History DemonicSpiders / TurnbasedStrategy

** There's also the codex. Good lord, the codex. While they may look weak, dealing only 4 - 6 damage (which is still enough to [[OneHitKill instakill]] soldiers in the start of the game,) they have a massive dodge chance, and when they are hit, they duplicate. Granted, those duplicates split the half of the original between them, but due to them being able to teleport to any position and instantly outflank your soldiers (allowing higher hit chance and more damage) makes them arguably worse than most of the late game enemies. Although they are susceptible to blue-screen rounds (EMP rounds in previous games), it takes a sniper with an upgraded rifle to dispatch them in one hit. Since they're robotic, acid, poison, fire and disorientation don't affect them, and they're impossible to hack, which gets rid of your only major counter to their electronic unit type. Some players ignore the quest that triggers them to spawn until the endgame, because ''they're that much of a pain.''
*** They're even worse in multiplayer. Instead of teleporting whenever hit, the player controlling them can teleport them ''anywhere they damn well please. Once a turn. AND THEN SHOOT YOU.'' They retain their duplication feature, so if your opponent turns out to be packing five codices as their team lineup, you're in for a rough time. (Veteran XCOM players have gone undefeated in multiplayer matches using this strategy - just teleport to outflank the enemies and slowly wear them down.

** Fire Emblem: Awakening adds several more spiders to the pile, but mostly only on difficulties higher than normal, where enemies receive improved stats and extra skills:

* ''StarWarsRebellion'' has a ''lot'' of {{Game Breaker}}s, but on the other side, they are, you guessed it, DemonicSpiders:

** Wyvern/Draco/Dragon Knights are pretty nasty opponents, they have very high strength and defense which makes them difficult for your melee units to kill. They are also flying units so they can just zoom in at any opportunity to harass you once a unit is in their range. And despite being flying units, their defense is often so high that they can ''laugh'' at their apparent [[KryptoniteFactor weakness to arrows]], unlike their [[FragileSpeedster Pegasus Knight]] counterparts. And they love to pick off weaker units and healers thanks to their higher movement range and the fact that in most games they wield lances so getting ambushed by one with a Javelin is not uncommon. And in the non-GBA installments, they will (or at least attempt to if they have movement spaces left) fly away from their target to terrain non-traversable by ground units after attacking, [[SpitefulAI denying you the opportunity to finish them off when your turn comes]]. And they often spawn in said terrain so they will almost always get the first strike. The third thru fifth games were by far their worst. Magic, especially Wind (or Thunder in [=FE10=]) Magic, and Wyrmslayer swords are about the only effective tools to dispose of them.

** [=FE4's=] got: Any enemy with Bolting, Blizzard, or Meteor. (Infinite uses, long range attack, will probably hit and do tons of damage.) These show up in other [=FEs=], but are no where near as annoying (And can usually be soaked through. The ones in [=FE4=] have infinite uses, it's five charges in any other game.) It gets even worse in [=FE5=], where Blizzard inflicts Sleep. Which in turn results in your units being instantly captured if an enemy so much as touches them.
*** Or worse, Loptyr Mages and Hell (Eclipse) it reduces the Target's HPToOne — and because at least one damage will always be dealt from any successful hit in [=FE4=], any hit after taking a Hell means you're dead.
*** On the other hand, you can unleash your own Demonic Spider on the enemy: This one lets you have the dread "Berserk" Staff... you know the one that'd make [[LovableRogue Colm]] turn around and kill [[VictoriousChildhoodFriend Neimi]]. In this title, status-effect staves automatically hit if the user's MAG is higher than the target's RES and very few non-magical units have significant RES, making these staves monstrously powerful for either side.

*** Bonus points for these Chryssalids actually looking like a cross between a spider and a [[{{Starcraft}} hydralisk]] and being able to leap on and off the top of buildings. However, they have been nerfed to the point where their attack doesn't mean instant death. They can only infect those they kill, and you can further protect your soldiers by equipping them with the [[LikeCannotCutLike Chryssalids' own carapace]].

* ''SwordOfTheStars'' has a few of these:

*** Any [[Anime/FafnerInTheAzureDeadAggressor Festum]] successfully hitting an allied unit drops the pilot's Will and armor value. While these StandardStatusEffects aren't such a big problem, the "demonic" part lies with all Festum units having an ability that grants them greater accuracy and evasion rates against ''non-Fafner units'' (and Heroman).

* Cockatris in ''OgreBattle'', these creates [[strike:[[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard can]]]] [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard will]] turn your characters to stone for the rest of the fight. This wouldn't be so bad unless A.Ogre battle expected you to "win" most battles (rather than force retreat via dealing more damage, then following it up once or twice THEN dealing enough damage to kill, meaning your chance of winning is lower because you don't have that character dealing damage) and B.said monsters didn't have godly dodge and accuracy.

