Clockwork Spider

Description:

Clockwork spiders are wind-up or engine-powered machines built to look and act like large spiders. It is unclear whether they are magical or purely mechanical in nature, but their metal bodies and many limbs make them an effective defense, and their ability to climb walls can make them difficult to deal with.

Special:

Essentially machines, clockwork spiders are immune to most magical effects including any spells or skills that affect the mind or the emotions, or any magic that drains or buffs Stats, Attributes or Derivatives. They take half damage from Shock or Frost, and are immune to Fire as well as poison, disease or any other physiological effects. They can see perfectly in total darkness.



In addition to attempting their bite attack, clockwork spiders can spray a sticky adhesive, presumably used for maintenance purposes, to a range of 7 hexes. Anyone who does not Dodge is immediately put into the entangled state.

 As normally, the victim can attempt to escape each turn by making a 21 Challenge using Adaptability or the Escape skill, but this adhesive hardens rapidly, soon becoming almost as hard as metal. Each turn a victim fails to escape, they suffer a (-1, -2, -3, -5, -8, -13, -21 etc) penalty to attempts to escape. Unlike giant spiders, clockwork spiders do not eat their entangled prey, and they will generally ignore victims they have entangled.

An attack with the acid of an Iron Ant, or the Decay spell (if not resisted using Stability) will reduce the Protection of a clockwork spider by 1 and do 3d6+1 points of damage to its Health. Additionally, if the caster or attacker succeeds a 21C using the Engineering skill, they can identify key components, and the rolled damage will be doubled. Depending on whether the Director defines the creature as magical or purely mechanical, it may or may not be possible to disable it using the Dispel spell.

With a full complement of 12 clockwork scarabs inside it, a clockwork spider will regenerate 1 Health every 5 minutes.