The roper is another of the "does what it says on the tin" monsters that are original to D&D. Alongside such creatures as trappers and piercers, it's clearly intended to disguise itself as part of the background and attack unexpectedly but does have a more distinctive look and an unusual method of attack that make it more memorable than they are, with the result that it consistently appears in the core Monster Manual books of each edition.1E
In the original Monster Manual, the roper is a tapered pillar-like creature with a single large eye above the mouth near the top of the body - there are no apparent nostrils or ears. The eye has an odd brow-like structure that seems to partially cover the upper surface; this might be a ridge to protect it from falling debris, since it lives in caves and there's plausibly a lid that flips down from it as well. The mouth opens horizontally and has pointed isodont teeth in both jaws, although it seems unlikely that the creature has much of an internal skeleton to attach them to. The base is limbless and flat to the ground, while a vertically arranged row of three apparent tentacles arise from each side.
I say "apparent" tentacles, because the text implies that they are strands of flammable mucus rather than part of the body, but that isn't how they look. In particular, their surface seems to be continuous with the creature's body, rather than projecting from some secretory organ. The creature is said to be yellowish, which might not be great for disguising itself as a stalagmite, but it lives in total darkness where most things likely to encounter it will be using colour-blind darkvision (or, in this edition, infravision) so this may not matter.
The 2E version looks much the same, but is squatter with a wider mouth and a look vaguely reminiscent of Slimer in the original Ghostbusters movie. Oddly, however, the picture on the cover of the 1E book looks quite different (and, as with the red dragon, it's by the same artist as the interior picture). This is greenish-brown, not yellow, has a circular mouth lacking jaws, a semi-dumbbell shape and, most obviously, two eyes, arranged vertically one above the other. This particular look is not seen again.The roper is a remarkably powerful creature, and extremely hard to kill. Since it's hard to imagine that it's agile and it's certainly slow-moving, the only plausible explanation for its high armour rating is that its hide really is harder to penetrate than steel plate. Nonetheless, the illustrations, and the 2E text, imply that it's flexible and mostly smooth, so it's probably a very thick rubbery material rather than a hard shell.
It's also surprisingly intelligent, comparable to the top 10% of humans, but quite what it uses these smarts for is unclear. There's no indication it can even speak, let alone fashion tools or have any sort of material culture. All it does is flail about and grab things, which hardly requires the IQ of 120+ that it seemingly possesses.
The 2E description adds that ropers are cold-blooded and that they have "cilia" on their undersides that they use to move about with. Why this would be necessary, or even helpful, isn't very obvious, since one would expect that muscular movement as seen in slugs and snails would be quite sufficient to explain its slow movement rate.
3E
The roper changes quite significantly in 3E. In terms of its appearance, it's now a rough cylinder with a flattened top and jagged protrusions on its lower body. It's now able to change its colour to match its surroundings, rather than being stuck with yellow. The eye is placed much further down on the body and lacks the brow, being a simple orb with a pinprick pupil (it's doubtless highly sensitive to light, living where it does) and, while it might have some sort of nictitating membrane, there don't seem to be proper eyelids.
The mouth is circular, lacking the jaw-like arrangement of earlier editions, and lined with three concentric rows of crystalline teeth. Instead of arising from the sides of the body, the tentacles project from a ring running right around the body above the eye; this time, they really do look like the ropy strands they are said to be and are visibly extruded from fleshy stubs rather than looking like permanent bodily features.
The roper's intelligence has dropped considerably, although it's still slightly above the human norm. It can speak now, being fluent in two different languages, although neither is unique to it. It turns out to be remarkably strong, which is hardly a surprise, and moderately agile, which is more so (unless we're just talking about the strands).
5E
The look of the roper returns to something closer to the first two editions in 5E. However, the mouth is wider than in 1E, to the extent that there doesn't seem to be much room for a stomach behind it. The eye has a slit-like pupil rather than a circular one and, while the brow is still absent, we are told that it has protective eyelids. The tentacles project from the sides of the body again, but are arranged in horizontal rows just above the mouth, rather than vertical ones along the flanks.
The roper is one of a small number of creatures whose armour rating doesn't drop between 3 and 5E - indeed, it remains the same in all editions except the fourth. This time around, however, it's a stony shell, rather than the flexible hide explicitly described in 2E. It now has the low dexterity you'd expect from something that moves so slowly and has a rigid body, although it's still as formidable as ever in a fight. The intelligence, however, has plummeted yet further, now being at the orcish level, and it has once again lost the ability to speak.
Given its unusual anatomy, it's surprising that the roper is considered to be a magical beast/monstrosity in 3E and 5E, and not an aberration. (Even more bizarrely, it's an earth elemental in 4E, which is something else entirely...) This, apparently, means that it isn't considered particularly alien, and therefore ought to have at least some relationship to real-world creatures. But what?