** Fire Emblem: Fates adds quite a few spiders as well: namely, enemies that have a Seal skill: they reduce by 6 the stat marked in the skill. In the early game, there's A LOT of enemies with Defense Seal, among others. The catch? Well, get this: no matter what you do, the attack, no matter if it's a counter or not, will seal your unit. The guy missed the attack? You get sealed. The guy can't counter your attack? You get sealed. His attack was negated by a Dual Guard? You ''still'' get sealed. The attack doesn't do any damage? You guessed it: you get sealed. The only way to avoid getting sealed is if the guy ''actually dies'' in the attack. As in, your counter or attack MUST kill the guy so the seal doesn't activate. Have fun.

* 3-hit combo from ''{{X-Com}}'': Cyberdisks, Psi-using aliens, and Chryssalids. Cyberdisks can fly and come with an accurate plasma cannon capable of rendering your units dead in a hurry, along with the fact that they [[CriticalExistenceFailure react violently]] [[MadeOfExplodium to dying]]; the one advantage you do have against them is that they're much larger than a normal enemy and thus easier to hit, which is just as well because the only starter weapon that can reliably OneHitKill them is the rocket launcher. Oh, yeah; there's also a 50% chance that they'll show up in the ''first month'', along with a psi-using alien. And those guys are fun, too. Once one of their allies spots ''one'' of your units, the psi-user amongst them gains the ability to go through your ''[[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard entire team]]'' for the unit with the lowest psi-defense (that you [[FakeDifficulty can't even see without the proper upgrade]]) and promptly makes that unit their bitch. Enjoy having that unit either run around randomly without their weapon, fire all over the place, or get Mind Controlled and take out 2 or 3 of their former teammates. The only way this crap gets more broken is when [[GameBreaker you get it]]. And then there are Chryssalids. [[http://ironshrinemaiden.deviantart.com/art/Pick-up-that-soap-83170472 Oh dear God there are Chryssalids.]] These things have one attack and one attack only: An infectious bite that instantly converts whatever was hit into a zombie (And kills tanks in a hurry). Said zombie becomes a new Chryssalid upon taking sufficient non-fire damage, which can then convert more units, and so on. And there is absolutely no defense against this bite: Your SuperSoldier of a Commander falls just as easily as your [[{{Redshirt}} Rookies]]. On top of this, they possess enough Time Units to charge at a unit from beyond visual range and transform it into a drooling zombie before the player is even sure it's there. Upon finding out that these things are involved in the mission, players are known to take drastic measures such as carrying a primed grenade at all times, killing civilians in the area to prevent them from being infected, and blowing up the body of every single Chryssalid that goes down, just to be sure.

** ''[[VideoGame/XCOM2]]'' introduces stun lancers. These units have both shock swords and assault rifles, high health, and innate dodge chance. They can still attack after dashing, unlike the vast majority of units, and can thus threaten your troops from obscenely long distances with high-accuracy melee strikes. Their weapons have a chance to stun or even ''instantly knock unconscious'' your soldiers, rendering them helpless - often for the entire duration of the mission - and requiring yet another precious soldier to be pulled from active combat in order to evacuate them safely. They appear very, very early in the campaign, before the player is equipped to deal with them, and remain a constant threat throughout. Making matters far worse, the game considers them fairly mundane units and often deploys them in large numbers. Finally, if all that wasn't enough, they have an 'elite' version that gets introduced later on with even more health and dodge.

* [[VideoGame/FireEmblemElibe FE6, or Binding Blade]] has Berserkers and Swordmasters which get a massive boost of +30% in criticals. While this is bad on its own, considering that said units being promoted, they would appear with generally more powerful weapons, and Berserkers in particular also have high Strength that essentially make your unit's Defense stat moot. And because of how critical hits are determined by one random number roll as opposed to the two-rolls for accuracy, in most cases, you will get hit more often than you'd expect. Those with low luck and/or low speed stat numbers should steer away from them.

''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemElibe FE6, or Binding Blade]] has Berserkers and Swordmasters which get a massive boost of +30% in criticals. While this is bad on its own, considering that said units being promoted, they would appear with generally more powerful weapons, and Berserkers in particular also have high Strength that essentially make your unit's Defense stat moot. And because of how critical hits are determined by one random number roll as opposed to the two-rolls for accuracy, you will get hit more often than you'd expect. Those with low luck and/or low speed stat numbers should steer away.

