What They Don't Tell You About Ropers - D&D

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MUSIC

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Crypto by Kevin MacLeod

The following music was used for this media project:
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Sources

1st Edition Monster Manual
2nd Edition Monster Manual
3rd Edition Monster Manual
4th Edition Monster Manual
5th Edition Monster Manual
Dragon Magazine #232

[drewforchic]

I think the reason they doubled down on making a slightly modified stone roper the default version for 5th edition is to differentiate it more from the mimic. Since the mimic is already a sticky, amorphous ambush predator with pseudopods, they probably wanted something that wouldn't feel too similar, thus leaving out the stickiness and blobby-ness, and changing from tendrils to tentacles.

[michaelkimberling]

In a game I was in we killed one of these on a mountain that if you died on it you were cursed to become a ghost. suffice to say we were ambushed by a ghost Roper several times.

[stringfenix]

So it's officially fair to say that a pack of Ropers can effectively be called a Clusterfuck? Yes.

[TroyBrophy]

Read up on how geckos walk on ceilings...It's all about area of the cilia coverage, and assuming the Roper has a large enough base, there should be way more cilia than necessary to hold a ton.

[Endymion]

My party got attacked by an evolved version of one of these on a train ride. It wouldn't keep its tentacles off us and kept making lewd mouth noises. It was a Groper.

[tomfoolery]

The word for the ropers "trance" is torpor. Thanks for all of your work! We appreciate it;

[Jonsoner]

Isn't Ropers one of those creatures that can easily wipe a party, or snowball them into a tpk at lower levels if played properly/DM not knowing their actual danger?

I always thought that's the reason they gave them intelligence, so the party can reason or bribe them, or at least deceive them for enough time to counter the ambush.

[walterguardiani]

I remember meeting one of these in 3.5 with my party of 3 people. I was a paladin and my friends were a Druid and a sorcerer if I recall correctly. The Roper tries to sneak attack us and it succeeds, we try to buy our lives out and offer fresh meat if he let us go. We were forced to go that way so we had to come back. We brought a donkey which we had taken at a close by village and I had like dozens of oil pots and alchemist’s fire. I put all the stuff in a brown sack and take it with me. We try to give the Roper the donkey along with other meat that we had in the sack, and when he was about to bite the donkey I throw the sack into his mouth and it explodes setting him on fire. Now mind that in 3.5 Roper had fire vulnerability and thanks to that play we had more than halved his total HP

[michaelburtyk]

Yes! The new editors of 5e sure got the roper mixed up with a storoper (mainly because of past artworks and drawings). I had noticed a discrepancy with most artwork showing ropers with tentacles (even in 1ed). They should be strong sticky "rope-like" (thus the name) strands which are easily hidden by the creature or retracted into its body.

[thearmoredneko]

you should do a what they don't tell you about humans episode. I feel like human are every across the world but I don't know anything about their origins or lore.

[zerokage]

I think I actually prefer what 5e did with the Roper. It feels more like a cohesive creature and less like the hundreds of other blob monsters.

As a bit of a side note I would like to say that I don't think it makes sense for it to be intelligent. It lives in caves where it's not going to have access to a regular supply of food. And I honestly feel like D&D has a bit of a problem with the over abundance of Sapient talking creatures in it. I mean it seems like you can't throw a rock without it hitting a talking badger or something. And once you've finished your conversation with the badger you then have to argue with the rock who didn't appreciate being thrown in such a manner.

Now I have to admit that is funny, but I do feel that animals should most of the time just be animals.

[digunder]

perhaps the 5e lore is implying that in this continuity the storoper have become the dominate breed, since each edition is it's own continuity as much as it is a continuation, storoper and roper cross breeding on mass = 5e roper if you have to explain it for a cohesive lore

[Natsirt]

I had my players go through a section of caves under an Underdark city (Ultoksamrin), and it was full of Ropers, Piercers, Darkmantles, Cave Fishers, and Chwidencha. Dropped 3 of the 4 PCs at various stages of combat. We all had much fun though. They got to fight a High Priestess of Lolth at the end. Our Warlock (Hexbalde) 1v1'd her while the others were dealing with the mess of Adds. She messed him up bad and he had to go invisible and hide for a round and try distractions, but ended up doing a sweet misty step behind her to get the killing blow (decapitation of course, it's kinda his thing). Was cinematic as fuck.

[MrBaumbach]

5e is not the only edition that defaulted to the stone roper, PF1 and 2 did as well...

[cerogaming]

2000 lb divided between thousands of scillia means each scillia needs to hold less than 2 lb each; probably even less than 1 lb. Sounds plausible to me.

[MethosJK]

Ran into one of these with a level 4 party. If not for some alchemist's fire and mercy from the DM, it would've been a TPK. Such a great monster!

[HumanoidCableDreads]

There is a mindflayer Roper variant as well.

[Fait]

They lost intelligence because everyone treats them as dumb animals. With their ambush tactics, unless an adventuring group has dungeneering talking to something that just grabbed the wizard just won't occur to many groups.

[kyleevans]

I feel like you should be compiling a Master Monster Manual filled with the comprehensive lore and resulting stat blocks made from the combined lore for each entry. Sure, it would be a big book and might even need a multi-volume release, but it would be worth it. I'd be willing to obtain a series of monster manuals like this even if divided into creature typing (i.e. Celestial, Fiend, Fey, Elemental, Devil, Draconic, etc.).

[ThatsGuy]

In my campaigns (2E base), Ropers are part of a classification of monsters that includes mimics. Piercers are A&D mollusks. AD&D started sh^tting the bed when WotC absorbed TSR. There will be probably 3 new editions every generation now.
I mean, these formerly smart monsters once being the non-demon form of Yochlol wasn't an accident. I never really liked Ropers, but I like what they became even less.