Huck Limpet (3.5e Monster)

Strategies and Tactics
A huck limpet has little means to defend itself, other than it's hard shell and unappetizing flavor. Its stinging nettles do little to phase the great beasts that roam Messos Myonel on land and in the seas. They rely on their ability to hide and clamp tight to surfaces. When attacked, a huck limpet typically dies, being very small and weak. However, it tries to lash out with its stinging barbed nettles to discourage predators. It mainly uses these tentacles to feed on much smaller life-forms.

Skills: Huck Limpets have a +4 racial bonus on Hide and Listen checks and a +8 racial bonus on Climb checks. A huck limpet can always choose to take 10 on Climb checks, even if rushed or threatened. Huck limpets use either their Strength or Constitution modifier to Climb checks, whichever is higher.

Huck Limpet Ecology
Huck Limpets aren't quite limpets, being from the world of Messos Myonel. Their meager defenses and social bonding traits have made them a fair choice among owners of pets (and familiars), exotic or otherwise. Huck limpets have since made their way to other worlds in the hands of other folks.

A huck limpet appears to be a roughly textured, brownish cone of shell with a small hole at its top. Four long, reddish tentacles protrude from this hole, often waving about gently, though able to be retracted within (and the hole covered by flaps of shell. They reach a height of about a foot and are roughly a foot long. In this regard, it resembles somewhat a very miniature volcano. A huck limpet moves about on a muscular, adhesive foot, slowly moving about across hard rock and over (or underneath) sand. Several small, glassy eyes ring the base of its shell. These eyes are fairly poor and are only supplementary to its tremorsensing ability.

When a huck limpet is unable to catch prey or feed on scraps, it will feed off organic muck, clays and blooms of microorganisms.

Huck limpets produce pearls. Roughly once a year, a huck limpet will spit out surprisingly heavy blue-green pearl. Value varies, but typically it is worth about 10 gp to collectors. Occasionally, these pearls are used for bartering and currency on Messos Myonel.

Taming Huck Limpets
Huck limpets are easy to train, docile and generally long-lived. They are treated as animals for the purposes of training with Handle Animal checks. Huck limpets enjoy the safety that being in the care of a sentient creature brings.

A tame and trained huck limpet lives for 20+1d20 years in captivity. Four times a year, an adult huck limpet will desire to mate. Being hermaphroditic, a huck limpet may reproduce asexually if no mate is available. Huck limpets incubate their broods of eggs internally until they are nearly ready to hatch, at which time, they are deposited in shallow, loose earth. A typical brood of huck limpet eggs is 10+2d10 eggs. These eggs hatch a day later and grow to adulthood in 1 year.

A young huck limpet is worth 1 gp, hardly being worth bothering over.

Familiars
Despite being a magical beast, the huck limpet can be selected as a familiar. Huck limpets grant their master the amphibious trait, allowing a limpet's master to breathe both air and water.