** Fire Emblem: Fates adds quite a few spiders as well: namely, enemies that have a Seal skill: they reduce by 6 the stat marked in the skill. In the early game, there's A LOT of enemies with Defense Seal, among others. The catch? Well, get this: no matter what you do, the attack, no matter if it's a counter or not, will seal your unit. The guy missed the attack? You get sealed. The guy can't counter your attack? You get sealed. His attack was negated by a Dual Guard? You ''still'' get sealed. The attack doesn't do any damage? You guessed it: you get sealed. The only way to avoid getting sealed is if the guy actually "dies" in the attack. As in, your counter or attack MUST kill the guy so the seal doesn't activate. Have fun.

** Fire Emblem: Fates adds quite a few spiders as well: namely, enemies with Seal skills. These have a rather high chance of activating: and if they do, they reduce by 6 the stat marked in the skill. In the early game, there's A LOT of enemies with Defense Seal, and they don't even need to engage you in close combat to activate it. Heck, if you attack, say, a Samurai, using an archer, you can STILL trigger Defense Seal, which means that next turn, if the archer isn't behind a wall, that guy is as good as dead. Have fun.

* Anti-Tanks in ''[[NintendoWars Advance Wars]]: Days of Ruin'' qualifies to a slight extent. If there are only land units, what makes it the epitome of CripplingOverspecialization (killing tanks efficiently, short range, weak against an infantry swarm) makes just one of them a pain to deal with properly. This can apply somewhat to indirects, but the Anti-Tank is the case worth mentioning, considering that it slows you down way worse. At least you get Anti-Tanks first though.

*** Dark Fliers can be an absolute nightmare. They're high-speed, high-movement magic users that can and will go anywhere. Units with poor resistance will be descended on and ripped apart in the blink of an eye, or even faster if their speed isn't up to par. And if you send someone with high resistance, better hope they have high defense too, because Dark Fliers can use spears just as well. Taking them out quickly can also be surprisingly tough; even if you exploit their weakness to bows and wind magic, they have enough HP, speed and resistance to last a decent while. But the final nail in the coffin that adds a truckload of insult to injury is their class skill, Galeforce. If a Dark Flier kills one of your units, it doesn't end there. Instead of going dark, they remain active as if their turn had just started from that exact spot. A second turn with no restrictions that allows them to, say, fly up to someone on the front lines, kill them, then use that extra movement to get behind your army and cause even more chaos. In Fire Emblem, the idea of one person being able to do that much, that quickly, is just infuriating.

*** Dark Fliers can be an absolute nightmare. They're high-speed, high-movement magic users that can and will go anywhere. Units with poor resistance will be descended on and ripped apart in the blink of an eye, or even faster if their speed isn't up to par. And if you send someone with high resistance, better hope they have high defense too, because Dark Fliers can use spears just as well. Taking them out quickly can also be surprisingly tough; even if you exploit their weakness to bows and wind magic, they have enough HP, speed and resistance to last a decent while. But the final nail in the coffin that adds a truckload of insult to injury is their class skill, Galeforce. If a Dark Flier kills one of your units, it doesn't end there. Instead of going dark, they remain active as if their turn had just started from that exact spot. A second turn with no restrictions that allows them to, say, fly up to someone on the front lines, kill them, then use that extra movement to get behind your army and cause even more chaos. The idea of one person being able to do that much, that quickly, in Fire Emblem is just infuriating.

*** Dark Fliers can be an absolute nightmare. They're high-speed, high-movement magic users that can and will go anywhere. Units with poor resistance will be descended on and ripped apart in the blink of eye, or even faster if their speed isn't up to par. And if you send someone with high resistance, better hope they have high defense too, because Dark Fliers can use spears just as well. Taking them out quickly can also be surprisingly tough; even if you exploit their weakness to bows and wind magic, they have enough HP, speed and resistance to last a decent while. But the final nail in the coffin that adds a truckload of insult to injury is their class skill, Galeforce. If a Dark Flier kills one of your units, it doesn't end there. Instead of going dark, they remain active as if their turn had just started from that exact spot. A second turn with no restrictions that allows them to, say, fly up to someone on the front lines, kill them, then use that extra movement to get behind your army and cause even more chaos. The idea of one person being able to do that much, that quickly, in Fire Emblem is just infuriating.

*** Individually, [[Gundam00AwakeningOfTheTrailblazer ELS]] units aren't strong, but they come in large numbers. Alongside dealing normal damage to HP, they also absorb EN, at a minimum of 10% per attack. ''UX'' treats the case that if any unit's EN is rendered to zero by ELS, it is automatically destroyed.

** These games also feature Piperunners, which are typically [[DifficultButAwesome too tricky]] for the player to use, but the enemy makes ''deadly'' use of them in maps intended to showcase them. Firstly, they have ''huge'' range, second only to the battleship, and a ton of fuel and ammo. Secondly, they are one of the few units in the game that can hit ''anything'' except submerged submarines and do a lot of damage. Finally, since they move on otherwise untransversable pipes, they can be quite difficult to approach and hit.