Idea for a New Unique Race

I often like to throw in unique NPC’s who are the only member of their race / species. For instance, in a campaign that I was running about 12 or so years ago, I created a half-red dragon half-black dragon hatchling that was going to play a role in the entire campaign. You can download a PDF of the first adventure in the campaign (the only one I actually ran) on the resources page.

Currently, I am in the process of creating a drider-like NPC created from a human instead of a drow elf named a Spuman (spider-human). Since my post recently decrying the lack of pronunciation guides in Dungeons & Dragons, I felt that it is my duty to list my official pronunciation of the spuman: spyoo-man.

While I haven’t named him or her yet, I have come up with a back story. A human necromancer with an affinity for spiders became learned of Lolth and started to worship her. This priest was so devoted to Lolth that he or she spent most of their waking hours experimenting to create larger, smarter, more powerful spiders to conquer the world in the name of the Spider Queen. Because of this devotion, and the priest’s love of spiders, Lolth transformed the cleric into the first – and only – spuman as a reward.

There is not a significant difference in the role-playing aspect of a spuman versus a drider. Both have many abilities in common: venomous that can be used to poison their weapons, an improved movement rate due to the extra 4 legs, the ability to spin webs, etc. The only real differences are their appearance and their stats. The skin, hair, and eye color of a spuman looks like that of a human (which allows for a lot of variation) instead of that of a drow. Also, instead being black widow shaped like that of a drider, the lower portion of a spuman looks more like a wolf spider. The stats of a spuman are adjusted from a human base instead of a drow base as well.

In theory, there could be many spumans on different worlds. Or, the first spuman could teach the ways of Lolth to other humans who become transformed. In this way, it would be easy to populate a game world with clans of spumans to throw at the party, if you don’t like the idea of a one-off. Personally, I like the uniqueness of throwing a memorable NPC in front of the players, especially if they appear throughout the campaign.

4 Comments

  1. CaptCalamitous said:

    Driders are created by Lolth as a punishment,would she really use it as a blessing or reward?

    I’d suggest that she maybe punished him for an affront he caused without knowing it.

    June 23, 2010
    Reply
    • cball said:

      While it’s true that she uses it as a punishment for drow, my rationale for making it a blessing for the human is the following. Becoming half spider would be a step up for such an inferior (from drow perspective anyway) race as a human. So, while he is still not on the same level as drow, he is superior to a human.

      Of course, this could also be used in other campaigns as a curse or even as a way to enslave humans by twisting their wills when their bodies are changed.

      June 23, 2010
      Reply
  2. Behemoth0089 said:

    Well, I think the idea its pretty good, and that being and Spuman or a Drider and if it is a bless or a curse depends of the campaign setting the DM want to create. Maybe in that campaign setting being a Drider is not a curse but a bless because they’re near to Lolth or something.
    I like the idea of some other races being in touch with the Spider Queen aside from Drows, and the idea of creating new monsters for our own campaign settings.
    Nice post ^^

    June 25, 2010
    Reply
    • cball said:

      That’s one of the great – and sometimes aggravating – things about Dungeons & Dragons, they encourage you to change anything and everything in order to fit your own games. It allows for unlimited flexibility in story telling but also can make things inconsistent between groups.

      June 29, 2010
      Reply

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *