Intelligence above a 4 imbues most (if not all) creatures with the capacity to speak and/or understand a language in 5e, so in cases like these, they sorta screwed themselves with tying that linguistic cap to a set Int score. And some spells have an explicit minimum or maximum Intelligence score limit for them to work, which is why they set that cap in the first place.

Seriously, why do these octopuses have an intelligence of 4?!? Hopefully when 6e comes out they make octopuses smarter.

Quote from Qoray >>

why does the octopus only have an intelligence of 4?

They are one of the most intelligent animals! It should be 6-8 at least

Quote from VitalTactics >>

I agree. I would even go as far as a 10 or 11. These creatures are smart as heck.

Quote from waluigi_mourner >>

They really did octopuses dirty. No venomous bite and average intelligence for a giant animal? Laaaaaaaaaame.

Quote from Firelake >>

This animal schould be threated like Giant Owls or Giant Eagles, with its own Language an int of 9-13 and some (small) spells like camourflage or psionics.

These animals are more intelligent than an avarage Child or even Teen. They are even in an real live Seting scary intelligent and proficient!

 

 

Beyond 20

 

 

 

 

 

Quote from Quickblue >>

Needs to be smarter!

Quote from JustANormalSorcerer >>

Seriously, why do these octopuses have an intelligence of 4?!? Hopefully when 6e comes out they make octopuses smarter.

 Keep in mind that the intelligence for average beasts hits a maximum at 3. The Giant Pacific Octopus is a real creature and the "giant octopus" could very well be based on it, if it isn't supposed to represent it already. The Giant Octopus' Intelligence is 4, which is tied for second place of "most intelligent real beast" in the Monster Manual. The Baboon is just as smart in the monster manual, with only the Ape being smarter (Int 6). And Apes make their own tools, while it appears that octopi only use existing ones in clever ways.

Several beasts are smarter than the Giant Octopus, but those are giant versions of creatures which don't exist in real life. If you remove all except for real animals, the Giant Octopus becomes one of the most intelligent beasts in the Monster Manual.

The thing is, Intelligence might be something of a logarithmic scale. There is no way that a black pudding (Int 1) is 1/10 as smart as a human. Int 4 is the threshold at which a creature can be affected by Tasha's Hideous Laughter, meaning that they "understand" humor somehow. That is a big leap from 3 to 4, from what I can tell.

And for the Giant Octopus being one of the most intelligent creatures, Chimpanzees and other primates also generally have that title. This is sort of reflected by having Giant Octopuses, Apes, and Baboons as the only three real animals in the Monster Manual that have an Intelligence higher than 3.

Makes up for it in HD though

yeh my partys druid turned int oit and it was so strong

How much do they weigh?

Quote from Pi3Orionis >>

As written above though, it can only grapple exactly one character, and cannot attack anyone else while it does so. It's not grabbing or attacking, say, up to eight characters here.

 Sure. But it can attack its grappled target with advantage and its escape DC is high. That puts it on even ground with a CR2 Ogre or Merrow, with more tricks too. This things CR makes sense in terms of an animal that isn't going to keep fighting if it's hurt, but it doesn't fit if it's for some reason hyper aggressive, if it's being controlled by an enemy or party member to fight its hardest.  If someone were to cast conjure animals underwater, one doesn't seem too weak, but 2 seems like a lot, 1 would be about as good as a hunter shark. This thing's restrain would benefit the party to hit, mostly anyone with disadvantage to hit underwater.

fighting a dragon with this OP monster @@@@@@ Love Dnd

yea you're rigjht!!

******

Druids meanwhile: You shall not pass!!!

To balance the encounters, I allow multiple tentacle attacks rather than spawning multiple Octopi.

OK, serious question here. What is the Octopus supposed to do once it successfully grapples someone?? If I'm reading this correctly, it can just keep trying to attack/squeeze the PC it initially hit and continue to do damage to it to the exclusion of all other targets since it can't use them against another target? How does it not have a bite attack??

the cr needs to be at least doubled. lvl 2 circle of the moon druid can wild shape into this as a bonus action

Action-oriented octopus solo.
a giant octopus designed 2 not be a solo would in all likelihood be a soldier or ambusher.

Action-oriented giant octopus

Large beast solo, unaligned

AC: 10

Hit points: 52 (8d10+8)
Speed 10ft, swim 60ft

Str 17 (+3), dex 11 (0), con 13 (+1), int 6 (-2), wis 10 (0), cha 4 (-3)

Expertise: perception, stealth.

Senses: darkvision 60ft, passive perception 14.

Languages: none.

Challenge 1 (200XP). PB+2

Lungful ocean-dweller: the octopus can only breathe water but can hold its breath up 2 an hour outside of water.

Actions

Tentacle: melee weapon attack, +5 to hit, reach 15ft, 1 target, hit: 6 (1d6+3) bludgeoning damage and the target is grappled (escape dc15).

The octopus has 8 tentacles, each of which can grapple a target and it is not slowed by grappling unless it has at least 8 weight points of creatures grappled, with large+ being 8, medium being 4, small being 1 and tiny being 0.

Crush: the octopus deals 6 (1d6+3) bludgeoning damage to a creature it has grappled.

Bonus actions

Underwater camouflage: if the octopus is submerged in water it hides, needing only to be against a nontransparent surface 4 concealment.

The octopus makes the dexterity(stealth) check at +4 but it only gains unseen attacker advantage and doesn’t conceal its position if it is grappling a creature.

Reactions

Block: when the octopus would be hit with a range attack while it has a grappled target it can gain a +2 bonus to its AC against that attack, potentially turning a hit into a miss.

Should this turn a hit into a miss, the octopus picks a grappled target to suffer the effects of the hit instead.

Villain actions

The octopus can take a villain action at the end of another creature's turn.

It can take 1 villain action per round and each action once per encounter.

Round 1: everyone not nailed down: the octopus moves up to its speed without AoO and makes a tentacle attack against every creature and object of its choice it comes within 15ft of during this move.

These attacks do not deal damage and solely grapple.

Round 2: crack open: the octopus attempts to utterly crush a grappled target, they must make a dc13 constitution save, taking 10 (2d6+3) bludgeoning damage on a failed save and ½ as much on a successful save.

Round 3: ink cloud: the octopus extends a 20ft radius cloud of ink around its current location, drops every creature it has grappled, moves up to its speed and hides(+4).

If you’re wondering about the dexterity, i had 2 nerf that slightly 2 ensure that this monster didn’t boil over 2 CR 2.
i could have nerfed the HP slightly, but i felt it was better 2 double down on the monsters weakness.

Not to mention it has a 15ft reach so if you manage to hit and grapple a medium sized creature that has no ranged attack 15ft out it literally can't even fight back at disadvantage. Just try and make the save.

Just so good.

Quote from evilevi21479 >>

OK, serious question here. What is the Octopus supposed to do once it successfully grapples someone?? If I'm reading this correctly, it can just keep trying to attack/squeeze the PC it initially hit and continue to do damage to it to the exclusion of all other targets since it can't use them against another target? How does it not have a bite attack??

 This is the part they really didn't make clear in the description of the action.  The phrase "Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the octopus can't use its tentacles on another target." does NOT explicitly state that the octo can continue attacking its grappled target.  But, it makes sense that they would, otherwise it would rarely benefit them to grapple other than on occasion to reduce the attacker's attacks, but would leave the octo vulnerable to other attackers.

So I'm going to assume it can make an attack (at advantage) on its grappled victim while it is grappling.

this is the best monster, although it should have much higher mental stats

best druid transformation