Underwater creatures, HELP!

[Urklore]

Perhaps

Str 13, Dex 9, Con 15, Int 1 or --, Wis 8, Cha 1
Perhaps tremeorsense or blindsense?

Using the Tendriculous (huge plant) from 3.5 MM as a basis we could use the following below. Since large-sized creatures can be up to 16ft, and medium size goes up to just near 8ft, I came up with the following below. Seeing the plant is more long in height, I figured there long tube-like bodies could hold more creatures in it.

Swallow Whole (Ex): A giant sea anemone that begins its turn with three tentacles attached can try to swallow an opponent of a smaller size than itself by making a successful grapple check. Once inside, the opponent is ground up by internal organs which causes the victim to take 2d6 points of bludgeoning damage plus 1d3 points of acid damage per round from the anenome's digestive tract. A swallowed creature can cut its way out by using a light slashing or piercing weapon to deal 15 (25 if Huge-Sized) points of damage to the digestive tract (AC 12 Large-Sized, AC 14 Huge-Sized). Once the creature exits, muscular action closes the hole; another swallowed opponent must cut its own way out. A Large-Sized Giant Sea Anemone's Interior Digestive Tract can hold 1 Medium, 4 Small, 16 Tiny, or 32 Diminutive, or 128 Fine or smaller opponents (perhaps double these numbers??).

A Huge-Sized Giant Sea Anemone's Digestive Tract can hold 2 Large, 4 Medium, 8 Small, 32 Tiny, 128 Diminutive, or 512 Fine or smaller opponents.

Poison, perhaps 1d8 Dex initial, and 1d8 Str secondary? 2d6 each respectfully for huge-sized? Or just flat dex/dex damage.

 

[Shade]

Nice work, Urklore! I'll get the stat block updated.

 

[Shade]

For the poison, how about 1d6 Str and 1d6 Dex for both primary and secondary?

 

[Urklore]

Ooo! Yeah yeah, that works! Since they do not have eyes, do we give them some sort of blindsense or tremorsense?

 

[Shade]

Blindsense seems the most appropriate to me.

 

[Shade]

Updated. How's it looking?

Does CR 7 seem appropriate?

We still need to fill in the blanks on the tentacle severing/regrowth paragraph.

 

[Urklore]

WOW! I guess Sea Anemone's are NOT plants! Egads, do we make them animals now? Vermin since they have no int?

Thought we were going to have the poison do Str and Dex damage? Do you think straight Dex dmg is ok? The poison affects the nervous and muscular systems so both stats might be needed for poison damage.

Cr7, so this creature would be a challenge for 4 7th level characters? DO you think CR5-6 might be in order? I think 4 7th level PCs, if they were not grappled would have an easy time with this thing.

100 or so tentacles, only 3 attacks per round? Perhaps 3 attacks per round to any creature in it's reach? Just a thought out loud. Squids and their ilk have only 8 tentacles and they can bring all 8 to bear on a foe. Just thinking out loud here.

Hard to decide on the tentacles. I could not find anything in research on how long a tentacle would take to grow back, or even if they DO grow back for Anemones. Since some spieces reproduce by splitting part of their body off, it can be assumed they can regenerate the tentacles. I would gestimate this,
since it is large-sized and has 100 or more tentacles, they cannot be that thick or strong, so that a good sword swing would be able to sever one? Perhaps 4hp and 8hp respectively for large and huge-sized species? 1-3 days regrowth for a tentacle? If it has 100 or more tentacles, perhaos if 10% or 20% (10-20) or more tentacles are lost it tries to withdraw. All guestimations on my part.


Cool Links
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/invertebrates/seaanemone/Seaanemoneprintout.shtml

http://biodiversity.uno.edu/ebooks/ch1.html#ch1


From one site:
The sea anemone is considered to be the flower of the sea. Sea anemones look like plants, but they are really meat-eating animals. Sea anemones come in different sizes and many different colors.
The sea anemone can attach itself to rocks or coral. In the center of the sea anemone is their mouth. In order for the sea anemone to eat, they must wait for their food to swim by. Then they sting it with their tentacles, and then push it into their mouth.

Sea anemones spend most of their lives in one place. They can attach themselves to rocks. Some even bury themselves in the mud




From another site:
Carnivorous and always hungry, a sea anemone is not a plant, as some people might think, but a silent slow-motion predator that will devour any small animal careless enough to stray within reach of its deadly tentacles. Equipped with tiny poisonous harpoons and digestive enzymes so strong they can digest the flesh of a small animal in 15 minutes, the sea anemone belies its harmless appearance.

