Trap Monsters: The Phase Spider

So nobody who plays my monthly Pathfinder game is surprised we're talking about trap monsters again, but I imagine everyone assumed this week would be about vampires. We did have a vampire encounter, though it went well and was decently satisfying. That's not to say I'm not going to talk about vampires: No, vampires in D20 are complete horse shit and I will get around to moaning about them too.

But no, you see. Something Happened.

We were attacked by phase spiders in what was supposed to be an easy encounter. The GM was calling back to earlier in the game, where we avoided an ambush. We were tracking someone through dense forest and they had made a fake trail. We decided Barkus, our dwarven warpriest would follow one path while Occam and Icke, stealth bros 4 lyfe, followed the other. Icke and Occam happened upon a grisly scene with a crying child and their parent killed by an axe. Icke immediately suspected it was some sort of trap, and Occam straight-up didn't care. We had better shit to do. So, we yelled out "Life's tough, kid, buy a helmet" and cut through the forest to meet back with Barkus on the true trail. That was a phase spider weaving illusions through its web to cause an ambush. Several days later and after our encounter with a vampire, we ran across another one, though this time we fell for it. Now, it's probably DIFFERENT phase spiders, but they're intelligent, so I choose to believe they were so fucking mad that they didn't fool us that they went through all this trouble to try again.

I didn't need to tell you that, I just think it's really funny. Anyway, it illustrates an important point: The GM created a decent, satisfying encounter and the fun of it was hamstrung only by the statistics and abilities of the monster.

Our GM was using a variant of the phase spider that had illusions(as above), an Accelerate Poison ability, and claws instead of improved grab. That's all fine, none of that is an issue we need to discuss here. I couldn't find that variant, but even if he had made it up himself, variants are a fun way to shake things up. Imagine if they didn't have those illusion abilities to create a trap: they would've just jumped out of the ethereal on us, randomly. That's boring. Anyway, having three natural attacks instead of one at least creates some sort of incentive for the thing to stay on the material plane. We'll see why that's a good thing later on.

Anyway. When I talked about Mind Flayers, I went through an overview of what makes a trap monster and why it's bad. In addition to abilities that are simply unfair or cause an unsatisfying combat experience, you also need to watch out for monsters whose suggested tactics or abilities cause players(or the monster) to act strangely. This will often lead to an unsatisfying combat experience, which is what we're worried about in the first place. It's a red flag.

The phase spider is CR5. It has a CON poison, a bite for decent damage, improved grab, and the reach of a size large enemy. It has the ability to ambush with a full attack action, as well as its Ethereal Jaunt ability. Feel free to search phase spiders on D20PFSRD.com for full stats. Its ethereal jaunt is special: It works like the spell of the same name, but it can enter the material plane from the ethereal as a free action and leave the material plane for the ethereal as a move action, or even as part of a move action.

Do you see the problem yet?

The phase spider can phase in, attack, then phase out, leaving itself completely invulnerable on other people's turns. It's a CR 5 monster, and no party actually challenged by it will have a direct answer to ethereal jaunt like dimension lock. Even a party twice its level(IE mine) will. This leaves you reliant on Readied Actions to do anything at all, an option that sees little use in most games or encounters. Hell, if your group doesn't understand or even know about readied actions, this is a TPK. Delaying your action doesn't work because it's not a way to act in the middle of someone's action. Readied actions aren't very common, so don't come at me insisting most groups know about them. Even in the groups I'm in, they come up very rarely and we often have people confused about how they work.

So that's the first problem. Everyone is reduced to single actions, nobody can take a full attack, and we throw the entire concept of initiative out of the window. After literally everyone in the group is readying their action, the initiative count is going to look like this.

20:
19: Phase Spider 1, Phase Spider 2, Occam, Icke, Kamuati, Mina, Robyn, Barkus, Eniere, Captain Ladybones, Dr. Gatter, Samual, and the 1976 Denver Broncos.
18:
17:
16:
15:

(Fun fact: all 34 members of the Denver Broncos play paladins. It's a VERY low conflict group.)

Does that look confusing and stupid? Yes it does. Good job. Is it fun? I mean, I sure didn't think so. Some people don't mind essentially doing the same thing every combat action. Some people love it and build characters with that in mind. However, even those people don't like being forced into a single tactic. It's the fact that only one thing is going to work that upsets them, the very restriction of it.

