Editing Aranea (section)

===Combat===
Aranea prefer to avoid physical combat. In humanoid form, they battle as the race emulated. In spider form, they wait in trees for prey to pass beneath, then lower themselves silently on web strands, and attack with spells. A victim attacked in this manner suffers a penalty of -1 to surprise rolls.

If forced into physical combat, an aranea can attempt to inject venom into an opponent. This requires a successful hit with fangs, so it can be performed only by aranea in arachnid or demispider form. A victim who fails a saving throw vs. poison after being bitten feels a faint stiffness in the limbs immediately, and takes 1d4 damage per round for the 1d4 rounds. Damage for multiple bites is cumulative. Aranea venom becomes nonpoisonous upon contact with air, so it cannot be saved and used on weapons. The aranea can inject venom up to three times each day.

An aranea gains web-spinning ability at maturity (1st level for PCs). This allows the creature to descend on webs, climb them, and entangle opponents. Naturally, webs can be spun only by aranea in spider or demispider form. An aranea can produce 10 feet of webbing per level per day (half from each spinneret). It can be spun in pieces of any size, up to the maximum length. A web strand is about a quarter-inch in diameter and strong enough to suspend about 500 pounds. Aranea climb webs at a Movement Rate of 12, (again, only in spider or demispider form). They have no special abilities against a web spell, however. Using webbing to entangle a target requires a weapon attack. A strand can be severed easily (requiring only 2 hit points of cutting damage inflicted in a single blow), and can be broken by a successful "open doors" roll.

Aranea place much value on magic, and nearly all of them are spellcasters, so [[magic]] is fairly common in their lands. DMs should treat aranea NPCs as 3rd-level [[mage]]s. They can cast spells in any of their forms. Most aranea are mages or specialist [[wizard]]s. They prefer [[Illusionist|illusions]] and [[Enchanter|charms]], and avoid [[Elementalism|fire-based]] spells. Some dwelling among humanoids keep their spellcasting abilities secret, to avoid arousing suspicion. Many are multi-class [[mage]]s or single-class [[Rogue|thieves]]. Single-class [[cleric]]s or [[fighter]]s are very rare. Though aranea might seem particularly well suited to be [[bard]]s, that class is forbidden to them, for the idea of being an entertainer is foreign to their culture, and their histories are kept by "real wizards," rather than those who simply "dabble in magic". Because of their special natures, aranea who emulate [[human]]s, [[lupin]]s, or [[rakasta]] can choose to become [[Multiclassing|dual-class, and cannot be [[Multiclassing|multi-class]] characters. Dual-class aranea usually take the non[[mage]] class first, so they may advance to high levels as [[wizard]]s.

Aranea choose [[kits]] appropriate to their humanoid forms, and can take any available to their character class and the race they emulate. The Noble kit is a favorite, but no aranea ever takes the Local Hero kit, because they consider it degrading.

Aranea wear armor appropriate for their clas. Most feel they will never need to change into their arachnid forms quickly enough to take daamge from restrictive armor. If they do change into spider form while wearing armor, damage suffered equals 10 minus the AC of the armor, and the armor is ruined.