Concealed Burrow. Cave Eels conceal their burrows skillfully, so they have tactical advantage on Dex (Stealth) checks to be hidden at the beginning of an encounter. An attack cave eel lunges from its cave, bites a victim within 5 ft., and then withdraws back into its burrow without triggering an opportunity attack. While in a burrow, a cave eel has three-quarters cover (+5 bonus to AC and Dex saving throws). The only way to negate this benefit is for a character to ready an action and attack the cave eel with a reaction as it extends its body to strike.
Viselike Jaws. When a cave eel withdraws back into its burrow with a grappled character in its jaws, that characters body effectively becomes a shield protecting the eel, giving it total cover inside its burrow (it only has three-quarters cover against the character it grapples). While the eel has a character grappled this way, it doesn’t need to extend from its burrow to attack the grappled character, who it bites automatically.
Bite. Melee Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., 1 target. Hit: 6 (1d8 + 2) [piercing] damage.
Description
Organization: Group (2-5) or swarm (3-24)
This creature resembles a cross between a snake and an eel, but that’s only if you see it before it bites into you with its steel hard teeth.
Cave eels resemble large, air breathing eels, but they have armored snouts and tremendously tough teeth with which they can chew tunnels through rock. They wait in these tunnels for potential prey to walk near, then lunge out to take great bites from whatever is in front of them. They usually pick narrow cave passages for their ambushes, where prey has little room to back out of reach of the cave eels’ long, sinuous bodies.