Giant Land Octopus

[Zulgyan]

Of course I could make stats for it myself, but:

Is there are setting, book, magazine that had Giant Octopuses that lived mainly on land rather than at sea? That would make a cool monster! And imagine it they could be mounted!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=THPq8UVmzFw

[fitz]

Runequest had the Walktopus -- if I remeber correctly, it was pretty fearsome

[Finarvyn]

Wow. I can't believe anyone else had this bizarre idea.

Years ago I ran a campaign where one part of the world was this giganto desert and the people rode across its surface on sand ships with sails and such. I had a number of giant worms (ala Frank Herbert's Dune) patrolling the area and when one came near I had an NPC shout out "we have wormsign!".

As it turns out, none of my group had read Dune and they thought giant earthworms were kind of silly. They had already decided that this desert adventure was simply a recycled sea adventure, and one of them shouted back "no, it's squidsign!"

So was created on the spot a giant sand squid monster.

Years later, whenever this group would ever enter a desert region, there would always be someone who would climb to a tall rock outcropping and look for squidsign. It has become a part of our gaming lore. :-)

Sadly, I don't know if I kept the stats for the original giant sand squid. With my gaming style, however, its exact stats wouldn't matter becasue it was probably different each time. Assume 8-10 tentacles each doing 1d6 plus electric attack (not sure how that got started; maybe due to friction with the sand). I gave each tentacle 3-4 HD and the main body around 16-20 HD. It was usually better to avoid the giant sand squid than to fight it. :-)

Maybe that helps?

[aldarron]

Check out the "Swampus" from The Future is Wild tv show.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Future_Is_Wild_species#Swampus

[Stonegiant]

The Star Frontiers game had in their introductory module a sentient race of desert dwelling octopuses who rode a dinosaur like creature.