The Coelacanth [3.5 Creature, WIP / PEACH]

[Palanan]

"[It was] the most beautiful fish I had ever seen...five feet long, a pale, mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-green sheen all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it had four limb-like fins and a strange little puppy dog tail."

Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer

Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae)

Medium Animal (Aquatic)
Hit Dice: 2d8+6 (15 hp)
Initiative: +6
Speed: Swim 10 ft.
Armor Class: 14 (+2 Dex, +1 natural, +1 mucilage), touch 13, flat-footed 12
Base Attack/Grapple: +1/+1
Attack: Bite +3 melee (1d6+4)
Full Attack: Bite +3 melee (1d6+4)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Engulfing gape, snaptail lunge
Special Qualities: Coldlife, nightsight, electric eye, mucilaginous touch, disagreeable flesh
Saves: Fort +5, Ref +4, Will +1
Abilities: Str 12, Dex 14, Con 17, Int 1, Wis 12, Cha 4
Skills: Escape Artist +10, Hide +11, Spot +13 (in darkness only), Swim +8
Feats: Improved Initiative
Environment: cold aquatic (depths from 200-2300 ft.)
Organization: Solitary (night) or cave group (daytime only)
Challenge Rating: 1
Treasure: none
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: None
Level Adjustment: -


Drifting silently on cold night-currents, the coelacanth is a slow-moving ambush predator of deep reefs and undersea cliffs. Often reaching six feet in length and weighing over two hundred pounds, coelacanths hunt in darkness, snapping up fishes, squids, eels, and even small sharks that stray too close to their powerful jaws. In addition to their excellent night vision, coelacanths rely on their sensitivity to minute electrical fields, perceiving the flickering nerves and beating hearts of nearby living prey. Their uniquely hinged skull allows for a surprisingly wide bite--and a sudden lunge doubles its effective range.

During daylight hours, coelacanths take shelter in deep undersea caves, sometimes quietly resting in groups of a dozen or more. The pattern of white-flecked spots, unique as a fingerprint for each individual, helps camouflage them against a background of rock and reef--for coelacanths have their own predators, primarily the larger sharks, and a coelacanth has no hope of outrunning them.

Coelacanths are slow, deliberate creatures in nearly every aspect of their lives. They have the slowest metabolism of any known vertebrate, and the longest gestation period: three full years, after which the mother coelacanth gives live birth to as many as two dozen pups. (The eggs, at nearly four inches across, are the size of a moderate orange and the largest fish eggs known.) This metabolic lethargy contributes to their extremely long lifespans--perhaps a hundred years or more--but it comes at a cost, since coelacanths cannot tolerate warmer waters.

Their internal anatomy is a hodgepodge of archaic and unusual features: a primitive tubular backbone; a pseudo-lung filled with fat; hollow-spined fins and a cartilaginous skeleton; and a brain which occupies barely one percent of the cranial cavity, the rest being taken up with more fat. Despite this abundance of fatty deposits, the fish is almost universally considered inedible--since, like sharks, it saturates its tissues with metabolic urea to maintain its osmotic balance.

Coelacanths are rare, ancient creatures, having survived long aeons in essentially their present state. Once widespread and numerous, they are now found only in deep, rocky regions, supporting minimal populations in remote corners of the ocean, isolated and nearly forgotten.


Engulfing Gape (Ex): Unique among living fishes, coelacanths possess a hinged cranium which allows the entire head to open wide, delivering a crushing bite and drawing smaller creatures entirely into the mouth. On a successful bite attack against a target of Small or smaller size, the target is completely engulfed as per the Swallow Whole ability.

Snaptail Lunge (Ex): Despite its typical lethargy, a coelacanth can strike with instant ferocity when a likely meal swims within range. A sudden surge of its massive, paddle-shaped tail launches it forward while the jaw expands to engulf its prey. The extra power delivered by the lunge adds five feet to the coelacanth's effective reach, allowing it to attack prey up to ten feet away from a standing start.

