Watchspider

A watchspider is a selectively bred strain of huge hunting spider, raised and trained to stand guard. It has the usual eight legs and eight eyes, a sleek body, a big head with large fangs, and a thick coat of hair on body and legs. It spins no webs, relying instead on speed, aggression and a venomous bite.

Watchspiders wait in the shadows by the entrances they guard, watching everyone who comes in and striking at unauthorized visitors before being seen, which gives opponents -6 on surprise. They can spring 30 feet at a target. Trained to disable as many foes as possible, they bite each intruder once in turn and keep going until all are paralyzed.

A bite does 1-6, and the victim saves vs. poison at +1. On a failure, paralysis sets in after 1-2 rounds and lasts 2-8 turns, leaving the victim able to see and hear but not move or speak. In other respects they match ordinary huge spiders, climbing walls and webs with ease. A watchspider kept hungry too long will eat paralyzed prey unless the victims are removed within three turns.

In a great coastal city they are common in the cellars and warehouses of guild halls and rich merchants. Each obeys a single master, who can tell it to spare certain people. All are taught to bring down spellcasters first and to dodge spears and other long piercing weapons braced against their leap. Generations of breeding have made them clever enough to train for each buyer's needs.

In one villa, four watchspiders fight as two pairs and a fifth sounds an alarm bell beside the cellar door. In another, permanent web spells drape a cellar ceiling, and the lone spider guarding an artifact vault, on counting more than two intruders, first drinks a unique potion of heroism from a basin set above the webs, gaining 3 extra Hit Dice (for hit points and THAC0) for 1d10 turns before it attacks.

The breed first came from a southern island realm, whose dark-skinned people tamed it as guards. A merchant family of the great coastal city brought the spiders and their training methods north and built a profitable trade. Sixty years on, watchspiders shipped from that city are sold all along a northern coastline, from the colder north to a far southern island. Originally from milder lands, they have grown heavier, almost furry coats, but the cold beyond the northernmost of those markets still kills them.

The family's last heiress recently married into a clan of monster trappers and trainers, and rumor says new strains are coming, such as web-spinners whose strands carry paralytic venom, or spiders that pair watchspider training with the bladed legs of a sword spider.