Roper

[oslecamo]

Roper

roper

HD: d10

Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special
1st	+1	+2	+2	+2	Roper Body, Dragging Strands, Like a Rock, Gummy, +1 Str, +1 Con
2nd	+2	+3	+3	+3	Rubber Hide, +1 Str, +1 Con
3rd	+3	+3	+3	+3	Extend Strand, Quick Drag, +1 Str, +1 Con
4th	+4	+4	+4	+4	Voracious Bite, Climb, +1 Str, +1 Con
5th	+5	+4	+4	+4	Weakness, +1 Str, +1 Con
6th	+6	+5	+5	+5	Growth, Good Strand, +1 Str, +1 Con
7th	+7	+6	+6	+6	Versatile Strands, +1 Str, +1 Con
8th	+8	+6	+6	+6	Immobilizing Goo, +1 Str, +1 Con
9th	+9	+6	+6	+6	Strand Storm, +1 Str, +1 Con
10th	+10	+7	+7	+7	World of Good, +1 Str, +1 Con
11th	+11	+7	+7	+7	Reflexive Strand, +1 Str, +1 Con
12th	+12	+8	+8	+8	Goo Galaxy, +1 Str, +1 Con

Skills: 4+Int modifier per level (x4 at 1st level. Class Skills: Balance, Climb, Intimidate, Hide, Knowledge(any), Listen, Move Silently, Sense Motive, Spot

Proficiencies: Its own natural weapons only.

Class Features:
Roper Body: The Roper loses all other racial bonus and gains Magical Beast traits (basically darkvision 60 feet and low-light vision). It's a medium sized Magical Beast with base speed 10 feet. It has a bite attack dealing 1d8+1,5 Str mod damage. A Roper can perform fine manipulation with its strands (see below).

The Roper also gains a bonus to Nat armor equal to 3+Con mod.

Dragging Strands:A Roper can extrude thick strands of a semi-liquid material similar to partially melted wax but much harder. They work as ranged touch attack natural weapon with a range equal to the Roper's natural reach x5 (so 25 feet for a medium sized roper, 50 for a large one, and so on). They don't deal any damage as if they hit, but instead latch onto the target's body. This deals no damage, but the stuck opponent cannot move away from the Roper and is dragged 10 feet closer each subsequent round (provoking no attacks of opportunity). Escaping from a Strand demands a DC 10+1/2 HD+Str mod Escape Artist or Str check as a Standard action. If multiple Strands are latched into a single creature, the DC increases by +2 for each extra Strand, but if the check is sucessful, the victim breaks free from all strands latched into them. Alternatively, the strands may be sundered, having 1/8 of the Roper's max HP, which doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity neither deals damage to the Roper itself. A Roper gains a +4 bonus on bite attack rolls for each Strand latched into a victim, provided they're close enough. The Roper starts able to maintain one Strand at a time, plus another at 3 HD and every 2 HD thereafter, and if they're sundered, it can reform new ones on its next turn as a free action.

Like a Rock: A Roper can attempt to hide whitout having anything to hide behind by keeping its mouth closed and don't producing any strands, pretending to be a rock.  If it is in a stony or icy area, it gains a +4 racial bonus on such Hide checks, and ignores any size penalty to hide as well.

Gummy: A roper is immune to electricity, but takes +50% damage from fire.

Ability Score Increase: The Roper gains +1 to Str and Con at every level, for a total of +12 Str and +12 Con at 12th level.

Rubber Hide: At 2nd level the Roper gains Resistance against Cold equal to its HD, plus SR equal to 15+HD, which may be raised or dropped as a free action, even if it isn't its turn.

Extend Strand: At 3rd level as a swift action the Roper can double its Strands reach for 1 round. If they hit a target, they remain extended until the victim is pulled close enough or they break free.

Quick Drag: At 3rd level as a fullround action the Roper can focus on dragging creatures already latched. They all make a Str check. The Roper drags victims closer to it by 5 feet for each point it gained this check, and gains a +4 bonus on it for each size category it is bigger than the victim.

Voracious Bite: At 4th level, when the Roper attacks with its Bite, it may choose to target all creatures caught up in its Strands whitin melee range instead of a single target. If it does so, it cannot gain extra attacks from effects like Cleave.

Climb: At 4th level, the Roper gains a Climb speed equal to its base speed.

Weakness: At 5th level a Roper's strands can sap an opponent's strength. Anyone grabbed by a strand must succeed on a DC 10+1/2 HD+Con mod Fort save or take 1d10 points of Strength damage. At 10 HD and every 5 HD thereafter this Str damage increases one size category. At 13 HD it can affect even creatures normally immune to Str damage, but they only take half Str damage on a failed save.

Growth: At 6th level the Roper grows one size category. Its Natural Armor increases by 1.

Goo Strand: At 6th level whenever it hits an opponent with a Strand, as an immediate action the Roper can cover the opponent in glue as if hit by a Tanglefoot bag and Dimensional Anchor, except the DCs all become 10+1/2 HD+Con mod. In addition creatures affected by this cannot benefit from Freedom of Movement or any similar effect.