Coldlife (Ex): Adapated over long ages to the chill of deep ocean waters, coelacanths fare poorly in the warmer surface layers. A coelacanth in water above 50 degrees must make a DC 14 Fort save or take 1d4 points of heat damage for each hour it remains overheated. It makes a new Fort save every hour, but the DC rises by 2 for each hour after the first.

Nightsight (Ex): A coelacanth's eyes, like a cat's, have a reflective layer behind the retina which gives exceptionally sensitive night vision. A coelacanth gains a +8 racial bonus to Spot checks during the night or in other conditions of nonmagical darkness. However, coelacanths are at a powerful disadvantage during the daytime or in a strong light source, and will often hide away from the full moon. A coelacanth exposed to strong light takes a -8 penalty to Search and Spot checks.

Electric Eye (Ex): Unique among all living vertebrates, the coelacanth possesses an electrosensory organ in its snout which allows it to detect the slightest variations in the surrounding electromagnetic field. A coelacanth is able to sense the faint bioelectric activity of any creature with a nervous system, including virtually all marine animal life. Coelacanths cannot use this ability to sense undead or magically animated constructs, although a construct with metal components would be detectable. This ability otherwise functions as if it were blindsight with a radius of ten feet.

Mucilaginous Touch (Ex): A coelacanth's body continually exudes a thin oily coating across its fins and scales. This provides a +1 mucilage bonus to AC, and a +8 racial bonus to Escape Artist checks and opposed grapple checks.

Disagreeable Flesh (Ex): The scales and tissues of a coelacanth are saturated with oils and metabolic waste. Any creature that makes a successful bite attack on a coelacanth must make a DC 14 Fortitude save or be nauseated for one minute.

Skills: A coelacanth gains a +8 racial bonus on Hide checks on deep reefs, seamounts and rocky undersea slopes. This bonus does not apply when the coelacanth is swimming above a grassy or sandy substrate, a well-lit shallow reef, or in clear sunlit water--all unusual and dangerous situations for a coelacanth.



Notes

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A few days ago Koda the kobold posted a request for a homebrewed coelacanth, since he wanted the base stats to build a hengeyokai with. Not having the faintest concept what a hengeyokai actually is, I did some background reading on Latimeria, and worked up a version based on some of the quirky, oddball features one finds in coelacanths.

I like most of what's here, but one special quality I couldn't work out was related to the extremely deep evolutionary history of coelacanths, and the almost complete morphological stasis they've shown over the past 300 million years or so. That's on a par with horseshoe crabs for stability of design through geological time; and in an attempt to reflect this in some small way, I came up with a simple ability called Timeless Form, which gave them a +8 bonus on saves to resist being polymorphed into other forms.

Turns out that either Polymorph can't be used against an unwilling target, or I simply don't get Polymorph, or quite possibly both. I like the idea of the coelacanth having some ability relating to its immensely deep history in the same form...just not sure what would work here. I'm open to suggestions, as well as to comments and corrections on the rest of the coelacanth 'brew.

Sources

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Amemiya et al. 2013. The African coelacanth genome provides insights into tetrapod evolution. Nature 496 (18 April 2013): 311-316.

Anonymous. Latimeria chalumnae Smith 1939. Encyclopedia of Life.

Banister, K. E. 1985. Coelacanth, lungfishes, bichirs. In: Encyclopedia of Aquatic Life, K. Banister and A. Campbell (Eds.), pp. 124-127. Facts on File Publications, New York.

Butler, C. and Ballesta, L. 2011. Ancient swimmers. National Geographic, March 2011, pp. 86-93.

Fricke, H., Hissmann, K., Froese, R., Schauer, J., Plante, R. and Fricke, S. 2011. The population biology of the living coelacanth studied over 21 years. Marine Biology 158(7): 1511-1522.

Hissmann, K., Fricke, H., Schauer, J., Ribbink, A. J., Roberts, M., Sink, K. and Heemstra, P. 2006. The South African coelacanths — an account of what is known after three submersible expeditions. South African Journal of Science 102: 491-500.

Keim, B. 2011. The man who swims with coelacanths. Wired Magazine interview with Hans Fricke.

