Anemone, Dire Seastar

Large beast, unaligned

Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points 104 (11d10 + 44)
Speed 10 ft., climb 10 ft.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
17 (+3) 15 (+2) 18 (+4) 8 (-1) 13 (+1) 8 (-1)

Saving Throws Dex +5, Wis +4, Cha +2
Condition Immunities prone
Damage Resistances bludgeoning
Senses blindsight 30 ft., passive Perception 11
Languages
Challenge 6 (2,300 XP)

Special Traits

  • Regeneration. The seastar regains 5 hit points at the start of its turn. If the seastar takes acid or fire damage, this trait doesn’t function at the start of the seastar’s next turn. The seastar dies only if it starts its turn with 0 hit points and doesn’t regenerate.
  • Tube Feet. Dire seastars move and grapple using thousands of shorter appendages filled with fluid and ending in tiny suction cups. They treat any solid surface as clear terrain. They also have advantage on Strength (Athletics) checks against being shoved, and on saving throws against any effect that would force it to move.
  • Water Breathing. The seastar can breathe only underwater.

Actions

  • Multiattack. The seastar makes two slam attacks.
  • Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d10 + 3) bludgeoning damage, and if the target is a Medium or smaller creature and the seastar isn’t already grappling a creature, it is grappled (escape DC 12).
  • External Stomach. A dire seastar ejects its stomach in order to begin digestion of a captured meal. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature grappled by the seastar, that creature is digested, and the grapple ends. While being digested, the creature is blinded and restrained, it has total cover against attacks and other effects outside the seastar’s external stomach, and it takes 14 (4d6) acid damage at the start of each of the seastar’s turns. If the seastar’s external stomach takes 20 damage or more on a single turn from a creature inside it, the seastar must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution saving throw at the end of that turn or regurgitate all swallowed creatures, which fall prone in a space within 5 feet of the seastar. Damage done to a seastar’s stomach does not harm the seastar. If the seastar dies, a swallowed creature is no longer restrained by it and can escape from the corpse using 5 feet of movement, exiting prone.

Reactions

  • Split. When a dire seastar is subjected to a critical hit from a slashing attack, it splits into two new seastars if it has at least 10 hit points. Each new seastar has hit points equal to half the original seastar’s, rounded down. New seastar are one size smaller than the original seastar.

About

Muscular tentacles explode from the sand and fold inward toward a toothless central maw.

Creeping Doom. Some starfish contend with a greater number of more dangerous marine threats than their lesser king, driving evolution to produce faster and stronger specimens (or the survival of deadly primordial species) that attack aggressively and recover from injury very quickly. Most unique among the seastars of the deep ocean and deadly coasts are those with no agenda or reproductive mechanism other than to split and regenerate after attacked by predators.

Ironically, the number of natural enemies that find them delicious ensures their survival.

One too Many Mouths. Varinaian seastars have mouths on both sides of their bodies, allowing them to crawl towards stationary food, or to lies half-buried in sand to ambush prey crawling across the seabed above them. The average dire seastar is 7 feet in diameter and weighs 600 pounds.

Colorful tentacles writhe across this marine creature like long petals on an immense flower.

Vermin of the Deep. The largest anemones in the ocean are capable predators despite their plodding movement. They lie in fields of other, usually smaller, anemones and among brightly colored coral societies. Deep tiger anemones feed local scavengers by attacking large prey or schools of fish, scattering uneaten remains to their neighbors.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Sea Monsters (5E) © 2021, Legendary Games; Authors Michael Ritter, Michael “solomani” Mifsud, Robert J. Grady, Mark Hart, Jeff Ibach, Alex Riggs, Scott D. Young, Jeff Lee, Matt Kimmel, and Jason Nelson.

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