Force spells and abjurations do work despite being ethereal. However, at level five this means magic missile. First off, you'd need see invisibility up to target it, because the spell requires less than total concealment.  You get three 1d4+1 missiles at level five, for an average of 9 damage. With the phase spider's 51 hit points, you'd need to cast the spell, on average, six times. A level 5 sorcerer has exactly six 1st level spells per day. He'll have say two more due to high CHA. Will he have See Invisibility? He's only chosen one 2nd level spell at this point, so unless it's provided by his bloodline, it's not likely.
Could the sorcerer kill the thing? Maybe. Will the sorcerer kill the thing in the six-seven rounds it'll take after the phase spider identifies the sorcerer as his only real threat? It does has an INT of 7. Well, the phase spider deals 2d6+7 damage and the sorcerer is gonna have about 30 HP if he's got a CON of 14. You tell me. Oh, and the wizard is just boned because there's no way he has enough magic missiles even if he knows he's fighting a phase spider. In fact, in this day and age I'm kinda being generous even assuming you've got an arcane spellcaster. The days of the Balanced Party are pretty well over, especially in Pathfinder with its absurd amount of base classes.

You can't even move to get away from it, because it can phase into the real world as a move action, or as part of a move action. It doesn't even take him any amount of feet of movement. You can double move past its speed of 40ft and deny it an attack by forcing it to double move as well...but it's not like it HAS to phase in. It can just move and then sit there waiting for your action while it's invulnerable. If you've been poisoned, this is even to its benefit. If you haven't? Well, cue up Yackety Sax and play it at full volume, because this can continue ad infinitum.

This gets into an infuriating meta-game if the GM doesn't identify that there is a problem with the monster's design. You'll start making endurance checks while walking in circles because neither you nor the monster is willing to give up and just get hit. You may have to field questions like "Well how long are you going to ready your action? Nothing happens for several minutes." with the monster waiting until you give up to get a "free" hit on you. Is that fun? You tell me.

The final problem is minor, but tangible. It's minor because the GM can fix it, but it requires illogical tactics. The monster acting illogically is fine to a point, but it's not really a fix. We'll talk more on that when vampire comes up. With his ethereal jaunt and low CR, the phase spider has a permanent, unbeatable escape. This is, in general, another red flag I failed to go over when discussing the trap monster overview. It can be mitigated by the GM simply not using it, but often when we use trap monsters it's because we haven't identified them as a trap.

Here's why that's such a problem. Even if you get proper XP from the fight, a villain getting away is frustrating. You should only do it sparingly, and only when you need a villain to come back and can't justify another method. Like, there's no reason a random encounter monster needs to escape unless you're trying to save the PCs from a situation too hard for them. This is a reason why I recommend you use villains in a non-combat capacity for face time. Talking via spells like magic mouth or programmed illusions, things like contingency or terrain the players can't traverse. Being in a combat and the antagonist getting away is frustrating. Despite what Bennett Foddy says, people do NOT find frustration fun. They'll hate your villain, true, but too much and it'll become hatred for the wrong reasons. If the players feel their agency is being taken away, they'll start to hate the villain because they're not being allowed to "get" them.

This isn't so bad when we're just talking about a standard encounter, but they'll still get angry that it got away. It's "pointless" if the PCs are still given proper experience for the encounter, and wildly unfair if they haven't been. Their frustration will compound if this happens too much. What's worse, is that if the GM doesn't identify the problem and acts "logically" then the monster may hold a grudge and come back...but he still has that unbeatable escape, so the party may end up in an extremely frustrating experience of being constantly ambushed by the same monster and never being able to defeat them.

So yeah, honestly I'm glad this came up while it was an "easy" encounter for my group so nobody had to die to prove how dumb this monster is. And I'm pretty sad at this one too, because Dale's descriptions of the monster and how it ripped through its web-illusions to attack were great. The monster's cool. Just, y'know, basically unusable.

A final note for anyone who doesn't believe me about its tactics. I urge you to go read the suggested tactics under its entry, because just like with the Illithid, I've followed them exactly. The book even says they'll poison people then just fucking sit there on the ethereal plane and wait for the poison to cause con damage. Fun! Fun encounter.

I don't know who designed the phase spider, but I did want to say something. An open letter. Sir or Madam, you're an asshole. There is no way you truly and honestly think this monster is fair or fun. I refuse to believe you are that stupid. If you're still designing monsters today, leave your First Edition D&D Jerkass Bullshit out of it. It's not welcome in Pathfinder.