While the eye and the teeth do suggest something vertebrate-like, nothing else about the creature and its form fits with such an idea, and it's clearly not an arthropod either, since it has no jointed exoskeleton. Instead, I'd argue that what it most closely resembles is a mollusc - a member of the group to which snails, oysters, and octopuses all belong, among many other creatures.The eyes of molluscs are, in terms of their general anatomy, remarkably similar to those of vertebrates, although their microscopic structure is different, so that's not a problem. To the extent that they have limbs at all (most don't), these are tentacles, and they have no skeleton, although most do have an external shell, just like the 5E roper has. Another key feature of molluscs is that they have a muscular foot, which is often at the base of the body and used to creep along slowly - it doesn't use cilia, but, again, it supports the idea of a similar anatomical layout.
Having noted these parallels, we also have to concede that there are a few differences between the roper and real-world molluscs. Perhaps it's a hybrid creature, in the way that a griffin is a hybrid of bird and mammal. But if we want to speculate about the details of roper anatomy, using molluscs as a baseline is certainly going to get us further than trying to force into a vertebrate scheme.
One of the most visible differences between a roper and real-world molluscs is the mouth. While some molluscs do have jaws, they are not lined by teeth. Instead, the teeth of a mollusc are on what's essentially its tongue (technically the radula) which it uses as a rasp. Clearly, in this respect, the roper is different and some of the other specialised features of the molluscan digestive system are likely also absent. Nonetheless, we can assume that the oesophagus runs up from the mouth into the body, through a stomach, and into an intestine in the lower part of the animal's body.
In fact, we're told that ropers have a "gizzard", which essentially means a highly muscular stomach. These are most associated with birds, and some reptiles, where they can contain stones of rough internal edges to grind up food in the absence of teeth in the mouth. Some molluscs do, in fact, have a stomach that can be loosely described as a gizzard, and ropers certainly don't have chewing teeth, so this is not unreasonable.
Most molluscs are aquatic, and have gills, but those that live on land typically have a single lung. This is formed from another key feature of molluscs, the mantle cavity. Given the overall appearance and orientation of the roper, and mapping it onto real-world molluscan anatomy, this is probably located in the animal's lower back, opening to the external world through an orifice at the base of the rear part of the shell, just behind and above the foot - explaining the absence of apparent nostrils. Given the roper's large size and presumed metabolic needs, it's likely a more complex organ than found in real molluscs but it seems likely that the lower portion of the lung, by the opening, would have a relatively simple form, still functioning as a regular mantle cavity.
This is because molluscs excrete through their mantle cavities, and therefore both the anus and the urinary ducts would open into it - and not into the lung proper. The ducts would be attached to a pair of kidneys lying above the cavity, and in front of the lung, as part of the main mass of visceral organs lying higher up in the body. In addition to the stomach/gizzard and a three or four-chambered heart, these would include a hepatopancreas, a large digestive gland that mirrors the functions of both the pancreas and the liver in vertebrates.
Even the 5E version of the roper is intelligent enough that its brain is likely large - the INT stat is still far higher than that of an octopus, which isn't exactly small-brained itself. The fact that it has a single eye also means that the brain would have a different structure to that of an octopus (or, indeed, any real-world mollusc), probably having a single lobe behind the eye, and smaller paired lobes beneath it and above the mouth. From this paired nerve cords run in a loop through the body, although they're likely quite short, given the roper's overall shape.
We're given two quite different explanations of how ropers reproduce. In 2E, they bud asexually, dropping off limbless larvae that change into the adult form in a matter of weeks. Obviously, this would completely rule out the idea of them being molluscs, but it's also hard to justify for any creature that's as anatomically complex as a roper appears to be. 5E is vaguer but does state that a distinct creature called a piercer is, in fact, a larval roper. (For what it's worth, 2E specifically states that piercers are molluscs, and hatch from eggs).
Molluscs vary in their reproductive patterns, so it's hard to say too much about how this would work for ropers. It's possible that, like many molluscs, they are hermaphrodites, but, again, many molluscs aren't, so that isn't necessarily so. Either way, they need a partner to mate, and the male genitalia are probably tucked inside the front part of the foot at the base of the "shell" when not in use. Land-dwelling molluscs lay eggs encased in a solid shell to stop them from drying out, and these are deposited via the mantle cavity, so this is likely true for ropers, too.
Molluscs do have larvae, but these are only free-living in the aquatic forms, with the larva of the air-breathing sort basically staying inside the egg until they can take on the form of a miniature adult. Having said that, aside from lacking the tentacles, a piercer (as shown in 5E) isn't that different from a roper in form, so it doesn't require radical metamorphosis to change from one to the other. More than real-world molluscs do, to be sure, but not biologically implausible... although it's perhaps harder to say the same of the piercer's method of feeding, but that's a different issue.
This leaves the roper's ability to weaken the creature it attacks. According to 5E, this is supposed to work by sending tendrils into the victim's muscles, which seems an excessively complicated method, but may be to justify why something that seems to require skin contact can still work on a target wearing armour. It's also unclear exactly how this could sap strength temporarily without using a toxin, which it apparently doesn't. The "tendrils" could destroy muscle fibres, or fine nerves, but that would hardly be temporary.
Mind you, one also wonders how it manages to aim its strands/tentacles so effectively when it doesn't have binocular vision...
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