BX Monsters A to Z: Carrion Crawler

 Here's a creature that's been a staple in my dungeons from way, way back: the carrion crawler. Fun fact: Carrion crawlers are considered to be the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast, and thus if included in retroclone games, are usually renamed as "corpse creepers" or something similar. Same critter, though.

Creepy, crawly, creepy, crawly...

Anyway...

Carrion crawlers are basically giant maggots with paralyzing tentacles clustered around their mouths. Oh, and they can crawl equally well on floor, wall, or ceiling. That's something that escaped my notice somehow, and I never used it in play, but how cool would that be to have a carrion crawler drop on an unsuspecting party from the ceiling? At 3+1 Hit Dice, they're fairly tough for Basic-level characters. They don't do any actual damage, but instead have eight (!) separate tentacle attacks per round, each inflicting paralysis if a saving throw is failed. If the crawler is not being attacked, it will proceed to eat paralyzed victims. Paralysis can be removed with a cure light wounds spell or wears off naturally in 2-8 turns. The crawler inflicts no hit points of damage with these attacks, however, and this makes for some interesting choices, especially for players of low-level characters.

Specifically, as long as an encounter with carrion crawlers doesn't end in a TPK, it's likely that nobody is going to die, but it easily could end in a TPK. With eight (!) attacks per round, there's a very strong likelihood the creature will paralyze at least one enemy per round. True, the tentacles are only two feet long, so it probably can't attack an entire party at once, but still. Assume it attacks two per round. If it directs four attacks each at frontline fighters in plate and shield, hitting at a rate of 35% (attack roll of 14+) it will hit each an average of 1.4 times per round. A fighter of level 1-3 needs a 16 to save vs. paralysis. I probably don't need to do any more math here; you can see that it's likely at least one of them will end up paralyzed, and a more than fair chance both will. And that's just the heavily armored guys. 

Still, there's a good chance, if the PCs roll decently, or use clever tactics, they'll be able to pare down the crawler's hit points before it can paralyze everyone. Then they just have to wait for their frozen comrades to recover (and hope the wandering monster dice are kind in the meantime). Of course, that's if they encounter only a single crawler; the number appearing is 1-3. 

A few other factors make the carrion crawler a scary encounter. Its base movement rate is as fast as an unencumbered character, which means anyone in armor is not getting away easily if it decides to pursue. Its morale score of 9 means it's not going to give up easily, either. Time to break out the flasks of oil and bar the way with fire!

On the plus side, carrion crawlers do have Treasure Type B, which is a decent hoard. This suggests they like to drag their prey back to a lair or "home" area if possible, where the stuff their victims were carrying gets cast aside as inedible. 

What would I change? To be honest, I'm not crazy about the eight attacks per round. Treating each tentacle as a separate attack, requiring a separate saving throw vs. paralysis, seems a bit ridiculous. I'd give it two, maybe three attacks per round, and perhaps bump up the number appearing to 1d4 or 1d6 to keep the encounter threat level average up. 

In spite of that, I actually like these things a lot. They're super creepy, they're a great way to challenge a party in a unique way, and they fill a solid niche in dungeon ecology, if such things matter to you. Whether you call them carrion crawlers, corpse creepers, or something else, they'll always have a place in my dungeons.