Weinberg, S. 2000. A Fish Caught In Time: The Search for the Coelacanth. Harper Collins, New York.

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[Pterocards]

You've already gone above and beyond what I expected to receive! Well done sir! And thank you so much!

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I like the idea of the Timeless Body thing but like you, I have no idea how at would work...*shrugs*

[Debihuman]

Damage is Str x1 and 1/2 since this is its only attack. Its bite damage should be 1d6+1.

Skills: 5 ranks plus bonuses plus ability modifiers. The racial bonus to Swim from its Swim speed is not normally included in the stat block.

Skills: Escape Artist +10, Hide +3 (+11 reefs), Spot +5 (+13 in darkness, -3 in bright light), Search -5 (-13 in bright light), Swim +1

Note since it has a swim speed it should have the following text under skills text:

A coelacanth can move through water at its indicated speed without making Swim checks. It gains a +8 racial bonus on any Swim check to perform a special action or avoid a hazard. The creature always can choose to take 10 on a Swim check, even if distracted or endangered when swimming. Such a creature can use the run action while swimming, provided that it swims in a straight line.

[Rolep]

Engulfing gape seems very powerful, as it is effectively improved grab and swallow whole combined but without the grapple check. Also, the damage dealt to creatures swallowed whole needs to be listed.

Cold life: 50-degree water seems pretty warm. This ability should be more specific: as a non-american citizen, I measure in celsius, not farenheit, so you should say that this is farenheit. 50 degrees celsius is 122 degrees farenheit, so you can see how the confusion would arise.

Mucilaginous Touch: Mucilage bonus? Do you mean natural armour bonus?

Also, this creature seems to be more CR 2 or maybe 3, since it has a lot of quite decent abilities.

And, as debby said, the bite damage should be 1d6+1. You can increase the damage die, but the bonus is fixed.

[Ashtagon]

I know it is fluff text, but please don't say they have a hinged cranium. The cranium is a specific part of the skull. The part that is hinged is conventionally the mandible (aka jawbone). Both cranium and mandible each comprise a number of separate bones (most of which are fused together or are missing in various species).

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Koda the kobold
You've already gone above and beyond what I expected to receive! Well done sir! And thank you so much!

You're very welcome. I enjoyed the chance to read up on coelacanths--more weird features than anything I can think of. "Living fossil" is a term that's out of scientific vogue these days...but they really are, in just about every way.

Originally Posted by Debihuman
*sharp commentary and corrections*

Thanks as usual for your careful and fine-toothed review, especially with the skills.

When you write "Search -5 (-13 in bright light)," did you mean Search +5? Or is there another permutation I'm overlooking? (I hadn't originally given them Search as a skill, since it's not really something they do.)

Originally Posted by Debihuman
Damage is Str x1 and 1/2 since this is its only attack. Its bite damage should be 1d6+1.

Hmm, okay. Is there any way to increase the bonus damage? Not sure if I want to bring it up to 2d6, but I'd like to add a little more bonus damage somehow. These things have smallish teeth, but really heavy jaws.

Originally Posted by Rolep
Engulfing gape seems very powerful, as it is effectively improved grab and swallow whole combined but without the grapple check. ...this creature seems to be more CR 2 or maybe 3, since it has a lot of quite decent abilities.

Thanks for pointing that out. I thought about setting it at CR 2, but I'm terrible at estimating CR and figured I'd be conservative on that point. If you think CR 2 is more appropriate, I'm happy to nudge it up.

Also, keep in mind that Engulfing Gape only affects Small-sized creatures or smaller, so the typical Medium adventurer won't have to worry about it. Aquatic familiars, on the other hand....

Originally Posted by Rolep
...as a non-american citizen, I measure in celsius, not farenheit, so you should say that this is farenheit.

Thanks for pointing that out. I wrote that section late last night, when I was literally falling asleep, and I'd originally intended to hunt up the degree symbol and be more thorough in general. The temperature range in the original source was in Celsius, since Hans Fricke is German, so "50 degrees" is a rough estimate anyhow.

