looking for big snake monsters with Swallow Whole ability

[Gruftzwerg]

1. Should be big enough to swallow medium sized creatures
2. Swallow Whole is required. Not debateable
3. Should have a snake body (90% +)
4. Humanoid head is a nice acceptable bonus but not required

Ideally it should still fit into buildings/doors. So I guess "Huge" will be the limit here (not sure, what's your opinion on this?).

I already found the Behir, but I dislike his legs. Otherwise it would be fitting.

[Falontani]

Greater flame snake from fiend folio, but that is a powerful dude.

Anything with the Dragon type can get a swallow whole ability through the use of feats, and anything with swallow whole can take gape of the serpent to increase what it can swallow by one stage.

Sorry I can't look further at the moment

[Yxylu]

1. Should be big enough to swallow medium sized creatures
2. Swallow Whole is required. Not debateable
3. Should have a snake body (90% +)
4. Humanoid head is a nice acceptable bonus but not required

Ideally it should still fit into buildings/doors. So I guess "Huge" will be the limit here (not sure, what's your opinion on this?).

I already found the Behir, but I dislike his legs. Otherwise it would be fitting.

There are a few worm-like creatures:

Century Worm (Fiend Folio)*
Dragon Eel (Monster Manual 3)
Fiendwurm (Monster Manual 2)*
Lucent Worm (Fiend Folio)*
Malasynep (Frostburn)
Nightcrawler (Monster Manual)*
Purple Worm (Minster Manual)*
Worm of Minauros (Fiendish Compendium 2)*

Those marked with * are gargantuan, but still pretty slender.

Plus there’s the aforementioned Greater Flame Snake.

[Gruftzwerg]

Greater flame snake from fiend folio, but that is a powerful dude.

Anything with the Dragon type can get a swallow whole ability through the use of feats, and anything with swallow whole can take gape of the serpent to increase what it can swallow by one stage.

Sorry I can't look further at the moment
I'm looking strictly for creatures that already have Swallow Whole. So no extra feats here.

The build I need this for doesn't have any room for feats anymore. I could use the floating feat from Chameleon the build has, but that is used for other purposes. I already slimmed the feat to a minimum that can't be bought or obtained otherwise. There is just no room sadly.


There are a few worm-like creatures:

Century Worm (Fiend Folio)*
Dragon Eel (Monster Manual 3)
Fiendwurm (Monster Manual 2)*
Lucent Worm (Fiend Folio)*
Malasynep (Frostburn)
Nightcrawler (Monster Manual)*
Purple Worm (Minster Manual)*
Worm of Minauros (Fiendish Compendium 2)*

Those marked with * are gargantuan, but still pretty slender.

Plus there’s the aforementioned Greater Flame Snake.

I'll look into these option, but I don't think I like to use worms for this. It would be nice if the creature would be more snake/naga/yuan-ti/(snakish dragons to some extend) with a (single) snakelike main body.

[Venger]

What are the limitations of the shape changing magic you're using to turn into these things so we can refine our searches accordingly? Is there a reason it needs to be a snake like form and are there any mechanical parameters for what this means?

[Thurbane]

Dragon Eel, already mentioned, is probably your best bet if you don't want to re-fluff or modify a creature. It is somewhat snake-like.

There's also Aspect of the Leviathan from Elder Evils, but that is less snake-like than the Dragon Eel IMHO. And a lot lager.

Actually, Greater Flame Snake, already mentioned, might be the best fit.

[Gruftzwerg]

What are the limitations of the shape changing magic you're using to turn into these things so we can refine our searches accordingly? Is there a reason it needs to be a snake like form and are there any mechanical parameters for what this means?

I haven't set the shape changing ability into stone so far. I'm likely to use Sculpt Self to give him something similar to Psychoactive Skin of Proteus, but maybe with a higer lvl cap than the standard item. I'm going to limit the shape changes to a few snake like forms due to the theme the (anime) character is build upon.

Sure I could always fluff some worm monster into a snake monster, but for the sake of style in a build showchase, I would like to avoid that. And mechanically speaking, it should look obvious like a snake (over 90%). A humanoid head is acceptable, but everything else should look like a snake on first impression.

Form a rule mechanical perspective, the Behir is looking the best to me so far. The Great Fire Snake seems to have to many special abilities that I don't need/want. Maybe I'll just cut off the legs of the Behir...^^


______________________
to reveal my intentions..^^
I'm looking for something like this ideally
https://www.pngfind.com/pngs/m/401-4019688_king-of-snakes-by-arrancarfighter-d677amr-naruto-orochimaru.png
yeah, I'm working on a showchase build on Orochimaru the past few months.. and it gives me a lot of headaches on to many levels, but let's not dive to much into that. The build is almost done and I am just fitting the last parts together atm.. Maybe in a few day.. weeks.. or months it will be finished.. Or I will be finished.. :furious:


hm....
What would you say if I would take a Behir and Minor Shape Change (Changeling) the legs into snakes and further use Morphic Weapons (warshaper) to get (e.g. Medusa) "Snakes" to cover the rest of the body??^^ Would that work to get the desired look?

