The air ripples from the heat within the stony cavern as the lone rachnoid skitters across the floor, its amber eyes probing the shadows before turning from whence it came. Its mother, adorned in her regal gown of white, looms over it as she strides upon long, chitinous legs. Upon her back, a massive sac of webbing carries the lone explorer’s siblings who casually mill over their mother’s vast frame. The bizarre family outing continues at a stately place until the wandering widow pauses, her head tilting and turning as her mandibles twitch. Hiding behind a rocky outcropping within her domain, the rogue tries to shush the rest of her stumbling party as they try to untangle themselves. She glances around the corner, freezing as she notices that the beast has gone missing – just as a glob of slobber splashes onto her shoulder and hood. As she feels it drip down the neck of her armor, she grimaces and turns to gaze up into the grisly visage of the empress spider who unleashes a hideous screech.
Coming close to the end of the new monsters that appeared in Monster Hunter Rise, we have the so-called 'Empress Spider,' the rakna-kadaki. Took some discussion to determine what CR to place her as, but once that had been determined, it was pretty straightforward. Rakna has the expected immunity to fire but also a curious immunity to electricity that I was sure to include as well as her weakness to cold. Her AC is on par with other creatures of her CR, but I made her health a tiny bit lower than average to account for the gown of protective webbing that she wears. Watching her fights, I noticed her primary modes of attack were her mandibles and her claws, both of which possessed incredible range, hence the reach longer than her space. While building her at this point, I also looked up pelican spiders - the real life animal that the rakna-kadaki's design is based off of - and their strange pedipalps are used to hunt other spiders. They stab them and hold them at distance with these pedipalps while injecting them with venom, letting that run its course while they keep it far enough away that their prey can't bite them. Real fascinating stuff.
Its special attacks are pretty standard between its breath weapon, web, and web spray ability - the latter simply allowing it to use its web in an area. From its remaining two abilities, I'd say its weave is the most unique, allowing it to create its gown of webbing that it's usually encountered in or the massive ball of it that she creates once the hunters break that. I did consider increasing the number of uses of web that the rakna-kadaki receives above the normal amount but ultimately decided against that. I'm still unsure it would ever even use all of its eight uses in an encounter. Web slide gives the massive creature some mobility at the cost of a resource and is something I wanted her to be able to use to do stuff like haul herself upward onto the ceiling. I opted against including the rachnoids as part of her stat blocks actual kit because they are mostly flavor - they die in a single hit unlike most rachnoids and simply burrow back to their mother. I did come up with a way of incorporating them into the 2e version, but they exist largely as flavor for the 1e version. As for the rachnoid stat block, its pretty simple, just being a greatly downgraded version of the rakna-kadaki. As one final note, the racial modifiers I opted to give it for its skills are based off of the racial modifiers that most spiders have in Pathfinder 1e.
Pathfinder 1e:
Didn't really make any major changes for the Pathfinder 2e rakna-kadaki, but since web doesn't have the limited use as it did in 1e, I had to work out a way of balancing its Web Slide, which I accomplished by making a two-action ability. However, I kept Weave a single action mostly to allow the rakna-kadaki a more varied action economy and I felt like it wasn't game-breaking. As usual, the new ability that I did add to the rakna-kadaki was a reaction in the form of Rachnoid Aid, representing her babies hopping out to give her a hand, making things a bit easier for her. There may well be rounds where she doesn't even need to use this reaction and it does require her to use her Breath Weapon or Web Slide before any other actions, which might not work out. As before, I aimed for a lower health pool to compensate for her Gown Weave. I also included a weapon based off her heavy bowgun since her armor set is all about using them. It's a pretty simple magical weapon that I might have ended up making too powerful with some of the choices I made for it. It's activated ability is meant to reflect the high affinity the weapon naturally has as well as its wyvernsnipe ability.
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Widow's Wrath: A town upon the outskirts of a dormant volcano have reported a rakna-kadaki departing its caverns and venturing dangerously close to town. The heroes are asked to investigate and arrive just in time to witness the rakna-kadaki laying waste to the town. If attacked, the rakna-kadaki ends up retreating into its caverns but it lingers in the town long enough that savvy heroes might notice that it seems to be looking for something. In truth, she is - a local merchant lord had some of his cronies steal away the rakna-kadaki's babies that he is hiding away to harvest their silk. The heroes can find hints of this if they look for it, and are given the option of launching an expedition to rescue the babies and return them to the enraged mother or simply slay her - along with whatever crazy conclusions they come to.
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Until next time, have a Monstrous Monday!
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