Originally Posted by Rolep
Mucilaginous Touch: Mucilage bonus? Do you mean natural armour bonus?

Since this is homebrew, I figured I'd come up with a separate category of armor bonus. These fish are really, really oily. It's actually the oils as much as the urea that makes them so utterly unpalatable.

Originally Posted by Ashtagon
I know it is fluff text, but please don't say they have a hinged cranium. The cranium is a specific part of the skull. The part that is hinged is conventionally the mandible (aka jawbone). Both cranium and mandible each comprise a number of separate bones (most of which are fused together or are missing in various species).

As it happens, my dissertation involved craniofacial morphology, so I do know my way around a vertebrate skull.

I used "hinged cranium" to distinguish the joint in question--the intracranial joint, unique to Latimeria among all living fishes--from its mandible, which is unremarkable by comparison. It's this extra joint, separating the skull into distinct anterior and posterior units, which allows the coelacanth to open its mouth so remarkably wide.

Here's the description from Samantha Weinberg's book, on p. 197:

"The coelacanth's tiny brain lies entirely behind a unique intracranial joint, a feature previously known only from fossils of primitive fish.... This enables the coelacanth to increase its gape by a sudden opening of the whole head, giving it a powerful bite that compensates for its relatively small teeth."

She also quotes Keith Thomson of Yale University, who first realized this while examining a specimen in 1966:

"The fish was completely thawed and flexible. I grasped the tip of the snout (carefully because the teeth are sharp) and lifted.... The [intracranial] joint hinged smoothly, the tip of the snout came up, and the lower jaw dropped and moved forward.... I felt a little like Galileo."

He felt that sense of wonder because he was seeing something no one had ever seen before: an ancient design, known only from fossils, working smoothly right before him.

Originally Posted by Ashtagon
Both cranium and mandible each comprise a number of separate bones (most of which are fused together or are missing in various species).

The part about fusion is key, because apart from Latimeria the intracranial joint only appears in fossils of primitive fish. Evidently the intracranial joint fused not long after coelacanths diverged from their early kin, and all other modern fish exhibit the fused condition.

.

[Debihuman]

When you write "Search -5 (-13 in bright light)," did you mean Search +5? Or is there another permutation I'm overlooking? (I hadn't originally given them Search as a skill, since it's not really something they do.)

Actually no. They have no ranks in the Search skill and it is Int based so they have -5 ability modifier. 0 plus -5 = -5. They take a further penalty in bright light at -8 for a grand total of -5 normally and -13 in bright light.

How did you assign the skill ranks (they have 5)? Then you apply the ability modifiers and then you add the other modifiers.

Debby

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Debihuman
Actually no. They have no ranks in the Search skill and it is Int based so they have -5 ability modifier. 0 plus -5 = -5. They take a further penalty in bright light at -8 for a grand total of -5 normally and -13 in bright light.

Okay, thanks. It all makes sense when you explain it.

[JennTora]

The polymorph thing: you can use baleful polymorph on an unwilling target, so I'd say the timeless shape ability is fine. You might could even make them immune to polymorph altogether. I can't really see the first thing someone thinks when coming across one being: "Welp, better turn it into a frog!"

[Debihuman]

It's Animal and not a Magical Beast so I'm not convinced those abilities (timeless shape and immunity to polymorph) make sense for it.

Debby

[JennTora]

It's Animal and not a Magical Beast so I'm not convinced those abilities (timeless shape and immunity to polymorph) make sense for it.

Debby

It's a coelacanth. If magic were real they'd be immune to polymorph. If a god tried to turn a coelacanth into something else he couldn't do it. Because it's a coelacanth.

Besides, they should get something for the fact that they've barely needed to evolve in any way since they set fin in the ocean.

[Debihuman]

Well, that's borked.

[TuggyNE]

It's a coelacanth. If magic were real they'd be immune to polymorph. If a god tried to turn a coelacanth into something else he couldn't do it. Because it's a coelacanth.

Polymorphing and genetic mutation are two quite different things, and there's essentially no commonality beyond the vaguely thematic. And "vaguely thematic" abilities are only suitable for things that are supernatural.

