Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8814080" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Do... do I need to explain how arms and joints work? I didn't think I did, but if you think comparing a crab's arm to a head without a neck makes any sense.... do I need to explain that to you?You are right, because the design was so stupid I had no desire to look it up.So, I was right about them not being able to bite anything and that they have to roll over it with their feet? Sure, I was wrong about it having only one head (something impossible to know for how it is depicted) but the only thing that solves from my description is the vision issue. Every other thing I said is still 100% valid.Also, how does darkvision, low-light vision, fast healing or spell resistance mean anything for their design? I can make up a dozen better creatures that have those traits AND reasonable ability to threaten people AND don't look this stupid.You can assume all you want. The direction of those legs, the way their joints work and face, and the lack of any actual body structure other than leg, hip, head, tells me it would be incredibly stiff. Notably, legs do not bend 90 degrees away from their joints without breaking. That is the point of joints.Piercers actually make quite a bit of sense. They seem stupid because they cannot be allowed to operate properly in a DnD adventure. However, they are ambush hunters with perfect camoflauge and a massively deadly attack. With a 30 ft ceiling (not hard to assume in the underdark when Cathedral ceilings 50 ft high are fairly common for stalagmite formation) they deal an average of 10.5 damage. Which doesn't seem like enough, but can kill most humanoids pretty easily. Additionally, they are colony creatures who fight together, meaning that a large creature like a Giant Lizard (not uncommon in the underdark) with their 10x10 "shadow" could be hit by four of them, for 42 damage, which kills it twice over (You really only need two shots) Finally, they are the larval form of a far deadlier predator, which could trivially help them fend off and kill any creatures which survive their initial attack, and leave the scraps for the young to eat. As a colony creature, they are social to some degree and sharing food would be common. And with a 50 ft radius threat ranger, Ropers can cover large swathes of the piercers territory. Again, something that logically could exist, hunt and feed itself with methods that make a large degree of sense.And yet, I wasn't talking about an artistic symmetry at all. I was talking about a biological assymetry. There is a reason that many things supposed to be unnerving and wrong have only one, large, central eye. As a species that has evolved to recognize human facial designs, and having binocular vision like the overwhelming majority of animals on the planet (seriously, even most insects appear to have two eyes) seeing a creature with only a single eye is unnerving to a degree. We are somewhat used to it, because it has appeared so often in media, but it appears so often in media because it is effective.</blockquote>

Verification