Octopus Questions

[hcobb]

Whataboutism dragging the land lubbers underwater?

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by Axly Suregrip

Bill,
Grapple Attack: Range 1 hex. Does no damage. Requires all 5 arms that are not used for standing. Thus it must drop its weapons. If successful, it has grabbed its prey & pulled itself into HTH onto the prey.

Since this initiates HTH, do the standard prerequisites fore establishing HTH and the 1d roll by the defender come into play? If not, does the octopus have to roll a standard 3/adjDX attack?

Beak Attack: once in HTH, the octopus may do a beak attack instead of the three arm attacks.

Is this beak attack an auto-hit or does it require a to-hit roll?

[Axly Suregrip]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Since this initiates HTH, do the standard prerequisites fore establishing HTH and the 1d roll by the defender come into play? If not, does the octopus have to roll a standard 3/adjDX attack?


Is this beak attack an auto-hit or does it require a to-hit roll?

Both attacks require a 3/adjDX standard attack roll. The beak attack will be done in HTH so it also has the standard HTH +4 DX.

Good point on clarifying HTH initiation. All standard HTH initiation needs to stay. If you are grappled (Octupus makes his 3/DX attack roll) you then roll 1d to determine you HTH status (rerolling a 6 if attacked from behind). A 5 or 6 means you are held but not in HTH and since you will now have MA 0, the octopus may attempt HTH initiation again the next turn. BTW, a 6 is still an automatic hit.

The big difference is since the octopus did an attack to grapple you, if it gets into HTH it does not get an attack in HTH. It took advantage of a special attack that can get it into HTH without meeting the prereqs (high MA, back to a wall, etc), so that special attack is its attack for the turn.

BTW, I would also limit this grapple special attack to only be useful against 1 hex sized creatures. And the paralytic venom only effective against 1 hex sized creatures. Although, it may still attempt to bore through armor with its beak in HTH with a larger foe.

Suggested tuning changes if you need to make the octopus stronger or weaker:
- to weaken it: reduce the beak attack to 1d-3.
- to strengthen it: increase the venom to 3 turns (current turn plus 2 more)

[Axly Suregrip]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Whataboutism dragging the land lubbers underwater?

Always a possibility if you got knocked down during HTH initiation while on the edge of water.

As far as making it strong enough to haul someone into water, I would say a 1 hex octopus creature does not have the power of a kraken to do so.

If you really want this, and alternative is the HTH initiation pulls the victim into the octopus' hex instead. If the octopus is in water, then it has achieved this goal.

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by Axly Suregrip

Bill,
I see what you are looking to do. Octopi grapple with their arms and inject venom with their beaks that paralyze the prey. This would be a realistic and scary addition to the land octopi in this game.

This is my suggestion of how to do it. I would base the grapple on how ITL handles giant scorpions grabbing. I would have the beak do low damage since octopi use it to bore through shells I would make the damage cumulative against armor. The paralyze affect would have last 2 turns. This allows for some playability or chance of escape but very tough.

With this model I would still answer these questions as:

1. Should the HTH damage for the octopus be ST dependent?
- no. sucker cups damage is not ST based.

2. What is the bite damage of an octopus and should it also be ST dependent?
- see below and not ST based

3. What is the best way to handle the fact that an octopus can entangle their foes and draw them toward their mouths? This is a very real possible fighting tactic since they are described as liking human flesh
- see below

New Rules:

Grapple Attack: Range 1 hex. Does no damage. Requires all 5 arms that are not used for standing. Thus it must drop its weapons. If successful, it has grabbed its prey & pulled itself into HTH onto the prey. They prey is immobilized (cannot roll to escape HTH), now has a DX -4 modifier and if wishes to break free must make a 3/ST save. Escaping the grasp still leaves you in HTH and the octopus may just grab you again. But it gets worse.

Beak Attack: once in HTH, the octopus may do a beak attack instead of the three arm attacks. The beak is used to bore into armor, but slowly. It does 1d-2 damage, that is cumulative against armor. Once the beak attack scores damage it paralyzes the victim for 2 turns. That means it gets just one turn to reapply the paralyze again and repeat. It is a very slow way to be eaten alive.

The above makes an Octopus very scary to face one on one since it is a slow but nearly certain death.

I intentionally made the escape easier than the giant scorpions claw. I like the idea of wrestling free of most of the tentacles only to be grabbed again in an epic struggle. You are still stuck in HTH. And you can choose to draw a dagger and stab instead, which is harder with the DX -4 but not impossible.

Let me know what you think.

Originally Posted by Axly Suregrip

Or just leave it as 1d-2 with 3 attacks in HTH instead of the above... because the creators of ITL wanted the octopus to have a weakness in HTH.

I wasn't even thinking of paralyzing poison. I really am not interested in that at all. However, the rest sounds interesting and viable.

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Whataboutism dragging the land lubbers underwater?

My thought was that if the octopus had successfully grabbed the foe, they could drag them toward or into the water for their action.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by Bill_in_IN

My thought was that if the octopus had successfully grabbed the foe, they could drag them toward or into the water for their action.

I’d consider a ST contest or saving roll for that rather than having it be automatic.

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by Shostak

I’d consider a ST contest or saving roll for that rather than having it be automatic.

Definitely!

[JohnPaulB]

The suction cups on the octopus's arms, how much suction do you think it has?

Might the suction cups aid in climbing a wall? Happens all the time in cartoons.