Sarynthia
Sarynthia — The Encounter
Web-Mother of the Drowned Cities, spider-serpent of the cursed plain · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Sarynthia
When fire and brimstone fell upon the twin cities of the plain, not all that crawled from the ash was mortal. The grimoires name Sarynthia among the things the destruction did not cleanse but transformed — a creature woven from the appetites of a place too wicked to be remembered, given the patient body of the spider and the cold hunger of the serpent. She nests in the drowned cellars beneath the salt-pillars, spinning webs of glistening venom across collapsed temples, and feeds on whatever pilgrims and grave-robbers come seeking the cursed gold of the dead. Her bite does not merely kill; it preserves, holding the dying in paralyzed wakefulness so her brood may feed slowly. Travelers who hear a sound like dry silk dragged over stone are wise to turn back, for she has already tasted their tremor through the ground and is climbing the walls above them, two limbs free to bind, the rest to clutch and close.
Run Sarynthia in Sixty Seconds
- Terrain first — she climbs walls and ceilings and ignores webbing, so put her overhead at the start; the party should never get to surround her on the floor.
- Open with Web on the backline caster or archer, then commit her Multiattack to the nearest melee target — lock the casters out, chew the front line.
- Bite is the kill — a creature dropped by her poison is paralyzed, not just down, so concentrate bites on one PC; once paralyzed, that player is removed from the fight until rescued.
- When bloodied, she retreats up a wall with Skitter and Webs whoever chases, forcing the party to spend turns burning silk (it's vulnerable to fire) instead of hitting her.
- Three ways to run her: ceiling-ambush assassin who picks off stragglers; brood-mother surrounded by venom-spawn; or a mid-fight escalation that drops in once a bigger boss is bloodied.
Sarynthia
Large fiend (demon), chaotic evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINESpider Climb. Sarynthia can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without an ability check.
Web Walker. Sarynthia ignores movement restrictions caused by webbing.
Brood-Weaver. Signature. When Sarynthia is hit by a melee attack while she has 1 or more legs free, the attacker is grappled (escape DC 14) by a lashing strand of venom-silk unless it is already restrained. While grappled this way, the creature has its speed reduced to 0 and Sarynthia's bite attacks against it have advantage. She can grapple up to two creatures at once.
Actions
Multiattack. Sarynthia makes one Bite attack and two Claw attacks. She can replace one Claw attack with Web (Recharge 5-6) if it is available.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d10 + 4) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 14 Constitution saving throw, taking 14 (4d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. If this poison damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, it is stable but poisoned for 1 hour, even after regaining hit points, and is paralyzed while poisoned in this way.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d8 + 4) slashing damage.
Web (Recharge 5-6). Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, range 30/60 ft., one creature. Hit: The target is restrained by webbing. As an action, the restrained target can make a DC 14 Strength check, escaping on a success. The webbing can also be attacked and destroyed (AC 10; hp 10; vulnerability to fire damage; immunity to bludgeoning, poison, and psychic damage).
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Skitter. Bonus Action. Sarynthia moves up to half her speed without provoking opportunity attacks, so long as she begins or ends the move climbing on a wall or ceiling.
A nightmare of fused forms, Sarynthia rears on a black-chitin spider's body, her crimson serpent-torso crowned with bat wings and a needle-fanged maw. Venom-silk drips from every joint as she scuttles down the ruined towers of a city the heavens already judged.
Sarynthia, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEPack Silk (signature). When Sarynthia and an ally are both within 5 feet of the same creature, that creature has disadvantage on checks to escape any grapple or restraint.
Actions
Venom Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8 + 3) piercing damage plus 7 (2d6) poison damage.
Reactions
Web Snap. When a creature within 30 feet that Sarynthia can see stands up from prone or breaks free of a grapple, Sarynthia makes a ranged attack (+5 to hit) to fling a glob of silk; on a hit the creature's speed is 0 until the start of its next turn.
A smaller, paler echo of its mother — still all fang and skittering legs, eager to swarm whatever she pins.
Guideline numbers — formula-tuned and read from the miniature's design, not yet table-proven. Tell us how it ran in the comments.
How It Fights — by Tier
Same creature, scaled threat. The traits never change; only the numbers move.
Open with Web from a wall to pin the squishiest PC, then drop in and Bite that target every round. Use Brood-Weaver to lock down anyone who melees her. Pair her with 2-3 giant-spider style minions so she never fights alone.
Open by Webbing a backline caster, then Multiattack the nearest melee PC — the paralysis rider on her Bite is the real threat, so concentrate her bites on one target until it drops. Kill-priority is anyone who can stop her grapples or burn her webs (fire is the counter). She is an add-on, not a solo: anchor an encounter alongside a bigger flagship threat or a brood of spawn climbing the same walls.
Run her as the lair's web-mother amid a nest of brood-spawn, never alone. Open with Web on the most mobile PC, then grapple two more with Brood-Weaver and feed bites into the paralysis. Have minions body-block while she skitters the ceiling; pair her with a bigger threat so the party can't simply focus her down.
Put Sarynthia on the table
Download the presupported STL and run the fight tonight — the model, and the encounter that comes with it.
Get the STL on MyMiniFactory →Clay Cyanide Companion Rules v1
How a bound creature acts
- A companion acts on its owner's initiative, immediately after the owner.
- It uses the Companion block above — roughly ×0.6 HP and damage, no recharge abilities, and at most one reaction trait.
- It moves freely; it takes its Action only while its owner is conscious.
- At 0 HP a companion is broken, not dead — restored on a long rest unless your table rules otherwise.
Original Clay Cyanide material © Clay Cyanide LLC — explicitly not the non-SRD official sidekick rules.
Questions, Asked at the Table
What CR is Sarynthia?
Her home build is CR 6 (Tier 2, levels 5-10): AC 16, 127 HP, +6 to hit, save DC 14. The record also gives drop-in CR 2 (Tier 1) and CR 11 (Tier 3) versions with the same traits and only the numbers rescaled, so she fits any table.
Can Sarynthia be a companion or ally?
She's built as an adversary, but the record includes a bound brood-spawn companion, Vessikra (AC 14, 76 HP), with Pack Silk, a venom bite, and a Web Snap reaction — ideal for a spider-cult villain's lieutenant or a corrupted ranger's monstrous pet.
Is Sarynthia a solo boss?
No — she lacks legendary actions, so a four-PC party will out-act her. Run her as an add-on alongside a flagship threat or a brood of spawn. Her strength is control (grapple, web, paralysis), which shines when the party is already busy with something bigger.
Tell Us How It Ran
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 ("SRD 5.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Clay Cyanide Miniatures is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. This content is compatible with the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game. Companion rules, lore, names, and original mechanics © Clay Cyanide LLC.
Technical Specifications
32mm, 75mm
STL, Pre-supported STL
Standard or ABS-like resin, 0.05mm layer height
Yes — ready to print, optimized supports included
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