D&D: Mike Mearls’ Vision of Lolth
Here’s a look at what Lolth might look like as a warlock patron, as envisioned by Mike Mearls.
One of the best things about D&D is creating your own homebrew creations. Whether it’s your own spell or class or monster or god, you’ve got a hand in shaping your own game and making your mark on it. It’s a part of whatever stories you gather to tell. Of course, when you’re one of the leads for 5th Edition, your homebrew stuff tends to get a little more attention.
I personally love it that the creators of D&D create stuff for use in their home games–it’s a good example to follow, if nothing else, though here we get a preview of Lolth envisioned as a Warlock Patron, pact features and all. Let’s take a look–bearing in mind this is all without any editing or play testing or the like.
You know, for not being an official patron, Lolth seems pretty solid. With classic Drow spells getting added to your spell list you’ll have a set of poison/darkness themed spells to supplement your own list.
No no, we said turn into a man-sized Spider.
But the real fun comes in the form of the Dark Queen’s Servitor, an ability that transforms you into the Dark Queen’s champion–a giant spider who can climb on walls and ceilings and cast spells, as long they’re on the Lolth Patron list. You also gain a bite that scales its damage upwards as you level up.
And at 6th Level you gain a college of glamour-esque ability to Charm someone as well as impose vulnerability to poison if you know you’re getting into a fight where that matters.
The other two levels add extra flavor, making your spider form a little more resilient and giving 14th level Warlocks a single powerful spell-like attack.
All in all this is a great start. It feels very Lolthy, though I could also see having a Spider that you summon a la the Shadow Sorcerer be pretty on-brand. At any rate, the big setpiece ability you’ll be playing with is transforming into a big spider which opens up new non-hex blade paths for melee warlocks.
At any rate, that’s just one interpretation, but hopefully since it’s from the powers that be, we’ll see something a little more official like this down the line.
Hey, how did the adventurer know he was dealing with the one and only Lolth? He spied her. I mean. He spider.
