D&D: The Carrion Crawler is Fixed – Digitally, at Least
WotC released one last batch of updates to the Monster Manual before its official release yesterday. Carrion Crawlers crawl on.
The official release date of the Monster Manual might have been yesterday, but WotC caught one last error before the final release. Not that it matters much for the print version—those are already out in the wild. But digital copies of the Monster Manual have a fix for the Carrion Crawler infinite paralysis loop.
This is one of many updates you’ll want to be aware of in the new Monster Manual. But don’t worry. Even if you don’t have a digital copy, all the current updates are in a single changelog if you know where to look.
WotC Fixed the Carrion Crawler—It Was as Easy as You Thought
In the changelog dates back to the weekend before the release., In it you’ll find one new stealth update to the 2025 Monster Manual stat blocks.Iinterestingly enough the change was made on Saturday. The change is listed under the same batch of &changes made in the February 4th update on D&D Beyond. It’s the same as before, just now there’s an entry for Carrion Crawler after the entry for Balor.
And the fix is pretty simple. It all relates back to the Carrion Crawler’s paralyzing tentacle attack. Previously, it had read that ac reature makes a Dexterity save to avoid getting the Paralyzed condition and could repeat the save on each of its turns, ending the condition on a success.
The only problem with that is that if you have the Paralyzed condition in D&D, you auto-fail any Dexterity saves. A proposed fix from the community was just to make it a Constitution save instead. It turned out that that’s exactly what the designers intended because the Dex save has now been replaced with a Con save.
It just signifies how much the world we live in has changed. These kinds of updates aren’t caused to raise the hue and cry anymore. We all know nobody’s perfect, sure. However, day 1 updates are a huge thing for video games, too. Culturally, we’ve all come to expect a list of bullet points talking about what systems have been tweaked, perhaps with a cheeky explanation.
Something like:
- Carrion Cralwers have had their tentacles tweaked, much to their chagrin, now it’s a Constitution save to avoid/end.
Or whatever. The point is that games are living systems these days more than ever. The design team updates the rules, but you should, too. Every ttrpg is its own beast, so get in there and muck with the rules and make them make sense to you.
Enjoy not getting perma stunned anymore!
