Spider Variety Brainstorm
Snakes is Poison/Fire with a little Electric and some plain ranged attacks.
Shoals is mostly ranged attacks, water against you, a little poison and ice.
Swamp is mostly poison, vampiric with a little ice and a lot of random elements in endings.
Spider's combination of confusion and poison melee ENSNARE and OOD spammers is unique; but very monotone compared to the other branches, as well.
I wanted to start a threat to brainstorm some ideas for more spider monster variety.
fire ant (a) | Spd: 10 | HD: 9 | HP: 35-63 | AC/EV: 8/10 | Dam: 18(fire:18-36) | !sil | Res: magic(36) | Vul: poison, ice | Chunks: poison | XP: 463 | Sp: fireball (3d17) | Sz: Medium | Int: insect.
Literal ant of fire; rather than an ant that injects acid that feels like fire...Been suggested a lot; but it's not horrible.
fire ant (a) | Spd: 12 | HD: 9 | HP: 35-63 | AC/EV: 8/10 | Dam: 18(acid:18-36) | Res: magic(36) | Vul: poison, ice | Chunks: poison | XP: 463 | Sz: Medium | Int: insect.
More like the real world; acid melee insect.
tunneling spider (s) | Spd: 12 | HD: 8 | HP: 28-59 | AC/EV: 13/4 | Dam:25 (acid:16-28) | !sil | Res: magic(32) | Vul: poison | Chunks: poison | XP: 197 | Sp: spit acid (3d7) | Sz: Large | Int: insect.
Burrows like a boring beetle, but faster than average (hard to escape) with acid spit (same as Oklobs and acid blobs).
desiccated corpse (M) | Spd: 8 | HD: 11 | HP: 58-82 | AC/EV: 1/9 | Dam: 25, 4 (hunger) | undead, doors, evil, spellcaster | Res: magic(40), cold, poison+++, rot, neg+++, torm | Vul: holy++, fire | Chunks: rot | XP: 598 | Sp: b.dry (3d14), slow, vampiric draining, raise dead, agony | Sz: Medium | Int: normal.
The body of a previous adventurer, who had their internal tissues liquidized and sucked out by spiders while still alive; creating a very tortured mummy. Their time in the world is limited; as they have a bunch of spider eggs living on what's left of their body. B.dry is non-elemental, which checks 1/2 AC and causes hunger. On death, evokes a sack of spiders twice.
Adding some silent specters or a moth with similar effect into the rotation would also have an interesting effect, since all spider spellcasters have !sil.
MORE IDEAS are very welcome.