Canopy Creeper, Grab, and multiple attacks

[The Norv]

A question about our good friend the Canopy Creeper. I'm running one tomorrow, and I'm a bit baffled by its grab special ability--and the way that interacts with the 4 freakin' tentacles it has that don't do any damage but do grab.

The concept/visual of the canopy creeper is great. This plant suddenly comes to life up above you, and starts shooting down vines to just yank people up to its maw and eat them (or just yank them into the air, where if they escape they'll be falling a long way to Certain Doom). But here's where I get confused: my canopy creeper is going to be facing 6th-level PCs. Well and good. If it makes a grab attack, it gets to make a grapple. It probably "only" grabs the PC with its vine tendril, thus not gaining the grappled condition itself...but then (A) it only has a bonus to its grapple check of +3, which is unlikely to succeed on any PC that has halfway decent combat skills, and (B) does it still have to use a standard action to maintain a grab, per the grappling rules?

In other words, does this four-tentacled monstrosity only get to have one creature effectively grabbed at a time (since at the start of the next round it has to use a standard action to maintain the grapple, thus dropping the other three even if it succeeded in grabbing them in the first place)? And what's up with that -20? There's no way for it not to use "just that limb" to attempt the grapple, since it's likely 100' away, and it makes no sense for it too to gain the grappled condition.

Am I just running up against rules technicalities vs. my mental image? Thanks in advance!

[healbot42]

I think I ran the same combat at you, I treated the animated tendrils as separate creatures for purposes of the grapple rules, not causing the creeper to count as grapple and to grapple multiple people at once.

It was a mistake. I killed everyone and ended the campaign there with everyone upset.

So if I ran it again I would only let it grapple one thing and give it the penalty. That's just me, and is in now way backed up by the rules.

[Scott Wilhelm]

If it grabs with just its tendril, it should suffer the -20. There aren't any limits as to how many people you can be grappling, as long as you have the actions to take, you can keep Initiating Grapples.

The limitation of the Grab ability is that it can only be used to Iniate a Grapple. You can't keep making tentacle attacks to Grapple then the next round Pin then then next round Damage opponents.

The 'Creeper might attack just 1 opponent, hauling him up to his maw to be devoured, leaving the party scratching their heads wondering how to Climb up the trees an fight whatever's up there in time to save their fellow. Then after finishing off the first one, the 'Creeper attacks the rest of the party in turn, now at a +2 since, as they Climb, they aren't anchored to the ground.

The 'Creeper might attack 4 opponents at once, scoring a Feed Attack on each one, pulling up only one. Each round, it will then need to make subsequent Tentacle attacks as part of its Full Attack Action, if unsuccessful, the PC is freed, perhaps plummeting to death; if successful, the Grapple may be re-initiated, and another round of Feeding can happen, and 1 poor soul getting ripped to pieces in the creature's bite.

Grappled itself, it would be too far away for most terrestrial creatures to attack it, an among them only a person would be smart enough to realize they might save their friend by climbing up after him and also stupid enough to try. Most groups of prey creatures would just run away, safe from Attacks of Opportunity, glad it wasn't them.

[Gwen Smith]

The Norv wrote:

A question about our good friend the Canopy Creeper. I'm running one tomorrow, and I'm a bit baffled by its grab special ability--and the way that interacts with the 4 freakin' tentacles it has that don't do any damage but do grab.

The concept/visual of the canopy creeper is great. This plant suddenly comes to life up above you, and starts shooting down vines to just yank people up to its maw and eat them (or just yank them into the air, where if they escape they'll be falling a long way to Certain Doom). But here's where I get confused: my canopy creeper is going to be facing 6th-level PCs. Well and good. If it makes a grab attack, it gets to make a grapple. It probably "only" grabs the PC with its vine tendril, thus not gaining the grappled condition itself...but then (A) it only has a bonus to its grapple check of +3, which is unlikely to succeed on any PC that has halfway decent combat skills, and (B) does it still have to use a standard action to maintain a grab, per the grappling rules?