[Crake]

in terms of looks, you can use a disguise self spell, or a hat of disguise to alter the appearance of any snake/worm-like creature to match what you want (with the humanoid head etc), so you don't need to be super picky on the looks I guess? A pearl of speech can arguably give you the ability to speak in any form too.

[ShurikVch]

How about the Dungeonbred Titanic Whipsnake (or Constrictor Snake - if Serpent Kingdoms is unavailable)?

Also, note: Orochimaru there reminds me a lot of Ha-Naga (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/haNaga.htm) image, but Ha-Naga is Colossal (and don't have Swallow Whole "as is")

[Gruftzwerg]

How about the Dungeonbred Titanic Whipsnake (or Constrictor Snake - if Serpent Kingdoms is unavailable)?

Also, note: Orochimaru there reminds me a lot of Ha-Naga (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/haNaga.htm) image, but Ha-Naga is Colossal (and don't have Swallow Whole "as is")

You can't transform into templates in any way (as far as I am aware off), so the Dungeonbred Titanic Whipsnake won't work here.


And I already had looked into the Ha-Naga. Visually they fit, but the size and the lack of Swallow Whole breaks it for me.

__

I guess unless we find something else, I'm going to stick to the Behir with the "Minor Change Shape "ability from Changeling to change the legs into snakes visually and put his face over the snake's head. Together with "Snakes" from Morphic Weapons" it should preserve the image of Orochimarus Great White Snake form (since his body is covered with snakes).

[ShurikVch]

My last suggestions:
Sea Serpents (Dragon #345): all three kinds (Crested, Lantern, and Spiked) got Swallow Whole
Hypnosnake (Dangerous Denizens: The Monsters of Tellene, Kingdoms of Kalamar): Huge cobra-like Magical Beast with Swallow Whole

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Dire Snake (MM2) is CR 5, 7 HD huge animal.

Half-Dragon is +2 CR, and OA has the Lung Wang dragon which doesn't have wings but gets a swim speed. RotD says this half-dragon variety gets water breathing instead of an energy immunity, and its breath attack is a cloud of super-heated steam that deals fire damage.

The dragon type is needed for the Draconomicon feats: Snatch, Improved Snatch, and Snatch and Swallow. This creature will have Con 18, and Snatch and Swallow requires Con 19, but we can reduce its Wis or Cha by one and increase its Con by one for no CR increase (the default array is 11, 11, 11, 10, 10, 10), or give it the nonelite array (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm#abilityScoreArrays) (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8) for no CR increase.

That's a CR 7, 7 HD huge snake that can swallow whole a medium creature. Add more Dragon HD (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm#addingHitDice) for +1 CR per +2 HD, it's still huge up to 12 HD, at 13 or more it goes to gargantuan size. So at 12 HD it's CR 9 (actually 9.5 but that rounds down), at 13 HD It's CR 11 due to the size increase.

[Gruftzwerg]

Dire Snake (MM2) is CR 5, 7 HD huge animal.

Half-Dragon is +2 CR, and OA has the Lung Wang dragon which doesn't have wings but gets a swim speed. RotD says this half-dragon variety gets water breathing instead of an energy immunity, and its breath attack is a cloud of super-heated steam that deals fire damage.

The dragon type is needed for the Draconomicon feats: Snatch, Improved Snatch, and Snatch and Swallow. This creature will have Con 18, and Snatch and Swallow requires Con 19, but we can reduce its Wis or Cha by one and increase its Con by one for no CR increase (the default array is 11, 11, 11, 10, 10, 10), or give it the nonelite array (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm#abilityScoreArrays) (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8) for no CR increase.

That's a CR 7, 7 HD huge snake that can swallow whole a medium creature. Add more Dragon HD (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm#addingHitDice) for +1 CR per +2 HD, it's still huge up to 12 HD, at 13 or more it goes to gargantuan size. So at 12 HD it's CR 9 (actually 9.5 but that rounds down), at 13 HD It's CR 11 due to the size increase.

as I said earlier. Swallow Whole must be a default race ability and not gained via extra feats (no room in the build), nor via templates (don't work with Polymorph/Shapechange/Methamorphosis).

[Troacctid]

So you can't just cast bite of the king then?

[Gruftzwerg]

My last suggestions:
Sea Serpents (Dragon #345): all three kinds (Crested, Lantern, and Spiked) got Swallow Whole
Hypnosnake (Dangerous Denizens: The Monsters of Tellene, Kingdoms of Kalamar): Huge cobra-like Magical Beast with Swallow Whole

both are visually not appealing to me for this build. I think I'm still stuck to the Behir so far. But I'll keep em in mind and maybe workaround their appearance with Minor Change Shape.

[Gruftzwerg]

So you can't just cast bite of the king then?

No, since I want to use Hoard Gullet for that aspect ;)