Roper

The Roper is an iconic Dungeons & Dragons monster. An ancient entry to the game, it is the most long-lasting of the plethora of "killer shit in disguise" monsters that infested 1970s-80s dungeons.

Everyone involved in the BXCMI line kept it out, so it was sequestered in the Monster Manual - until 1984, when Michael L. Gray unleashed XL1: Quest for the Heartstone upon a Mystara that didn't deserve it.

In a nutshell, a roper is a predatory aberration that resembles an outcropping of rock with one eye, a giant mouth full of teeth, and long, sticky tentacles it uses to grab victims and drag them into range of its mouth.

Allen Hammack in A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords introduced the storoper which is the same damn thing except OH NO IT'S MORE DIFFICULT. C'mon, man. Somehow Richard Garriott got away with sticking the baseline into the Ultima series also.

In Fifth edition, the juvenile form of the roper is the 'piercer. Which is a whole 'nother rant: a snail like creature that hangs from the ceiling of caves pretending to be a stalactite, and drops on people that walk under it to try to impale them with its body. The piercer sucked so bad even the first Tome of Horrors didn't want it.

Lords of Madness reveals that ropers can undergo the same process used to turn humans into illithids, which results in a creature called an Urophion.

The abundance of tentacles has made the r*per the go-to "tentacle monster" for vaguely D&D-themed /d/ manga and anime.

Gallery

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  D&D Supplement II: Blackmoor

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  1e

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  AD&D Monster Card

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  2e Monstrous Compendium Vol. 2

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  2e Monstrous Manual

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  A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords

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  3e

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  4e