Keep in mind that it can grab from up to 100 feet away, which severely limits what the PCs can do in response. (It can pull creatures 30 feet per round, but it doesn't have to.) And every time it grapples, it does get a feed attack for 1d8 and 1 strength damage. Getting the grappled condition doesn't mean it can't continue to attack, so it doesn't have to take to -20: just apply grappling penalties after the first successful grab.

Given that, I ]might give it up to 4 attacks in the opening round, but once it has something grappled, I'd have it maintain and pull the grappled creature towards it. Three rounds of pull+feed attacks and one bite attack at reach before the character even gets a chance to attack back seems plenty deadly to me. And then it can always take a free action to release the character and let it plummet to its death.

[Thewms]

If the Canopy Creeper successfully grabs a target from 100ft away does the sentence "If you successfully grapple a creature that is not adjacent to you, move that creature to an adjacent open space (if no space is available, your grapple fails)." mean that target is moved 95ft to an adjacent square belonging to said creeper? If that is the case, then this creature becomes much more terrifying!

[The Norv]

Thanks for the input, all. I ended up not running the encounter last weekend because the party took an unexpected route...guess they'll just meet it on the way out, now. When they've been softened up... >:)

More seriously, it sounds like I'm underestimating the difficulties of taking on something that's so powerful when there are limited range capabilities (which is true for my party too). I'm going to leave the grapple rules on maintaining as a standard action, etc., as they are.

Another question I just came up with...it has "cold vulnerability," but it doesn't specify what the vulnerability does. Is it +50% damage? No fast healing for 1 round? I'm not sure what the standard is.

[Gwen Smith]

Thewms wrote:

If the Canopy Creeper successfully grabs a target from 100ft away does the sentence "If you successfully grapple a creature that is not adjacent to you, move that creature to an adjacent open space (if no space is available, your grapple fails)." mean that target is moved 95ft to an adjacent square belonging to said creeper? If that is the case, then this creature becomes much more terrifying!

I don't think think so, otherwise there's no reason for the creature to have the "pull" ability. Also, the tentacles are defined as a ranged attack on the stat block, so I don't know if the normal grapple rules apply.

Also, it's actually worse for the creeper to drag them adjacent in one round, because then the grappled creature gets a full attack. It's much better to take three rounds to pull them in, getting 1d8 and some Str damage each round to soften them up.

[Obbu]

My 2c:

Run it without the auto-adjacency, the vines are vulnerable to sunder/grapple attack/breaking, and once you've gotten rid of a few, it has the choice between attacking with the remainder, or one attack and one vine growback as a move action.

The grapple is always performed with the vine, so I wouldn't apply the -20 rule, I assume it's part of the statblock, otherwise the encounter is only threatening to level 1 characters (CMB 3? meh).

If it's the encounter from the adventure path I will put this in spoiler tags:

Spoiler:

Skull and Shackles:

The vines are ranged attacks, and the ships deck should have locations for taking cover from them, if needed, perhaps doorways could work.

If the fight gets out of control, you can start offing the crew instead of focusing on the PCs. I generally run crew as an invisible presence on deck during combats, but you can start snapping their necks as a 'breather' if you want to look like a meanie, when you're actually doing the party a favour.

The encounter tends to start mid way through another encounter beneath the ship, so you might have them come back up to find some of their crew being eaten, strangled, thrown around, just make sure you don't kill enough to make the ship un-sailable ;).

I ran it with 30 ft pulls, no auto-adjacency, and allowed people to take cover in doorways on the deck, if desired. I didn't apply the -20 rule for grappling with part of a creature, as mentioned.

I didn't try to pin any characters with vines: I just dragged them upwards while grappled + feeding. Combat reflexes probably only comes into play with the beak, so don't stress too much about that.

Parties can use ranged attacks, sunder (or grapple attack vs the vine, basically) vines, climb the vines (I allowed them to reach the beak easily, if they wanted to do some reckless face-tanking) flight (if available, though it gets bonuses if you arent on the deck).

Attack spells work pretty well, I treated the vines as part of the creature, and did not let them fireball all the vines at once for example.

Be aware of falling damage rules due to chopping vines and falling to the deck, (or ocean): and if someone is airborn very high up when they fall, I'd give them the chance to grab a limp vine via a reflex save.