Small spiders.

[XBlade]

Now I know crafting is suppose to be hard, and that's the fun of it, when you eventually make a shiny stick that when used once per day obliterates  everything in the room.

But that's not the point of this post, just suggesting about small spiders. I know where a couple are but over all they seem very rare on mistone, unless there are more out there (I haven't explored far). Starting off poison is probably the toughest start in all crafts I'm assuming.

So maybe pop some more small spiders about, like in the crypt or caves? There's only two that spawn where I know, just to make poison making a tad easier.

Taric/XBlade.

[ycleption]

There are a few locations for small spiders, some of which spawn only at certain levels. Look around :-)

[Faldred]

Off the top of my head, I can think of two spawns that include small spiders for low-level characters that are not inside a "starting area" and are on Mistone.

Without going into specifics, try checking out places where you could get groups of spiders spawning...

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Even still, they typically (from what I've noticed) only spawn at lower character levels, and are also still a bit tougher to find than, say, Dire Spiders.

I would be all for some more Smalls tossed about; they add another dimension of challenge to a low-level fight, and it's not like I'll benefit from it.

[darkstorme]

At the same time, Poisoncrafting is supposed to be glacial... I, myself, would rather see more ettercaps.  Their silk pouches are good for more than just poisons, after all.

[lonnarin]

I'd be interested in SWARMS of small spiders around some places.  Never in my PnP DMing experience have I ever made an encounter of just one or two tiny spiders at a time... the fun is in the swarm!  Sure your AC might be high and their hp low, but with 10-15 of them at once, the chances of them scoring a crit and poisoning a party is fairly good.  It's pretty evil, but spiders + ore veins = slow miners... a fun challenge.

Also, it would be sweet to have them accompany the currently ubiquotous dire spider swarms, even for higher level spawns.  Just because somebody's higher level does not mean that every spider in a web are automatically fully grown.  It's more realistic to have even a queen spider surrounded by her babies, than to have 20-30 dire spiders with not a single spiderbaby in sight.

oooh, you could also set seperate spawns in such a way that you see the queen spider in the distance, run to her to attack, which trips the second spawn of baby spider swarms... kind of like seeing the teeny colony of her children leap off her back to attack.  I watched a mother spider nabbing a florida cockroach like this once... she bit it and as it was twitching in her hold, all the babies on her back crawled over onto it and feasted.  It made me hungry for Taco Bell.

[Faldred]

I'd be interested in SWARMS of small spiders around some places.

It would certainly annoy the fighter-types who don't have Great Cleave, but one AoE spell would make a swarm pretty well useless...

[Faldred]

Even still, they typically (from what I've noticed) only spawn at lower character levels, and are also still a bit tougher to find than, say, Dire Spiders.

Not necessarily.  I've noticed that at least one the two spawn points (I don't have enough data to verify the second one) I've mentioned that they come and go at various encounter levels -- as you gain levels, the group of easier spiders gives way to a smaller number of tougher spiders, then the next time you see a change in the spawn difficulty, you get a larger swarm with some "easier" ones mixed back in again with the tougher ones.

I'm sure at some point, you'll be unable to spawn a small spider from these points, but by then you can either pay someone else to collect them for you, or you've leveled your craft beyond the point of needing them.