Is a carrion crawler monk too OP? Would you allow it?

[flamewolf393]

Every natural attack gets a free chance to paralyze. In 3.5 thats 8 of them at a time. Even in pathfinder thats 4 of them. Then monk it up for boosting the number of attacks.

[Blackhawk748]

The first question is, how are you playing a Carrion Crawler?

[Gavinfoxx]

Uh...

You are aware of the general disposition of this forum with regard to 3.5 monks, casters, mobility, and high-dc save or suck abilities? As well as monsters with racial hit dice and level adjustment?

[Tvtyrant]

They have an Int of 1 so they aren't available as PCs. Assuming you raised the Int score and added an LA, it would depend on what the level adjustment is. If 0 and just 3 crawler HD it would be pretty decent, higher LAs would quickly make it unplayable.

[Troacctid]

Carrion crawler isn't a playable race, and even if it were, tentacles aren't a special monk weapon, so you can't use them as part of a flurry of blows.

Try gravetouched ghoul instead.

[Nifft]

Int 1
Level Adjustment: --

I wouldn't allow that monster to be played as a PC even without a class.

Are you the player who wants this, or the DM who has to deal with the player?

[tyckspoon]

The LA assignment thread https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=20911353&postcount=111 rated it at +1, although it was pretty early on the project and they might change their minds about how factors such as 'can't speak' and 'doesn't have hands' might impact it now. While it's pretty blah otherwise, paralysis is a very strong status effect, and it gets enough chances to apply it that you have good odds of getting it through even if you wind up fishing for nat 1 failed saves, so if you don't mind doing basically nothing but 'Paralyse things and then coup de grace them/watch your party beat the tar out of them while they're stuck' it could be pretty strong. (Note the LA thread generally handwaves the intelligence thing and assumes that if your DM is even willing to consider the idea of you playing such a creature, they'll work with you to give it a playable Int score.)

Do note that the paralysis doesn't trigger on 'every natural attack' - it's just the tentacles. The bite doesn't carry that effect, and any additional natural attacks or unarmed attacks you might add through class levels (Monk, Totemist?) won't either.

[Tvtyrant]

A Grell is also an almost strictly better Carrion Crawler (flying, intelligent, cool fluff.) It has a listed LA of 6, and here is also a Grell Monster Class homebrew if you want to play a Grell Monk from level 1 up.

[flamewolf393]

Everyone should know theres plenty of ways to raise an int score, the most common being awaken.



Carrion crawler isn't a playable race, and even if it were, tentacles aren't a special monk weapon, so you can't use them as part of a flurry of blows.

Natural attacks can be used as unarmed attacks.

[Aegis013]

I'm generally a fairly permissive DM, often running very high-power variants and generally happy to let people play out power fantasies if it's what they like.

Given that, whether or not I would allow and work with a player to implement this or something similar depends on the game I'm running and what I know about the players at the table.

That's probably about as clear an answer as can be given to the thread title without additional details.

[tyckspoon]

Natural attacks can be used as unarmed attacks.

No, they can't. Or, to try to specify, because this is one of the places where D&D's rules basically have nothing to do with common sense: You can make Unarmed Attacks with pretty much any part of the body that could potentially strike something. A carrion crawler could certainly make an Unarmed Attack using its tentacle. However, an Unarmed Attack using a tentacle is, mechanically, not the same thing as a Tentacle attack. This matters in this case, because the Paralysis special effect is specifically linked to the Tentacle attacks.

[Tvtyrant]

Everyone should know theres plenty of ways to raise an int score, the most common being awaken.
.

It has no listed LA, it is not a legal character. Also writing a buff spell into your backstory opens up way more worms optimizaton wise; unless you can afford the cost of the spell with your starting wealth it simply shatters the game (my uncle casted True Polymorph twice so I start as a bronze dragon!)

[Thurbane]

A Grell is also an almost strictly better Carrion Crawler (flying, intelligent, cool fluff.) It has a listed LA of 6, and here is also a Grell Monster Class homebrew if you want to play a Grell Monk from level 1 up.

If home-brew is on the table, Carrion Crawler (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=21798992&postcount=2) was assigned an LA adjustment of +1 in the ongoing forum threads, for a starting ECL of 4 (assuming you can get around the Int issue).

Aberrations don't have a hard cap on Int scores the way Animals do, so with a starting Int modifier of -10, as long as you assign a score of 13 or more, you are in the legal range of Int for PCs.

[Quertus]

Would I allow… an Elan polymorphed into a Carrion Crawler, or a Forum-approved LA +1 Carrion Crawler… to go Monk? Why not. Crusader - with higher BAB & on-hit riders would probably be better, though.

Would I allow their Flurry of Blows to count as tentacle attacks? Um… I'd probably make a thread to poll for opinions.

Balance to the table. If it matches the table's balance range, shrug, whatever.

[TheCount]

Take unorthodox flurry from dragon compendium, flurry with tentacles!
In a monster game? Sure

[vasilidor]

No, do to the fact that I find monks to underpowered for the games i like to run.

[Mordaedil]

Awaken doesn't work on aberrations either, so unless you become an animal you are kinda stuck.

[Thurbane]

There were spells in an issue of Dragon (304) for Awakening Magical Beasts, and also Oozes. Don't think there was one for Aberrations, though.

There are hoops you can jump through to qualify for Awaken (Skull Talisman of Persisted Aspect of the Wolf, for instance), but you are probably better off looking for other ways to boost your Int.

[Endarire]

An Elan or Synad or other Medium Aberration could become one with alter self. Polymorph could work on more subjects.