Besides, they should get something for the fact that they've barely needed to evolve in any way since they set fin in the ocean.

So, what, the universe balances things? Not getting it. It's a critter: it doesn't "get something" in exchange for having certain qualities as a species, it merely has those qualities. There aren't any special rewards or punishments available.

In short: magical thinking is only appropriate for stuff that's magic. Like a Magical Beast.

[JennTora]

It's called rule of cool, man. Coelacanth are cool, therefore they get cool abilities and not the lame ones that uncool animals get. The op felt that they should receive an ability related to their long history in the same form, and there's really no non-magical ability that would be appropriate.

Furthermore, lighten up.

[Palanan]

Well, my sentiments are with Corwin, but I also agree that casting polymorph probably isn't the first thing someone would think when they see a coelacanth--especially someone capable of casting polymorph in the first place.

I wanted something which alluded to the coelacanth's phoenomenal persistence through geological time, something which gave a nod to its retaining essentially the same form throughout the entire history of terrestrial vertebrate life. Clearly the polymorph idea isn't quite right, but I'll keep thinking on it.

[TuggyNE]

Furthermore, lighten up.

No! Homebrew is SRS BSNS!

[JennTora]

No! Homebrew is SRS BSNS!

No, it's all about having fun, man. Only when you truly believe in having fun and in the heart of the homebrew will you be able to understand how to homebrew effectively. Otherwise your heart will not truly live in your homebrew.(rambles on for seven more paragraphs.) Also, homebrew created the world. Or something.

[Debihuman]

Engulfing Gape should explain why the bite does +4 damage instead of +1.

Debby

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Debihuman
Engulfing Gape should explain why the bite does +4 damage instead of +1.

Yeah, still trying to work that one out. Originally I had an additional +1d4 of bludgeoning damage to the prey, once it's inside the mouth, but I'm not quite sure how that would work with the bite itself. Since the prey is being engulfed, the bite damage wouldn't really come into play.

Maybe 1d4+1 bludgeoning damage per round when engulfed? That would leave the bite as an option for prey that don't cooperate with the engulfing.

[Pterocards]

Perhaps the polymorph thing isn't exactly necessary (cool idea though!)

So have we decided how it's Swallow Whole works? The bludgeoning damage and all...?

And someone should probably either crest a new stat block, or update the old one with our new decisions for the mighty fish
If that's alright I mean....

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I've also made my character and he's awesome. He's ready to swallow some kobolds and things if we can get the Swallow While sorted out
Also does Snaptail Lunge work out of the water if the coelacanth say...had wings by chance?

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Koda the kobold
So have we decided how it's Swallow Whole works? The bludgeoning damage and all...?

Sorry, been distracted by a lot of things this past week, haven't had a chance to polish this up.

Originally Posted by Koda the kobold
Also does Snaptail Lunge work out of the water if the coelacanth say...had wings by chance?

Coelacanth...wings...bu--wha--?

*brain shorts out*

[TuggyNE]

Coelacanth...wings...bu--wha--?

*brain shorts out*

I'm thinking Half-Dragon template.

Not that that makes things even a whit better.

[Pterocards]

Coelacanth...wings...bu--wha--?
*brain shorts out*

I'm thinking Half-Dragon template.
Not that that makes things even a whit better.

Gilled Armor+Cloak of wings
But I don't plan to add winged coelacanths XD
It was just an example.

Are you in need of a new animal companion? Normal wolf can't kill like you want it too? Shark too mainstream? Look no further!
Introducing the new winged coelacanth!

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It comes in "Cloak of Wings"

And "Half Dragon"

For a limited time only 9000 GP!

And I totally understand the busy thing, don't worry about it!
I was simply curious

[Palanan]

...where did you get the coelacanth artwork?

It's...sort of an OotS coelacanth.



--with wings.

*brain shorts out*

[Pterocards]

...where did you get the coelacanth artwork?

It's...sort of an OotS coelacanth.



--with wings.

*brain shorts out*

I drew it last night