Versatile Strands: At 7th level whenever it hits an opponent with a Strand, the Roper can attempt a disarm, trip or grapple as a free action on the victim whitout provoking attacks of opportunity or needing a to succeed on a touch attack.

Immobilizing Goo: At 8th level when the Roper hits an opponent with a Strand it may choose one of their body parts. The body part cannot be used until the victim breaks free from the strand somehow and then scraps off the remaining goo (which demands as much work as breaking off from the strand). An immobilized wing makes flight impossible, an immobilized leg halves all land/climb/burrow speeds, goo on eyes results in blindness, on ears results in deafness and blocks gazes and eye attacks, in mouth results on not being able to produce sounds and blocks breath weapons, in nouse unable to smell, and so on. If both nose and mouth are covered then the victim must hold their breath as if underwater. If a creature has multiple disting eyes or mouths, they must each be immobilized on their own.

Strand Storm: At 9th level as a standard action the Roper may simultaneously attack all with its free Strands! Enemies whitin Strand reach of the same size or smaller than the Roper must make a Reflex save with DC 10+1/2 HD+Str mod or be caught like flies to glue. This allows the Roper to catch multiple creatures in each of its Strands, but they must be split among the Roper's strands as evenly as possible (so for example if the Roper had 3 free Strands and 6 creatures fail the Reflex save, there would be 2 creatures caught per strand). If a creature in a strand breaks free, all creatures in that Strand break free, but Immobilizing Goo applies individually.

World of Goo: At 10th level the Roper can use Good Strand as a free action whenever it hits a target, but still no more than once per strand hit. In addition it now lasts 2d4 hours, unless 10 minutes are spent carefully scrapping it off.

Reflexive Strand: At 11th level as an Immediate action the Roper may make a Strand Attack against enemy whitin reach that hurts it.

Goo Galaxy: Ropers are bizarrely diverse. At 12th level it picks one of the following options

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Molting Strangler-Once per day the Roper can shed their external rocky carapace as a fullround action, assuming a new form that can mimic the appearance of any stone object of its size, even manufactured objects as statues, walls, or a specific ground pattern, using its Hide and Move Silently skills. In addition the molded skin clings to a miserable semblance of life as an identical Roper with 4 less levels and no feats or skill points for 1d12 hours before dying horribly, until which it will follow any orders from its “parent”.

Vulkard- This roper looks as if made of basalt, losing its vulnerabity to fire and instead gaining immunity to this element. Actually any attack that deals fire damage heals 1 point of damage for every 4 points of fire damage it would otherwise deal.

Sigil Crab-If you feast in a spellcaster, you grow bizarre and powerful runes of crystal on the Roper's body. Those allow the Roper to cast a specific Symbol spell once per day as a standard action as a SLA, with DC 10+1/2 HD+Str mod. The specific symbol must be chosen when the spellcaster is devoured, and cannot be of higher level than the highest spell level the spellcaster could cast.

Shardstriker-The strands of this roper are jagged, stone-like threads that shred opponents even as they ensnare them. Strand attacks by a Shardstriker deal 1d8+Str mod slashing damage (still count as touch attacks) plus all other Strand effects. If a Shardstriker hits a single foe with more than one strand (but not Strand Storm), it also rends the victim for an additional 2d6+1,5 Str mod slashing damage.

Stone Lurker-The most common variety of Roper, but not necessarily less dangerous. A Lurker is immune to indirect divination effects and special senses such as mindsight, tremorsense, scent, blindsight and similar while it is hiding in rocky or icy terrain unless the observer is whitin 10 feet. In other words, the only way to tell it apart from the scenery is with a sucessful Spot or Listen check.

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Another classic D&D monster, the hentai tentacle Roper! That despite being smarter than your average human, still doesn't seem to have anything better to do than lurking on caves pretending to be part of the scenery waiting for adventurers to aproach and then try to nom them. Except that unlike other lurking monsters, instead of pouncing on the victims, it instead uses very long tentacles to drag them closer. "Wait Oslecamo, hadn't you already done something very similar already?" Yes I had. D&D designers are renowed for recycling monster concepts, and it's up to me to find a way to make them play diferent.

But first some trivia, the 3.5 roper has only 10 HD for a CR 12 enemy, and no stat above 19, meaning it's not really that much of a threat, in particular with a basic +10 to Hide, meaning even first level characters have a decent shot at spotting it. Also the art is horrible.

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Seriously, if a monster's main focus is having six tentacles, why does the official art just shows two?

Anyway I decided for the Roper to focus on the whole immobilizing aspect. The fluff says their tentacles strands are covered in goo or something, so I went for that. Goo. Goo everywhere.  The roper doesn't kill you quickly, it focus on debuffing the hell of its opponents, then takes its time to leisurely eat them. Also average skill points and full Bab and big Str/Con bonus and saves and natural armor because they just have 10 base speed. And then a touch of PF for the capstone.

If people like this, I'll do the evolution Urophion as a prc next.

So if you want to play the classic tentacle lurker, the Roper's for you!

[dmanus]

This is a neat take on the roper.  Slow melee/ short range controller.  This will be fun to playtest.  Thanks for another MC.