Monster Monday: Giant Starfish

Today's Monster Monday is a two-fer: the giant starfish and the giant thorny starfish, two related creatures that won't fit in your average tidepool.  Use them in conjunction with the giant sea anemone for a surreal, slightly rubbery beach-party brawl!

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The OGL, PFSRD-compatible monster is available after the jump.
The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2013 Jonah Bomgaars.


Starfish, Giant        CR 1

XP 400

N Large vermin (aquatic)

Init -2; Senses all-around vision 30 ft.; Perception -4

DEFENSE

AC 12, touch 7, flat-footed 12 (-2 Dex, -1 size, +5 natural)

hp 13 (2d8+4)

Fort +5, Ref -2, Will -4

Regeneration 1 (fire)

Immune vermin traits

Vulnerability fire

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., Burrow 10 ft., Climb 20 ft.

Melee 3 arms +2 melee (1d6+2 plus grab)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks Digest

STATISTICS

Str 15, Dex 7, Con 14, Int -, Wis 2, Cha 4

Base Atk +1; CMB +8; CMD 16 (cannot be tripped)

Skills climb +10; Racial Modifiers climb +8

SQ Hold Breath (on land)

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Digest (Ex)

Beginning the round after it succeeds in winning a grapple, the giant starfish begins to digest its victim, dealing 1d4 acid damage for every round the grapple is maintained.
ECOLOGY

Environment any ocean, coastline

Organization solitary

Treasure none

Giant starfish are much more dangerous than their tiny cousins so often seen in tidepools.  Because they are so much larger, they can feed on much larger prey.  They also move much faster comparatively, crawling forward with their muscular arms rather than gliding slowly on tube-feet as small starfish do.  They are still too slow to pose much of a threat to alert creatures, but many a traveler who attempted to sleep on the beach or ventured into a seaside cave has wound up engulfed by an opportunistic giant starfish and slowly digested.  Each of their thick, powerful arms is lined with tiny adhesive tube-feet which grant the giant starfish a +4 racial bonus to CMB and CMD checks, which they most often use to pry open giant clams’ shells, but which can easily be used to rip the armour off a drowned corpse.  Their incredible yet simple physiology allows them to close up wounds and even regenerate lost limbs.  Unlike most aquatic creatures, the starfish does not have the ability to swim.  While it has 5 arms, it can only attack with three at a time, requiring the other two to root it to the ground.  When threatened by predators, the giant starfish will burrow into the sand.

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Starfish, Giant Thorny  CR 2

XP 600

N Large vermin (aquatic)

Init -2; Senses all-around vision 30 ft.; Perception -4

DEFENSE

AC 14, touch 7, flat-footed 14 (-2 Dex, -1 size, +7 natural)

hp 17 (3d8+4)

Fort +5, Ref -2, Will -4

Defensive Abilities Spines

Regeneration 1 (fire)

Immune vermin traits

Vulnerability fire

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., Burrow 10 ft., Climb 20 ft.

Melee 3 arms +2 melee (1d8+2 plus poison plus grab)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks poison, digest

STATISTICS

Str 15, Dex 7, Con 14, Int -, Wis 2, Cha 4

Base Atk +2; CMB +9; CMD 17 (cannot be tripped)

Skills climb +10; Racial Modifiers climb +8

SQ Hold Breath (on land)

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Digest (Ex)

Beginning the round after it succeeds in winning a grapple, the giant starfish begins to digest its victim, dealing 1d4 acid damage for every round the grapple is maintained.

Poison (Ex)

Sting—injury; save Fort DC 13, primary effect: 1d4 Dex; secondary effect: nausea

Spines (Ex)

The Giant Thorny Starfish is covered with poisonous spines.  Every time it is touched or struck in melee combat by a natural attack, or if it is the target of a combat maneuver that required body contact, such as a grapple or bull-rush, the attacker must make a DC 18 reflex save or suffer spine damage (1d6 plus poison).  The underside of the starfish is not spiny, and thus it does not deal spine damage when the starfish grapples a target. 
ECOLOGY

Environment warm ocean, coastline

Organization solitary

Treasure none

These giant starfish are covered with thousands of poisonous spines, making them much more formidable than regular giant starfish.  

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Starfish are sufficiently weird that, with a little GM-added flavour and a change of environment, they could work well as minor horrors in a Cthulhu-style game.

If you are looking for a terrifying giant starfish for a 2nd edition campaign, you can find it here.

As always with Monster Mondays, I encourage you, the reader, to use this monster in a game and report the results back to me below in the comments.  I don't get to play enough D&D to playtest all of my monsters, so I appreciate any help I can get though crowd-sourcing.  If I've calculated anything incorrectly or made the monster's CR too high/low, I would like to know.

-your pentalaterally-symmetric d20 despot