Sea anemones are animals belonging to the phylum Cnidaria, which includes the jellyfish, corals and sea pens. They live in all oceans from the shore to a depth of 10,000 metres, and range in size from one centimetre to almost two metres in diameter. They attach themselves to rocks, wharves and other hard surfaces, or construct burrows in mud and sand.

Sea anemones have a flat upper surface, with a central mouth surrounded by tentacles, a tubular body, and a flat base that attaches to the substrate.


A sea anemone uses its tentacles to capture prey and defend itself against predators. Every tentacle is covered with thousands of tiny stinging capsules called nematocysts. Each capsule contains a coiled hollow thread with a barb on the end. The threads carry a minute amount of poison capable of paralysing or killing small animals. When a small fish, shrimp or crab comes into contact with the tentacles, hundreds of the capsules burst open and fire their barbed threads like harpoons, which pierce the skin of the animal and inject their poison.

The thread remains attached to the tentacle so, like a harpooned whale, the victim is held by its captor. The anemone moves all the nearby tentacles into position to sting and hold its prey until it is subdued by the poison. It then moves the prey to its mouth and swallows it whole. Later, it spits out any nondigestible parts, such as bones and shells. Although some tropical species can inflict painful stings, none of British Columbia's anemones are poisonous to humans.

Sea anemones have no visible sense organs, but they can distinguish between edible and inedible items. If you were to drop a piece of paper onto its tentacles, a sea anemone would grasp but then discard it. But if you first soaked the paper in clam juice, the anemone would eat the paper, because it tastes like food.

 

[Shade]

WOW! I guess Sea Anemone's are NOT plants! Egads, do we make them animals now? Vermin since they have no int?

Animal makes the most sense. It also was very easy to make the change. Both plants and animals have the same base attack bonus, skill points, and hit die, and it picked up good Reflex saves.

Thought we were going to have the poison do Str and Dex damage? Do you think straight Dex dmg is ok? The poison affects the nervous and muscular systems so both stats might be needed for poison damage.

Oops! I messed it up when I typed it in. It has been corrected.

Cr7, so this creature would be a challenge for 4 7th level characters? DO you think CR5-6 might be in order? I think 4 7th level PCs, if they were not grappled would have an easy time with this thing.

Hmmm...it's very comparable to the darktentacles in MM2, which is CR 7. However, the darktentacles has some powerful spell-like abilities, so I could see dropping anemone to CR 6.

100 or so tentacles, only 3 attacks per round? Perhaps 3 attacks per round to any creature in it's reach? Just a thought out loud. Squids and their ilk have only 8 tentacles and they can bring all 8 to bear on a foe. Just thinking out loud here.

The darktentacles provided the answer to this question, too. Check out the update and tell me what you think.

Hard to decide on the tentacles. I could not find anything in research on how long a tentacle would take to grow back, or even if they DO grow back for Anemones. Since some spieces reproduce by splitting part of their body off, it can be assumed they can regenerate the tentacles. I would gestimate this, since it is large-sized and has 100 or more tentacles, they cannot be that thick or strong, so that a good sword swing would be able to sever one? Perhaps 4hp and 8hp respectively for large and huge-sized species? 1-3 days regrowth for a tentacle? If it has 100 or more tentacles, perhaos if 10% or 20% (10-20) or more tentacles are lost it tries to withdraw. All guestimations on my part.

We could use the usual tentacle writeup that we've been working on, or we could once again turn to the darktentacles and use this:

Tentacle Regeneration (Ex): Foes can attack the tentacles of a darktentacles, but only when those appendages are actually holding an opponent. A tentacles has an AC of 19 (touch 12) and can withstand 20 points of damage. The loss of a tentacle does not harm the creature (that is, the damage does not apply against its hit point total), and it regrows the limb within a day.

If we don't use this, and stick with the standards, consider the tentacles of the giant octopus, which is also Large. Its tentacles have 10 hit points each, severing a tentacle deals 5 points of damage to the it, it withdraws from combat if it loses four (50%) tentacles, and regrows severed limbs in 1d10+10 days.

 

[Urklore]

We should use the one we have now, we don't want to leech too too much

 

[Shade]

Sounds good.

So how about...

An opponent can attack a giant sea anemone's tentacles with a sunder attempt as if they were weapons. A giant sea anemone's tentacles have 4 hit points each. If a giant sea anemone is currently grappling a target with the tentacle that is being attacked, it usually uses another limb to make its attack of opportunity against the opponent making the sunder attempt. Severing one of a giant sea anemone's tentacles deals 2 points of damage to the creature. A giant sea anemone usually withdraws from combat if it loses 25% of its tentacles (usually 25). The creature regrows severed limbs in 1d3 days.