Even if we can't see the picture in the original thread anymore, I'm not putting it here. This is litterally just a big spider.

Well this one is just incredibly bad. The chelicera is little more than a monstrous spider, with no supernatural ability and fun but ultimately useless extraordinary ones. Its stats are similar but ultimately worse than those of an ettercap (+4 Str, +8 Dex, +2 Con, -8 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha) except a half-decent +5 natural armor.

It has the regular claw-claw-bite routine (primary claw) and clearly has a grappling focus, but is pretty bad at it. They tried to balance the fact that it's a Medium Vermin by giving it +4 to grappling checks and the ability to use Dex instead of Str on grappling checks, but since Improved Grab only works on creatures at most one size category smaller than you, you cannot efficiently grapple anything above Small size. That's extremely bad, and means that you won't be able to use your Blood Drain in most combats (1d4 Con drain each round you have pinned a creature is extremely slow anyway, and drain is little better than Con damage against monsters-of-the-week).

It can also reproduce sounds it hears, kinda like a spidery lyrebird (just a limited Ghost Sound at will); it has immunity to sonic (probably the least common energy type); has scent (underpowered, but useful I guess) and Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat.

And now, let's play a game of "how many RHD did WotC give this one?". Well, it's a Medium creature with stats a bit better than a Large Monstrous Spider, so 4 or 5 RHD? Maybe 7? Wrong. It has freaking twelve of them. That's unplayable in all the worse ways. Compared to an ettercap, you have that weird use-impaired grappling focus, more natural armor and dexterity, and immunity to mind affecting, but less intelligence, no web and especially no ability to wield weapons and items. That seems comparable to me. I'll suggest 2 RHD for the Chelicera. It should make for an okay rogue, maybe with a ranger dip. And it's bad enough that DLA-5 doesn't seem too overpowered.


The chelicera is like the Lamia from MM1, an underpowered, uninteresting monster that probably got created because they had an idea for a specific adventure involving them, but nothing else on them, so they got next to no lore. Next time, we'll have the first of the very few elementals of that book: the Chraal!