someone with its poison, but oh well.
I'm actually glad I didn't roll any encounters during their rest - it's always easier to start a session with everyone at full strength and one action point than having to write all the numbers down and then find the correct scraps of paper at the beginning of the next session.